You may have known me as LordSunday, Meldshal (a redirect), or Meldshal42.

Alternate accounts (all now unused), but declaring them nonetheless:

• User:Larkdragon98
• User:MeldshalP (for public editing)
• User:Whenshal42

Good article nominations | January 2022 Backlog Drive
January 2022 Backlog Drive: On New Year's Day, a one-month backlog drive for good article nominations will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number and age of articles reviewed. Interested in taking part? You can sign up here.
Other ways to participate: Join the conversations on our talkpage.
You're receiving this message because you have conducted 10+ good article reviews or participated in the March backlog drive. Click here and remove your username from the mailing list to opt out of any future messages. --Usernameunique

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles at 21:17, 31 December 2021 (UTC).[reply]

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

Administrator changes Amalthea • Ihcoyc (deceased) • Kateshortforbob • Kirill Lokshin • Rifleman 82 • Ryan Norton • Wrp103 Interface administrator changes Mr. Stradivarius

CheckUser changes Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes Opabinia regalis Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy Oversighter changes Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes Opabinia regalis Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

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.

• Additionally, consensus for proposal 6C of the 2021 RfA review has led to the creation of an administrative action review process. The purpose of this process will be to review individual administrator actions and individual actions taken by users holding advanced permissions.

Arbitration

• Following the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Cabayi, Donald Albury, Enterprisey, Izno, Opabinia regalis, Worm That Turned, Wugapodes.

Miscellaneous

• The functionaries email list (functionaries-enlists.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.

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)

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:36, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:01, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Geology of the Lassen volcanic area/archive1. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:48, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Nick-D on the Australian Army in Somalia Review essay: Hog Farm on American Civil War sites in the South and Midwest

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

Administrator changes AustralianRupert • Cimon Avaro • Euryalus • Jehochman • Nunh-huh 28bytes Bureaucrat changes 28bytes

Interface administrator changes Evad37 • Galobtter Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• The Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines have been published for consideration. Voting to ratify this guideline is planned to take place 7 March to 21 March. Comments can be made on the talk page.

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

• Community input is requested on several motions aimed at addressing discretionary sanctions that are no longer needed or overly broad.
• The Arbitration Committee has published a generalised comment regarding successful appeals of sanctions that it can review (such as checkuser blocks).
• A motion related to the Antisemitism in Poland case was passed following a declined case request.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2022 Steward elections will begin on 07 February 2022, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2022, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey is open until 11 February 2022.

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 and Nick-D on World War II in Europe

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

Administrator changes Modussiccandi BOZ • Brookie (deceased) • Jackmcbarn • Jamesday • Jonathunder • Master of Puppets • Saravask

CheckUser changes Callanecc Oversighter changes Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• A RfC is open to change the wording of revision deletion criterion 1 to remove the sentence relating to non-infringing contributions.
• A RfC is open to discuss prohibiting draftification of articles over 90 days old.

Technical news

• The deployment of the reply tool as an opt-out feature, as announced in last month's newsletter, has been delayed to 7 March. Feedback and comments are being welcomed at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project. (T296645)
• Special:Nuke will now allow the selection of standard deletion reasons to be used when mass-deleting pages. This was a Community Wishlist Survey request from 2022. (T25020)
• The ability to undelete the talk page when undeleting a page using Special:Undelete or the API will be added soon. This change was requested in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. (T295389)

Arbitration

• Several unused discretionary sanctions and article probation remedies have been rescinded. This follows the community feedback from the 2021 Discretionary Sanctions review.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 appointees for the Ombuds commission are Érico, Faendalimas, Galahad, Infinite0694, Mykola7, Olugold, Udehb and Zabe as regular members and Ameisenigel and JJMC89 as advisory members.
• Following the 2022 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AntiCompositeNumber, BRPever, Hasley, TheresNoTime, and Vermont.
• The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey results have been published alongside the ranking of prioritized proposals.

And so ends the first round of the WikiCup. Last year anyone who scored more than zero points moved on to Round 2, but this was not the case this year, and a score of 13 or more was required to proceed. The top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius, a finalist last year, who led the field with 1906 points, gained from 32 GAs and 19 DYKs, all on the topic of New York buildings.
• AryKun, new to the contest, was second with 1588 points, having achieved 2 FAs, 11 GAs and various other submissions, mostly on the subject of birds.
• Bloom6132, a WikiCup veteran, was in third place with 682 points, garnered from 51 In the news items and several DYKs.
• GhostRiver was close behind with 679 points, gained from achieving 12 GAs, mostly on ice hockey players, and 35 GARs.
• Kavyansh.Singh was in fifth place with 551 points, with an FA, a FL, and many reviews.
• SounderBruce was next with 454 points, gained from an FA and various other submissions, mostly on United States highways.
• Ktin, another WikiCup veteran, was in seventh place with 412 points, mostly gained from In the news items.

These contestants, like all the others who qualified for Round 2, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews of a large number of good articles as the contest ran concurrently with a GAN backlog drive. Well done all! To qualify for Round 3, contestants will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two participants.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Anything that should have been claimed for in Round 1 is no longer eligible for points. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.

Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:06, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Nick-D on Hitler as a military leader

Hi, I don’t know if you remember me but you and I were very good collaborators some years ago. Just wanted to drop by to say that I miss your presence here and hope to see your return soon. :) FrB.TG (talk) 20:41, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes Firefly • Sdrqaz Ad Orientem Geschichte • Ryan Postlethwaite • Sabine's Sunbird • Wassupwestcoast

Interface administrator changes Evad37

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open proposing a change to the minimum activity requirements for administrators.

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

• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Opening of proceedings has been updated to reflect current practice following a motion.
• A arbitration case regarding Skepticism and coordinated editing has been closed.
• A arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been opened.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines has closed, and the results were that 56.98% of voters supported the guidelines. The results of this vote mean the Wikimedia Foundation Board will now review the guidelines.

22:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 on military logistics and rebuilding Nagasaki

The second round of the 2022 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 115 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top seven contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 11 featured articles and the 79 good articles achieved in total by contestants.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:

1. Epicgenius, with 1264 points from 2 featured article, 4 good articles and 18 DYKs. Epicgenius was a finalist last year but has now withdrawn from the contest as he pursues a new career path.
2. AryKun, with 1172 points from two featured articles, one good article and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews.
3. Bloom6132, with 605 points from 44 in the news items and 4 DYKs.
4. Sammi Brie, with 573 points from 8 GAs and 21 DYKs.
5. Ealdgyth, with 567 points from 11 GAs and 34 good and featured article reviews.
6. Panini!, with 549 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and several other sources.
7. Lee Vilenski, with 545 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and a number of reviews.

The rules for featured and good article reviews require the review to be of sufficient length; brief quick fails and very short reviews will generally not be awarded points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:39, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes Colin M David.Monniaux • Fribbler • Grue • Kpjas • West.andrew.g

CheckUser changes Ks0stm Oversighter changes Ks0stm

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, a change has been made to the administrators inactivity policy. Under the new policy, if an administrator has not made at least 100 edits over a period of 5 years they may be desysopped for inactivity.
• Following a discussion on the bureaucrat's noticeboard, a change has been made to the bureaucrats inactivity policy.

Technical news

• The ability to undelete the associated talk page when undeleting a page has been added. This was the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
• A public status system for WMF wikis has been created. It is located at https://www.wikimediastatus.net/ and is hosted separately to WMF wikis so in the case of an outage it will remain viewable.

Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the St Christopher case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to place a ban on single-purpose accounts who were disruptively editing on the article St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine or related pages from those pages.

Good article nominations | June 2022 Backlog Drive

On 1 June, a one-month backlog drive for good article nominations will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number and age of articles reviewed. Interested in taking part? Sign up here!

You're receiving this message because you have conducted 5+ good article reviews or participated in previous backlog drives. Click here to opt out of any future messages. (t · c) buidhe 04:26, 28 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 on a World War II summit and the American space program

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

Administrator changes Tamzin Barek • Darkwind • Geometry guy • ProcseeBot • RoyBoy • Sean Whitton • Valereee • Visorstuff • WAvegetarian Sn0wflake → VersedFenrir

CheckUser changes Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

• Several areas of improvement collated from community member votes have been identified in the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines. The areas of improvement have been sent back for review and you are invited to provide input on these areas.

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

• Remedy 2 of the Rachel Marsden case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to delete or reduce to a stub, together with their talk pages, articles related to Rachel Marsden when they violate Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy.
• An arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been closed.

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 and Nick-D look at four recent works

The third round of the 2022 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 180 points, which is a lower figure than last year when 294 points were needed to progress to round 4. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• BennyOnTheLoose, with 746 points, a tally built both on snooker and other sports topics, and on more general subjects.
• Bloom6132, with 683 points, garnered mostly from "In the news" items and related DYKs.
• Sammi Brie, with 527, from a variety of submissions related to radio and television stations.

Between them contestants achieved 5 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 51 good articles, 149 DYK entries, 68 ITN entries, and 109 good article reviews. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article nomination, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. WikiCup judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just checking in as I haven't heard from you in a while. Volcanoguy 04:36, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, I want to let you know that I'm currently in the process of rewriting the Mount Garibaldi article for FA. It will be the first time at FAC since the time you nominated it in 2006. Volcanoguy 03:53, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Volcanoguy: Sorry for the delayed reply. Real life is busy right now. Hoping to come back and resume activity relatively soon - hoping all is well with you and good luck with the FAC. Article looks to be in great shape. ceranthor 17:30, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes AA • Gwalla • Ioeth • Laurascudder • Moriori (deceased) • Nat • Rfl Drilnoth → AFigureOfBlue Bureaucrat changes Lee Vilenski

Interface administrator changes Nihiltres

Technical news

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

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding conduct in deletion-related editing has been opened.

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.

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 on Falklands War artillery and Nick-D on the Battle of the Ruhr

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

Administrator changes

Valereee

Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • Capitalistroadster • Samsara

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.

Hi! I just volunteered to review an article nominated for GA status. This is my first time conducting a GA review, and I saw you on a list of GA review mentors. Are you willing to help me with some questions about the review process? My first questions (before I get into a detailed review of the article) are stylistic. For one thing, the article contains many redundant links. Should I ask that these be removed? I have an impression that the Wikipedia's style guidelines are that each link should appear a single time in an article. My other question has to do with tightening up the wording of the article. However, the article appears to be written in "Indian English" as opposed to "American English" which I'm more accustomed to. So, is it reasonable to ask the nominator to tighten up the wording, given that this could just be the difference between the two styles of English? As examples, I edited the introductory section of the article myself to tighten the wording. The article in question is Galconda diamonds. Many thanks in advance on the guidance on this. Nolabob (talk) 21:19, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Nolabob: Hi, Nolabob! I think I would recommend seeking out another GA review mentor who's more active. I'm hoping to become more active sometime in the next few months, but for now sadly I don't have the time to thoughtfully advise you. Hope we can work together at some point in the future! Sorry I can't help at this time, ceranthor 17:26, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. Thanks for the response. I've actually been making progress on my first GA review, by just carefully plodding along. Nolabob (talk) 18:01, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 on the Falklands War

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

Administrator changes DanCherek • DatGuy • Femke • Z1720 Aldux • Graham Beards • Nyttend

Interface administrator changes Mr. Stradivarius

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

• The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
• The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

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.

The fourth round of the WikiCup has now finished. 383 points were required to reach the final, and the new round has got off to a flying start with all finalists already scoring. In round 4, Bloom6132 with 939 points was the highest points-scorer, with a combination of DYKs and In the news items, followed by BennyOnTheLoose, Sammi Brie and Lee Vilenski. The points of all contestants are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.

At this stage, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For the remaining competitors, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them, and importantly, before the deadline on October 31st!

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. The judges are Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:43, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wishing Ceranthor a very happy birthday on behalf of the Birthday Committee!   Chris Troutman (talk) 19:08, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 on Australian military leadership and Nick-D on the First Crusade's Byzantine connection

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

Administrator changes ScottishFinnishRadish Staxringold Ahoerstemeier (deceased) • Ched

Interface administrator changes Cyberpower678 CheckUser changes GorillaWarfare

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that if the rationale for a block depends on information that is not available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee, a checkuser or an oversighter for action (as applicable, per ArbCom's recent updated guidance) instead of the administrator making the block.
• Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
• Community comment on the revised Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines is requested until 8 October.

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

• Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
• A modification to the deletion RfC remedy in the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been made to reaffirm the independence of the RfC and allow the moderators to split the RfC in two.
• The second phase of the 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review closes 3 October.

Miscellaneous

• An administrator's account was recently compromised. Administrators are encouraged to check that their passwords are secure, and reminded that ArbCom reserves the right to not restore adminship in cases of poor account security. You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to provide an extra level of security.
• Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections open 2 October and close 8 October.
• You are invited to comment on candidates in the 2022 CUOS appointments process.
• An RfC is open to discuss whether to make Vector 2022 the default skin on desktop.
• Tech tip: You can do a fuzzy search of all deleted page titles at Special:Undelete.

From your current listing at FAC mentors, you are listed for possible interest for biography articles. For the past several months, I've been editing the president's article for James Madison, and thought to ask you if this would be of sufficient interest for you to look at. After my successful GAN promotion for it, there are now another two positive peer reviews as well. Any interest for you to possibly be a co-nominator or mentor for a FAC nomination for this biography article? ErnestKrause (talk) 14:38, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@ErnestKrause: Sorry for the delayed response. I'm not terribly active these days, and I also don't have much experience working in presidential biographies. Luckily, there are quite a few FAs on US Presidents - if you haven't already, I'd reach out to Wasted Time R, Display name 99, or Wehwalt. Let me know if I can be of further help! ceranthor 01:46, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm semi-retired as a result of a recent controversy, but I would review the article if ErnestKrause were to request it. Display name 99 (talk) 16:34, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's a kind offer from Display name, and Wasted Time has stated that a co-nomination is not possible for him due to general inactivity for over a year. Previously, when I asked Wehwalt to mentor on this, it looked like a pass for him. Can a co-nominator be found for such a prominent president? ErnestKrause (talk) 00:20, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I won't co-nominate for two reasons. One is because I am no longer a very active contributor to Wikipedia because it seems to me that my contributions are not wanted. The second is because, despite knowing a thing or two about early American history, I am not familiar enough with Madison to make major contributions to the article. I know the basic facts of his life from reading books about the time period, including several biographies of other Founding Fathers. (I have fully read one biography of Washington, one biography of Hamilton, and two biographies of John Adams.) But I have never read a biography of Madison. That's why I'm hesitant to make major revisions to the article. But I can look at what's there and offer suggestions. If you want me to, I will. Display name 99 (talk) 03:21, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the literature on Madison, then the Noah Feldman biography about him is about half the size of the Chernow biography about Washington, and also half the size of the Chernow biography about Hamilton. If you are an avid reader then Feldman's book is a good read. Any comments would be nice to hear especially if your local public library has access to the Feldman biography; the Wikipedia article will still need a co-nominator given the large attention usually given by reviewers to prominent president articles. ErnestKrause (talk) 13:24, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ceranthor, on a similar theme, I'm looking for a FAC mentor for another biographical article that recently got through a successful GAN promotion - Natalie Portman. Is that something you'd be able to help with, or suggest someone who could? I've never submitted anything to be a FAC before, and I've had no responses to the peer review so far. Thanks. -Kj cheetham (talk) 12:32, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Kj cheetham: Similar to above, stretched too thin in real life for now, but I'd suggest reaching out to Krimuk2.0 or FrB.TG. Also suggest posting to relevant WikiProjects like WikiProject Actors or WikiProject Film to see if you can find interested reviewers for the PR. Good luck with the article! ceranthor 20:25, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ceranthor: Completely understandable, thank you for the pointers though! -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:56, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ceranthor, I've finally submitted the James Madison article for FAC and after your helpful comments above, I thought to ask if you might offer some support/oppose comments at the FAC? ErnestKrause (talk) 23:13, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@ErnestKrause: Happy to look it over and give feedback! ceranthor 15:18, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that and for referring me to User:Wasted Time above for his help on the James Madison article. The other editor you mentioned User:Display name 99 appears very different and seems to be upset about him being page blocked by El C on the Andrew Jackson article for misconduct and edit quarrels. User:Display name 99 has now moved his edit quarrels to the James Madison Talk page and the FAC nomination page in progress for James Madison at this time. His edit conduct has been significantly upsetting to the co-nominator at FAC that he (Mike) has decided to withdraw from further participation at FAC. Should User:Display be allowed to carry over his poor editing at the Andrew Jackson article to now disrupt the progress being made for the James Madison article currently at FAC. Could you look at this? ErnestKrause (talk) 15:53, 13 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@ErnestKrause: I am sorry you are experiencing that; seems like a lot of negative energy. The FAC delegates are reasonable and will look past any opposes that are based on personal disagreements, so if you are concerned this behavior will continue I would encourage you to reach out to them by pinging them on the FAC page. I will try to look over the article asap! ceranthor 18:06, 13 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Recent external reviews Op-ed: Meet some of the project coordinators

Hi there! I was hoping to enlist some help to update the Earthquakes wiki. There is a request posted for cleanup which it really needs. Hope you or some other Earthquakes WikiProject members could help. EricFishers11 (talk) 03:02, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@EricFishers11: While I'd like to help, that seems like a herculean task, one I'm not currently able to help with substantially. I can help here and there, but the article needs a lot of work to revamp it. Sorry for the delay in responding! ceranthor 14:01, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

• 
  • Isabelle Belato
  • Whpq
• 
• 
  • Atama
  • Astronautics~enwiki
  • Athaenara
  • Eddie891
  • GraemeL
  • Marianocecowski
  • Natalya
  • Pratyeka
  • SB Johnny

Interface administrator changes

• TheresNoTime
• Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

• 
  • Blablubbs
  • Firefly
• Joe Roe

Oversight changes

• DGG

Guideline and policy news

• The article creation at scale RfC opened on 3 October and will be open until at least 2 November.
• An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 13 November 2022 until 22 November 2022 to stand in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The arbitration case request titled Athaenara has been resolved by motion.
• The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has entered the proposed decision stage.
• AmandaNP, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections. Xaosflux and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of two new CheckUsers.
• You can add yourself to the centralised page listing time zones of administrators.
• Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like ((rangeblock|create=yes)) or ((uw-ublock|contains profanity)).

The 2022 WikiCup has drawn to a close with the final round going down to the wire. The 2022 champion is

• Lee Vilenski (1752 points), who won in 2020 and was runner up in both 2019 and last year. In the final round he achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on cue sports. He was closely followed by
• Bloom6132 (1732), who specialised in "In the news" items and DYKs, and who has reached the final round of the Cup for the past three years. Next was
• BennyOnTheLoose (1238), another cue sports enthusiast, also interested in songs, followed by
• Muboshgu (1082), an "In the news" contributor, a seasoned contestant who first took part in the Cup ten years ago. Other finalists were
• Sammi Brie (930), who scored with a featured article, good articles and DYKs on TV and radio stations,
• Kavyansh.Singh (370), who created various articles on famous Americans, including an FA on Louis H. Bean, famed for his prediction of election outcomes. Next was
• PCN02WPS (292), who scored with good articles and DYKs on sporting and other topics and
• Z1720 (25) who had DYKs on various topics including historic Canadians.

During the WikiCup, contestants achieved 37 featured articles, 349 good articles, 360 featured article reviews, 683 good article reviews and 480 In the news items, so Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors. Well done everyone! All those who reached the final round will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or the overall leader in this field.

• Lee Vilenski wins the featured article prize, for a total of 6 FAs during the course of the competition and 3 in the final round.
• Kavyansh.Singh wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 2.
• Adam Cuerden wins the featured picture prize, for 39 FPs during the competition.
• Z1720 wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 35 FARs in round 4.
• Epicgenius wins the good article prize, for 32 GAs in round 1.
• SounderBruce wins the featured topic prize, for 4 FT articles in round 1.
• Lee Vilenski wins the good topic prize, for 34 GT articles in round 5.
• Sammi Brie wins the good article reviewer prize, for 71 GARs overall.
• Sammi Brie wins the Did you know prize, for 30 DYKs in round 3 and 106 overall.
• Bloom6132 wins the In the news prize, for 106 ITNs in round 5 and 289 overall.

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January and possible changes to the rules and scoring are being discussed on the discussion page. You are invited to sign up to take part in the contest; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to have a good turnout for the 2023 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners and finalists, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:28, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Nick-D on the 1991 Gulf War air campaign Op-ed: Meet some more of the coordinators

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

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

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add ((NoACEMM)) to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:32, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. It's been a while. Kinda stepped back after getting burned but now back to defend my FAs from demotion. Nice to see you still keeping on :) Thanks for the good wishes. Serendi^podous 16:14, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Serendipodous: Glad to hear from you! Let me know if I can help out at all. ceranthor 16:30, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Right now I've done all I can on Sedna's FAR. Everything hinges on the whole is it a dwarf planet or not debate, which I have have been too heavily burnt over to deal with. Serendi^podous 16:37, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

• Eddie891
• Euryalus
• TheresNoTime

• Alex.muller
• Excirial
• RedWordSmith
• Ron Ritzman
• TheresNoTime
• Stephen

Interface administrator changes

TheresNoTime

TheresNoTime

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been found in an RfC to automatically place RfAs on hold after one week.
• The article creation at scale RfC has been closed.
• An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.

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

• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
• The proposed decision for the 2021-22 review of the discretionary sanctions system is open.
• The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has been closed.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
• A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add /64 to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Nick-D looks at British Territorials in India Interview: On turning 200 (issues of the Bugle!) Review essay: Coordinators' 2022 reading list Op-ed: Meet some more of the coordinators

Congratulations, Ceranthor! The article you nominated, Boring Lava Field, has been promoted to featured status, recognizing it as one of the best articles on Wikipedia. The nomination discussion has been archived.

This is a rare accomplishment and you should be proud. If you would like, you may nominate it to appear on the Main page as Today's featured article. Keep up the great work! Cheers, Gog the Mild (talk) via FACBot (talk) 00:05, 13 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2023 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:16, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

• ComplexRational
• Extraordinary Writ

Stephen

• Andrew Yong
• Dbenbenn
• DESiegel
• GlassCobra
• Joe Decker
• Nancy
• Pathoschild
• StuffOfInterest
• William Pietri
• Wwwwolf
• Xdamr

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

CheckUser changes

Moneytrees

• Ivanvector
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• GeneralNotability
• Moneytrees

• Guerillero
• SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.

Arbitration

• Following the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, CaptainEek, GeneralNotability, Guerillero, L235, Moneytrees, Primefac, SilkTork.
• The 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review has concluded with many changes to the discretionary sanctions procedure including a change of the name to "contentious topics". The changes are being implemented over the coming month.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been closed.

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.

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 on the key contributions of two Australian scientists in World War II Review essay: Nick-D reports on his recent visits to British military sites

Hi Ceranthor, hope you are well. Back in November, you very kindly reviewed my previous Gillingham F.C. season article FAC. I was wondering if you might have any spare time to review my current one? Not to worry if not, have a great day! -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:13, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@ChrisTheDude: Sure thing. Should have some time today. ceranthor 14:04, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Black Crater you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Mertbiol -- Mertbiol (talk) 22:19, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article Black Crater you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Black Crater and Talk:Black Crater/GA1 for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Mertbiol -- Mertbiol (talk) 17:20, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article Black Crater you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Black Crater for comments about the article, and Talk:Black Crater/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Mertbiol -- Mertbiol (talk) 19:01, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes Gimmetrow Bjelleklang Bob the Wikipedian Leithp WhisperToMe 100 inactive admins

CheckUser changes BDD Bradv Donald Albury Maxim MusikAnimal Oversighter changes BDD Bradv Donald Albury Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the administrator policy now requires that prior written consent be gained from the Arbitration Committee to mark a block as only appealable to the committee.
• Following a community discussion, consensus has been found to impose the extended-confirmed restriction over the topic areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan and Kurds and Kurdistan.

Technical news

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

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 24 February 2023.
• In December, the contentious topics procedure was adopted which replaces the former discretionary sanctions system. The contentious topics procedure is now in effect following an initial implementation period. There is a detailed summary of the changes and administrator instructions for the new procedure. The arbitration clerk team are taking suggestions, concerns, and unresolved questions about this new system at their noticeboard.

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.

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 on translation and Eisenhower's armies Review essay: Catlemur on military museums in Athens

Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:21, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for the kind words, Gerda. You are precious too! ceranthor 14:11, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! And today also for Boring Lava Field, introduced: "This is part of a series of articles I've been working on over the past decade off-and-on related to the Cascades Volcanoes." --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:21, 1 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

		The Reviewers Award
		By the authority vested in me by myself it gives me great pleasure to present you with this award in recognition of the thorough, detailed and actionable reviews you have carried out at FAC. This work is very much appreciated. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:58, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Gog - that's very kind and much appreciated! ceranthor 23:01, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes The Wordsmith Fuhghettaboutit Spinningspark (deceased)

CheckUser changes Callanecc Oversighter changes Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F10 (useless non-media files) has been deprecated.
• Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
• A request for comment is open to discuss making the closing instructions for the requested moves process a guideline.

Technical news

• The results of the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey have been posted.

Arbitration

• Remedy 11 ("Request for Comment") of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been rescinded.
• The proposed decision for the Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case is expected 7 March 2023.
• A case related to the Holocaust in Poland is expected to be opened soon.

Miscellaneous

• The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
• Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
• The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.

So ends the first round of the 2023 WikiCup. Everyone with a positive score moved on to Round 2, with 54 contestants qualifying. The top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Unlimitedlead with 1205 points, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with two featured articles on historical figures and several featured article candidate reviews.
• Epicgenius was in second place with 789 points; a seasoned WikiCup competitor he specialises in buildings and locations in New York.
• FrB.TG was in third place with 625 points, garnered from a featured article on a filmmaker which qualified for an impressive number of bonus points.
• TheJoebro64, another WikiCup newcomer, came next with 600 points gained from two featured articles on video games.
• Iazyges was in fifth place with 532 points, from two featured articles on classical history.

The top sixteen contestants at the end of Round 1 had all scored over 300 points; these included LunaEatsTuna, Thebiguglyalien, Sammi Brie, Trainsandotherthings, Lee Vilenski, Juxlos, Unexpectedlydian, SounderBruce, Kosack, BennyOnTheLoose and PCN02WPS. It was a high-scoring start to the competition.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. The first round finished on February 26. Remember that any content promoted after that date but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:36, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is to let you know that the Boring Lava Field article has been scheduled as today's featured article for April 1, 2023. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page blurb, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 1, 2023, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so. If you wish to make comments on other matters concerning the scheduling of this article, you can do so at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/April 2023.

I suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks and congratulations Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:46, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hog Farm on the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War

Hello! I am in the process of changing all the references in Calabozos to SFNs in templates, and I wanted to run it by you first to make sure you don't object, as you were mentioned on talk. Thanks! BhamBoi (talk) 18:35, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Replied there. ceranthor 19:09, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your informative remarks. BhamBoi (talk) 19:28, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone ahead with the re-nomination of the James Madison article. There is a rewritten Slavery section now and it would be nice to hear your support/oppose comments. Possibly you could revisit the review which you had started 2 months ago if time allows. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:43, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@ErnestKrause: Hi! I've left a few comments about the slavery section. ceranthor 21:19, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for looking at those; I'm thinking that Cmguy already addressed them fairly consistently and he's ready for more comments when they are available. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:51, 5 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@ErnestKrause: Sorry, real life is insanely busy - but congrats on the FA promotion! ceranthor 03:18, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes Aoidh KillerChihuahua

CheckUser changes Ferret

Guideline and policy news

• A community RfC is open to discuss whether reports primarily involving gender-related disputes or controversies should be referred to the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard.

Technical news

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis starting this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. (T178356)
• The rollback of Vector 2022 RfC has found no consensus to rollback to Vector legacy, but has found rough consensus to disable "limited width" mode by default.
• A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will now appear in the subtitle links shown on Special:Contributions. This was voted #17 in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023.

Arbitration

• The Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case has been closed.
• A case about World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been opened, with the first evidence phase closing 6 April 2023.

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Nick-D on the Australian War Memorial and the South China Sea raid, Hawkeye7 on the 1999 East Timor intervention

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

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robin Drysdale until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Timothytyy (talk) 10:11, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Twin Buttes (California) you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Mertbiol -- Mertbiol (talk) 17:22, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article Twin Buttes (California) you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Twin Buttes (California) for comments about the article, and Talk:Twin Buttes (California)/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Mertbiol -- Mertbiol (talk) 12:43, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Mertbiol! ceranthor 23:01, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The second round of the 2023 WikiCup has now finished. Contestants needed to have scored 60 points to advance into round 3. Our top five scorers in round 2 all included a featured article among their submissions and each scored over 500 points. They were:

• Iazyges (1040) with three FAs on Byzantine emperors, and lots of bonus points.
• Unlimitedlead (847), with three FAs on ancient history, one GA and nine reviews.
• Epicgenius (636), a WikiCup veteran, with one FA on the New Amsterdam Theatre, four GAs and eleven DYKs
• BennyOnTheLoose (553), a seasoned competitor, with one FA on snooker, six GAs and seven reviews.
• FrB.TG (525), with one FA, a Lady Gaga song and a mass of bonus points.

Other notable performances were put in by Sammi Brie, Thebiguglyalien, MyCatIsAChonk, PCN02WPS, and AirshipJungleman29.

So far contestants have achieved thirteen featured articles between them, one being a joint effort, and forty-nine good articles. The judges are pleased with the thorough reviews that are being performed, and have hardly had to reject any. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:14, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes Spicy Ale jrb Dbachmann DGG (deceased) Jimbo Wales

CheckUser changes Jimbo Wales Oversighter changes Jimbo Wales

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

• Progress has started on the Page Triage improvement project. This is to address the concerns raised by the community in their 2022 WMF letter that requested improvements be made to the tool.

Arbitration

• The proposed decision in the World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case is expected 11 May 2023.

Miscellaneous

• The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input through May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023.

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 on the Western Allied invasion of Germany Op-ed: Hawkeye7's tips for writing articles on military logistics

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 on the Western Allied invasion of Germany Op-ed: Hawkeye7's tips for writing articles on military logistics

Greetings! I noticed you have performed some reviews at FAC recently and I wanted to ask if I could interest you in reviewing a Meghan Trainor album I have nominated recently.--NØ 09:22, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MaranoFan: I'll try to get to it over the weekend. ceranthor 17:45, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ceranthor, I don't believe we've ever interacted before; I'm reaching out because you are one of the few editors listed at WP:FAM who ever edits mathematics articles. Some time ago, I wrote the article Affine symmetric group (a topic typically not encountered outside of the context of post-graduate study in combinatorics), and managed to get it promoted to GA. If you have the time, I would be interested in your assessment of whether it is a plausible candidate for FA. (I am also asking Iry-Hor.) Thanks, JBL (talk) 21:03, 30 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@JayBeeEll: I might be able to get to it in the next week or two. Real life is very busy right now, so please have patience with me! thanks, ceranthor 17:45, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response. Absolutely, there is no obligation and certainly no rush. (I mean, the article has essentially not been touched since February 2022, to give a sense of just how non-urgent this is :).) Would it be all right if I set a calendar reminder for myself to check back with you some time in July, if I don't hear from you before then? (And really please believe me that "no I'm just too busy for this" is a perfectly reasonable answer.) --JBL (talk) 18:55, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ceranthor,

I wanted to let you know that I've officially nominated the article for FA. If you get a chance to comment there, that would be lovely -- but of course no obligation.

All the best,

JBL (talk) 18:27, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that the window for commenting has narrowed to a few days. --JBL (talk) 23:03, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes Ingenuity Ddstretch Prodego Resolute

CheckUser changes Courcelles

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

• Following a community referendum, the arbitration policy has been modified to remove the ability for users to appeal remedies to Jimbo Wales.

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 and Nick-D review three recent works

Dear Ceranthor,

After few modifications of the Wikipedia article of the page Post Bellum in English language, user Skywatcher68 deleted some of my paragraphs because that could have been considered a conflict of interest. I have actually, and I admit it, used some of the NGO's website paragraphs in order to add new information about the organization, and as it is my first submission, I did not know that such practice could be prohibited. Indeed, I was planning to write more likely a draft to the article than a definitive submission, and I didn't see that some of the messages "such as "We"", weren't removed.

Therefore, user Skywatcher68 suggested me to write a revised article draft submission and then sending it to a proofreader before posting it. Also, I think I notice that I might have used too much URL external hyperlinks, which could have seem to represent an attempt to make advertisement for the NGO.

I was redirected to your account, because you have been mentioned on a list of users who can copy segments of deleted articles into my user page. I therefore ask you if it was possible to get some of the deleted paragraphs back. I will send them later to another user for verification before submission.

PS : sorry for my english level that can seem somewhat irregular, it is not my native language.

Wishing you a good reception of this message.

~~~~ Hitreza (talk) 00:18, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

An IP registered to Post Bellum using the term "Actualisation" in an edit summary and you using the term "Actualising" in your very first edit summary less than an hour later was just a coincidence?   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 00:44, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This was not a coincidence, it was me actually. Also, I cannot lie that I have relations with Post Bellum. However, that doesn't mean I work for them directly, they are associates, but does working in relation with an organism but not for them constitute a conflict of interest ? If such, is it still possible to modify a Wikipedia page if it is submitted to a proofread control ?

Also, I am not doing this work for any compensation as well and I am not doing paid editing, I change Post Bellum page during my free time and I am not willing to make advertisement for the NGO. Therefore, if there is such a conflict of interest, I would be very incline to submit the modifications to an editor that could verify if I adopt a neutral position. This could help me improve my writing and contribution, if this solution can ever be accepted.

Also, this account is managed by only one person and it does not belong to a company or multiple people. As I have been active to Wikipedia on other accounts but not on this one, my history is empty and it does seem to be my first contribution. I admit that this is the first time I am doing a major changing. Finally, thank you again Skywatcher68 for showing me the pages that would have been useful to me for improving my contribution to the article, and I understand that in my position, I could not adopt the most neutral position on how to present the NGO.

Wishing you a good reception of this message, I am willing to improve my skills and writings in Wikipedia. Hitreza (talk) 09:04, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

Novem Linguae

• Deckiller
• Electionworld
• MBisanz
• Penwhale
• Raul654
• Roadrunner
• Viridae
• Yannismarou

Bureaucrat changes

MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

• Contributions to the English Wikipedia are now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) license instead of CC BY-SA 3.0. Contributions are still also released under the GFDL license.

Technical news

• Discussion is open regarding a proposed global policy regarding third-party resources. Third-party resources are computer resources that reside outside of Wikimedia production websites.

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.

The third round of the 2023 WikiCup has come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round had at least 175 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• Thebiguglyalien, with 919 points from a featured article on Frances Cleveland as well as five good articles and many reviews,
• Unlimitedlead, with 862 points from a high-scoring featured articles on Henry II of England and numerous reviews,
• Iazyges, with 560 points from a high-scoring featured article on Tiberius III.

Contestants achieved 11 featured articles, 2 featured lists, 47 good articles, 72 featured or good article reviews, over 100 DYKs and 40 ITN appearances. As always, any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:17, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Nick-D on alleged Australian war crimes and Hawkeye7 on the 1944–45 Philippines campaign and the Australian Signals Directorate

Good article nominations | August 2023 Backlog Drive
August 2023 Backlog Drive: On 1 August, a one-month backlog drive for good article nominations will begin. Barnstars will be awarded. Interested in taking part? You can sign up here.
Other ways to participate: Join the conversations on our talkpage
You're receiving this message because you have reviewed or nominated a good article in the last year. (t · c) buidhe 05:15, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Recent external reviews Op-ed: Adam Cuerden on finding and using images

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

Administrator changes

Firefangledfeathers

• AlisonW
• Amberrock
• Closedmouth
• Scottywong

Interface administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Technical news

• The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. This allows hiding edits made by automated tools. (T334338)
• Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool that allows easier blocking of plain domains (and their subdomains). This is more easily searchable and is faster for the software to use than the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. It does not support regex (for complex cases), URL path-matching, or the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. (T337431)

Arbitration

• The arbitration cases named Scottywong and AlisonW closed 10 July and 16 July respectively.
• The SmallCat dispute arbitration case is in the workshop phase.

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

Administrator changes Pppery Theleekycauldron Dwheeler G.A.S Royalbroil Ssd

CheckUser changes Bradv Oversighter changes Bradv

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

• Special:Contributions now shows the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. (T324166)

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.

The fourth round of the competition has finished, with anyone scoring less than 673 points being eliminated. It was a high scoring round with all but one of the contestants who progressed to the final having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were

• Epicgenius, with 2173 points topping the scores, gained mainly from a featured article, 38 good articles and 9 DYKs. He was followed by
• Sammi Brie, with 1575 points, gained mainly from a featured article, 28 good articles and 50 good article reviews. Close behind was
• Thebiguglyalien, with 1535 points mainly gained from a featured article, 15 good articles, 26 good article reviews and lots of bonus points.

Between them during round 4, contestants achieved 12 featured articles, 3 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 126 good articles, 46 DYK entries, 14 ITN entries, 67 featured article candidate reviews and 147 good article reviews. Congratulations to our eight finalists and all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them and within 24 hours of the end of the final. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.

I will be standing down as a judge after the end of the contest. I think the Cup encourages productive editors to improve their contributions to Wikipedia and I hope that someone else will step up to take over the running of the Cup. Sturmvogel 66 (talk), and Cwmhiraeth (talk)

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Recent external reviews Op-ed: Hawkeye7 on the Oppenheimer biopic

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 on an American general and the first female astronauts, Nick-D on Roman fortifications

The WikiCup is a marathon rather than a sprint and all those reaching the final round have been involved in the competition for the last ten months, improving Wikipedia vastly during the process. After all this hard work, BeanieFan11 has emerged as the 2023 winner and the WikiCup Champion. The finalists this year were:-

• BeanieFan11 with 2582 points
• Thebiguglyalien with 1615 points
• Epicgenius with 1518 points
• MyCatIsAChonk with 1012 points
• BennyOnTheLoose with 974 points
• AirshipJungleman29 with 673 points
• Sammi Brie with 520 points
• Unlimitedlead with 5 points

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether they made it to the final round or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the competition, some of whom did very well. Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from the quality creations, expansions and improvements made, and the numerous reviews performed. All those who reached the final round will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. Awards will be handed out in the next few days.

• Unlimitedlead wins the featured article prize, for 7 FAs in total including 3 in round 2.
• MyCatIsAChonk wins the featured list prize, for 5 FLs in total.
• Lee Vilenski wins the featured topic prize, for a 6-article featured topic in round 4.
• MyCatIsAChonk wins the featured picture prize, for 6 FPs in total.
• BeanieFan11 wins the good article prize, for 75 GAs in total, including 61 in the final round.
• Epicgenius wins the good topic prize, for a 41-article good topic in the final round.
• LunaEatsTuna wins the GA reviewer prize, for 70 GA reviews in round 1.
• MyCatIsAChonk wins the FA reviewer prize, for 66 FA reviews in the final round.
• Epicgenius wins the DYK prize, for 49 did you know articles in total.
• Muboshgu wins the ITN prize, for 46 in the news articles in total.

The WikiCup has run every year since 2007. With the 2023 contest now concluded, I will be standing down as a judge due to real life commitments, so I hope that another editor will take over running the competition. Please get in touch if you are interested. Next year's competition will hopefully begin on 1 January 2024. You are invited to sign up to participate in the contest; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors. It only remains to congratulate our worthy winners once again and thank all participants for their involvement! (If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.) Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:51, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

Tamzin

Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

• Ragesoss
• TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

• The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.
• There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. Feedback on this proposal is requested.

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

• The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 looks at English Civil War logistics and Peacemaker67 at Austro-Hungarian torpedo boats Op-ed: Hawkeye7 on how WP:SIZE matters

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) 00:27, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings, Nevado del Ruiz has got a maintenance tag for some time; do you think it would make sense to reduce the size of that section down to one paragraph, akin to how Ubinas does not dedicate paragraphs to recent activity. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:18, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Thanks for the reminder. I'll try to get to that this week. ceranthor 21:20, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Took me a bit, but finally got around to it. Thanks! ceranthor 20:50, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

• Ganesha811
• JPxG

• Ajpolino
• Lourdes
• Mairi
• RockMFR
• Somno
• WilyD

Beeblebrox → Just Step Sideways

CheckUser changes

• Beeblebrox
• Opabinia regalis

Oversight changes

• Beeblebrox
• Opabinia regalis

Guideline and policy news

• Following a talk page discussion, the Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.

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.

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Nick-D looks at the Russian invasion of Ukraine Op-ed: Nick-D on writing Rhodesian military articles

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Mount Hudson § On the 1991 eruption. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:15, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2024 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close on 31 January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), and Frostly (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:21, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

Clovermoss

Dennis Brown

• Julia W
• Marasmusine
• PBS

CheckUser changes

• Aoidh
• HJ Mitchell
• Sdrqaz
• Spicy
• ToBeFree
• Vanamonde93
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• Aoidh
• Firefly
• Sdrqaz
• ToBeFree
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Arbitration

• Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
• The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 looks at three diverse works Op-ed: Hawkeye7 on the state of the Wikiproject

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

Administrator changes

• Red-tailed hawk
• Robertsky

• Ameliorate!
• Ancheta Wis
• Anthony Bradbury (deceased)
• Cobi
• Ev
• Moondyne
• Worm That Turned

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

CheckUser changes

Wugapodes

Interface administrator changes

• Enterprisey
• Izno

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