User talk : Harryboyles

Oversighter changes

Guideline and policy news

A RfC is open to change the wording of revision deletion criterion 1 to remove the sentence relating to non-infringing contributions.
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)
Special:Nuke will now allow the selection of standard deletion reasons to be used when mass-deleting pages. This was a Community Wishlist Survey request from 2022. (T25020)
The ability to undelete the talk page when undeleting a page using Special:Undelete or the API will be added soon. This change was requested in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. (T295389)

Arbitration

Several unused discretionary sanctions and article probation remedies have been rescinded. This follows the community feedback from the 2021 Discretionary Sanctions review.

Miscellaneous

The 2022 appointees for the Ombuds commission are Érico, Faendalimas, Galahad, Infinite0694, Mykola7, Olugold, Udehb and Zabe as regular members and Ameisenigel and JJMC89 as advisory members.
Following the 2022 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AntiCompositeNumber, BRPever, Hasley, TheresNoTime, and Vermont.
The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey results have been published alongside the ranking of prioritized proposals.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Wishing Harryboyles a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Birthday Committee! Best wishes! CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 00:29, 4 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2022).

Administrator changes

Firefly • Sdrqaz

Ad Orientem

Geschichte • Ryan Postlethwaite • Sabine's Sunbird • Wassupwestcoast

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

An RfC is open proposing a change to the minimum activity requirements for administrators.

Technical news

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)

Arbitration

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Opening of proceedings has been updated to reflect current practice following a motion.
A arbitration case regarding Skepticism and coordinated editing has been closed.
A arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been opened.

Miscellaneous

Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines has closed, and the results were that 56.98% of voters supported the guidelines. The results of this vote mean the Wikimedia Foundation Board will now review the guidelines.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:13, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New administrator activity requirement

The administrator policy has been updated with new activity requirements following a successful Request for Comment.

Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:

Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period

Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.

22:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).

Administrator changes

Colin M

David.Monniaux • Fribbler • Grue • Kpjas • West.andrew.g

CheckUser changes

Ks0stm

Oversighter changes

Ks0stm

Guideline and policy news

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.
Following a discussion on the bureaucrat's noticeboard, a change has been made to the bureaucrats inactivity policy.

Technical news

The ability to undelete the associated talk page when undeleting a page has been added. This was the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:34, 9 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).

Administrator changes

Tamzin

Barek • Darkwind • Geometry guy • ProcseeBot • RoyBoy • Sean Whitton • Valereee • Visorstuff • WAvegetarian

Sn0wflake → VersedFenrir

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

Several areas of improvement collated from community member votes have been identified in the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines. The areas of improvement have been sent back for review and you are invited to provide input on these areas.

Technical news

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.

Arbitration

Remedy 2 of the Rachel Marsden case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to delete or reduce to a stub, together with their talk pages, articles related to Rachel Marsden when they violate Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy.
An arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been closed.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:55, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Problem

problems with the links of the songs and more links are needed List of most-streamed songs on Spotify Tirso Gutiérrez (talk) 02:59, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2022).

Administrator changes

AA • Gwalla • Ioeth • Laurascudder • Moriori (deceased) • Nat • Rfl

Drilnoth → AFigureOfBlue

Bureaucrat changes

Lee Vilenski

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

Technical news

user_global_editcount is a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)

Arbitration

An arbitration case regarding conduct in deletion-related editing has been opened.

Miscellaneous

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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2022).

Administrator changes

Valereee

Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • Capitalistroadster • Samsara

Guideline and policy news

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.

Technical news

The Wikimania 2022 Hackathon will take place virtually from 11 August to 14 August.
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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:44, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).

Administrator changes

DanCherek • DatGuy • Femke • Z1720

Aldux • Graham Beards • Nyttend

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Guideline and policy news

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 email Madalina 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.
Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Need help! Removing talk page discussions that could undermine recently submitted RfC

So I and @Hippo43 are having a content dispute. Quick background; after it did not resolve naturally through gradual edits of 4 days of reverts, I brought it to the talk page where disagreement was still present, and after that I first sought an informal WP:3O and after an editor contributed I prompted @Hippo43 to it on their talk page. It was definitely not going to resolve it but I wanted to at least try before I went to RfC and as expected on @User talk:Hippo43#3O they replied reaffirming that disagreement remained. To move it along I copied his response in reply to the 3O on his talk page so as to document that disagreement remained and move on from what was always going to be a formality. The issue is that they are now trying to hide this by removing my forwarded reply on the article's talk page and it could undermine the RfC by making it look like I did not first see if the Third Opinion resolved the dispute. They keep justifiying it by saying I can't copy and paste their responses into other discussion but 1) it is the same discussion just linking up the different talk pages 2) they haven't shown me any policy or guidline that says this is a good reason for removing an editor's discussion input. It is my first RfC and I am an inexperienced editor so lack of the understanding of processes which could get it stopped in its tracks anyway. But I at least don't want it to be because of removal of talk page discussion or in an attempt to stonewall it. I mentioned in my revert summary what I have mentioned here about it potentially undermining the process and saying that I will seek an admin on this but they have since persisted. JamesLewisBedford01 (talk) 19:06, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

May have caught @Harryboyles just as he was signing off. I'm tagging another recently active admin in the hope I can get this resolved: @Thryduulf JamesLewisBedford01 (talk) 20:48, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm busy with other things at the moment and will then be logging off for a bit myself so don't have time to investigate any of this. If you need help from an administrator then asking at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard is much more reliable than pinging individual admins. Thryduulf (talk) 20:51, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no worries. I will look to do that, thank you. JamesLewisBedford01 (talk) 20:53, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).

Administrator changes

ScottishFinnishRadish

Staxringold

Ahoerstemeier (deceased) • Ched

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678

CheckUser changes

GorillaWarfare

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, consensus was found that if the rationale for a block depends on information that is not available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee, a checkuser or an oversighter for action (as applicable, per ArbCom's recent updated guidance) instead of the administrator making the block.
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.
Community comment on the revised Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines is requested until 8 October.

Technical news

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.
A modification to the deletion RfC remedy in the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been made to reaffirm the independence of the RfC and allow the moderators to split the RfC in two.
The second phase of the 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review closes 3 October.

Miscellaneous

An administrator's account was recently compromised. Administrators are encouraged to check that their passwords are secure, and reminded that ArbCom reserves the right to not restore adminship in cases of poor account security. You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to provide an extra level of security.
Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections open 2 October and close 8 October.
You are invited to comment on candidates in the 2022 CUOS appointments process.
An RfC is open to discuss whether to make Vector 2022 the default skin on desktop.
Tech tip: You can do a fuzzy search of all deleted page titles at Special:Undelete.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:43, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).

Administrator changes

- Isabelle Belato
- Whpq

Interface administrator changes

CheckUser changes

Oversight changes

DGG

Guideline and policy news

The article creation at scale RfC opened on 3 October and will be open until at least 2 November.
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.

Arbitration

Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 13 November 2022 until 22 November 2022 to stand in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections.
The arbitration case request titled Athaenara has been resolved by motion.
The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has entered the proposed decision stage.
AmandaNP, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections. Xaosflux and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.

Miscellaneous

The 2022 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of two new CheckUsers.
You can add yourself to the centralised page listing time zones of administrators.
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}}.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:22, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

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.

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:23, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).

Administrator changes

Interface administrator changes

TheresNoTime

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Consensus has been found in an RfC to automatically place RfAs on hold after one week.
The article creation at scale RfC has been closed.
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 proposed decision for the 2021-22 review of the discretionary sanctions system is open.
The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has been closed.
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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:44, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year, Harryboyles!

Happy New Year!

Harryboyles,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. See this for background context.
— Moops ^⋠T⋡ 22:27, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

— Moops ^⋠T⋡ 22:27, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Seventeenth First Edit Day!

Hey, Harryboyles. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee!
Have a great day! Chris Troutman (talk) 19:41, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).

Administrator changes

Stephen

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

CheckUser changes

Moneytrees

Oversighter changes

Guideline and policy news

Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.

Arbitration

Following the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, CaptainEek, GeneralNotability, Guerillero, L235, Moneytrees, Primefac, SilkTork.
The 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review has concluded with many changes to the discretionary sanctions procedure including a change of the name to "contentious topics". The changes are being implemented over the coming month.
The arbitration case Stephen has been closed.

Miscellaneous

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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).

Administrator changes

Gimmetrow

CheckUser changes

Oversighter changes

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, the administrator policy now requires that prior written consent be gained from the Arbitration Committee to mark a block as only appealable to the committee.
Following a community discussion, consensus has been found to impose the extended-confirmed restriction over the topic areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan and Kurds and Kurdistan.

Technical news

The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.

Arbitration

The arbitration case Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 24 February 2023.
In December, the contentious topics procedure was adopted which replaces the former discretionary sanctions system. The contentious topics procedure is now in effect following an initial implementation period. There is a detailed summary of the changes and administrator instructions for the new procedure. The arbitration clerk team are taking suggestions, concerns, and unresolved questions about this new system at their noticeboard.

Miscellaneous

Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:37, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).

Administrator changes

The Wordsmith

CheckUser changes

Oversighter changes

https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Category:Pages_using_WikiProject_Plants_with_unknown_parameters&action=history

Guideline and policy news

Following a request for comment, F10 (useless non-media files) has been deprecated.
Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
A request for comment is open to discuss making the closing instructions for the requested moves process a guideline.

Technical news

The results of the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey have been posted.

Arbitration

Remedy 11 ("Request for Comment") of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been rescinded.
The proposed decision for the Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case is expected 7 March 2023.
A case related to the Holocaust in Poland is expected to be opened soon.

Miscellaneous

The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2023).

Administrator changes

Aoidh

KillerChihuahua

CheckUser changes

Ferret

Guideline and policy news

A community RfC is open to discuss whether reports primarily involving gender-related disputes or controversies should be referred to the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard.

Technical news

Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis starting this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. (T178356)
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 link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will now appear in the subtitle links shown on Special:Contributions. This was voted #17 in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023.

Arbitration

The Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case has been closed.
A case about World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been opened, with the first evidence phase closing 6 April 2023.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:11, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2023).

Administrator changes

Spicy

CheckUser changes

Jimbo Wales

Oversighter changes

Jimbo Wales

Guideline and policy news

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.

Arbitration

The proposed decision in the World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case is expected 11 May 2023.

Miscellaneous

The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input through May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me

I have a question about certain WikiProject template parameters. As you can see here, I've been adding an |importance= parameter to articles in WikiProject Cities, even though I believe that's no longer supported (per this and this). Should I not continue to add this parameter? Thank you. Nythar (💬-🍀) 13:23, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Nythar: I wouldn't worry too much if you do or don't happen to modify the importance parameter (though if you are previewing your edits, it would be nice to catch any errors shown in the preview before saving). There's no need to rush to remove the deprecated importance parameters (since by default the only visible change is the addition of Category:Pages using WikiProject Cities with unknown parameters). I only put in error handling for the {{WikiProject Cities}} template today, so your edits last week wouldn't have shown anything wrong when previewing in AWB. there is no deadline either - the intent is to inform editors adding new instances of WikiProject banners of errors when previewing their changes, so that gradually over time editors get more feedback and the quality of the WikiProject tagging gets better.

John M Wolfson did remove the importance parameter last year in favour of a small "core list" of cities per this discussion, but it wasn't a particularly wide consensus (more that no-one objected over the course of 2 months of it being proposed). So I'm not particularly motivated to start editing all 140,000 talk pages that got tagged over the course of a decade (in case there's a sudden reversal of consensus) Harryboyles 15:07, 28 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Asking directly for deletion of a page I accidentally hit "Publish"

Hey. Accidentally hit "Publish" on a page and I'm worried an Admin might think I'm griefing or something. Saw you were recently online and I wanted to ask you to delete it. Weird request, right?

Here's the page.

Thanks.

Bourbonbounce (talk) 02:34, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Bourbonbounce: It's not a weird thing to do to create a copy of an article in your user space - people create drafts of articles in their user space all the time. Since you asked, I've deleted the page since it meets criterion G7 of the Criteria for speedy deletion - author requests deletion ("If requested in good faith and provided that the only substantial content of the page was added by its author.") Cheers. Harryboyles 02:45, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, it was in my own User space! At least that. I'll keep an eye out to things.

Cheers!

Bourbonbounce (talk) 02:48, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Administrator changes

Ingenuity

CheckUser changes

Courcelles

Guideline and policy news

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.

Miscellaneous

Following a community referendum, the arbitration policy has been modified to remove the ability for users to appeal remedies to Jimbo Wales.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Project class" anime and manga articles

Why does this come up as an unknown parameter at Wikipedia talk:Wikipe-tan if a category exists for it? Category:Project-Class anime and manga articles The other pages from what I have seen display "Project" "This page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale." (ex: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anime and manga/Digimon) - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:59, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Knowledgekid87: the reason why Wikipedia talk:Wikipe-tan came up with unknown parameters is that it had rating=Project, and rating is not a supported parameter in the {{WikiProject Anime and manga}} template (the parameter should be class). Also, the WikiProject banners on that talk page are inside {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which recently added functionality for project-independent quality assessments (i.e. one class rating for the whole page). The banner shell automatically determines a project rating for certain namespaces without needing to add a class manually (e.g. Template, File, Wikipedia namespaces). The project-independent quality scale only has NA-class, not Project-class specifically. So there was no difference in the output when I previewed removing the rating parameters (or replacing with class) - so I removed the parameters and saved the change. I note that Wikipedia talk:Wikipe-tan is still categorised in Category:Project-Class anime and manga articles - it's just that the banner shell doesn't currently display the custom project class.

If the Anime and manga WikiProject wants to deviate from the standard classes and show Project class on pages using the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template, it should follow the instructions left on the project's talk page (now archived) in order to opt out and use its own ratings exclusively: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anime and manga/Archive 76#Project-independent quality assessments 2. Harryboyles 22:06, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

very impressed by what it does, but do we have one for oz?

have just seen the positive effect on the plants project - is/has there been one for the oz and subsidiary projects yet ?

Keep up the good work! JarrahTree 01:41, 16 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the encouragement! WikiProject Australia already has its own check in place - Category:Pages using WikiProject Australia with unknown parameters. As it turns out, I put it in place all the way back in 2017. The category has been kept well maintained since then, not just by myself but others as well. All of the subsidiary projects within {{WikiProject Australia}} are covered by the category too.

It was only recently that I was inspired to extend the checks to the majority of WikiProjects (a big task - still in progress). I can see that {{WikiProject Australian Roads}}, {{WikiProject Australian Women in Religion}} and {{WikiProject Australian rules football}} as distinct WikiProjects with their own templates - I'll add it to my list to add the checks. Harryboyles 03:20, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

removing unsupported parameter 'importance'

Hi there. I don't think it is a good idea to remove all these parameters. If WikiProject Alabama decided to start using importance ratings again in the future, then they would have to add all of these again. I think it is better just to leave them in the template and ignore them. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:33, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please can you respond to this? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:48, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've stopped deliberately removing importance ratings for the time being. Perhaps there's an argument to be made to distinguish unknown parameters for a WikiProject template (e.g. some has mistyped parameter name or put in an invalid parameter alias) from unsupported parameters that are common in other WikiProjects (WikiProjects that have chosen not to add importance ratings, or don't support the auto parameter that's commonly added by bots/automated editor tools). For unsupported parameters, the preview would still display a guidance message of some kind, but if the wikitext is saved, then don't add the category for Pages using WikiProject x with unknown parameters. I've always thought that without Module:Check for unknown parameters in place, there's zero feedback to an editor that there might be a mistake in the way they are calling a template (since in the English Wikipedia, VisualEditor is not enabled for any talk pages). Hence why I was rolling out the unsupported parameters module to WikiProject banner templates. Harryboyles 10:17, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply. I agree that it would be useful to distinguish between unknown/invalid/unsupported, although the exact definition of each will need careful consideration! I think in the case of unsupported parameters, some feedback in the preview would be useful but perhaps it should not populate the tracking category? I'm planning to work on a system that will automatically identify unknown parameters without all the extra code in the bottom of the template. Are you interested in helping with that? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:08, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just to note that I have a prototype of the automatic unknown parameter identification working on Module:WikiProject banner/sandbox and currently seems to be working well on Template:WikiProject National Football League/sandbox. If we deploy this then the extra code invoking Module:Check for unknown parameters on each page would be redundant. Have you had any further thoughts on how to distinguish between inavlid/unsupported parameters and how this could work? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:48, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My definition of which parameters would be suppressed from being added to tracking categories would be the list of display parameters that {{WPBannerMeta}} has specific functionality coded for (category, listas, class, importance, auto, attention, infobox, b1-6). These parameters are common enough that they would probably cover 90% or more of the parameters that are added by auto-rater scripts/tools, and those cases where a WikiProject might decide to start using said functionality in the future (especially for "importance" ratings which was the trigger for this discussion in the first place). As for how to implement it, would it be easy or hard to take the array of input parameters, "subtract/remove" the above display parameters, then run the array of remaining parameters through the check?

By the way, thanks for taking the initiative to standardise the checks within {{WPBannerMeta}} itself! Harryboyles 13:17, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. As for this edit, I often go through and clean out a bunch of maintenance categories, one of which is Category:Incorrectly tagged WikiProject Biography articles. {{WikiProject Biography}} automatically puts articles in this category for a few reasons, one of which is if the banner is not on the talk page of an article and it calls the below parameters. It's been this way since at least 2009 (that I can tell from the template history).

 |cat 8={{{core|}}}{{{needs-photo|{{{needs-image|{{{image-needed|{{{photo-needed|{{{image-requested|}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}{{{needs-infobox|}}}{{{needs-filmography|}}}{{{needs-discography|}}}{{{past-collaboration|}}}
  |CAT_8                = {{#ifeq:{{pagetype|{{{class|}}}}}|article||Incorrectly tagged WikiProject Biography articles}}

Harryboyles 10:17, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've no idea why draft articles are put into the error category. I guess it would make sense for other namespaces, but the Draft namespace is newer than the rest. Shall I drop a note on Template talk:WikiProject Biography? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:10, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The template code looks like it is working properly, although its result may not be desirable. At Draft talk:Mónica Ramírez Almadani, {{pagetype}} is used to test whether the page is an article (i.e. in main space). It is not, so the category is applied. If the use of |needs_photo= parameter should not trigger the error category in draft space, that pagetype test could be modified, or the whole of CAT_8 could be wrapped in {{draft other}}, or something else could be done. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:33, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Bureaucrat changes

MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

Contributions to the English Wikipedia are now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) license instead of CC BY-SA 3.0. Contributions are still also released under the GFDL license.

Technical news

Discussion is open regarding a proposed global policy regarding third-party resources. Third-party resources are computer resources that reside outside of Wikimedia production websites.

Arbitration

Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:58, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A note on unknown parameter checking in WikiProject templates

The hidden span tag wrapping an error message appears to cause two Linter errors when an unknown parameter includes a line break. The fix appears to be using a div tag instead of a span tag. Please update your copy/paste routine to include this change, unless you know of any harm that it will do. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonesey95: No worries - I've changed the span tag to a div tag in my workflow for future updates. Harryboyles 01:52, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Super. Thanks for adding unknown parameter checking to these templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

Firefangledfeathers

Interface administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Technical news

The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. This allows hiding edits made by automated tools. (T334338)
Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool that allows easier blocking of plain domains (and their subdomains). This is more easily searchable and is faster for the software to use than the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. It does not support regex (for complex cases), URL path-matching, or the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. (T337431)

Arbitration

The arbitration cases named Scottywong and AlisonW closed 10 July and 16 July respectively.
The SmallCat dispute arbitration case is in the workshop phase.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Attached KML/Blacktown Road, Sydney

Template:Attached KML/Blacktown Road, Sydney has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 11:29, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Administrator changes

CheckUser changes

Bradv

Oversighter changes

Bradv

Guideline and policy news

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.

Technical news

Special:Contributions now shows the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. (T324166)

Arbitration

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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).

Administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

Tamzin

Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.
There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. Feedback on this proposal is requested.

Arbitration

Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
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!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message

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.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:24, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Attached KML/Southern Cross Drive, Canberra

Template:Attached KML/Southern Cross Drive, Canberra has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 09:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2023).

Administrator changes

Beeblebrox → Just Step Sideways

CheckUser changes

Oversight changes

Guideline and policy news

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.
Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:54, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Undated GA templates

A tag has been placed on Category:Undated GA templates indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and removing the speedy deletion tag. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:07, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).

Administrator changes

Clovermoss

Dennis Brown

CheckUser changes

Oversighter changes

Arbitration

Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
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 arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.

Miscellaneous

The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Removing useless/harmless WikiProject parameters

Hi, I was wondering if you could point me to where there was some discussion or consensus that lead to your mass removal of parameters from WikiProject banners? These extraneous parameters are harmless if the template doesn't support them yet, but will already be place if and when support for them is added. Plus there are several article rating tools out there that adds these parameters regardless of their support, explicitely because if they are not supported yet they are ignored, thus harmless. So it's kind of weird of me to see you massively removing them when I know me and others are intentionally adding them, it feels like that's gonna be tens of thousands of edits back and forth with no net change.. Thanks in advance for pointing me in ther right direction to find where this was discussed. :) Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 21:36, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ben,

As I go through Category:WikiProject templates with unknown parameters, my main intention is to fix parameters where possible, such as typos or cases where only a particular form of a parameter is supported (e.g. 'imageneeded' not 'needs-image'). I'm deliberately leaving alone cases where there are hundreds/thousands of instances of a common parameter like 'importance' appearing on a single WikiProject template. (e.g. the 100,000+ instances of 'importance' for WikiProject Albums). But if there is a small-enough number where I can empty a WikiProject's unknown parameters category, then it's not too much work for me to clean it up.

As for the aspect of consensus, the following phrase appears on a few hundred WikiProject template documentation pages

“

To avoid needlessly cluttering up talk pages, it is usually appropriate to remove any unused parameters from the template.

”

— Special:Search

By this stage, most of the WikiProjects have been established for over a decade or more, and the general workflows have been long-established. If a WikiProject template isn't currently using a parameter, it's not particulaly likely to suddenly change in the future. There are also cases where projects have come to a consensus to deprecate parameters explicitly:

There was a similar discussion on my talk page a few months ago around the time MSGJ was modernising the unknown parameters logic within the WikiProject banner template, where I mentioned the idea of splitting "deprecated" parameters to suppress the categorisation and preview warning - you may want to raise this on Module talk:WikiProject banner if you think this is a good idea.

Harryboyles 01:44, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the detailed response. I'm still kinda concerned about circular redundant work as me and others are still going to add importance= and imageneeded= to wikiproject banners whether they officially support it or not, because there's no way to tell and it is harmless. We're just gonna keep stepping over each other until there is some sort of consensus put in place to stop either the removal or addition of harmless not-used-yet parameters. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 02:33, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For rating assessment, the User:Evad37/rater tool has many features that address your concerns and make the whole rating process more streamlined. The tool automatically parses the WikiProject banners to determine which parameters are/are not supported by a given WikiProject banner at the time of rating assessment. Among many of its features, the tool will only show the importance assessment field (and valid importance values) if the WikiProject banner supports it (you don't need to manually check whether each WikiProject supports importance). It also displays the list of supported parameters for each banner as its own dropdown, greatly reducing the chance of mixing up other parameter variants like imageneeded vs needs-image. If a banner has TemplateData information, even valid parameter values are displayed as dropdowns. Other features include automatically adding {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and displaying auto-complete suggestions for adding WikiProject banners.

Even if making edits manually, previewing an edit will display a preview warning if there are templates being called with unknown parameters. The preview warning includes a hyperlink to the template's main page with the documentation:

Harryboyles 06:14, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I do use a script for assessment but I don't think it's this one, I don't remember if there is a specific reason for that. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 18:18, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing you're using User:Kephir/gadgets/rater from your user scripts ("I use a handful of user scripts and gadgets, adding more whenever I find them."). Probably the case that this was the gadget that you found, since it was created in 2012, while Evad37's tool was created in 2017. It looks like Kephir hasn't been active in 3 years, so I doubt it will be updated to accommodate Template:WikiProject banner shell/doc#Project-independent quality assessments (User talk:Kephir/gadgets/rater#Using class parameter in banner shell) Harryboyles 18:33, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mind not doing this, or else trying to coordinate it with others, to figure out how to minimize the disruption? There are already other bots doing the same thing, and it doesn't seem to me to benefit from being divided among several bots, with the resulting complaints, bug reports, etc. split across multiple talk pages. These edits are almost entirely pointless (the only visible change to the article of removing these inoperative parameters is removing a category from the page that nobody cares about), and make noise/churn on everyone's watchlists. –jacobolus (t) 04:41, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Happy First Edit Day!

Have a very happy first edit anniversary!

From the Birthday Committee, CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:21, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Attached KML/Kingsford Smith Drive, Canberra

Template:Attached KML/Kingsford Smith Drive, Canberra has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 13:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).

Administrator changes

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

CheckUser changes

Wugapodes

Interface administrator changes

Guideline and policy news

An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.

Technical news

Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)

Arbitration

Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.

Miscellaneous

Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:02, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Birthday!

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).

Administrator changes

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.

Technical news

The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:21, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).

Administrator changes

Guideline and policy news

An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.

Technical news

The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

Arbitration

An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".

Miscellaneous

Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:47, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another template parameter question

Hi, based on the topics above, it's obvious you're the right person to ask, I'm so glad. I tried to add the A-class parameter to Template:WikiProject Figure Skating/doc because the WikiProject is setting up an A-class assessment, and then you reverted me. Could you please advise me how to add the parameter correctly? I'm considering bypassing using the template and just directing nominators to create a talk page. What would you advise? Thanks in advance. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 17:05, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Harry, would you mind answering this question? If not, could you lead me to someone who can? Thanks. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 15:52, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've been on a week-long holiday, so I've only been back online today. I'd only updated the documentation because the template itself Template:WikiProject Figure Skating hasn't yet been updated to implement A-class ratings. A request to edit the template to include the A-class rating parameters should be made on the talk page (referencing the Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Figure_Skating#Article_assessment_update as the consensus for doing so). You can use the template's sandbox to test the changes - guidance on how to implement the A-class functionality into the template is at Module:WikiProject_banner#A-class_review_note. Harryboyles 00:08, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Harry! We're in kind of a hurry to compete the process, plus I saw the 24-hour blurb at the top and figured (har-har, see what I did there?) you were ignoring me. Next time you go on holiday, you should put up a notice about that! I hope you had a nice, restful holiday with no one to pester you. At any rate, I appreciate the excellent advice, which I have followed. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 02:24, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).

Administrator changes

Nyttend

Bureaucrat changes

Nihonjoe

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe

Oversight changes

GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.

Technical news

Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531

Arbitration

The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.

Miscellaneous

This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2024).

Administrator changes

Graham Beards

Bureaucrat changes

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz

Guideline and policy news

Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.

Technical news

The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351

Arbitration

The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.

Miscellaneous

WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2024).

Administrator changes

Technical news

Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)

Miscellaneous

The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:58, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2024).

Administrator changes

Isabelle Belato

Interface administrator changes

Izno

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49

Technical news

Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.

Arbitration

The Arbitration Committee appointed the following administrators to the conflict of interest volunteer response team: Bilby, Extraordinary Writ

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:59, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2024).

Administrator changes

Interface administrator changes

Oversighter changes

Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past.
A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.

Arbitration

Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.

Miscellaneous

Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:44, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).

Administrator changes

CheckUser changes

Guideline and policy news

Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

Miscellaneous

If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:59, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Belgian cinema task force

Hi. Regarding your edit to Template talk:User Belgian cinema task force, I inform you that Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Belgian cinema task force has been created recently, so the template was correctly tagged to the task force (even though something went wrong with the categories). Earthh (talk) 13:22, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Earthh: you'll need to make an edit request on Template talk:WikiProject Film to have the Belgian task force added as a supported parameter to {{WikiProject Film}} - otherwise, the template won't recognise it as a valid parameter (and thus it categorises the page in Category:Pages using WikiProject Film with unknown parameters. Harryboyles 13:43, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation to participate in a research

Hello,

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.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC) [reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2024).

Administrator changes

Crisco 1492

CheckUser changes

Oversighter changes

Guideline and policy news

Following a discussion, the discussion-only period proposal that went for a trial to refine the requests for adminship (RfA) process has been discontinued.
Following a request for comment, Administrator recall is adopted as a policy.

Technical news

Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068

Arbitration

RoySmith, Barkeep49 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2024 Arbitration Committee Elections. ThadeusOfNazereth and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate from 3 November 2024 until 12 November 2024 to stand in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections.
The Arbitration Committee is seeking volunteers for roles such as clerks, access to the COI queue, checkuser, and oversight.

Miscellaneous

An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:20, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder to participate in Wikipedia research

Hello,

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.

Take the survey here.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 13 November 2024 (UTC) [reply]

ArbCom 2024 Elections voter message

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.

If you wish to participate in the 2024 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:09, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2024).

Administrator changes

Interface administrator changes