User talk:Philippe

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This user may have left Wikipedia. Philippe has not edited Wikipedia since April 2023. As a result, any requests made here may not receive a response. If you are seeking assistance, you may need to approach someone else.

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Did it again. :-) -Philippe (talk) 18:20, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Karl_Klug&curid=31658515&diff=672163636&oldid=670779637--TM 19:18, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that seems reasonable. Certainly not done to improve the encyclopedia. Thanks for pointing it out. -Philippe (talk) 19:51, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

With respect Philippe, I suggest that we should not be speculating on an editor's mental health; even when tempered with what may or may not be best for it. -- Ched : ? 07:10, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ched, you're quite right. I will remove that portion. Not sure what I was thinking there. Thank you. -Philippe (talk) 07:12, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Philippe! Just to let you we're deactivating the all-access UTRS account associated with Philippe (WMF). If you want, you're absolutely welcome to request a new account from Philippe and we'll activate you right away, as well as flag you as a CU. Thanks! * Salvidrim! * 02:21, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Philippe.JPG, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 00:07, 5 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability 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, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:57, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A year ago, you were recipient no. 1063 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:54, 15 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Two years ago, you were recipient no. 1063 of Precious, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:18, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Four years now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:39, 15 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

<3 . -Philippe (talk) 19:09, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The user Helmoony is mass-removing "Tunisian arabic" in articles that was in place since several months. after the debate in Tunisia portal in september, an admin finally decided to grant the mention of Tunisian arabic for the names of people and places. Things were so settled since then, but the user Helmoony is recently removing all the mentions, could you please do something about it ? Thank you.Zangouang (talk) 16:23, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I will be glad to take a look, but honestly it will likely not happen until this evening at the earliest. If you need quicker action, you might want to leave a note on WP:ANI for an administrator there to have a look. -Philippe (talk) 19:21, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I confirm that I have requested an account on the UTRS tool. -Philippe (talk)

• I've just activated your account, and asked our developper to flag you as CU. Glad to have you back! :) * Salvidrim! * 15:37, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As a former employee of WMF, you could perhaps give me some insight. You know the results of the harassment survey that were published (I saw your reaction on the mailing list). You may or may not know that those results were hugely inflated because they counted all responses, including those where people gave a value of zero (for the question: how many times did you experience the following types of harassment).

Quick overview:
The first two days of the survey, people couldn't skip items that didn't apply (Kalliope (WMF) reported on nov 4 that it had been fixed). This will have resulted in a lot of zero answers present.
The raw data of the results confirm that zero values were included: the average and standard deviation for revenge porn and hacking are mathematically impossible with only values between 1 and 100. The revenge porn results contain at least 381 zero's. It's a weak lower bound, the actual number cannot be determined from the average and standard deviation (doxxing for example could contain even more zero's, or none at all, the lower average/sdev ratio makes it impossible to conclude anything )
The revised report simply dropped the percentages (respondents who reported each type of harassment) and instead gives the averages for each type. This is useless information, because people gave inflated numbers. The average and sdev for hacking for example are only possible if the 14 highest responses add up to more than 1000 (49% of total). People having their account hacked more than 70 times?? The most likely explanation imo is that with 10 sliders from 0 to 100, people will have indicated the importance, rather than the number of incidents (or the sliders were difficult to move accurately, or a few trolls..).
There has been no straight answer to the claim, it seems obvious to me that they don't want to admit the error and give the correct results. The qualtrics application may or may not provide a way to count non-zero results (the help page for slider controls mentions limited analytic tools as a possible drawback ), I don't know, but the site explicitly mentions the option to download all data if users want to perform additional processing.
The most likely reason why they won't address the issue, imo, is that the real figures are much lower, and releasing them would raise the question why they didn't double-check the very unlikely results.

That's the short summary. Few people (outside the WMF) know the exact details I think, my first (erroneous) hypothesis (a technical error, forcing users to enter non-zero values) was based on a feedback post from nov 3 (saying he could only proceed to the next question after entering non-zero values for all the ten types listed), and it was this version that people posted on reddit and on Jimbo's talk page. People reading the survey talk page could also easily get the wrong idea. The two versions would give the same results btw, in both cases all surveys from 2 to 4 november would be affected. The big difference (which I should have realized much sooner): it's pretty unlikely that hundreds of participants would submit wrong answers because they couldn't finish the survey otherwise, and only one of them would report it.

My question: if you accept this version of events, do you think there is a chance that the WMF will publish the results eventually, or will they ignore such request because the impression of a "botched survey" is preferable to the alternative? I've seen little interest from the community, Patrick Earley's reactions (on the survey page and on his talk page) don't answer my questions, so I've given up trying to get answers on-wiki. I'm currently considering which science journalists or statistics blogs might be interested in doing a story about it.

BTW: Do you think any of the resignations last week (and the comments from Siko) could be related, or am I simply too focused on this case? Prevalence 12:45, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I should begin by saying that while this report was issued by members of my former team, I had nothing to do with its execution, and was not around for most of the time period in question, so I am not privy to any details about how this was constructed or what design choices were made.

You ask

• if you accept this version of events, do you think there is a chance that the WMF will publish the results eventually, or will they ignore such request because the impression of a "botched survey" is preferable to the alternative? - I do not yet know enough to know if I accept this version of events. However, my experience with this team suggests that if errors were made, they will be corrected.
• Do you think any of the resignations last week (and the comments from Siko) could be related, or am I simply too focused on this case? - No, my understanding is that none of them related in any way to this case. Rather, they were exactly what they appear to be... a mix of people moving on for various reasons. I would place this case's importance in those decisions at around 0%. -Philippe (talk) 12:52, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In my scenario the decision would have come from the top, not from inside Support and Safety or CE. It hasn't exactly been a good news show lately, maybe they wanted to avoid yet another WMF controversy on top of it. Thank you for your answer. Prevalence 13:34, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think that in the fullness of time, we will realize that this is exactly what it appears to be: errors that were made at an unfortunate time. Sometimes with hoofbeats you chase zebras... but sometimes, they're just horses. This is all horse, I think. -Philippe (talk) 13:49, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When Patrick Earley gives "the data and graphs weren't as informative as they should have been" as motivation for removing the percentages and displaying the averages instead, what else can one conclude? I changed my opinion about the team not responsible for the decision btw, I just noticed that even though these averages are useless as averages, they do correspond fairly well to the number of users who would have reported each type of harassment (if you take 30 as corresponding to 100%, most values seem reasonable). So the team could easily justify it for themselves, no harm done...

Doesn't change much as far as I'm concerned, for someone who understands averages, the results for the rare types are still absurd. And they introduced another error: saying that the statistics are based on 1215 respondents, instead of on the specific number of responses received for each of the ten questions. For hacking there were 760 responses, which gives a total of 2044 (760*2.69) reported incidents, not 3268 (2.69*1215). Prevalence 15:13, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to give you thanks for conducting that gigantic CU at Isla Riordan, and some coffee to help you stay awake through it. Much appreciated! GABHello! 22:48, 13 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Aww, thanks! Much appreciated. :) -Philippe (talk) 22:50, 13 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ping me if you need a hand. Risker (talk) 22:52, 13 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I salute your decisiveness when recommending a duckblock for Gushtasp as a Egaplaicesp sock. Egaplaicesp is however definately the same person as the prominent sockmaster Tirgil34. Having this fact established by an administrator would be of great help to future SPIs. Aside from their same behaviour of promoting Turkic at the expense of Indo-European history in Central Asia through edit warring and extensive socking, their connection can be proven with solid evidence:

• Proto-Turkic language/Urheimat: Tirgil34 (IP sock)[1]/Egaplaicesp[2]
• Haplogroup R1b: Tirgil34[3]/Egaplaicesp[4]
• Identical way of marking edits: Tigil34 (IP sock)[5]/Egaplaicesp[6]
• Quoting "starling.rinet.ru" source: Tirgil34[7][8][9][10][11][12]/Egaplaicesp[13]
• Promoting the image "Eickstedt Europe Turanid.jpg": Tirgil34 (image created by Su4kin)[14]/Egaplaicesp[15]
• Pazyryk culture/Pazyryk rug: Tirgil34[16]/Egaplaicesp[17]
• Karasuk culture/Karasuk languages: Tirgil34[18]/Egaplaicesp[19]
• Quoting "ncbi" source: Tirgil34[20][21]/Egaplaicesp[22][23][24][25][26]

Regards. Krakkos (talk) 21:30, 21 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree that it would be useful for future purposes, I have a fairly strong belief that checkuser is a tool of last resort - when we can demonstrate account relatedness in other ways (as we very clearly can here), there is no need to use Checkuser. Using it probes into the activities of anyone using the same IP, and any innocent parties deserve to have their privacy protected as much as possible. Therefore, where we have behavioral evidence that can clearly connect users, I always consider that a better way to do so. I agree with you that this evidence is damning, and would consider it to make the connections. -Philippe (talk) 04:33, 22 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Philippe, can you explain what exactly is going on at User:Gmartin1122/Wikia? I was just dating the draft and it looks like you created a WP:UP#COPIES of Wikia with incomplete attribution which is fine but why is it in the userspace of another editor who's only edit was a COI notice and why are you working on it there? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:52, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gmartin is a coworker of mine at Wikia. We are collaborating on a new draft of the article to present on the talk page as a beginning point for an update to the article, in hopes that we can convince some folks to make the necessary updates. That is also why both of us placed COI notices up pertaining to Wikia. We won't be directly editing the article, of course, just providing a draft as a starting point, on the talk page. -Philippe (talk) 02:57, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, that makes more sense. Thanks. The userspace choice was a bit unusual to me. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:05, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I absolutely understand that. Obviously, we're working very hard to be sure that we are within policy here - when we take the suggestions to the article talk, we will again disclose our COI, and use the appropriate templates. At the same time, because this article is a derivative work of the one that's already there, the attribution issue will also be cured. If there's anything we can do to make this more transparent, I welcome the suggestion. (Obviously, the intention was to lay all of this out when we go to the article talk, you just beat us to it - and beat me to getting the article cleaned up and ready as well, btw.) -Philippe (talk) 03:07, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:05, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:50, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:35, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:51, 22 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Philippe.

A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.

It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:48, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:54, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:44, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:10, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:43, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:52, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes

NinjaRobotPirate * Schwede66 * K6ka * Ealdgyth * Ferret * Cyberpower678 * Mz7 * Primefac * Dodger67

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Guideline and policy news

• A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
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Technical news

• When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
• Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
• The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.

Obituaries

• JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.

---

13:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

WikiLGBT is on Twitter!

Hello Philippe! Follow the Wikimedia LGBT user group on Twitter at @wikilgbt for news, photos, and other topics of interest to LGBT Wikipedans and allies. Use #wikiLGBT to share any Wiki Loves Pride stuff that you would like to share (whether this month or any day of the year) or to alert folks to things that the LGBT Wikipedan community should know. RachelWex (talk) For more information about Wiki Loves Pride, - click here -.

RachelWex 17:21, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

You're invited to The Black Woman is God Edit-a-Thon at SOMArts in San Francisco on Saturday July 22, 1-4 pm. It'll be at 934 Brannan Street (between 8th & 9th). Everyone is welcome to join this editing event, held in conjunction with The Black Woman is God exhibition to raise the online visibility of Black women artists and challenge the gaps in art history that erase or minimize Black women's contributions as artists, activists and social change-makers. (Message requested by Dreamyshade and delivered on 14:23, 9 July 2017 (UTC). You can subscribe/unsubscribe to San Francisco event talk page notices here.)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2017).

Administrator changes

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Guideline and policy news

• ACTRIAL, a research experiment that restricts article creation to autoconfirmed users, will begin on September 7. It will run for six months. You can learn more about the research specifics at meta:Research:Autoconfirmed article creation trial, while Wikipedia talk:Autoconfirmed article creation trial is probably the best venue for general discussion.
• Following an RfC, WP:G13 speedy deletion criterion now applies to any page in the draftspace that has not been edited in six months. There is a bot-generated report, updated daily, to help identify potentially qualifying drafts that have not been submitted through articles for creation.

Technical news

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Arbitration

• Applications for CheckUser and Oversight are being accepted by the Arbitration Committee until September 12. Community discussion of the candidates will begin on September 18.

---

Hello,

Beginning in September 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-harassment tool team will be conducting a survey to gauge how well tools, training, and information exists to assist English Wikipedia administrators in recognizing and mitigating things like sockpuppetry, vandalism, and harassment.

The survey should only take 5 minutes, and your individual response will not be made public. This survey will be integral for our team to determine how to better support administrators.

To take the survey sign up here and we will send you a link to the form.

We really appreciate your input!

Please let us know if you wish to opt-out of all massmessage mailings from the Anti-harassment tools team.

For the Anti-harassment tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 20:56, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm leaving this note here, because I know that many people still have me watchlisted. I am disclosing a COI related to Atlassian. I am an employee of Atlassian, though any edits made here are unrelated to my employment. With that in mind, I've added the new Atlassian logo, and left a note on Talk:Atlassian with a link. Would someone please swap out the infobox logo? Thanks. -Philippe (talk) 11:03, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploading File:New logo for Atlassian Corporation.svg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 18:01, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2017).

Administrator changes

Boing! said Zebedee * Ansh666 * Ad Orientem

Tonywalton * AmiDaniel * Silence * BanyanTree * Magioladitis * Vanamonde93 * Mr.Z-man * Jdavidb * Jakec * Ram-Man * Yelyos * Kurt Shaped Box

Guideline and policy news

• Following a successful proposal to create it, a new user right called "edit filter helper" is now assignable and revocable by administrators. The right allows non-administrators to view the details of private edit filters, but not to edit them.
• Following a discussion about mass-application of ECP and how the need for logging and other details of an evolving consensus may have been missed by some administrators, a rough guide to extended confirmed protection has been written. This information page describes how the extended-confirmed aspects of the protection policy are currently being applied by administrators.

Technical news

• You can now search for IP ranges at Special:Contributions. Some log pages and Special:DeletedContributions are not yet supported. Wildcards (e.g. 192.168.0.*) are also not supported, but the popular contribsrange gadget will continue to work.

Arbitration

• Community consultation on the 2017 candidates for CheckUser and Oversight has concluded. The Arbitration Committee will appoint successful candidates by October 11.
• A request for comment is open regarding the structure, rules, and procedures of the December 2017 Arbitration Committee election, and how to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

---

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2017).

Administrator changes

Longhair * Megalibrarygirl * TonyBallioni * Vanamonde93

Allen3 * Eluchil404 * Arthur Rubin * Bencherlite

Technical news

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team is creating an "Interaction Timeline" tool that intends to assist administrators in resolving user conduct disputes. Feedback on the concept may be posted on the talk page.
• A new function is now available to edit filter managers that will make it easier to look for multiple strings containing spoofed text.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors will be invited to submit candidate statements for the 2017 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 12 until November 21. Voting will begin on November 27 and last until December 10.
• Following a request for comment, Ritchie333, Yunshui and Ymblanter will serve as the Electoral Commission for the 2017 ArbCom Elections.

Obituaries

• The Wikipedia community has recently learned that Allen3 (William Allen Peckham) passed away on December 30, 2016, the same day as JohnCD. Allen began editing in 2005 and became an administrator that same year.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2017).

Administrator changes

Joe Roe

JzG

Ericorbit * Perceval * Thingg * Tristanb * Violetriga

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, a new section has been added to the username policy which disallows usernames containing emoji, emoticons or otherwise "decorative" usernames, and usernames that use any non-language symbols. Administrators should discuss issues related to these types of usernames before blocking.

Technical news

• Wikimedians are now invited to vote on the proposals in the 2017 Community Wishlist Survey on Meta Wiki until 10 December 2017. In particular, there is a section of the survey regarding new tools for administrators and for anti-harassment.
• A new function is available to edit filter managers which can be used to store matches from regular expressions.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is open until Sunday 23:59, 10 December 2017 (UTC). There are 12 candidates running for 8 vacant seats.

Miscellaneous

• Over the last few months, several users have reported backlogs that require administrator attention at WP:ANI, with the most common backlogs showing up on WP:SPI, WP:AIV and WP:RFPP. It is requested that all administrators take some time during this month to help clear backlogs wherever possible. It should be noted that AIV reports are not always valid; however, they still need to be cleared, which may include needing to remind users on what qualifies as vandalism.
• The Wikimedia Foundation Community health initiative is conducting a survey for English Wikipedia contributors on their experience and satisfaction level with Administrator's Noticeboard/Incidents. This survey will be integral to gathering information about how this noticeboard works (i.e. which problems it deals with well and which problems it struggles with). If you would like to take this survey, please sign up on this page, and a link for the survey will be emailed to you via Special:EmailUser.

---

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2017).

Administrator changes

Muboshgu

Anetode * Laser brain * Worm That Turned

None

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

• 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.

Technical news

• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey results have been posted. The Community Tech team will investigate and address the top ten results.
• The Anti-Harassment Tools team is inviting comments on new blocking tools and improvements to existing blocking tools for development in early 2018. Feedback can be left on the discussion page or by email.

Arbitration

• Following the results of the 2017 election, the following editors have been (re)appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Alex Shih, BU Rob13, Callanecc, KrakatoaKatie, Opabinia regalis, Premeditated Chaos, RickinBaltimore, Worm That Turned.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2018).

Administrator changes

None

Blurpeace * Dana boomer * Deltabeignet * Denelson83 * Grandiose * Salvidrim! * Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

• 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 tag will 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 standardized editnotice 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.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2018).

Administrator changes

Lourdes+

AngelOfSadness * Bhadani * Chris 73 * Coren * Friday * Midom * Mike V

+ Lourdes has requested that her admin rights be temporarily removed, pending her return from travel.

Guideline and policy news

• The autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) is scheduled to end on 14 March 2018. The results of the research collected can be read on Meta Wiki.
• 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 feature contains_all that edit filter managers may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2018 Steward elections, the following users are our new stewards: -revi, Green Giant, Rxy, There'sNoTime, `l.

Obituaries

• Bhadani (Gangadhar Bhadani) passed away on 8 February 2018. Bhadani joined Wikipedia in March 2005 and became an administrator in September 2005. While he was active, Bhadani was regarded as one of the most prolific Wikipedians from India.

---

You're invited to an Art+Feminism Edit-a-Thon at SFMOMA in San Francisco on Thursday March 8, 5-9 pm. It'll be at 151 Third Street, 2nd floor, free to the public. Everyone is welcome to participate in an evening of communal updating of Wikipedia entries on subjects related to gender, art, and feminism. (This message is from User:Dreamyshade. You can subscribe/unsubscribe to San Francisco event talk page notices here.)
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:58, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2018).

Administrator changes

331dot * Cordless Larry * ClueBot NG

Gogo Dodo * Pb30 * Sebastiankessel * Seicer * SoLando

Guideline and policy news

• 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.
• The notability guideline for organizations and companies has been substantially rewritten following the closure of this request for comment. Among the changes, the guideline more clearly defines the sourcing requirements needed for organizations and companies to be considered notable.
• The six-month autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) ended on 14 March 2018. The post-trial research report has been published. A request for comment is now underway to determine whether the restrictions from ACTRIAL should be implemented permanently.

Technical news

• 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.

---

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2018).

Administrator changes

None

Chochopk * Coffee * Gryffindor * Jimp * Knowledge Seeker * Lankiveil * Peridon * Rjd0060

Guideline and policy news

• The ability to create articles directly in mainspace is now indefinitely restricted to autoconfirmed users.
• 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.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee is seeking additional clerks to help with the arbitration process.

Obituaries

• 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.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2018).

Administrator changes

None

Al Ameer son * AliveFreeHappy * Cenarium * Lupo * MichaelBillington

Guideline and policy news

• 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.
• Following an AN discussion, all pages with content related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, are now under indefinite general sanctions.

Technical news

• 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.
• There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups.
• 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.

Miscellaneous

• In early May, an unusually high level of failed login attempts was observed. The WMF has stated that this was an "external effort to gain unauthorized access to random accounts". Under Wikipedia policy, administrators are required to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2018).

Administrator changes

Pbsouthwood * TheSandDoctor

Gogo Dodo

Andrevan * Doug * EVula * KaisaL * Tony Fox * WilyD

Bureaucrat changes

Andrevan * EVula

Guideline and policy news

• 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.
• A request for comment closed with a consensus that the {{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.

Technical news

• 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.

---

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2018).

Administrator changes

Sro23

KaisaL * Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

• 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.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2018).

Administrator changes

None

Asterion * Crisco 1492 * KF * Kudpung * Liz * Randykitty * Spartaz

Optimist on the run - Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

Amorymeltzer * Mr. Stradivarius * MusikAnimal * MSGJ * TheDJ * Xaosflux

Guideline and policy news

• 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.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2018).

Administrator changes

Justlettersandnumbers * L235

Bgwhite * HorsePunchKid * J Greb * KillerChihuahua * Rami R * Winhunter

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678 * Deryck Chan * Oshwah * Pharos * Ragesoss * Ritchie333

Oversight changes

Guerillero * NativeForeigner * Snowolf * Xeno

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the process for appointing interface administrators has been established. Currently only existing admins can request these rights, while a new RfC has begun on whether it should be available to non-admins.
• 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.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
• The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
• 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.

---

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2018).

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment determined that non-administrators will not be able to request interface admin access.
• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the Mediation Committee should be closed and marked as historical.
• A village pump discussion has been ongoing about whether the proposed deletion policy (PROD) should be clarified or amended.
• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether pending changes protection should be applied automatically to today's featured article (TFA) in order to mitigate a recent trend of severe image vandalism.

Technical news

• 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.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2018).

Administrator changes

Al Ameer son * Randykitty * Spartaz

Boson * Daniel J. Leivick * Efe * Esanchez7587 * Fred Bauder * Garzo * Martijn Hoekstra * Orangemike

Interface administrator changes

Deryck Chan

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the Mediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
• 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".
• A proposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page to interface administrators in order to mitigate the impact of compromised accounts.

Technical news

• 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.
• Since deployment of Partial blocks on Test Wikipedia, several bugs were identified. Most of them are now fixed. Administrators are encouraged to test the new deployment and report new bugs on Phabricator or leave feedback on the Project's talk page. You can request administrator access on the Test Wiki here.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 3 December 2018. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

Miscellaneous

• 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.
• Wikipedia policy requires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.

Obituaries

• 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.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).

Guideline and policy news

• There are a number of new or changed speedy deletion criteria, each previously part of WP:CSD#G6:

1. G14 (new): Disambiguation pages that disambiguate only zero or one existing pages are now covered under the new G14 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-disambig}}; the text is unchanged and candidates may be found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
2. 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.
3. 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}}.

• The Wikimedia Foundation now requires all interface administrators to enable two-factor authentication.
• 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:

1. At least 8 characters in length
2. Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
3. Different from their username

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.

Arbitration

• Following the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: AGK, Courcelles, GorillaWarfare, Joe Roe, Mkdw, SilkTork.

Miscellaneous

• 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.

---

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2019).

Administrator changes

Enterprisey * JJMC89

BorgQueen

Harro5 * Jenks24 * Graft * R. Baley

Interface administrator changes

Enterprisey

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is currently open to reevaluate the activity requirements for administrators.
• 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.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2019 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2019, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2019, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• 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.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2019).

Guideline and policy news

• The RfC on administrator activity requirements failed to reach consensus for any proposal.
• 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.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2019 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Base, Einsbor, Jon Kolbert, Schniggendiller, and Wim b.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2019).

Technical news

• In Special:Preferences under "Appearance" - "Advanced options", there is now an option to show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link.
• 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.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee clarified that the General 1RR prohibition for Palestine-Israel articles may only be enforced on pages with the {{ARBPIA 1RR editnotice}} edit notice.

Miscellaneous

• 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.

---

This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 03:00, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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.

For the Arbitration Committee, -Cameron11598 21:04, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment concluded that creating pages in the portal namespace should be restricted to autoconfirmed users.
• Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.

Technical news

• 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.

Miscellaneous

• A request for comment is currently open to amend the community sanctions procedure to exclude non XfD or CSD deletions.
• A proposal to remove pre-2009 indefinite IP blocks is currently open for discussion.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).

Administrator changes

Andonic * Consumed Crustacean * Enigmaman * Euryalus * EWS23 * HereToHelp * Nv8200pa * Peripitus * StringTheory11 * Vejvancicky

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project.
• An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
• An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.

Technical news

• 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.
• The 2019 talk pages consultation produced a report for Phase 1 and has entered Phase 2.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).

Administrator changes

28bytes * Ad Orientem * Ansh666 * Beeblebrox * Boing! said Zebedee * BU Rob13 * Dennis Brown * Deor * DoRD * Floquenbeam¹ * Flyguy649 * Fram² * Gadfium * GB fan * Jonathunder * Kusma * Lectonar * Moink * MSGJ * Nick * Od Mishehu * Rama * Spartaz * Syrthiss * TheDJ * WJBscribe

¹Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

²Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.