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User talk:Stwalkerster/Archive January 2019

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Administrators' newsletter – January 2019

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

Guideline and policy news

  1. G14 (new): Disambiguation pages that disambiguate only zero or one existing pages are now covered under the new G14 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-disambig}}; the text is unchanged and candidates may be found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
  2. R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
  3. G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.

Technical news

  • Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
  1. At least 8 characters in length
  2. Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
  3. Different from their username
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.
  • Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
  • {{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
  • Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Hey

I don't understand how that was an attack page, but ok. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Laganrat (talk • contribs) 22:20, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi, just a little message to thank you for blocking that troll who was attacking another editor, i was typing a report at ANI but you were faster ! Thank you very much and, BTW, happy new year to you and yours. Wish you a great rest of your day. Take care.---Wikaviani (talk) (contribs) 14:30, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Sleeper Check?

Check for sleepers on User:2019szm. 7_qz (ゆっくりしていってね!) 16:07, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

You'll need to present a better case than just "do this". Who's the master? What accounts have they had previously that have been used as sleepers? stwalkerster (talk) 08:28, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

curious about my post

I was wondering if there was anything i could do to make the post you flagged more acceptable, to be perfectly honest I want a rather satirical page referencing a bogus rumor so if not its okay :P — Preceding unsigned comment added by LordTsume (talk • contribs) 22:39, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

If that's what you're aiming for, then Wikipedia is not the place for you. We are an encyclopedia, where we have serious articles about real subjects, supported by references to reliable sources such as newspapers - we're not a place for satire or rumour. stwalkerster (talk) 22:46, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

reversion of Dave Cahill

Please read the references linked by an article before reverting edits; the birth date and death date of Dave Cahill are both stated plainly in the primary article reference. A lack of sources overall is a different article problem, but right now the text of the article is in direct conflict with the source it uses, and as such, I'm reverting your edit.

Thank you for your understanding. Horst.Burkhardt (talk) 22:34, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Horst.Burkhardt - whoops, thanks for that! As a general point, I see a lot of edits where a birth or death date is added to an article without adding sources, especially by new or unregistered users - and they are probably about 33% correct. We need to be really careful when we write about living (or recently deceased) people, since what we write can have a real, lasting effect on the subject and their relatives - it's why we have our WP:BLP policy. In this case, since no additional reference was added, and the access date on the existing reference was not updated to account for it's change, I assumed it was yet another of those edits with no source. Combined with edits like this, it looked like the usual slam-dunk. Thanks for raising that one to me - I've spent a few mins hunting down another ref specifically for the death, and while it's also not great (neither are particularly reliable), and I've done some cleanup on that page too - including re-reverting that FBI comment (which I hope you don't mind). We really do need to find reliable sources for that article - in it's current state it has none, and that's really not good, but as you say, that's a different problem :) stwalkerster (talk) 22:55, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello again! I don't at all mind reverting the FBI comment; it was clearly unsourced and only a sentence fragment, possibly a bit of vandalism that slipped by. My bad for not catching it in the first place. I was just a little concerned that your revert dumped the poor guy straight back into the category for living people. I do note that the date of birth is possibly contentious - NFL.com says he was born in '42; other sites say '41. Which is accurate? Who knows. Hopefully someone with a passion for the topic can come in and help clear things up - I only got involved in the article because I was undoing some disruptive editing and saw a chance to be useful. Thanks for cleaning things up :) Horst.Burkhardt (talk) 23:04, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Checkuser's Barnstar
For your help in the account creation process's checkuser queue. I just joined the team this week, and I discovered that we have a pretty severe backlog in this rather obscure area of Wikipedia. Since dealing with these requests seems to be a rather thankless task with minimal positive feedback (everyone seems to be burned out!), I figure I leave you this token of thanks. Mz7 (talk) 00:27, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
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