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.
On 7 January 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Lee Joannes, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that in 1933 Green Bay Packers president Lee Joannes personally loaned the organization $6,000 to keep it in operation? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Lee Joannes. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Lee Joannes), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Hey Gonzo, Hope all is well with you. Rough season for us this year. Forgive my stalking, but I happened to see you had Blake Martinez in your sandbox. Was wondering if you'd be interested in doing a once over it with me to see if we can get it up to GA? I remember years ago getting it to DYK, but I don't know how much of the article has changed since then. --ChurchTalk21:32, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good, I've also taken the liberty of beginning the work on Emil Fischer in your Sandbox. He's such an important part of the history of the Packers, should be a good DYK candidate. --ChurchTalk20:15, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Church, thanks for your interest in Emil Fischer (American football executive). Although I appreciate any help, I do have a certain system when it comes to writing an article from scratch. I also don't move an article to namespace until I think it is close to WP:GA status. Since it is in my userspace, I would prefer to draft it using my general process, which is:
Article Template (infobox, categories, sections, pic) --> Fully formatted references (usually from Newspapers.com) --> Write Lead --> Write each section individually --> Add citations to each section --> Copyedit & revise as needed
Just be aware that I probably will rewrite some of or all of what you add. For me I find it easier to write from scratch. I just don't want you to waste too much time on it. Cheers, « Gonzo fan2007(talk) @ 23:21, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Gonzo, I appreciate you giving me the heads up, and I apologize if I overstepped. I will go ahead and back off of it now, but if you need any help I'll be here. Admittedly, I'm struggling right now to find a Packer's article that interests me to work on, but I'll keep plugging. Thanks for all of your work.--ChurchTalk03:59, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good. I'll give Curly a read over when work slows down in a bit and see if I can start a to-do list. Appreciate all your time and help as always. --ChurchTalk18:23, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Wisestork. Although I appreciate the request, I have some stuff irl that I am working on and don't have much time for editing right now outside of maintaining my own projects.
Also, just a little bit of a recommendation: people are more willing to review articles from people who have reviewed other articles. So I would recommend as your article sits in the queue that you review a few articles in the Sports & Rec category. That way your article gets higher on the list and people notice that you are actively helping cut down the backlog.
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.
Hi, this is to let you know that the above article will appear as Today's Featured Article on March 14, 2019. The blurb to be used can be found here. You are free to edit the blurb, and may want to watchlist that page, as well as WP:ERRORS in case there are queries about it on the day it runs, as well as the previous day. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to post on my talk. Thanks for building quality content!--Wehwalt (talk) 15:19, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On 2 March 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Russ Bogda, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Green Bay Packers president Russ Bogda advocated for a public referendum in the 1950s to finance the construction of Lambeau Field? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Russ Bogda. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Russ Bogda), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
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.
Hi, I'm RonBot, a script that checks new non-free file uploads. I have found that the subject image that you recently uploaded was more than 5% in excess of the Non-free content guideline size of 100,000 pixels. I have tagged the image for a standard reduction, which (for jpg/gif/png/svg files) normally happens within a day. Please check the reduced image, and make sure that the image is not excessively corrupted. Other files will be added to Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests for manual processing. There is a full seven-day period before the original oversized image will be hidden; during that time you might want to consider editing the original image yourself (perhaps an initial crop to allow a smaller reduction or none at all). A formula for the calculation of the desired size can be found at WP:Image resolution, along with instructions on how to tag the image in the rare cases that it requires an oversized image (typically about 0.2% of non-free uploads are tagged as necessarily oversized). Please contact the bot owner if you have any questions, or you can ask them at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content. See User:RonBot for info on how to not get these messages. RonBot (talk) 18:05, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Content I have contributed has been thrice removed by another editor. Please contact me & advise how I proceed to request arbitration. Entry point for the process is not available on the pertinent guidepages. Thank you.Dogru144 (talk) 00:31, 15 March 2019 (UTC) -Correction-has been removed five times.Dogru144 (talk) 00:33, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Just because you make content doesn't mean anyone is under obligation to keep it on those pages, especially if it's deemed that it shouldn't be there. You scold me (incorrectly) for not engaging on the talk page, but when I ask you to, you give up on engaging and instead immediately seek a third party without giving discussion a chance. This feels incredibly underhanded--Fradio71 (talk) 00:40, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've read your comments and have changed everything to the best of my capabilities.
However, In regards to the following points below, I have listed some explanations:
Francis Douglas Memorial College first XV - A first XV is the top rugby union team in a secondary school in New Zealand. Francis Douglas Memorial College first XV, is the name of the team Riccitelli represented.
Hi there. I currently have another baseball related GA nom under review which caused me to start a conversation at WT:BASEBALL#Baseball GAs around prose in baseball related GAs. You might be interested in that discussion in light of taking on the Goldschmidt review. Muboshgu, who nominated this one, and I have had some extended and I think productive conversation about the topic. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:48, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Barkeep49 for pointing out the discussion. I am very familiar with Goldschmidt's career and have a few areas where I think the article could be expanded/improved during the GA review. Feel free to provide any input as you see fit. « Gonzo fan2007(talk) @ 02:59, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Jack Vainisi you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Sportsfan77777 -- Sportsfan77777 (talk) 04:41, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article W. Webber Kelly you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Sportsfan77777 -- Sportsfan77777 (talk) 05:22, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Lee Joannes you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kosack -- Kosack (talk) 14:01, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The article Lee Joannes you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Lee Joannes for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kosack -- Kosack (talk) 20:02, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Russ Bogda you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of MrLinkinPark333 -- MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 21:01, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Hi there, Gonzo, and thanks for the copy-editing on the East/West rivalry article. I'm a bit confused as to why you tagged my cite of the Congressional Record as an unreliable source. I was citing it to back up the assertion that Green commemorated the 100th game on the floor of Congress, not as evidence of the 100th game itself. Please advise what may be a better source in this situation, and please ping me with a response. Etzedek24(I'll talk at ya) (Check my track record)23:28, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Hi, any chance you can unprotect this page? I'd like to tag it for deletion since there are no quality assessments for North Korea articles. Regards. PC78 (talk) 23:11, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi PC78, we usually don't delete these type of pages, as they show a historic record of changes. Is there a particular reason you think it needs to be deleted and can't just be left as is? « Gonzo fan2007(talk) @ 03:32, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yikes TheVirginiaHistorian, that it quite the rude response to a basic question. You said in your original post to my talk page "The question was previously litigated on a WP copyright oversight community page, and the result is WP permission for the page." I reply in under a day requesting a link to the discussion you referenced so I can better understand what you are talking about. You reply a week later, accuse me of being racist, OWNING pages, and only understanding Green Bay Packers articles!?!? All I did was request a link to the discussion you are referencing and said "I would be glad to assist with the request." I will no longer assist you with this request. The deletion review is the proper venue for this type of discussion and your blatantly rude tone and words are unacceptable on my talk page, especially for a user who has been editing as long as you have. « Gonzo fan2007(talk) @ 16:06, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reference to the deletion review. I've been informed that no discussion is required at an administrator's "speedy deletion" initiative. I really appreciate the bots and administrators who police the many wp:vandal attacks on my authored pages. I guess that's the only way things can get done in an expeditious way. Sorry I took the deletion as a personal attack, and I inappropriately replied in kind. Thanks for all you do. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk)
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.
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.
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.
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.
By the authority vested in me by myself it gives me great pleasure to present you with this barnstar in recognition of your bringing order where there was chaos, reason where there was randomness, scraping away the accretions of the eons and generally making the Four Awards site accessible. Gog the Mild (talk) 04:09, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!
Hello,
Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.
I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!
From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.
If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.
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.
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