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Administrators' newsletter – December 2017

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

Administrator changes

Joe Roe

JzG

Ericorbit • Perceval • Thingg • Tristanb • Violetriga

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:57, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2018

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

Administrator changes

Muboshgu

Anetode • Laser brain • Worm That Turned

None

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the administrator policy should be amended to require disclosure of paid editing activity at WP:RFA and to prohibit the use of administrative tools as part of paid editing activity, with certain exceptions.

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

AfD

Please help close this AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nurzaidi Bunari as you deleted article, thanks! Hhhhhkohhhhh (talk) 09:31, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

G5 deletion

Could I trouble you for one more G5 deletion relating to Sebi wj? You seem to have missed Raslam Khan. Thanks in advance. Sir Sputnik (talk) 03:14, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

@Sir Sputnik:  Done. Thanks ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 08:19, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Ali Alsalim & Khaled Alhnen

Hi, How are you? (Ali Alsalim) Iraqi singer and songwriter. I added more than six sources What is the purpose of deleting the article??? Also Khaled Alhnen. No need to delete such articles! - Regards--IamIRAQI (talk) 23:10, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello. I deleted the articles because they do not contain credible claims to significance for their subjects. If you want to write articles about these people you need to show why they are important or significant. I saw that you added articles but unfortunately I don't read Arabic (most people here don't; this is the English Wikipedia after all) so the sources you use to demonstrate importance really need to be in English. Otherwise these articles might be better off on the Arabic Wikipedia. Regards ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 09:08, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

@Elahrairah: Hi, yes the articles are important so i wrote them but i was surprised to delete them (the reason that most administrators of the English encyclopedia do not speak Arabic).I am here to help you in the Arabic language as I speak it well and you can take my advice in the Arabic articles.Can I request a return of the articles or is this a final decision? - Regards--IamIRAQI (talk) 00:05, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

This is the final decision from me, yes. If you really think the decision is wrong then the correct avenue is WP:Deletion review. Regards ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 00:15, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Now at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2018 January 10. —Cryptic 09:14, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Anna Jones (businesswoman)

I see you turned down my request for the speedy deletion pf Anna Jones (businesswoman) on the grounds that a merger with Anna Jones (businessperson) would be better. Fair enough, I wouldn't object to that. I would point out however that both these articles were created by the same author, 32MJR, obviously an undisclosed CoI (paid) editor, whose only contributions have been to these articles, and the creation of Debbie Wosskow. The second Anna Jones article was added in the full knowledge that the first article already existed. Both of these people are involved in a startup company called Sharestyle, and you propose rewarding this duplicitous behaviour by allowing both copies of Anna Jones articles to remain. You mentioned in your edit summary that they could be merged, but don't you think you have a duty, having turned down my speedy deletion request, to merge them yourself or at the very least, see that they are merged, so that only one remains on an ongoing basis? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:54, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi. I'll reply in points:

1. I'm not really motivated to "punish" people for paid editing. 32MJR may or may not be a paid editor, but creating two articles about the same subject was probably just a ham-fisted mistake. The article you tagged for deletion has been improved by several other editors since.
2. I am a volunteer, and as such don't really perceive myself as having a "duty" to do anything on Wikipedia. We're all busy in RL and find it difficult to find time to do the longer tasks. I guess I am no different.
3. A merger typically requires a discussion about what content should be retained. I think that's important in this case given the recent contributors to the article you tagged. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 14:18, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

OK. Having looked again at the history of Anna Jones (businessperson) I see that it was not published in February 2017 as I had thought but on 7 January 2018, and my indignation was misplaced. I apologize if I seemed critical, nut as a new page reviewer I see too many articles promoting people and businesses being created by CoI authors. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 14:42, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

No problem at all. As someone who regularly patrols the CSD nominations I get pissed off by promotional articles too. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 17:05, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

User:Medianadia

Hi, this is in re: declined G5. User Medianadia was discussed at SPI Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Dyhp612/Archive#Suspected sockpuppets 3. The account was connected to AnnLivinova and subsequently blocked. Is this the information you were looking for? K.e.coffman (talk) 21:31, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi. I'm not going to delete the article. My initial concern is that there was not any CheckUser evidence to tie the account to any other - I don't like deleting articles on a hunch. I see from the SPI that there was some CheckUser evidence and I was going to delete, but I also notice that the article has received significant contributions from other editors and so G5 does not apply. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 18:07, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

CSD declined

Hi Elahrairah, just to let you know as to why List of songs recorded by T. M. Soundararajan and List of songs recorded by Hemlata were nominated for CSD per A10. The article creator (a fairly new editor) has been extracting content from already existing articles and making new articles out of them, neither with prior discussion nor attribution. I've redirected all those pages to the original articles. Thanks, MT Train^Discuss 09:58, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Ok. I don't really consider discographies to be within the scope of A10. Including comprehensive discographies in articles about music artists can make them disorganised and difficult to read. Creating a separate discography article can help to clean that up, and copying the information from one article to another is the first step in splitting the articles. I personally think it would be better to remove the discography from the original article and simply place a link to the new discography article. But whatever. Do whatever you think is best. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 22:29, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Termux

Hi, you recently deleted the Termux article because of G4, but I believe the reason for the deletion no longer applies. The original article was a advertisement-like, unsourced ramble written by a single overenthusiastic user. But the second Version was created by a different User, had a few different contributors and was sourced. If there are more problems with the article as it was just before your deletion can you please move it to a draft, so we can continue to improve it until it is ready? Otherwise I ask you to please undelete the article. --Glow oli (talk) 15:02, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi. I'm sorry but I simply disagree with you. The article was deleted just a month ago due to a lack of notability. The only decent source in the latest version predates the deletion discussion so I'm not prepared to unilaterally reverse the outcome of an AfD discussion. I have, however, moved the content of the article to your userspace at User:Glow oli/Termux. You can continue to work on it there until you find the right sources. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 15:10, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I can agree with that decision. Thank you for moving it to my userspace. I've shared this information with the very eager Termux community and asked them not to recreate the article for the time being in order not to annoy Wikipedia admins any longer. Once the article is much better and better sources have been found, we can talk about this again. --Glow oli (talk) 15:30, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Rowland Ola Abíọ́dún

Hi, Please may I have a copy of this biographical article which you deleted yesterday due to copyright infringement? Please feel free to place the uncategorized version in my sandbox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eruditescholar/sandbox so that I can address the issues in the article. Thanks in anticipation :-Eruditescholar (talk) 07:30, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi. I'm sorry but I will not provide a copy of an article deleted due to copyright infringement. You'll have to write the article from scratch using your own words. See WP:COPYVIO. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 10:34, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Even though, I have assumed good faith, the essence of getting a copy of the deleted article is to confirm the authenticity of the copyriot violation and address the issue. I see nothing wrong with that. The request has also got nothing to do with your authority or role as an administrator but more with the nominator of the article for deletion. I am also aware that not all administrators are willing to provide copies of deleted articles. It was worth a try. -Eruditescholar (talk) 11:03, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't really perceive myself as having any sort of "authority". They just trust me to press the buttons in the right order. In this case, I'm not supposed to press the "restore" button. I'm usually prepared to provide copies of deleted articles, but never copyright violations. The article was basically lifted, in sections, from this site. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 11:17, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

A copy of the deleted article pasted in my sandox (without categories) makes it inaccessible to Wikipedia readers and keeps it from the public domain. I will most likely be the only one to have access to edit it. Notwithstanding, thanks for your expatiation. -Eruditescholar (talk) 12:26, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Jack Pickard

Hi there. You recently deleted my page Egg London. It was unfinished at this stage, but fair enough sorta, it was pretty pants at that point. I've now re-made it much better. Please would you kindly not delete it this time? Cheers - Jack. —Preceding undated comment added 21:50, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi. The new article is much better. I've made a few very minor touches to improve it but it looks good. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 22:50, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Your signature

Please be aware that your signature uses deprecated <font> tags, which are causing Obsolete HTML tags lint errors.

You are encouraged to change

[[User:Elahrairah|<font color="green">'''E'''</font><font color="CC9900">'''A'''</font>]]&nbsp;[[Special:Contribs/Elahrairah|<sup><font color="green">inspect damage</font></sup>]]⁄[[User talk:Elahrairah|<sub><font color="CC9900">berate</font></sub>]] : EA ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate

to

[[User:Elahrairah|<b style="color: green;">E</b><b style="color: #CC9900;">A</b>]]&nbsp;[[Special:Contribs/Elahrairah|<sup style="color: green;">inspect damage</sup>]]⁄[[User talk:Elahrairah|<sub style="color: #CC9900;">berate</sub>]] : EA ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate

—Anomalocaris (talk) 07:22, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for updating your signature! —Anomalocaris (talk) 02:25, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

(moved)

Hello, Elahrairah. 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.

Please advise on why the article on Joseph Holston was deleted. I disagree with the G11 characterization, and believe it conforms to all guidelines on notability and verifiability. I am requesting that the article be undeleted, or that I be allowed to correct any problems with the article. Attawaysmith (talk) 17:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello Attawaysmith. The article was deleted because it was written in a promotional tone; it read like an advert and would need to be fundamentally re-written to comply with Wikipedia requirements for neutral tone. Your disagreement is noted. Whether the article was compliant with policy on notability and verifiability is not the issue. I will not restore the article but I will move the contents to a subpage in your userspace, if you wish, so that you can use the references there to write a completely new article which is not promotional. However, if you try to create the article again with the same basic structure I will delete it again and possibly take further action if necessary. Are you happy with this? ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 19:46, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your prompt response. I would like the article moved to my userspace so that I may make the appropriate changes.Attawaysmith (talk) 20:19, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

"Changes" are not sufficient. The article needs to be completely re-written. You can find the text at User:Attawaysmith/Joseph Holston. Regards ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 20:33, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Keşık Havası (melody)

I noticed that you have deleted Kaşık Havası (melody). That's the second deletion of the article . In the first deletion on 28 July 2017, the rationale was "They are all created by the same user, Samizambak, and are all stubs, mostly under 100 words. All are about "anonymous Turkish folk tunes", the vast majority are either completely unreferenced or rely on a single source." Well for Kaşık Havası (melody) this was not true. For one thing it was created by me and not a part of a series. (I hadn't been notified then) . Also a stub article is quite permissable in WP. Please let me recreate the article . Cheers Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 07:13, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

No, that wasn't the rationale. The rationale was that the tunes aren't notable; see WP:N. Cherry-picking quotes from an AfD nomination statement isn't going to get you anywhere. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 17:25, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Altogen Biosystems Deletion

Hey Elahrairah, I was going to contest the deletion of Altogen Biosystems, but it was deleted before I had the time to do so. You wrote that you deleted it per G4, but I wrote the article from scratch without any information on what the previous article was like, and based on the deletion discussion, I don't think my version was substantially similar to the previous one. Do you think you could let me improve on it? I know it's not that much, but I'm trying to be broad in my editing, hoping that other people will help along. Thanks MeredithGitre (talk) 23:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi. At the original deletion discussion one of the concerns raised was that the sources used were basically just press releases, and I felt that was still the case with the article you wrote. See WP:ITEXISTS etc. I'm happy to restore a draft version to your userspace if you'd like? But the sourcing needs to improve really. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 11:47, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Hey, I'd be happy to improve the sourcing. If you could restore the article in my userspace that'd be great. I'll do some work on it and see if I can get it up to par. Thanks! MeredithGitre (talk) 23:08, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done. See User:MeredithGitre/Altogen Biosystems. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 23:49, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you! I added some more references just now. Could you look over the page to see if it can now be published? I don't know if all the citations are necessary, but better to have them than not. Thanks! MeredithGitre (talk) 03:28, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

No, that is not sufficient. I think you need to have a more careful read of the general notability guideline. The sources you have added simply make passing mentions about the company; there need to be independent, reliable sources which cover the subject in depth. For example, it would probably be possible to find lots of sources written about the Coca-Cola company, its impact and so on; it wouldn't just be limited to sites listing their latest products.

If I'm honest, my hunch is that you won't be able to find such sources because I doubt they exist. In this case the subject would not be considered notable and wouldn't be suitable for an article at this time. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 21:52, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll see what I can do, but if it's goner then ok. I'll let you know if I find something that I think meets the criteria, but otherwise thanks for reviewing. MeredithGitre (talk) 22:53, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2018

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

Administrator changes

None

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

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has closed with a consensus that candidates at WP:RFA must disclose whether they have ever edited for pay and that administrators may never use administrative tools as part of any paid editing activity, except when they are acting as a Wikipedian-in-Residence or when the payment is made by the Wikimedia Foundation or an affiliate of the WMF.
• Editors responding to threats of harm can now contact the Wikimedia Foundation's emergency address by using Special:EmailUser/Emergency. If you don't have email enabled on Wikipedia, directly contacting the emergency address using your own email client remains an option.

Technical news

• A tag will now be automatically applied to edits that blank a page, turn a page into a redirect, remove/replace almost all content in a page, undo an edit, or rollback an edit. These edits were previously denoted solely by automatic edit summaries.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee has enacted a change to the discretionary sanctions procedure which requires administrators to add a standardized editnotice when placing page restrictions. Editors cannot be sanctioned for violations of page restrictions if this editnotice was not in place at the time of the violation.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:51, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Denilson Igwe

Rexjae (talk) 07:19, 6 February 2018 (UTC)please kindly move the above mentioned article back to draft space for further editing seeing the reason for deletion was simply because of ambiguous marketing, re-editing the article should be allowed and considered. I'm new to editing and creating Wikipedia articles. @ Elahrairah. Rexjae (talk) 07:19, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

The article is promotional and I will not restore it. If you wish to write an article about this individual, you should start from scratch. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 09:08, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Deleted article: Canberra Primary School

Hi Elahrairah, I understand you have deleted my article titled: Canberra Primary School. I would like to further understand what was wrong with my article and how I can improve when writing articles in the future. Thanks SGguy (talk) 10:57, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi. The article was deleted because at a previous WP:AfD discussion there was consensus to delete, and because the most recent version of the article was written like an advertisement. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 23:26, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Two articles of the same name

Hello my friend how are you?? There are two articles with the same name:

• Mahmoud Hassani Sorkhi
• Mahmud al-Hasani al-Sarkhi

Please resolve this issue--IamIRAQI (talk) 22:16, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

I've redirected one article to the other. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 08:01, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

un deletion of Gopi prasannaa

Dear Admin I can see that the subject article has been tagged for deletion. Since, this is my first artcile on wiki, looks am on a learning curve. I have gathered enough references to support the article. request your support to undelete the article so that I can start to edit it and support it with enough citations. thanks Nerdish Verb Nerdish verbs (talk) 01:11, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi. The article was promotional and I will not restore it. Please see WP:G11 (and the edit notice when you wrote this message...) ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 08:26, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Dear Admin this article is a non promotional article and basically a pure biography of a living artist. if you can restore the article in my userspace that'd be great and i can provide you enough citations for your review and could attempt to see if i can get it up to par. Thanks. Nerdish verbs (talk) 02:01, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, but no, I will not restore it. The article was promotional and the references were poor. If you want to re-write the article then you'd be best off doing it from scratch. There's nothing worth keeping from the old version. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 08:08, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2018

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

Administrator changes

Lourdes†

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

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

Guideline and policy news

• The autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) is scheduled to end on 14 March 2018. The results of the research collected can be read on Meta Wiki.
• Community ban discussions must now stay open for at least 24 hours prior to being closed.
• A change to the administrator inactivity policy has been proposed. Under the proposal, if an administrator has not used their admin tools for a period of five years and is subsequently desysopped for inactivity, the administrator would have to file a new RfA in order to regain the tools.
• A change to the banning policy has been proposed which would specify conditions under which a repeat sockmaster may be considered de facto banned, reducing the need to start a community ban discussion for these users.

Technical news

• CheckUsers are now able to view private data such as IP addresses from the edit filter log, e.g. when the filter prevents a user from creating an account. Previously, this information was unavailable to CheckUsers because access to it could not be logged.
• The edit filter has a new feature contains_all that edit filter managers may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.

Miscellaneous

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

Obituaries

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

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:00, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi

dear writer my article is an encyclopedic article and everything turned right and has references it is very ridiculous to delete it please support me in this regard — Preceding unsigned comment added by Entergirls (talk • contribs) 07:21, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi. I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about. Regards ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 18:13, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

dear Authorized,

please help me. my article was removed for no reason. I did everything right. I even wrote the sources — Preceding unsigned comment added by Entergirls (talk • contribs) 15:34, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Please see above. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 18:13, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I guess most people don't need to reply to a sock-spammer, post-block...But, ~ Winged Blades^Godric 18:51, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric: don't take it personally. I just sometimes like to have these things here for posterity. ElAhrairah ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 11:02, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2018

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

Administrator changes

331dot • Cordless Larry • ClueBot NG

Gogo Dodo • Pb30 • Sebastiankessel • Seicer • SoLando

Guideline and policy news

• Administrators who have been desysopped due to inactivity are now required to have performed at least one (logged) administrative action in the past 5 years in order to qualify for a resysop without going through a new RfA.
• Editors who have been found to have engaged in sockpuppetry on at least two occasions after an initial indefinite block, for whatever reason, are now automatically considered banned by the community without the need to start a ban discussion.
• The notability guideline for organizations and companies has been substantially rewritten following the closure of this request for comment. Among the changes, the guideline more clearly defines the sourcing requirements needed for organizations and companies to be considered notable.
• The six-month autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) ended on 14 March 2018. The post-trial research report has been published. A request for comment is now underway to determine whether the restrictions from ACTRIAL should be implemented permanently.

Technical news

• There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee is considering a change to the discretionary sanctions procedures which would require an editor to appeal a sanction to the community at WP:AE or WP:AN prior to appealing directly to the Arbitration Committee at WP:ARCA.

Miscellaneous

• A discussion has closed which concluded that administrators are not required to enable email, though many editors suggested doing so as a matter of best practice.
• The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team has released the Interaction Timeline. This shows a chronologic history for two users on pages where they have both made edits, which may be helpful in identifying sockpuppetry and investigating editing disputes.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:23, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

11 years of editing, today.

Hey, Elahrairah. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Chris Troutman (talk) 22:16, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2018

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

Administrator changes

None

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

Guideline and policy news

• The ability to create articles directly in mainspace is now indefinitely restricted to autoconfirmed users.
• A proposal is being discussed which would create a new "event coordinator" right that would allow users to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit.

Technical news

• AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new equals_to_any function can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability to see which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access to Logstash.
• When blocking anonymous users, a cookie will be applied that reloads the block if the user changes their IP. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. This currently only occurs when hard-blocking accounts.
• The block notice shown on mobile will soon be more informative and point users to a help page on how to request an unblock, just as it currently does on desktop.
• There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.

Arbitration

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

Obituaries

• Lankiveil (Craig Franklin) passed away in mid-April. Lankiveil joined Wikipedia on 12 August 2004 and became an administrator on 31 August 2008. During his time with the Wikimedia community, Lankiveil served as an oversighter for the English Wikipedia and as president of Wikimedia Australia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2018

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

Administrator changes

None

Al Ameer son • AliveFreeHappy • Cenarium • Lupo • MichaelBillington

Guideline and policy news

• Following a successful request for comment, administrators are now able to add and remove editors to the "event coordinator" group. Users in the event coordinator group have the ability to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit. Users will no longer need to be in the "account creator" group if they are in the event coordinator group.
• Following an AN discussion, all pages with content related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, are now under indefinite general sanctions.

Technical news

• IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in June. This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
• The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team will build granular types of blocks in 2018 (e.g. a block from uploading or editing specific pages, categories, or namespaces, as opposed to a full-site block). Feedback on the concept may be left at the talk page.
• There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups.
• It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked.

Arbitration

• A recent technical issue with the Arbitration Committee's spam filter inadvertently caused all messages sent to the committee through Wikipedia (i.e. Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee) to be discarded. If you attempted to send an email to the Arbitration Committee via Wikipedia between May 16 and May 31, your message was not received and you are encouraged to resend it. Messages sent outside of these dates or directly to the Arbitration Committee email address were not affected by this issue.

Miscellaneous

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

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:59, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2018

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

Administrator changes

Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor

Gogo Dodo

Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD

Bureaucrat changes

Andrevan • EVula

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
• A request for comment closed with a consensus that the {{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.

Technical news

• Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.
• Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon () in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates.
• IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.

Miscellaneous

• Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:22, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Ways to improve Joseph Deweese Holston, Jr.

Hi, I'm Enwebb. Elahrairah, thanks for creating Joseph Deweese Holston, Jr.!

I've just tagged the page, using our page curation tools, as having some issues to fix. Some of your facts and paragraphs are insufficiently supported with citations. It is important to include a footnote after a fact with the reference that supports it. I hope you consider going back through and adding footnotes to the article.

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, you can leave a comment on my talk page. Or, for more editing help, talk to the volunteers at the Teahouse.

Enwebb (talk) 03:12, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2018

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

Administrator changes

Sro23

KaisaL • Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

• After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
• Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.

Technical news

• The WMF Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the second set of wireframes for the Special:Block redesign that will introduce partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:31, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Joseph Holston

Hi, I have just seen that you have previously "userfied" the article Joseph Holston. It now appears to have been edited further with an apparent conflict of interest. Could you please have a look at the page again and assess the situation? I do not know about the longer history of that article, which appears to have been lost during a move. Thank you very much in advance! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:40, 25 August 2018 (UTC)