User talk:GeneralizationsAreBad/Archive 15

LTA range

@Acroterion and NeilN: I just took out 71.251.40.0/21 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), which has... quite the history, going back to October 2015. Just FYI, since you've dealt with this character. Regards, GAB^gab 05:23, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Oh, wow! Some of those articles. Blast from the past. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 05:31, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

2021, good. A nice clean rangeblock. Thanks, Acroterion (talk) 12:48, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Deleted articles

Hi there. I see you deleted World University Cross Country Championship as part of a block case. I remember the information there was valid, and possibly some of it by myself. Are you willing to share the deleted content so I can recreate what is useful? I would also be interested in any other athletics-related articles that were deleted as a result of this clean-up. Thanks, SFB 14:23, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

@Sillyfolkboy: If you mean World University Cross Country Championships, then I'd be happy to restore it. GAB^gab 17:48, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that would be great. Thanks! SFB 20:22, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

@Sillyfolkboy:  Done. GAB^gab 20:35, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Looks like we've got a few more examples of articles created by other users that were deleted in error in the sockban as a result of the problem user doing a copy-paste/redirect job:

• 2017 Women's European Amateur Boxing Championships
• World University Squash Championships
• World University Orienteering Championships
• IPC Nordic Skiing World Championships
• IPC Alpine Skiing World Championships
• IPC Biathlon and Cross-Country Skiing World Championships

Can you review the original article creators and restore as appropriate? Thanks SFB 17:40, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi! Still waiting on a response on this. Seems like a bit of bother for both of us to send this to Deletion Review... Thanks SFB 00:07, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

UFAA / AIV

Hi GAB, Just wanted to say thanks for revdelling the edits of the editor I reported at UFAA/AIV a few days ago and I also want to apologise for not actually stating which edits needed revdeling but anyway thanks for dealing with that and again sorry for making you do the legwork there!, Happy editing, –Davey2010^Talk 20:40, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Can you comment on a general issue raised by your block of Special:Contributions/185.165.168.117?

Please see this thread at the ref desk talk page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk#Can_someone_block_82.43.223.98?, especially the unhatted part of it, which is the part relevant to the block you issued.

What I am wondering is, if the user deserved a month's block for using a proxy, shouldn't his edit also have been removed? Could you clarify, was the editor simply blocked because the address is know to be used as a proxy, or was the editor himself a blocked editor who just happened to be using a proxy which itself was an ok IP if used legitimately?

To me the situation is like the headline, man arrested entering window of house. Was he a known felon, who was caught entering a window? Or was his entering the window the crime for which he was arrested?

Please answer here so the other editors can see what's going on. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 02:20, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Medeis: Replied there. GAB^gab 20:26, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

SPI custom and practice

Thanks for your thanks. I also have a question I hope you can help with. WP:SOCKTAG is all very well as a policy but if there is anything about 'sentencing policy' for abusers that is more specfic I have yet to find it. It's all very well handing out indef blocks for the obvious cases, but what is custom and practice for more complex issues? Specifically I got stuck here (which I now fear has become TLDR), but I am no more clear about others I have taken an interest in. Ben MacDui 19:32, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

@Ben MacDui: I'm so glad that you're interested in taking a more active role at SPI. I can't comment on that case specifically, but I can say that the sockblock policy is very discretionary. Generally, if the socking is exacerbated by other disruptive activity (or vice-versa), the indef will likely come quicker. The best way to get acquainted with the general MO is by reading archived cases (preferably recent). For instance, I keep an SPI log for reference. I hope that this - vague as it is - helps. GAB^gab 23:35, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

At present my thoughts about SPI are something like "one third strange, one third alarming and one third intriguing". No promises but I hope to keep plugging away; there always seems to be a backlog. Your log looks very helpful and I will use it as a reference in future if that's OK. I can see that I might have to create something similar to keep the bewildering array of names encountered in order. I guessed as much about 'policy' - there's a danger that old hands bad habits become newcomers accepted practice - although I suspect there are few complaints from regular editors. See you soon over at the ranch no doubt. Ben MacDui

This and subsequent edits by the same user were made at an SPI investigation after the case was closed.

Q1 - Should these be reverted or simply left in place?

Q2 - There was a related discussion here which I have classified under the heading of "weird and wonderful". If you think any further action might be needed please let me know. Ben MacDui 15:27, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2018

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

Administrator changes

None

Blurpeace • Dana boomer • Deltabeignet • Denelson83 • Grandiose • Salvidrim! • Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has closed with a consensus that candidates at WP:RFA must disclose whether they have ever edited for pay and that administrators may never use administrative tools as part of any paid editing activity, except when they are acting as a Wikipedian-in-Residence or when the payment is made by the Wikimedia Foundation or an affiliate of the WMF.
• Editors responding to threats of harm can now contact the Wikimedia Foundation's emergency address by using Special:EmailUser/Emergency. If you don't have email enabled on Wikipedia, directly contacting the emergency address using your own email client remains an option.

Technical news

• A tag will now be automatically applied to edits that blank a page, turn a page into a redirect, remove/replace almost all content in a page, undo an edit, or rollback an edit. These edits were previously denoted solely by automatic edit summaries.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee has enacted a change to the discretionary sanctions procedure which requires administrators to add a standardized editnotice when placing page restrictions. Editors cannot be sanctioned for violations of page restrictions if this editnotice was not in place at the time of the violation.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:51, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad, thank you for your efforts in reviewing new pages!

The NPP backlog at the end of the drive with the number of unreviewed articles by creation date. Red is older than 90 days, orange is between 90 and 30 days old, and green is younger than 30 days.

Backlog update:

• The new page backlog is currently at 3819 unreviewed articles, with a further 6660 unreviewed redirects.
• We are very close to eliminating the backlog completely; please help by reviewing a few extra articles each day!

New Year Backlog Drive results:

• We made massive progress during the recent four weeks of the NPP Backlog Drive, during which the backlog reduced by nearly six thousand articles and the length of the backlog by almost 3 months!

General project update:

• ACTRIAL will end it's initial phase on the 14th of March. Our goal is to reduce the backlog significantly below the 90 day index point by the 14th of March. Please consider helping with this goal by reviewing a few additional pages a day.
• Reviewing redirects is an important and necessary part of New Page Patrol. Please read the guideline on appropriate redirects for advice on reviewing redirects. Inappropriate redirects can be re-targeted or nominated for deletion at RfD.

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Matthew Jocelyn

You just revdeled some edits on Matthew Jocelyn. I removed some stuff of serious BLP concern earlier, which may have some link to what you've removed, and I probably should've called for a revdel. If you could take a look at this range of edits and revdel as appropriate, it would be appreciated. Not "send you a big box of muffins" level of appreciated, but appreciated nonetheless. --Nat Gertler (talk) 22:47, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

@NatGertler:  Done. Someone clearly has an axe to grind. GAB^gab 02:33, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

On this day, 3 years ago..

Hey, GeneralizationsAreBad. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Lepricavark (talk) 00:16, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

The Propaganda Account

Hello Sir, thanks for your help, i just wonder why the account of User:O.celebi who gets another account to assist him and confirm his claim in Turks in Egypt page, is not blocked? This user uses Wikipedia as a political tool and constantly wanting to change the demographics of other nations and getting another user to help him spread his propaganda. Beronzya (talk) 02:38, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

@Beronzya: The other account was found to be a sockpuppet of a different master. Please consider dispute resolution processes, though. Regards, GAB^gab 17:07, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

WP:CBAN for Krajoyn

On Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, I have started a discussion of a potential CBAN of Krajoyn which you might have been involved in.

The discussion is linked at WP:CBAN for Krajoyn. Iggy (Swan) 19:21, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Posible sockpuppet

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad, Rakib23 and Pilot333 both were registered four days after you blocked Sayed022 and Rakib23's first edit was to create Irfan Qadir (very well formatted) and an exact copy of Sayed022's article Jagrit Pratap Singh especially the award section (see diff here and here), he then edited Draft:Sterling Coleman and removed orphan tag from Jagrit Pratap Singh both articles were created by Sayed022. Pilot333 was registered a day before Rakib23 and definitely not a new brand new user. He turned his talk and user page into blue and starts voting in random AfDs including Sayed022's article Jagrit Pratap Singh. He is just a week older and already knows about many guidelines (see his votes). Thank you – GSS (talk|c|em) 11:33, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2018

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

Administrator changes

Lourdes†

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

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

Guideline and policy news

• The autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) is scheduled to end on 14 March 2018. The results of the research collected can be read on Meta Wiki.
• Community ban discussions must now stay open for at least 24 hours prior to being closed.
• A change to the administrator inactivity policy has been proposed. Under the proposal, if an administrator has not used their admin tools for a period of five years and is subsequently desysopped for inactivity, the administrator would have to file a new RfA in order to regain the tools.
• A change to the banning policy has been proposed which would specify conditions under which a repeat sockmaster may be considered de facto banned, reducing the need to start a community ban discussion for these users.

Technical news

• CheckUsers are now able to view private data such as IP addresses from the edit filter log, e.g. when the filter prevents a user from creating an account. Previously, this information was unavailable to CheckUsers because access to it could not be logged.
• The edit filter has a new feature contains_all that edit filter managers may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2018 Steward elections, the following users are our new stewards: -revi, Green Giant, Rxy, There'sNoTime, علاء.

Obituaries

• Bhadani (Gangadhar Bhadani) passed away on 8 February 2018. Bhadani joined Wikipedia in March 2005 and became an administrator in September 2005. While he was active, Bhadani was regarded as one of the most prolific Wikipedians from India.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:00, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Pete Hawkes again

Hi again,

You might remember that I asked you for advice about the Pete Hawkes article, and that you recommended to take it to WP:COIN if the vandalism continued. Well, the pattern is indeed continuing unabated. Since we last spoke, he's created five more throwaway accounts to edit his article, so I've reported this behaviour at COIN again. Last time I did that, there was no reply. If you have time, I'd appreciate it if you could take a look and give your opinion. --Slashme (talk) 00:29, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

@Slashme: I'm very sorry for the delay - things have been kind of crazy recently. It looks like things are mostly inactive there. GAB^gab 19:50, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

No worries, I know how things go! I think the main reason why it's gone quiet is that the page is now protected. I'll keep an eye on it after the protection expires and see whether it starts up again. --Slashme (talk) 05:33, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Lyricalmigibalvd new users

After one year of silence, they're back with more of the same: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here. 123.136.118.169 (talk) 10:51, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Some falafel for you!

I read this and it made my day :-) "However, one of the biggest strengths of Wikipedia (in my opinion) is that it's easy to break away and find another quiet subject area to work on (music, technology, history, etc.) that is not so heated. Just my 2 cents. " d[@-@]b (talk) 15:58, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

@Wakelamp: I'm glad I finally said something useful :) GAB^gab 19:44, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

April 2018 Milhist Backlog Drive

G'day all, please be advised that throughout April 2018 the Military history Wikiproject is running its annual backlog elimination drive. This will focus on several key areas:

• tagging and assessing articles that fall within the project's scope
• adding or improving listed resources on Milhist's task force pages
• updating the open tasks template on Milhist's task force pages
• creating articles that are listed as "requested" on the project's various lists of missing articles.

As with past Milhist drives, there are points awarded for working on articles in the targeted areas, with barnstars being awarded at the end for different levels of achievement.

The drive is open to all Wikipedians, not just members of the Military history project, although only work on articles that fall (broadly) within the scope of military history will be considered eligible. This year, the Military history project would like to extend a specific welcome to members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red, and we would like to encourage all participants to consider working on helping to improve our coverage of women in the military. This is not the sole focus of the edit-a-thon, though, and there are aspects that hopefully will appeal to pretty much everyone.

The drive starts at 00:01 UTC on 1 April and runs until 23:59 UTC on 30 April 2018. Those interested in participating can sign up here.

For the Milhist co-ordinators, AustralianRupert and MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:53, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

New Page Review Newsletter No.10

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

ACTRIAL:

• ACTRIAL's six month experiment restricting new page creation to (auto)confirmed users ended on 14 March. As expected, a greatly increased number of unsuitable articles and candidates for deletion are showing up in the feed again, and the backlog has since increased already by ~30%. Please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day.

Paid editing

• Now that ACTRIAL is inoperative pending discussion, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

• The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
• Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies. A further discussion is currently taking place at: Can a subject specific guideline invalidate the General Notability Guideline?

Nominate competent users for Autopatrolled

• While patrolling articles, if you find an editor that is particularly competent at creating quality new articles, and that user has created more than 25 articles (rather than stubs), consider nominating them for the 'Autopatrolled' user right HERE.

News

• The next issue Wikipedia's newspaper The Signpost has now been published after a long delay. There are some articles in it, including ACTRIAL wrap-up that will be of special interest to New Page Reviewers. Don't hesitate to contribute to the comments sections. The Signpost is one of the best ways to stay up date with news and new developments - please consider subscribing to it. All editors of Wikipedia and associated projects are welcome to submit articles on any topic for consideration by the The Signpost's editorial team for the next issue.

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To opt-out of future mailings, go here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:06, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2018

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

Administrator changes

331dot • Cordless Larry • ClueBot NG

Gogo Dodo • Pb30 • Sebastiankessel • Seicer • SoLando

Guideline and policy news

• Administrators who have been desysopped due to inactivity are now required to have performed at least one (logged) administrative action in the past 5 years in order to qualify for a resysop without going through a new RfA.
• Editors who have been found to have engaged in sockpuppetry on at least two occasions after an initial indefinite block, for whatever reason, are now automatically considered banned by the community without the need to start a ban discussion.
• The notability guideline for organizations and companies has been substantially rewritten following the closure of this request for comment. Among the changes, the guideline more clearly defines the sourcing requirements needed for organizations and companies to be considered notable.
• The six-month autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) ended on 14 March 2018. The post-trial research report has been published. A request for comment is now underway to determine whether the restrictions from ACTRIAL should be implemented permanently.

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

• A discussion has closed which concluded that administrators are not required to enable email, though many editors suggested doing so as a matter of best practice.
• The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team has released the Interaction Timeline. This shows a chronologic history for two users on pages where they have both made edits, which may be helpful in identifying sockpuppetry and investigating editing disputes.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:23, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Welcome back!

GAB, welcome back! Hhhhhkohhhhh (talk) 01:50, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2018

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

Administrator changes

None

Chochopk • Coffee • Gryffindor • Jimp • Knowledge Seeker • Lankiveil • Peridon • Rjd0060

Guideline and policy news

• The ability to create articles directly in mainspace is now indefinitely restricted to autoconfirmed users.
• A proposal is being discussed which would create a new "event coordinator" right that would allow users to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit.

Technical news

• AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new equals_to_any function can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability to see which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access to Logstash.
• When blocking anonymous users, a cookie will be applied that reloads the block if the user changes their IP. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. This currently only occurs when hard-blocking accounts.
• The block notice shown on mobile will soon be more informative and point users to a help page on how to request an unblock, just as it currently does on desktop.
• There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee is seeking additional clerks to help with the arbitration process.

Obituaries

• Lankiveil (Craig Franklin) passed away in mid-April. Lankiveil joined Wikipedia on 12 August 2004 and became an administrator on 31 August 2008. During his time with the Wikimedia community, Lankiveil served as an oversighter for the English Wikipedia and as president of Wikimedia Australia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Request for deletion

I just need to request you that please delete page User talk:Widr farted as G6. We don't need that page any more. Thank you. 106.223.75.179 (talk) 07:05, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Interaction Timeline V1.1

Hello GAB, I’m following up with you because you previously showed an interest in the Interaction Timeline. The Anti-Harassment Tools team has completed V1.1 and the tool is ready for use. The Interaction Timeline shows a chronologic history for two users on pages where they have both made edits.

The purpose of the tool is to better understand the sequence of edits between two users in order to make a decision about the best way to resolve a user conduct dispute. Here are some test cases that show the results and also some known limitations of the tool. We would like to hear your experience using the tool in real cases. You can leave public feedback on talk page or contact us by email if the case needs discretion or you would prefer to comment privately. SPoore (WMF), Trust & Safety, Community health initiative (talk) 16:24, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Waiting for response

Did you delete page User talk:Widr farted? Please do so. 106.211.2.105 (talk) 09:03, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.11 25 May 2018

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

ACTRIAL:

• WP:ACREQ has been implemented. The flow at the feed has dropped back to the levels during the trial. However, the backlog is on the rise again so please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day; a backlog approaching 5,000 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.

Deletion tags

• Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders. They require your further verification.

Backlog drive:

• A backlog drive will take place from 10 through 20 June. Check out our talk page at WT:NPR for more details. NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.

Editathons

• There will be a large increase in the number of editathons in June. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

Paid editing - new policy

• Now that ACTRIAL is ACREQ, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. There is a new global WMF policy that requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

• The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
• Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies.

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, tag as required, then move to draft if they do have potential.

News

• Development is underway by the WMF on upgrades to the New Pages Feed, in particular ORES features that will help to identify COPYVIOs, and more granular options for selecting articles to review.
• The next issue of The Signpost has been published. The newspaper is one of the best ways to stay up to date with news and new developments. between our newsletters.

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Administrators' newsletter – June 2018

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

Administrator changes

None

Al Ameer son • AliveFreeHappy • Cenarium • Lupo • MichaelBillington

Guideline and policy news

• Following a successful request for comment, administrators are now able to add and remove editors to the "event coordinator" group. Users in the event coordinator group have the ability to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit. Users will no longer need to be in the "account creator" group if they are in the event coordinator group.
• Following an AN discussion, all pages with content related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, are now under indefinite general sanctions.

Technical news

• IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in June. This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
• The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team will build granular types of blocks in 2018 (e.g. a block from uploading or editing specific pages, categories, or namespaces, as opposed to a full-site block). Feedback on the concept may be left at the talk page.
• There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups.
• It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked.

Arbitration

• A recent technical issue with the Arbitration Committee's spam filter inadvertently caused all messages sent to the committee through Wikipedia (i.e. Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee) to be discarded. If you attempted to send an email to the Arbitration Committee via Wikipedia between May 16 and May 31, your message was not received and you are encouraged to resend it. Messages sent outside of these dates or directly to the Arbitration Committee email address were not affected by this issue.

Miscellaneous

• In early May, an unusually high level of failed login attempts was observed. The WMF has stated that this was an "external effort to gain unauthorized access to random accounts". Under Wikipedia policy, administrators are required to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:00, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Hey

I was looking through a few archives recently and realized that I hadn't seen your name in some time. Just wanted to check whether everything is okay in your world, since your departure was a little abrupt. You were one of the most helpful admins we had, so I also wanted to let you know that you are missed around here. Life comes first, of course, so I hope you enjoy your break from Wikipedia while you're at it. Cheers, Mz7 (talk) 03:56, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

@Mz7: Thank you for your kind words, and I'm truly sorry that I left like that (and surely puzzled people). In truth, I was having a difficult time balancing my other responsibilities, and have decided to try to ease back in. Nothing crazy yet. GAB^gab 01:58, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

NPP Backlog Elimination Drive

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel: there are currently 2900 unreviewed articles, and 4000 unreviewed redirects.

Announcing the Backlog Elimination Drive!

• As a final push, we have decided to run a backlog elimination drive from the 20th to the 30th of June.
• Reviewers who review at least 50 articles or redirects will receive a Special Edition NPP Barnstar: . Those who review 100, 250, 500, or 1000 pages will also receive tiered awards: , , , .
• Please do not be hasty, take your time and fully review each page. It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing.

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Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 06:57, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

How can the Interaction Timeline be useful in reporting to noticeboards?

Hi GAB,

The Anti-Harassment Tools team built the Interaction Timeline to make it easier to understand how two people interact and converse across multiple pages on a wiki. The tool shows a chronological list of edits made by two users, only on pages where they have both made edits within the provided time range. Our goals are to assist users to make well informed decisions in incidents of user misconduct and to keep on-wiki discussions civil and focused on evidence.

We're looking to add a feature to the Interaction Timeline that makes it easy to post statistics and information to an on-wiki discussion about user misconduct. We're discussing possible wikitext output on the project talk page, and we invite you to participate! Thank you, For the Anti-Harassment Tools team, SPoore (WMF), Trust & Safety, Community health initiative (talk) 22:42, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2018

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

Administrator changes

Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor

Gogo Dodo

Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD

Bureaucrat changes

Andrevan • EVula

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
• A request for comment closed with a consensus that the {{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.

Technical news

• Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.
• Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon () in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates.
• IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.

Miscellaneous

• Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:22, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Missed

Just a general note about your presence around these parts being missed during your break. Hope all is well with you. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:17, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: Thank you - I'm trying to settle back into the swing of things and see what I've missed GAB^gab 01:52, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

This ping just made my wiki-night :D TonyBallioni (talk) 01:52, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Rough night? :p GAB^gab 01:55, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

SPI clerk

Hi GAB, I've moved you to the temporarily inactive list. I miss you; hope you are well.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:48, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Bbb23: Thank you - I'll hopefully be around a bit more these days (been really busy). GAB^gab 01:51, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Welcome back!--Bbb23 (talk) 14:37, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Three years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:02, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Cheers! —PaleoNeonate – 07:00, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated GAB^gab 02:18, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. ()

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

June backlog drive

Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers.
Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.

New technology, new rules

• New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
• Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
• Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.

Editathons

• Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

The Signpost

• The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.

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Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 00:00, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2018

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

Administrator changes

Sro23

KaisaL • Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

• After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
• Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.

Technical news

• The WMF Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the second set of wireframes for the Special:Block redesign that will introduce partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:31, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Welcome back

Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 03:44, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

I was glad to see someone else at WP:OPP! Welcome back! I've written some extra tools for OPP: IPCheck, IP Range Resolver, and ISP Range Search (warning: SLOW!). SQL^{Query me!} 02:13, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

103.25.180.34

103.25.180.34 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)

Considering that this IP has had a very long history of vandalism in the past and they have already been blocked several times before, would you consider extending the block duration. Thanks. 2601:1C0:4401:24A0:F115:1EE5:2361:5735 (talk) 04:20, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Block has already been extended. GAB^gab 22:49, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Give your feedback about changes to Special:Block

Hello,

You are receiving this message because you are a top user of Special:Block on this wiki. Thank you for the important work that you do. There is a discussion happening about plans to improve Special:Block with the ability to set new types of blocks. To get the best design and new functions added, it is essential that administrators who use the tool join the discussion and share their opinions about these changes.

Instead of a full site wide block, administrators would be able to set a Partial Block. A user could be blocked from a single page, multiple pages, one or more namespaces, from uploading files, etc. There are several different ways to add this feature to Special:Block. Right now Important decisions are being made about the design and function.

Please review the page on Meta and share your feedback on the discussion page. Or you can reach me by email Also, share this message with anyone else who might be interested in participating in the discussion.

I appreciate any time that you can give to assist with making improvements to this feature. Cheers, SPoore (WMF) (talk) , Trust and Safety Specialist, Community health initiative (talk) 01:47, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello again

Nice to see you're back, was glad to see you pop up at the Newpages feed. Home Lander (talk) 01:01, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

User:XYZ1997

Another sockpuppet, User:XYZ1997 has emerged, scarcely concealed after you blocked User:XYZ2018. The constant shenanigans at Room (2015 film) have grown well past tiresome and sprotection would be greatly appreciated. Ribbet32 (talk) 00:16, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello

How can i restore an account which is mistakenly blocked? Soulmaz AP (talk) 08:53, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

@Soulmaz AP: I'm guessing this isn't your first account? GAB^gab 15:00, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello

I’m Shahab Pishanidar , an athlete from Iran I have a Wikipedia account , Shahab pishanidar . There are always some Profitable persons who wanted to get account by my name so that my main account has been blocked. I have my Wikipedia in Persian but i want to restore my main account in english. How can i do it ? Soulmaz AP (talk) 10:33, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

@Soulmaz AP: That account was blocked by Athaenara for promotion. I recommend that you read this page and especially this one. Hopefully, this is useful. GAB^gab 14:00, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Soulmaz AP (talk) 19:44, 31 August 2018 (UTC)