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Administrators' newsletter – July 2018

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

Administrator changes

added Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor
readded Gogo Dodo
removed Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD

Bureaucrat changes

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

A beer on me!

For helping me at the Helpdesk. DBigXray 19:58, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Edit War

Stop starting edit wars — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.154.195.248 (talk) 17:02, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2018

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

Administrator changes

added Sro23
readded 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

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

Tsing Yi North Bridge

Was your attention drawn by my question at the helpdesk or merely accidental? Would you happen to know where I could find the answer to my question, because searching with

hastemplate:"Coord" "tsing yi" "bridge"

does find that Tsing Yi South Bridge also has the same problem. I'm figuring it may be zillions of articles have this problem. Sure would be nice to know how to search for them! :) Shenme (talk) 02:41, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

BTW: the other fix is to delete the infobox coordinates line and the Coord template usage, in order to let the Wikidata values only to supply the coordinates. Shenme (talk) 02:44, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes, it was your Helpdesk question that drew my attention. I don't know of any way to search for such articles; some articles have a template in the infobox calling for the Wikidata coordinates, but in others the Wikidata coordinates appear to pop up for reasons that are unclear to me. I fixed the article the way I did, rather than using your "other fix" mainly, because I have a distrust (based on some experiences) of Wikidata coordinates, and also because they lack the "region" parameter. I've also dealt with the south bridge article. Deor (talk) 06:29, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

The Great God Pan

I nominated The Great God Pan for GA; would you like to review it? MagicatthemovieS (talk) 00:06, 12 August 2018 (UTC)MagicatthemovieS

I see that Katolophyromai is already on this. I would be a poor choice in any event, since I've never done a GA review and am probably incompetent to do one. Deor (talk) 09:14, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Would you be interested in addressing some of the concerns Katolophyromai brought up on the talk page? I'm having difficulty doing so promptly as I have no access to a computer (I'm using my phone now) and will not have access to one for days...and it's very hard to do one of these reviews via phone. I would not have nominated the article if I had known I would be in this situation. MagicatthemovieS (talk) 17:56, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Unnecessary removal of edits

Why are you removing the changes made by me on SMCH? I am a passout from that college so I know better! Without even confirming you have removed all the hardwork! Wikimicky89 (talk) 14:23, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

@Wikimicky89: I was attracted to the article by the problem of multiple coordinates' displaying in the title position (because of the addition of a second infobox with a second {{coord}} coded for title display) and noticed that many additions had been made in the past couple of days. As I wrote in my edit summary, much of the added material—for example, in the "The college logo" and "SMC Students' Union" sections—was a direct copy from pages of the institution's Web site and therefore a copyright violation. A limited amount of uncontroversial information can be sourced to that primary source, but the exact wording of the source cannot be used. In general, Wikipedia prefers that reliable secondary sources be used for all information in its articles. Your personal knowledge is useless for Wikipedia's purposes because it is unverifiable. Deor (talk) 14:44, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
I can understand the direct copy issue you have for the edits. But the secondary sources you speak of are only the students and doctors from this college and the website which was launched recently. Because citations were asked so I added the website address as reference. We the passouts are the only reliable source as we know about the college in detail. If you can't verify the edits of the page you have no right to remove them! Wikimicky89 (talk) 18:54, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
You've got the responsibility backwards; verifiability is the responsibility of anyone who adds material to Wikipedia, not the responsibility of someone removing unverifiable material. Wikipedia does not care what you, the "passouts", know if the knowledge cannot be verified (in cited sources) by readers of the article. And Wikipedia cares little about what the institution says about itself. Although the Web site can be used to reference some uncontoversial information, the bedrock of an article should be what others say about it in published, reliable sources. Deor (talk) 20:47, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2018

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

Administrator changes

added None
removed Asterion • Crisco 1492 • KF • Kudpung • Liz • Randykitty • Spartaz
renamed Optimist on the run → Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

added Amorymeltzer • Mr. Stradivarius • MusikAnimal • MSGJ • TheDJ • Xaosflux

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.

Technical news

  • Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
  • Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title.
  • Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age.

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:23, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Gladstone's Library

Hi Deor - the reason I moved the reference to Gladstone's Library being formerly known as St Deinol's out of the first sentence was because I added a citation which does not include the St Deinol's info. I also thought it was useful to have a link to St D. Yours, Tacyarg (talk) 18:35, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

@Tacyarg: The reason I moved it back was that the parenthetical Welsh version translates "St. Deinol's Library", not "Gladstone's Library". The boldfacing of "St. Deinol's Library" was also useful, since that's the standard way of indicating that the article is the target of a redirect at that name. I don't think that a link to the St. Deinol article is particularly useful in this context, and I don't see any problem in your ref's not including the former name. Deor (talk) 21:48, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2018

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

Administrator changes

added Justlettersandnumbers • L235
removed Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter

Interface administrator changes

added Cyberpower678 • Deryck Chan • Oshwah • Pharos • Ragesoss • Ritchie333

Oversight changes

removed Guerillero • NativeForeigner • Snowolf • Xeno

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
  • The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
  • Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
  • The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
  • Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
  • Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:13, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2018

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
  • A user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
  • The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.

Arbitration

  • Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
  • The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-en@wikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:18, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

On Loggiato of the Uffizi edits

Thanks, I did need someone to help me tidy it up.Rococo1700 (talk) 15:37, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

You're welcome. Deor (talk) 18:05, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Dunning Mountain refimprove tag

Greeting, Deor. In July, 2017 you placed the refimprove tag on the article Dunning Mountain. Found this while working on a related article. Since no one else took action, I added cites from the National Map and the PA Geology map, then removed the tag. Thought I'd let you know in case you would like to check it out, haven't done a correction like this before. Thanks.Are1718 (talk) 04:50, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Good work, Are1718. It's nice to know that someone pays attention to those maintenance tags with which we so cavalierly deface articles. Deor (talk) 14:41, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Glad to helpAre1718 (talk) 04:17, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Deor. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

advice required

Thanks for monitoring my additions to Ramsey Campbell's page. I'm new to this and hadn't realised that I needed to source materials to that degree. Is it possible to redo the last entry I made on evening of 22nd Nov without having to reconstruct from memory? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Witbysea (talk • contribs) 06:20, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

@Witbysea: I assume that you're the IP editor 82.132.236.81 who made this edit. The material you added was indeed unsourced but, more important, was filled with subjective, peacocky language that would be more appropriate on a fan site than in an encyclopedia. You can see what you wrote by clicking on the link above, and you can easily restore the edit yourself (by clicking on "edit this page" at that diff and then saving); but if you do so, your edit will almost certainly be reverted again, by me or someone else. You may want to read WP:NPOV to get an idea of the tone in which Wikipedia articles should be written. Deor (talk) 17:27, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for advice. I've attended to the issues you identify and redone the edits, adding sources where I could, and eliminating editorial language. Apologies for previous. As I said, this is my first go at Wiki editing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Witbysea (talk • contribs) 07:42, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

What program can open an MRC file?

I downloaded this file, it is in mrc format? What program do I need to open it? I only have Word and Acrobat Is it microfiche, pdf or text?https://www.amdigital.co.uk/primary-sources/virginia-company-archives Thank YouOldperson (talk) 00:01, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

@Oldperson: I'm afraid that I don't know anything about file formats, computer programs, and such. (I'm an old person, too.) I merely moved your question from the wrong place to the right place (i.e., Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing). Deor (talk) 06:15, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2018

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

Administrator changes

readded Al Ameer son • Randykitty • Spartaz
removed Boson • Daniel J. Leivick • Efe • Esanchez7587 • Fred Bauder • Garzo • Martijn Hoekstra • Orangemike

Interface administrator changes

removedDeryck Chan

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, the Mediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
  • A request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
  • A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
  • A proposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page to interface administrators in order to mitigate the impact of compromised accounts.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
  • Wikipedia policy requires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.

Obituaries

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:36, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Metamorphoses

I wouldn't call it "incoherent", but it's typical student writing, yes, of someone who is not an expert in writing on literature. Pity, because there are some useful sources, but the difference between argumentative and encyclopedic writing has not yet been explained to the editor. Drmies (talk) 18:17, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, some of it was clearly incoherent—sentence fragments, quotations whose sources were not made clear in the text, non sequiturs, etc. I guess that I could have written a clearer edit summary, but frankly there was so much wrong with the addition that I had trouble figuring out where to start. (I try to avoid brief pejorative summaries like "poor addition" or "rambling nonsense".) I'd been thinking since yesterday of how the material might be cleaned up and some of it integrated into the article, but today I—perhaps lazily—concluded that a simple reversion was the way to go (in part because I wasn't impressed with the sources cited). Deor (talk) 18:38, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

First Edit!

Happy First Edit Day

Happy First Edit Day, Deor, from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! A 10 fireplane Imform me 00:26, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
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