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all those red links - just as well they are ones that I cannot play with :) JarrahTree 10:25, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes Dreamy Jazz • Newslinger • Rosguill Deor • Spartaz • Xeno Angusmclellan • clpo13 • Edgar181 • Matthewedwards • NCurse

CheckUser changes Bradv • Casliber • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno Oversight changes Bradv • Casliber • DGG • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno Someguy1221

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment asks whether partial blocks should be enabled on the English Wikipedia. If enabled, this functionality would allow administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces, rather than the entire site.
• A proposal asks whether admins who don't use their tools for a significant period of time (e.g. five years) should have the toolset procedurally removed.
• Following a successful RfC, a whitelist is now available for users whose redirects will be autopatrolled by a bot, removing them from the new pages patrol queue. Admins can add such users to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist after a discussion following the guidelines at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist.

Arbitration

• The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted rather than reasonably construed.
• Following the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Bradv, Casliber, David Fuchs, DGG, KrakatoaKatie, Maxim, Newyorkbrad, SoWhy, Worm That Turned, Xeno.

Miscellaneous

• This issue marks three full years of the Admin newsletter. Thanks for reading!

I've removed your statement at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kudpung. The case has been opened, so no further preliminary statements can be made, but you are welcome to contribute to the /Evidence page if you have information that you would like the arbitrators to consider. Please see the guide to arbitration if you need more information about the process. – bradv🍁 04:44, 15 January 2020 (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 Jim Mattis

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

Administrator changes Ergo Sum • Nick Moyes • QEDK • Wugapodes Dennis Brown Aude • BrownHairedGirl • CALR • Jengod • John Reaves • J.smith • Kim Dent-Brown • K1Bond007 • MECU • Refdoc • RHaworth

CheckUser changes Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos Interface administrator changes Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
• The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.

Technical news

• Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: ((uw-pblock)).
• When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [1]

Arbitration

• Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2020 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2020, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2020, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles. Thank you everyone for your contributions!

Welcome to the twelfth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

General news[edit]

• A training for mentors has been published. The training was first tried with the Czech community, and went well.
• Growth team features have been deployed to Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Armenian Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together whether your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.

Productive edits from newcomer tasks[edit]

We deployed the basic workflow for newcomer tasks to our target wikis on November 20, and the early results are exciting.

• About 1.5% of newcomers who visit their homepage complete the workflow and save a suggested edit. So far, this has amounted to over 450 edits, on all wikis, coming from both desktop and mobile users.
• When we look at the edits that newcomers make, we see that they are largely positive! We are pleased to see that this feature does not appear to encourage vandals.
  • 75% of the edits are productive and unreverted.
  • 95% of the edits appear to be in good faith.
• Most of the edits include copyedits and adding links, with some newcomers also adding content and references. Copyedits are suggested most strongly.
• Click here to learn more specifics about the results so far.

Topic matching deployed[edit]

The results from our user tests showed us that newcomers are likely to do more suggested edits if they can choose articles related to a topic that they're interested in, such as "science", "music", or "sports".

• On January 21, we deployed topic matching on our pilot wikis. Newcomers are now using it. We expect it to cause more newcomers to try suggested edits, and to keep making more of them.
• In the coming weeks, we will be making improvements to the accuracy of the algorithm used to topic matching, which is part of the ORES project.

Next steps for newcomer tasks[edit]

Because we are seeing positive results from newcomer tasks, the Growth team plans to concentrate our efforts on improving the workflow and encouraging more newcomers to use it.

• Guidance: next, we will be using the help panel to provide guidance to newcomers as they do suggested edits, and to prompt them to do another edit after completing their first one. In user tests for this feature, demo videos were one of the favorite features, and we will think about how these might be added.
• Starting the workflow: only about 20% of newcomer who visit their homepage begin the newcomer tasks workflow. We are going to be trying out different layouts of the homepage to encourage more newcomers to try newcomer tasks.
• Additional task types: we are researching methods to recommend more specific tasks to newcomers, such as specific links to add, or images that could be added to articles from Commons.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:39, 4 February 2020 (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: Nick-D looks at a failed German counterattack in the Battle of Normandy

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

Has got to a new stage of its progress in this confusing and chaotic world... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unknown-importance_Australian_biota_articles = 0. Please help by when creating new biota articles for australia, to make sure the unassessed page stays the way it is adequately tagged, or please ask for help in doing so... More on the next stages of the Australian biota project soon... and thanks for whatever you have done for the project in any way since 2006 - JarrahTree 05:52, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes Money emoji Athaenara • DeltaQuad Fishhead64 • Kudpung • Mikaey Bureaucrat changes DeltaQuad

CheckUser changes DeltaQuad Oversight changes DeltaQuad

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
• A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

Technical news

• Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: BRPever, Krd, Martin Urbanec, MusikAnimal, Sakretsu, Sotiale, and Tks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
• The 2020 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Ajraddatz and Uzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.

Hi Gnangarra, I saw you declined my draft (Draft:List of National Soccer League Clubs). Do you think any considerable changes could be made to the article to make it worthwhile of its own page? WDM10 (talk) 06:48, 8 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Admin trouble between Shirt58 and Gnangarra regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Fram (talk) 15:15, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Interesting way to frame it, my response is there Gnangarra 15:48, 12 March 2020 (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

both the older lullfitz and younger have closed down since - classic case of dissappeared nurseries to get onto wikidata, regardless of their notability... possibility of an online project to track down older nurseries in trove - what you think ? JarrahTree 05:18, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

yes but not Gnangarra 05:30, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

? JarrahTree 05:41, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

after so many years leading projects and activities, I just want to tinker around without structure, no timetables, no one expecting anything, I want to follow the qwop weirn exploring where the knowledge takes me. Gnangarra 05:52, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

hhahahah err, ok.JarrahTree 05:55, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes Cabayi • Lee Vilenski Boing! said Zebedee Jonny-mt • MarkGallagher • PeaceNT Money emoji → Moneytrees Bureaucrat changes SilkTork • WereSpielChequers

CheckUser changes NativeForeigner Oversight changes Someguy1221 Daniel Case

Guideline and policy news

• There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.

Technical news

• There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.

Arbitration

• Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.

Miscellaneous

• The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.

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 the logistics behind the Crusades and the USAF's early Cold War nuclear deterrant

Over at George Pell, you made some edits with "behind paywall needs open source to verify per WP:BLP" as an example edit summary. Reviewing WP:BLP, I can't locate any exclusion for paywalled sources (and certainly WP:PAYWALL indicates that they are allowable in general.) Can you point me to the section of WP:BLP that I'm missing? --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:22, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Only The Australian had named the individuals in their article as its behind a pay wall it fails Biographies of living persons ("BLPs") must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid: the inclusion of that list of people in Pell article doesnt contribute to the article is an attack against those individuals, some of whom dont even have Wikipedia articles themselves. The removal those doesnt change or impede the purpose of the section which is critical look at the ABC therefore adding them one can only conclude its to sensationalise the event making neither conservative or neutral but just an attack on those individuals. Gnangarra 13:52, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still not seeing the link you're trying to make. Are you suggesting that free media is part of the public discourse, and priced media is not?? In this case, we're talking about material from a nationally-distributed newspaper aimed at a general audience. --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:13, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm saying that with the naming of individuals by the source isnt sufficient to accept it by itself. It needs other independent source to justify the mentioning of those individuals. Being behind a paywall doesnt enable independent verification of the context to enable a conservative neutrally written piece about those individuals Gnangarra 14:26, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]