You seem very serious about getting that guy topic-banned. To be honest, I'm fed up with him and his antics, so he must be reported. I'd like to report him, but I already warned him about attacking other editors. --George Ho (talk) 08:46, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't see a need for a topic ban at this stage. I think page protecting and blocking if the personal abuse is over the top is sufficient at this stage. These were his first significant edits in nine months. Happy to wait and see what happens. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 10:23, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It seems every time I go looking for a photo for some Queensland topic, a town hall, a museum, or whatever, I find a Mattinbgn photo! I know you uploaded a lot of them some years ago, so you must have been wondering if you'd wasted your time, but I'm thrilled at the coverage of small town Queensland that you have provided. Many thanks, Kerry! Kerry (talk) 05:54, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! I wasn't concerned about wasting my time - I always thought someone would get around to using them for something sooner or later. I still have huge chunks of Queesland to cover yet though. Great work on the Queensland Heritage Register items too, by the way. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 06:34, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Request to use photograph
Hi Mattinbgn
I love your image of the Mt Walsh National Park / mountains, which features on the Wikipedia page titled "Mt Walsh National Park".
I am wondering if you would give permission for me to use the image on a website.
For more information, feel free to email me direct at <redacted>
Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.
Hello. Thank you for editing Burnett River. Would you please be able to add some embedded references? It would also be great to flesh out the subsection about the fish present in this river, if we can find sufficient information... Thank you again, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.Zigzig20s (talk) 08:57, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again. Are you interested in creating a page for the Callide River in Queensland? I have very slow internet connection, so I can't look for the right references at the moment. I know you do great work with wikipedia, so I thought I would ask. Thanks.Zigzig20s (talk) 08:59, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Gender in biographies
Hi, you reverted my edit which stated the gender of a person. Don't you think it's time to include this crucial information in our biographies? I was reading an article in a newspaper which included the name of Hetty Johnston and I needed to write an article myself in a non-English language. In some non-English languages it's impossible to talk about a person (or even an unanimate thing like a table or a chair, or an abstract thing like a country or an idea) without stating their gender. It's impossible to know the gender of a person from their name, particularly in English. The issue may sound like an non-issue but it is if you write many articles in non-English languages and you have to spend 10 or 20 minutes before writing every article just to find out someone's gender. In some cases for non-famous people it was impossible for me to find out someone's gender and I had to write my non-English article guessing the gender and in more than one ocassion readers who knew the gender of the person I was referring to wrote to me saying I referred to a male as a she (or to a female as a he), but what can one do? In some non-English languages it's also impossible to say something like "gender unknown" because the gender of a person can change most of the words of a whole article, so it's not one could simply include both the male and female forms of one or two words and let the rest of the article be the same, all the words in the whole article have to change according to the gender. As I did some work searching the internet to find it out her gender, I added it to her Wikipedia article. If we don't state the gender of a person in our biographies, the only way this information is conveyed if through the use of "he" or "she" and "his" or "her", but we shouldn't rely on this grammatical feature because it can easility be lost after an editor's re-write or copyedit. Indeed, many times I've checked Wikipedia biographies hoping to see quickly a "he" or a "she" or ideally a photograph in the first paragraphs but in many Wikipedia biographies this doesn't happen, or the much-searched-for "he" or "she" is only included after many paragraphs of text or not at all, and it's prone to be removed by copyediting (or even put there by someone like me who wrongly assumed the gender of someone after failing to find it out by searching on the internet). I think the best way to avoid these problems and make Wikipedia biographies more useful is to include the gender of the person in parentheses after their date of birth, or inside their infobox if the article has one. What do you think? Would you agree with including the gender of people in their biographies and refrain from reverting such edits like mine which include this crucial and much-needed information? You can read more about why the gender of a person is important in the grammatical gender article. Cogiati (talk) 08:31, 14 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You can see another example of an article (not edited by me) which includes the gender of a person (a photographer, I'm also a photographer myself but I also write articles so I have the problem of finding out the gender of a person almost every day and it's really a serious problem for someone having to write many articles every day, don't underestimate what it's like to lose 10+ minutes before writing an article just for finding out the gender of someone!) here: Polixeni Papapetrou in which we read that "Polixeni Papapetrou (born 1960) is a female photographer from Melbourne, Australia." Would you copyedit the article to remove the word "female" in that instance? If not, then why revert an edit introducing the word "female" into another biography where such crucial and much-needed essential biographical information is not included or is only conveyed through the utilization of "she" (or "he") which can easily be lost in other editors' copyedits? We should strive to make Wikipedia more useful rather than less useful, and we do this by including all the information needed by our readers. Cogiati (talk) 08:44, 14 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The sex of a subject is certainly important but it should be a little more stylishly introduced than just whacking the term "female" in brackets next to the birth date. More than anything else, it reads like the subject was born female but may no longer be. What you are proposing is a rather significant change to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies and one I would not support. Perhaps take it up on the talk page there -- Mattinbgn (talk) 04:15, 15 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Mattinbgn. Please check your email; you've got mail! Message added 14:51, 1 June 2014 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Pardon my ignorance but could you check Metung's subsection on Metung Productions. My knee-jerk reaction is that this is the result of a series of vanity posts. However your expertise in small town articles may see some reason why this article has about 1/3rd of its content on this particular film group. To me the whole section is unreferenced, PoV, poorly written and fairly repetitive: I'm tempted to delete it but I'd like a second opinion. [signed very late, sorry] shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 05:51, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hazeldene
How would you rewrite the article in a way that makes sense now that the town no longer formally exists? I am usually a fan of separate articles, and there are plenty of examples where articles on degazetted towns still make sense (i.e. Wittenoom), but I can't see how it makes sense to maintain an article on a tiny town that no longer has a separate identity. What is your objection to merging the content into the Flowerdale article? The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:09, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Bredbo
You provided a name move and disam page. So instead of a page we now have two and lots of links that need tidying up after ... And other towns of the same naming convention that haven't been moved. Should they ? --Dave Rave (talk) 05:17, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Two things - Firstly, we should always have had two pages - there should have been a redirect from the plain name "Bredbo" to "Bredbo, New South Wales" just as there is now a redirect the other way. As long as there are no double redirects, there is no urgency to "fix" the links - this can be done at someone's leisure. Therefore there is no extra page and also no extra work. Secondly, the naming convention at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Australia applies and clearly Bredbo belongs at its plain, undisambiguated name. Should the other titles similar to this be moved as well? In my view, yes, absolutely - but there is no hurry - so long as redirects from one name to the other exist, readers will find the article they are looking for. Hope this explains my actions. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 06:06, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Mattinbgn Photo used on Dalby page incorrect
Hi,
As a longtime Dalby resident, I would like to point out that your photo that has been labelled as "Dalby War Memorial 2008" on the Dalby page is actually an obelisk erected to the memory of Joshua Thomas Bell an early MP, pioneer and landholder and is found in Bell Park at the end of Cunningham Street.The War memorial is in Patrick Street near the swimming pool and features a digger on top of a plinth. You might want to edit same.
Hello Mattinbgn, with your knowledge on these matters, I'd like to ask your help/opinion on moving "Super 10 (Southern Hemisphere competition)" page to be the primary topic at Super 10. The peak dates of 1992–97 on
Google Books Ngram seems to support it's primacy.
The Super 10 page now just redirects back to it. There is a disambig page at: Super 10 (disambiguation). An Italian tournament also used the name at one time but it is now called the Eccelenza. Is requesting a multiple page move the way to go or would this be a waste of time? Thanks -- Ham105 (talk) 15:35, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A multiple page move request at WP:RM would be the way to progress this. Gather your evidence for the move and draft up a move request. I am happy to take a look at it before you post it, if you like. Be aware that there may be some discussion about a merge with Super Rugby, although that was different altogether. Good luck! -- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:26, 20 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
{{subst:Requested move |new1 = Super 10 |current2=Super 10 |new2= Super 10 (disambiguation) |reason =
The international tournament within major rugby nations South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand in the 1990s should be the Super 10 primary topic. From
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Super+10&year_start=1985&year_end=2015&corpus=15&smoothing=1&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CSuper%2010%3B%2Cc0 Google Books Ngram], the peak counts in the period 1992–97 supports its case for primacy.
After 2000, the Italian domestic rugby competition previously known as Serie A adopted the name for a time before being rebranded again as Eccelenza. Its wikipedia page is "National Championship of Excellence". I propose to include a hatnote on the page of the international Super 10 saying "For the Italian former Super 10, see National Championship of Excellence. For other uses, see Super 10 (disambiguation)." -- ~~~~
Australian poems category
I'm replying to your edit of the Banjo Paterson poem "Clancy of the Overflow", as I'm a bit confused about the correct approach to poems of this sort.
I added the "Australian poems" category to the page a day or so back only for it to be reverted by user Michael Bednarek who stated "Category:Australian poems is parent to Category:Poetry by Banjo Paterson". I believe the implication is that as the poem is listed under "Category:Poetry by Banjo Paterson" it isn't required to be listed under "Category:Australian poems" as that would amount to a duplication.
As I have a number of other poems that fit this category (along with others by Henry Lawson) I'd like to standardise the approach to avoid an "edit-war". Any thoughts? Perry Middlemiss (talk) 21:11, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.
This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. The discussion is about the topic Magneto (generator).
Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! Biscuittin (talk) 19:26, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello haven't looked at your pic yet but in the early 1950s the postmistress (of the destroyed PO just over the Crawford) baked the best gingerbread in the world. Probably need more for an article.
Cheers Epistemos (talk) 11:26, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think so! :) Was fascinating travelling around the south west. Lots of scope for new articles in that region. The Rising Sun Hotel in Hotspur could almost sustain an article on its own!. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 01:17, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Disambiguator removals
Hello Matt. I have noticed you have been altering article titles to remove "unnecessary disambiguations", such as your move from Mullumbimby, New South Wales to Mullumbimby. I am just wondering if you have consensus for these moves? Because last time I checked, the consensus was to retain the disambiguators, whether "unnecessary" or not. Gatoclass (talk) 10:20, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That guideline language is not necessarily an invitation for moving pages from the long-accepted name, it is permissive of creating new articles at the shorter name. This was noted in the discussion on WP:AWNB by gnangarra in the last week. --Scott DavisTalk23:28, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's unfair - I have not been bulk-naming articles and if there is any controversy I have either accepted opposition or used WP:RM. I have also largely left SA WA articles alone as I am aware that some editors there have strong pro-mandatory disambiguation views.
What I do think is wrong though is to use claims of "disruption" to derail the process of moving articles to their natural names. The discussion around disambiguation was had - and contrary to claim at AWNB, the discussion was detailed and comprehensive - and it is time to move on. Any idea that only new articles should be at undisambiguated names is nonsense - so Mungar can be at its natural name but Orroroo, South Australia let's say, created earlier, can't? (BTW, read Talk:Orroroo, South Australia) What is disruptive IMO is forcing a WP:RM discussion every time an article that has a unique name or is clearly the WP:PRIMARY topic. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:54, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There have been several people recently moving Australian place articles around. I don't think anyone has used the term "disruption" specifically about you. There are two other editors I would consider using it for (but I don't think I have actually said it about them either, although others might have). You and I are quite possibly close to the extreme ends of the continuum of opinions, but I think we generally manage to be polite and accepting that the other has a legitimate point of view even if it's not our own. In general, I prefer precise naming of articles, while I would say you prefer concise naming. I've always described "<name>, <state>" as a qualified name, not a pre-disambiguated name, in the "fully qualified" sense that you don't really expect a kid's letter to be delivered successfully to "grandma, High Street". I chipped into this conversation from the side, from having your talk page on my watchlist, not from any specific issue about Mullumbimby. I explicitly thanked you for the WP:RM conversation about Coolangatta, since I got to that one amongst several other disputed moves that had not been discussed by their movers. --Scott DavisTalk12:11, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the explanation Matt. It seems things have changed since I last took a look at this issue. Anyhow, I am fully in favour of the removal of unnecessary disambiguators - how many towns in the world named "Mullumbimby" are there likely to be? - so you are welcome to proceed from my POV. I just wanted to be sure you were not editing against consensus. Gatoclass (talk) 13:48, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Wondering if you could have a look at this article Norm Houghton (historian), and see if you have a view on its notability, which has been proposed for AfD, and if you don't think t gets there yet, whether you have any suggestions for possible sources that might help, thanks Garyvines (talk) 01:49, 13 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Richie Benaud
I'm not sure if you are aware that in April this year I nominated the Richie Benaud article for "Good Article" status. It took a while for the review to come though and I now find there are a number of items that need to be addressed. I'm okay with the bulk of them but a few are outside my area of expertise - particularly in terms of illustrations fitting copyright and commons requirements. As you have an interest in Australian cricket I was wondering if you'd like to join me in getting the Benaud article up to scratch, or, if not, if you could recommend someone else who might be able to help. Cheers, Perry Middlemiss (talk) 22:35, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to help and will take a look when I can. Also, the team at [[W{:CRICKET]] would be able to provide some advice. I suspect the photos in question are not public domain unfortunately. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 08:55, 2 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi,
I am using wikipedia for photographs , and have come across a few photographers that I would like to talk to, briefly , and occasionally donate money to, as well as wikipedia.
I respect the work that is done on a voluntary basis, by the photographers on Wikipedia, and whilst I am a business startup, and do not have a load of money, I appreciate the work being done, and want to reward if I have any spare money, to the individual photographer, but find this hard to do. So I joined Wikipedia.
I look at a lot of town and city images around the country, and around the world, on wikipedia, for my job. I can occasionally now guess a photographer before I see who took the pic :)
Also want to learn the ropes for photos occasionally , to upload my own, to wikipedia towns and cities.. still early days.. I hope I am using the photos the right way, on my website. Thanks for reading.. .Marty (Martyk@ezebook.com ) please delete email address after initial read? Thanks
2016 Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Search Community Survey
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A new user right for New Page Patrollers
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Hi. Today is Friday, hence my edit. However, happy for you to clarify on the page if you think it is necessary. Thanks for the courtesy of discussing it with me.-- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:09, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed it is, I assume they do mean Scipione retires 'this' Friday, so I'm splitting hairs a bit lot. I think when I queried, I had assumed they meant he retired 'next' Friday 10 April. Technically, perhaps, he's commish until the moment he retires, or formally hands over to Fuller. I've also updated Scipiones page, may need copyediting this evening, feel free as I may not have internet access then. Regards --220ofBorg01:20, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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Hi Matt, I saw you noticed some of my edits to Australian Cricket Hall of Fame, I'm hoping to bring it up to FLC standards and then co-nom it with you, if you're interested? I've tinkered with both the Frank Worrell Trophy (at FLC now) and the Trans-Tasman Trophy (waiting for FLC) as well. I'm not sure how I've stumbled into working on these three Aussie lists, but outside the Ashes, us Poms don't really have anything that interesting to report about! Cheers, The Rambling Man (talk) 07:35, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry @The Rambling Man: - I meant to come back to this and reply and got caught up. Thanks for the work you have done and the thought re: co-nomming - it is appreciated. I have deliberately stayed away from participation in the FA/GA process over the past few years. I found the process incredibly frustrating. I am happy to help though where I can. Cheers, Mattinbgn (talk) 22:08, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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Hi El cid, el campeador and thanks for your feedback. From Wiktionary - Hoax - "Anything deliberately intended to deceive or trick". The article was not a hoax. It may have been mistitled, poorly sourced or factually incorrect, but we deal with these matters via editing and discussion, not deletion. Cheers, Mattinbgn (talk) 00:24, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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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.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Goroke until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)02:40, 18 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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.
You know what the guideline says: something that says "both are acceptable" is not an invitation to attempt to unilaterally force your passionately-held naming views on the project. You have single-handedly conducted mass moves of hundreds of articles virtually alone among all users in Australian Wikipedia, in spite of a guideline that does not support this, so you could - predictably - turn around and claim that the status quo had changed and try to use that unilateral effort to overcome your long-standing inability to get a consensus for your desired position. You didn't have consensus support for the moves in the first place, so forcing you to actually get that consensus is hardly WP:POINT. Go bully someone else. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:00, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Farewell, travel safe and come back some time
Good morning. I just noticed that you have set your user page to "Retired". While you and I have clashed over the naming convention and its application for Australian places on-and-off for a very long time, I have valued your contributions to article content, especially photographs of rural places. I also took a few years off of Wikipedia when other stuff became more important. I wish you well in your life and hope to see you back here one day. --Scott DavisTalk01:08, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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.
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.
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, Mattinbgn. 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.
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.
I finally got around to starting the Queensland Country Women's Association article and was overwhelmed by the number of photos of their halls that you have taken. I am putting them to good use! So please treat yourself to some tea and scones in honour of the QCWA and all your photos! Kerry (talk) 04:42, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! I enjoy getting around small-town Australia and CWA halls (along with Masonic Lodges and RSL buildings) are in nearly every town of any size. Glad the photos are being used. Cheers, Mattinbgn (talk) 07:55, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Hi and Happy New Year to you too! Not sure I want to get involved in the football/soccer wars again - my NY resolution is to avoid online conflict as far as possible!!!! That said, there is an argument that the "men's" team is not strictly a team for men alone but rather an "open team; women, subject to being good enough, would be eligible for selection. I am not sure that flies though. Whatever happens should be consistent across the sport as a minimum and ideally the encyclopedia as a whole. Cheers, Mattinbgn (talk) 01:30, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Given your enthusiasm for photos, I thought you might be interested to see that I have reorganised the NSW requested photo category into a category tree of local governments, people, etc, to break it down into more manageable subsets, so it doesn't look so daunting. Kerry (talk) 11:30, 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.
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.
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.
On 14 August 2019, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Graham Farmer, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks so much for your work on historical NSW LGAs, by the way - I know we've clashed plenty over the years, but it's bugged me for years that our coverage of this area has been so poor and that links are inevitably red, so it's been fantastic to suddenly see so many of them turning blue. You really are doing a great job with this. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:37, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Praise from the praiseworty is praise indeed as I really admire your work with cultural heritage items in Australia. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 21:39, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
hanging in there
sheesh ones and other editors edits actually create so much peripheral damage challenges that.... - following the rabbit holes from any ones edits - if only the editor numbers werent so shrinking JarrahTree11:37, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. Must admit I only poke my head back here once in a while now. Only when I get something I am interested in. The maintenance tasks don't really grab me any more. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 21:14, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
no big deal that, most eds have not the slightest maintenance interest anymore, but hey better than disappearing completely as so many have... keep the faith... JarrahTree00:50, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.
Technical news
Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [2]
Arbitration
Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.
Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.
Technical news
Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.
Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.
Miscellaneous
The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.
The Wikimedia Foundation announced that they will develop a universal code of conduct for all WMF projects. There is an open local discussion regarding the same.
Arbitration
A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.
very important contribs imho - the sort of material that we always need to improve - as for email, no big deal there is no deadline :) JarrahTree03:52, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
eureka - just before the government libraries et al closed down I was checking out cumpston primary sources in the archives here in perth - he was the origin of the federal cmo - imho - unless someone else can prove to me otherwise - he solved oz's problems by being in the right place at the right time and saved oz from really worse effects from 1918-1919 issues... but as dg of health some of the ideas moved up to the federal corridors so to speak... I had forgotten his name and role - but the discussion brought it all back - there is a lot more to public health administration in the oz federal and state systems than the average punter realises - here in WA in the 1880s to 1950s (mainly) many lgas/councils had their own board of health - tracking that is outright crazy - but they were in most cases absorbed into councils broader roles by the 60s - but their preoccupations and issues are great reading... JarrahTree08:58, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles.
Hi, thanks for your thanks regarding Beryl Friday. I've just transferred a bunch of other "Queenland Firedbirds players" from the 2015 and 2016 era into the Wikimedia Commons category of the same name. I've managed to identity some of them. I would be grateful if you could help with identifying the remainder and double check that my identifications have been correct so far. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. DjlnDjln (talk) 23:46, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sysops will once again be able to view the deleted history of JS/CSS pages; this was restricted to interface administrators when that group was introduced.
Twinkle's block module now includes the ability to note the specific case when applying a discretionary sanctions block and/or template.
Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. 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.
Voting for proposals in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey, which determines what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year, will take place from 8 December through 21 December. In particular, there are sections regarding administrators and anti-harassment.
By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorizedfor all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes). The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason).
A request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a 2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
A request for comment is in progress to remove F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
A request for comment asks if sysops may place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?
When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions.
Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.
Technical news
When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)
Palm Island, Queensland, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Whiteguru (talk) 08:40, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.
Arbitration
The community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.
Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.
Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.
Technical news
IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.
Arbitration
The community authorised COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.
An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.
Technical news
Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)
A discussion is open to decide when, if ever, should discord logs be eligible for removal when posted onwiki (including whether to oversight them)
A RfC on the next steps after the trial of pending changes on TFAs has resulted in a 30 day trial of automatic semi protection for TFAs.
Technical news
The Score extension has been re-enabled on public wikis. It has been updated, but has been placed in safe mode to address unresolved security issues. Further information on the security issues can be found on the mediawiki page.
Arbitration
A request for comment is in progress to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules. Comments and new proposals are welcome.
Following an RfC, extended confirmed protection may be used preemptively on certain high-risk templates.
Following a discussion at the Village Pump, there is consensus to treat discord logs the same as IRC logs. This means that discord logs will be oversighted if posted onwiki.
A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.
Miscellaneous
Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.
Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.
Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. 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.
Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)
The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, have been made permanent.
A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Hi Mattinbgn! I've nominated you (along with all other active admins) to receive a solstice season gift from the WMF. Talk page stalkers are invited to comment at the nomination. Enjoy! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk ~~~~~
Following consensus at the 2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.
The functionaries email list (functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to the Arbitration Committee.
You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.
When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.
Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.
We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.
The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.
A RfC is open to discuss prohibiting draftification of articles over 90 days old.
Technical news
The deployment of the reply tool as an opt-out feature, as announced in last month's newsletter, has been delayed to 7 March. Feedback and comments are being welcomed at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project. (T296645)
Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have the deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights. This means that those in the Researcher user group and Checkusers who are not administrators can now access Special:RevisionDelete. The users able to view the special page after this change are the 3 users in the Researcher group, as there are currently no checkusers who are not already administrators. (T301928)
When viewing deleted revisions or diffs on Special:Undelete a back link to the undelete page for the associated page is now present. (T284114)
Following an RfC, a change has been made to the administrators inactivity policy. Under the new policy, if an administrator has not made at least 100 edits over a period of 5 years they may be desysopped for inactivity.
A public status system for WMF wikis has been created. It is located at https://www.wikimediastatus.net/ and is hosted separately to WMF wikis so in the case of an outage it will remain viewable.
Arbitration
Remedy 2 of the St Christopher case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to place a ban on single-purpose accounts who were disruptively editing on the article St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine or related pages from those pages.
Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.
The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.
An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.
Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)
Arbitration
The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.
Miscellaneous
You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Val Holten until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.
A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.
Technical news
The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please emailMadalina Ana.
Arbitration
An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.
Miscellaneous
The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more.
Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.
Arbitration
Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.
Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like {{rangeblock|create=yes}} or {{uw-ublock|contains profanity}}.
Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.
Technical news
A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)
Arbitration
Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.
Miscellaneous
Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add /64 to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.
Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. LizRead!Talk!02:21, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.
Hi Mattinbgn
I hesitated to put my snap of the silo alongside yours, but I reckon that north end is an essential part of the piece. If you have a shot of that end I won't complain, but couldn't find it on Commons. There's a good background story to its commissioning. Cheers, Doug butler (talk) 10:11, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.
The rollback of Vector 2022 RfC has found no consensus to rollback to Vector legacy, but has found rough consensus to disable "limited width" mode by default.
A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.
Technical news
Progress has started on the Page Triage improvement project. This is to address the concerns raised by the community in their 2022 WMF letter that requested improvements be made to the tool.
Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.
Technical news
Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.
Arbitration
The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.
Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.
The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.
Miscellaneous
Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.
hi i was wondering if i might have your permission to use one of your pictures of an empty Lake Boga (such as the one below). i think it would be very helpful contribution to a book i am writing about how our surroundings impact our emotional health.
thank you very much in advance for your kind consideration of my request,
Jenny D
Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.
Miscellaneous
The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!
Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Following a talk page discussion, the Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.
Arbitration
Following a motion, the Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
The Arbitration Committee has announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of Wikipedians to better understand what draws administrators to contribute to Wikipedia, and what affects administrator retention. We will use this research to improve experiences for Wikipedians, and address common problems and needs. We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous survey.
You do not have to be an Administrator to participate.
The survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement .
Please find our contact on the project Meta page if you have any questions or concerns.
I recently invited you to take a survey about administration on Wikipedia. If you haven’t yet had a chance, there is still time to participate– we’d truly appreciate your feedback. The survey is anonymous and should take about 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement.
Hello! Voting in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 2 December 2024. 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.
