User talk:A Train/Archive XIV

Greetings in this Christmas season

I'm still feeling the effects of our exchange at the Frangipane AfD, and even if I'm not sure how to proceed, I want to at least express my appreciation for your contributions to Wikipedia.  Thank you, Unscintillating (talk) 16:55, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi Unscintillating, I hope you had a lovely Christmas and an enjoyable New Year. I'm sorry to hear that you are feeling any stress at all about that AfD. You and I had a good back and forth but that's what Wikipedia is all about, isn't it? Lots of frank exchanges of opinions in search of consensus? There's absolutely no hard feelings at all from my end, if that helps at all. Have a wonderful 2018 and I'm sure I'll see you around. A Train^talk 12:23, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Record charts

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New Year's resolution: Write more articles for Women in Red!

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Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2018!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2018!

Hello A Train, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2018. Happy editing, Chris Troutman (talk) 23:49, 27 December 2017 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Chris, I hope you had a great Christmas and a happy new year. Cheers! A Train^talk 12:20, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

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Happy New Year!

New Year cats

A Train,
Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia, and a Happy New Year to you and yours! North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:11, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

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Happy new year to you too, North America! A Train^talk 12:19, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Your recent discounting of a source

At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter A. Appel, I could not rebut the allegations made against Bloomberg because they were proofs by assertion groundless opinion, considered disruptive at AfD; even though I knew that if evidence were attempted I could refute it.

Further, the casual reader should read into the discussion that neither Bloomberg nor S&P Global are so fiducially irresponsible as to put their name on a wiki, to the extent that the notion should raise a question of competence or bias.

And further, my assertions were backed by the two RSN discussions I cited, which had been dismissed with IDHT.  As per the RSN, editors are aware of the problem of puffery.  In my experience, this doesn't make Bloomberg any less than among the best when it comes to measuring Wikipedia's notability.

There is one part of your close that I don't want to over state the case, that I have seen a difference between the usefulness of bloomberg biographies and Bloomberg company profiles.  The topic under discussion, though, represented the founding of companies.

Respectfully, Unscintillating (talk) 19:23, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Hey Unscintillating, how's it going? I've read through that old RS noticeboard discussion you linked to at the AfD (this one, right?) and it doesn't read like a particularly conclusive discussion to me. Even if we all agreed that the source is good (I still don't think it is, FWIW), that one single reliable source is not a sturdy rock upon which to build a BLP. I feel like I'm not really grasping your whole argument, though; where exactly is the fiduciary responsibility fitting into all this? You lost me there.

[This paragraph refactored below into a new section. 17:36, 3 January 2018 (UTC)]

A Train^talk 20:32, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

At both the AfD and above I've identified two discussions in that RSN archive, those being #2 and #22.  This diff is an editor who opined that there was consensus in that RSN archive.

As for what fiduciary responsibility means, perhaps you have never been on a board of officers of a corporation.  The point is that if these huge corporations put their name on a Wiki, they would be associating themselves with all manner of personal opinions expressed on that Wiki, which would expose their assets.

This seems at least partly related, that attorney User:Bearian states on his user page, "If you become an admin, you are held to the highest standard, that of a fiduciary."

From looking at the cited Bloomberg web page: for "updates", "Documentation will be required", which appears to be the same standard as for Wikipedia's WP:Verifiability.

As per WP:Articles for deletion#How to contribute, "a pattern of groundless opinion, proof by assertion, and ignoring content guidelines may become disruptive."  AfD editors are directed to this information in the AfD edit notice.

Look again at a statement regarding Bloomberg in the AfD, "there's no editorial oversight or fact-checking".  Do you agree that this is groundless personal point of view?  Unscintillating (talk) 17:36, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

It's very good of you to explain fiduciary responsibility to me, compadre, but unnecessary. ;)

The place where you lost me is what precisely Bloomberg's fiduciary responsibility has to do with Wikipedia policy. The answer is nothing at all. For our purposes on Wikipedia, it does not matter how strict the requirements are for being listed in Bloomberg's database. I'm sure I don't have to return the favor by explaining the logical fallacy of special pleading to you.

The nut of your argument is that a listing in Bloomberg's business intelligence database is a reliable source upon which to base an article. There are several problems with this.

• The Bloomberg database is enormous, and contains board-level officers for countless corporations. Your argument suggests that they are all, as a result, notable. I do not think you will find many established editors who will concur, though I encourage you to bring the question to the RS noticeboard if you have any doubt.
• The goal of every Wikipedia article is to be a work of encyclopedic prose about the subject. The Bloomberg listing is a little less than a CV: how you could squeeze any prose blood from that stone I have no idea. The canonical example of "significant coverage" from the GNG page is "book-length history of IBM by Robert Sobel"; is a non-prose, non-bylined listing in Bloomberg really in the same ballpark or even the same universe as that?

So yes, I'm sure that Bloomberg endeavour to ensure that the listing in their database are correct. I don't care, and neither should you. In an article with an otherwise solid foundation, such a reference would be handy for establishing certain uncontroversial facts. But you cannot use it alone as the basis for an encyclopedia article. A Train^talk 18:28, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm glad that we agree that "Bloomberg endeavour[s] to ensure that the listing in their database are correct".  Unscintillating (talk) 21:08, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

My friend, if that is your takeaway from this conversation (and the previous conversations with other editors, as highlighted by K.e.coffman below, then I don't know what to tell you. If, over the course of almost two years, you have never managed to convince anybody of your position, it may be time to reassess that position. A Train^talk 21:12, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

No, we just agreed that "Bloomberg endeavour[s] to ensure that the listing in their database are correct", which is a wise thing for a fiduciary to say.  Regarding the one case of anecdotal evidence that k.e.coffman brought to the discussion below, I had already responded above when I said, "As per the RSN, editors are aware of the problem of puffery."  Unscintillating (talk) 22:19, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Okay, cool bro. Thanks for letting me know. A Train^talk 22:21, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Bloomberg News vs S&P Market Intelligence

This was discussed with editor Unscintillating here:

• User_talk:Drmies/Archive_103#Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Semil_Shah
• User_talk:Drmies/Archive_103#Reaching_the_decision_at_the_Semil_Shah_AfD

That was more than a year ago; that's why I said I was surprised that they kept bringing up these directory listings at AfDs. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:50, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Another discussion

The following blockquote is refactored from above, in a reply to me:

:At any rate, fully 50% of the editors arguing to keep that article were confirmed socks. I think you can pick a better hill to die on than this one. A Train^talk 20:32, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Refactored by Unscintillating (talk) 17:36, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Since you referred to me as a confirmed sock and disregarded my input for purposes of deciding this AfD discussion, I don’t know if your openness to a request to review your decision to delete the article on Appel extends to me. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe I am characterized as a confirmed sock. I acknowledged during the investigation that I canvassed out of genuine inexperience and I have been unblocked after the administrator who initially blocked me reconsidered the ban. I do recognize that I’m an SPA so I don’t carry the weight of far more experienced editors, and I appreciate that you must have skepticism as to whether I have a conflict of interest (I really don’t). Despite that, I would really appreciate it if you would help me better understand your decision. Please let me know if you would be willing to respond to a few questions of mine, and, if so, I will provide them. Thank you. Bernice McCullers (talk) 22:06, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi Bernice, my understanding is that you have been unblocked on the basis that you agree to refrain from further sockpuppetry. You acted in bad faith to influence an AfD discussion that, for now, has represented the entire width and breadth of your editing career. I think acting as though you've done nothing wrong is not a great look. If you want to be taken seriously as a well-meaning editor, I would strongly suggest that you go make improvements to non-Peter Appel articles for a while before beating this horse to death.

If you have some specific questions you'd like to pose about the Peter Appel AfD, I will answer them. But it's not helping you appear like less of a single-purpose account. A Train^talk 09:45, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

I hope you find the following to be a legitimate inquiry regarding your decision to delete the Appel article and not just a worthless intrusion by an SPA. Feel free to move all of this, as well as your responses, if any, to my talk page if you don’t want it cluttering yours.

Let me begin by saying I agree with you that my career as a Wikipedia editor has been less than inspiring and one that hasn’t earned the time and attention of other editors who live and breathe here. However, I have not acted like I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve acknowledged that I canvassed, and although it was due to inexperience on my part, I get that it was inappropriate and have committed to not engage in inappropriate behavior again. And although you view me as a sock puppeteering, meat puppeteering, canvassing, conflicted SPA, and you see this AfD discussion as a dead horse and a hill not worth dying on, I nevertheless believe that your deletion decision warrants some clarification, and that the questions below about your decision are worthy of a response even though they come from me. So hopefully you’ll give them a fair reading.

First, when you made the unilateral decision to delete the Appel article, were you saying that a “rough consensus” had been reached or were you basing it on the Wikipedia policy contained in the deletion guidelines for administrators that provides that a closing admin must determine, as part of determining a “rough consensus,” whether an article violates Wikipedia’s core content policies (verifiability, BLPs, etc.)? If not, what guideline did you rely on? From what I have learned thus far, Wikipedia guidelines provide that the role of a non-involved administrator in a AfD is to determine if a consensus has been achieved; I have not found anything that states that a closing admin is supposed to weigh in with an independent view of whether the subject of the AfD is notable. In the case of Appel's AfD, even if you disregard the two SPAs, it seems pretty clear that there was no consensus (two very experienced editors voted to keep (not including mine and the person I canvassed with), while two others (not including the ubiquitous JPL) voted to delete. However, rather than rule it no consensus, you decided to delete.

Second, you decided to delete even though you acknowledged that it was a “close call.” As I'm sure you know, there's another consensus guideline, which is actually set forth in boldface, that states that “when in doubt, don’t delete.” I recognize that one can possibly harbor no doubt in a close call, but was there some doubt when you made the “close call” (or perhaps you were just being polite)?

Third, if your decision to delete was, in fact, entirely due to your view that the article violated Wikipedia’s core content policies, and not due to your view that there was a consensus to delete or that Appel is not notable or worthy of note, then are sources that are verifiable, independent and without any reputational issues, but not widely read/viewed, considered unreliable? While some of the sources in the article are pretty weak, most, if not all, appear to be legitimate and verifiable sources of information from independent third parties, even if they are not the New York Times and Time magazine. Were most or all these sources deemed unreliable? Asked differently, if the contents of the article were all contained in an article about the subject in, for example, a lead newspaper in a major metropolitan area, would you have decided to keep?

Fourth, once I get through the editorial blocking and tackling needed to establish credibility, I may have an interest in creating biographical articles for people like Appel who have had outlier success in their fields but who either shun publicity, do not self-promote or the media simply does not find them in any significant way. However, if, by definition, you have to have meaningful press coverage in order to be considered “notable,” then this pursuit would obviously be a waste of time. Is Wikipedia a place to learn about people “worthy of note” who do not court, or otherwise have, significant media attention or, is it, in fact, only a place for topics that have significant press coverage? If it’s the latter, what does the standard “worthy of note” mean and why does the standard even exist if someone without substantial press coverage cannot be notable enough to warrant an article; i.e., what is meant in the notability guidelines by “significant, interesting or unusual enough to deserve attention (emphasis mine)”?

Fifth, if a non-SPA made the same arguments I did, and they therefore counted in your deliberation, would the result have changed?

I apologize about the length of the foregoing, but I really do believe these are legitimate questions that warrant clarification. I hope you don't dismiss them because of my lowly status on the editorial totem pole. Thanks for your time on this. Bernice McCullers (talk) 21:54, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi Bernice McCullers. I regret to admit that I skimmed most of that. Brevity is an important quality if you're going to work on a collaborative encyclopedia. Even though some of us "live and breathe" around here, we still gotta walk the dog and catch the bus, you know? You can also drop all the obsequious bowing and scraping, which someone less chill than me could interpret as facetious. The best way to prove your good intentions is to go make some positive contributions to non-Peter Appel articles.

The single biggest reason for my decision, in a nutshell, was WP:BLP. BLP was created years back because Wikipedia very nearly got sued into oblivion, so BLP is handled with the utmost seriousness. To comply with BLP, it is essential that biographies of living persons have a rock-solid foundation of several reliable sources, which I'm sure by now you've read are "third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". If you go back and look at your list of sources for the Appel article and scrutinize them through that lens, you may understand where I was coming from better.

If you read this and think I'm still full of crap, by all means take the AfD to Deletion Review; that's what it's there for. A Train^talk 07:35, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2018

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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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Administrators

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2018 in North Korea

Can you undelete 2018 in North Korea, which you deleted following a discussion? The concern shared by the nominator and all three participants has been resolved. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:45, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

@Finnusertop: done! A Train^talk 15:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Deletion review for Wu Yongning

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Wu Yongning. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Valoem ^{talk contrib} 07:15, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dheeraj Singh Moirangthem

Hi, A Train. You deleted three articles per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dheeraj Singh Moirangthem in October 2017. I happened to see the AfD — god knows why — and noticed the articles were all bluelinked. It turned out they had all been recreated by User:ArsenalFan700 (sometimes by moving/redirecting, but in any case, they all came back to the encyclopedia). I nominated them for speedy per G4, as well as deleting a couple of redirects myself, and thought of reproaching ArsenalFan, but checked your page history first to see if perhaps he had consulted the deleting admin. It turned out he sort of had. Well, not consulted so much as told you he had recreated Dheeraj Singh Moirangthem.[1] This was after another user, in fact the nominator at the AfD, had posted to say the player was now notable and could you restore the article.[2] You archived the posts along with a whole lot of others, probably not noticing that those were questions. So now I'm uncertain about my speedy nominations. I can't face researching the other two articles (I know nothing about football), but I certainly can't see that you have been consulted about them. Anyway. I'll just leave this in your lap. :-) Please remove my speedy tags if you think that's best. Bishonen | talk 14:12, 13 January 2018 (UTC).

These players were not notable in October when they played in a World Cup but for players under the age of 17. In November they started playing in the I-League, India's professional football league. That is why they were deleted in October and recreated in November. There was no reason to speedy delete without consulting first. --ArsenalFan700 (talk) 16:48, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Marcuscw

FYI in regards to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marcus Van Wattum. Kr, Sam Sailor 11:17, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout

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Any chance you would userfy an article for me?

Hi A Train, Found you as one of the admins willing to userfy pages. One of my first and only articles, Ty Morse, was deleted last week after a deletion discussion that focused on RS, most of the sources came from newspapers, and GNG, which seemed to be in a gray area. Ultimately, the admin deleted it, which was incredibly disappointing to me. As an inexperienced editor, I think I didn't have the right wiki-speak for the debate. I'd like the chance to work on my article, improve it, and eventually resubmit it. Could you help me get access to the deleted article? Jemima1418 (talk) 20:30, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

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Feburary 2018 at Women in Red

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Administrators' newsletter – February 2018

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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Women's History Month 2018 at Women in Red

		Welcome to Women in Red's March 2018 worldwide online editathons. Historically, our March event has been one of the biggest offerings of the year. This year, we are collaborating with two other wiki communities. Our article campaign is the official on-line/virtual node for Art+Feminism. Our image campaign supports the Whose Knowledge? initiative. Women's History Month 2018 Continuing: #1day1woman Global Initiative
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Administrators' newsletter – March 2018

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, علاء.

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.

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A note

Kinda old but I don't check up on my old AfDs often. This is a prime example of bad logic imo. Firstly, INHERITED makes sense but not in conjunction with further logic, if a random man were to be suddenly selected as the VP of the United States of America right now, obviously the man would have notability due to the position he holds. The fact that you think the keep sides were flawed when clearly it wasn't the only logic that was offered is baffling. Obviously it's closed now and I have no qualms about the matter, so consider this as my 2 cents, just. --QEDK (後 🌸 桜) 15:22, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

How can I have a rollback form to block vandalism n wikipedia

Please tell me,how can I get rollbacks? And also please me the way to stop vandalism through rollback!!! So, please reply in my talk page (@NARUTO FAN) NARUTO FAN (talk) 19:48, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Please reply as soon as you can!!! NARUTO FAN (talk) 19:49, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@NARUTO FAN: Give Wikipedia:Rollback a read for short gist on why it's used where and when you need the right. You should give it a thought before straight up requesting the right. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 20:14, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

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April 2018 at Women in Red

		Welcome to Women in Red's April 2018 worldwide online editathons. Focus on: April+Further with Art+Feminism Archaeology Military history (contest) Geofocus: Indian subcontinent Continuing: #1day1woman Global Initiative
		To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list or Women in Red/international list. To unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list. Follow us on Twitter: @wikiwomeninred --Rosiestep (talk) 12:04, 29 March 2018 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Signpost issue 4 – 29 March 2018

• Op-ed: Death knell for The Signpost?

• News and notes: Wiki Conference roundup and new appointments.

• Arbitration report: Ironing out issues in infoboxes; not sure yet about New Jersey; and an administrator who probably wasn't uncivil to a sockpuppet.

• In the media: The media on Wikipedia's workings: the good and not-so-good

• Traffic report: Real sports, real women and an imaginary country: what's on top for Wikipedia readers

• Featured content: Animals, Ships, and Songs

• Technology report: Timeless skin review by Force Radical.

• Special report: ACTRIAL wrap-up.

• Humour: WikiWorld Reruns

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Administrators' newsletter – April 2018

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.

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The Signpost: 26 April 2018

• From the editors: The Signpost's presses roll again

• Signpost: Future directions for The Signpost

• News and notes: Photo of Kim Jong-un. Stephen Hawking death tops hits on many Wikipedias.

• In the media: The rise of Wikipedia as a disinformation mop

• In focus: Admin reports board under criticism

• Special report: ACTRIAL results adopted by landslide

• Opinion: Guideline for Organization Notability revised

• Op-ed: World War II Myth-making and Wikipedia

• Community view: It's time we look past Women in Red to counter systemic bias

• Discussion report: The future of portals

• Arbitration report: No new cases, and one motion on administrative misconduct

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Military History

• Blog: Why the world reads Wikipedia

• Humour: Our Favorite Places to Whine About Stuff

• Traffic report: A quiet place to wrestle with the articles of March

• Technology report: Coming soon: Books-to-PDF, interactive maps, rollback confirmation

• Featured content: Featured content selected by the community

• Gallery: A look at some famous and not as well-known border tripoints

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User talk page privileges

Not that the user didn't deserve their block, but, contrary to what you seemed to be saying here, users are allowed to remove messages (save for SPI notices, MfD notices, and declined unblock requests from an active block) from their talk pages (they just can't then say they never got those warnings or notices). Daniel Case (talk) 19:22, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Daniel Case, I'm not sure why you're wading into an entirely moot 6-month old conversation but if you've read the relevant ANI archives then surely it's obvious why I did that? Thanks for your opinion. A Train^talk 17:54, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Sorry for the belated response.

I recently blocked one of Aggiefan's socks; that led me over to the page to see what the issues had been with the master account.

Over at AIV we occasionally see reports from people who don't know BLANKING and think that deleting warnings and messages on your talk page counts as vandalism. It has often fallen to me to point them to that link.

Looking over the AN/I, my opinion on the stated reasons for the block hasn't changed. He should have been blocked purely for the disruption he created by continuing to edit his way (as, in the grand scheme of things, he was). If an editor simply, and repeatedly, deletes the messages left on his or her talk page, other editors should just stop engaging them as obviously they're not interested in engaging. It's not a blockable offense in and of itself, and anytime we suggest that it is, we give credence to the idea that admins just make up the rules as they go along to suit their personal preferences. Daniel Case (talk) 05:53, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Daniel Case, I can see where you are coming from, and appreciate that you took the time to write a thoughtful response to me. I still disagree with you in this case, though. Here we had a user who had been disruptively editing forever. Aggiefan had managed to skirt any meaningful block for years because he sanitized his talk page to remove criticism, and admins who failed to make a significantly rigorous examination of the talk page history didn't get the full picture of the disruption. Wikipedia affords every user certain rights, until they abuse them. In this case, part of Aggiefan's abuse involved talk page whitewashing. I think my action was entirely responsible. For other, more recent examples of users who managed to extend an abusive tenure on Wikipedia through memory hole-ing criticism from their talk pages, check out User:SwisterTwister. A Train^talk 09:04, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Well, yes, there can always be exceptions. I do agree that when you're reviewing a talk page sometimes it's easy to miss that there's a history and look at that. I tend to appreciate AIV or AN/I reports that note that when it's the case.

Perhaps we should amend BLANKING a bit to account for this. Or train our admins better. Daniel Case (talk) 14:22, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

May 2018 at Women in Red

		Welcome to Women in Red's May 2018 worldwide online editathons. File:Soraya Aghaee4.jpg New: "Women of the Sea" New: "Villains" New: "Women in Sports" New: "Central Eastern European women" Continuing: #1day1woman Global Initiative
		(To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list) --Rosiestep (talk) 23:11, 29 April 2018 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Username policy

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Administrators' newsletter – May 2018

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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The Signpost: 24 May 2018

• From the editor: Another issue meets the deadline

• Op-ed: Has the wind gone out of the AdminShip's sails?

• Opinion: Integrating my many lives on Wikipedia

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Portals

• Discussion report: User rights, infoboxes, and more discussion on portals

• Featured content: Featured content selected by the community

• Arbitration report: Managing difficult topics

• News and notes: Lots of Wikimedia

• In the media: Wikipedia in Turkish politics; COI politics in Wikipedia; most cited work

• Traffic report: We love our superheroes

• Technology report: A trove of contributor and developer goodies

• Blog: Why I write about women on Wikipedia

• Recent research: Why people don't contribute to Wikipedia; using Wikipedia to teach statistics, technical writing, and controversial issues

• Humour: Play with your food

• Gallery: Wine not?

• From the archives: The Signpost scoops The Signpost

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:24, 24 May 2018 (UTC)