User talk:RoySmith/Archive 20

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Edelgard Huber von Gersdorff

Hi, I see that you regularly close AfDs as "delete", without invoking WP:ATD. I wonder why in this case, where you say that there is a "clear consensus to delete", you decide for "redirect" even though literally nobody in that AfD !voted that way. I could understand a "delete and redirect", but aa simple "redirect" when there was a "clear consensus to delete" seems a bit weird to me. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 09:04, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The redirect suggestion was in the AfD nomination itself, so it seems a good redirect. Hello another Randy. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:55, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi Randy :-) Creating a redirect as suggested after deletion, fine. But I find it weird not to delete against such a clear consensus. --Randykitty (talk) 12:06, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, she was 112 years old and close to a record-breaker. I would have commented 'Keep' on the AfD (I don't venture into the sad realm of AfD often, too many good articles are put up by too many editors, often on a daily basis, without an initial gateway which would be useful). Randy Kryn (talk) 12:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The point is not to re-litigate the AfD. It's to understand why the close was so different from the consensus. --Randykitty (talk) 12:26, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Sam Sailor, Legacypac, The Blade of the Northern Lights, Sandstein, RebeccaGreen, Willthacheerleader18, CAPTAIN RAJU, ThatBaileyLad, JFG, Randykitty, Newshunter12, and Rzvas: When I turn an existing article into a redirect, I ask myself, Is the existing text something that needs to be removed because it's in violation of our TOU (copyvio, WP:BLP problems, etc), or just something that's not notable? If the answer is that it's just not notable, I don't see any reason to actually delete the underlying text. That was the case here.

I also look at what people wrote in the AfD. If people are explicitly saying, delete, then redirect, I'll generally honor that. If people don't say one way or the other, I try to read between the lines. In this case, I looked at what those arguing to delete wrote, and came to the conclusion that what they were really saying was, Not notable enough for a stand-alone article, but didn't see any specific reason to hide the existing text.

I've pinged everybody who participated in the AfD. If I've mis-interpreted your sentiment, let me know. If more than a couple of people feel my reading between the lines was in error, I'll be happy to revise my close. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:41, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Roy, once more, I'm not here to re-litigate the AfD. I'm just surprised that I see a string of AfDs where you deleted the article, didn't make any redirects, and didn't mention ATD. And then there's this one where suddenly ATD pops up and what you yourself call a "clear consensus to delete" is ignored and we get a simple redirect instead. I just would like to understand what the difference is between all those AfDs where you deleted the article and this one. Why does ATD apply here and not with the others? Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 14:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

There's two different questions here. First, Why did I go with redirect?, and second, Once I decided to redirect, why didn't I also delete the history?. Your initial note made it sound like you were OK with the first one, and were just seeking an answer to the second, so that's what I concentrated on that in my response.

To now address the first question, several people talked about covering her, in reduced detail, at List of German supercentenarians. At least, that's what I assumed people meant by mini bio. It's standard policy, supported by WP:ATD and WP:CHEAP, that when a non-notable subject is covered to any extent in another article, we provide a redirect as a navigation aid. But, I'm sure you know this, so maybe I'm not quite understanding your question.

It's not uncommon for me to take what looks like a delete consensus and turn it into a redirect in my close. My justification for doing so is essentially what I've outlined above. Search my AfD closes for "ATD", and I'm sure you'll find more than a few of these. I could have done a better job explaining this in my closing statement, and I'll be happy to update that. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:06, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Reply Well, I !voted Keep - but I agree, there was a consensus (not well argued, or argued at all, in some cases, in my opinion) to delete - but the nominator and one Delete !voter both said they could see a mini-bio on the List of German supercentenarians, and one other Delete !voter said that they had already placed some of the unique info in the caption under her photo on that page (wonder how long the page will survive .....) So, 3 of the 5 Delete !voters mentioned something other than a straight Delete. Personally, I thought several of the Delete !voters had no arguments about this specific article, and could have been ignored in closing as not having any rational arguments - but, as you say, we're not here to relitigate, and as far as I'm concerned, redirection is not against the spirit of 5 of the 9 participants in the AfD. RebeccaGreen (talk) 14:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• I'm just a relister, so I have no opinion. Sandstein 15:01, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• Endorse – For my own part, I agree with the redirect, and I think the closer's decision not to perform a hard delete first was within their discretion. — JFG ^talk 16:10, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• People, this is not DRV nor have I the intention to bring this to DRV. There is no need for all participants in the AfD to come here and endorse (or not) the decision. All I wanted was to understand why Roy invoked ATD here, what made this AfD different from all the other AfDs that were simply closed "delete" without leaving a redirect and without invoking ATD. Roy has given some explanation. I don't really follow it, but let's leave it at that, OK? --Randykitty (talk) 16:18, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-51

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 7 January 2019.

Recent changes

• Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before. [1][2]
• Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped. [3]
• The ParserMigration extension has been removed. It compared the result of two versions of the MediaWiki wikitext parsing pipeline. It was used when we moved to the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy.

Problems

• <ref> tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example <ref name="adams" group="books">. If a <ref> tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed. [4]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 December. It will be on all wikis from 20 December (calendar).

Meetings

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• tiles.wmflabs.org and wma.wmflabs.org will stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going. [5]

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20:35, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Request Undeletion of Kamil Ekim Alptekin

The "Kamil Ekim Alptekin" page was deleted per review here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Kamil_Ekim_Alptekin

He has now been charged in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in relation to the investigation of Michael Flynn (indictment: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000167-bce4-df8f-adff-bdfd2a910001).

Would you kindly consider approving the undeletion of the page (archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20170703181335/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamil_Ekim_Alptekin) in light of the new developments?

PvOberstein (talk) 17:00, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I wrote in my AfD close, If future events unfold which add substantial coverage to this person, this can, of course, be revisited. I guess this qualifies. Done. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:25, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Much appreciated. PvOberstein (talk) 21:21, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Deletion review for Pakistan administered Kashmir

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Pakistan administered Kashmir. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. --DBigXrayᗙ 22:32, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pakistan administered Kashmir

Hi Roy, I am here to discuss your closure of the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pakistan administered Kashmir, Thanks for taking out the time to read the long discussion and special thank for sharing a long closing comment.

You had agreed Some people did point out that "Pakistan administered Kashmir" is a term that's used in many WP:RS, and is apparently the term used by the United Nations. which was a correct observation. You noted that However, most people here felt that this article was a WP:POVFORK, and as such did not merit a stand-alone article. This comment was just carried over from the older AfD which had a POV title "occupied", no explanation was given how it is POVFORK and whose POV since it is a term used be neutral third party, POV arguement did nt make much sense.

I am not sure how you weighed the arguments of each side, so I am here to understand the same.

Worth noting is that there's been long-term disagreement about the use of "controlled" vs "occupied" vs "administered". They all have similar meanings, but with subtle differences in tone. It's unlikely there will ever been complete agreement on which is the best word to describe the current situation. a disagreement about title words should be discussed in a subsequent WP:RM discussion after keeping the article, this should not be used as a reason to delete/redirect.

In my opinion there were strong policy based justifications to keep and on the other side there were weak, factually incorrect, policy misrepresentation arguments to delete. On top of that as expected, this AfD was SOCK and MEAT infested. User:The_Donkey_King is already blocked as a sock and cursory look at the contribution history of another clearly imply canvassing. This should also should be taken into account while deciding the weight of arguments.

Please let me know if you can change your closure to keep or No consensus. I feel there are strong reasons to keep as explained in the table discussing all the comments. Looking forward to hear your thoughts. regards.--DBigXrayᗙ 23:46, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Rationale	!vote	user	Response/Notes
Article is a content fork of Kashmir conflict, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan	Delete	Qualitist	Factually incorrect, all three articles, are about different region/topic.
This is only a term used for referring two of the states (Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan) that are administered by Pakistan	Delete	Qualitist	not just a term but a Political, Geographic and historical entity.
"Azad Kashmir" and "Gilgit-Baltistan" are separate from each other as political units.	Delete	Qualitist	They have different local governments but are federally governed by Pakistan through Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan, so it is a political unit in that sense.
There should be no need to create an article which treats them as same.	Delete	Qualitist	This article doesnt treat them as same, they are different and that treated as different.
The more popular redirect is Pakistan-administered Kashmir and has significant talk page history on its talk page Talk:Pakistan-administered Kashmir.	Delete	Qualitist	not a valid reason to delete but to rename.
According to that talk page, a similar article was turned into redirect before after this AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pakistan occupied Kashmir.	Delete	Qualitist	Result of the AfD was to redirect to Pakistan administered Kashmir, which was an existing article then. Long term consensus was to keep this article at location Pakistan-administered Kashmir where it existed from 2004 [6], till 2012 [7] when the article was unilaterally merged into separate articles without a wider consensus at AfD.
unneeded WP:POVFORK	Delete/Redirect	(5 Users) Satpal Dandiwal, Capankajsmilyo, Shiv Sahil, Umar shahid, 1990'sguy	WP:POVFORK talks about both article on the "same subject". There is "no other article" for the same subject (geographical entity). It is quite obvious from the maps itself that the geographic entities of Pakistan administered Kashmir are not the same as either Azad Kashmir or Gilgit-Baltistan. If there was an existing Pakistan administered Kashmir and then someone created another article at "Pakistan occupied Kashmir" then one could have argued that its a POV FORK, but with only 1 existing article for the subject one cannot claim WP:FORK, let alone WP:POVFORK So it is not a fork. Pakistan administered Kashmir internationally refers to the combined geographical entity of "Azad Kashmir + Gilgit-Baltistan", the two parts of Kashmir. It is fallacious to redirect Pakistan administered Kashmir to Azad Kashmir since they are not the same entities.
multiple past RfCs	Delete/Redirect	Radhamadhab Sarangi	So RFC was held and no links provided.
it is best not to create articles that are already covered in other separate articles.	Redirect	Capankajsmilyo	The topic of this article is not the same as any existing article.
The sources provided here does not show how this topic is distinct or it can be differently covered than what it has already been at Kashmir conflict, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan	Redirect	Capankajsmilyo	Sources CNN and BBC clearly show that it is not the same as AK or GB.
no such entity	Delete	The Donkey King	Blocked Sock making factually incorrect arguments
3 sources don't mention Gilgit-Baltistan and say "Pakistan-administered Kashmir" means "Azad Kashmir"	Delete/Redirect	Shiv Sahil	Factually incorrect. Our article Azad Kashmir does not claim that Azad Kashmir includes, "Gilgit Baltistan". Even the Pakistan Government mentions Azad Kashmir (map) on their official website gov.pk and they don't include Gilgit Baltistan in Azad Kashmir. -DBigXray Until 1990s, Pakistan did not even reveal that Gilgit-Baltistan had been irrevocably separated from Azad Kashmir. (See the Karachi Agreement page.) In her well-regarded book,[8] scholar Navnita Chadha Behera comments that these mountainous regions had been "enveloped in multiple and overwhelming silences". So, you cannot use the fact that there are some ill-informed sources as a justification for propagating the same kind of ill-information here. And, I wonder if blocking an article from being written here is also a contribution to these silences.-- Kautilya3 All the three sources were rebutted by Kautilya3 in reply.
this article cannot be written without copy pasting content from Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir	Delete/Redirect	Shiv Sahil	Not a valid reason to delete. see WP:SPINOFF
All of the sources mentioned above (with some not even mentioning the term) seems to be verifying that we can't create more than a couple of sentences of the article.	Delete	Umar shahid	Invalid, the article was more than a couple of lines and was already 22,000 Bytes at the time of AfD.
This is already covered in the 3 named articles by the nominator and also covered on Kashmir	Delete	Umar shahid	There is no existing article that is redundant to Pakistan administered Kashmir. The geographic entity Pakistan-administered Kashmir is not the same as the geographic entity of Kashmir or Gilgit-Baltistan or Azad Kashmir. Each of them has its own different map, which is different from the other. So no, this is not a "redundant" article but a geographic article representing a unique geographic entity.
the subject is already described enough times in numerous articles that we dont need this page.	Delete	Syed Zain Ul Abideen Bukhari	same as above.
Wikipedia is certainly not to be used for advancing nationalist POV.	Delete	Syed Zain Ul Abideen Bukhari	This term is used internationally by neutral mainstream media and the UN. and not a POV.
Redirect to maybe Kashmir#Current_status_and_political_divisions. The best place to explain this is the main Kashmir article . My suggestion would be to keep this as a redirect and explain the terms in the main article where the context is provided. This avoid too much fragmentation and yet preserves the information	Redirect	Example	No valid reason to delete, the comment is against widely followed WP:SPINOFF
Scope is dubious since the term can mean both Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan or only Azad Kashmir. In reliable sources, the use of "Pakistan-administered Kashmir" term is similar to that of "Indian-administered Kashmir" and that is why we can't just create a "Pakistani-administered Kashmir" against long term consensus [9] while avoiding the creation of an Indian-administered Kashmir page.	Delete/Redirect	1990'sguy	Long term consensus was to keep this article at location Pakistan-administered Kashmir where it existed from 2004 [10], till 2012 [11] when the article was unilaterally merged into separate articles without a wider consensus at AfD.
In any case, such articles cannot be created without mass content forking and that is clearly against our policies. There is clearly nothing new for us to describe here that hasn't been already described elsewhere.	Delete/Redirect	1990'sguy	Topic is distinct and does not duplicate any existing article. Regarding the point of "nothing new here", note that this geographic entity is federally administered by Government of Pakistan's Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan. The United Nations and the international media refer to this entire region as Pakistan administered Kashmir, so this article can discuss the history, administration and geography of this geographic entity.
Completely unnecessary to create another article only for repeating what we already have repeated around. These kinds of creations do not help encyclopedia but encourage more WP:POVFORKs.	Delete/Redirect	Srkamal	Topic is distinct and does not duplicate any existing article. Also, just a few mins back, Srkamal posted here on the talk page of this article, opposing merger and saying that "Yes, it should continue to be a separate article"
"Pakistan administered Kashmir" is the term by which UN refers to this area of Azad Kashmir + Gilgit Baltistan.[1] And this is the term by which the neutral international mainstream media refers this geographical entity,[2] "Pakistani controlled Kashmir" is the other widely used term for the same Geo area	Keep	DBigXray	no rebuttal or source using any other term provided.
The subject is the title of several books.[4][5][6][7][8]	Keep	DBigXray	Multiple historical books with the title greatly strengthens the notability of the topic.
"Pakistan-administered Kashmir" is a well-attested term, covered in reliable sources. this[9] recent scholarly book has a section on Pakistan-administered Kashmir and 20+ other occurrences.	Keep	Kautilya3, Spinningspark	enhances notability and no rebuttal provided.
Kashmir has an obvious international dimension to it, and internationally Pakistan-administered Kashmir is one unit even if Pakistan were to administer it internally as two separate provinces. There is in fact a single ministry in the central government that deals with both of them.	Keep	Kautilya3, Spinningspark	enhances notability and no rebuttal provided.
As to what this article might cover other than what is covered in Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan articles, I expect that it would focus on the "Pakistan-administered" aspect: why Pakistan administers it and how Pakistan administers it. A certain amount of overlap with the other articles is inevitable.	Keep	Kautilya3, Spinningspark	explains why the article is needed. no rebuttal provided
performed Google searches and shared the results to demonstrate notability and better title	Move	Arun Kumar SINGH/AKS.9955	Didnt suggest a deletion and made arguments in support of a better title.
prior to this article being created Pakistan-administered Kashmir was being redirected to Azad Kashmir. That was done in 2012, when most of the present editors weren't around. The edit summary says "per talk", but the talk page discussion was a mess. It was WP:OR and factually wrong, because the reliable source I gave above [12] clearly shows both Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan being parts of "Pakistan-administered Kashmir". The old redirect is not acceptable.	Keep	Kautilya3	Valid arguments and no rebuttal was provided. A reply comment was made about few sources misusing the term, but few sources misusing the term is not a reason to delete.
Maps from CNN, "BBC". and Pakistan Government provided to show distinct entity	Keep	DBigXray	no rebuttal provided.
terms such as Indian Kashmir have a clear redirect target - the Indian state Jammu and Kashmir. It's clear that both Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan are part of the Kashmir region. There is a lot of overlap, but that doesn't prohibit separate articles; The Maritimes and Atlantic Canada overlap quite a lot as well.	Keep	Power~enwiki	Valid argument in support along with a similar existing example as a precedent.
Kashmir is de facto partitioned between India and Pakistan. Whether the two halves are "administered", "occupied", or "controlled" is a matter of POV - whether the speaker has an Indian or Pakistani POV. There is no formal border, only a cease-fire line or line of control...[suggested a title]]...Merging or redirecting is not an option, since it covers both Gilgit-Baltistan or Azad Kashmir.	Keep	Peterkingiron	Valid argument in support describing the situation and suggestinga keep. no rebuttal provided.
the term refers to both the territories. The article was previously unanimously disambiguated then without clear consensus redirected to Kashmir. A redirect won't suffice as well, a broad target such a Kashmir isn't correct, DAB fails and an article which covers Kashmir under Pakistan is needed here. Also, I fail to see what is POV or POVFORK here the term is a widely used neutral one and the article simply covers the administration of the region.	Keep	Gotitbro	Valid arguments and no rebuttal provided.

Well, let's start with the obvious stuff. The closing template says, No further edits should be made to this page. So, you shouldn't be making further edits. I've reverted your edit. Had I known that The Donkey King was a sock, it wouldn't have made any difference; there was still a good consensus to delete this, even ignoring The Donkey King's comments.

As for my comment about controlled vs occupied vs adminstered, that was just an observation that I made. It was not the reason I closed the discussion as I did.

I realize that you, as the author of this article, are disappointed that it was deleted, and disagree with my close. However, I think I made the right close, and don't see anything in your comments above to change my mind. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:06, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind reply, I had struck per WP:SOCKSTRIKE, I understand your revert, sorry for the trouble.

• Ok, but can you please elaborate more on how you judged the consensus and weights. Regards --DBigXrayᗙ 01:32, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure what question you're asking. If you mean, what mechanical process did I use, I copy-pasted the entire text of the AfD into an editor and worked on the text to extract the key sentiments and arguments from each discussant. This left me with a summary of the major points that were brought up in the discussion, and some notes of particularly significant things which I thought deserved mention in the close, regardless of which way it went. It also left me with a rough idea of how many people said the same things.   If, however, you mean can I go through a detailed analysis of every contributor's comments, as you did in your table above, no, I'm not going to do that. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:10, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

No, I was not expecting a table from you, although I did share my analysis in table format. Thank you for your kind reply. --DBigXrayᗙ 02:53, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

• Update FYI, Today, as was suspected a second AfD participant who voted Delete, Special:Contributions/Farooqahmadbhat has been CU blocked as a sock. After the Close of AfD, The Donkey King (talk · contribs) and Farooqahmadbhat have been CU blocked. --DBigXrayᗙ 20:55, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that, but thank you for the note. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:04, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

You are welcome, In the light of the recent developments (that happened after your close), do you now feel that the "No Consensus" close would have now been more appropriate ? A merry Christmas--DBigXrayᗙ 21:16, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Please just let the DRV run its course. I have already stated that I will remain neutral there. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:34, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

All right. As you must be observing, even the DRV has not been spared by the puppet masters. Lets see how this proceeds--DBigXrayᗙ 21:37, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

DYK for SoHo Weekly News

On 26 December 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article SoHo Weekly News, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that an angry artist walked into the SoHo Weekly News offices and chopped off two of his fingers as a "protest"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/SoHo Weekly News. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, SoHo Weekly News), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Mifter (talk) 00:01, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Deletion failed?

Hello, I see you were the closer for List of photographs by John Thomas. Just thought you might want to know, the talk page was deleted per the AfD result, but the article page itself is still there. Thanks! PohranicniStraze (talk) 07:32, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

My guess is the script that handles the close details timed out. I saw your message earlier this morning, when I was on a mobile device, and tried to bring up the page. I couldn't even load it. Maybe all the images made it too big? Anyway, I see User:Ymblanter fixed that up already, so we're good. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:26, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I have noticed it here, checked the AfD nomination page, and then deleted. It is not an exception, pages fail to get deleted on a regular basis, I guess for a million of reasons.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:32, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy new year

Happy New Year!

Hello RoySmith: Thanks for all of your contributions to Wikipedia, and have a great New Year! Cheers, Hhkohh (talk) 09:40, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year snowman}} to people's talk pages with a friendly message.

Happy New Year!

RoySmith,
Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia, and a Happy New Year to you and yours! North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 14:48, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

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Administrators' newsletter – January 2019

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

Administrator changes

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Guideline and policy news

• There are a number of new or changed speedy deletion criteria, each previously part of WP:CSD#G6:

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

• The Wikimedia Foundation now requires all interface administrators to enable two-factor authentication.
• Members of the Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.

Technical news

• Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:

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• Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
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Arbitration

• Following the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: AGK, Courcelles, GorillaWarfare, Joe Roe, Mkdw, SilkTork.

Miscellaneous

• Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
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January 13: Wikimedia NYC invites you to Wikipedia Day 2019

Sunday January 13: Wikipedia Day 2019 in NYC

You are invited to join us at Ace Hotel for Wikipedia Day 2019, a Wikipedia celebration and mini-conference as part of the project's global 18th birthday festivities. In addition to the party, the event features keynote presentations, panels, lightning talks, and, of course, open space sessions. And there will be cake. We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects. Sunday January 13 Wikipedia Day 2019 (RSVP at Eventbrite). 9:30AM - 6:00PM at Ace Hotel, 20 West 29th Street in Manhattan We especially encourage folks to add your 3-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 20:57, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Requesting Undeletion of "List of PlayStation 2 games with alternative display modes"

I am requesting the restoration of the page List of PlayStation 2 games with alternative display modes. This page provided useful information for anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the PS2's video output capabilities, including the hardware requirements such as the type of A/V cable that must be used. The most vital information on the page beyond this is the list of software that is actually capable of supporting alternate display modes, and what action the user must perform to achieve these alternate modes when the hardware requirements are met, including but not limited to modification of the software to gain access to alternate display modes that the software does not officially support.

The main PS2 article does not provide this information, and the page surely must have been made with the intention of not weighing down that article with this abundance of additional information.

Please note that similar articles for the GameCube and Xbox also existed and were recently deleted as well by users Patar knight and TheSandDoctor respectively, and I am making restoration requests for those articles on their respective talk pages as well.

Thank you for your time. --2601:440:C07F:77A1:B47F:491B:3E34:CEC1 (talk) 05:35, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

The AfD was unanimous, there really is no way I can restore this. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:48, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-02

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.

Recent changes

• RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [13]
• MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [14]
• codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [15]
• On several wikis, an account named "Edit filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.

Problems

• In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [16]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from January 9. It will be on all wikis from January 10 (calendar).

Meetings

• Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:30, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Deletion review for Draft:Curtis Jones (footballer)

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Curtis Jones (footballer). Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:57, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Illicit Alcohol Article Deletion

Hello Roy,

I am writing to you with the purpose of getting a solution about the deletion of the Illicit Alcohol Article under the criteria of Speedy deletion G12: Unambiguous copyright infringement. Action taken the past 5th of January.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Illicit_Alcohol

The article is an original publication of Euromonitor, who is aware of the attempt to upload it to the Wikipedia Encyclopedia and in fact, important to say, that it is his interested to publish on the platform for it to be shared with the wikipedia readers, in order to contribute with important information obtained worldwide by studies about the illicit alcohol topic.

In order to maintain this article uploaded, the information about copyrights has been examined, reason why I kindly ask what is the appropriate next step:

Is it necessary that the source: Tracit.org, the one which has the paper uploaded to easily review it, differing from Euromonitor which asks for user info to download it, has to have a publication containing a copyright disclaimer or other indication that the material is free for use? So, it can be under the figure of public domain under the page that has it published?

If this is the case, there is exactly a place where this information should be seen or any link that expresses it is enough? Currently, the paper says: Not to be distributed without permission.

https://www.tracit.org/uploads/1/0/2/2/102238034/illicit_alcohol__-_white_paper.pdf)

How this text has to be licensed under The Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA) (CC BY-SA) in order to publish it as a Wikipedia Article?

This article provides information about consumer perceptions, health, fiscal risks, also, regulatory and legal issues, everything involved into the illicit alcohol consume. Whereby, have it as an informative article means to provide useful and valuable information related with this illegal and harmful activity.

Your help is very much appreciated, AlcoholEducation (talk) 20:17, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for your note. There's a couple of different things here that need to be discussed in turn.

First, there's the issue of copyright. The copyright owner needs to explicitly license the text under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Please see WP:Donating copyrighted materials for the details. I'm afraid I'm not an expert on the copyright donation process, so the best I can do is refer to you that page.

But, that's just the legal copyright question. Even after the text is appropriately licensed, based on what you've written, it seems unlikely that it is appropriate for a wikipedia article. We are an encyclopedia, not a free platform for people to publish content they wish to distribute, regardless of the copyright status, per WP:NOTPROMO. Please see WP:YFA, and in particular, WP:YFA#Are you closely connected to the article topic? for some additional guidance. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:28, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Illicit Alcohol Article Deletion

Thanks a lot Roy for your feedback, it is very valuable information on this process.

I am reviewing all the Wikipedia info for the publication of new articles, as well, all the suggested links you provided to check on the content and requirements for this to be on Wikipedia.

For a matter of doubts, is it possible that you could please redirect me to and administrator on Wikipedia, expert on Creative Commons Licenses and Copyright Donation Processes?

This is a tremendous help, have a good day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlcoholEducation (talk • contribs) 21:33, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

You could ask at Wikipedia talk:Donating copyrighted materials, or perhaps WP:Teahouse. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:38, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-03

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• You can now use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [17][18]
• You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
• Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [19][20]
• Templates with could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [21]

Problems

• When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [22]

Changes later this week

• You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
• Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [23]
• The AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15

17:55, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Multilingualism in India

Hi, I'm wondering about your close at that AfD. There was strong consensus that the subject was notable enough in its own right to be kept.

One editor !voted merge, with the most minimal of reasoning. Everyone else who !voted thought that the subject was notable enough in its own right to have its own article; hence !voting keep.

The comments by the nominator such as " If the article is expanded, even just a bit, to include information not included at Languages of India, I will gladly withdraw my nomination." were weightless posturing and I hope they didn't factor into your decision.

Would you mind taking a second look please? I dont think your 'no-consensus' close reflects the true consensus, which I believe should be 'keep'. Thank you, Cesdeva ^(talk) 22:28, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I took a quick look. I think my close was reasonable. In any case, there's no practical difference between keep and no consensus, so this doesn't seem worth worrying about. RoySmith-Mobile (talk) 22:36, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-04

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

• Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [24]

Recent changes

• The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
• https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.

Problems

• When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [25]
• MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [26][27]
• Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [28]

Changes later this week

• You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [29]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:37, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

AfD

Greetings Roy: Just a heads up that while you closed this AfD discussion, the article itself was not deleted. Cheers, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:00, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I've fixed that manually. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:03, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the ultra fast response! North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:03, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Another Closed AFD but article is still live.

Hello RoySmith,

I recently bumped into an AFD Discussion here which you closed as Delete but the article is still live. Happy Sunday to you. PlotHelpful (talk) 14:27, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I just fixed that. Sometimes the automation fails to work properly, that seems to be the case here. The page had a large number of revisions. The first time I tried to delete it manually, it failed due to a database timeout. That's probably what happened during the automated AfD close as well. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:44, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Draft:Clara_Belle_Baker

Thanks for the feedback, Roy. I am working on adding detail (as a part of the research I'm doing on Clara Belle Baker). She was author of more than 70 books for children in addition to being a leading voice in public education for over 50 years. I'm a bit new to wikepedia - and in hindsight I should have sandboxed the article until it was more developed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by InquirEDlearn (talk • contribs) 19:43, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

@InquirEDlearn: I think what you're doing is fine. Getting stuff out for review early is a reasonable way to go. If somebody wrote 70 books, it's likely that they're a good subject for a wikipedia article (what we call "notable"). You might also want to take a look at WP:WikiProject Women in Red; what you're working on will fit into that effort. Good luck working on this, and please feel free to ask me for assistance if you find yourself having difficulty. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:09, 27 January 2019 (UTC)