Administrators' newsletter – January 2020

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

  Guideline and policy news

  Arbitration

  • The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted rather than reasonably construed.
  • Following the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Bradv, Casliber, David Fuchs, DGG, KrakatoaKatie, Maxim, Newyorkbrad, SoWhy, Worm That Turned, Xeno.

  Miscellaneous


Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

  Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
  • The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.

  Technical news

  • Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
  • When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [1]

  Arbitration

  • Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.

  Miscellaneous



Administrators' newsletter – March 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).

  Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
  • A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

  Technical news

  • Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.

  Miscellaneous



Administrators' newsletter – April 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).

  Guideline and policy news

  • There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.

  Technical news

  Arbitration

  Miscellaneous

  • The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.

MOS:DATERANGE

Thanks again for pointing that out - I'll go through the article tomorrow and fix the other examples. I have to confess that some areas of the MOS frighten and confuse me sometimes... Cheers! GirthSummit (blether) 21:45, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@Girth Summit: As a former copyeditor, I sometimes tend to get persnickety about such things to a degree that frightens and confuses nearly everyone. Probably just a desire to spead my own constant fright and confusion. Misery loves company. Deor (talk) 14:44, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

sprinkles

By definition, confectionery includes multiple types of confections, including chocolate confections. More importantly, another title already used in the page is Jimmies, which also refers to chocolate sprinkles, just like chocolate vermicilli, or simply vermicilli in the UK, does. See the second sense "vermicelli". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. n.d. See also Mackley, Lesley; Handslip, Carole (1996). The Chocolate Book. Wigston: Salamander. Chocolate vermicilli (sprinkles) are available in milk and semisweet chocolate. Please further explain your reversion. Assem Khidhr (talk) 16:28, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

The article is primarily about sugar-candy sprinkles rather than chocolate analogues, and the second sense on the Oxford page specifies that the word is used in Britain to denote "shreds of chocolate" rather than bits of sugar candy. As far as I know, jimmies is used in some regions of the United States to refer to such sugar-candy bits as well as to chocolate bits. (Also, your edit created a ParserFunction error message in the ref, which is what attracted me to the article in the first place. Why did you use {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}, {{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}, and {{subst:CURRENTDAY2}} for the access date instead of just entering the date of the day on which you consulted the source?) Rather than just fix the ParserFunction error, I decided to revert the edit, since it seemed to add a somewhat problematic synonym. Deor (talk) 16:56, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
@Deor: I did fail to replace the template placeholders. However, I don't think good editing should only be judged by technical knowledge of wiki markup and Wiki conventions, which I'm still trying to be all informed of. As for the semantic discussion, the nearest visit to any respective dictionary entry would tell you jimmies denote chocolate sprinkles in particular, even if seldom used as a synechdoche to refer to any bits of confectionery. See e.g. "jimmies". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster.; jimmies (you can confirm I'm not the editor if in doubt).

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).

 

  Administrator changes

  GnangarraKaisershatnerMalcolmxl5

  CheckUser changes

  Callanecc

  Oversight changes

  HJ Mitchell

  Guideline and policy news

  Technical news

  Miscellaneous


Portland Regency Hotel & Spa

Hi there, I noticed that you moved Portland Regency Hotel & Spa to a draft. However, I added a number of independent, non-trivial and reliable sources about the building and restored it to the mainspace.--User:Namiba 21:12, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Ojai Valley Inn

As time permits, I plan to work on a few of the Doncram creations that you moved to draft space. Today, I reworked Draft:Ojai Valley Inn with extensive independent sourcing. It is now ready to be moved back to main space. Thanks, Cbl62 (talk) 06:20, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62:   Done. In the future, you can move these to mainspace yourself when you think they have been sourced enough. Deor (talk) 11:26, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. I just didn't want to offend by moving without first asking. Cbl62 (talk) 16:43, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).

 

  Administrator changes

  CaptainEekCreffettCwmhiraeth
  Anna FrodesiakBuckshot06RonhjonesSQL

  CheckUser changes

  SQL

  Guideline and policy news

  Arbitration

  • A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.

Happy...

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

french train station s-line template

hey, just wondering why you keep shifting the s-line template's from the body of an article to its infobox. both are acceptable location per this policy and by doing it i you've removed some additional information about the services and sources documenting that such services exist. see edit on Aguilcourt-Variscourt halt as an example. happy to change how i am editing articles in this category, just wanted a bit of clarification. all the best. Epluribusunumyall (talk) 09:01, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Partly, my changes were a response to situations like that brought up here, where the layout of the article left a massive amount of vertical white space between the heading "Services" and the services box that the templates create. Partly, they were just to get rid of the unsightly rectangle at the bottom of the infobox when there's text but no s-rail templates in the infobox's "services" field. I see that in some cases I did remove refs, but I don't think I removed any "additional information about the services", since the lines or networks served by the stations and the endpoints of the lines ("Regional services (TER Grand Est C10) Reims ... Laon" in the example you cite) are still present in the s-line templates in the infobox. Deor (talk) 16:07, 18 June 2020 (UTC)