User talk:Barkeep49/Archives/7

Scary Stories for Young Foxes

Hi Barkeep! I've been working on Scary Stories for Young Foxes recently since I'm having a hard time finding sources to create new articles on other subjects. I've nearly dried up on sources for this one and was wondering if it had any chances of achieving GA status. I still need to polish the plot section and add information about its sequel, but haven't found much else to add. So, what do you think? Thanks as always for the help. Isabelle ^🔔 03:17, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I have somewhat limited availability to do this at the moment so I might not be able to do this until next week. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:10, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

No worries! Take your time and stay safe. Isabelle ^🔔 01:28, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@Isabelle Belato any Newberry honor book can be brought to GA. Will this be your first GA? If so when you've worked on plot and sequel go ahead and nominate it and let me know. I will pick up the review and help you fill in what's missing (i.e. I typically include a summary/quote of the Newbery citation and some sort of author reaction to winning the award). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:48, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I've done a couple GA, so I'm somewhat familiar with the process (although I'm never sure whether an article is good enough or not). WRT Heidicker's book, I've added a couple more references and expanded the reception and lede, and added some information about the sequel. I couldn't find any other good sources, so I'll take a break from it while waiting for your input. Isabelle ^🔔 20:55, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@Isabelle Belato go ahead and nominate it and I'll pick up the review. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:41, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2021).

Administrator changes

BusterD

Kees08 • Nickshanks • Protonk • Schissel • Ultraexactzz • Wknight94

CheckUser changes

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Oversighter changes

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Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.

Technical news

• Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)

Arbitration

• Following an amendment request, the committee has clarified that the Talk page exception to the 500/30 rule in remedy 5 of the Palestine-Israel articles 4 case does not apply to requested move discussions.

Miscellaneous

• You can vote for candidates in the 2021 Board of Trustees elections from 4 August to 17 August. Four community elected seats are up for election.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:17, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Clarify please

How does a draft that hasn't been edited by a human in 9 years, 8 months, (or by a bot in 2.5 years+) fail WP:G13? Your decline of my speedy del nom of User:Seaslugqber/Anti-emos baffles me and I'd like to understand this better so I don't repeat any error. Thank you. Zinnober9 (talk) 23:49, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Please read Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#G13. Abandoned Drafts and Articles for creation submissions. None of the pages that you tagged were in Draft space, they were all in User space and the G13 criteria, as stated, did not apply. Just because a page hasn't been edited in years doesn't mean it qualifies as a G13. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:21, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I had submitted a reply that doesn't seem to have gone through but g13 almost never applies to user space these days. To be eligible in userspace it needs {{AFC submission}} and these days if something gets that template it is moved to draft space. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:26, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I see I didn't ping @Zinnober9 so fixing that now to ensure the message is seen. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:37, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification, Barkeep49. Zinnober9 (talk) 22:13, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Disruptive users continues edit warring despite Wikipedia:Consensus at article Pahonia

@Barkeep49: Hello, disruptive users continues edit warring despite a clear Wikipedia:Consensus at article Pahonia. The RfC was already closed (closure statement), but disruptive users refuses to accept it. I created a report at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Hugo.arg and Kazimier Lachnovič. In the past you put user Kazimier Lachnovič under the discretionary sanctions, but it is clear that he doesn't learn and continues his disruptive behavior. Please implement sanctions against these disruptive users. The question of Pahonia should be finally closed. -- Pofka (talk) 16:39, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

@Pofka by going to Arbitration Enforcement some uninvolved administrators will examine the situation and provide an appropriate outcome. As an arbitrator I do not normally work AE because ArbCom are the people who hear appeals. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:55, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Who are you?

Someone claiming to be you just sent me an email. DuncanHill (talk) 01:37, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for not introducing myself @DuncanHill. Most editors who are as active as you having some passing recognition of who I am whether from my work on ArbCom or at RfA, so I didn't think to introduce. Apologies on that. Anyhow I'm Barkeep49, currently an editor, administrator, and sitting arb. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:39, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Did you send me an email? DuncanHill (talk) 01:45, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill yes [1]. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:46, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I could answer you now but I think it would be better to leave it until tomorrow. I REALLY can't cope with yet more Arbcom incompetence at the moment. DuncanHill (talk) 01:59, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill by all means leave it to tomorrow. Just know I want to understand what happened in an attempt to be competent. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:00, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Email

You have email DuncanHill (talk) 02:17, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Got it. Very helpful, thank you @DuncanHill. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:27, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't expect anything positive to come of it. It never has in the past. Not your fault I'm sure. DuncanHill (talk) 02:29, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

ArbCom changes

Hey Barkeep,

Continuing our discussion on ARCA, I've a few ideas for ArbCom:

1. Reward honesty and penalize dishonesty: I've seen editors lie when faced with a preponderance of evidence about something; repeat accusations that were refuted several times before; misrepresent sources and their credentials; and more. We give editors broad leeway to present their cases, and most do that with absolute candor; but where an editor outright lies they should be disciplined.
2. Examine long-term interactions and editing trends: ANI/AE tend to address only recent events, which means it's open to manipulations, and never gets the whole story. ArbCom can do better: understand editors' agendas, interactions and development over time. Take these two examples: an experienced editor who started in good faith, but over time became frustrated and aggressive; and an editor with an agenda, who with experience learned how to conceal it. In both cases focusing only on recent events could lead to conclusions that are undesirable for the project.
3. Examine "content": there's this perception on Wikipedia that "content" and "conduct" are mutually exclusive, but if that's the case then how can you tell if someone is long-term POV-pushing? You don't have to determine the validity of some material, but you can determine if editors consistently push materials that the community had deemed problematic (and where no such determination exists, what's to stop an RfC from being started as part of an arbitration case?).
4. Interview instead of "workshop": instead of long "workshops" where people mostly shout at each other at length, why not interview editors one at a time on Zoom? Half the world has been doing it. It could be more convenient, efficient and informative than "workshops", and still maintain editors' anonymity.
5. Use experts: for an enterprise built on RS, we're surprisingly inane in how we conduct ourselves internally. Say an admin needs to determine whether a T-ban has been broken, but they have no domain knowledge whatsoever - how can they possible make a reasonable determination? And what about an Arb who is tasked with resolving a multi-year dispute that Policy - the Arb's guideline and reference - has already failed to address? There's a variety of situations where outside opinion could benefit the community, and we know experts who would be more than willing to provide.
6. Use WMF resources: the WMF has resources that you don't. Why argue on whether someone hounded someone else when you can just ask T&S to check the server logs?
7. Take a more involved role with admins: it's unfortunately the case that admins don't always get things right, and other admins aren't always quick to correct them. ArbCom should take a more involved role in reviewing and guiding admins - not for disciplinary reasons, as it already does, but to make sure admins are proactive, effective, and well informed in whatever TA they're working. There are many degrees of intervention between "nothing" and "desysopping", and this community (admins included) desperately needs more options.

François Robere (talk) 20:05, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

François Robere, not Barkeep but I do stalk his page :P

• 1 is an excellent point and something I wish to reward too, though the practical problem is it can be hard to tell when someone is actually telling the truth.
• 3 is I think important, but the community has generally been resistant to having ArbCom examine content. Unless the community's mind changed substantially I still think it would be hard for us to do so.
• 4 an intriguing idea, although it might be of limited use. Many editors remain anonymous and would balk at even having their voice heard. Plus, it is rather difficult to arrange the schedules of even a few Arbs as it is. We still struggle to get even a majority of folks together for our monthly Zoom call.
• 5 not quite clear what you mean, what sort of experts would we procure?
• 6 We interface with the WMF more than most folks think, but much of it must of course remain private.
• 7 I quite agree. I think the obstacle to this is that there is a widespread view that if an admin has restrictions, then they shouldn't be admins. If that view were to change, I think it would be easier for us to take intermediate actions. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 20:19, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@CaptainEek: Thanks for your response.

• 1 It is difficult, and it shouldn't be the main goal (AGF should still be the guiding principle), but in cases with a preponderance of evidence, repeat offence, etc. we should take a stand.
• 4 True, but some do want their story heard (how many editors at AMPOL, APL, etc. are introverts?...) and you don't need all of the arbs to hear them, just 2-3 who are willing to sit down as committee representatives. You then have a cycle that looks sort of like this:

1. Get background material from the parties (diffs, sources, written arguments)
2. Consult with the other arbs
3. Meet with one or more parties, separately
4. Present the results to ArbCom and consider further action

As an aside, there are programs that can interface with people's calendars and schedule meetings automatically; if you can find one that suits your use case, it could save you a lot of time.

• 5 The obvious case is domain experts who can tell whether some material or article or biased, or whether an editor is POV-pushing. You may recall K.e.coffman bringing several experts to opine on Wikipedia's reflection of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht;[2] Jan Grabowski, Havi Dreifuss and Shira Klein[3] have all opined on our treatment of Holocaust history. Omer Benjakob[4] has been writing on Wikipedia for some time, and may have insight into how it's perceived inside and out. On a smaller scale, I've also contacted experts to ask for clarification on something they've written on a number of occasions, and they were all happy to cooperate. More broadly, you can also ask for advice from behavioral/organizational experts, legal scholars and technologists on how to solve persistent problems in the community, and either present them for the community to consider (RfC) or to the WMF.
• 7 I've been thinking for a while that we should have specialized admins for problematic TAs. Presenting a case to AE admins who don't know the subject nor the players is hugely ineffective, and with repeat cases you eventually start getting responses like "we're tired of you, we should just ban everyone". That's just bad. François Robere (talk) 10:57, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

@François Robere thanks for these thoughts. I want to sit on them for a few days before responding, but I wanted to acknowledge this now so you know your time and thinking is appreciated. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:33, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Here's the thing. In theory I agree with a lot - but not all - of what FR says above. Hell, I've been yelling about how "all behavioral issues are fundementally content issues" for like eight years now. But the problem is that we're going to interpret these points very differently in practice.

For example, FR's #1. Yes! Honesty should be rewarded and dishonesty penalized! I said that repeatedly during the Icewhiz case - if someone had just checked Icewhiz's edits two years earlier, then all the problems would have already been easy to spot and we wouldn't have had to have an entire ArbCom case about it. Things like fabricating quotations from BLPs, pretending sources said what they didn't say, mis-attributing sources by pretending they were written by someone other than the actual author, arguing for reliability of a same source in one instance then trying to get that same source banned when it turned out it didn't agree with his POV... these are all examples of dishonesty that should've been penalized. Yet, it was Francois Robere who supported Icewhiz in all those endeavors (you can read through the Evidence page of that old arbcom case). And I was the one that got topic banned for pointing out that Icewhiz was doing these things.

(the FoFs/Proposed Decisions in that case are a bit surreal, to be perfectly honest. "Finding of Fact 1: Volunteer Marek accused Icewhiz of lying, which is incivil, so topic ban for VM" [5] but then "Finding of Fact 2: Well, Icewhiz was actually lying, so topic ban for Icewhiz too" [6] [7]. I sometimes thing that the only reason I am able to continue to edit Wikipedia is because I have a highly developed appreciation for the absurd, like I imagine that I'm actually a character caught in an Ionesco play and then it's ok) Volunteer Marek 00:24, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

That's indeed #1.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] François Robere (talk) 11:38, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't think you two getting too far into the specifics is going to be helpful nor is it really the right venue for that. Relitigating the topic ban is definitely not germane to the broader ideas presented. Barkeep49 (talk) 11:47, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

@François Robere: as promised here are my thoughts about your intriguing ideas on how to improve ArbCom:

1. In my experience as a watcher, party, and arb I think dishonesty is punished during cases. However, that punishing seems to happen without being stated a lot of the time (really most of the time). It happens by arbs putting some diffs rather than others into the FoF. Or it comes from more severe sanctions being approved. If I'm going to be sanctioning someone adding "and I think you're a liar" to my statement feels needlessly provocative. My job as an arb is to decrease the "temperature" rather than raise it and so it just feels easier to focus on battleground behavior or edit warring or other issues that wouldn't be received as much as a personal attack. However, you are correct that by failing to name it that we're not creating as much social pressure against it both in and outside of cases and so even if we're punishing it in the end we're not doing as much as we could to discourage it. I'm going to have to think more on this but I do think you've hit on a good point here.
2. I like that ArbCom cannot launch investigations but rather must respond to community request. I think that is an important check on its power and so I would be opposed to proactive monitoring of the kind I think you're suggesting.
3. I think the committee has been increasingly willing over the last 3 or so years to address conduct that bleeds into content. However, without a community endorsement, through an amended WP:ARBPOL I'm not sure how much farther we can go. And I would be truly reluctant for ArbCom to propose this; I would think it would genuinely have to come from the community. If this change were made I think it would also mean we'd have to think about electing other kinds of arbs or providing arbs with subject specific expertise beyond what happens today. But it would be a pretty large change and I am skeptical community support is there.
4. Huh. That's an interesting one. Could we accept non-written evidence? Maybe. But the best evidence is always that which can be supported by a diff which is difficult to do in a conversation. This might be worth trying in the right circumstance though.
5. I talked about this in 3 but yes I agree this is something that should be done. How could it work in reality? I dunno but it seems reasonable and doable and so if you have more ideas on actual implementation, I'd be interested to hear it.
6. Checking server logs is not "cheap" for the foundation in terms of time it takes them to do it. Plus the data that is returned to us might not be useful based on some server log information I see as a CU. That's before even considering the privacy aspects of this which are substantial. I agree with the principle that we should be using the foundation resources and would echo what Eek said about it.
7. Same issue as 2 but if ArbCom were going to take a more proactive role, that is one more akin to how it handles OS and CU, starting with Admin makes sense. But I would want some kind of community consensus behind us, perhaps not ARBPOL amending but a real consensus, before we did so.

Thanks again for all your thoughts. There are definitely some items here that I am going to continue to think about and at least one (non-written evidence) I am going to keep in mind to see if we can find a way to do a proof of concept. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:12, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

• 2 I completely agree and I'm definitely not suggesting proactive action. What I am suggesting is that, where applicable, ArbCom tries to use its resources to trace the development of conflicts over time. I know ArbCom tries to look at cases from a broader perspective than ANI/AE, but it also tries (or at least seems to try) to be conservative - ie to avoid sweeping determinations - which can make it easy to narrow the field too much. Put simply, I'd like editors to be judged not only on a selection of events, but on the reasons for these events and on their overall contribution. A good-faithed editor who's been "worn out" by eg. hounding shouldn't be judged solely on an outburst, and an editor who's only polite when the admins are looking shouldn't get a pass; but you'd only know either is the case if you intentionally sought to establish long-term trends. Does this make sense?
• 4 It's not only the evidence, it's also how it's interpreted, how candid witnesses are, how well the story holds when challenged without preparation, etc. There's so much that can be learned from a conversation, and you know? Perhaps it will even be less stressful than a written "workshop". I've suggested to CaptainEek above that this can be based on written evidence, so you get the benefits of a written record in addition to everything else.
• 5 This should have four components: agreeing on the content, approaching the experts, approving the experts, and soliciting their opinion:

1. Agree on the content that should be reviewed (articles, diffs, sources...) and the specific questions that should be asked.
2. The parties then approach experts of their choosing to ask for their participation. How they approach them is at their discretion, but their bids must make clear certain contractual elements: a consent for publication under our usual WP:CC BY-SA license; the pro bono nature of their work; the way they are to be referred to ("expert witness", with the usual professional titles and affiliations); what will be asked of them ("review X pages of material and provide an opinion on the following..."); and how the case may be cited in the future ("American Politics 2. Arbitration Committee proceedings. Wikipedia, 2015").
3. The parties then submit 3-5 names for ArbCom to select from based on the usual reliability/notability metrics and their relevance to the case.
4. ArbCom then approaches the experts independently with the materials and questions that were agreed upon in stage 1.

Also pinging K.e.coffman, who's approached expert witnesses in the past and may have an idea on the best way to involve them in arbitration cases.

• 6 Interesting. Analytics are usually very cheap, though they do tend to use more intrusive and high-level methods than parsing server logs. I think privacy could be maintained at least partially if such measures were consensual and clearly delimited in both time and space.

As an aside, WP:CHECK#CheckUser operation should probably have more detail on the format of CU queries and replies.

Thanks, and keep safe. François Robere (talk) 12:42, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

2: It does make sense. I think Arbs have different degrees of willingness to do that (and sometimes it may be case dependent). There's nothing technically or procedurally stopping us, it just needs to be something that arbs want to do. So this could be something that you ask candidates about and vote accordingly.

4: I'm not sure how excited I would be for an adversarial interview which seems to be what you're suggesting with "how well the story holds when challenged". But I do agree with the value of conversations - it's a reason I'm glad ArbCom does it once a month.

5: I thought about GWE, the case Ke got outside experts, when reading your idea. I will note that the way that was handled by ArbCom was controversial at the time and was something that I know still upsets editors today. That said I was thinking about how nice it would have been to have some expert give me an overview of Kurds and Kurdistan or the current case around MEK.

CU: What are you thinking about? Some of that is intentionally left vague owing to WP:BEANS but if you know the right places to look you can sleuth out more info.

Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:39, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

4: Not adversarial, no. No pliers. I just think it's important to question ambiguities and discrepancies where they arise, if the truth of anything is to be ascertained.

CU: Figured as much, and I just found the "right place". Thanks for the cue! François Robere (talk) 11:42, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Remind me

Captain , good day to you, I can’t for the life of me remember how to access the deletion log of an article that has already been deleted. Please how may I access or view the deletion log/history of a red-linked article? Could you help me? Celestina007 (talk) 21:23, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@Celestina007 I would use User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js which provide a nice little button for you to click to see previous deletions and AfDs. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:28, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Captain. Celestina007 (talk) 21:45, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Boy am I lucky to have you as a teacher. It works perfectly. Thanks captain. Celestina007 (talk) 08:19, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Eldridge Broussard

Hello, Barkeep49. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Eldridge Broussard".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been deleted. If you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:48, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

I usually post these messages to the talk pages of new editors, not admins. You can restore this or I can if you prefer. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:50, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

@Liz no worries I figured it was semi-automated and have already restored it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:51, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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On Mobile diffs

At least 90% of the time I edit via a mobile phone and for example when I provide diffs to venues, AN, ANI or wherever, I sometimes observe some people remove the “mobile” in the url or try to “un-mobile” the diffs, sometimes, people even get angry at me for using a mobile to provide diffs, Captain if I may ask, just what exactly is wrong with mobile diffs? Yesterday I switched to my laptop to view how it appeared on a laptop and it seemed just fine. Am I missing or not understand something correctly? Please could you expatiate on this for me and explain what to do, perhaps is there a better way of providing diffs I am oblivious of? Celestina007 (talk) 10:14, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

There are some differences between the two. The big one for desktop is that it allows you to see the whole page in addition to the diff. I think mobile is a little cleaner on what has changed. I suspect some of it is just what people are used to. I think you should ignore people who get snippy about you using mobile diffs even though I normally change mobile to desktop myself. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:53, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you captain. I’m grateful for this explanation. Celestina007 (talk) 15:43, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Furthermore you said “even though I normally change mobile to desktop myself” please how can I do this also? Celestina007 (talk) 16:00, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

By removing the m in en.m.wikipedia.org Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:18, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

You can also scroll down to the bottom of the page you're editing and click "desktop" on the bottom right, as long as you're editing on the browser and not the app. Clovermoss (talk) 16:32, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

I also edit a lot on mobile. I have to say, the idea of people "fixing" other people's comments because they link to mobile diffs rubs me up the wrong way. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:47, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Sorry just to be clear, I don't edit other people's links, I just change it for myself after I click on it. If that's what's happening I'm a bit astounded. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:11, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

@Clovermoss thanks for that piece of information, @Lee Vilenski, I honestly feel the sane way too. This entry was what shook me to my core, however Bbb23 said they put a smiley to show they weren’t necessarily mean spirited about it (my device didn’t interpret the smiley) so all I saw were symbols. In any case it is their prerogative if they hate mobile diffs, I don’t see myself interacting with them in the foreseeable future. Celestina007 (talk) 21:45, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	Honestly, I could not find any appropriate Barnstar but this was the closest. I still find myself going back to the academy to re-learn certain things. Thanks captain. I’m grateful for all you taught me. Celestina007 (talk) 22:03, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

@Celestina007 as I see you help others, I know we're all doing our part to make Wikipedia a collaborative place and a site people want to be a part of. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:10, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

How do I go about this

I’ve been monitoring a pattern which is growing exponentially, in summary, a non notable biographical article is created then a major cite over kill say over 50 sources are optimized (IMO done deliberately) to inundate and frustrate reviewers, I don’t believe it is pragmatic that anyone would be willing to sit and create a source analysis table dissecting each source, what is your take on this? Do I just AFD the article and say a WP:BEFORE search turns up nothing concrete and the references used in the article are a mirage to create a false sense of notability? I have said something similar in the past but that got me into hot water as the article creator took it as an attack on them, I’m confused on what the best possible course of action to be and I need your advice on this. Celestina007 (talk) 12:15, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree the over citing can be hard to combat. And yes all that you can do at times is do a BEFORE and end up at AfD where you'll need to try to make your case. In some circumstances you can ask them to choose their 3 best (or maybe 5 best) sources and explain why those don't meet our policies. AGF, even with the spammers who are abusing our reviewers in the way you state, has worked well for me. That is I patiently explain why overciting doesn't help and the sources aren't a high enough quality to meet our standards. But it's not easy and not always successful. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:44, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, you make a very salient point about asking them to provide any 3 refs, I knew I could always count on you for guidance. I’d do just as you have suggested moving forward. Celestina007 (talk) 17:39, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Your comment at VPP

I'm a bit put off by your recent comment at VPP. Rather than responding at such a high profile place I thought it better to express my thoughts here. First I did read the whole proposal and all the comments at the time of my comment and the insinuation that someone is going to reach an incorrect conclusion because they did read the all the comments at the time they participated is not, I think, a fair expectation. My concerns about the proposal are not because I am someone who don't want to lose what they may perceive as a certain type of "power". My concern is because it would give admin too much power. I certainly agree that the proposal would change blocking culture and not for the better. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:06, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm confused by your reaction. I made a general thought about certain types of concerns. I don't believe I said thatall admins felt that way.

I also, in what I've read of your comments of late at various pages at least, consider you one of the more thoughtful (in the Shakespeare sense of 'full of thought') commenters in a discussion.

I'm going to re-read my comment to make sure I didn't unintentionally imply that it referred to all admins.

Thank you for sharing your concerns. - jc37 00:13, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

@Jc37 one of the more thoughtful (in the Shakespeare sense of 'full of thought') commenters is the nicest way anyone has ever said that I write too much (an all too true observation). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:15, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

rofl. speaking as someone who might suffer from that all-too-often affliction of verbosity, you are quite welcome : ) - jc37 00:18, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Afghanistan causes recognition of Kosovo to fall within minority of UN member states

Hi, as the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has ceased to exist the number of UN states that recognize the Republic of Kosovo has fallen to exactly 50% (96/192). This is very significant as it means that the Republic of Kosovo has lost majority recognition in the UN. I would appreciate if you would update the page accordingly.

The page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Kosovo

Talk thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:International_recognition_of_Kosovo#Afghanistan_causes_recognition_of_Kosovo_to_fall_within_minority_of_UN_member_states

Thanks for reading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.216.117.38 (talk) 14:17, August 23, 2021 (UTC)

IP editor: hopefully you have made these requests at the talk page you link to. That would be the right place to get editor attention. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:59, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

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Hello captain

I’m pretty sure I’ve asked this question before and you gave me a mechanism that proved helpful that day, I bookmarked your response but my bookmarked pages are a serious mess and a deep reservoir, manually searching would take up an inordinate amount of time so please I’m re-asking instead, please how do you find the history of an article in red link? Celestina007 (talk) 22:55, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Celestina007 what do you mean by history? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:31, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh my! I thought you were extremely preoccupied with more serious activities like overseeing the project as a whole hence not allowing you to answer the question sooner. Precisely by “history” I mean,the first account to create the article, note that it is redlinked thus clicking on it would redirect to me to “create this page” I note that this may a little too technical thus I have also asked technical inclined editors here for help in this regard. I’m happy you are chanced to engage me. Celestina007 (talk) 01:38, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

That's available in the log which I use through Superlinks which I'm guessing I've recommended to you before. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:55, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Yup I thought as much you indeed have taught me this before. Thanks, since my knee injury I’ve been a little bit scatter-brained. But I’m slowly recovering and the pain subsidizing. Celestina007 (talk) 02:42, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear about your knee injury. I hope you have a swift recovery. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:51, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Review of process to grant administrative privileges

Thanks for your efforts in reviewing the process for granting administrative privileges. Hopefully the conversation will remain sufficiently focused and editors will remain engaged long enough for a fruitful discussion to take place! isaacl (talk) 06:08, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@Isaacl so far I have been pleased with the conversation that has been had and that was my true goal with starting this conversation. I'm hoping that we end phase 1 with closer to 100 participants rather than the 50 or so I would expect from current trend but we shall see. Thanks for writing. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:49, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished with over 500 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants, The Rambling Man and Epicgenius, each scoring over 3000 points, and six contestants scoring over 1000. All but one of the finalists achieved one or more FAs during the round, the exception being Bloom6132 who demonstrated that 61 "in the news" items produces an impressive number of points. Other contestants who made it to the final are Gog the Mild, Lee Vilenski, BennyOnTheLoose, Amakuru and Hog Farm. However, all their points are now swept away and everyone starts afresh in the final round.

Round 4 saw the achievement of 18 featured articles and 157 good articles. Bilorv scored for a 25-article good topic on Black Mirror but narrowly missed out on qualifying for the final round. There was enthusiasm for FARs, with 89 being performed, and there were 63 GARs and around 100 DYKs during the round. As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it to the final round; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For other contestants, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:01, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2021).

Administrator changes

Jake Wartenberg

Emperor • Viridian Bovary

Ashleyyoursmile → Viridian Bovary

Guideline and policy news

• Feedback is requested on the Universal Code of Conduct enforcement draft by the Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee.
• A RfC is open on whether to allow administrators to use extended confirmed protection on high-risk templates.
• A discussion is open to decide when, if ever, should discord logs be eligible for removal when posted onwiki (including whether to oversight them)
• A RfC on the next steps after the trial of pending changes on TFAs has resulted in a 30 day trial of automatic semi protection for TFAs.

Technical news

• The Score extension has been re-enabled on public wikis. It has been updated, but has been placed in safe mode to address unresolved security issues. Further information on the security issues can be found on the mediawiki page.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is in progress to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules. Comments and new proposals are welcome.

Miscellaneous

• The 2021 RfA review is now open for comments.

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Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 3

Universal Code of Conduct News
Issue 3, August 2021Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the third issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.

If you haven’t already, please remember to subscribe here if you would like to be notified about future editions of the newsletter, and also leave your username here if you’d like to be contacted to help with translations in the future.

• The Enforcement Draft Guidelines - The Enforcement Draft Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct has just been published on meta in different languages. These guidelines include some definitions of newly introduced terms and recommendations for local enforcement structures. (continue reading)
• Enforcement Draft Guidelines Review - Before the enforcement guidelines are finalized, they must be reviewed and discussed by the community. The facilitation team has set up various discussion means throughout this review period. (continue reading)
• Conversation Hours & Roundtables - To listen to community opinions and exchange ideas regarding enforcement draft guidelines proposed by the drafting committee, the UCoC facilitation team will be hosting weekly conversation hours. (continue reading)
• Wikimania Wrap-up - The facilitation team hosted a Roundtable at Wikimania 2021, featuring some WMF trustees and staff. The session offered some insights on how the Enforcement Draft Guidelines came about, and what next steps are being imagined. (continue reading)
• Translation - Because a considerable number of Wikimedians are not English speakers, and that UCoC applies to all members, projects across the wikimedia movement, it’s of a great importance to provide adequate language support throughout this process. (continue reading)
• Diff blogs - Check out some interesting publications about the UCoC on Wikimedia Diff blog. (continue reading)
• WMF's 2021 Board of Trustees election - Please read the Candidate Presentations and vote! (continue reading)

MNadzikiewicz (WMF) (talk) 22:35, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Ethan Statham

Allow the Ethan Statham wiki page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.171.82.80 (talk) 15:19, September 10, 2021 (UTC)

Do you have any sources that back up any of the claims made around the eating contests on that page? That would stop me from deleting it as a draft but will not make it into a real article. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:22, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

NPP

It's a shame], I kinda guessed this would happen though, but provided your enthusiasm for honesty among the Arbcom members has not already been daunted, I wouldn't go back on anything I said in my ACE candidate guide. After all, as volunteers, we are all perfectly within our rights to to do anything we choose, or even nothing at all. I have chosen the latter, but I'm still finding it difficult to stay away - at least from areas I dedicated hundreds of hours to for years. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:41, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah @Kudpung I feel sad about it too. We had talked about what would happen with NPP if I was elected and I do feel like I was managing it OK until I got onto the UCoC. And that was too important a thing to pass up. I don't know yet if I will end up supporting the final work but I am determined to try and make it something that helps the community. As for NPP, it remains close to my heart even if I don't have the time for it that it deserves. And I'm glad you're still lurking around. You're right that choosing how we spend our time is a real gift we have as volunteers - something I feel all the more strongly considering how much of that choice I've given up as an arb. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:47, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

I have a different opinion of UCoC than you. The owners of volunteer projects such as the Wikipedia encyclopedias' WMF are notorious for feeding their fat salaries and perks* by exploiting the good will of the volunteers, and other volunteer organisations and NGOs also characteristically spend lots of time 'coming up with ideas' and drafting them; I see it all the time here in SE Asia in Cambodia and Laos. It's a bit like the toilets in the WMF office which have those pretty little flower-power signs in them like 'Gentlemen please lift the seat' - as if we need reminding - (probably not a genuine fact,but it reminds me of an excellent interpretation Iridescent once offered me). However, one can lead a horse to water but one can't make it drink. And that's the problem of UCOC and its rules and regulations. Sorry to sound negative, but I think it's a time sink.
*Off topic, but AFAICS, the WMF is not doing any worse (but not any better either) for not having a CEO in the chair these past months. Perhaps that can be reflected in a financial saving with less investment in bolstering people's frequent flyer points, and a lot less hot air and 'do-good' ideas. The whole shebang is moving towards being a massive socio-political-cultural movement than a collection of knowledge bases that use the Internet as their publishing platform, and as a linguist and communication scientist, that's not what I signed up for. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:37, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021

New Page Review queue September 2021

Hello Barkeep49/Archives,

Please join this discussion - there is increase in the abuse of Wikipedia and its processes by POV pushers, Paid Editors, and by holders of various user rights including Autopatrolled. Even our review systems themselves at AfC and NPR have been infiltrated. The good news is that detection is improving, but the downside is that it creates the need for a huge clean up - which of course adds to backlogs.

Copyright violations are also a serious issue. Most non-regular contributors do not understand why, and most of our Reviewers are not experts on copyright law - and can't be expected to be, but there is excellent, easy-to-follow advice on COPYVIO detection here.

At the time of the last newsletter (#25, December 2020) the backlog was only just over 2,000 articles. New Page Review is an official system. It's the only firewall against the inclusion of new, improper pages.

There are currently 706 New Page Reviewers plus a further 1,080 admins, but as much as nearly 90% of the patrolling is still being done by around only the 20 or so most regular patrollers.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software.

Various awards are due to be allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue. If you would like to manage this, please let us know. Indeed, if you are interested in coordinating NPR, it does not involve much time and the tasks are described here.

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To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent to 827 users. 04:30, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Question for The Signpost

Could I ask you a question for publication? You recently initiated a new round of discussion on requests for adminship. I would like to know if you can tell the readers what issues this is meant to address and where are you expect the process to go next? ☆ Bri (talk) 17:34, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

@Bri I always welcome the chance to talk to the Signpost. We're on pace to end the year with the fewest number of new admin ever - less than 10. And it didn't seem to be from a lack of trying on the part of people who were ready to be nominators. For at least the last 15 months or so, and arguably much longer than that, there have been regular discussions at WT:RFA and elsewhere about problems with RfA and possible solutions. It had also been six years since the last time the community comprehensively thought about RfA. It felt like we had made as much progress as we could with pre-discussion and also from those discussions it wasn't clear exactly what problem needed to be addressed with many people offering different (and sometimes contradictory) ideas. So it was time to see if the community agreed that changes were needed at RfA and if so what problems we should attempt to solve. And quite honestly I will admit that I decided that this had the chance to produce more new administrators than investing time looking through the editing records of one of the half dozen or so editors currently on my "maybe RfA" list only to be turned down by the ones who I think would make good admins and have a good chance of passing RfA.

So far I've been very pleased with the discussion which has been thoughtful and robust in the best spirit of Wikipedia. Assuming that some of the suggest problems are deemed to have consensus by the closers, we'll then move to a second phase where possible solutions are discussed and considered. I expect that some changes will be made, though I also think it likely that some problems will not have any solutions which have community consensus behind them. I modeled much of the format of this RfA review on the great work Biblioworm did in 2015 in a similar process. I look forward to seeing how this plays out.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any follow-up questions. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:20, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your reply. Maybe I will come back with a follow-up before writing deadline next week. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:20, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

User:Eshaanbera

Hi would you mind taking a look at this user's talk page and seeing if you think any action is warranted? They seem to be getting into all kinds of problems, and I just ran into the latest one at NPP. On 18 Sept they blanked the page at Vakkom Moulavi (reverted by another editor) and then recreated the article under a different title at Moulavi Vakkom Khader. It showed up as a copyvio which is how I came across it, but I couldn't immediately see how it had been derived from a blog which was itself sourced to Wikipedia. Anyway there are plenty of other warning signs on the editor's talk page so this incident isn't a one-off. Thanks Mccapra (talk) 06:48, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mccapra it seems like this got handled or is intervention still needed? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:59, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, yes the immediate issue I came across has been resolved thanks. It was more the overall problematic patterns of editing that looked worrying to me. Mccapra (talk) 18:07, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

What else are you seeing as problematic @Mccapra? I notice they have a few speedy deletion notices but a quick look at their most recent edits don't jump anything out at me besides the problem you already warned about. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:20, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Well copyright, removing sourced material, adding unsourced material, and poor/dummy refs. Quite a collection of notices really. But if nothing strikes you as worrying that’s fine, thanks for looking. Mccapra (talk) 19:27, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

It is quite a collection. The question becomes what I can act on as an admin. This might be something where a well-written ANI can do things that I as an individual admin cannot. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:47, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

NPP Coordinator

Hi Barkeep49, Good day. As per NPP newsletter, NPP is looking for a coordinator and I am interested in helping in this role to expand my services in Wikipedia. I am not sure if you are still the coordinator for this role and if so, pls advise if I am qualify and how to proceed further. Stay safe and best. Cassiopeia talk 01:57, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@CASSIOPEIA I did indeed step down as coordinator. I have found since March I simply haven't had time to do the job (and haven't even done all that much NPP recently). Kudpung was the one who sent out that newsletter - I'm not sure if we need a formal coordinator in most ways, I think people can just do the job. Where I think it is helpful is when being an ambassador. So when NPP gets dragged on at ANI, it's helpful. It's helpful when talking with the foundation. Otherwise in the best of Wikipedia ways, people can just do the job no title needed. Let me know if you have questions or want further info. I am happy to provide. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:54, 20 September 2021 (UTC)Bonus ping because the script doesn't like your sig ​. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:56, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@CASSIOPEIA: The newsletter was extremely carefully worded. It links to a page on which it is clearly stated: NPR is a complex process. Currently coordination activities are undertaken by whoever is keen on those particular tasks. If you wish to help with any of the coordination activities below, please post to the reviewers' discussion board or discuss with other active coordinators so that we know what everyone is working on. There was no suggestion that NPP needs a formal coordinator. Indeed there never has been one. I and any of the other 'coordinators' were people who simply saw what needed doing and took the matters in hand. They did this with apparently some measure of success and they became to be regarded as de facto coordinators. There are suggestions on that page for electing coordinators because that's how things are organised on some larger Wikiprojects, but it was never mandatory.

As their interest changes, volunteers often decide to shift their focus to other things. Although the energy and commitment of a 'coordinator' might be missed, this is perfectly normal and it provides scope for someone else to step into the breach. When I moved on after creating the NPR user right and setting everything up in 2016, NPR was looked after for a while by TonyBallioni followed by Insertcleverphrasehere for a couple of years, then Barkeep continued the good work. You are an experienced editor and your work on NPR has been recognised several times. If you think there are some coordination tasks that appeal to you, you might simply wish to take them on. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:37, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Kudpung and Barkeep49, Thank your for replying my message. I have a look at Coordinator tasks, and I have done and some of them. I wrote because I thought there are certain specific tasks needed some help from the editors. If so, let me. Stay safe and best. Cassiopeia talk 04:45, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Don't hesitate to contact Barkeep49 if you need any advice on what to do. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:47, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Ugh

So,

• Person A: Several people did something wrong, and this is so typical, and is what is wrong with Wikipedia.
• Involved Person B: Nobody did anything wrong.
• Uninvolved Person C: Nobody did anything wrong.
• Uninvolved Person D: Nobody did anything wrong.
• Uninvolved Person E: Nobody did anything wrong, so closing this before anyone says anything rude.
• Person A, with no hint of self reflection or irony: One or more of you is disingenuous. Have a nice day.

Ugh. This is so typical, and is what is wrong with Wikipedia. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:30, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd rather have people passionate about our content rather than indifferent? I could type a bunch more but ultimately I'd be preaching to the choir. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:38, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, Barkeep49/Archives. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template. Barkeep49 (talk) 03:21, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Barkeep49. I've replied; please let me know if you don't receive it. Firsfron of Ronchester 05:21, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks, Barkeep, for being one of the most consistently level-headed people around, and your dedication to quality whether it's writing or reviewing GAs, RfA (reform), and particularly for providing me high-quality advice (on a multitude of topics) that has really shaped my editing around here. It means a lot, and keep up the good work! Eddie891 Talk Work 02:02, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@Eddie891: thanks for thinking of me. We're all doing our parts and I appreciate the work you're doing - May Childs Nerney is a fascinating topic and I'm so glad our encyclopedia has an article on her now. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:37, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

(Hands you a cloth to polish that star) - Looks to me like this star was well earned : ) - jc37 17:42, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Arbitration talk page redirect

Why did you redirect Wikipedia talk:Arbitration to the Arbitration Committee talk page? Previously, it redirected to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests, and I changed that because there should be some place to discuss changes to the Arbitration page. Then, after I added a section to the page, I saw that you had replaced it with another redirect. I've gone ahead and reverted your change, but is there some reason it needs to be a redirect? If so, where is discussion of Wikipedia:Arbitration supposed to go? flarn2006 [u t c] time: 19:03, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Very few people have Wikipedia:Arbitration (and thus Wikipedia talk:Arbitration) watchlisted. It looks like in the past questions had been primarily about requests which is why it had been redirected there. I redirected it to the committee as that is a more watched page while still being about the same general ideas/concepts. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:02, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Donald Trump on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Indication

I’ve long come across editors which describe a source as “yet to develop a reputation for fact checking” my question is, how do we now ascertain or know when a source has built a reputation for fact checking? Are there any core indications? Your response and expertise is greatly required here. Celestina007 (talk) 17:53, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Celestina007 great question. There's not a clear cut answer but it basically boils down to whether or not other RS credit its reporting for stuff, whether it has a clear policy of fact checking and corrections, and whether it wins awards or other industry recognition for its work. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:30, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Captain💗. I’m definitely taking a screen shot of this, what a great explanation you have given me, this would definitely go a long way in assisting me. Celestina007 (talk) 18:40, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I made an edit above, so retake your screen shot Celestina007 . Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:56, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Lmao. Done. Celestina007 (talk) 20:51, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Off topic, but I can’t thank you enough for drilling me hard & making me nigh perfect in source analysis, at that time at the academy I felt devastated, but now I cant thank you enough for making me very proficient in source analysis, you indeed brought out the best in me & for that I’m eternally grateful. I love you mate 💗. Celestina007 (talk) 20:59, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Student Request

Hi, I am requesting to be a student in NPP school, and I want you to teach me! You seem experienced, and I'm desperate to learn/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mohammed12313893 (talk • contribs) 22:06, September 29, 2021 (UTC).

Hi there @Mohammed12313893:. Unfortunately I currently don't have any spots available in my New page Patrol school. I see you've also asked Cassiopeia. I wish you best of luck with them. P.S. A quick reminder to please sign messages you leave on a talk page. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:13, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Closure requests

Barkeep49, do you have an administrative opinion on the issue at hand with RandomCanadian's close at WP:CR? I saw you marked it as done. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 18:21, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

My being an administrator doesn't give me an special power or authority in a discussion like that. I marked it closed because it's clear RandomCandadian does not intend to reverse their close so for purposes of WP:CR the close is done. I have not taken a look at the RfC in question nor have I looked at RC's close, Chetford's close, or the discussion around Chetford's close so I have no idea what's really going on but if there's a sense that the close is wrong that can be challenged per our procedures. If it's just that RC (accidently) stepped on some toes I certainly understand why people are irked and hope RC thinks about that in the future but don't know if there's anything else to be done. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:28, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate the response. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 18:39, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment

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Newbie asking for some guidance

Hello! Hope you are having a good weekend. I've seen your name pop up multiple times when lurking on arbitration or disputes and greatly respect your impartiality. I started editing Wikipedia some months ago and have taken up to answering RfCs in order to both help the wiki and learn more about how to edit constructively. Today I answered an RfC on the Public Investment Fund, see here for link.
It responded to a request from Riyadhcafe87 to remove sourced claims on PIF's lack of transparency. The editor is a worker at the PIF, and while the COI is disclosed, they only edit the PIF or related subjects in a promotional manner. Furthermore, they are quite aggressive towards editors adding criticism of the PIF to the article as can be seen in the Talk page. They are capable of writing very thoughtful arguments but a lot of them fall to fallacies or biased reasoning. What should I do about it? I don't necessarily think the editor should be blocked or restricted, but I genuinely believe that their conduct is detrimental to the development of articles related to the PIF (and they do not edit outside of that). Any advice is much appreciated. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 13:46, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I see that RfC has been speedily closed. Ultimately if their behavior continues to be disruptive and polite requests to stop aren't listened to, you'll need to ask for community help at WP:ANI. That's a big step and so seeing if other options work - such as not engaging with them - would make sense to try first. Good luck. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:54, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

While that RfC has been speedily closed, it is similar to requests he's made in June and September — I was only aware of it after being notified by the recent RfC request on my talk page. I don't think not engaging would work, especially seeing how their edits (composed overwhelmingly in the PIF page) go back to 2018 and the page has been the target of repeated whitewashing by possible anonymous sockpuppets: IP within Riyadh address near multiple holding companies, mobile edit 20min walk from Saudi Embassy in London. He recently pinged me to continue the discussion but hasn't establish their points, I think maybe I'll wait until Monday to see if their reply is once again disruptive and if that's the case go to WP:ANI (which is slightly scary as a first time for me, not going to lie lol). Thanks for the advice! A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 21:13, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I certainly remember my nervousness the first time I had to report someone at ANI so I appreciate that feeling. Best case scenario is that some admin provide some quick clarity about expectations. Worst case is that it turns into a sprawling thread that ends up with frustration. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:05, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

New page review

Hello, hope you are having a good day? Sorry for the inconveniences please but I need your help with a review on this new article Benjamin Sokomba Dazhi. Kindly assist if you can and if there's any corrections, I will gladly like your guidance in putting me through. Kind regards. Moshswacide (talk) 09:04, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Moshswacide I know it can be frustrating to wait for a reviewer to evaluate the page so it will appear in search engines but I don't do new page reviews on requests. It is in the queue to be looked at and hopefully a reviewer will get to it soon. If at 90 days it has not been reviewed it will be indexed automatically at that time. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:26, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: Thank you very much for your time and once again,I apologize for the inconveniences. Regards Moshswacide (talk) 18:25, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Administrator changes

Blablubbs

Alvestrand • Black Falcon • Deathphoenix • Dppowell • Mark Arsten • JGHowes (deceased)

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Mkdw

Interface administrator changes

Galobtter

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, extended confirmed protection may be used preemptively on certain high-risk templates.
• Following a discussion at the Village Pump, there is consensus to treat discord logs the same as IRC logs. This means that discord logs will be oversighted if posted onwiki.

Technical news

• DiscussionTools has superseded Enterprisey's reply-link script. Editors may switch using the "Discussion tools" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features.

Arbitration

• A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
• Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
• The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

• Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
• The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Recent Arb Decision on RfCs

I notice you were one of the drafting arbitrators on the Iran case. With respect to the remedy giving uninvolved administrators the ability to use discretionary sanctions to limit actions relating to the discussions at AfCs, and especially the ability to use DS to prevent a second RfC on any question within a year of the first RfC, is this intended to apply only to the topic area of this case. Reading though the proposed decisions section, I cannot tell what was intended; different arbs seemed to expres different views.

I would have asked this during the case, but I was not following it, as I have no interest whatsoever in this topic area. I'm just asking informally for your view on what was intended. DGG ( talk ) 03:37, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Always happy to have you drop by @DGG and no need to apologize for not following the case. My personal take is that the measures listed are already in the realm of permissible under DS, at least as DS is currently written, and ArbCom was just endorsing them for this topic area. What is your thinking? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:45, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

You are correct that the current rule for DS permits essentially anything, including interference in Wikipedia article content which arb com itself could not directly do. Most subject-related RfCs at this point involve sourcing, and sourcing RfCs are no longer about only general rules, but the usual current method of determining specific content. An RfC can freeze content, by eliminating the use of sources in a way that does not not allow coverage of the minority view on a topic. Thus, any pressuregoup which can establish a temporary consensus for excluding sources ,can under this rule of arb com's impose its view for an entire year.The most prominent recent areas were this has occurred is the origin of covid, and Race &. intelligence.I myself edit in neither area, because the dominance of these areas by those who wish to call their opponents fringe makes it impossible. It was difficult enough beefore this statement to get reconsideration of unrepresentative discussions, Arb com has now endorsed the restrictive views of those who do not want to give their opponents fair play, thus negating the basic principle of NPOV.

I do not think this was the arbcom intent. I think you were not aware of the way in which such a rule would be used by POV pushers. I'm goingto give a discussion related to this at WM-NA on saturday the 9th, and I think I will follow it up with a proposal for an amendment of one of the older arb com decisions on which this view has been base, and continue this with further requests.

The general princople behind this is that WP has no business making conclusions about the truth of anything,; we all I think agree on not doing it explicitly, but the restriction of sources and ithe increasingly broad scope claimed for FRINGE and MEDRS has come to lead to the same effect. The proper view is by presenting all views fully, the reader will then be able to to determine the truth for themselves--it is their responsibility, not ours--we just provide the information by which they can do so. . This is hardly a new view of mine-- I have been saying it for the last 15 years; the time has come to do something about it. DGG ( talk ) 10:56, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) origin of covid, and Race &. intelligence If I remember correctly, the enforcement in R&I follows from RfCs establishing general consensus for the status quo, and I don't think COVID DS (or the GS) was used to enforce sourcing rules with regards to the origins (certainly there was enforcement of MEDRS as DS relating to medication like Ivermectin, but not the origins IIRC), except one GS sanction which was later undone. Enforcement was later clarified by a community RfC on the use of MEDRS in the topic area. Most exclusion of content was really under soft pressure rather than any kind of formal DS sanctions. Whether 'pressure groups' have resulted in consensus or policies that are counter-productive is, I suppose, a separate discussion, but I don't think there is any issue with how the DS itself is being used here. (that said, there is a view that the existence of a DS inherently results in different editing standards, but these are nowhere to be read at WP:ACDS or elsewhere, and an admin can interpret that as however they want, and enforce such a view without a single logged action, which is an instance of 'soft pressure' but this is something I think might be a problem). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:08, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

ProcrastiatingReader, I agree with you about the proper scope of MEDRS--diagnosis and therapy and prevention. But during the discussions on covid origin there were efforts to expand it way beyond this to all of biomedicine, as if nobody but an MD could determine the structure of a virus, or publish it outside of a medical journal. As you note, it took an RfC to remove medically-related economics and sociology and politics. Ivermectin is an excellent example: the question of its value as a drug is MEDRS, but the reasons why people promote it is outside MEDRES. I think we probably basically agree on most of this. But informal pressure under the unspoken threat of DS is one of the evil effects of having DS, just as having the death penalty available distorts the justice system. DGG ( talk ) 05:25, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

DGG I certainly agree with you that RfC moratoriums are tricky things. While I think it has a place in this particular topic area as a tool in the toolbox I specifically wrote it to be a maximum of 1 year and I hope that if used that some thought is made to doing even shorter times - I think 6 months could be effective. I'm reluctant to dive too deeply into the other points you're making given your admitted interest in filing an ARCA (something that ArbCom was already aware of for those talk page watching) in the nearish future as I anticipate getting into it then. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:42, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

they are likely to be a series of several ARCAS, one this year, one next year. Arb com--and WP generally-- has for some yers now been in the position of trying to work with (and around) rules adopted in simpler days. Certainly I don't expect an informal response here--that's why I was a little hesitant to even ask you.

But the best way to handle dangerous remedies is to use those with less potential for abuse, rather than try to find a dose that isn't too toxic. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Toxins can in some (limited) circumstances be an effective medicine. That's how I view RfC moratoriums. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:13, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

RfA 2021 review update

Thanks so much for participating in Phase 1 of the RfA 2021 review. 8 out of the 21 issues discussed were found to have consensus. Thanks to our closers of Phase 1, Primefac and Wugapodes.

The following had consensus support of participating editors:

1. Corrosive RfA atmosphere

   The atmosphere at RfA is deeply unpleasant. This makes it so fewer candidates wish to run and also means that some members of our community don't comment/vote.

2. Level of scrutiny

   Many editors believe it would be unpleasant to have so much attention focused on them. This includes being indirectly a part of watchlists and editors going through your edit history with the chance that some event, possibly a relatively trivial event, becomes the focus of editor discussion for up to a week.

3. Standards needed to pass keep rising

   It used to be far easier to pass RfA however the standards necessary to pass have continued to rise such that only "perfect" candidates will pass now.

4. Too few candidates

   There are too few candidates. This not only limits the number of new admin we get but also makes it harder to identify other RfA issues because we have such a small sample size.

5. "No need for the tools" is a poor reason as we can find work for new admins

The following issues had a rough consensus of support from editors:

6. Lifetime tenure (high stakes atmosphere)
   Because RfA carries with it lifetime tenure, granting any given editor sysop feels incredibly important. This creates a risk adverse and high stakes atmosphere.
7. Admin permissions and unbundling
   There is a large gap between the permissions an editor can obtain and the admin toolset. This brings increased scrutiny for RFA candidates, as editors evaluate their feasibility in lots of areas.
8. RfA should not be the only road to adminship
   Right now, RfA is the only way we can get new admins, but it doesn't have to be.

Please consider joining the brainstorming which will last for the next 1-2 weeks. This will be followed by Phase 2, a 30 day discussion to consider solutions to the problems identified in Phase 1.

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Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 4

Universal Code of Conduct News
Issue 4, October 2021Read the full newsletter

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Welcome to the fourth issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.

If you haven’t already, please remember to subscribe here if you would like to be notified about future editions of the newsletter, and also leave your username here if you’d like to be contacted to help with translations in the future.

• Enforcement Draft Guidelines Review Wrap-up - The Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Draft Guidelines Review will come to a close on 17 October 2021, after more than two months of extensive consultations. (continue reading)
• Roundtable Discussions and Conversation Hours - Another successful roundtable session happened on September 18, 2021 to discuss the EDGR. One last conversation hour will be happening on October 15th, 2021. (continue reading)
• Movement Charter Drafting Committee Elections - The Movement Charter Drafting Committee selection process has kicked off and will be open until October 25, 2021. Contributors to Wikimedia projects can elect their favorite candidates on to the committee. (continue reading)
• New Direction for the Newsletter - As we round-up the consultation processes for the Universal Code of Conduct, the facilitation team is currently envisioning new directions for the newsletter. (continue reading)
• Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about the UCoC on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

MNadzikiewicz (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Brainstorming

If my participation is beginning to be an annoyance, just tell me. Apart from the 1,000s of hours I invested in RfA reform and the development and coordination of other process, I don't really give two hoots what happens to Wikipedia management these days - RfA or NPP. I can just as easily do a RexxS and disappear for good. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:00, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung you're no annoyance at all. Insights about what the past has been is good. While I don't know that any of the "large scale" changes will pass I do think we're in a different moment in that they can't be ruled out as viable. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:23, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

I am oblivious of what is transpiring or has transpired between yourself & Kudpung, but let me just say this here, I really haven't looked into this pedantically due to the fact that I am currently multi tasking here & coupled with real life work. I haven’t seen the proposals yet, but my sincere take is, if any changes are to be made on Adminship, it is my opinion it should be the quality of editors participating, for example if it is made possible that tough very tough questions be asked solely by bureaucrats & system operators to the candidate, I believe it would be ideal and less of a bloodbath, after which, both bureaucrats and admins would delegate and the result of the delegation would be made known to the editor in question if or not they were successful or otherwise. If that mechanism is implemented, vengeful editors or editors who have an axe to grind wouldn’t be given the opportunity to do so as all they do is edit disruptively under the guise of “contributing” Look Captain, to be honest the current RFA atmosphere is beyond toxic and I honestly wouldn’t blame competent editors who say no to becoming sysops due to the seven day toxicity. Celestina007 (talk) 01:20, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi Celestina007. There has been a very big discussion taking place for 30 days which was closed a couple of days ago. Prior to moving to a Phase 2 RfC , the points retained to be followed up are currently at a brainstorming stage at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Brainstorming. What you are saying here is important - perhaps you would like to say it there. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:31, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As you can probably understand, I'm trying to stay out of the English Wikipedia as much as possible these days but it's not easy when I use the encyclopedia many times daily to look things up for my day job. It's not easy when I have the baggage of a fairly good institutional memory going back well over a decade. It's not easy having been instrumental in bringing about some of the major policy changes in post 2007 Wiki - particularly those which involved policy battles with the WMF and getting their devs to do stuff. I just don't want to be bothersome. What you are doing is immensely important even if part of your programme only records general community attitudes rather than obtaining changes/improvements.

WereSpielChequers once told me many many years ago during a private meetup in Weatherspoons in Oxford that several small changes are easier to obtain than large ones - baby steps first - and I always followed his advice. Single changes get more participation at their RfC, but running a programme of suggestions simultaneously for multiple changes can (but not always) lead to the community being confused about the goals and dilutes the participation.

Maybe times have indeed changed since I used to propose things, but one thing you can be sure of is that anything that would improve the status quo by however little would be most welcome. Even now, several years since the NPR right was created, they are finally talking about stiffening the criteria for becoming a reviewer and hw to smoke out UPE (but the NPP process still clearly lacks leadership). Changes come slow on Wikipedia, too slow - it took six years for ACTRIAL, six years to get NPP recognised as an official process, and six years have elapsed already since Biblioworm's RfA reforms (is there a pattern there?). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:23, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung As God is my witness I took a look and I saw this: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Brainstorming#Idea: Remove !voting at RfA, replace with a discussion and crats determining consensus, I had no idea it was there, so apparently it means it had been discussed in the past as noted by Barkeep and opposed. I Honestly don’t think I want to participate in it if my point has been raised and opposed in the past, such aspects of Wikipedia, which I consider “political in nature” are the aspects of this collaborative project I try as much as possible to avoid. Because In the end it is just extreme loquaciousness on the part of almost everyone participating without any real action occurring. As stated earlier I hadn’t even seen that proposal before I made the comments above, I think it’s just common-sense (please and please if you are reading this, I do not know who the opposers were in the past, please I’m sorry if this is rude, please it is not my intention to be rude) but that is or ought to be the right thing to do. But like said I wouldn’t bother posting there if the outcome wouldn’t be any different from the first time it was proposed. Celestina007 (talk) 02:05, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Celestina007, I'm sorry if I caused some confusion. Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Brainstorming is merely a summary of the points which on the closers' review had reached sufficient consensus to be discussed further. The brainstorming and its talk page are not debates and the section you linked to above is just the first of several separate sections on the page and it has a carefully worded caveat in a green banner. I think parts of Barkeep's project have some real chances of succeeding and there will be some action, and based on the ideas, including yours, he will decide which ones to exert pressure on and how. My reputation and credibility were destroyed nearly 2 years ago and what I have to say nowadays carries little or no clout, so don't despair, your opinions are valid and valuable - keep them coming. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:26, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung:, just so you know, not everyone thinks that in regards to you reputation. I hope that helps. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:12, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Would you be willing to review an AFD close of mine?

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philip Linn Pioneer Cemetery is the first controversial AFD I've closed. Would you say the rationale and/or closing statement are adequate here? Hog Farm _Talk 17:36, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

@Hog Farm happy to do so. I would say it's a good close both in your determination of the consensus and in your explanation why. One suggestion is to rarely, or never, refer to things like a "majority" of editors. I avoid labels that suggest I was merely head counting, which I don't do and is clear from this discussion you were not doing. I will say things like "a consensus of editors agrees X while a minority of editors suggests Y" but even that I try to do sparingly. I've probably written too much on a fairly minor point of what I consider a good close. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:02, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Phase 2 comments

Regarding this edit: I presume when you said "In two part RfAs it is standard...", you meant two-part RfCs? It's a bit more confusing than usual as the preceding sentence was commenting on the viability of the brainstorming proposals, so the start of the sentence makes it seem like you are continuing this theme. isaacl (talk) 19:44, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes a typo. I think I'm ok on TPG to edit and will do so. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:45, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

@Isaacl do you have any comments on the phase 2 page? I know you'd specifically written you wanted to see it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:26, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I think it is a good idea to have a 7-day drafting period before discussion starts. This will hopefully allow for proposals to settle into a final (for the moment) form, and perhaps to ward off any sprawl (assuming someone doesn't dump in a bunch of proposals at the last moment). I think an actual example might help, but since there is the drafting period, you (or someone) can help copyedit initial proposals if they diverge from your template, and then future proposals will likely follow suit. It's a bit counterintuitive how an RfC with a single proposal for RfA reform can garner a lot of attention (and people forking out their own proposals in the comments), while deliberate attempts such as these to consult the entire community can kind of fade out: it illustrates the difficulty in finding common ground. But hey, only by trying will we know if sentiment has changed sufficiently to get some agreement on something. isaacl (talk) 02:22, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Apologies; I missed that there is a wikitext example, as I was thinking of a live example within the actual body of the RfC. I think it should help. isaacl (talk) 19:38, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

@Isaacl yeah I got what you meant. I plan to move Wugapodes revised Q1 wording as a suggestion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:40, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Sorry again: when I said "I think it should help", I should have clarified that I was referring to your existing example using an idea from 2015. But having the revised Q1 proposal as an example is probably a good, small-stakes example to include. isaacl (talk) 19:49, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

"no new proposals will be allowed after 11/7": Just double-checking to make sure I can take that literally, that a new proposal on the 7th (UTC) would be possible, but not the 8th. I'll check on the 7th to see if my proposal might be needed (probably not, but it's something I want to put some thought into). - Dank (push to talk) 16:56, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

@Dank good question. My goal is next week at about this time to start the 30 day discussion perio and a week after that to close the proposal period. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:59, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, well, The Awful English Language keeps changing ... I've increasingly seen cases where people assumed that "after" meant "starting on". This is why copyeditors have to stock up on antacids. - Dank (push to talk) 17:03, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

@Dank so true. I am grateful for copyeditors and their antacids. On a different note, just wanted to confirm you got my 2nd email. You didn't reply and no reply was necessary but since you're here I thought I would confirm you got it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:13, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh, yes, sorry, I did get it, all is well (except that we got some dicey medical news yesterday and I'm taking a semi-wikibreak till we get more test results, probably within a week or two. Fingers crossed.) - Dank (push to talk) 17:25, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh dear. Fingers crossed indeed! Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:25, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

And btw, some kind of language would be appreciated along the lines of "if you vote in the first week, please check back after the 7th for new proposals". Even if my proposal isn't needed, other proposals will probably be added (and sometimes the late ones are the best ones!) Back in the day when I was closing RfCs, I noticed that a lot of people who voted never returned to look at new stuff ... even when prompted. - Dank (push to talk) 17:41, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes that's a good idea. I will add it to the commented voter language. Additionally if we do watchlist notice it, I would not do that until after the 7 day period. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:43, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Perfect. - Dank (push to talk) 17:45, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

November 2021 backlog drive

New Page Patrol | November 2021 Backlog Drive
On November 1, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. (t · c) buidhe 01:58, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Realistic appraisal requested

As I'm sure you're sure aware, I"ve been somewhat active in the RFA reform discussions you started. I wanted to first of all thank you for getting that ball rolling. As I've proposed gathering people together in the tranche/cohort idea, I've been feeling a little guilty that I'm possibly suggesting others try something I wouldn't. I have previously not been interested in becoming an admin and I've never edited with an eye towards fulfilling the de facto requirements for becoming one. I did an ORCP over four years ago and I don't think I really did "significantly change my editing habits in order to build up an RfA-worthy resume" but I invite your feedback on whatever you think is useful. Just to be clear, I'm not trying to mold myself into the very model of a modern major adminibile but want to know if my reticence is justified. Thank you in advance. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:09, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

@Eggishorn that's for the kind words about RFA2021. I appreciate all that you and others have put in towards making our RfA better. Ultimately I want to see more admin because I think it's healthy editorially (more people to press needed buttons) and culturally (to ensure that we don't get an admin upper-class). I think people vastly overstate the qualifications necessary to pass RfA. Vastly. I am always happy to do an assessment. I will do it in the next day or two - my top non-ArbCom/RFA2021 task is a GA review that I need to check-in on but this will go into the queue after that. I find I can deliver more forthright feedback and RfA strategy privately so I will email you what I find. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:13, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks again. You're probably right about the vast overstatement. I look forward to hearing from you whenever or whatever. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:18, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

@Eggishorn not sure if you saw it or not but I emailed you my assessment a few days ago. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:56, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. I did see it and I replied through email. Thanks again. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 17:00, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Glad I checked with you. Your response had gone to my spam filter. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:06, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #19

Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks

"Add an image" prototype, showing suggested image for the article

• "Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results. So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement. We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
• "Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype. We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.

News for mentors

• The Mentor dashboard is available at our pilot wikis: Arabic, Czech, and Bengali Wikipedias. It will soon be available at a few more volunteering wikis, as a test. [21]
• At wikis where the mentor dashboard is deployed, a new filter is available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors [22]

Community configuration

• Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.

Scaling

• We are proud to announce that all Wikipedias now have the Growth features! Thank you to all the community members who helped the team build the features and bring them to their wikis. The only exception is Chinese Wikipedia (zh), for technical reasons. [23]
• The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 280 of the smallest of those Wikipedias have the features. [24][25]
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Complaint on Arabic Wikipedia Admins

I have a complaint for Arabic Wikipedia Admins, Can you help where to send my complaint? — Preceding unsigned comment added by حبيشان (talk • contribs) 08:09, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@حبيشان I do not know enough about Arabic Wikipedia to help. Perhaps try the Teahouse. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:19, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Advice needed

Captain, I was going to open an SPI but the master sock has been blocked for a long while now so I’m unsure if the SPI would be an effort in utter futility become it has become stale, can I still open an SPI and ask the duck test (based on behavioral evidence) be used instead of optimizing technical evidence. Is that possible? Celestina007 (talk) 21:10, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Are there any more recent socks? Is this someone with a lot of socking or little previous socking? The more previous socking there has been the more likely an SPI could CU evidence. Of course a behavioral based SPI can also work. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:27, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I’m hoping the behavioral evidence would work. I’d file the SPI tomorrow. It’s 11:47pm in Nigeria and boy am I fagged out. Celestina007 (talk) 22:51, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

SPI Opened

This right here was what I was referencing and hopefully the behavioral pattern would be sufficient. Captain I have another challenge, I am trying to open another SPI pertaining to a different editor but my constraint is, my proof of that editor engaging in socking requires images, how do I go about this? As without the images the SPI is rather useless. There’s no outing involved I might add, do I open the SPI all the same or do I report it to ARBCOM ? Celestina007 (talk) 14:29, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@Celestina007 what do you mean by images? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:51, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

That is, I have pictures (that serve as evidence) to support my claims without those pictures my claims have no real substance or cannot be comprehended thus why I think emailing ArbCOM would be the best approach. Celestina007 (talk) 19:15, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@Celestina007 this shounds like something that could (should?) go to checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:24, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

I was thinking the same just now. I’d do that. Thanks for the audience. Celestina007 (talk) 19:26, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

This is something elaborate and complicated so in order not to complicate or exacerbate matters even more, i think I would wait until the aforementioned SPI I just opened has been addressed / closed before I message the Checkuser team. Celestina007 (talk) 19:47, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	Thank you for everything you do around here. Also, thank you for your patience earlier this year. Scorpions13256 (talk) 22:41, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

I know you are a very busy functionary.

This is a very off point question, but I had always found it funny when i come across this where Administrators place Autopatrol or NPR adjacent their Administrator bit please why is this so? I thought being a sysop comes with all the perms? For example you are a Checkuser, Admin, & oversigher but I can also see new Page reviewers also, now isn't that meant to be a part of Being an admin? Celestina007 (talk) 22:46, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Because I use the NPR user box I was told not having the permission made it confusing so I added the permission rather than remove the infobox. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:58, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) also Barkeep loves NPP more than most things on this site lol –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 23:49, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

RfA Reform 2021 Phase 2 has begun

Following a 2 week brainstorming period and a 1 week proposal period, the 30 day discussion of changes to our Request for Adminship process has begun. Following feedback on Phase 1, in order to ensure that the largest number of people possible can see all proposals, new proposals will only be accepted for the for the first 7 days of Phase 2. The 30 day discussion is scheduled to last until November 30. Please join the discussion or even submit your own proposal.

There is 1 future mailing planned with the results of Phase 2. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

16:13, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 October 2021

• From the editor: Different stories, same place

• News and notes: The sockpuppet who ran for adminship and almost succeeded

• In the media: China bans, and is there intelligent life on this planet?

• Opinion: A photo on Wikipedia can ruin your life

• Discussion report: Editors brainstorm and propose changes to the Requests for adminship process

• Recent research: Welcome messages fail to improve newbie retention

• Community view: Reflections on the Chinese Wikipedia

• Traffic report: James Bond and the Giant Squid Game

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Comment (re)moval

Hey Barkeep! :)

Can you explain to me what I did "wrong" with the comment in that discussion page? Please don't take this text as a kind of accusation. I was just sincerely surprised with the move because I thought discussion was what we were striving for in that page. And that issue had no discussion started so if anything else I thought I was "being helpful" in the general scheme of things. Why would we want to leave that issue empty? The other issues already had a lot of replies and comments going on. Was my comment inadequate or unfit in some way for the page? - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:58, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Klein Muçi, thanks for your question, I'm happy to answer. The 8 issues come from the first part of this process. In that part various issues were discussed and the 8 on the page now are those that had community consensus behind them. Following that there was a 2 week brainstorm where there was general discussion as well as discussion of specific ideas. During the current phase we are primarily discussing changes that could be implemented. Generalized discussion is, of course, still welcome but is happening on the talk page where I moved your comment. In this way the large number of editors that are going to participate can focus on the various ideas proposed. The page is already quite large - ~175k - after one day and is only likely to grow and this kind of effort is an attempt to make it as manageable as possible for the largest number of editors as possible. Discussion on the talk page has been quite constant itself so people will definitely see and consider what you say - I know someone has ever responded already. I hope that answers your question but if not please ask follow-ups. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:37, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed answer! I had already seen the phases (and even read some of the Signposts' articles through the years in regard to RfAs listed there). I understand your motivation. Do you think that issue is bound to have other comments composed in a more specific way compared to mine? Again, this is not an accusation. It's just that I really care for the subject because it has been a topic which I've touched myself in the past and I was surprised finding it there as well. That's actually what made me participate in the discussion after seeing the notification for it in an user's talk page and following it out of curiosity. If you see my answers on my steward candidature of this year, you'll see that in the end of the first answer I talk exactly about this problem. So I'm just interested in seeing a discussion develop in regard to that, be that from anyone's starting comment, not wanting it to die out. I'm a crat in my homewiki and the overall philosophy followed there is that everything is better than nothing because it helps sparking discussions. BUT my homewiki is SqWiki and we really struggle for discussions. I fully understand that EnWiki may have the total opposite problem of that. You know it better in this aspect. - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:06, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi for phase 1 we had over 100 participants and because we will be advertising this discussion on watchlists I am hoping for more than 200 participants in this phase. Given the large number of editors involved, which will be greater than the number who participated in your steward candidacy, discussion does need to be a bit less free flowing than at smaller discussions in order to still have a chance of producing results. This was one reason we had a separate brainstorming phase where there were plenty of places for both specific ideas and generalized discussion. You definitely could still pull a proposal together on your idea on the talk page and propose it over the next week, or even just spark good discussion itself which is, as you note, of its own use. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:16, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Okay then. Those numbers are of course reassuring. Keep up the good work! Regards! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:20, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Best resolution

Hi, I'm Islsfjdk, I'm reaching out to you about the article Zev Shapiro because you are an admin and a contributor to the article. I have been in contact with MrsSnoozyTurtle about the article after they moved it to draft. I asked them on their talk page to consider relooking at the sources and take it to AfD instead if they still have concerns about the subject's notability. They refused. I simply do not agree with what they are doing. What would be the best course of action for this? Regards, Islsfjdk (talk) 04:28, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2021).

Administrator changes

Clpo13

Brian0918 • JDoorjam • Karanacs • MrDarcy • Mindspillage

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Dreamy Jazz • Ferret • GeneralNotability • Girth Summit • RoySmith

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz • LuK3

Guideline and policy news

• Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.

Technical news

• Toolhub is a catalogue of tools which can be used on Wikimedia wikis. It is at https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/.

Arbitration

• GeneralNotability, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections. Ivanvector and John M Wolfson are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves to stand in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections from 07 November 2021 until 16 November 2021.

Miscellaneous

• The 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of five new CheckUsers and two new Oversighters.

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• Discuss this newsletter
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 November newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year and the finalists can relax! Our Champion this year is The Rambling Man (submissions), who amassed over 5000 points in the final round, achieving 8 featured articles and almost 500 reviews. It was a very competitive round; seven of the finalists achieved over 1000 points in the round (enough to win the 2019 contest), and three scored over 3000 (enough to win the 2020 event). Our 2021 finalists and their scores were:

1. The Rambling Man (submissions) with 5072 points
2. Lee Vilenski (submissions) with 3276 points
3. Amakuru (submissions) with 3197 points
4. Epicgenius (submissions) with 1611 points
5. Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1571 points
6. BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 1420 points
7. Hog Farm (submissions) with 1043 points
8. Bloom6132 (submissions) with 528 points

All those who reached the final round will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. Awards will be handed out in the next few days.

• The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for 8 FAs in round 5.
• Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 5.
• Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured topic prize, for 13 articles in a featured topic in round 5.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 63 GAs in round 4.
• The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the good topic prize, for 86 articles in good topics in round 5.
• The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the reviewer prize, for 68 FAC reviews and 213 GAN reviews, both in round 5.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 30 did you know articles in round 3 and 105 overall.
• Bloom6132 (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 71 in the news articles in round 1 and 284 overall.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether they made it to the final round or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup, some of whom did very well. Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from the quality creations, expansions and improvements made, and the numerous reviews performed. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.

If you have views on whether the rules or scoring need adjustment for next year's contest, please comment on the WikiCup talk page. Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2022 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:55, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Little help

Hey captain, what’s a superlink? Hyper link, & permalink please what are those? Celestina007 (talk) 21:40, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Superlinks is a script. Hyperlink has an article so I'll point you there. Permalink is a diff of that page at that moment can be be generated by clicking on "Permanent link" in the sidebar on desktop. I know you're mobile and I do not think there is a way to generate one there in the same way. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:47, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Barkeep49/Archives. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 21:47, 3 November 2021 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Pahunkat (talk) 21:47, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

@Pahunkat it definitely has been discussed though I can't point you to one at this moment. There was enough discussion to make my list. You could definitely float your idea on the talk page for feedback. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:05, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

A bucketful

Personally my wikipedia bucket is full at the moment between WP:RFA2021, extensive writing I have been doing for the UCoC drafting committee, and my "everyday" Arb work. I do hope you're not spreading yourself too thin 😉 Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:23, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Right now my bucket is full but not overflowing. It is why I am being careful to not further extend myself. My biggest frustration is my inability to do any sort of deep content work. But hopefully when the UCoC stuff wraps up I can resume more activity there. Thanks for your concern @Kudpung. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:56, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of The Anthropocene Reviewed

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article The Anthropocene Reviewed you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:21, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Programmable search question

Hi Barkeep, hope all is well. Ever since your recommendation during a GA review, I've been using your custom google search to help quickly find reviews for articles. It's been extremely helpful, but I noticed today, while researching for Skin of the Sea, that the NPR does not appear to be in the search (their review). I'd like to know how to add them to the custom search, as I find their reviews quite useful (even though they don't publish that many). Thanks as always, Isabelle ^🔔 01:01, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

@Isabelle Belato I agree NPR is useful. I have intentionally kept the engine limited to just review journals to keep from false positives clogging up results but I'd be happy to rethink. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:10, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Now that you mention, it indeed might be best to leave NPR out, so as not to risk getting false positives. I was going to suggest using their section on books (https://www.npr.org/books/) to help avoid that issue, but it didn't work when I tried, which is a shame. Isabelle ^🔔 03:24, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

How to report a poor admin

There is an editor who has been recklessly removing anything he/she disagrees with and saying things like "nah" or "because I said so" to valid criticism. How can a system administrator be punished. This person has a pattern of disruptive and highly inflammatory behavior with regards to the narrow scope of politics. Are there any consequences for abuse of power? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.50.43.200 (talk) 00:18, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Administrator is a specific position with the ability to act in certain circumstances. You seem to be in a dispute with another editor. I would encourage you to look at our guide to dispute resolution which can offer you a few different tools you could use including asking for a third opinion. Good luck. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:08, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

SNOW closed as what?

Hi. At Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/2021_review/Proposals#Instructions_for_voters I see you have SNOW closed some things. I wish your close said SNOW closed as what? PRobably they are all SNOW closed as "Opposed", but please don't make me have to open and read SNOW closed sections to get up to speed. -- SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:53, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi, Barkeep! Funny, I came here to make the same request: Thanks for all your work yesterday, evaluating discussions at the current RFC regarding RFA. That was enormously helpful. But a suggestion: when you closed proposals 1B, 1C, 2D, 3A, 7C, and 8A, your closing comment was just “snow closed,” without saying how it was closed: whether the proposal was accepted or rejected. It would be helpful if the closure comment specified the outcome, since the discussion is hatted and we have to open it to see the result. Just a thought. -- MelanieN (talk) 15:10, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

As a counter argument (although I agree they could do with being more descriptive), is it even possible to have a WP:SNOW close as accepted? I thought the definition was that there wasn't a snowballs chance that the suggestion would go ahead. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:17, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't know why you couldn't have a "snow approved" result at an RFC situation. At AfD for instance you can have either "snow keep" or "snow delete" - when the result is so obvious that there is no point in waiting seven days. -- MelanieN (talk) 15:36, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

My understanding was like @Lee's as SNOW says If an issue has a snowball's chance in hell of being accepted by a certain process, there's no need to run it through the entire process. with WP:AVALANCHE applying to successful proposals. But this is an easy fix and I'm happy to have done it @SmokeyJoe @MelanieN. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:36, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

A snow close as delete or as accepted should really be a speedy keep/accept. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:37, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Project Collapsing

HI,

I am a bit confused on Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2021 January 8#Template:WikiProject banner shell. I think this was only for collapsing project templates if more than N projects. Was there a separate discussion about having Wiki templates default on both Talk and Article to auto collapsed? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 06:33, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

@Wakelamp I'm not entirely sure I understand your question. The proposal was to autocollapse the Wikiproject banner. Some participants supported this but only in cases where there were more than X project banners. There was agreement to not collapse all banners and no consensus about whether to autocollapse only if there were X (or more) banners. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:00, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Need Clarification

I read WP:RS each day as a hobby, but I still can’t fathom what the real difference between WP:BIASED & WP:RSOPINION is, could you give me more insight on what the difference is? Celestina007 (talk) 20:43, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

The source can have an agenda which makes it biased. However a biased source can still be factual in nature. An opinion source is about advancing an opinion as opposed to "just" being biased. There's a lot of nuance here so I have not explained it perfectly but I hope that is of some help. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:10, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

It does help. Thanks captain. Celestina007 (talk) 14:12, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Some assistance required

Hi there Barkeep. I was in the process of moving my draft on Petra Mayer when I noticed someone had created an article on her in the meantime (see Petra Mayer). I was wondering if I should just copy and paste the content from my draft into the article, or if there is a process that I must go through (such as merging, for example). Could you advice me? Thanks. Isabelle ^🔔 01:52, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Isabelle Belato since you were the only author of the draft, I would just merge (copy and paste) as you see fit. There's no need to actually do a histmerge in this case. If others had edited the draft and you were doing the merge than we would maybe do that (beyond just giving attribution in say the edit history). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:05, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I've copied the content to the article in main space. Isabelle ^🔔 02:21, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Sometime in the past I stumbled on an article about an Indian school

My question is it seems to be copy pasted from the school website asides the copyvio it seems the school is making very promotional unverified statements which may be untrue for example (best school in Tamil Nadu) but no source substantiate this, the material was copy pasted from that website straight to here, now asides the conventional G12, can a CSD G11 still be applicable seeing as it is a copy pasted material? Or would a G11 be inappropriate? Celestina007 (talk) 12:30, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes something can be both promotional and a copyvio. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:56, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Gradual Atrophying of Africa & Asia “Reliable Sources”

Captain what are your thoughts on African and Asian reliable sources engaging in less than ethical practices? The Punch has been a very reliable source in Nigeria as far back as I can recall, Infact have won award for their integrity in the past, see this today I came across this & my heart sunk, because this was a pre-packaged sponsored post that they deliberately failed to expressly tag it as a sponsored post as they formerly would have done. It’s really frustrating, what are your thoughts on this exponential atrophy of reliable sources in Asia & Africa? Some time ago Praxidicae, left me this which showed The Guardian (Nigeria) to be guilty of what I just mentioned to you. What are your thoughts on this? I stand to be corrected but I think Usedtobecool also raised this point of Nepalese RS now losing credibility, I know this is bothering you but I need to hear your opinion on this. Celestina007 (talk) 21:04, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Finding sustainable business models to produce what Wikipedia considers reliable sourcing is hard. Very hard. I don't know that I have any great wisdom other than to acknowledge that what you're seeing is what I'm seeing over time as well. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:29, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Even the best of sources are only "generally" reliable. We need to do a better job of assessing individual sources on a case by case basis, something which most of us don't seem to do very much. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:04, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Question: Captain, Do you know of any tools used for de-orphaning an orphaned article? Celestina007 (talk) 21:52, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

No. In general I've just have read the article and seen what could use an incoming link. But you may be able to use the info from Wikidata to find something. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:ORPHAN has a section on how to de-orphan which mentions some tools. IIRC, I have used the find link tool before and it worked. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:08, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

@Usedtobecool, thanks mate, I did find that very helpful. On RS, I agree with you completely that pieces from “RS” have to be scrutinized, Infact here I say this expressly, my disappointment is these were once Nigerian stellar sources which did not require any scrutinizing on their piece as they were always very honest and had integrity, I guess I’m just shocked The Punch would engage in such. At this juncture I’m beginning to think the concept of Reliable sources is dead. Celestina007 (talk) 11:09, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Topic ban enacted

Hi,

You topic banned me about a year ago (diff). Will you please be so kind to justify your action per WP:ADMINACCT and present list of wikipedia policies I violated together with diffs that prove violations, so I can avoid such violations in future?--Antidiskriminator (talk) 15:25, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

@Antidiskriminator, your topic ban was a result of this discussion. You can find the diffs and explanations of what policies/guidelines led to the topic ban in that discussion. Let me know if you have further questions after you've had a chance to read that discussion and examine the diffs. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:37, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

I sincerely apologize if I am wrong, but I do not see "diffs and explanations of what policies/guidelines led to the topic ban" at the link you presented. It contains a discussion of a very small number of editors (5), all involved in numerous disputes against me. Four of them did not provide a single diff of my edits. There were no uninvolved and neutral additional opinions in the discussion. The consensus is based on arguments of editors who maintain a neutral attitude, grounded in wikipedia policies. Still, you closed that discussion and concluded there is consensus for an indef topic ban. In order to be able not to repeat the same violations in future I would really appreciate it if you could justify your decision to ban me per WP:ADMINACCT and present a list of wikipedia policies I violated together with diffs that prove violations.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 16:06, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

There are several diffs presented on that page. This includes an entire section labeled Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it which I know I used when making my assessment that the topic ban should be re-instated. You disagreed with that assessment but 3 other uninvolved administrators also reached the conclusion that a topic ban was appropriate. It was based on this agreement among 4 (including me) uninvolved administrators that I closed the AE thread. This explanation is fulfilling my obligation to provide accountability under our policy. If you wish to appeal your topic ban you may do so following the instructions here. You haven't actually asked me to review the ban (option 1) but since you have been inactive since the topic ban I decline to change it at this time. You may therefore choose one of your other options if you wish to appeal this further. I personally would recommend option 2 as arbs tend to prefer to see that step done before they consider any appeal. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:43, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I sincerely apologize if I am wrong, but the section labeled Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it actually does not present a single diff of my edits as proof of wikipedia policies I violated. It basically points to the alleged issue with a couple of new articles I created and drafts of others I was preparing. Since you used that section when making your assessment, the ban you imposed on me is the first one related to the new articles I created. I have never been sanctioned in relation to issues with new articles I created. And I created more than 500 articles, almost all of at least start level quality, some of them of top importance within their wikiprojects. All my previous (I believe also unjustified) bans were related to alleged issues with my talkpage behavior. Since my last ban, I have strictly taken care of my talkpage behavior. That is why there was no diff related to my talkpage behavior in the section you pointed at. Having that in mind, I propose you lift the ban you imposed and I am willing to respect my obligation to subject any new article I want to create through regular process of review of new "articles for creation" for the next two years?--Antidiskriminator (talk) 21:45, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

In a process that only needed 1 administrator to agree you had four different ones all agreeing that there should be a topic ban. You are essentially making a claim that despite this that you are innocent. That's fair enough. You are entitled to make such a claim, but it is not going to land with me. So I will repeat what I said above. If you wish to appeal your topic ban you may do so following the instructions here. As I am not going to change the topic ban, you may therefore choose one of your other options if you wish to appeal this further. I personally would recommend option 2 (AE or AN) as arbs tend to prefer to see that step done before they consider any appeal. Barkeep49 (talk) 22:40, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

My request for you to unban me is not based on my innocence. It was based on the simple fact that you made the decision to ban me because of a complaint in relation to new articles I created. If I would have to go through the process of review of new "articles for creation" there is no need for such wide indeff ban. Don't you agree?--Antidiskriminator (talk) 11:32, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

No I don't. You'd had a related topic ban previously and so I see the new articles as evidence of those issues continuing not that you don't know how to write new articles. Further the review mechanism you propose isn't equipped to review for the kind of issues that were present at the AE filing. Barkeep49 (talk) 12:27, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. To be able to avoid future violations of wikipedia policies and to prepare a valid appeal, I would appreciate it if you could reply to my simple question.

• Please present list of wikipedia policies I violated together with diffs that prove violations you found in the section labeled Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it you used when making your assessment?

I would appreciate if your explanation would include quotes from policies that I violated. Having in mind serious accusations and duration (indeff) of ban you imposed against me I believe you can easily find and bring serious evidence, so it should not be to hard for you to respect WP:ADMINACCT and justify your action in my case. Best regards. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 11:23, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I have responded promptly and civily about my conduct and actions. You of course may seek review of that under the appropriate policies, guidelines, and procedures. Barkeep49 (talk) 13:20, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of The Anthropocene Reviewed

The article The Anthropocene Reviewed you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:The Anthropocene Reviewed for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:41, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Request to express your thoughts at Nomination of Sadat Hossain for deletion

If you are able to express your thoughts and regards again Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sadat Hossain (3rd nomination) it will be helpful. He is famous and renowned writer in Bangladesh and IMDB listed Director. It is third time it nominated for deletetion. I think this is personal vendetta to delete this article. I hope you can review the article and give your opinion about keep or delete it. Jubair Sayeed Linas (talk) 15:36, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

@Jubair Sayeed Linas I am not sure why you messaged me. Asking people to do something on an AfD goes against WP:CANVASS. Please read up on that guideline. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:59, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

What’s the significance ?

I’m not so sure where I saw it now, I’ve read so much things are muddied up in my brain, but I read something perhaps an essay on reviewing articles at the backend and something about new page reviewers being extra careful when reviewing old articles, my question what’s so difficult or special about reviewing old(er) articles? Celestina007 (talk) 11:34, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Older articles are harder, because they are old because reviewers skip them because they are hard. (talk page stalker)SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:52, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Harder you say? I’m not I understand your explanation, aren’t the same relevant GNG or SNG's used as parameter for accessing notability? I’d think since NPF is an actual queue as opposed to AFC which is a pool, that older articles be attended to first should be the ideal thing to do. The only reason I prefer reviewing new articles is because of nabbing possible spam immediately. Celestina007 (talk) 12:55, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I think newer items in the queue aren't necessarily easier or harder than old items. As SmokeyJoe notes sometimes they are harder because the reason they're old is because lots of reviewers have chosen not to review them. At least at NPP, sometimes they just need to reviewed differently. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:34, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

true, I myself from here review biographical articles predominantly. That’s a serious problem, if I’m seeing this correctly there seems to be unreviewed articles that go back years, wouldn’t that be problematic seeing as after 6 months google indexes them & possibly many of those articles could meet a criterion from WP:draftify, or worse promotional g11 article or blatant hoaxes? I think very experienced editors who aren’t anti spam reviewers should be reviewing from the oldest, but that is just my philosophy. Celestina007 (talk) 17:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I’d be damned Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Oldest was what I was referencing when I said I’m not so sure where I saw it now. Im going to read it thoroughly now. Thanks. Celestina007 (talk) 17:44, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Guy you banned on Wikipedia had image on wikimedia

Special:Contributions/Please_sign_my_guestbook shows you blocked the person, I assume they a sockpuppet of someone else. Anyway, they uploaded an image of a mugshot of someone who was charged but not convicted of a crime apparently. It was determined the mention of this arrest should not be listed in the article.

Since he was banned for trolling and being a sockpuppet, can you delete that image?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_H_Trevena_mugshot.jpg Dream Focus 12:19, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Dream Focus I have no ability to do anything on commons. I am not sure what criteria they use for deletion and whether this would be eligible. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:29, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Dubious username

You might want to check this out. Cheers, Johnbod (talk) 16:33, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Johnbod looks like they got blocked by SpacemanSpiff. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:35, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Johnbod (talk) 16:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

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Satish Chandra

Hi Barkeep49, I was referred to you from here by the AfD nominator. I saw this article in AfD and I suspect that the article Satish Chandra (state commissioner) is created for undisclosed paymemt, but I have no evidence other than a hunch. What can be done? I cannot imagine anyone creating these deleted articles [26] Venkat TL (talk) 15:01, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

@Venkat TL, if we don't have any evidence nominating it for deletion is right first step. If you can show a pattern of bad articles being created that can also be something. You could do that at WP:COIN. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:03, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

How many bad articles are needed to prove a pattern? The link shows quite a few. Is this enough for COIN? Venkat TL (talk) 17:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

In addition to the ones already deleted, I can see that Aashutosh Srivastava, Chilakamarthi Prabhakar Chakravarthy Sharma, Himayat Ali Mirza are non notable BLPs that should not have been created. Venkat TL (talk) 17:15, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

@Venkat TL that might be enough especially if there's a somewhat obvious case to be made about how they're troubling. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:29, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I have posted at WP:COIN. Venkat TL (talk) 08:41, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

An editor is edit warring over the reason you blocked another editor

[27] 22:51, 19 November 2021 Barkeep49 blocked Please sign my guestbook talk contribs with an expiration time of indefinite (account creation blocked) checkuserblock-account

The issue is now at [28]. Please take a brief moment to look at that. Dream Focus 13:00, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

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For soldiers

What criteria or SNG are we currently using to access the notability status of soldiers? I’m currently looking at an article and it mentions that the soldier is a General, my thinking is this should be good enough but as I can’t locate an sng, perharps due to its non existence or me just being oblivious about it, I’m looking to use GNG or BIO to evaluate this military person but it appears they fail both, how do you think I should deal with this? Celestina007 (talk) 20:02, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Soldiers are a pretty hotly debated topic at AfD these days. There are no set SNGs, though some people like the WP:NSOLDIER criteria developed by MILHIST. In terms of community endorsed criteria BIO would be the appropriate criteria. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:17, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I’d skip this & allow reviewers with expertise on this topic area to do the reviewing, thanks once again. Celestina007 (talk) 20:58, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Indeterminate sentence

This is a law term. It should redirect to sentencing guidelines because it refers to the common sentences in which defendants face between x amounts of months or years and x amounts of months or years. This is shown in the sentencing guidelines.--Libracarol (talk) 20:08, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Libracarol we should have this discussion at Talk:Indeterminate sentence or WP:RFD. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:09, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

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DYK for The Anthropocene Reviewed

On 6 December 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Anthropocene Reviewed, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that on his podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green reviews velociraptors, a hot dog stand in Iceland, and bubonic plague? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Anthropocene Reviewed. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, The Anthropocene Reviewed), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:03, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

That's a fun DYK, nice work barkeep :) CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:08, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

While I gave a few thoughts on the hook, all credit for the DYK should go to Cerebral726 who did all the work around it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:09, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Existence of a consensus on Kyiv/Kiev spelling

Hi Barkeep49, could you leave a comment in a discussion regarding the consensus on spelling of the city's name? I was under the impression that a completed RM and the RfC you've closed provide enough evidence that a consensus exists, but maybe some additional clarification is needed. Thanks, Exlevan (talk) 12:13, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Exlevan if necessary I will answer questions but with controversial closes like that I tend to prefer that the wording of the close act for itself. At the moment I see you pointing to the RfC, something the original editor seems unaware of, and hopefully that helps you find consensus. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:42, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

The editor in question reverted my changes, claiming that he has read the RfC and the RM closure statement, so I don't have high hopes that my second pointing them out will have any positive effect. But I do understand the unwillingness to directly engage with the topic, it must have been less than pleasant to deal with in the recent years. — Exlevan (talk) 17:20, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrators will no longer be autopatrolled

A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:05, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

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Block this user

Hello. Sorry for the disturbance, but can you help me on this matter? Can you block this user : 186.36.130.20. This person keep on adding content in an article, "Eiichiro Oda" and always didn't provide a reliable source. You can see also its talk page and received many complaints. I do not have a capability to permanently block this user but i hope you can help me on this. Hope you respond. Thank you. Selenne (talk) 04:52, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Selenne it looks like that IP has stopped now for several hours. In the future you may want to use WP:AIV as a way to get prompt administrator attention. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:44, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the respond! Selenne (talk) 00:42, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Cullen328 (talk) 21:41, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Ditto. I was like...should I just go ahead and reset that since it was in place before my RfA...? Now I'm thinking maybe I should figure out how to help with this. :D —valereee (talk) 21:45, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

AntiCompositeNumber pulled together a nice querry of people who had it before RfA. It seemed like just doing it for them would make more sense than making them try to self-justify. I'm all done with it now. It was fun getting to give a PERM to someone who once gave me a PERM (Amorymeltzer) and to a person who had nominated me for RfA (MelanieN). I thought I would get to give it someone who I had previously given autopatrol to but turns out Girth Summit was fast and beat me to it by self-assigning. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:01, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Logged in for the first time in a few days, and my watchlist was lighting up with you re-enabling this on a bunch of admins - thought I'd save you a few clicks :) Girth Summit _(blether) 22:10, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Barkeep49! I realize I'm technically inept, so I hope all that checking isn't as mindnumbingly tedious as I think it is. All the best, 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 22:47, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the update regarding my autopatrolled status, I also had an automated message regarding that issue posted to my UserTalk page.--TommyBoy (talk) 00:53, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks from me too! Cordless Larry (talk) 09:45, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Awww, that's sweet! I always knew you would be an outstanding administrator, but I didn't realize I would get payback for nominating you! -- MelanieN (talk) 22:32, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I got notifications that I had some common.js pages approved. It looks like the admins who are m:GRN but weren't previously autopatrolled may still need some love, but that looks to be a vanishingly small group. Cabayi (talk) 09:35, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

There is one admin if they have the gall to ask for Autopatrolled, it should be vehemently denied. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

YGM

Hello, Barkeep49/Archives. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

because it's a bit long to post here but it addresses some ideas we had in more detail. That said, you might find this ACE2021 analysis interesting, and the comments on the talk page.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:05, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung you've actually already got a reply. How's that for service :)? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:07, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

It's not in my in box yet. Heck it must be the middle of the night where you are. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:14, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Check your spam folder? I sent it about an hour ago. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:25, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Nothing in spam, junk, or accidentally deleted from my AppleMail client. I have my own server hardware (no shared or virtual hosting) where nothing ever gets deleted, and there is nothing there. Please send again, or try through the Wikipedia mail (it;'s the same mail account). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:24, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Still nothing. Could you send it again please. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:32, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Still nothing. Did you perhaps forget to press 'send'. It sometimes happens to me when I have a lot of windows open and I get distracted.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:44, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Still nothing. Dinner time here. I'll probably try to enjoy some of my semi-retirement this evening unless something exiting turns up - like a new RfA or a desysoping case ! (who says I'm a cynic?) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:23, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung I definitely sent it. Strange. Anyhow I just sent it to you through wikimail. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:38, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Just received your resend by Wikimail. The original never turned up. It's 02:30 here and I'm heading for bed. I'll reply in the morning. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:37, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Challenges with kitchen sink RfC

One challenge due to the wide-ranging scope afforded by the RfA review, where anything was in bounds to discuss, was that it was hard ahead of time to notify the appropriate interested audiences. In future, I think once the set of proposals being discussed were finalized, it would be good to figure out the best places to advertise the specific proposals under discussion. For example, the permission unbundling proposal probably would have benefitted from being advertised at new page patrol and the administrator's noticeboard. This may have helped avoid surprises from those who thought the RfA review was just going to make proposals directly affecting the RFA process.

Another challenge is that the participants in phase 1 and phase 2 varied considerably, at least in the one use case I examined: those who weighed in on whether or not RfA should be less like a discussion and more like a vote, and those who offered a view on having anonymous elections. (The number of participants were a lot smaller during phase 1, though.) This leads to the tricky result that even though we treat the outcome of one consensus discussion as something to build upon in an immediately subsequent discussion, in truth opinion can go the other way depending on the details and just who happens to show up. I think this serves as a reminder that sometimes managing one area of concern might affect something else that the community likes in isolation; it's just willing to trade it off. Also it is usually easier for people to have a definite opinion on a specific proposal. Various people switched sides (mostly from "doesn't need to be more like a vote" to "anonymous vote", but a few the other way), but the shifts were not unreasonable: they were just able to make a different tradeoff based on the specific change being suggested. isaacl (talk) 05:44, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Isaacl, Therein lies indeed the ambiguity. I made several comments throughout the campaign that it was mixing RfA reform with reform of Adminship. These are two very different topics. Some people might see an overlap, but issues of the length of tenure (adminship for life etc.), and whether or not to have or to insist on recall, or alternative methods for addressing admin misconduct, are secondary and are furthest in the minds of the average voter. The high turnout since January 2016 through wide advertising has attracted many drive-by voters.

I always failed to understand why any proper research or statstics was not made before addressing these issues. Quarrying for stats is child's play for a lot of the IT savvy users here and who speak fluent RegEx, and we have better tools for it now than we did 10 years ago. Scottywong did it easily enough for WP:RFA2011 and came up with excellent profiles of the voting community. Maybe I'm just a stickler for stats, but backing RfC proposals up with concrete facts works best. I always remember what my Wikipedia mentor told me many, many years ago: small changes are easier to obtain than large, all-encompassing ones. And it worked like a charm - at least for the RfCs I led into battle.

I'm not downplaying for a moment the huge effort that went into this exercise - it was engineered by a person who commands a high level of respect and whom people listen to. However, I fear that yet again the essentials have not succeeded: Reducing the toxicity of the venue, and encouraging more candidates of the right calibre to come forward. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:11, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts @Isaacl. I think it unlikely that I will lead an endeavor like this again in the future or if I do it won't be for a number of years. To do otherwise would, I feel, test the community's forbearance. As to the matter itself, I think it highly revealing that there was no real momentum around substantive direct changes to RfA. It suggests some sense in the community that there are pluses and minuses to the RfA format and that changes to address the negatives would compromise the advantages in ways the community isn't willing to trade-off. Honestly if I thought that stats would have change this equation, as Kudpung does, I'd have done it. But I don't think this the case. Indeed the stats I did compile, such as on what happens when there are simultaneous candidacies, basically went unremarked upon. So instead of changing RfA, the large scale viable (though not necessarily successful) proposals for change either attempt to fix it indirectly, as with autopatrol, or by creating an alternative, namely elections.

As to how to appropriately notice such a thing, the idea that the list of proposals could have been posted after being finalized is undoubtedly correct. Of course the only reason that would have been possible is because of the innovation of not allowing new proposals after a certain date in this style of RfC. The fact that we (I) hadn't perfected this in the first go is not surprising. I hope those who run this kind of process in the future use the idea and further perfect it.

That said I will admit that there are limits to my feelings that we needed to better reach out to those who have been taken by surprise. We've already seen one explicit admission that an editor didn't engage because they were cynical that anything would come of the process. I am guessing that more than one editor made this calculus. Real efforts were made so that even a casual glance would give you enough information to know whether you should care or not - for instance if someone had just clicked and reviewed the table of contents they could have seen the scope of changes being discussed. Choosing not to participate is a choice and the question should be whether you were given enough information and opportunity to make a reasonable choice. While not perfect, as acknowledged above, I think it was sufficient.

As for different people showing up and/or changing their minds that's to be expected. I do think that the two phase process helped to focus solutions. Whether or not this will ultimately lead to any substantive change to improving RfA, well that's still open as we see how the remaining issues get closed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:51, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Barkeep, I just wanted to thank you for the effort. The RfC was complex and wide-ranging and I can't even imagine how much work must have gone into pulling it all together and running it. I think there's a widespread resistance to change among editors that is very difficult to overcome. Schazjmd (talk) 18:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Schazjmd for the kind words. I think our community is conservative when it comes to change and don't think that's a bad thing - I often feel that way myself. But sometimes we have problems that need addressing. Our declining administrative capacity is such a problem. Whether this will have done anything to address that or not remains to be seen. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:22, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Frankly I think it's more about many folks disliking change and few having had the experience recently enough to be able to empathize. —valereee (talk) 20:00, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree many dislike change; I don't agree with a lack of empathy as I think many people do want to improve the RfA experience. But after years of failing to reach a consensus agreement on changes (which is normal, given that consensus decision making doesn't scale up well), it's unsurprising the editors who like to comment in these discussions are looking to try something different. I suspect if it were somehow possible to poll the entire Wikipedia community, people would favour either voting or appointment by a committee, as these are the typical ways hierarchies are established in other online communities. All methods have drawbacks, of course; it's just a matter of which ones we are willing to live with, in context of Wikipedia's current editing environment. isaacl (talk) 21:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I fully appreciate the reality that with our current decision-making traditions, it's pretty hard to accommodate those who don't show up in discussions. Nonetheless, I think we need to do our best to encourage even the cynical to check in (which I think was done in this review), and also to help those who pick-and-choose what discussions in which to participate (which I think could be done better in future). It's not something that I thought about before and during the process as I fell prey to the easy assumption that everyone was aware of the scope of discussion as it progressed. isaacl (talk) 21:05, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Check user request

I have been watching a discussion happening on the Talk:November 2021 Pacific Northwest floods as an uninvolved editor, and I noticed a weird account, user:GregV6G, who made their first ever edit on Wikipedia as a !vote (over 1600 bytes size) to rename the article to exactly what another editor, User:Pierre cb made 2 weeks ago. It could be a big coincidence, but it seemed too suspicious for me not to alert an admin to it. Elijahandskip (talk) 20:50, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@Elijahandskip sounds like something that you'd want to post at WP:SPI. When I was making reports I'd always use the ARV tool in Twinkle to help me file the SPI (just navigate to one of the users, go to your twinkle menu and choose ARV, and then choose SPI from the drop-down menu). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:29, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@Elijahandskip: I not sure what you imply here but in case you are thinking that I created another account for that vote, I can tell you it is not the case. I contribute since 2006 and you can view all my editions which have always been constructive. As for that vote you are talking about : I already offered my opinion and have nothing further to say. I always let the majority decide. Pierre cb (talk) 00:40, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

@Pierre cb: Glad to hear that. I hope you could at least see why I raised an eyebrow to it. A brand-new editor, and does the first edit as an !vote, which a large reasoning, and duplicate rename wording to your !vote. I am not planning to post to SPI, I just thought it was extremely suspicious, which now appears to be an extreme coincidence that is sort of funny. Elijahandskip (talk) 00:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Page Update

At the 2021 Admin Review page, requesting to update the second phase "7 November: Deadline for submitting proposals to give the community adequate time to discuss any proposals (where we are)" as the review has ended and the changes are being implemented. Thanks! Interesting Geek (talk) 19:00, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@Interesting Geek thanks for the ping. You could have definitely been BOLD and done some updates yourself. That said I have gone ahead and given an update - the closing process has worked differently than expected and has strung out for a while in a way I hadn't anticipated. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:14, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Quick one

Captain, what do we call sources that deal solely with one topic area? Like say, Fashion, Technology, Music, the list is endless but this sort of sources only discuss one topic and never delve into any other topics, Is there a name we call those sort of sources? Celestina007 (talk) 20:31, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

There are various terms someone can use for that but I can't think of any of them used on Wikipedia with any regularity. In theory all RS are only RS within a certain realm of focus. That focus area is just larger for some publications (e.g. New York Times) than others (Burke's Peerage). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:41, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, indeed RS is RS, and regardless of their area or topic of interest insofar as they meet the requirements outlined in what constitutes as a reliable source they are straight. Thank you for your time captain. Celestina007 (talk) 21:33, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Noticeboard links discussion

It's probably too late to change now, but your edit has a relevant word-substitution error: it should be "administrative action review". isaacl (talk) 21:31, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

I've just been calling it XRV so much that I didn't have the real name solid yet. Oh well. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:35, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

AARV or ARV would better match the process name, but that's probably a discussion for one or two years down the road (if it's still active then) when some newbie pops in and suggests it ;-). isaacl (talk) 23:03, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Holiday greetings (2021)

Barkeep,
I sincerely hope your holiday season goes well this year especially with what we went through last year. I'm optimistic that 2022 will be a better year for all of us: both in real life and on Wikipedia. Wishing you the best from, Interstellarity (talk) 19:03, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Uninvolved

How many of the people commenting at RFAR are uninvolved? You have to check each commenters editing history. The comments you see are not representative of the community. Not by a long shot. I have to say that the idea of sending a former arbitrator to close these discussions and make some judgments about content is a path of maximum drama. Taking any of these chaps to AE results in a noisy storm of shrieking involved editors where it is very hard to take an objective view. I think y’all need to step in here and fix this problem. Jehochman ^Talk 20:19, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jehochman I am definitely aware of who is UNINVOLVED and who is not. And I am not suggesting an arb make judgements about content, I am suggesting that they formally close a single COIN discussion. I have a more substantive response to your larger point but my talk page, out of eyes of the rest of the committee, is probably the wrong place for that. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:42, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

You are right. Thank you for your response and for your work on the Committee. I know its a difficult and often thankless job. I'm happy to be proven wrong if you can find a quicker way to solve this. Jehochman ^Talk 20:50, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, Barkeep49/Archives! Or Season's Greetings or Happy Winter Solstice! As the year winds to a close, I would like to take a moment to recognize your hard work and offer heartfelt gratitude for all you do for Wikipedia. Especially at NPP. May this Holiday Season bring you nothing but joy, health and prosperity. Onel5969 TT me 22:46, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

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Season’s Greetings

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Hi Barkeep49, Have an enjoyable holiday season! Cassiopeia talk 09:32, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

For that acknowledgement. Yes, this stuff does make me angry though I think that's a natural, normal and perfectly understandable reaction given all that's happened. I'll probably log off for now and not comment anymore until after holidays.

As an aside, fwiw, even though I've disagreed with them often, I think User:El C has done a fine job in this area, and has approached it with the common sense that is rarely seen among admins. Volunteer Marek 17:27, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

VM, when you are addressing me, remember that I tend to stop reading when I reach polemics and sarcasm.[29] If you want me to pay attention to your comments, please try to stick to the facts. I've tried to improve my statement multiple times. You might consider whether you could improve yours. Jehochman ^Talk 17:58, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jehochman:, I would appreciate it if you'd refrain from making false allegations and WP:ASPERSIONS even if you're being careful to do so only through weaselly insinuation, as you're busy doing here here and here. I guess you've hit upon the strategy of trying to inflame the situation by attacking other editors as a way to get your case accepted, but since these allegations you're making are either ridiculously false (no, there has not been 110 AE reports on me) or pretty disgusting (accusations of falsifying history for "nationalistic ends") I really got ask you stop. Admin or no, you simply don't get to falsely accuse other editors of things that are not true. Volunteer Marek 19:10, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Vested contributors

Sorry to fragment discussion, but I'm over my limit already. We have long recognized the problem of vested contributors acting badly. It's a situation where ArbCom can help. It's incredibly hard to sanction a vested contributor and keep that sanction in place. The amount of pressure that is applied to an individual administrator can be unbearable. Maybe you can invent a procedure where a report to AE can be flagged for committee action when this becomes a concern. Jehochman ^Talk 18:22, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jehochman I agree with your idea of the difficulty of sanctioning vested contributors (it's why I'm voting to accept) and think you state that nicely here. If this does proceed to a case, I hope you consider submitting these ideas for discussion at the workshop. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:44, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

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Clarification

Per this edit, they vaguely probably did give me the answer I was looking for but that isn’t what made me oppose rather it was a combination of several other factors such as the diff El_C brought to light. Celestina007 (talk) 19:50, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

To expatiate, yes certain, if not most of AFD’s that have an equal number of keep and delete votes almost always end up as no consensus but the question I asked them was hypothetical and I expressly told them that I have removed the option of “no consensus” and that they must answer with a keep or delete, what I wanted to hear was something along the lines of “since you have removed the option of no consensus, I would check the quality of the arguments made on both sides and close as keep/delete depending on policy based arguments” I’m not sure how else I could have phrased the question, of course I could have phrased(worded) it better but all that is moot now. Celestina007 (talk) 23:20, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 December 2021

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RFA 2021 Completed

The 2021 re-examination of RFA has been completed. 23 (plus 2 variants) ideas were proposed. Over 200 editors participated in this final phase. Three changes gained consensus and two proposals were identified by the closers as having the potential to gain consensus with some further discussion and iteration. Thanks to all who helped to close the discussion, and in particular Primefac, Lee Vilenski, and Ymblanter for closing the most difficult conversations and for TonyBallioni for closing the review of one of the closes.

The following proposals gained consensus and have all been implemented:

1. Revision of standard question 1 to Why are you interested in becoming an administrator? Special thanks to xaosflux for help with implementation.
2. A new process, Administrative Action Review (XRV) designed to review if an editor's specific use of an advanced permission, including the admin tools, is consistent with policy in a process similar to that of deletion review and move review. Thanks to all the editors who contributed (and are continuing to contribute) to the discussion of how to implement this proposal.
3. Removal of autopatrol from the administrator's toolkit. Special thanks to Wugapodes and Seddon for their help with implementation.

The following proposals were identified by the closers as having the potential to gain consensus with some further discussion and iteration:

1. An option for people to run for temporary adminship (proposal, discussion, & close)
2. An optional election process (proposal & discussion and close review & re-close)

Editors who wish to discuss these ideas or other ideas on how to try to address any of the six issues identified during phase 1 for which no proposal gained are encouraged to do so at RFA's talk page or an appropriate village pump.

A final and huge thanks all those who participated in this effort to improve our RFA process over the last 4 months.

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01:46, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

GAN Backlog Drive – January 2022

Good article nominations | January 2022 Backlog Drive
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Merchandise giveaway nomination

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Full Formal and Proper Closure of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals

Hello Barkeep,

I see that although all the proposals at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals have already been closed, there still hasn't been a full formal closure of that page as a whole with a statement signifying the close and the overall changes made. The page still looks like it is active and I believe that it deserves a full and proper formal closure as a whole. I would suggest that an experienced editor or an admin close and summarize it accordingly. What do you think? Thanks. TheGeneralUser (talk) 07:10, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

@TheGeneralUser I have pasted the summary newsletter as a close to the overall process to make clear to those who come to it in the future that it is no longer active. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:04, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Great! The close is exactly as I had hoped it should be. Thanks for your kind help in this regard and also wish you a very Happy New Year. Best wishes. TheGeneralUser (talk) 18:05, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

PROXY vs PROXYING

A minor note: in the recently posted Jehochman motions you linked to WP:PROXY but that policy doesn't seem to be related to the case; I think you may have meant to link WP:PROXYING. ShashakiroSH (talk) 18:04, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2021).

Administrator changes

Amalthea • Ihcoyc (deceased) • Kateshortforbob • Kirill Lokshin • Rifleman 82 • Ryan Norton • Wrp103

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

CheckUser changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Oversighter changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Guideline and policy news

• Following consensus at the 2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.

• Additionally, consensus for proposal 6C of the 2021 RfA review has led to the creation of an administrative action review process. The purpose of this process will be to review individual administrator actions and individual actions taken by users holding advanced permissions.

Arbitration

• Following the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Cabayi, Donald Albury, Enterprisey, Izno, Opabinia regalis, Worm That Turned, Wugapodes.

Miscellaneous

• The functionaries email list (functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to the Arbitration Committee.

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How we will see unregistered users

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Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:36, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:01, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Adan Santiago Goc-ong Igut

Hello, Barkeep49,

As you might have guessed by the unusual article title, articles about this subject under different titles have been deleted and protected. It's been the interest of a sockpuppet so the latest editor has been reported at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/CalabazaFénix2. The other articles don't seem to have focused on this person's sexuality so this was a new addition to their pattern of article creation. Thank you! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:28, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

No objections to it being deleted, it was just not a G10 as I noted in my comment at Fram's talk page. A revdel or suppression request both would also have been appropriate, in my view, outside of this. Thanks for that background @Liz. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:35, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

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Notification of discussion in progress

Greetings Barkeep49. I want you to know that a discussion is underway to review an action which you performed. While you are not compelled to participate, you certainly are welcome if you desire. Fram (talk) 17:51, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Apologies

Hi Barkeep49, my apologies for my remarks from yesterday, they were undeserved and way over the top. Below, I'll give some background, but that doesn't change the fact that I should not have attacked you like that for what was at the very worst a minor mistake.

Normally, I try to keep my private life and my enwiki life completely separate. Editing here is a hobby, a distraction, nothing more. But these last few months, a close family member has been dealing with a very serious medical condition, and this stress, these worries, the fatigue, have on the one hand taxed my patience and reduced my clearheadedness, and on the other hand seem to have given me much more sensitivity for some BLP issues. I had a similar situation in an AFD recently, where the callousness of an editor towards a sensitive situation (a suicide which had caused the death of another person as well) made me lash out. But this is background I have to deal with, and I need to realise that taking my frustrations and pain out on others doesn't help me, and hurts others. So, one again, my apologies.

Less important, some background on the situation yesterday, and how it looked like from my side (if my memory doesn't deceive me). I see a page with serious BLP issues, tag it G10, an admin comes along and does nothing. So I retag it, explaining in the edit summary what the issue is: and nothing happens until another admin does the G4 deletion. And then the first admin comes to my talk page to lecture me about what I did wrong, while they did nothing to solve the real issue.

I now know that between my retagging and your lecture, you actually suppressed the info, so my impression that you had done nothing was obviously wrong. However, and I hope I remember this correctly, such suppression doesn't appear in the watchlist, so I hadn't seen any action at all by you (deletion, moves, revdels appear in the watchlist: but suppression doesn't, I think?). Or else I didn't refresh between the time you acted and the time Liz deleted. Which made it look like you twice left very obvious and serious BLP issues in an article, but did feel the need to explain to me what I did wrong (your initial edit summary "this is not an attack page. no comment on whether it qualifies for any other CSD" didn't give any indication of you taking or considering any action). Which got my blood boiling... If I may make a small suggestion (with the understanding that the things I need to change are more important): don't remove a G10 while the offending bits are still in the article: first revdel or suppress whatever needs removing, adn only then remove the G10.

Finally, for what it's worth; I chose the admin review board because this was a single action, not an issue which required AN or ANi with its call for sanctions and so on. I thought mistakenly that the review board was a better, less drama-prone place for such things. Apparently not though.

But again, I apologise for my harsh, undeserved comments. Fram (talk) 07:25, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fram thanks for taking the time to write this and I am sure that making yourself vulnerable in this way was not easy. I can see how much empathy and compassion you have and how that drives your editing. I wish I had been included in that and hope that maybe the next editor will be. As for the drama, there is no low drama way for an established editor to accuse a sitting arb of being incredibly irresponsible and being a wikilawyer. Nor would there have been anyway for you, no matter how it was worded or where it was posted (your talk, my talk, AN, ANI, XRV), to take issue in this circumstance without there being some drama. This inevitable drama seems like it would be a burden but it shouldn't, in my view, mean you can't ask for decisions to be reviewed. I genuinely was in agreement with you that this was a decision I took as an administrator rather than editor and thus should be up for review. If I was out of line with community expectations I wanted to know and I take all feedback, including that which you offer here, seriously. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:37, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for accepting this gracefully, as I wasn't treating you the way you deserved. I was indeed surprised that the admin action review board was according to some people not the right place to discuss the actual issue, or how some people wanted to push it to DRV (which had nothing to do with this issue at all). But I guess some others simply didn't want the drama I brought along with the questions about your (in)action. Anyway, if I would have issues with something you do later on, I'll bring it here and discuss it more calmly and less accusatory. I don't think anyone here is above or beyond scrutiny, but scrutiny doesn't equal flaming pitchforks of course... Fram (talk) 16:51, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Revert

I've used 1RR to revert your. removal of a line in policy that does not have consensus. We've usually gotten along pretty well until now , but If you revert me again I will consider it edit warring.. DGG ( talk ) 15:47, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@DGG I saw you did that rather than participating in the discussion (or doing both as I did). When I saw it, I had no intention of undoing you but did wonder whether you would choose for a third time to remove it if a different person reinstated it. The only reason I am trying to make it work is because a consensus of the community wanted it - if it had gone the other way I'd have respected that too because I was genuinely neutral at the RfC itself. I will continue to disagree with the concept that people who think something is a bad idea should get two opportunities to veto it - once at the concept stage and once at implementation. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:53, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't think this is a bad idea; I even said in response to K. that I thought it was a good idea. I think this is an overhasty implementation without sufficient prior consultation. But the discussion should remain centralized where it is, unless it gets moved elsewhere,, and I'm taking a break from it for a day or two to diminish the prospects for escalating conflict. We've usually gotten along pretty well, so I don't want this to get personal. DGG ( talk ) 16:06, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Narrative concerning KL Warshau

Hi Barkeep49, regarding your request to Levivich here, I think I can construct a brief narrative that explains it.

• Here is Levivich's KL Warsaw page.
• The key thing to notice is what is NOT in there. Look at all the sections between 2004-2006 and 2011-2018. A whole bunch of edits by IPs, long gone accounts, and a whole bunch of edits by this guy, HanzoHattori. This is the account, long indef banned, who mostly added all the false information to the article, although some of it predated him. AFAIK HanzoHattori wasn't even a Polish user!
• What is NOT in there? Any edits by anyone involved in the present request for a case (asterisk).

What Levivich's timeline actually shows is that I and Piotrus, or anyone else active on Wikipedia today, had NOTHING to do with this article. THIS is why it's so frustrating that there are some people who are trying to "pin" the blame for this on me or some other editors. That is what Icewhiz tried to do in the Haaretz article (although even the Haaretz article doesn't say we were responsible for the KL Warsaw article). The argument seems to be "some Polish editor long time ago created this article then some other non-Polish editor put in a bunch of false info into it and there are still some Polish editors on Wikipedia so they are the ones obviously responsible". It's an absurd - and quite offensive (it blames one individual for actions of another only because they belong to same ethnic group) - line of argument so you'd think that people would easily see through it.

Except not. Somehow this keeps coming up again and again, and each time I find myself having to point out the basic fact that I had nothing to do with that article to various people. Even good faith'd editors initially presume that because I am mentioned in connection to the article, then I must be guilty of the false hoods in it. At the COIN discussion I had to defend myself against the direct accusation that I "perpetuated a hoax"! Why do I have to keep doing this? It's because other people keep bringing it up, always omitting the part that I had nothing to do with the KL Warsaw article.

(asterisk) - If you search Levivich's page for my name you'll find that I made one minor edit to that article in 2009. Apparently. Here it is again. I don't remember making that edit since it was 12 years ago, it was a minor correction of bad grammar, only edit I made to that article prior to 2019, I've made more than 85,000 edits to Wikipedia and similar minor edits to the article have been made by a few dozen users (like this person and this person and this person etc etc etc). Yet no one tries to pretend that because Mild_Bill_Hiccup once corrected spelling in that article [30] they are responsible for the false info that was in it.

(If you search Levivich's page for Piotrus he doesn't even appear until last part of 2018)

Anyone who claims that I or Piotrus "perpetuated a hoax" without diffs should be blocked (especially if this has been explained to them already). Anyone who tries to insinuate it, needs to be warned, and if they keep insinuating despite the warning, that's when you know they're just using it as a WP:BATTLEGROUND tactic in bad faith. so at that point they should also be blocked. Volunteer Marek 19:53, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

VM, for what it's worth, I remember HanzoHatori from other TAs and concur that they were quite troublesome.[31] My reading of the situation (and I've been reading quite a bit) is that the APL TA has become so toxic that talk page discussions became darn near useless for generating consensus. When editors come in trying to fix past damage, they have to run a gauntlet of sock puppets, and beleaguered, incumbent editors (such as yourself) who have trouble distinguishing between bona fide new users and socks, and there is also a tendency for incumbent editors to form mutually supporting teams (a natural human reaction to the onslaught of sock attacks, but not great for consensus). I don't know what the solution is, but I know it's a very bad problem, the worst I've seen in 16 years on wiki, and that the first step could be a detailed investigation to determine what's going wrong and how to correct it. I was hoping, and still hope, that ArbCom can help. I also hope that the problem can be fixed without banning anyone. Perhaps ArbCom could organize a commission of skillful editors to assess the situation and provide a factual report. Jehochman ^Talk 20:36, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

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Hi

hi how are you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ensonhaber (talk • contribs) 14:08, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Ealdgyth's evidences

My name was mentioned during the discussion of the Gas van article, so I think I have a right to comment. You wrote that you are going to analyze evidences presented by Ealdgyth. If you think the Gas van story is relevant to that case, I can provide a detailed analysis of it. That incident has some history and some consequences that are directly related to the EEML case, and it is a good example of a disruptive tactics that is successfully used by some EEML members. If you believe that may be relevant, I can provide details. If you think that that may require a separate discussion, please, let me know. Paul Siebert (talk) 04:25, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Actually, I've learned that the former EEML member whom I wanted to report made this post, which clarified my doubts, and I am ready to present my evidences. If arbitrators think that a discussion of the gas van article falls under the Holocaust in Poland case, I am ready to present my evidences of what I believe is a disruptive behaviour of some ex-EEML members. Since I am not familiar with the procedure, can you please advise me about my next steps? Paul Siebert (talk) 05:51, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert the case itself is about to be declined in a few hours. I don't think it likely that new evidence will change that. The motion which is passing is going to suggest people use AE or ARCA with issues so I would recommend, if you think sanctions are needed, trying one of those forums after the motion passes. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:28, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment

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in friendship

January songs

in friendship

Happy new year! - Today I show yesterday's snow (if you click on "songs") and today's music in memory of Jerome Kohl, a friend --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:07, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt how picturesque. Good luck with your 2022 theme of songs. I hope to find time to start doing content work again soon because I really miss it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:04, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Camp Ashraf on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Notification of VP discussion and indirect mention

A discussion you may be interested in has been opened regarding whether athletes meeting a sport-specific guideline must demonstrate GNG at AfD. You are also indirectly mentioned in this comment. JoelleJay (talk) 22:26, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions topic area changes

In a process that began last year with WP:DS2021, the Arbitration Committee is evaluating Discretionary Sanctions (DS) in order to improve it. A larger package of reforms is slated for sometime this year. From the work done so far, it became clear a number of areas may no longer need DS or that some DS areas may be overly broad.

The topics proposed for revocation are:

• Senkaku islands
• Waldorf education
• Ancient Egyptian race controversy
• Scientology
• Landmark worldwide

The topics proposed for a rewording of what is covered under DS are:

• India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan
• Armenia/Azerbaijan

Additionally any Article probation topics not already revoked are proposed for revocation.

Community feedback is invited and welcome at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Motions. --Barkeep49 (talk) 16:59, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Barkeep. As a long-time editor of the WP:AA2 topic area, I would like to leave a few suggestions for improvement of how to handle the seemingly never-ending disruption that haunts this topic area. Could you let me know where I could drop such suggestions and remarks? Thanks a lot, - LouisAragon (talk) 17:19, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

@LouisAragon feedback and suggestions are most welcome. You can do that for AA here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:20, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks. - LouisAragon (talk) 17:21, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

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Arbitration Committee support required.

Dear Barkeep49,

Can you please review talk on the [toponym] article.

Background:

Fist I added information supported by the WP:RSPRIMARY source, which was reverted by user HistoryofIran without any discussions or steps to achieve consensus. I undo the revert considering that information was reverted without any discussions, however HistoryofIran reverted it back again. At this point I decided that edit war will not solve our dispute and started the discussion on the Talk page of the Article.

I received no reply from user HistoryofIran, but I received reply from other user LouisAragon. I found reply of the LouisAragon very offensive and aggressive. Looks like he taking this toping very personally. With no resons he jumped straight accusations that I am trying to weaken secondary sources, that I am working for some kind of state-funded negationist nonsense and so on. (Full reply of LouisAragon quoted below)

Wikipedia is written using reliable, secondary sources (per WP:RS). Chardin is a WP:PRIMARY source, written in the 17th century. You are deliberately trying to shove this primary source into this article in order to nullify and weaken the WP:SECONDARY sources (i.e. WP:RSPRIMARY). This constitutes WP:TENDENTIOUS editing. I am well aware that there is a long-standing campaign going on at "certain" YouTube, FaceBook and Reddit subsections in order to overhaul Wikipedia according to certain state-funded negationist nonsense (Historical_negationism#Azerbaijan, Media freedom in Azerbaijan, Human rights in Azerbaijan). It will never succeed, however, as long as free academic writing exists in this world. Consider this a final warning. - LouisAragon (talk) 17:09, 27 January 2022 (UTC) The Enc. of Islam source also doesn't cover what you are trying to add. Being "absorbed into" the OG Azerbaijan doesn't equal to "there was a region of Azerbaijan to the north of the Aras River". - LouisAragon (talk) 17:13, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

At this point I collected my patience and decided to continue discussion in a friendly manner. To solidify my positions I supported previously provided source WP:RSPRIMARY with the WP:SECONDARY source. I asked LouisAragon and HistoryofIran either to provide valid justification on why provided sources should not be reflected on the article, or achieve consensus on how this information should be reflected in the article. However LouisAragon and HistoryofIran are ignoring me and there is no reply since then.

1. I want to raise a complaint against a LouisAragon for breach of ethical communication and bias. This is unprofessional and harms healthy communication. I know he is an experienced member of Wikipedia, however in my understanding being experienced means helping newbies, but not disregarding and threatening them with "final warnings".

2. I want to discussion on the talk page of [toponym] article reviewed by arbitrator to reach consensus.

Can you please support? Thanks in advance! --Abrvagl (talk) 16:42, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Abrvagl. The Arbitration Committee does not deal with content disputes. We only deal with behavior problems (conduct problems) and only as a final resort. It sounds like you are concerned about both things. I see you've replied to LouisAragon on the content. Hopefully this leads to a positive response. If not you could try other methods of support. My suggestion for a next step would be getting a third opinion and then if that doesn't work using more formal dispute resolution. If you feel like the conduct continues to be a problem you can ask for administrator help at arbitration enforcement or at the Administrators' Noticeboard/Incidents which take a look at the conduct of all editors involved. I hope this is helpful. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:49, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

good days @User:Barkeep49 thanks for reaching out and for recommendations. You are right, agressive and bias attitude of LouisAragon concerns me, I believe it is not the way how editors should threat each other, and this attitude should be investigated if LoisAragon has any admin/moderator privilege. Anyways. What I want,. is to ask you to help me. I do not know anyone on Wikipedia, can I ask you to be the person who will provide third opinion? It would be very kind of you! Thanks in advance! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abrvagl (talk • contribs) 16:36, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

@Abrvagl LouisAragon is not an administrator. You can find out how to request a third opinion on this page. Unfortunately I don't have the time to do that work myself right now. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:59, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports on a "Society, sports, and culture" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Editor here to advertise

While I run into UPE editors all the time, I've actually never come across one so blatant about it. Please this thread on my talk page, regarding Kylespencer. Here's a link to their talkpage: User talk:Kylespencer. Any thoughts on how to proceed? Onel5969 ^{TT me} 18:09, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

@Onel5969 it's so blatant that my read is that they're complying with our COI disclosure expectations. They just need some advice about what to do. Hopefully what I've said in my reply helps and lets them not be so combative. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:23, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. We'll see, but that's the same thing I told them when I moved it to draft. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 23:57, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. But sometimes hearing it from a second person is enough for it to sink in. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:58, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

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

Administrator changes

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Interface administrator changes

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Guideline and policy news

• The Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines have been published for consideration. Voting to ratify this guideline is planned to take place 7 March to 21 March. Comments can be made on the talk page.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
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Arbitration

• Community input is requested on several motions aimed at addressing discretionary sanctions that are no longer needed or overly broad.
• The Arbitration Committee has published a generalised comment regarding successful appeals of sanctions that it can review (such as checkuser blocks).
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Miscellaneous

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:01, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

At WP:Scam

You made this edit. That page gets about 100 page views a day - but the email hasn't been working since Nov, according to the talk page. And it's the only email, the only suggested action to counter the scam. Could you fix it? BTW, in 2017 I noticed the Orange Moody scam appeared to be still going on - the same wording in the letters, I notified WMF legal and they suggested putting up a notice with contact info. Seems like the least we could do, right? But now the contact email goes nowhere. I can send you the "Your message wasn't delivered to ... because the address couldn't be found, or is unable to receive mail." But it would be just as easy for you to try it yourself. Any help appreciated. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:11, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I've fixed it because obviously we don't want that. The email was on the page twice and was correct in one place, so I'm curious if there's a reason you didn't fix it? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:41, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I just check the page every once in awhile. It seems that the receiving page changes every once in a while, but the address on the page changes more slowly. Of course nobody tells me about it. I don't know what the the official receiving e-mail is supposed to be. When I've tried to check before, I got no answer, so when I saw a name that I know - I just asked you. I do know that there are big spurts and long slow dropoffs in the pageviews, so I try to figure out what's happening. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:30, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Some help please

I'm taking you up on your offer to explain a few things to me. Trypofish explained [32] that we can respond on the workshop page but that only sometimes the Arbs will look at the comments. I took that to mean that I should not bother responding because knowing how we got from the Havana Syndrome talk page to an ArbCom case against GSoW and myself was when I tried to explain everything and it blew up into endless drama threads. It was a free-for-all, and kept escalating. So I felt with all this history and Trypo's comment about Arb not really using the workshop (plus someone else explained that the Workshop phase was one that was probably going to be phased out and would be surprised if it was used for this case) I haven't wanted to respond to anything on the workshop page. I've been reading comments and I just can't understand why editors are saying the things they are as if I didn't spend hours going over in detail and counting words carefully to refute each of the pieces of evidence that had been given against myself and GSoW. I keep reading that sanctions and banning are being discussed as if I have been found guilty.

So now I read your response on Rp2006's talk page and see that he had to call out a piece of "evidence" against him and get it refuted. No one had analyzed that bit and people kept repeating it as if were true. I'm now wondering if I need to do the same, with each of these claims people are making against GSoW and myself. I've given private evidence and some of these claims like am I taking money for the edits we make, I don't know how I would refute that? How do you prove a negative? Everyone keeps assuming I have a COI, but I've read and reread COI policy and I'm obviously not seeing what they are seeing. Do I need to call this out in the workshop? If so how do I do so without it escalating as they clearly have a different definition of COI than I do. Besides if this COI conflict started when I became a CSI fellow in 2018, then why are they saying I should not have edited pages from before that?

My questions are many, but I need to understand. Do I go point by point on the worksheet and refute it using the evidence I've already given? Can I bring in new evidence if needed onto the workshop? Or should I not bother, ArbCom will go though each point based on the evidence given and the workshop phase is just a way to keep people busy while ArbCom is doing it's work? And only maybe ArbCom is going to review what is there? I don't understand these "Proposed principles" that are all over the workshop, where are all these from? It looks like they are pulling up old quotes from policies. One is from Iranian politics, another from the historicity of Jesus, another from BLP issues on British politics articles. I don't understand at all, it looks like I need a para-legal to look for case law or something. Here is another one that is "modified from gun control".

Why do all these people seem to have equal agency, shouldn't the only editors that are advising sanctions and quoting policy at least be admins?

I am completely at a loss over this process and frustrated. Sgerbic (talk) 06:50, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi there Sgerbic. Let's see if I can help. You've written a ton of stuff here. When I get a ton of stuff questions, which I would say has often been the case with your initial questions, I try to focus on a few key areas because writing too much runs the risk of nothing being absorbed. But here I am going to try to be comprehensive.

Trypofish explained [33] that we can respond on the workshop page but that only sometimes the Arbs will look at the comments. This is not what Tryptofish said. Trypto said Sometimes, the Arbs will look at a proposal and think it's a good idea and use it in the Proposed Decision, and sometimes they will revise a proposal and use that, and most of the stuff in the Workshop is set aside and not used at all, because the Arbs decide that it's useless. The drafting arbs are reading every comment and every proposal. Trypto is acknowledging the reality that we may not use any of the proposals this is what is meant by "set aside and not used at all". By reading every comment I was able to knock down the speculation that we have private evidence to support the claim against Rp2006 that we have not shared. And by reading every comment, we were in a position to respond quickly (in about 30 minutes) when Rp2006 expressed concern about an allegation remaining even though there was an acknowledgement that there wasn't evidence to support it.

I took that to mean that I should not bother responding because knowing how we got from the Havana Syndrome talk page to an ArbCom case against GSoW and myself was when I tried to explain everything and it blew up into endless drama threads. It was a free-for-all, and kept escalating. I can understand why your experiences at AN and COIN were not pleasant. I am not going to claim that an ArbCom case is pleasant but it is designed in a way to minimize the "free-for-all" element (at least by Wikipedia standards - more on this below). What I can say is that there is no escalation after ArbCom. Sometimes when we accept a case it will be because there will need to be ongoing efforts (often in the form of what we call Discretionary Sanctions) to keep the problem at a certain level. With this case I am hoping that after the ArbCom case that overall conflict about this will decrease substantially. Everyone will have had their chance to be heard and heard in a methodical manner, following which a group of very experienced Wikipedians will issue some "Findings of Fact" about what happened and some "Remedies" to try and fix any deficiencies.

(plus someone else explained that the Workshop phase was one that was probably going to be phased out and would be surprised if it was used for this case) this was not a great explanation. It is true that Workshops are no longer being used in every case. But they are not being phased out.

I haven't wanted to respond to anything on the workshop page. that's your choice and one that parties to a case frequently choose to make.

I've been reading comments and I just can't understand why editors are saying the things they are as if I didn't spend hours going over in detail and counting words carefully to refute each of the pieces of evidence that had been given against myself and GSoW. I think everyone is trying to do the best they can. There's a lot to go over - ArbCom places word and diff limits to try and keep it from being completely unmanagable. I have no doubt that you are doing the best you can. I have found what you have written quite useful in furthering my understanding of what is going on with GSoW, just as I have found other evidence helpful.

I keep reading that sanctions and banning are being discussed as if I have been found guilty. You haven't been found anything. This concern of yours that you've already been found guilty because of workshop proposals is one of the reasons I had said to you before that thinking of it as a trial or a court may not be useful [34] [35]. As you know, Wikipedia is a collaborative discussion based endeavor. This spirit of colloboration and discussion is not just true in our article editing, it is true in our behind the scenes processes. To give an example of this from an area you are familiar with, articles for deletion, there is rhetoric about the bolded comments people leave (often keep or delete) being "not votes" - that is we are not just voting on whether or not to delete something we are having a discussion and finding consensus. The way that this value of collaboration and discussion plays out at Arbcom, people can, if they choose, participate in the case. This includes giving suggestions about what the final decision should be. The time to give suggestions is at the heart of what the Workshop phase is doing.

So now I read your response on Rp2006's talk page and see that he had to call out a piece of "evidence" against him and get it refuted. No one had analyzed that bit and people kept repeating it as if were true. Editors might have been, but Arbs have not been. We're going to make up our own minds and what we write in our findings of facts will be supported by evidence. Not supporting a finding of fact with evidence is one of the largest reasons that Workshop proposals don't get used in the final decision. I have pointed this need for evidence, or a lack of evidence, a few times in my comments on the Workshop [36] [37] [38]. I also referenced what evidence was available in both my replies in the thread about Rp2006 [39] [40]. As an arb I am focused on evidence. I know this to be true of my colleagues as well.

I'm now wondering if I need to do the same, with each of these claims people are making against GSoW and myself. You are certainly welcome to do this. If you do this it would go in the "Comments by parties" for a particular FoF you think is wrong or you could create an "Analysis" section. You can also create your own proposal section, which I'll discuss more below.

I've given private evidence and some of these claims like am I taking money for the edits we make, I don't know how I would refute that? How do you prove a negative? (emphasis added) I'm a bit surprised to see you write the bolded section. One of the things you do is attempt to prove a negative all the time - such as that people do not have the ability to speak with the dead. So you have some skills in this area. In terms of this case, you are welcome to deny something that isn't true. The burden remains on them to prove it is true and so if there is not evidence (and admittedly in the case of you being paid for something it's likely to be private evidence and thus not available to you) then there's not evidence and it will not end up in the final decision.

Everyone keeps assuming I have a COI, but I've read and reread COI policy and I'm obviously not seeing what they are seeing. Do I need to call this out in the workshop? It would be helpful for my understanding for you to lay out your thinking but you do not strictly need to. If you don't, the arbs will base their judgement on whether you have a COI from their understanding of the COI guideline and the evidence that we have been presented.

If so how do I do so without it escalating as they clearly have a different definition of COI than I do. Besides if this COI conflict started when I became a CSI fellow in 2018, then why are they saying I should not have edited pages from before that? My advice on how to do this would be to copy the blank template found towards the bottom of the Workshop page and create your own section. You can then list "Findings of fact" that show you do not have a COI (and perhaps the principles that support this - more on principles in a moment).

Do I go point by point on the worksheet and refute it using the evidence I've already given? I've discussed this above.

Can I bring in new evidence if needed onto the workshop? No you cannot, just as BilledMamal could not and thus had to withdraw their statement about Rp2006's editing.

Or should I not bother, ArbCom will go though each point based on the evidence given and the workshop phase is just a way to keep people busy while ArbCom is doing it's work? This is a judgement question. I believe I've given you information above that will let you make an informed judgement for yourself.

And only maybe ArbCom is going to review what is there? ArbCom will definitely review what is there. ArbCom will only maybe use what is there.

I don't understand these "Proposed principles" that are all over the workshop, where are all these from? The goal of the principles is to put everyone on the same page. To quote from the Guide to Arbitration, "Principles highlight the key applicable provisions of policy, procedure, or community practice and, where appropriate, provide the Committee's interpretation of such provisions in the context of the dispute."

It looks like they are pulling up old quotes from policies. One is from Iranian politics, another from the historicity of Jesus, another from BLP issues on British politics articles. I don't understand at all, it looks like I need a para-legal to look for case law or something. Here is another one that is "modified from gun control". Writing a principle can be hard work - I know because I've done it. You need to try to effectively summarize Wikipedia policies and guidelines in a way that applies both to the individual case and in general. Because it's hard work, ArbCom will often reuse principles and this is what editors are suggesting we do, they are noting what case the principles came from so that Arbs know that it has gone through the vetting process for a principle already. Fortunately for everyone, no paralegal is needed to find old principles. We have a page that has collected most cases' past principles. I use that index when I'm drafting a case (often doing a search for a keyword or phrase).

Why do all these people seem to have equal agency, shouldn't the only editors that are advising sanctions and quoting policy at least be admins? I will be frank: of all your questions this is by far the most surprising question you've asked me given your long involvement in the project and your work to train other editors. It asks about a core piece of Wikipedia culture. Admins (and Arbitrators) have certain abilities but the community as a whole is equally entitled to give their opinion. So an admin can block someone and an arbitrator can vote on an arbcom case but all editors can still offer their opinion on what should happen. And in other contexts the fact that I am an admin and an arb means nothing. I give my thinking the same as everyone else and it only matters as much as I can convince people with what I write and how I back my thinking up with evidence and policies and guidelines. As an ideal, Wikipedia is designed to have a very flat hierarchy and to let discussions, and consensus, be open to all who wish to participate. At ArbCom we limit this in certain ways, but the principle and ideal remains that we will be open and transparent to all.

There is obviously a lot here but I hope I've answered some of your questions, even if I've spurred a few new ones. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:30, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. Barkeep49's characterization of my earlier comments is 100% correct. Sgerbic, it was definitely not my intention that you should refrain from commenting on anything that you can recognize is wrong. In fact, my personal advice would be quite the opposite. The way that I find useful to think about it is that, on the one hand, most Arbs do indeed think for themselves and are smart and well-intentioned, but on the other hand, they are not mind readers and, like anyone, they can miss things. Taking those things together, it is generally prudent to make it clear that something is not supported by the facts, rather than to just assume that it is self-evident to everybody. Don't get into a tit-for-tat, and do make it "just the facts". You don't have to do it, but in my experience you should.

About the law-like way of writing the Principles, to some extent that's just the way I tend to write them, and in this case, other people may have imitated me. My reasoning is that, if I copy-paste it from an earlier case, I should give credit for the edit history; also it tells the Arbs that the Committee has said something like this in the past, so it may be good. The simplest purpose of the Principles is that they are the justification for citing something as a Finding of Fact, and the simplest purpose of the Findings is that they justify the Remedies. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:00, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Regarding just as BilledMamal could not and thus had to withdraw their statement about Rp2006's editing, I believe you meant Bilby? BilledMammal (talk) 23:05, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Sorry about that. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:10, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

User page question

How come Blaze Wolf can have his birthdate on his user page but I can't have mine? wizzito | say hello! 02:29, 8 February 2022 (UTC

@Wizzito I'm not going to fight you on this, but the reason is no one reported Blaze's userpage (so I've now done it there) and someone reported yours. I know you've already had an eventful Wikipedia career but I would suggest over disclosure can open up whole new realms of making you a target, especially given other information. I ask that you reconsider. Barkeep49 (talk) 02:45, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Okay, fine, whatever. Blaze's birthdate is on older versions of the page too. wizzito | say hello! 02:51, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Please do not remove it again. I am perfectly fine with having my birthdate on my userpage and having it public. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 03:41, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I would like for you to unrevdel those revisions please. They are causing no harm whatsoever to the project and I have stated previously that I'm fine with having my birthdate public. Do you want me to publicly declare it on my userpage so this doesn't happen again? ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 03:46, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf and Wizzito: @Barkeep has the best of intentions and I think its wise to look at what they are trying to tell you. Take a step back from the situation. I have a ten year-old daughter. We live in Alaska. There are dangers around every corner. She didn't grow up here and she doesn't understand all the dangerous situations she could put herself in. She is an extremely smart girl as the both of you are quite intelligent and you pick up on things so fast. I sometimes read Blaze's discussions because he amazes me with the knowledge and understanding he has. But please listen to and at least think about what Barkeep said. Despite the fact that we assume good faith and will continue to do so there are those that come here with very negative intentions and its wise to limit information that just isn't necessary. Protection of you both is paramount in the minds of those who care not only about you but the community at large. As I stated, I live in Alaska. You have to get in a small plane to reach me from any of the "major" population centers. It's possible but not likely to happen. However, giving out so much information could lead to someone with determined ill intent to harm you or take advantage of you especially considering the work you both have been doing here. All I'm asking is that you consider what Barkeep said. --ARoseWolf 15:22, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I understand what you are trying to say ARoseWolf, however I really don't see how revealing my age could help people identify me because there are probably millions of people in the world who are the same age as me. Yes there are probably fewer with my exact birthdate, however there's still a lot of people with the same birthdate as me. So someone finding who I am based only on my birthdate is highly unlikely. I understand that risks somehow associated with revealing my birthdate and I am willing to take those risks. I keep my email address private for the reason that it uses my real name which I prefer to keep private (hence why everywhere online I go by the username "Blaze Wolf"). ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 15:26, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I would suggest going everywhere with the same username makes you less private than if you used different names in different places. Regardless as I indicated to Wizzito, while I think what your doing all sorts of unwise I am also not prepared to stick to it against your wishes. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:53, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

"Blaze Wolf" is my online identity. Someone would really only be able to figure out who I am exactly based on that if they somehow doxxed (i'm assuming that's the correct term, I'm fairly familiar with computers but occasionally get some terms mixed up) me which would probably require me clicking on a suspicious link. Although I'm sure my real info is somehow out on the internet somewhere because websites like selling the data they receive from users. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 16:05, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

In any case, could you please unrevdel the revisions you deleted from my userpage? I would like to restore it to those revisions since I want to use that sidebar and don't want to copy and paste all the code again. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 16:07, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I had already done that before my reply. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:08, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Ah ok. Didn't notice. Thanks for doing so. I'll probably add a notice to my userpage stating that I am fine with disclosing my birthdate and do not want oversighters to remove and revdel the info. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 16:17, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

You know everything I said was for your benefit, Blaze. Every editor here is special to me as a part of this community and I don't want to see you or Wizzito harmed. I'll drop this because its your wish. Thank you @Barkeep for being understanding and offering your viewpoint. --ARoseWolf 18:43, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I understand you said that for my benefit. I just don't see how knowing my birthdate can help someone figure out who I am behind the screen. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 18:46, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Heads up

I thought you might like to know that apparently you caused a book to be written by starting an AfD in 2019. I wish that I could cause books to be written with so little effort. Congratulations! - Astrophobe (talk) 03:20, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I deeply respect the work you do for this project, Barkeep, but it's going to be hard to unlink you from 'misguided banana hammock'. Firefangledfeathers 03:34, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Barkeep, you are in that. Take care. --Victor Trevor (talk) 09:42, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Brief advice

Hi Barkeep, hope all is well. While creating Jason Chin I learned that there is a small bookshop in New York called Books of Wonder. I loved their name and so I decided to do some research on it, to see if it'd merit an article, but most of what I found (here) appears to be from a single place, Publishers Weekly, with a couple other reliable sources. Do you think these are enough to justify an article? If not, do you know which databases I could use to find more sources? Thanks as always. Isabelle ^🔔 13:43, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Isabelle Belato I'm glad you were able to write Jason Chin's page. I had done some brief research and hadn't found a whole lot a couple years back and so I didn't pursue it (didn't help that he's got a fairly common name). Publisher's Weekly is definitely RS so that's good. On the whole I agree you're somewhat borderline here. Can you see if there was any coverage in like the Village Voice or some other newspaper? Something beyond merely a notice of an author's event of course. If you could find something like that I would say you're over the top and good to go. As is you might still want to do it, knowing that it might get challenged (I've done this a couple of times myself). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:51, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I'll see what else I might find and begin writing the draft. Isabelle ^🔔 16:42, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

This is what I managed to write. Will probably send it through AFC, but would like if you could take a look first (also, courtesy ping to Firefangledfeathers, who helped with a very good source). I'm also falling into a rabbit hole of interesting children's bookstores, as I just learned of the existence of Eeyore's. Isabelle ^🔔 23:09, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

That's some nice content. I'll be curious what the AfC reviewers think notability wise. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:11, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

You've got mail

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This is a "don't ask to ask, just ask situation. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:29, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment

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WP:AFC Helper News

Hello! I wanted to drop a quick note for all of our AFC participants; nothing huge and fancy like a newsletter, but a few points of interest.

• AFCH will now show live previews of the comment to be left on a decline.
• The template {{db-afc-move}} has been created - this template is similar to {{db-move}} when there is a redirect in the way of an acceptance, but specifically tells the patrolling admin to let you (the draft reviewer) take care of the actual move.

Short and sweet, but there's always more to discuss at WT:AFC. Stop on by, maybe review a draft on the way? Whether you're one of our top reviewers, or haven't reviewed in a while, I want to thank you for helping out in the past and in the future. Cheers, Primefac, via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:59, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Eldridge Broussard

Hello, Barkeep49. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Eldridge Broussard".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been deleted. If you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:47, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

need to edit via anonymously or unblock my IP

{{unblock|Caught by an open proxy block but this host or IP is not an open proxy. My IP address is <redact>. Place any further information here. Pstkay (talk) 18:45, 18 February 2022 (UTC)}}. user: Pstkay Pstkay (talk) 18:45, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Pstkay: hi there. You are looking for IP Block Exemption. While I am a CU, this is not work I normally do. A quick scan of your IP suggests it might not be 100% straightforward and so it should be done by a CU who does this kind of work. The best way to get help for this is to email checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org with your information. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:06, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and nullified this unblock template, as it makes Barkeep appear in CAT:RFU. SQL^{Query Me!} 19:44, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Question on 17:52, 15 April 2021 Barkeep49 talk contribs dele

Hi! I saw you deleted a page with name Chitra Ramakrishanan. I wanted to see if I can connect Chitra Ramakrishna with Chitra Ramakrishnan (with N at the end). Most people confuse Krishan and Krishna, I want to help them so they dont leave Wikipedia without reading the article they were looking for! Kindly advise!

Thanks, Anastasius Hartmann — Preceding unsigned comment added by AnastasiusHartmann (talk • contribs) 10:54, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@AnastasiusHartmann do you want to create a redirect? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:41, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@Barkeep49 No. I don't understand if I am looking at the right page. Unless I know for sure the page belongs to the NSE CEO alleged to have defraud the system, I cannot add a redirect. I have no way to tell if the page is of the person in question. Sorry if I caused confusion. Thanks for response!

--AnastasiusHartmann (talk) 14:47, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Just stopped by to say Hi

....... well! Just because I can . Okay Jokes apart, I trust all is well with you and yours. I thought it wise to check up on a mentor. Speaking of, Why don’t you check on me?  :( Celestina007 (talk) 21:37, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

@Celestina007 always great to have you stop by. The reason why I don't check on you is pretty simple - most of my Wikipedia time is spent on ArbCom. It is truly nothing personal and I'm glad you checked in. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:49, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Looking for more about WikiEd

Hello Barkeep49. In Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Skepticism and coordinated editing/Proposed decision#Training, you said that "For me the way WikiEd does training both in content and format is best practice and others looking to do training would be wise to learn from them." I would be interested to find out more about this, especially for training new(-ish) editors. I found this site but it does not appear to give any information about the content or format. Is that what you had in mind, or something different? Can you suggest where I can find information about the content and format that makes it best practice?--Gronk Oz (talk) 06:02, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

@Gronk Oz - you can find their materials here. You'll need to log-in (I believe) with your Wikipedia account to see them. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:47, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Brilliant - thank you!--Gronk Oz (talk) 17:04, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 February 2022

• From the team: Selection of a new Signpost Editor-in-Chief

• News and notes: Impacts of Russian invasion of Ukraine

• Opinion: Why student editors are good for Wikipedia

• Special report: A presidential candidate's team takes on Wikipedia

• In the media: Wiki-drama in the UK House of Commons

• Serendipity: War photographers: from Crimea (1850s) to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022)

• Technology report: Community Wishlist Survey results

• WikiProject report: 10 years of tea

• Featured content: Featured Content returns

• Deletion report: The 10 most SHOCKING deletion discussions of February

• Recent research: How editors and readers may be emotionally affected by disasters and terrorist attacks

• Arbitration report: Parties remonstrate, arbs contemplate, skeptics coordinate

• By the numbers: Does birthplace affect the frequency of Wikipedia biography articles?

• Gallery: The vintage exhibit

• Traffic report: Euphoria, Pamela Anderson, lies and Netflix

• News from Diff: The Wikimania 2022 Core Organizing Team

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* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:19, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Suggestions for edit conflict on UIXP

Hi there! I am a reviewer over at AfC. I reviewed and approved the article Uganda Internet Exchange Point, and the primary author, who has a significant COI, is now rather aggressively editing the article directly on mainspace, despite several notices directing otherwise.

I noticed that this user has had some conflict previously with Onel5969 where you stepped in, and I am reaching out for suggestions and recommendations from you (and possible Onel as well). Thank you! SiliconRed (he/him) (talk) 14:54, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

@Siliconred are you concerned the edits are not neutral? If so you could go to COIN. If it's just about the pattern of editing perhaps give the page the COI tag? Sorry I can't really dive into this but my time is limited at the moment. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:15, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Yup, I'll post a notice there! No problem, just figured I would ping you and check for recommendations. Thank you! SiliconRed (he/him) (talk) 16:18, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I was going to wait to tomorrow to post at COIN, as was tidying up other stuff today. Clearly an involved editor who is attempting to promote the organization they are part of. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 17:05, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Onel5969 -- I'll wait on your post in COIN and keep an eye on that discussion. Makes a certain amount of sense to give it 24 hours. Cheers, SiliconRed (he/him) (talk) 17:08, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022

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

Administrator changes

Modussiccandi

BOZ • Brookie (deceased) • Jackmcbarn • Jamesday • Jonathunder • Master of Puppets • Saravask

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• A RfC is open to change the wording of revision deletion criterion 1 to remove the sentence relating to non-infringing contributions.
• A RfC is open to discuss prohibiting draftification of articles over 90 days old.

Technical news

• The deployment of the reply tool as an opt-out feature, as announced in last month's newsletter, has been delayed to 7 March. Feedback and comments are being welcomed at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project. (T296645)
• Special:Nuke will now allow the selection of standard deletion reasons to be used when mass-deleting pages. This was a Community Wishlist Survey request from 2022. (T25020)
• The ability to undelete the talk page when undeleting a page using Special:Undelete or the API will be added soon. This change was requested in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. (T295389)

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

Hello, Barkeep49,

I was surprised to see Jackmcbarn on this list and looked up his second RFA and saw you were one of the nominators. He didn't edit for very long after passing that RfA, I hope it wasn't the admin experience that caused him to depart the project. There was a time I was "studying RfAs" years ago and noticed that, in years past, it wasn't uncommon for an editor to pass an RfA and, soon after, they stopped editing.

It doesn't happen much any more but it did make me wonder whether passing an RfA was a goal they had and after they met it, editing on the project didn't have the same appeal...or whether they just didn't care for the work that comes with being an admin and the pushback we all receive. But, like I said, I hardly see that happen these days, there are so few RfA candidates that the ones who ready themselves for the process end up sticking around. That's good news as we really can't lose any able-bodied admins who can help out! Hope all is well with you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:03, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Always happy to have you stop by @Liz. I had noticed that he had gone inactive last summer and did some digging around and couldn't find anything that suggests he was run off. I had hoped that if Jack stuck around it would be easier to make things better in terms of giving the community comfort in raising the activity level for sysops with the expectation that a re-rfa wouldn't be too much of a thing. Oh well. And in related but better news, I was happy recently to see Steel1943 return to editing after their unsuccessful RfA. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:08, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

It's always nice to see a productive contributor return after an absence or, more rarely, a retired admin come to BN to request their tools back. Sometimes, they overestimate their interest in returning to do work but I've come to the position that a part-time admin is better than no admin at all!

After years spent patrolling CSD categories and welcoming new editors, in January I started closing XfD discussions and I had no idea how badly those areas need admin help. I took it for granted that other admins were keeping up with the workload but discovered that, like a lot of other areas, there's a handful of admins who close most discussions and even fewer, more experienced, ones who take on the more difficult closures. But I'm grateful to those few who carry the authority to make those close calls, where, like arbitration cases, you know that whatever decision you make, there will be some greatly disappointed editors. I guess I had done mostly uncontroversial admin work because in six years, I had never been brought to Deletion Review and now I've been brought there twice! Not a pleasant experience (probably like being reviewed in a ACE candidate guide!) but I guess it's good to move into more difficult areas. I've been here long enough that I should take on more challenging work...maybe with more experience, I'll work up to closing those mile-long RfCs where it takes a week to read all of the comments. And I need to accept that, sometimes, you can do your best and still no one is happy. Sigh. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:22, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

I've always enjoyed closing really hard AfDs or RfCs. It felt great to write a close that you knew people wouldn't like but that they respected enough to not challenge. That is its own victory (as is being upheld when at DRV). Glad to see you're willing to try some new areas and if I can be of help let me know. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:25, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the WikiCup. Last year anyone who scored more than zero points moved on to Round 2, but this was not the case this year, and a score of 13 or more was required to proceed. The top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius, a finalist last year, who led the field with 1906 points, gained from 32 GAs and 19 DYKs, all on the topic of New York buildings.
• AryKun, new to the contest, was second with 1588 points, having achieved 2 FAs, 11 GAs and various other submissions, mostly on the subject of birds.
• Bloom6132, a WikiCup veteran, was in third place with 682 points, garnered from 51 In the news items and several DYKs.
• GhostRiver was close behind with 679 points, gained from achieving 12 GAs, mostly on ice hockey players, and 35 GARs.
• Kavyansh.Singh was in fifth place with 551 points, with an FA, a FL, and many reviews.
• SounderBruce was next with 454 points, gained from an FA and various other submissions, mostly on United States highways.
• Ktin, another WikiCup veteran, was in seventh place with 412 points, mostly gained from In the news items.

These contestants, like all the others who qualified for Round 2, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews of a large number of good articles as the contest ran concurrently with a GAN backlog drive. Well done all! To qualify for Round 3, contestants will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two participants.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Anything that should have been claimed for in Round 1 is no longer eligible for points. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.

Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:06, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Apropos

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Less Unless. All the best! SN54129 16:13, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

I swear I didn't but in checking things over (inspired by BN, I'm making my "admin tree") you're right. I'll fix it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:15, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Apologies for obsessiveness! Have a good—arboreal!—weekend  :) SN54129 16:51, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of feature films with LGBT characters

Yikes, I just closed this AfD and then saw your {{Closing}} template when I refreshed the page. Sorry about that. I'm happy to revert and allow you to close it if you prefer. I'm curious if you came to the same conclusion about the consensus though, as it wasn't the easiest AfD to close. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 18:02, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

@Scottywong, it happens though I admittedly was hoping it wouldn't happen here by placing the closing tag, though I too have experienced stuff happening between the time I open XfDcloser and hitting the button to submit. I'm going to stop my read so my comments here are based only on the discussion up until the relist but I definitely was seeing a no consensus outcome as opposed to keep. You seem to have weighted away the concerns of delete voters concerns about such a list being indiscriminate in a way that I would not have especially as some of those arguing keep agreed the list needed some larger reworking. Looking at just the bolded comments after the relist I am doubtful I'd have moved from this no consensus finding. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:08, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I'll admit that I was on the edge between Keep and No Consensus for this one, but I leaned harder towards Keep because the policy-based rationales for deletion weren't strong, and the Keep voters provided very convincing strategies for resolving many of the perceived problems with the list (many of which seemed to be part of the trigger to nominate it for deletion). Again, apologies for wasting your time; I started reading the AfD shortly before you added that template. In the future, I'll try to use the {{closing}} template myself for these kinds of AfDs. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 18:22, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions

BK49, I'm not sure where to ask, so you get the prize :). Can the discretionary sanctions (x 2) now in place at J. K. Rowling be extended to Politics of J. K. Rowling? It is the Politics article where the entire section on Transgender gets hammered, and it has been in the last few days, with BLP vios. Also, might you or a TPS be able to semi-protect the Politics article? Please let me know where I would better ask the discretionary sanctions question in the future; I know the normal place for requesting semi-protection, but am rolling it all in to one here, for expediency. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:01, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia asking me is a reasonable place to ask DS questions. Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee is also a good place to ask general DS questions. I've add the gender DS notice to the talk page of Politics of J. K. Rowling. In reality that notice is less important than leaving the appropriate talk page message to individual editors. I've semi'ed it for a year as well. Hope that all helps. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:08, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! (Can I/should I leave a DS message to an IP?) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:36, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Static (or somewhat static) IPs have been sanctioned under DS before and they would also need to be aware so you can leave a DS message. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:10, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

OK, thx! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:26, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

burton rose

you deleted my prod on burton rose. No problem with that. I encourage you to find some reliable sources attesting to notablility if you can! let me know if you want help or ideas or feedback or anything. QueensanditsCrazy (talk) 14:58, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@QueensanditsCrazy while I understand the WP:SOFIXIT message you're expressing here, I would suggest that the current sourcing makes a claim to notability under WP:NPROF. If you feel differently you are of course welcome to propose it for deletion via WP:AFD. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't care about this enough to propose it for deletion, so I'll just let it be as is. Thank you for your input! QueensanditsCrazy (talk) 15:49, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Make Way for Ducklings FAR

I have nominated Make Way for Ducklings for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. BK, in case you have any further feedback. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:57, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #20

Welcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Suggested edits

As of February, 300,000 suggested edits have been completed since the feature was first deployed in December 2019.

Add a link is the team's first structured task, deployed in May 2021. It has improved outcomes for newcomers. The team is now working on a second iteration based on community feedback and data analysis. Improvements will include: improved algorithmic suggestions, guardrails to prevent too many similar links to be added, and clearer encouragement for users to continue making edits. After adding these improvements, we will deploy this task to more Wikipedias.

Add an image is the second structured task built by our team. It was deployed in November 2021 to four pilot Wikipedias. This is a more challenging task for newcomers. However, it adds more value to articles (so far, over 1,000 images have been added). We are currently learning from communities and from the data on what is working well and what needs improvements. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. We will soon deploy this task to more Wikipedias as a test.

"Add a link" and "Add an image" now both have a limitation on how many of these tasks newcomers can do per day. It is meant to discourage careless newcomers from making too many problematic edits.

Positive reinforcement

Over the last two years, the Growth team has focused on building suggested edits: easy tasks for newcomers to start with. We have learned with this experience that these tasks help many newcomers to make their first edits. Now, the team is starting a new project : "positive reinforcement". Its goal is to make newcomers proud of their editing and to make them want to come back for more of them. With the positive reinforcement project, we are considering three kinds of features:

• Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
• Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
• Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.

This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!

News for mentors

• The mentor dashboard is available at all wikis. It helps mentors see who their mentees are and keep track of their activity. It is automatically activated where a list of mentors has been created. If you need assistance to create a list of mentors, please contact us.
• The mentor dashboard has a new module: settings. It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away). They can specify the volume of questions they want to receive, and they can claim mentees in an easier way. It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign their mentees to other mentors.
• We are working on an ability for a mentee to opt-out (and back in) to having a mentor.
• Previously, in the table that displays mentees activity, the filters displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. Mentors can change this value in their filters.
• We are currently working on a special page for mentors to sign-up.

Some wikis have created userboxes that mentors can display on the user pages. If your wiki has one, please link it to Wikidata!

Scaling

Previously, at most Wikipedias, only 80% of newcomers were getting the Growth features. This was done for experimentation, to have a control group. We have changed this setting. Now 100% of new accounts at all Wikipedias get the Growth features (except a few, kept as test wikis). We invite communities to update their onboarding documentation and tutorials. Please include the Growth features in it. To help you, we have created an help page that can be translated and adapted to your wiki.

How to help

Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work. We regularly update it.

Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

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Celestina007 (talk) 20:39, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 5

I'm sorry about the late delivery of this newsletter. Within the newsletter was material about an ongoing vote, which closes in under 21 hours.

Please share the information links with interested users: Project Overview • Universal Code of Conduct • Enforcement guidelines (proposed) • Voting • Voter information • Voting link

Xeno (WMF) (talk) 03:42, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 5, January 2022Read the full newsletter

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Welcome to the fifth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News (formerly known as Universal Code of Conduct News)! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board elections and other relevant MSG topics.

This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly or bi-weekly to subscribers. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive these updates.

• Call for Feedback about the Board elections - We invite you to give your feedback on the upcoming WMF Board of Trustees election. This call for feedback went live on 10th January 2022 and will be concluded on 16th February 2022. (continue reading)
• Universal Code of Conduct Ratification - In 2021, the WMF asked communities about how to enforce the Universal Code of Conduct policy text. The revised draft of the enforcement guidelines should be ready for community vote in March. (continue reading)
• Movement Strategy Implementation Grants - As we continue to review several interesting proposals, we encourage and welcome more proposals and ideas that target a specific initiative from the Movement Strategy recommendations. (continue reading)
• The New Direction for the Newsletter - As the UCoC Newsletter transitions into MSG Newsletter, join the facilitation team in envisioning and deciding on the new directions for this newsletter. (continue reading)
• Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about MSG on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

Xeno (WMF) (talk) 03:42, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

WP:RS Google Custom Search

You are maintaining the custom search engine for WP:RS/PS, right? If so, consider excluding results from URLs that start with downloads.zdnet.com or arstechnica.com/civis/ since these are not reliable. Dexxor (talk) 21:19, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@Dexxor "maintaining" is probably too nice to describe what I'm doing there. It'll have been close to a year since I've updated it, perhaps more. Excluding the downloads from ZDNet is probably doable - in theory I have just done it. Excluding the civis from arstechnica is going to be trickier - because I'm using the free version I have some limited options. I've made note to think about updating this and the other CSE I maintain (for WP:NPPRS) but it might be a bit before I get to them. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:36, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Closing a case

Regarding this edit: I'm a bit confused. If you support a change to require a majority of arbitrators to agree to close a case, did you mean to say that obtaining a majority is an "unreasonable thing to obtain"? Am I misunderstanding the motion? isaacl (talk) 23:33, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

No I misread what I wrote. I had it right the first time, thanks for pointing this out. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:12, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

On a somewhat related note, do the arbitrators actually want community feedback, or are they just following process? If the former, it would help to know what problem the arbitrators are trying to solve. Is it "we want every arbitrator to have the opportunity to weigh in before deciding to open a case"? If so, personally I'd suggest handling this separately from whatever threshold is deemed desirable to accept a case. For example, an arbitrator could issue a 48-hour hold, delaying judgement on whether not a case is accepted. (To avoid cascading holds stopping a case from proceeding, there could be a cutoff, such as once a case meets the criteria to be accepted, no holds can be issued after 24 hours.) isaacl (talk) 23:50, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@Isaacl I get into this with my reply over at A/R/M but what I think we're trying to solve with 1 & 3 is what the community's expectations should be about when we open a case. We have a number of arbs who think we should only be opening cases with a majority and because of some of the mechanics of how we operate this can stop us from opening a case. If we talk about this in the abstract, without the pressure of any case bearing down on us, then we can decide as a committee whether we should indeed wait for a majority or if it's OK to move forward with net 4. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:26, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

OK, if I understand correctly, it sounds more like an internal discussion that's dependent on interpersonal interactions. Thanks for the clarification. isaacl (talk) 02:25, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@Isaacl you may wish to sign your most recent comment at ARM. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:28, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 March 2022

• From the Signpost team: How The Signpost is documenting the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

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• Eyewitness Wikimedian, Kharkiv, Ukraine: Countering Russian aggression with a camera

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Block me

Now — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rose Carrot Joaquin (talk • contribs) 18:09, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Non Duplicate

It wasnt a duplicate, although it did look too much like one. I will reword to clarify the removed question and how it is different, and repost. McClenon mobile (talk) 21:55, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022

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

Administrator changes

Firefly • Sdrqaz

Ad Orientem

Geschichte • Ryan Postlethwaite • Sabine's Sunbird • Wassupwestcoast

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

• Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have the deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights. This means that those in the Researcher user group and Checkusers who are not administrators can now access Special:RevisionDelete. The users able to view the special page after this change are the 3 users in the Researcher group, as there are currently no checkusers who are not already administrators. (T301928)
• When viewing deleted revisions or diffs on Special:Undelete a back link to the undelete page for the associated page is now present. (T284114)

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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Appreciation

Captain thank you for the kind words in this trying times I really appreciate the love and encouragement you sent my way, on a lighter note you said something along the lines of “Your spiritual health is important” I’m not sure why that made me smile, how did you know I was a spiritually inclined person? Was it because I mentioned somewhere that I dabble in occultism or did you get the idea from my Userpage? Celestina007 (talk) 23:28, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

@Celestina007 I can't recall if you've talked about it directly before but you've definitely mentioned ideas around it which told me how important it was to you and so I thought it important to mention in that context. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:40, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

One link archived from Template:Centralized discussion

As I saw, you archived a link to one of RFC discussions about use of non-free samples. How does the discussion not meet the standards of WP:CENT? --George Ho (talk) 08:57, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I think it did @George Ho but it seemed like the conversation had become inactive. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:57, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

The RfC discussion is still active at WT:NFC, but it's starting to slow down. Mind me reinserting the link there then? --George Ho (talk) 15:59, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Of course the discussion can remain active but by my look it's had 1 comment since April 6? which is obviously after I archived it but the discussion on the whole doesn't seem all that active in the way that CENT discussions can often spur, so that's my 2 cents but if you reinstate I definitely wouldn't archive it again. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:56, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

dupe comment

I got an edit conflict with myself somehow. That edit conflict resolving tool confuses the hell out of me sometimes. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:08, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox interesting. I had about 9-12 month s where I would get edit conflicts with myself. Then it stopped and I don't get that anymore. What I found was that if I get an EC with myself that the comment had always gone through so I could just move on. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:09, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

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, Take your time, it is imperative but not so urgent. Celestina007 (talk) 22:04, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 6

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 6, April 2022Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the sixth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board of trustees elections and other relevant MSG topics.

This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while the more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.

• Leadership Development - A Working Group is Forming! - The application to join the Leadership Development Working Group closed on April 10th, 2022, and up to 12 community members will be selected to participate in the working group. (continue reading)
• Universal Code of Conduct Ratification Results are out! - The global decision process on the enforcement of the UCoC via SecurePoll was held from 7 to 21 March. Over 2,300 eligible voters from at least 128 different home projects submitted their opinions and comments. (continue reading)
• Movement Discussions on Hubs - The Global Conversation event on Regional and Thematic Hubs was held on Saturday, March 12, and was attended by 84 diverse Wikimedians from across the movement. (continue reading)
• Movement Strategy Grants Remain Open! - Since the start of the year, six proposals with a total value of about $80,000 USD have been approved. Do you have a movement strategy project idea? Reach out to us! (continue reading)
• The Movement Charter Drafting Committee is All Set! - The Committee of fifteen members which was elected in October 2021, has agreed on the essential values and methods for its work, and has started to create the outline of the Movement Charter draft. (continue reading)
• Introducing Movement Strategy Weekly - Contribute and Subscribe! - The MSG team have just launched the updates portal, which is connected to the various Movement Strategy pages on Meta-wiki. Subscriber to get up-to-date news about the various ongoing projects. (continue reading)
• Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about the UCoC on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

Thanks for reading. Xeno (WMF) 02:23, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

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New administrator activity requirement

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

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

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

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

22:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Since BN isn't my blog

I'll continue here. I wasn't actually around in 2005, so maybe I'm imagining something as "the good old days" when it really wasn't. Maybe 2005 was a bad example. But I have to believe at some point in our past, someone would have just boldly changed this, and no one would have batted an eye. But allowed by policy or not, I guarantee someone would have reverted this change with "a change like this requires discussion" if this had simply been boldly added today. Even if they did not disagree with the change themselves. I either wish I was editing back whenever this would have been OK, or wish I was editing in the imaginary world where this would have been OK. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:25, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

It just occurred to me that based on this section header that the logical conclusion to draw is that my user talk is now Floq's blog. I admit I'm excited to read future entries. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:59, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Lol, that wasn't what I meant to imply. I actually already have a blog. It is, shall we say, somewhat infrequently updated, so "excited to read future entries" is probably doomed to disappoint. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:08, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I think this is a discussion worth having and am in the middle of starting a VP thread about it but I don't think you're wrong in imagining it playing out that way. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:26, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

There were a couple of not-very-well-attended discussions last year on the policy and guidelines talk page about not reverting changes simply because there was no prior discussion: Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines § Meaning of "developed" in PGBOLD and Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines § Substantive reasons. Personally, I don't like to see significant procedure changes made without prior discussion, as I think there's a tendency to over-extrapolate from a small number of cases/a few expressed opinions. I understand why there are editors who like to cut the Gordan knot this way, and if the change is just putting actual practice into writing, there shouldn't be an issue. If changes are made that do not reflect universal practice, though, and no one notices until months later (as is quite common), we waste a lot of time doing archeology on the disputed change, trying to figure out if there was ever any consensus for it. It would be simpler if there were some underlying discussion which could be pointed to in a reference. isaacl (talk) 20:54, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I am on team "discussion but not RfC" required myself. If there's something of a consensus about that coming out of the village pump discussion that would be a positive in my mind given the all too frequent occurrence of "one person objects on procedural grounds and so it automatically goes to RfC" that you noted at the pump. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:57, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I should have noted that the way English Wikipedia determines community consensus is also prone to over-extrapolating: it looks at the opinions of a self-selected sampling of whoever showed up to comment. But at least it's something written to look at, beyond an edit summary of one editor. isaacl (talk) 22:12, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

But I have to believe at some point in our past reminds me of a note at Wikipedia:Old-fashioned Wikipedian values: It is quite normal for each generation, as they age, to yearn for the values of the past, in a rose-tinted spectacles manner. There probably never was a time of Wikipedian harmony, polite collegiality and happiness, but it's nice to think that there was, and to aspire to bring it back. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:26, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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The Signpost: 24 April 2022

• News and notes: Double trouble

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• Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary (Part 2)

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I’ve missed you Captain

Hope you are good? 💗. Celestina007 (talk) 11:00, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for checking in. I'm battling some kind of virus at the moment (not COVID, fortunately) so that's less than great but otherwise doing fine. How has your editing been @Celestina007? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:51, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

I’m so sorry to hear that, If I knew your real government name and had a picture of you, I would have used a Rosicrucian technique to send healing to you. All the same I pray you get better very soon. I’m doing okay, I’ve been absent for about a week now, I travelled to see my family in Utah to pay my last respects to a relative of mine who died of natural causes (old age). In any case I’m back to Nigeria now so I’m back to editing. It is my utmost prayer that you recover speedily. So mote it be. Celestina007 (talk) 19:39, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

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WikiCup 2022 May newsletter

The second round of the 2022 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 115 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top seven contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 11 featured articles and the 79 good articles achieved in total by contestants.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:

1. Epicgenius, with 1264 points from 2 featured article, 4 good articles and 18 DYKs. Epicgenius was a finalist last year but has now withdrawn from the contest as he pursues a new career path.
2. AryKun, with 1172 points from two featured articles, one good article and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews.
3. Bloom6132, with 605 points from 44 in the news items and 4 DYKs.
4. Sammi Brie, with 573 points from 8 GAs and 21 DYKs.
5. Ealdgyth, with 567 points from 11 GAs and 34 good and featured article reviews.
6. Panini!, with 549 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and several other sources.
7. Lee Vilenski, with 545 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and a number of reviews.

The rules for featured and good article reviews require the review to be of sufficient length; brief quick fails and very short reviews will generally not be awarded points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:39, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Deletion review for Thirupathi (2006 Kannada film)

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Thirupathi (2006 Kannada film). 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. DareshMohan (talk) 07:43, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Your 'crat proposal

Since you mentioned it on WP:BN, I thought I might jump in and give my two cents. I hope you don't mind. My main concern is that the backup plan for this proposal is granting all checkusers and oversighters the current bureaucrat toolbox. While we are all certainly trusted to keep private information secure, we weren't elected on our consensus-judging abilities. Sure, granting technical roles like bot and interface-admin wouldn't be an issue, but a "functionary chat" is a different story. Think about it—you're giving me of all people crat this way. I'm pretty confident nobody wants me as a bureaucrat. :) Cheers! Reaper Eternal (talk) 23:20, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

I am grateful you jumped in and gave your two cents @Reaper. The bet here is that we can trust people with CUOS to know their limitations. And I'm willing to make that bet that those who aren't inclined in that way don't use those tools, in the same way that many arbs know Checkuser is beyond their ken and never use it despite having the permission (so they can see Checkuser information produced by others as part of appeals). And the other bet we'd be making is that they wouldn't WHELL each other. Given the many ways that people with these perms work together on issues I think that's, in some ways, an even better bet than the trust in knowing their limitations. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:28, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

The (s)election methods and criteria for Bureaucrats and Arbcom (and CU and OS) are fundamentally different and Galobtter and Wugapodes make some apposite observations. Where occasionally an Arb might indeed be a highly trusted and respected editor, basically where there are barely enough candidates to fill the vacant seats, some will pass whoever or whatever they are; Arbcom does have a significant history of its own contentious issues and member behaviour. OTOH, through the RfB system the candidates go through through an open discussion/voting process and scrutiny with a high, preset bar which is quite different from simply anonymously checking a box to select people from a list. The 'Crats are still probably the most highly trusted local permission group.

Expanding the role of the 'Crats to make the job more appealing might certainly have its merits - recent RfA 'cratchats have proven yet again that many 'Crats are not exactly the most active of users and getting enough of them together from the current 20 'Crats to form a reasonable quorum is not always easy. Only four of them were promoted within the last 7 years or so. Several years ago, however, WTT and I proposed some possible changes to the role of the 'Crats, but it does seem that any changes to their job description do, and will, meet with resistance. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:32, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I think that we're all aware that changes will meet with resistence @Kudpung - and BARC was especially infuriating as it had numerical majority but was turned down as no-consensus. Just as my recent proposal for Admin elections was. The issue at hand, highlighted by @Guerillero is that our 'crats are long term users who may be less involved in the day to day running of the encyclopedia. I fully include myself in that number, I know I haven't been working on the ground for 6-7 years. That's not to say I'm doing nothing, but I do wonder if it's appropriate for me to make such decisions, simply due to my long gone past history and my well known nature. There's no "re-crat" process, and we barely elect new crats.

I don't believe there is any need of the role these days. "Evaluating consensus" can be done by anyone, and we have many long term editors who are willing to. Two of the user-rights that are managed by crats (intadmin and bot) could be managed by admins, in my opinion - perhaps with no option to assign to self, either technically or simply by policy. The only user-right I'd rather admins didn't have was "assign / remove sysop" - and we don't need an elite group to do that, it could be done by functionaries, or arbs - I wouldn't have an issue with either. Worm^TT(talk) 09:34, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

@Worm That Turned: 500 edits ago for Cecropia is 2007, Deskana goes back to 2018, and UninvitedCompany and Avraham have made less than 500 edits since 2019. It is unconscionable that we encourage them to pop out and decide the outcome of a contentious RfA while making less than 200 edits a year. That is a full fifth of the crat team and I have no reason to suspect that they understand the current state of on our policies. To make it a quarter, Acalamari has made less than 500 edits since 2020. Further, 4/5 of the crat team passed their RfA before I joined Wikipedia in 2009, and I am no longer considered to be a young editor. I am worried that such an important role is, proportionally, the domain of editors of a certain vintage that no longer have their finger on the pulse of the community. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 09:51, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

On the flipside, the crat role isn't about knowing policies (like admins' role), it's about being able to determine consensus and taking action based on that consensus. Looking at RfA particularly (as that's the most controversial area that 'crats work) - I would expect any 'crat to follow changes in the RfA process, but that's far less onerous than expecting an administrator to follow all the community areas of change.

I'm not saying I disagree with issue that over half our crats over a decade ago, nor that I disagree with the proposal to remove the role, but I do wonder, @Guerillero, if the arguments of "out of touch" might need to be a) backed up with evidence of mistakes or b) a clear explanation of why it is likely to be an issue? Worm^TT(talk) 10:36, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

@Worm That Turned: The perception of the legitimacy of crat decisions is important and that is reliant on users seeing them as more than the old boys club from a bygone era (+ Amanda and Primefac). It is a bad look when the crats reading no consensus at the most recent crat chat made 3 edits and 7 edits in 2022 beforehand and we are almost at the year's halfway point. It doesn't help that Acalamari didn't know that autopatrolled was unbundled four months after the decision was made.

I would love it if the crats, who are supposed to be the master consensus readers, would be that for the community. It would be great if every discussion with 75 or more members was closed by a crat or panel of crats. Instead, major discussions such as Mass killings under communist regimes, Desysop 2021, RfA reform 2021, etc. are all closed by non-crat admins. The FA Coords and admins at AN/ANI/AE do more consensus determining in a month than the crats do in a year. I would love it if the crats were the ones to run the ArbCom elections since they run or other advanced permission schemes, but outside of running once every few years there is no interest. For the areas that the crats are supposed to be skilled at they don't do outside of the once in a blue moon crat chat. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 12:31, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

It sounds like you are alternatively asking for an expansion of the crat role - something that Kudpung and I tried with WP:BARC. That would hopefully encourage more, new crats. It's a bit difficult to argue for the absolution and expansion of the same role. Worm^TT(talk) 12:47, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

It either needs to be expanded to increase diversity or abolished because the current role is not working. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 12:59, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

So, by all means, encourage others to undergo RfB. Undergo it yourself! Realize that its a process and taking 2 or 3 attempts is normal. The first RfB is as much a venue for the community to give you feedback as to perceived areas for improvement than it is to actually get the tools. Use the constructive criticism as intended. As for activity, 'crats are now harmonized with admins, which makes sense. If Wikipedians feel that 100 edits over 5 years in insufficient, then by all means, put that up for an RfC. Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 17:32, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I addressed the autopatrolled and activity issues here. It wasn't that I didn't know, but that I forgot in the moment; Barkeep49 reminded me so that I wouldn't forget in the future. Given the rarity of RfAs nowadays and it being my first close since the change, this particular slip up should be understandable and easy to forgive since it's something that's easily correctable. Acalamari 13:02, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Looking at those links it seems like you've put together a good list of people who should consider RfBs. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:00, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't think anyone can argue with Guerillero's concerns now that he has provided the stats. One could be forgiven for thinking that possibly some 'crats believe they have reached the pinnacle of Wikipedia hierarchy and don't need to do much any more, but it wouldn't really be assuming GF - they probably didn't think like that at the time of their promotion. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:39, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Building off the discussion Worm That Turned and Guerillero had upstream maybe the more basic question about crats is what we should be asking.

Should the role of crats:

1. Be expanded (i.e. Crats are asked to run ACERFC and other places where consensus finding is particularly important/valued)
2. Kept the same (things are working)
3. Be eliminated (there's not enough to do with the crats and so we should find alternatives for the work that they currently do

That provides a clean set of options for the community to weigh in on. If three has consensus it still runs into the problems that I was trying to address with the deadline in that I am skeptical it would ever actually be implemented. But if 1 had consensus I think there likely could be some interesting discussion. That said maybe it's not worth running at all as there seems to be a substantial percent of the community, enough to have a no consensus decision if not outright consensus for it, so why spend the community time on it? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:55, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I think that question is a good one, and would be interested in seeing how it would turn out. I might suggest that "i.e. Crats are asked to run ACERFC and other places where consensus finding is particularly important/valued" is flipped to say "Crats are asked to run places where consensus finding is particularly important/valued, e.g. ACERFC". A

Thinking out loud, I wonder if "deprecated" might help, rather than eliminated - finding alternatives, but leaving the crats there until the alternatives are proven? That would mean we could remove items one at a time. That said, there's only three things left, so maybe that's not a big deal. Worm^TT(talk) 08:49, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes those are both improvements @Worm. That said my read of the conversations that have happened is that 2 is the choice of many people, enough that such a survey would either be no consensus, have a majority for 2, or perhaps even a consensus and so I'm not sure any such survey would be a good use of community time. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:56, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

I think it's still early to say what consensus might be, since the ideas have only been discussed informally without more background on motivation. I agree with Worm That Turned that #1 should be flipped around to describe the essence of the role and how it can be best deployed, rather than sounding like we need some role called "bureaucrats" and so have to find work for it. I was thinking of it as a "trusted closer" role, and so would be used to evaluate RfAs and could be called upon to assist on closing narrowly contested RfCs. RfCs related to policies and guidelines could be a domain specifically delegated to the trusted closer role (in addition to the arbitration committee election RfC). isaacl (talk) 20:29, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

I think the discussion at WP:BN is too small to be a true representation of the community as a whole so it's possible the consensus is different. But you have a pretty diverse set of editors, for reasons both in common and unique, arriving at a certain conclusion and so I think the most likely outcome is that the feelings expressed there would, roughly speaking, match the community as a whole. Like there is a fairly wide "error bar" in terms of opinion right nearly the entire error bar would suggest an outcome that's not going to be a change (either no consensus or consensus for #2). And unlike some instances where even learning that could be helpful, I don't see it worth the community time in this case. That said, you can see how I already adjusted per Worm's idea at User:Barkeep49/Bureaucrats. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:02, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

My out-of-the-blue guess is if a process change was proposed with the sole aim of increasing the number of bureaucrats to decide on RfAs, not enough people would think there is a significant problem yet warranting change. However, there have been some discussions on how policies and guidelines get modified. There could be interest in having a trusted closer group to determine consensus for guidance-related discussions plus other ones such as RfAs. I agree, though, that it might not be enough interest to warrant proceeding forward. isaacl (talk) 21:42, 5 May 2022 (UTC)