This user may have left Wikipedia. SB Johnny has not edited Wikipedia since September 30, 2021. As a result, any requests made here may not receive a response. If you are seeking assistance, you may need to approach someone else.

Archive 1 (up to December, 2006) archive #2 archive #3 archive #4 (March '08-Feb '09) archive #5 (March '09-May '09) #7 (to March 2012)

I had seen a question asked about a tool. Perhaps this would help.

• [1]

Wizardman also may know of additional tools, I know he has helped me with some CCI stuff in the past. — Ched :  ?  20:52, 9 March 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks, that will help for the next one (Hex got a positive ID on that article and removed the section). BTW, let me know if you run across any more like that (articles sent to AfD for using the old "sources" section rather than the cite templates)... I'm still following that hunch. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 11:37, 10 March 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A couple of months ago, you opposed a proposal to lift the restrictions on Gibraltar-related DYKs, which were imposed in September 2012. Could you possibly clarify (1) under what conditions you would support a lifting of the restrictions, and (2) when you think it would be appropriate to lift the restrictions? Prioryman (talk) 20:08, 7 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Could you link to the discussion please? --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 14:01, 8 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Gibraltar-related DYKs, in the first collapsed box. Prioryman (talk) 22:39, 8 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Is there a current discussion somewhere? --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 13:27, 9 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No. Prioryman (talk) 07:44, 10 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, Am I a qualifying contributor, I mean to get paid, if I am one of the winners? Thanks. 76.126.142.59 (talk) 02:12, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You mean if you're not logged in? I don't know, but I'll pass the question along. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 08:51, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes, it is what I meant, but surely, if Wikipedia considers me a qualifying contributor, Wikipediocracy should too. By the by have you ever considered nominating the article for DYK? 76.126.142.59 (talk) 13:33, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Nothing firm yet, but if you're in this for the money, I think you should create an account. Wikipedia doesn't charge anything for making accounts, last I checked ;-). --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 22:09, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Of course I am in for the money mostly because it is fun to get payed for criticizing Wikipedia on Wikipedia. Yes, creating an account is free, but it is a hassle. I would not like to be attached to a user name, I prize my freedom. Besides I've already made most additions to the article as IP. 76.126.142.59 (talk) 00:07, 18 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Well, it says right there on the board: "Candidates for this prize will be registered Wikipedia user accounts" (italicized on the board). I get the impression that they're not interested in changing that rule, so not much more I can do for you. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 10:21, 18 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yeah, you probably shouldn't be commenting in the uninvolved administrator section on that case. Someone is bound to blow a gasket. ;) --The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 01:53, 25 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I don't see why... I have absolutely no interest in Scientology, though I'm aware that it's been a contentious topic on WP. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 13:55, 25 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I meant because of the specific article that was under discussion, but I guess it no longer matters.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 16:01, 25 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Well, I'm not really all that involved in the article either. I'm interested as a reader, of course, but I don't have any particular stake in it as an "editor", much less as an "admin". --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 19:02, 25 April 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Just letting you know so I can get the reward . Cheers, nerdfighter 00:52, 8 May 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Please note: User talk pages User talk pages are rarely protected, and are semi-protected for short durations only in the most severe cases of vandalism from IP users. Users whose talk pages are semi-protected should have an unprotected user talk subpage linked conspicuously from their main talk page to allow good faith comments from non-autoconfirmed users.[2]

"Give it a rest" isn't a valid reason for protecting a user's talk page. Please undo your action or be prepared to explain why you took it upon yourself to make up new rules at WP:ANI. Rklawton (talk) 23:38, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It's a perfectly valid reason per IAR (and in is case perhaps BLP as well). Leaving the poor guy be for a couple of days is the right thing to do, and hopefully can helm lower the drama level. I'm sure the wiser heads at AN/I will agree. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 23:45, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Rklawton (talk) 00:41, 21 May 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

	Philadelphia's Great American Wiknic at Penn Park
	You are invited to the Philadelphia edition of the Great American Wiknic taking place in Penn Park, on Saturday, June 22, 2013! We would love to see you there!--User:Ocaasi (talk)|))

You know, I had no idea that you were an admin here? Neato. — Scott • talk 10:34, 22 June 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Dear SB Johnny.

This is just a quick courtesy notice. You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manning naming dispute. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manning naming dispute/Evidence. Please add your evidence by September 19, 2013, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manning naming dispute/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Seddon ^talk 23:31, 8 September 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wikipedians are invited to the GLAM Café at the Chemical Heritage Foundation to meet, talk, and edit. We provide the space, the coffee, and the snacks: you provide ideas and enthusiasm! On the second Tuesday of each month, starting November 12, 2013.

I appreciate your judgement. It needed to be blocked for a short time to allow cooling off, 24 hours was too long but your timing was perfect. Worm^TT(talk) 08:04, 30 October 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

De nada. That's why you keep us old timers around hovering well over the fray, right? --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 12:20, 30 October 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

your post was reverted by user:demiurge1000, but I have no idea why. 24.4.37.209 (talk) 15:36, 6 November 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi SB Johnny. I saw your comment on the Ramtha's discussion page and have added a summary of the key points from the longer message. You can see that on the discussion page. I hope you're still willing to be a helpful interloper. Calstarry (talk) 17:38, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ya know, I'd been meaning to ask you what the significance of your user name is. — Scott • talk 14:49, 19 November 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Template:Hortibox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. eh bien mon prince (talk) 19:40, 30 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

cultivating trust
Thank you, "Oldtimer" interested in "horticulture, landscape architecture, philosophy, and history", for cultivating plant stubs, real life ("spend time doing something more satisfying") and trust, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:00, 30 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Aw, shucks :-). Thanks! --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 22:01, 30 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Move Like This
by 28bytes

Adding "move like this, like this move" and the link to "awesomely weird", --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:50, 19 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

On the 28th: a blue duck attacks the German Main page, right now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:09, 28 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A year ago, you were the 708th recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:41, 30 December 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Three years ago, you were recipient no. 708 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:30, 30 December 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Six years now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:09, 30 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• (Protection log); 23:09 . . SB Johnny (talk | contribs) changed protection level of User talk:Jimbo Wales‎ ‎[edit=autoconfirmed] (expires 11:09, 4 January 2014 (UTC))‎[move=sysop] (indefinite) ‎(throttle down, Jimmy has made it pretty clear that he wants IPs to be free to talk on his talk)

Your protection makes it impossible for IPs to edit the page. -mattbuck (Talk) 23:34, 3 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

For 12 hours, I know. It had been set to indefinite a little earlier, so I shortened it. Changed the move permissions too, because Hagger???? ;-) --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 23:53, 3 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Move permission seems sensible. -mattbuck (Talk) 00:34, 4 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you for taking an interest in this problem. The banned editor is Mbz1. She's very persistent about hopping to new IPs and is seeking a forum for grandstanding. If she returns, please lengthen the protection. I had shortened it previously, but she came right back so I had to re-protect, and used a longer duration. More eyes on the problem is good. Jehochman ^Talk 01:56, 4 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Well, the problem is that if you set it to "indefinite", you never know when it's "worked", and like I mentioned in the log, Jimmy is a big believer in "IP editing and speech". It's easy enough for you to throw the rope up for another 12 hours if she's causing a major problem, though it's often even easier to skip over the R&B and go right to I. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 02:45, 4 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

FWIW, Jehochman, she says the IP in question isn't her (and is from Germany, etc.), though I agree the style and content certainly resembles hers. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 14:05, 4 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There're three possibilities: (1) It is her. (2) It is some other editor taking advantage of the situation to act just like her. (3) It's somebody completely unrelated who's acting just like her, but doesn't realize it. Given the lack of trust we have in her, created by her inability to get along with other editors resulting in a ban, and then by her continued violation of editing through her ban, I think her statement has no information value whatsoever. Thank you for keeping an eye on the situation and if there are further similar edits, please respond as you see fit or let me know if you think my response needs to be adjusted so that it would be more effective. I didn't mean to set the protection to indefinite! I had meant to select something like one or two weeks, which is the approximate length of time she's been editing of late. Jehochman ^Talk 17:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm nearly certain that it isn't her (lying isn't one of her faults). She feels rather insulted by you accusing her of being this other person (who she doesn't think resembles her at all), so if you can spare a "sorry about that" for her, she'd appreciate it.

(And yes, Jehochman, I originally thought you had gotten the edit and move protection settings backwards, went to fix that, then realized the problem with having that length of protection on that particular page. We all have our senior moments, despite our youthful appearance and vigor.) ;-) --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 23:01, 4 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think she feels insulted that I continue to suck air, and nothing I say will have any benefit. My plan is to ignore her. If she stays away for 6 mos she can then try to come back under the standard offer. I won't object. She needs to let go of the past. Jehochman ^Talk 01:11, 5 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Mbz1 was here. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 01:21, 6 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I was wondering if you would like to come back to Wikiversity ;) --Goldenburg111 (talk) 01:28, 5 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you for that, I've signed. May I suggest that you remove the "Support" from your signature? I worry that people will start adding "Oppose" comments, as if it's an RfC, not a petition. Let them lynch-mob elsewhere. — Scott • talk 23:39, 10 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Already did, good thinking :-). --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 23:41, 10 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Well, we tried. "Dignity", what a joke. — Scott • talk 18:05, 11 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

"I am unaware of any nondisclosure agreements and do not intend to intervene in a staff matter. Given that he was unaware that she was an employee, I'm not sure how much weight to put in that (though something in the signpost seems to suggest that there isn't an NDA, or at least that she's permitted to discuss the issue). --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 23:59, 12 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

How did Kww use technical means to force the WMF on the Visual Editor mess? I know that the Visual Editor was not ready for prime time and that WMF, as the employer of the developers, was trying to ram it into production. What did Kww do? Was he heroic? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:06, 25 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

He modified the javascript, iirc, which effectively allowed VE to be disabled (as default?), which is what the WMF (including Philippe in particular) were refusing to do. Whether it's heroic depends on your perspective, I suppose, but the point is that (a) Phillipe and Kww have a history of personal animosity, and (b) this is actually a wider dispute between Phillipe's wing of the WMF and parts of the community that are not at all happy with the WMF. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 14:08, 26 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You said "See WP:DEADLINE to start. I think it's wonderful that there's a POTD and some DYKs available, but contorting everything else because Jimmy thinks it's a good idea is frankly a bad idea".

That comment really helped me. I've been getting a bit worked up over things, and I really needed to hear the words "WP:DEADLINE". Sometimes when you need to chill, a stranger shows up to say the magic words-- WP:NODEADLINE. So, I wanted to thank you for the advice-- it helped me. --HectorMoffet (talk) 08:50, 7 February 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Also, I agree we shouldn't push FA at all or "contort" stuff; just on the the stuff we already have that meets our criteria, do you think it's appropriate to schedule them all on a theme day like Feb 11, or should we stagger them across multiple days? your opinion valued. --HectorMoffet (talk) 08:52, 7 February 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for the kind words :) this isn't the first time I've been mobbed over something where I believed I was primarily in the right, and I'm usually fairly good at dealing with it, the magnitude of this was just a bit more than I expected. The reason I posted a statement of the length that I did was because I had received multiple emails telling me to do so or they'd take it to ANI, and I figured my talk page would be less painful than ANI. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:56, 9 February 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi SB Johnny. I contribute to Wikipedia regularly with a conflict of interest, while following best practices and bringing most articles that qualify up to "Good Article" status to ensure I am meeting a high standard of compliance with Wikipedia's content policies.

I'm trying to spread myself around a little more, to avoid the allegation that I have a small posse of favorable editors, which will inevitably occur if I rely too heavily on just 2 or 3 editors, so I thought I would introduce myself and see if you have an interest in chipping in on an article where I am affiliated.

The article is Triumph International. The draft I've prepared is located at User:CorporateM/Triumph. It's been shared on the Talk page and at COIN, but I find even COIN posts often get archived without anything getting done, so I try to ping people individually and find someone willing to chip in.

Let me know if you have the time/interest to take a look. CorporateM (Talk) 15:07, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello there, a proposal regarding pre-adminship review has been raised at Village pump by Anna Frodesiak. Your comments here is very much appreciated. Many thanks. Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:46, 28 May 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration and have not been listed as a party. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/DangerousPanda. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/DangerousPanda/Evidence. Please add your evidence by 3 December 2014, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/DangerousPanda/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 12:36, 19 November 2014 (UTC). Message delivered by MediaWiki message deliveryReply[reply]

You recently recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Wifione. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Wifione/Evidence. Please submit your evidence before 16 January 2014, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Wifione/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration.

Please read this notice before submitting any material (evidence or workshop proposals or comments) on the case or talk pages.

From the statements so far, this case is either about an administrator editing in defiance of the neutral point of view policy or a group of editors unjustly making accusations of such. The committee takes no view at present.

However, all participants are reminded that breaches of the Outing and harassment policy and the Personal attacks policy are prohibited. Further, be aware that the outing policy takes precedence over the Conflict of interest guideline.

No material that touches upon individual privacy may be posted publicly but must instead be sent using "Email user" to the Arbitration Committee. Such material will be accepted, or disregarded, at the committee's sole discretion.

Before communicating by email with the Committee, please read our "Communications and privacy" statement.

For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 00:03, 2 January 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You have mail. Go Phightins! 15:09, 4 April 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm just wondering why this was undone?

The reason I protected it was because an editor made socks simply to target Jimbo. When they made one of their socks, they said that they were simply going to keep creating accounts to target his page. As indeed they did.--5 albert square (talk) 05:39, 13 April 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

See here. 12 days was way too long. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 08:22, 13 April 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm afraid to say that I have learned otherwise in dealing with his talk page. In any case I would have preferred that you'd have at least pinged me in the message that you left on Jimbo's talk page, if not left a message on my own talk page about it. All the best.--5 albert square (talk) 20:36, 13 April 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I figured you'd see it, didn't see the point in "calling you out" about it. I just re-protected for another 12 hours, BTW. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 13:00, 14 April 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Somehow I think they will be back. I hope I am proved wrong..............--5 albert square (talk) 19:51, 14 April 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Of course they will. There's a long view that I'm seeing............ can you see it? I bet you can ;-). --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 02:15, 15 April 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Timeline of Philadelphia has a discussion about selection and inclusion criteria. Two editors are discussing it, but we have divergent views. More opinions would be helpful. - SummerPhD^v2.0 13:23, 23 June 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has, per the above, accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement/Evidence. Please add your evidence by July 13, 2015, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. Apologies for the potential duplicate message. For the Arbitration Committee, L235 (t / c / ping in reply) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:43, 29 June 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You are receiving this message either because you are a party to the Arbitration enforcement arbitration case, because you have commented in the case request, or the AN or AE discussions leading to this arbitration case, or because you have specifically opted in to receiving these messages. Unless you are a party to this arbitration case, you may opt out of receiving further messages at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement/Notification list. The drafters of the Arbitration enforcement arbitration case have published a revised timetable for the case, which changes what you may have been told when the case was opened. The dates have been revised as follows: the Evidence phase will close 5 July 2015, one week earlier than originally scheduled; the Workshop phase will close 26 July 2015, one week later than originally scheduled; the Proposed decision is scheduled to be posted 9 August 2015, two weeks later than originally scheduled. Thank you. On behalf of the arbitration clerks, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:58, 1 July 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This message is sent at 12:53, 5 July 2015 (UTC) by Arbitration Clerk User:Penwhale via MassMessage on behalf of the Arbitration Committee. You are receiving this message because your name appears on this list and have not elected to opt-out of being notified of development in the arbitration case.

On 5 July, 2015, the following motion was passed and enacted:

I've sent you one. — Ched :  ?  20:59, 12 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Got it Ched. Replied. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 02:06, 13 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Dear SB Johnny,

I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more.

Best regards,  — Scott • talk 10:45, 19 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Time for a 15 year society eh? Happy New Year to you all. Peter Damian (talk) 14:53, 2 January 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

[[File:Jimmy_Wales_September_2015.jpg|thumb|2000px|MASSIVE Jimbo Wales]] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.239.103.66 (talk) 17:26, 8 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Santa? --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 01:59, 9 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I thought I'd try to start a discussion here on my talk, Figureofnine, in the hopes that we can keep it on-topic and not-so-silly. Coretheapple, you are not welcome on my talk page.

Alison is a "co-founder" of WO in the same sense I am: we participated in an email discussion about whether to set it up, how to avoid some problems that made Wikipedia Review fail, etc. We were also among the first people to get accounts there, and we both have "advanced permissions" on the website.

Neither Alison or I have anything at stake in Wikipediocracy's success or failure, and therefore neither of us has a "conflict of interest" in the normal (i.e. non-wiki-lawyer) sense of the expression.

I put my name of the template because I'm interested in Wikipediocracy as a participant and fan (as is User:Alison, of course), but arguably no more interested than Mr. Coretheapple, which is why I added his name as well. The point is that none of us should be listed in the template, or all of us.

If you didn't mean to kick the hornet's nest here, I'm sorry if it's been a source of stress or annoyance. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 00:17, 12 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I saw some of this discussion elsewhere - and I just don't understand the fuss. The two sites serve different purposes; and even if they have a thread in common, they aren't competitors. It all seems like a tempest in a teapot to me. — Ched :  ?  01:52, 12 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

WP is policed by a bunch of power-obsessed anal retentives. Nothing more needs to be said. Eric Corbett 02:15, 12 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It looks like this discussion may already be off-topic, into silly name calling, etc. So, I will only leave one comment and ask you to think on it: We should disclose to the readers about that article, those who declare founder with advance permissions status - that is information about the subject, and about the article. If you want to discuss this comment further, you are invited to my talk page. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:30, 14 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Just saw the ping. I agree with Alanscottwalker and have nothing to add. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 14:25, 25 December 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others. The scope of this case is Gamaliel's recent actions (both administrative and otherwise), especially related to the Signpost April Fools Joke. The case will also examine the conduct of other editors who are directly involved in disputes with Gamaliel. The case is strictly intended to examine user conduct and alleged policy violations and will not examine broader topic areas. The clerks have been instructed to remove evidence which does not meet these requirements. The drafters will add additional parties as required during the case. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others/Evidence.

Please add your evidence by May 2, 2016, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. This notification is being sent to those listed on the case notification list. If you do not wish to recieve further notifications, you are welcome to opt-out on that page. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:39, 18 April 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

An arbitration case regarding Gamaliel and others has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

1. Gamaliel is admonished for multiple breaches of Wikipedia policies and guidelines including for disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, removing a speedy deletion notice from a page he created, casting aspersions, and perpetuating what other editors believed to be a BLP violation.
2. DHeyward and Gamaliel are indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing each other anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
3. DHeyward (talk · contribs) is admonished for engaging in incivility and personal attacks on other editors. He is reminded that all editors are expected to engage respectfully and civilly with each other and to avoid making personal attacks.
4. For conduct which was below the standard expected of an administrator — namely making an incivil and inflammatory close summary on ANI, in which he perpetuated the perceived BLP violation and failed to adequately summarise the discussion — JzG is admonished.
5. Arkon is reminded that edit warring, even if exempt, is rarely an alternative to discussing the dispute with involved editors, as suggested at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE.
6. The community is encouraged to hold an RfC to supplement the existing WP:BLPTALK policy by developing further guidance on managing disputes about material involving living persons when that material appears outside of article space and is not directly related to article-content decisions.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:38, 4 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others closed

Join us this Saturday (July 30) at the Philadelphia Wiknic, the "picnic anyone can edit". This is an opportunity to meet other local Wikipedians, have fun, and discuss potential projects.

The event is this Saturday, between 1pm-5pm at the Picnic Grove in Penn Park.

(To unsubscribe from future messages, remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiProject Philadelphia/Philadelphia meet-up invite list.)

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:21, 28 July 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

In this edit[3] you say

"I'm not seeing any abuse of privileges here, but I'll happily list them if someone can bring them to my attention: [...] If someone brings abuse to my attention, I'll note them above. I can even add more slots if there are more than 5. If not, please consider the lack of evidence to be evidence, since as we all know it's very hard to prove a negative."

Here are three examples:

• 2005 - MH is rebuked for protecting page that they are engaged in an editing dispute over
• 2007 - MH engages in wheelwarring against three other admins.
• 2009 - MH again wheelwars with other admins

Wheel warring is a very serious offense. See WP:WHEEL.

I look forward to seeing you keep your "If someone brings abuse to my attention, I'll note them above" promise.

While your claim of no abuse of tools is demonstrably false, a claim of no recent abuse of tools would be fair an accurate. I don't think there has been any abuse of tools in the last five years. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:45, 15 August 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks, I'll put those in when I have time to look over them. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 11:45, 16 August 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Template:Nspp has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:51, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello, SB Johnny. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.

Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.

In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:

• Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
• A bot will post a notification at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard of each use. MusikBot currently does this by updating a report, which is transcluded onto the noticeboard.

Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you.
This message was sent to the administrators' mass message list. To opt-out of future messages, please remove yourself from the list. 17:49, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:32, 12 November 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi SB Johnny.

A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.

It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:47, 15 November 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello, SB Johnny. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

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 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Template:PrSpam has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 03:45, 24 November 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes

NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67

Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13

Guideline and policy news

• A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
• Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.

Technical news

• When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
• Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
• The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.

Obituaries

• JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.

13:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2017).

Administrator changes

Amortias • Deckiller • BU Rob13

Ronnotel • Islander • Chamal N • Isomorphic • Keeper76 • Lord Voldemort • Shereth • Bdesham • Pjacobi

Guideline and policy news

• A recent RfC has redefined how articles on schools are evaluated at AfD. Specifically, secondary schools are not presumed to be notable simply because they exist.
• AfDs that receive little participation should now be closed like an expired proposed deletion, following a deletion process RfC.
• Defender, HakanIST, Matiia and Sjoerddebruin are our newest stewards, following the 2017 steward elections.
• The 2017 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Góngora, Krd, Lankiveil, Richwales and Vogone. They will serve for approximately 1 year.

Technical news

• A recent query shows that only 16% of administrators on the English Wikipedia have enabled two-factor authentication. If you haven't already enabled it please consider doing so.
• Cookie blocks should be deployed to the English Wikipedia soon. This will extend the current autoblock system by setting a cookie for each block, which will then autoblock the user after they switch accounts under a new IP.
• A bot will now automatically place a protection template on protected pages when admins forget to do so.

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2017).

Administrator changes

TheDJ

Xnuala • CJ • Oldelpaso • Berean Hunter • Jimbo Wales • Andrew c • Karanacs • Modemac • Scott

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion on the backlog of unpatrolled files, consensus was found to create a new user right for autopatrolling file uploads. Implementation progress can be tracked on Phabricator.
• The BLPPROD grandfather clause, which stated that unreferenced biographies of living persons were only eligible for proposed deletion if they were created after March 18, 2010, has been removed following an RfC.
• An RfC has closed with consensus to allow proposed deletion of files. The implementation process is ongoing.
• After an unsuccessful proposal to automatically grant IP block exemption, consensus was found to relax the criteria for granting the user right from needing it to wanting it.

Technical news

• After a recent RfC, moved pages will soon be featured in a queue similar to Special:NewPagesFeed and require patrolling. Moves by administrators, page movers, and autopatrolled editors will be automatically marked as patrolled.
• Cookie blocks have been deployed. This extends the current autoblock system by setting a cookie for each block, which will then autoblock the user if they switch accounts, even under a new IP.

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2017).

Administrator changes

Karanacs • Berean Hunter • GoldenRing • Dlohcierekim

Gdr • Tyrenius • JYolkowski • Longhair • Master Thief Garrett • Aaron Brenneman • Laser brain • JzG • Dragons flight

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has clarified that user categories should be emptied upon deletion, but redlinked user categories should not be removed if re-added by the user.
• Discussions are ongoing regarding proposed changes to the COI policy. Changes so far have included clarification that adding a link on a Wikipedia forum to a job posting is not a violation of the harassment policy.

Technical news

• You can now see a list of all autoblocks at Special:AutoblockList.
• There is a new tool for adding archives to dead links. Administrators are able to restrict other user's ability to use the tool, and have additional permissions when changing URL and domain data.
• Administrators, bureaucrats and stewards can now set an expiry date when granting user rights. (discuss, permalink)

Miscellaneous

• Following an RfC, the editing restrictions page is now split into a list of active restrictions and an archive of those that are old or on inactive accounts. Make sure to check both pages if searching for a restriction.

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2017).

Administrator changes

Doug Bell • Dennis Brown • Clpo13 • ONUnicorn

ThaddeusB • Yandman • Bjarki S • OldakQuill • Shyam • Jondel • Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC proposing an off-wiki LTA database has been closed. The proposal was broadly supported, with further discussion required regarding what to do with the existing LTA database and defining access requirements. Such a tool/database formed part of the Community health initiative's successful grant proposal.
• Some clarifications have been made to the community banning and unblocking policies that effectively sync them with current practice. Specifically, the community has reached a consensus that when blocking a user at WP:AN or WP:ANI, it is considered a "community sanction", and administrators cannot unblock unilaterally if the user has not successfully appealed the sanction to the community.
• An RfC regarding the bot policy has closed with changes to the section describing restrictions on cosmetic changes.

Technical news

• Users will soon be able to blacklist specific users from sending them notifications.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2017 elections, the new members of the Board of Trustees include Raystorm, Pundit and Doc James. They will serve three-year terms.

Template:Plantsclean has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 03:18, 11 June 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Template:Copied howto has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 01:21, 13 June 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2017).

Administrator changes

Happyme22 • Dragons flight

Zad68

Guideline and policy news

• The RFC discussion regarding WP:OUTING and WMF essay about paid editing and outing (see more at the ArbCom noticeboard archives) is now archived. Milieus #3 and #4 received support; so did concrete proposal #1.

Technical news

• Fuzzy search will soon be added to Special:Undelete, allowing administrators to search for deleted page titles with results similar to the search query. You can test this by adding ?fuzzy=1 to the URL, as with Special:Undelete?fuzzy=1. Currently the search only finds pages that exactly match the search term.
• A new bot will automatically revision delete unused file versions from files in Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old.

Miscellaneous

• A newly revamped database report can help identify users who may be eligible to be autopatrolled.
• A potentially compromised account from 2001–2002 attempted to request resysop. Please practice appropriate account security by using a unique password for Wikipedia, and consider enabling two-factor authentication. Currently around 17% of admins have enabled 2FA, up from 16% in February 2017.
• Did you know: On 29 June 2017, there were 1,261 administrators on the English Wikipedia – the exact number of administrators as there were ten years ago on 29 June 2007. Since that time, the English Wikipedia has grown from 1.85 million articles to over 5.43 million.

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2017).

Administrator changes

Anarchyte • GeneralizationsAreBad • Cullen328 ^{(first RfA to reach WP:300)}

Cprompt • Rockpocket • Rambo's Revenge • Animum • TexasAndroid • Chuck SMITH • MikeLynch • Crazytales • Ad Orientem

Guideline and policy news

• Following a series of discussions around new pages patrol, the WMF is helping implement a controlled autoconfirmed article creation trial as a research experiment, similar to the one proposed in 2011. You can learn more about the research plan at meta:Research:Autoconfirmed article creation trial. The exact start date of the experiment has yet to be determined.
• A new speedy deletion criterion, regarding articles created as a result undisclosed paid editing, is currently being discussed (permalink).
• An RfC (permalink) is currently open that proposes expanding WP:G13 to include all drafts, even if they weren't submitted through Articles for Creation.

Technical news

• LoginNotify should soon be deployed to the English Wikipedia. This will notify users when there are suspicious login attempts on their account.
• The new version of XTools is nearing an official release. This suite of tools includes administrator statistics, an improved edit counter, among other tools that may benefit administrators. You can report issues on Phabricator and provide general feedback at mw:Talk:XTools.

User:SB Johnny/List of fictional expletives, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:SB Johnny/List of fictional expletives and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of User:SB Johnny/List of fictional expletives during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:53, 31 August 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2017).

Administrator changes

Nakon • Scott

Sverdrup • Thespian • Elockid • James086 • Ffirehorse • Celestianpower • Boing! said Zebedee

Guideline and policy news

• ACTRIAL, a research experiment that restricts article creation to autoconfirmed users, will begin on September 7. It will run for six months. You can learn more about the research specifics at meta:Research:Autoconfirmed article creation trial, while Wikipedia talk:Autoconfirmed article creation trial is probably the best venue for general discussion.
• Following an RfC, WP:G13 speedy deletion criterion now applies to any page in the draftspace that has not been edited in six months. There is a bot-generated report, updated daily, to help identify potentially qualifying drafts that have not been submitted through articles for creation.

Technical news

• You will now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device that has logged into your account before, you will be notified after five failed attempts. You can also set in your preferences to get an email when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address, which may be encouraged for admins and accounts with sensitive permissions.
• Syntax highlighting is now available as a beta feature (more info). This may assist administrators and template editors when dealing with intricate syntax of high-risk templates and system messages.
• In your notification preferences, you can now block specific users from pinging you. This functionality will soon be available for Special:EmailUser as well.

Arbitration

• Applications for CheckUser and Oversight are being accepted by the Arbitration Committee until September 12. Community discussion of the candidates will begin on September 18.

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2017).

Administrator changes

Boing! said Zebedee • Ansh666 • Ad Orientem

Tonywalton • AmiDaniel • Silence • BanyanTree • Magioladitis • Vanamonde93 • Mr.Z-man • Jdavidb • Jakec • Ram-Man • Yelyos • Kurt Shaped Box

Guideline and policy news

• Following a successful proposal to create it, a new user right called "edit filter helper" is now assignable and revocable by administrators. The right allows non-administrators to view the details of private edit filters, but not to edit them.
• Following a discussion about mass-application of ECP and how the need for logging and other details of an evolving consensus may have been missed by some administrators, a rough guide to extended confirmed protection has been written. This information page describes how the extended-confirmed aspects of the protection policy are currently being applied by administrators.

Technical news

• You can now search for IP ranges at Special:Contributions. Some log pages and Special:DeletedContributions are not yet supported. Wildcards (e.g. 192.168.0.*) are also not supported, but the popular contribsrange gadget will continue to work.

Arbitration

• Community consultation on the 2017 candidates for CheckUser and Oversight has concluded. The Arbitration Committee will appoint successful candidates by October 11.
• A request for comment is open regarding the structure, rules, and procedures of the December 2017 Arbitration Committee election, and how to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2017).

Administrator changes

Longhair • Megalibrarygirl • TonyBallioni • Vanamonde93

Allen3 • Eluchil404 • Arthur Rubin • Bencherlite

Technical news

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team is creating an "Interaction Timeline" tool that intends to assist administrators in resolving user conduct disputes. Feedback on the concept may be posted on the talk page.
• A new function is now available to edit filter managers that will make it easier to look for multiple strings containing spoofed text.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors will be invited to submit candidate statements for the 2017 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 12 until November 21. Voting will begin on November 27 and last until December 10.
• Following a request for comment, Ritchie333, Yunshui and Ymblanter will serve as the Electoral Commission for the 2017 ArbCom Elections.

Obituaries

• The Wikipedia community has recently learned that Allen3 (William Allen Peckham) passed away on December 30, 2016, the same day as JohnCD. Allen began editing in 2005 and became an administrator that same year.

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2017).

Administrator changes

Joe Roe

JzG

Ericorbit • Perceval • Thingg • Tristanb • Violetriga

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, a new section has been added to the username policy which disallows usernames containing emoji, emoticons or otherwise "decorative" usernames, and usernames that use any non-language symbols. Administrators should discuss issues related to these types of usernames before blocking.

Technical news

• Wikimedians are now invited to vote on the proposals in the 2017 Community Wishlist Survey on Meta Wiki until 10 December 2017. In particular, there is a section of the survey regarding new tools for administrators and for anti-harassment.
• A new function is available to edit filter managers which can be used to store matches from regular expressions.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is open until Sunday 23:59, 10 December 2017 (UTC). There are 12 candidates running for 8 vacant seats.

Miscellaneous

• Over the last few months, several users have reported backlogs that require administrator attention at WP:ANI, with the most common backlogs showing up on WP:SPI, WP:AIV and WP:RFPP. It is requested that all administrators take some time during this month to help clear backlogs wherever possible. It should be noted that AIV reports are not always valid; however, they still need to be cleared, which may include needing to remind users on what qualifies as vandalism.
• The Wikimedia Foundation Community health initiative is conducting a survey for English Wikipedia contributors on their experience and satisfaction level with Administrator’s Noticeboard/Incidents. This survey will be integral to gathering information about how this noticeboard works (i.e. which problems it deals with well and which problems it struggles with). If you would like to take this survey, please sign up on this page, and a link for the survey will be emailed to you via Special:EmailUser.

Hello, SB Johnny. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible 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 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2017).

Administrator changes

Muboshgu

Anetode • Laser brain • Worm That Turned

None

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the administrator policy should be amended to require disclosure of paid editing activity at WP:RFA and to prohibit the use of administrative tools as part of paid editing activity, with certain exceptions.

Technical news

• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey results have been posted. The Community Tech team will investigate and address the top ten results.
• The Anti-Harassment Tools team is inviting comments on new blocking tools and improvements to existing blocking tools for development in early 2018. Feedback can be left on the discussion page or by email.

Arbitration

• Following the results of the 2017 election, the following editors have been (re)appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Alex Shih, BU Rob13, Callanecc, KrakatoaKatie, Opabinia regalis, Premeditated Chaos, RickinBaltimore, Worm That Turned.

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

Administrator changes

None

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

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

Administrator changes

Lourdes†

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

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Miscellaneous

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

Obituaries

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

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

Administrator changes

331dot • Cordless Larry • ClueBot NG

Gogo Dodo • Pb30 • Sebastiankessel • Seicer • SoLando

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

Administrator changes

None

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Obituaries

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

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

Administrator changes

None

Al Ameer son • AliveFreeHappy • Cenarium • Lupo • MichaelBillington

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

Administrator changes

Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor

Gogo Dodo

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

Bureaucrat changes

Andrevan • EVula

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

Administrator changes

Sro23

KaisaL • Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

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

Administrator changes

None

Asterion • Crisco 1492 • KF • Kudpung • Liz • Randykitty • Spartaz

Optimist on the run → Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

Amorymeltzer • Mr. Stradivarius • MusikAnimal • MSGJ • TheDJ • Xaosflux

Guideline and policy news

• Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.

Technical news

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
• Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title.
• Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.

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

Administrator changes

Justlettersandnumbers • L235

Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678 • Deryck Chan • Oshwah • Pharos • Ragesoss • Ritchie333

Oversight changes

Guerillero • NativeForeigner • Snowolf • Xeno

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the process for appointing interface administrators has been established. Currently only existing admins can request these rights, while a new RfC has begun on whether it should be available to non-admins.
• There is an open request for comment on Meta regarding the creation a new user group for global edit filter management.

Technical news

• Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
• The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
• Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
• The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
• Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
• Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.

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

Administrator changes Sir Sputnik Kudpung • Liz • Lourdes Everyking • Jackmcbarn Interface administrator changes Dinoguy1000

CheckUser changes AGK • Ivanvector • Stwalkerster • TonyBallioni Oversight changes Amorymeltzer • Oshwah • TonyBallioni • Vanamonde93 Keilana

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment determined that non-administrators will not be able to request interface admin access.
• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the Mediation Committee should be closed and marked as historical.
• A village pump discussion has been ongoing about whether the proposed deletion policy (PROD) should be clarified or amended.
• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether pending changes protection should be applied automatically to today's featured article (TFA) in order to mitigate a recent trend of severe image vandalism.

Technical news

• Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
• A user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
• The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
• The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-enwikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.

Hello, SB Johnny. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible 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 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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

Administrator changes

Al Ameer son • Randykitty • Spartaz

Boson • Daniel J. Leivick • Efe • Esanchez7587 • Fred Bauder • Garzo • Martijn Hoekstra • Orangemike

Interface administrator changes

Deryck Chan

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the Mediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
• A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
• A proposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page to interface administrators in order to mitigate the impact of compromised accounts.

Technical news

• Administrators and bureaucrats can no longer unblock themselves unless they placed the block initially. This change has been implemented globally. See also this ongoing village pump discussion (permalink).
• To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.
• Since deployment of Partial blocks on Test Wikipedia, several bugs were identified. Most of them are now fixed. Administrators are encouraged to test the new deployment and report new bugs on Phabricator or leave feedback on the Project's talk page. You can request administrator access on the Test Wiki here.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 3 December 2018. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

Miscellaneous

• In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
• Wikipedia policy requires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.

Obituaries

• Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (Raymond Arritt) passed away on 14 November 2018. Boris joined Wikipedia as Raymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.

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

Administrator changes Galobtter Orangemike BorgQueen • Davidruben • Ocee • Revolving Bugbear • Theda • There'sNoTime • Timc • Tijuana Brass • Tristessa de St Ange Bureaucrat changes Addshore

CheckUser changes Joe Roe • SilkTork Euryalus • Newyorkbrad • There'sNoTime Oversight changes AGK • Joe Roe • SilkTork Euryalus • Newyorkbrad • There'sNoTime

Guideline and policy news

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

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

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

Technical news

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

1. At least 8 characters in length
2. Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
3. Different from their username

User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.

• Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
• ((Copyvio-revdel)) now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

• Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
• Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.

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

Administrator changes

Enterprisey • JJMC89

BorgQueen

Harro5 • Jenks24 • Graft • R. Baley

Interface administrator changes

Enterprisey

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is currently open to reevaluate the activity requirements for administrators.
• Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent request for comment has amended the blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
• A request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.

Technical news

• A discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2019 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2019, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2019, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• A new IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be identified.

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

Administrator changes Evad37 There'sNoTime Alex Shih • Brian • Mushroom • Nakon • Oscarthecat • PeruvianLlama • Ragib • Reaper Eternal • Rossami • Tom Interface administrator changes Evad37 • Galobtter Ritchie333

CheckUser changes There'sNoTime Keegan • Ks0stm Oversight changes There'sNoTime Ks0stm • Sphilbrick

Guideline and policy news

• The RfC on administrator activity requirements failed to reach consensus for any proposal.
• Following discussions at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the restoration of adminship policy was reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.

Technical news

• A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
  • paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
  • checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2019 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Base, Einsbor, Jon Kolbert, Schniggendiller, and Wim b.

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

Administrator changes Reaper Eternal • ThaddeusB Bogdangiusca • Christopher Parham • Necrothesp • Schneelocke • Siroxo • Sarah Mentifisto → Lofty abyss Interface administrator changes Mr. Stradivarius

Bureaucrat changes DeltaQuad Kingturtle

Technical news

• In Special:Preferences under "Appearance" → "Advanced options", there is now an option to show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link.
• The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Please see meta:Community health initiative/User reporting system consultation 2019 to provide your input on this idea.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee clarified that the General 1RR prohibition for Palestine-Israel articles may only be enforced on pages with the ((ARBPIA 1RR editnotice)) edit notice.

Miscellaneous

• Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
• As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.

Administrators must secure their accounts The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised. Use strong, unique passwords for your Wikipedia account and associated email Change your password now if your Wikipedia account password or email password is reused on another website, exposed, or weak Enable two-factor authentication now for improved security

View additional information

This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:39, 4 May 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.

Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.

We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.

For the Arbitration Committee, -Cameron11598 21:04, 4 May 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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

Administrator changes HickoryOughtShirt?4 • RexxS Necrothesp Bratsche • Kyle Barbour • Kzollman • Madman Interface administrator changes Pharos

Bureaucrat changes Primefac CheckUser changes Reaper Eternal

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment concluded that creating pages in the portal namespace should be restricted to autoconfirmed users.
• Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.

Technical news

• XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well: Steward Stats and Patroller Stats.

Arbitration

• In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases, the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions; administrators found failing to have adequately done so will not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
• Following a formal ratification process, the arbitration policy has been amended (diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.

Miscellaneous

• A request for comment is currently open to amend the community sanctions procedure to exclude non XfD or CSD deletions.
• A proposal to remove pre-2009 indefinite IP blocks is currently open for discussion.

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

Administrator changes

Andonic • Consumed Crustacean • Enigmaman • Euryalus • EWS23 • HereToHelp • Nv8200pa • Peripitus • StringTheory11 • Vejvančický

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project.
• An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
• An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.

Technical news

• The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
• Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.

Miscellaneous

• The previously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 was approved and has taken place.
• The 2019 talk pages consultation produced a report for Phase 1 and has entered Phase 2.

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

Administrator changes

28bytes • Ad Orientem • Ansh666 • Beeblebrox • Boing! said Zebedee • BU Rob13 • Dennis Brown • Deor • DoRD • Floquenbeam¹ • Flyguy649 • Fram² • Gadfium • GB fan • Jonathunder • Kusma • Lectonar • Moink • MSGJ • Nick • Od Mishehu • Rama • Spartaz • Syrthiss • TheDJ • WJBscribe

¹Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

²Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment seeking to alleviate pressures on the request an account (ACC) process proposes either raising the account creation limit for extended confirmed editors or granting the account creator permission on request to new ACC tool users.

• In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.

• The scope of CSD criterion G8 has been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
• The scope of CSD criterion G14 has been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
• A request for comment seeks to determine whether Wikipedia:Office actions should be a policy page or an information page.

Technical news

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.

Miscellaneous

• In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in significant community discussion, a request for arbitration (permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an open letter to the WMF Board.

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

Administrator changes Johnuniq • Kosack • Valereee Ad Orientem • Ched • Gadfium • Jonathunder • Nick • Yelyos Bald Zebra • Beetstra • Doug Bell • Journalist • Ruud Koot • Splash • Voice of Clam Interface administrator changes Dinoguy1000

CheckUser changes RickinBaltimore Oversight changes Beeblebrox RickinBaltimore

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the page Wikipedia:Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
• A request for comment (permalink) is in progress regarding the administrator inactivity policy.

Arbitration

• Editors may now use the template ((Ds/aware)) to indicate that they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for a topic area, so it is unnecessary to alert them.

Miscellaneous

• Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
• The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist.

  Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.

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

Administrator changes

Bradv • Chetsford • Izno

Floquenbeam • Lectonar

DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana

CheckUser changes

Callanecc • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

Callanecc • Fox • HJ Mitchell • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Technical news

• Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
• The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2019 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

Miscellaneous

• A global request for comment is in progress regarding whether a user group should be created that could modify edit filters across all public Wikimedia wikis.

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

Administrator changes Barkeep49 Beetstra • KillerChihuahua • Kusma Arcadian • Extraordinary Machine • Xeno JamesBWatson → JBW Interface administrator changes Evad37

CheckUser changes Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens Oversight changes Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories.

Technical news

• As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.

Arbitration

• The 2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
• The arbitration case regarding Fram was closed. While there will be a local RfC focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.

Miscellaneous

• The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.

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

Administrator changes GermanJoe • Girth Summit • Kees08 • Nosebagbear DESiegel • GB fan • MSGJ • Voice of Clam • WilyD DeltaQuad • Fang Aili • Pakaran Bureaucrat changes DeltaQuad • Pakaran Interface administrator changes MSGJ

CheckUser changes L235 • Mz7 • SQL • ST47 Ivanvector DeltaQuad Oversight changes L235 • Mz7 • ST47 • Stwalkerster • The Blade of the Northern Lights • Xaosflux DeltaQuad • DGG • Julia W

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC was closed with the consensus that the resysop criteria should be made stricter.

• The follow-up RfC to develop that change is now open at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2019 Resysop Criteria (2).

• A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors may now nominate themselves as candidates for the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add ((NoACEMM)) to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:05, 19 November 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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

Administrator changes

EvergreenFir • ToBeFree

Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂

CheckUser changes

Beeblebrox

Deskana

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC on the administrator resysop criteria was closed. 18 proposals have been summarised with a variety of supported and opposed statements. The inactivity grace period within which a new request for adminship is not required has been reduced from three years to two. Additionally, Bureaucrats are permitted to use their discretion when returning administrator rights.
• Following a proposal, the edit filter mailing list has been opened up to users with the Edit Filter Helper right.

Technical news

• Wikimedia projects can set a default block length for users via MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry. A new page, MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip, allows the setting of a different default block length for IP editors. Neither is currently used. (T219126)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

Miscellaneous

• The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive.

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!