This is an archive of past discussions with User:Excirial. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
1. Dispute Resolution Noticeboard: Since the parties are not obligated to comply with the advise of DRN moderator, what's the solution when someone is sure that the other parties are not going to agree with him anyway and a ruling from a judge is essential. I am sure DRN is not an option in this case. Could "Mediation" be an option? Is any user, even an administrator obligated to comply with the advise of Mediation Committee? If not, then is "Arbitration" an option? Is any user, even an administrator obligated to comply with the advise of Arbitration Committee?
2. What’s the difference between Dispute Resolution Noticeboard and a specialized noticeboard such as “Fringe theory noticeboard”? I know specialized noticeboards are subject specific. But my question is that whether the moderators in “Fringe theory noticeboard” are only administrators or general users as well? If there are general users as well, how can I become a fringe theory noticeboard volunteer? Do I need to list my username anywhere and/or add any template in my user page?
3. When I am in a dispute with a couple of admins in a Wikipedia page, what’s the process of reporting those abusive admins. Let’s say, the admins are reverting any edit that is against their personal views and beliefs. And those admins need to be removed from the page. The Wikipedia manual says as admins can be removed through a dispute resolution process. But it doesn’t explain how. Because DRN moderator or Mediation committee may not be able to remove an administrator. So, if an user is in dispute with administrators, should he directly file a case to Arbitration Committee?
4. How can I add a new section and subsection to a Wiki article and remove an existing section from a Wiki article in visual editor?
5. I found that some contributions are deleted from “History” page of an article. So how to delete a contribution and who can do it?
6. Wiki policy states as I should not copy contents from other websites and should rather write my own contents. But what if the contents are open source contents? Can I directly copy those in Wikipedia? Are online news posts open source, including the images in the news? Can I use these texts and images in Wikipedia without editing? Can I copy and paste statements of medical national and international organizations in Wikipedia without editing?
7. Where to find images for a Wikiedia article if the image is not already available in Wikimedia? Are the images collected from news posts open source? And many sites don't have their images copyrighted. Do those images qualify as open source? When I upload an image, Wikipedia asks for copyright information. I have no idea what information to provide? What info should I provide if the image is in open source? And if the image is owned by me? Wikipedia asks me to contact the copyright holder and ask them for copyright information for the image. But some websites don't have "Contact us" section, some other sites are unresponsive when they are contacted, and even when I contact a website owner, he may not be able to provide me copyright information as the images are not copyrighted. So what information to provide Wikipedia in such a case? How do Wikipedia verify if the images are already copyrighted or not. If I claim to be granted permission for reuse from the copyright holder, how does Wikipedia verify the copyright holder has actually granted me permission for reuse of the copyrighted content?
8. How to add videos to a Wikipedia article? Do I need to provide copyright information for a video available in Youtube? Are there other policies on videos such as policies for graphic videos?
9. When I create a new article, how do I save my private draft for the article. If I click on "Save", the draft will become public and will be accessible for anyone. But I like it to be private. Is it possible. Furthermore, when I edit on an existing article, is there a way I can save my edits as a draft before publishing? It is an essential function. Because some posts may be very long and will take a long time to write. So, my unsaved works can be lost if browser tab is closed or if the texts are accidentally selected and deleted. So saving draft is essential.
10. Where can I save the usernames of my co-writers in my Wikipedia account like a phone book? I can't memorize the usernames of every persons. Thus, I need to have a phone book when the usernames will be saved in the respective categories.
11. How can I be connected with the community to improve each Wikipedia article? I know each important article is being monitored by some administrators. But how do I know which administrators is monitoring a page so that I can discuss with them about improving the article? How to get connected with the community for editing articles? I heard that communication is important here. But how? Everyone is stranger here. Whom to contact among these random people?
12. What’s the use of pending changes reviewing by administrators and “pending change reviewers”? As much as I know anyone can revert another user’s edit. In that case, what will change if an edit is approved by an administrator or a “Pending changes reviewer”? Will other users be unable to revert the edit back then? If not, then what’s the use of pending changes reviewing?
Furthermore, how do the users know an edit has been approved by a administrator or a pending changes reviewers? Will the approval appear anywhere such as in the “History” page?
13. What’s the requirement and process for becoming a pending changes reviewer? Can anyone become a pending changes reviewer?
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.
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.
Beginning on November 28, 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation Community health initiative (Safety and Support and Anti-Harassment Tools team) will be conducting a survey to en.wikipedia contributors on their experience and satisfaction level with the Administrator’s Noticeboard/Incidents. This survey will be integral to gathering information about how this noticeboard works - which problems it deals with well, and which problems it struggles with.
The survey should take 10-20 minutes to answer, and your individual responses will not be made public. The survey is delivered through Google Forms. The privacy policy for the survey describes how and when Wikimedia collects, uses, and shares the information we receive from survey participants and can be found here:
Hi! Over at AFC, there's been a bit of discussion about exploring another backlog drive. One focus of the discussion is how we can effectively prevent or detect bad reviews. I'm interested in how difficult it would be to make a bunch of changes to AFCBuddy, in case we decided to change the scoring or re-review systems. Would it be possible for you to post the source code for AFCBuddy somewhere, or email it to me if you don't want it to be public? Thank you so much! Enterprisey (talk!) 09:52, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
ArbCom 2017 election voter message
Hello, Excirial. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 tagwill 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 standardizededitnotice 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.
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 featurecontains_all that edit filter managers may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.
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.
The Danny Grainger page - in which he was named 'Dickstick' - was not updated by me. Until today, I didn't even know who Danny Grainger was. I can only assume some sort of hacking has gone on.
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.
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.
Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!
please help translate this message into your local language via meta
The 2017 Cure Award
In 2017 you were one of the top ~250 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I didn't edit any French Article or whatever it is you are talking about. I don't even have a Wikipedia account. If someone used a VPN and faked my IP address then just know that was not my doing.
24.0.12.138 (talk) 07:27, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
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.
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.
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.
Hey Excirial! Glad to see you're back! While you're around, would it be possible for you to dump the AFCBuddy source code somewhere? We're going to hold another AfC backlog drive soon. Thanks! Enterprisey (talk!) 22:07, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: I'm not against doing so at all, but I would note that AFCBuddy will be of little use unless some work is put into fixing it.
AFCBuddy is a VB.Net project i started - and stopped - working on years ago. As coding is a hobby for me and all my programming skills are entirely self-thought my historical code tends to be quite subpar compared to code I write nowadays. Glancing at AFCBuddy now there are some code parts that could use a rewrite or a sanity check, not to mention that the basic program structure isn't optimal (Read: Everything chugged into a single class with a main program loop calling functions, all single threaded). None of that is really a breaking issue though.
More importantly: The Wikimedia API changed quite a bit in the past four years and none of these changes were incorporated in AFCBuddy. AFCBuddy still uses HTTP for API calls for example (HTTPS on Wikipedia was implemented after AFCBuddy was written). Aside from this a lot of the API calls AFCBuddy uses are outdated, changed or even fully deprecated in the meantime. To name another example: Bot accounts \ passwords are now required for logging into the Wikipedia API but these were implemented after work on AFCBuddy stopped (so currently it cannot even log in). I assume that most of the API calls would need checking and likely correcting. Any changes to the AFC Project or the scoring mechanism for AFC Drives would also have to be incorporated as that logic is also likely out-of-date.
Recently i have been spending quite a bit of time coding various hobby projects (among other things of course). Switching back to Wikipedia after a rather extensive break is more or less also intended as a break from spending my evenings on programming related stuff. I'm admittedly not really thrilled at the prospect of having to go over an old project to make it tick again, at least not at the moment. If someone else wants to poke through it I got nothing against this though but admittedly an experienced programmer might just want to start from scratch rather that sifting through someone else's old code. . Excirial(Contact me,Contribs)06:48, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm definitely rolling my own scoring script for this next one, but I was interested in the parts of AFCBuddy that were parsing reviews and rereviews so that I can replicate the behavior accurately. I'll have to dust off my VB.NET skills, that's for sure :) Thanks for the detailed response! Looking forward to reading it. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:56, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: That would indeed be an excellent use for AFCBuddy's code. Even if it is a bit wonky here and there the basic logic should at least be sound enough as an example (If nothing else it should at least have some comments explaining what it should be doing). It is probably still located in an old SVN repository i am no longer using but i am nigh certain it can still be dug up from there.
Wait, what!? I guess some troll probably moved it and altered its contents to attack some non-banned user they didn't like (wouldn't be the first time -- JS actually opened at least one SPI on me back in 2013), but surely the standard procedure would be to revdel at most, no? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:57, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Hijiri88: This was a slightly different situation actually. The now blocked vandal was moving around SPI investigations and subsequently creating a new pages at the old SPI case location. The new pages contained nothing one would want to merge back into the SPI case history so these new pages were deleted under as G6, followed by a move of the original case to the old location.
The actual SPI page for this case still exists and can be found here. I did just notice that that the user also replaced the "i" in the page title with a capital character, causing me to move it back to what is effectively a different page (leaving the redlink in the history). For the sake of consistency I've moved it back to the noncapital "i" variant now. Excirial(Contact me,Contribs)09:12, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
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.
Thank you for reaching out. You are correct that I am employed by Wonacott Communications.
However, I made the edit on my own volition (nobody asked me to do so). I am a big time fan of Remedy games (especially Max Payne!) and I'm super stoked for Control. Sony announcing the game is a big deal (to me at least) and I figured since the game was already listed on the List of 505 video games page, it would be okay to link.
Alas, if I am indeed in violation of the Wikipedia code of conduct, please feel free to remove the edit. I'll be a stalwart reader non the less!
Hello, Excirial. 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.
@Cahk: I changed the soft block to a hard block as the account is now clearly used for advertising. I didn't remove their talk page access to allow for a username change request to be posted, though in all honesty I doubt that will yield anything useful in the end. If they repost the same advertorial i have no qualms about removing their talk page access though. Excirial(Contact me,Contribs)09:22, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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}}.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Recently, several Wikipedia admin accounts were compromised. The admin accounts were desysopped on an emergency basis. In the past, the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. The committee has updated its guidelines. Admins may now be required to undergo a fresh Request for Adminship (RfA) after losing control of their account.
What do I need to do?
Only to follow the instructions in this message.
Check that your password is unique (not reused across sites).
Check that your password is strong (not simple or guessable).
Enable Two-factor authentication (2FA), if you can, to create a second hurdle for attackers.
How can I find out more about two-factor authentication (2FA)?
Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
