And real life is very much in the way these days.
I probably won't be able to log in as frequently and contribute as much as I would like. Messages left here probably won't get a quick response as before. Your patience would be very much appreciated.
A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the administrator policy should be amended to require disclosure of paid editing activity at WP:RFA and to prohibit the use of administrative tools as part of paid editing activity, with certain exceptions.
An RfC has closed with a consensus that candidates at WP:RFA must disclose whether they have ever edited for pay and that administrators may never use administrative tools as part of any paid editing activity, except when they are acting as a Wikipedian-in-Residence or when the payment is made by the Wikimedia Foundation or an affiliate of the WMF.
Editors responding to threats of harm can now contact the Wikimedia Foundation's emergency address by using Special:EmailUser/Emergency. If you don't have email enabled on Wikipedia, directly contacting the emergency address using your own email client remains an option.
Technical news
A tagwill now be automatically applied to edits that blank a page, turn a page into a redirect, remove/replace almost all content in a page, undo an edit, or rollback an edit. These edits were previously denoted solely by automatic edit summaries.
Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee has enacted a change to the discretionary sanctions procedure which requires administrators to add a standardizededitnotice when placing page restrictions. Editors cannot be sanctioned for violations of page restrictions if this editnotice was not in place at the time of the violation.
Community ban discussions must now stay open for at least 24 hours prior to being closed.
A change to the administrator inactivity policy has been proposed. Under the proposal, if an administrator has not used their admin tools for a period of five years and is subsequently desysopped for inactivity, the administrator would have to file a new RfA in order to regain the tools.
A change to the banning policy has been proposed which would specify conditions under which a repeat sockmaster may be considered de facto banned, reducing the need to start a community ban discussion for these users.
Technical news
CheckUsers are now able to view private data such as IP addresses from the edit filter log, e.g. when the filter prevents a user from creating an account. Previously, this information was unavailable to CheckUsers because access to it could not be logged.
The edit filter has a new featurecontains_all that edit filter managers may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.
Bhadani (Gangadhar Bhadani) passed away on 8 February 2018. Bhadani joined Wikipedia in March 2005 and became an administrator in September 2005. While he was active, Bhadani was regarded as one of the most prolific Wikipedians from India.
Thank you, Gerda. Wish you a Happy St Patrick's Day, as mentioned on the first line of On This Day on MainPage. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 11:10, 17 March 2020 (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.
Please undo this edit as it is irrelevant that it may not be the latest English football story. You've left the template short, unbalanced the main page, and this is simply not how ITN works. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:58, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Well try to respect the usual ITN methodology rather than just removing an item because you happen to have nominated another football-related story. That way lies conflict of interest. I strongly recommend you don't repeat such an action. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:40, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's the other way round. I was looking for a replacement for the stale EPL item. The FA Cup was found as a potential replacement. The EPL got to go. Now reading on Venezuelan election... --PFHLai (talk) 09:42, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
By all means find another up-to-date and supported entry to add to the ITN template, but don't arbitrarily remove items you personally disagree believe should go. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:49, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously, your approach would eventually render no stories on ITN, brilliant solution. To deal with main page balance issues, please add or remove items from OTD. Your ugly "solution" rendered the page unbalanced, both as a whole, and against TFA. If you can't update ITN in the correct manner, then I suggest you leave it to other admins who can. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:58, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not removing the Gaza bit. It's already the latest update on that front. In contrast, Manchester City winning the EPL is no longer the latest big news in English football. Keeping that on ITN looks bad, imo. --PFHLai (talk) 10:27, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, so it's not about the news being stale then. And as you probably know, the EPL and the FA Cup are completely different competitions with completely different outcomes and impacts. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:28, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, maybe you don't know then. The FA Cup is really not considered in the same breath as the EPL (or even promotion from the Championship) these days. They're literally not in the same league. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:33, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the note, Stephen. I thought I was correcting the date from the 20th to the 18th, based on this edit of the Billy Cannon wikiarticle. Glad that you've fixed it on ITN to match the article. Judging from the edit history of the Cannon article, the date of death is being disputed. I'd would leave things as they are for now. --PFHLai (talk) 11:01, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Stephen:, I've started a discussion about the date of death on the talk page of the Cannon wikibio. This probably won't get resolved before Cannon gets bumped off RD, though. Oh, well... --PFHLai (talk) 11:28, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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, PFHLai. 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.
R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.
Members of the Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.
Technical news
Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.
Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
{{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.
Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent request for comment has amended the blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
A request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.
Technical news
A discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.
A new IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be identified.
Following discussions at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the restoration of adminship policy was reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.
Technical news
A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.
Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.
The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Please see meta:Community health initiative/User reporting system consultation 2019 to provide your input on this idea.
Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.
Recently, several Wikipedia admin accounts were compromised. The admin accounts were desysopped on an emergency basis. In the past, the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. The committee has updated its guidelines. Admins may now be required to undergo a fresh Request for Adminship (RfA) after losing control of their account.
What do I need to do?
Only to follow the instructions in this message.
Check that your password is unique (not reused across sites).
Check that your password is strong (not simple or guessable).
Enable Two-factor authentication (2FA), if you can, to create a second hurdle for attackers.
How can I find out more about two-factor authentication (2FA)?
Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)
ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.
Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.
We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.
XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well: Steward Stats and Patroller Stats.
Arbitration
In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases, the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions; administrators found failing to have adequately done so will not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
Following a formal ratification process, the arbitration policy has been amended (diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.
The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.
Miscellaneous
The previously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 was approved and has taken place.
In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.
The scope of CSD criterion G8 has been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
The scope of CSD criterion G14 has been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.
Miscellaneous
In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in significant community discussion, a request for arbitration (permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an open letter to the WMF Board.
Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.
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.
Hello, Vikram Nankani. That was 13 years ago! I have no idea why I did what I did... I am looking at Category:Districts of Sindh now. If I do what you suggested, would it make things inconsistent with other subcategories there? Those other subcategories have the word 'District'. I don't think it's a good idea to create inconsistency. --PFHLai (talk) 19:28, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
PFHLai, if you consider Tharparkar talk page you will understand that both refer same entity. This doubt was also raised while merging Tharparkar and Tharparkar District page which was discussed and understood in same talk page. So by doing what I requested you, will actually remove the inconsistency or unnecessary categories created.
Among sub-categories Thari people and People from Tharparkar District are again same since Demonym for Tharparkar(District) is Thari as specified in page and as confirmed in many references in that page. So even Thari people and People from Tharparkar District needs to be merged into Thari people. The third sub-category Populated places in Tharparkar District may remain as it is since I can't confirm.
Referring Page Authorship and Tharparkar page you may confirm and get assured that I am trying to bring accurate details and remove inconsistency as much possible relating to this topic. Kindly, let me know if further any doubts or issues are raised by merging categories or by doing anything as I suggested. Thanks and Regards.--Vikram Nankani (talk) 21:33, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
PFHLai thank you for promptly responding. I have never tried it. I will read entire topic soon. Meanwhile, if you have any further suggestion regarding same do let me know.
I will need your help also in another matter which is regarding removal of a redirect and create a page. There is an administrative division namely Dahli in same Tharparkar which is railway hub of the district. Although Dahli page doesn't exist but someone has set it to redirect on another page which has no edits or updates for more than 2 years. So can a page with name as Dahli with url as here be created or it has got reserved and can't be created with same title and url? Thanks and regards.--Vikram Nankani (talk) 03:39, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not at all, Vikram Nankani. No worries. You are the one doing all the hard work improving the encyclopedia. I hope you are having fun "working" here at Wikipedia. Happy editing. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 15:31, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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.
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.
I guess you don't use social media much? Even if I didn't have Disney+ I've seen it all over every platform (ads, people talking about it). —howcheng {chat}21:00, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not add new additions to these pages without direct sources as the burden to provide them is on the editor who adds or restores material to these pages.
Hi, Toddst1. I have restored Johann Palisa's birth and death to the respective day wikipages with references now. I hope you would approve of these edits of mine. Please let me know if any further fixes are needed. Thank you. --PFHLai (talk) 01:53, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Looks great to me, but it's not about my opinion.
Just so you know, the Days of Years (DOTY) project had exempted themselves from verifiability. As a result, almost none of the pages had any sources to back things up, based on the naive (and against Wikipedia policy) belief that all entries would be backed by reliable sources in the linked article. It turns out that was not the case and the DOTY pages were filled with incorrect info and even worse, other places started believing the info there and publishing the incorrect info in newspapers, for example on "Today's date in history" type listings.
So about two years ago the DOTY project took the bold step of requiring that all new entries be backed by direct reliable sources. Several of us have gone through and started cleaning things up. May 11 is an example of where we want to be. For details see the content guideline, the WikiProject Days of the Year style guide or the edit notice on any DOY page.
We could use your help in:
Preventing new entries that don't include direct sources and when they occur, either supplement them with a reliable source or reverting them.
Helping us clean up articles. The project members have asked all participants to go through their birthday and clean the entries up by adding reliable sources to each entry, or removing entries where reliable sources aren't readily available.
Thank you, Toddst1. I am glad to know that DOTY wikipages are getting properly referenced. I used to find anons and new users putting in their own birthday a little too often and became rather annoyed. I'll help add more references and remove questionable births, etc. --PFHLai (talk) 22:41, 18 July 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).
I had liked your image :(. Also, could you revisit our conversation here? I gave the proposal as you asked but it seems it was closed before you could answer. CheersOyMosby (talk) 16:40, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, OyMosby. Thanks for your message here and your e-mail. Things change quite quickly on WP:ERRORS, a place meant for mostly requests for simple, quick changes. If no further changes are deemed necessary, posts get removed. That was what Stephen (talk·contribs) did, which is fine. Everything is still in the page history and can be easily restored as needed, which was what you did. Let's keep the dialogue continue as needed. Thank you. Happy editing. --PFHLai (talk) 19:57, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Sorry, Gerda, is it about one of my recent edits? It should be BLP=no, or BLPO=yes if the wikibio mentions other people who may be still alive. If it's my mistake somewhere, please let me know where and I'll go fix it. Thanks. --PFHLai (talk) 08:17, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
BLPO is something new to me, too. I stumbled upon it recently. For simple teacher-student relationship, it's probably not important. This may be important in other relationships, such as marriage/divorce/extramarital affairs with (illegitimate) children, for instance. --PFHLai (talk) 08:44, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Well, then, a statement that someone is demented had better come with references. BLPO applies, I suppose. --PFHLai (talk) 08:51, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. Zingarese fixed it there. And, I was confused, too. I misread what you wrote above and thought Andriessen's wife was demented. Oh, well... never mind. Anyway, thank you for putting in the refs. Glad to see that everything is properly referenced in your articles. --PFHLai (talk) 10:01, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, I try. Only: there's no "my articles", - I "adopt" many translations, and many who recently died, and often it's not easy to find refs in retrospect. Example: there were two lines in the Andriessen bio, about "amplified non-vibrato voices" and such, for which we could find no independent ref (but many who copied exactly that). A conservative user removed it, although it was in the article for more than a decade. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:06, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt that, because I really looked. Many copied it, but the original was possibly a program booklet, not easily found. It's just a bit funny, that now other Wikipedias and websites have that detail, but not in English. It doesn't really matter, at least to me. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:13, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi PFHLai, regarding your recent removal of the Atlanta Spa shooting blurb from the ITN template, the oldest one on the list is actually the Pritzker Architecture Prize one per this comment here [3]. Some1 (talk) 01:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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)
You do realize, of course, that French Guiana is a department of France. It is not considered to be a separate country politically. It's part of the EU (ridiculous as that may seem). Hence the DYK hook, which was discussed at considerable length at DYK. Just so's you know – the hook wasn't an error. MeegsC (talk) 20:39, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the note, MeegsC. A mountain of gold gets my attention regardless of location. This one is in France the country but not in France the place. I thought the original hook is less ambiguous than ALT1... maybe not... Should I revert my edit at the template? --PFHLai (talk) 21:19, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose it's fine to leave now; there's only another 1.5 hours until it's replaced anyway. I actually didn't know myself that French Guiana was a department until the discussion at DYK. That was kind of the point of the hook, I guess. The nominator thought (probably correctly) that it would get people to click on the link. MeegsC (talk) 21:31, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, thanks, I shall leave things as they are at DYK. The hook works as clickmagnet either way, methinks. --PFHLai (talk) 21:36, 2 May 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.
The headline ("missing of 1300 people") is misleading. See also the latest comment, by User:Count Iblis in Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates#(Posted)_2021_European_floods. Not only I can confirm that for a short while, those numbers were raised/mentioned in the media because of broken mobile/telephone-infrastructure in a certain area. (Source: in german: by the spiegel (which is acknowledged by the english wikipedia). If you would like to the check the source for yourself you can do that with translation-addons. I ask you to remove those missing numbers and update the death toll (over 150 people) now. --LennBr (talk) 10:08, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your message, LennBr. I see that you have also posted at WP:ERRORS, and other admins have started to address your concern. I shall look into this and respond there soon. --PFHLai (talk) 14:05, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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)
Hi, Fabrickator. I was reviewing this nomination for ITN RD. Even before my edits, inadequate referencing has been identified as an issue, preventing this wikibio from getting featured on RD. I hope the {{cn}} tags would help the next wikieditors at that bio identify places to add missing references. Does this help? --PFHLai (talk) 12:12, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Oh, thanks for restoring that. As you guessed, just a classic error on my part, editing an old version of the page to make changes, without noticing it. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 14:12, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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.
You're welcome, Cato censor. Glad to have this wikiarticle on MainPage. May Cardinal Medina rest in peace. Please be encouraged to nominate more well-updated wikiarticles for ITN/RD. Happy editing. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 17:42, 4 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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)
Could you change movie to film on the hook "... that the 2018 film soundtrack album It's Christmas, Eve by LeAnn Rimes originated from a movie in which Rimes played the main character?" Gatoclass didn't like my hook and came up with a new one. I'm fine with it except for that error. SL93 (talk) 02:51, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi PFHLai! 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.
I have learned that the permission isn’t quite proper. We need to contact the uploader and ask them to confirm it through the designated procedure. JehochmanTalk00:05, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Ktin. You are too kind. Thank you. To be honest, I was merely doing touch-ups most of the time. You actually build the wikiarticles for use on ITN. You have done a lot more heavy-lifting! Thank you for that! Happy editing. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 04:08, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You kindly marked Biller ready for RD a while ago. He finally made it yesterday, 17:44, but was kicked already this morning. I remembered that you quoted a 24h rule/wish/whatever, and think he'd deserve it, by what he did for the world. I pleaded with Stephen who removed him (don't want to repeat my arguments), but to no avail. Would you make an exception, adding him back as a 7th for a bit more time? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:31, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
... and latish happy new year! It started nicely with long vacation, pictured if you click on songs, and a few days still missing. I waited for a special day, a feast day for which Bach wrote several cantatas including Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, BWV 125, which was on on DYK 10 years ago and TFA 4 years ago. Georg Christoph Biller had to wait days for a Main page appearance under recent deaths, and then stayed not even for a full day. It would been so meaningful today, with the man in the cantata saying he can depart in joy and peace. - The February pic was taken in memory last year. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:38, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Happy New year to you, too, Gerda. And thank you for letting me know about Biller. Nine hours was indeed a rather short appearance. He is now back on RD for a few more hours this evening. --PFHLai (talk) 17:10, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for intervening. What made me so furious was that instead of his name, we had just white space, at least in my rendering. I'll try to forget, but it was highly disappointing because of his stature, - the only bigger disappointment was Márta Kurtág not appearing at all, because the news (in Hungarian) arrived late, and by the time an article was created she had gone "stale", - at that time it went by day of death, strictly. It's an improvement that now we enter every new one at the front, and make adjustments for information of death coming late. - I like my talk today (keeping Biller a bit longer, and even explaining how it works), and managed to picture two more vacation days. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:13, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome, Gerda. I did not do much. Just a few clicks. You contributed much-appreciated contents for use on ITN and the work deserves a little more time in the spotlight on MainPage. Please keep the good contents coming. Happy editing! Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 23:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, - it was the work of many. I like the collection of today on my user page: TFA, last DYK, last quality, new article, the people remembered: all around Bach ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:24, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and the German DYK (SG) is normally slow, 6 weeks from nominating to appearing, as they take in only 2 per day. But they have a fast lane for Ukrainian culture: 3 days for this one - my record there! (In English: it was 10 minutes, in the good old days of 4 sets per day.) All this while the English DYK hesitates to show anything related to a conflict zone ... I don't think we have to remain neutral. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:37, 6 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. On another St. Patrick's Day, with green thoughts. Thank you for the amazing work you do for others! - I decorated my talk with memories of St. Patrick's in 2019, and the whole playlist of back then seems so good right now, music about the Breastplate (listen, YT in the article), Psalm 91, Psalm 130 ... --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:43, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Thanks, Stephen & Oronsay. I just happen to have found on Google stuffs about this interesting character and moved them onto her wikibio. Glad that she is now on MainPage. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 06:55, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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)
Oh, Gerda. You are the miracle worker, not me! Thank you for contributing good contents for use on MainPage. Please keep the good stuff coming. --PFHLai (talk) 22:54, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Gerda, for quickly enriching a wikibio that was already good enough for an appearance on MainPage, making it even better during its appearance on MainPage. :-) Happy editing! Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 21:29, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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.
You have been successfully nominated to receive a free t-shirt from the Wikimedia Foundation through our Merchandise Giveaway program. Congratulations and thank you for your hard work! Please email us at merchandisewikimedia.org and we will send you full details on how to accept your free shirt. Thanks!
This looks good enough for RD to me. If you can find another wikieditor to give it a favorable review within the next few hours, I can ignore the time limit (per WP:IAR) and post it on ITN. --PFHLai (talk) 01:24, 30 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Mehediabedin The mere release of a film would almost certainly not be considered to merit posting, it would be seen as just advertising the film. If the film set a record of some kind(like worldwide revenue) or there was something else unusual about the film, it might merit posting. 331dot (talk) 23:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your extensive work on the Billy Kametz article. That said, I'd like to ask your rationale for mentioning his role as Naofumi Iwatani in the article scope alone. The article body mentions winning an award for the role, but the article cited in the edit justification has JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Pokémon mentioned more prominently than it. Personally, I don't think elevating one role above the others makes sense when his roles were relatively even in fan appreciation and reception. Aside from that, having one role in the scope seems like it would be edit bait, despite the message telling users to justify their edits. One user has already added to the scope without citing their edit.
I'd like to hear your thoughts about how the scope should be managed, especially with the spotlight the article is currently under.
Hello, Paul F Villerius. Thank you for your message. I must confess that I am not that familiar with the subject of the wikibio. The wikibio was nominated for RD at ITN. I was merely tidying things up before the link goes on MainPage. An intro is meant to be a summary highlighting the main points in an article. Materials are expected to be elaborated upon in the main body of the article. At the time, I noticed that the intro had mentioned a number of roles played by Kametz, but not everything in the intro in this article was described or explained in more details afterwards, except his award-winning role as Naofumi Iwatani. So that stayed, and the rest got moved. If you believe that things in the article can be better arranged, please go ahead and revise the article as you see fit. Happy editing! Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 15:16, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Philip Baker Hall
Hi. The filmography has been completely sourced now. Can you take another look and see if this can still be posted in the news? He was in all the major publications so it would be a pity not to have him in the news section of Wikipedia simply because the filmography held it up as the article is overall well sourced and his passing was very well covered in all major newspapers. Thank you. 2001:BB6:4E18:E358:E039:D97F:5D62:D1B (talk) 21:38, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. Thank you for all the new footnotes in this wikibio. It looks ready for use on RD now. I don't mind bending the rules for this nom to give it one extra day. If you can find one other regular editor at ITN/C (any editor with an account there, not necessarily an admin) to look at this wikibio and give his/her support to this RD nom before the end of today (23:59 UTC), I shall post the link on MainPage. Okay? Thank you. --PFHLai (talk) 10:58, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Thank you so much. I'm afraid I don't know any of the editors though. I did ask in the helpdesk chat and someone gave me some advice to make some changes to refs and then said it looked fine. If you have a record of that. Otherwise, I'm not sure how to approach someone or what to say or where I'd start? Can the nom be reposted somewhere for others to see it? Thanks again. 2001:BB6:4E18:E358:6870:36EE:1A44:B7EE (talk) 12:45, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much. I also got someone (whom I think is an admin but not an ITN/C regular poster) to Support it on the nomination itself (in the archvies) if that's any help. If you need me to chase up some regular posters and post on their pages asking for support, let me know, and I could maybe find time to do that a bit later today. Thanks again for all your help! 2001:BB6:4E18:E358:6870:36EE:1A44:B7EE (talk) 13:39, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure you have done much more article-improving than I have, Gerda. Oh, deer?!... sorry, I am not a good hunter... This one? Looks delicious. :-) --PFHLai (talk) 22:37, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Could you please add Crispulop as creator; he's not around that much, but he is a high quality editor who has made 100s of biographies on (mainly Dutch) scientists. I assume he will appreciate it. KittenKlub (talk) 18:29, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the suggestion, KittenKlub. I don't think the creator function of the credit template is meant for edits that old and long time before the nom, but, as suggested, I have added Crispulop to the nom, anyway. Happy editing. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 18:37, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's also a bit personal. I recognized the author just by glancing over the bio. In the past, I have written some bios about people which are interesting, but for a small audience like Laurens Storm van 's Gravesande and Apatou (captain). One or two days after making it, Crispulop pressed on the thank you button for creating the article. Hardly anybody does that (or check the new pages). KittenKlub (talk) 18:47, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Glad to see that the ITN credit posts can be used as a goodwill gesture. I am sure Crispulop will be happy to find out that his contributions is going on MainPage. -- PFHLai (talk) 18:55, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
