User talk:Slon02

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Requests for adminship and bureaucratship update

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WikiCup 2015 is just around the corner...

Hello everyone, and may we wish you all a happy holiday season. As you will probably already know, the 2015 WikiCup begins in the new year; there is still time to sign up. We have a few important announcements concerning the future of the WikiCup.

• We would like to announce that Josh (J Milburn) and Ed (The ed17), who have been WikiCup judges since 2009 and 2010 respectively, are stepping down. This decision has been made for a number of reasons, but the main one is time. Both Josh and Ed have found that, over the previous year, they have been unable to devote the time necessary to the WikiCup, and it is not likely that they will be able to do this in the near future. Furthermore, new people at the helm can only help to invigorate the WikiCup and keep it dynamic. Josh and Ed will still be around, and will likely be participating in the Cup this following year as competitors, which is where both started out.
• In a similar vein, we hope you will all join us in welcoming Jason (Sturmvogel 66) and Christine (Figureskatingfan), who are joining Brian (Miyagawa) to form the 2015 WikiCup judging team. Jason is a WikiCup veteran, having won in 2010 and finishing in fifth this year. Christine has participated in two WikiCups, reaching the semi-finals in both, and is responsible for the GA Cup, which she now co-runs.
• The discussions/polls concerning the next competition's rules will be closed soon, and rules changes will be made clear on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring and talk pages. While it may be impossible to please everyone, the judges will make every effort to ensure that the new rules are both fair and in the best interests of the competition, which is, first and foremost, about improving Wikipedia.

If you have any questions or concerns, the judges can be reached on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, on their talk pages, or by email. We hope you will all join us in trying to make the 2015 WikiCup the most productive and enjoyable yet. You are receiving this message because you are listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk), The ed17 (talk), Miyagawa (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Figureskatingfan (talk) 18:54, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

GOCE coordinator elections

Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors Candidate nominations for Guild coordinators to serve from January 1 to June 30, 2015, are currently underway. The nomination period will close at 23:59 on December 15 (UTC), after which voting will commence until 23:59 on December 31, 2014. Self-nominations are welcomed. Please consider getting involved; it's your Guild and it won't coordinate itself, so if you'd like to help coordinate Guild activities we'd love to hear from you. Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, and Miniapolis. Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:17, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

December 2014 GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2014 Newsletter Drive: Thanks to everyone who participated in November's Backlog Elimination Drive. Of the 43 people who signed up for this drive, 26 copy edited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Progress report: The November Drive removed 26 requests from the Requests page and 509 articles from the {{copy edit}} backlog. We copy edited 83 articles tagged in the target months; July, August, and September 2013. Together with tag removals from articles unsuitable for copy editing, we eliminated July 2013 from the backlog and reduced August and September's tags to 61 and 70 respectively. As of 01:01, 1 December 2014 (UTC), the backlog stood at 1,974 articles, dipping below 2,000 for the first time in the Guild's history (see graph at right). Well done everyone! Blitz: The December Blitz will run from December 14–20 and will focus on articles related to Religion, in recognition of this month's religious holidays in much of the English-speaking world. Awards will be given out to everyone who copy edits at least one of the target articles. Sign up here! Election time again: The election of coordinators to serve from 1 January to 30 June 2015 is now underway. Candidates can nominate themselves or others from December 01, 00:01 (UTC), until December 15, 23:59. The voting period will run from December 16, 00:01 (UTC), until December 31, 23:59. You can read about coordinators' duties here. Please consider getting involved and remember to cast you vote—it's your Guild and it doesn't organize itself! Thank you all once again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve anything without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, and Miniapolis. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:15, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 16

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Islam in Ukraine, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Crimean Tatar. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Happy adminship birthday!

Wishing Slon02 a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 15:08, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Madhusudan Mandir

There was no indication in the article that it was a temple I thought it might be the name of a small town, but I could not tell from the text. With shame I must confess that I just found out that Mandir means temple. Thank you for fixing it, and happy hollidays.--Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 07:47, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

GOCE holiday 2014 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors Late December 2014 Newsletter Blitz: Thanks to everyone who participated in the December Blitz. Of the 14 editors who signed up for the blitz, 11 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. January drive: The January backlog-reduction drive is just around the corner; sign up here! Election time again: The election of coordinators to serve from January 1 to June 30, 2015 is now underway. The voting period runs from December 16, 00:01 (UTC), until December 31, 23:59. Please cast your vote—it's your Guild, and it doesn't run itself! Happy holidays from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978 and Miniapolis. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 launch newsletter

Round one of the 2015 WikiCup has begun! So far we've had around 80 signups, which close on February 5. If you have not already signed up and want to do so, then you can add your name here. There have been changes to to several of the points scores for various categories, and the addition of Peer Reviews for the first time. These will work in the same manner as Good Article Reviews, and all of the changes are summarised here.

Remember that only the top 64 scoring competitors will make it through to the second round, and one of the new changes this year is that all scores must be claimed within two weeks of an article's promotion or appearance, so don't forget to add them to your submissions pages! If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, and you hope to get it promoted before the end of the round, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. However, please remember to continue to offer reviews at GAN, FAC and all the other pages that require them to prevent any backlogs which could otherwise be caused by the Cup. As ever, questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs), Miyagawa (talk · contribs) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs)
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

GOCE 2014 report

Guild of Copy Editors 2014 Annual Report Our 2014 Annual Report is now ready for review. Highlights: Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page; Review the election results; Membership news; Changes around the Guild's pages; Plans for 2015. – Your project coordinators: Jonesey95, Miniapolis and Baffle gab1978. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:54, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

December 2014 Wikification awards.

		The Working Wikifier's Barnstar
		For scoring 6th place on the leaderboard during the December 2014 Wikification drive, you are hereby awarded the Working Wikifier's Barnstar. Congratulations!

Cheers! Fellow editors, we are like keys in a cod... Oh, don't say that doesn't make sense! (talk) 19:47, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Pennsylvania photo help?

Since you're in PA, would you be interested in helping on a comprehensive statewide photo project? I've begun an attempt to get at least one representative photo for every municipality statewide, and any help you can give would be appreciated. User:Nyttend/Pennsylvania is the tracking page for everything, with a separate section for each county that lists and maps all its unillustrated municipalities. If you're interested in helping, it won't take a lot of work; many of the photos I've added are simple things like local landmarks, local government buildings, churches, interesting scenery, or (in boroughs and villages) street scenes. Nyttend (talk) 21:07, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

February 2015 GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors February 2015 Newsletter Drive: Thanks to everyone who participated in January's Backlog Elimination Drive. Of the 38 people who signed up for this drive, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Progress report: We were able to remove August 2013 from the general copyediting backlog and November 2014 from the request-page backlog. Many thanks, everyone! Blitz: The February Blitz will run from February 15–21 and again focuses on the requests page. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one request article. Sign up here! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Jonesey95, Biblioworm and Philg88. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

American Sharia

I'm curious why you reverted my edit. 28bytes (talk) 05:29, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

GOCE March newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2015 Newsletter Blitz: Thanks to everyone who participated in the February Blitz. Of the 21 people who signed up, eight copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Progress report: The blitz removed 16 articles from the requests list, and we're almost done with December 2014. Many thanks, everyone! Drive: The month-long March drive begins in about a week. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the backlog. Sign up here! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Jonesey95, Biblioworm and Philg88. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:41, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 March newsletter

One of several of Godot13's quality submissions during round 1

That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed and we're into round 2. 64 competitors made it into this round, and are now broken into eight groups of eight. The top two of each group will go through to round 3, and then the top scoring 16 "wildcards" across all groups. Round 1 saw some interesting work on some very important articles, with the round leader Freikorp (submissions) owing most of his 622 points scored to a Featured Article on the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within which qualified for a times-two multiplier. This is a higher score than in previous years, as Godot13 (submissions) had 500 points in 2014 at the end of round 1, and our very own judge, Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) led round 1 with 601 points in 2013.

In addition to Freikorp's work, some other important articles and pictures were improved during round one, here's a snapshot of a few of them:

• Cwmhiraeth (submissions) took Bumblebee, a level-4 vital article, to Good Article;
• AHeneen (submissions) worked-up the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 article, also to Good Article status;
• Rodw (submissions) developed an extremely timely article to Good Article, taking Magna Carta there some 800 years after it was first sealed;
• And last but not least, Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points) worked up a number of Featured Pictures during round 1, including the 1948 one Deutsche Mark (pictured right), receiving the maximum bonus due to the number of Wikis that the related article appears in.

You may also wish to know that The Core Contest is running through the month of March. Head there for further details - they even have actual prizes!

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. 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. Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), Miyagawa (talk · contribs · email) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email)

Thanks for your assistance! Miyagawa (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiCup.

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was send by Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:55, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Happy Easter!

File:Chocolate-Easter-Bunny.jpg

All the best! "Carry me down, carry me down; carry me down into the wiki!" (talk) 04:35, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

April 2015 GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors April 2015 Newsletter March drive: Thanks to everyone who participated in last month's backlog-reduction drive. Of the 38 people who signed up, 18 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. April blitz: The one-week April blitz, again targeting our long requests list, will run from April 19–25. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the requests page. Sign up here! May drive: The month-long May backlog-reduction drive, with extra credit for articles tagged in December 2013, January and February 2014 and all request articles, begins soon. Sign up now! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Jonesey95, Biblioworm and Philg88. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 May newsletter

C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) is a long-period comet discovered on 17 August 2014 by Terry Lovejoy; and is one of several Featured Pictures worked up by The Herald (submissions) during the second round.

The second round one has all wrapped up, and round three has now begun! Congratulations to the 34 contestants who have made it through, but well done and thank you to all contestants who took part in our second round. Leading the way overall was Cas Liber (submissions) in Group B with a total of 777 points for a variety of contributions including Good Articles on Corona Borealis and Microscopium - both of which received the maximum bonus.

Special credit must be given to a number of high importance articles improved during the second round.

• Coemgenus (submissions) was one of several users who worked on improving Ulysses S. Grant. Remember, you do not need to work on an article on your own - as long as each person has completed significant work on the article during 2015, multiple competitors can claim the same article.
• Cwmhiraeth (submissions) took Dragonfly to Good Article for a 3x bonus - and if that wasn't enough, they also took Damselfly there as well for a 2x bonus.
• LeftAire (submissions) worked up Alexander Hamilton to Good Article for the maximum bonus. Hamilton was one of the founding fathers of the United States and is a level 4 vital article.

The points varied across groups, with the lowest score required to gain automatic qualification was 68 in Group A - meanwhile the second place score in Group H was 404, which would have been high enough to win all but one of the other Groups! As well as the top two of each group automatically going through to the third round, a minimum score of 55 was required for a wildcard competitor to go through. We had a three-way tie at 55 points and all three have qualified for the next round, in the spirit of fairness. The third round ends on June 28, with the top two in each group progressing automatically while the remaining 16 highest scorers across all four groups go through as wildcards. Good luck to all competitors for the third round! Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), Miyagawa (talk · contribs · email) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) 16:44, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

GOCE June 2015 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2015 News May drive: Thanks to everyone who participated in last month's backlog-reduction drive. Of the 38 people who signed up, 29 copyedited at least one article, and we got within 50 articles of our all-time low in the backlog. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Coordinator elections: Nominations are open through June 15 for GOCE coordinators, with voting from June 16–30. Self-nominations are welcome and encouraged. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Jonesey95, Biblioworm and Philg88. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

GOCE August 2015 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors August 2015 Newsletter July drive: Thanks to everyone who participated in last month's backlog-reduction drive. Of the 24 people who signed up, 17 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. August blitz: The one-week April blitz, targeting biographical articles that have been tagged for copy editing for over a year, will run from August 16–22. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the article list on the blitz page. Sign up here! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, KieranTribe, Miniapolis, and Pax85. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

sent by Jonesey95 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:43, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 September newsletter

The finals for the 2015 Wikicup has now begun! Congrats to the 8 contestants who have survived to the finals, and well done and thanks to everyone who took part in rounds 3 and 4.

In round 3, we had a three-way tie for qualification among the wildcard contestants, so we had 34 competitors. The leader was by far Casliber (submissions) in Group B, who earned 1496 points. Although 913 of these points were bonus points, he submitted 15 articles in the DYK category. Second place overall was Coemgenus (submissions) at 864 points, who although submitted just 2 FAs for 400 points, earned double that amount for those articles in bonus points. Everyone who moved forward to Round 4 earned at least 100 points.

The scores required to move onto the semifinals were impressive; the lowest scorer to move onto the finals was 407, making this year's Wikicup as competitive as it's always been. Our finalists, ordered by round 4 score, are:

1. Cas Liber (submissions), who is competing in his sixth consecutive Wikicup final, again finished the round in first place, with an impressive 1666 points in Pool B. Casliber writes about the natural sciences, including ornithology, botany and astronomy. A large bulk of his points this round were bonus points.
2. Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points), second place both in Pool B and overall, earned the bulk of his points with FPs, mostly depicting currency.
3. Cwmhiraeth (submissions), first in Pool A, came in third. His specialty is natural science articles; in Round 4, he mostly submitted articles about insects and botany. Five out of the six of the GAs he submitted were level-4 vital articles.
4. Harrias (submissions), second in Pool A, took fourth overall. He tends to focus on articles about cricket and military history, specifically the 1640s First English Civil War.
5. West Virginian (submissions), from Pool A, was our highest-scoring wildcard. West Virginia tends to focus on articles about the history of (what for it!) the U.S. state of West Virginia.
6. Rodw (submissions), from Pool A, likes to work on articles about British geography and places. Most of his points this round were earned from two impressive accomplishments: a GT about Scheduled monuments in Somerset and a FT about English Heritage properties in Somerset.
7. Rationalobserver (submissions), from Pool B, came in seventh overall. RO earned the majority of her points from GARs and PRs, many of which were earned in the final hours of the round.
8. Calvin999 (submissions), also from Pool B, who was competing with RO for the final two spots in the final hours, takes the race for most GARs and PRs—48.

The intense competition between RO and Calvin999 will continue into the finals. They're both eligible for the Newcomers Trophy, given for the first time in the Wikicup; whoever makes the most points will win it.

Good luck to the finalists; the judges are sure that the competition will be fierce!

Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs), Miyagawa (talk · contribs) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs) 11:48, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Denali

Are we finding consensus on the slopes of Mt. McKinley, or is this just glacial progress? Please have a look... Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 15:40, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

I think that the discussion has made very substantial progress toward a consensus. I want to give it just a little more time to see if it changes, but I'd be open to lifting protection on the article early if it continues.--Slon02 (talk) 19:05, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree, it probably still needs to simmer down. But keep an eye out! I'm pleased the most fractious factions seem less factitious. Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 19:09, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for reviewing

Hi Slon02, thank you for reviewing copy-edits during the GOCE's September drive; it's appreciated. :-) Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 22:29, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

October 2015 GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors October 2015 Newsletter September drive: Thanks to everyone who participated in last month's backlog-reduction drive. Of the 25 editors who signed up, 18 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. October blitz: The one-week October blitz, targeting requests, has just concluded. Of the nine editors who signed up, seven copyedited at least one request; check your talk page for your barnstar! The month-long November drive, focusing on our oldest backlog articles (June, July, and August 2014) and the October requests, is just around the corner. Hope to see you there! Thanks again for your support; together, we can improve the encyclopedia! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, KieranTribe, Miniapolis and Pax85. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:54, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015: The results

WikiCup 2015 is now in the books! Congrats to our finalists and winners, and to everyone who took part in this year's competition.

This year's results were an exact replica of last year's competition. For the second year in a row, the 2015 WikiCup champion is Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points). All of his points were earned for an impressive 253 featured pictures and their associated bonus points (5060 and 1695, respectively). His entries constituted scans of currency from all over the world and scans of medallions awarded to participants of the U.S. Space program. Cwmhiraeth (submissions) came in second place; she earned by far the most bonus points (4082), for 4 featured articles, 15 good articles, and 147 DYKs, mostly about in her field of expertise, natural science. Cas Liber (submissions), a finalist every year since 2010, came in third, with 2379 points.

Our newcomer award, presented to the best-performing new competitor in the WikiCup, goes to Rationalobserver (submissions). Everyone should be very proud of the work they accomplished. We will announce our other award winners soon.

A full list of our award winners are:

• Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points) wins the prize for first place and the FP prize for 330 featured pictures in the final round.
• Cwmhiraeth (submissions) wins the prize for second place and the DYK prize for 160 did you knows in the final round (310 in all rounds).
• Cas Liber (submissions) wins the prize for third place and the FA prize for 26 featured articles in all rounds.
• West Virginian (submissions) wins the prize for fourth place
• Calvin999 (submissions) wins a final 8 prize.
• Rationalobserver (submissions) wins a final 8 prize.
• Harrias (submissions) wins a final 8 prize and the FL prize for 11 featured lists.
• Rodw (submissions) wins the most prizes: a final 8 prize, the GA prize for 41 good articles, and the topic prize for a 13-article good topic and an 8-article featured topic, both in round 3.
• ThaddeusB (submissions) wins the news prize for the most news articles in round 3.

We warmly invite all of you to sign up for next year's competition. Discussions and polls concerning potential rules changes are also open, and all are welcome to participate. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2016 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.

Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · logs), Miyagawa (talk · contribs · logs) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · logs) 18:39, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup Award

Awarded for participating in the 2015 WikiCup. Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs), Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs) and Miyagawa (talk · contribs) 19:34, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability 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, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:12, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 is just around the corner...

Hello everyone, and we would like to wish you all a happy holiday season. As you will probably already know, the 2016 WikiCup begins in the new year; there is still time to sign up. There are some changes we'd like to announce before the competition begins.

After two years of serving as WikiCup judge, User:Miyagawa has stepped down as judge. He deserves great thanks and recognition for his dedication and hard work, and for providing necessary transition for a new group of judges in last year's Cup. Joining Christine (User:Figureskatingfan) and Jason (User:Sturmvogel 66) is Andrew (User:Godot13), a very successful WikiCup competitor and expert in Featured Pictures; he won the two previous competitions. This is a strong judging team, and we anticipate lots of enjoyment and good work coming from our 2016 competitors.

We would also like to announce one change in how this year's WikiCup will be run. In the spirit of sportsmanship, Godot13 and Cwmhiraeth have chosen to limit their participation. See here for the announcement and a complete explanation of why. They and the judges feel that it will make for a more exciting, enjoyable, and productive competition.

The discussions/polls concerning the next competition's rules will be closed soon, and rules changes will be made clear on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring and talk pages. The judges are committed to not repeating the confusion that occurred last year and to ensuring that the new rules are both fair and in the best interests of the competition, which is, first and foremost, about improving Wikipedia.

If you have any questions or concerns, the judges can be reached on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, on their talk pages, or by email. We hope you will all join us in trying to make the 2015 WikiCup the most productive and enjoyable yet. You are receiving this message because you are listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Figureskatingfan (talk), and Godot13 (talk).--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:47, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors 2015 End of Year Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2015 End of Year Report Our 2015 End of Year Report is now ready for review. Highlights: Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page; New record lows in the article backlog and on the Requests page; Coordinator election results; Membership news; Changes around the Guild's pages; Plans for 2016. – Your project coordinators: Jonesey95, Miniapolis and Baffle gab1978. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by Jonesey95 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:41, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016: Game On!

We are about to enter the second week of the 2016 WikiCup. The most recent player to sign up brings the current total to 101 contestants. Signups close on 5 February. If you’re interested, you can join this year's WikiCup here.

We are aware that in some areas the scoring bot’s numbers are a little bit off (i.e., overly generous) and are working to have that corrected as soon as possible.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:03, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016: Game On!

We are about to enter the second week of the 2016 WikiCup. The most recent player to sign up brings the current total to 101 contestants. Signups close on 5 February. If you’re interested, you can join this year's WikiCup here.

We are aware that in some areas the scoring bot’s numbers are a little bit off (i.e., overly generous) and are working to have that corrected as soon as possible.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:08, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 March newsletter

One of Adam Cuerden’s several quality restorations during round 1

That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed and we're into round 2. Forty-seven competitors move into this round (a bit shy of the expected 64), and we are roughly broken into eight groups of six. The top two of each group will go through to round 3, and then the top scoring 16 "wildcards" across all groups.

Twenty-two Good Articles were submitted, including three by Cyclonebiskit (submissions), and two each by MPJ-DK (submissions), Hurricanehink (submissions), 12george1 (submissions), and Cas Liber (submissions). Twenty-one Featured Pictures were claimed, including 17 by Adam Cuerden (submissions) (the Round 1 high scorer). Thirty-one contestants saw their DYKs appear on the main page, with a commanding lead (28) by Cwmhiraeth (submissions). Twenty-nine participants conducted GA reviews with J Milburn (submissions) completing nine.

If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. 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 yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Thanks to everyone for participating, and good luck to those moving into round 2. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:39, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 March newsletter (update)

Along with getting the year wrong in the newsletter that went out earlier this week, we did not mention (as the bot did not report) that Cas Liber (submissions) claimed the first Featured Article Persoonia terminalis of the 2016 Wikicup. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email).--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:05, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors April 2016 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors April 2016 Newsletter March drive: Thanks to everyone who participated in last month's backlog-reduction drive. Of the 28 people who signed up, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. April blitz: The one-week April blitz, again targeting our long requests list, will run from April 17–23. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the requests page. Sign up here! May drive: The month-long May backlog-reduction drive, with extra credit for articles tagged in March, April, and May 2015, and all request articles, begins May 1. Sign up now! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Miniapolis, and Baffle gab1978. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:47, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 May newsletter

FP of Christ Church Cathedral, Falkland Islands by Godot13

Round 2 is over and 35 competitors have moved on to Round 3.

Round 2 saw three FAs (two by Cas Liber (submissions) and one by Montanabw (submissions)), four Featured Lists (with three by Calvin999 (submissions)), and 53 Good Articles (six by Worm That Turned (submissions) and five each by Hurricanehink (submissions), Cwmhiraeth (submissions), and MPJ-DK (submissions)). Eleven Featured Pictures were promoted (six by Adam Cuerden (submissions) and five by Godot13 (submissions)). One Featured Portal, Featured Topic and Good Topic were also promoted. The DYK base point total was 1,135. Cwmhiraeth (submissions) scored 265 base points, while The C of E (submissions) and MPJ-DK (submissions) each scored 150 base points. Eleven ITN were promoted and 131 Good Article Reviews were conducted with MPJ-DK (submissions) completing a staggering 61 reviews. Two contestants, Cwmhiraeth (submissions) and Cas Liber (submissions), broke the 700 point mark for Round 2.

If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. 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 yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Thanks to everyone for participating, and good luck to those moving into round 2. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) -- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:59, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

June 2016 Guild of Copy Editors Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2016 News Hello everyone, welcome to the June 2016 GOCE newsletter. It's been a few months since we sent one out; we hope y'all haven't forgotten about the Guild! Your coordinators have been busy behind the scenes as usual, though real life has a habit of reducing our personal wiki-time. The May backlog reduction drive, the usual coordinating tasks and preparations for the June election are keeping us on our toes! May drive: Thanks to everyone who participated in last month's record-setting backlog reduction drive. Of the 29 people who signed up, 16 copyedited at least one article, 197 copyedits were recorded on the drive page, and the copyedit backlog fell below 1,500 for the first time! Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. June Blitz: this one-week copy-editing blitz will occur from 12 June through 18 June; the themes will be video games and Asian geography. Coordinator elections: It's election time again; how quickly they seem to roll around! Nominations for the next tranche of Guild coordinators, who will serve a six-month term that begins at 00:01 UTC on 1 July and ends at 23:59 UTC on 31 December, opens at 00:01 UTC on 1 June and closes at 23:59 UTC on 15 June. Voting takes place between 00:01 UTC on 16 June and 23:59 UTC on 30 June. If you'd like to assist behind the scenes, please consider stepping forward; self-nominations are welcomed and encouraged. All Wikipedia editors in good standing are eligible; remember it's your Guild, and it doesn't run itself! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Miniapolis and Baffle gab1978. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:01, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

June blitz

		The Modest Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Slon02 for copy edits totaling over 2,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE June 2016 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Miniapolis 13:49, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors July 2016 News

Guild of Copy Editors July 2016 News Hello everyone, and welcome to the July 2016 GOCE newsletter. June Blitz: this one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 12 through 18 June; the themes were video games and Asian geography. Of the 18 editors who signed up, 11 removed 47 articles from the backlog. Barnstars and rollover totals are located here. Thanks to all editors who took part. Coordinator elections: The second tranche of Guild coordinators for 2016, who will serve a six-month term until 23:59 UTC on 31 December, have been elected. Jonesey95 remains as your drama-free Lead Coordinator, and Corinne and Tdslk are your new assistant coordinators. For her long service to the Guild, Miniapolis has been enrolled in the GOCE Hall of Fame. Thanks to everyone who voted in the election; our next scheduled one occurs in December 2016. All Wikipedia editors in good standing are eligible; self-nominations are welcome and encouraged. July Drive: Our month-long July Copy Editing Backlog Elimination Drive is now underway. Our aim is to remove articles tagged for copy-edit in April, May and June 2015, and to complete all requests on the GOCE Requests page from June 2016. The drive ends at 23:59 on 31 July 2016 (UTC). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Corinne and Tdlsk. >>> Sign up for the July Drive! <<<

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:54, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors September 2016 News

Guild of Copy Editors September 2016 News Hello everyone, and welcome to the September 2016 GOCE newsletter. >>> Sign up for the September Drive, already in progress! <<< July Drive: The July drive was a roaring success. We set out to remove April, May, and June 2015 from our backlog (our 149 oldest articles), and by 23 July, we were done with those months. We added July 2015 (66 articles) and copy-edited 37 of those. We also handled all of the remaining Requests from June 2016. Well done! Overall, we recorded copy edits to 240 articles by 20 editors, reducing our total backlog to 13 months and 1,656 articles, the second-lowest month-end total ever. August Blitz: this one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 21 through 27 August; the theme was sports-related articles in honor of the 2016 Summer Olympics. Of the eight editors who signed up, five editors removed 11 articles from the backlog. A quiet blitz – everyone must be on vacation. Barnstars and rollover totals are located here. Thanks to all editors who took part. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Corinne and Tdlsk. >>> Sign up for the September Drive! <<<

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:36, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection

Hello, Slon02. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.

Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.

In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:

• Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
• A bot will post a notification at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard of each use. MusikBot currently does this by updating a report, which is transcluded onto the noticeboard.

Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you.
This message was sent to the administrators' mass message list. To opt-out of future messages, please remove yourself from the list. 17:49, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Asian 10,000 Challenge invite

Hi. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Asia/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge and Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like South East Asia, Japan/China or India etc, much like Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. At some stage we hope to run some contests to benefit Asian content, a destubathon perhaps, aimed at reducing the stub count would be a good place to start, based on the current Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon which has produced near 200 articles in just three days. If you would like to see this happening for Asia, and see potential in this attracting more interest and editors for the country/countries you work on please sign up and being contributing to the challenge! This is a way we can target every country of Asia, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant! Thank you. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:59, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 November newsletter: Final results

The final round of the 2016 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2016 WikiCup top three finalists:

• First Place - Cas Liber (submissions)
• Second Place - MPJ-DK (submissions)
• Third Place - Adam Cuerden (submissions)

In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:

• Featured Article – Cas Liber (actually a three-way tie with themselves for two FAs in each of R2, R3, and R5).
• Good Article – MPJ-DK had 14 GAs promoted in R3.
• Featured List – Calvin999 (submissions) produced 2 FLs in R2
• Featured Pictures – Adam Cuerden restored 18 images to FP status in R4.
• Featured Portal – SSTflyer (submissions) produced the only FPO of the Cup in R2.
• Featured Topic – Cyclonebiskit (submissions) and Calvin were each responsible for one FT in R3 and R2, respectively.
• Good Topic – MPJ-DK created a GT with 9 GAs in R5.
• Did You Know – MPJ-DK put 53 DYKs on the main page in R4.
• In The News – Dharmadhyaksha (submissions) and Muboshgu (submissions), each with 5 ITN, both in R4.
• Good Article Review – MPJ-DK completed 61 GARs in R2.

Over the course of the 2016 WikiCup the following content was added to Wikipedia (only reporting on fixed value categories): 17 Featured Articles, 183 Good Articles, 8 Featured Lists, 87 Featured Pictures, 40 In The News, and 321 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:52, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2017 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. 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 · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email)

WikiProject Good Articles's 2016-2017 GA Cup

WikiProject Good Articles's 2016-2017 GA Cup Greetings, all! We would like to announce the start of the 4th GA Cup, a competition that seeks to encourage the reviewing of Good article nominations! Thus far, there have been three GA Cups, which were successful in reaching our goals of significantly reducing the traditionally long queue at GAN, so we're doing it again. Currently, there are over 400 nominations listed. We hope that we can again make an impact this time. The 4th GA Cup will begin on November 1, 2016. Four rounds are currently scheduled (which will bring the competition to a close on February 28, 2017), but this may change based on participant numbers. We may take a break in December for the holidays, depending on the results of a poll of our participants taken shortly after the competition begins. The sign-up and submissions process will remain the same, as will the scoring. Sign-ups for the upcoming competition are currently open and will close on November 14, 2016. Everyone is welcome to join; new and old editors, so sign-up now! If you have any questions, take a look at the FAQ page and/or contact one of the judges. Cheers from 3family6, Figureskatingfan, Jaguar, MrWooHoo, and Zwerg Nase. We apologize for the delay in sending out this message until after the competition has started. Thank you to Krishna Chaitanya Velaga for aiding in getting this message out. To subscribe or unsubscribe to future GA Cup newsletters, please add or remove your name to our mailing list. If you are a participant, you will be on the mailing list no matter what as this is the easiest way to communicate between all participants.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:40, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Europe 10,000 Challenge invite

Hi. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Europe/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries, Iberian Peninsula, Romania, Slovenia etc, much like Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. If you would like to see masses of articles being improved for Europe and your specialist country like Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon, sign up today and once the challenge starts a contest can be organized. This is a way we can target every country of Europe, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant and also sign under any country sub challenge on the page that you might contribute to! Thank you. --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:09, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/The 50,000 Challenge

You are invited to participate in the 50,000 Challenge, aiming for 50,000 article improvements and creations for articles relating to the United States. This effort began on November 1, 2016 and to reach our goal, we will need editors like you to participate, expand, and create. See more here!

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:38, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins

Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:32, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

A new user right for New Page Patrollers

Hi Slon02.

A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.

It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:47, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Slon02. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

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 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Slon02. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

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 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2016 News

Guild of Copy Editors December 2016 News Hello everyone, and welcome to the December 2016 GOCE newsletter. We had an October newsletter all set to go, but it looks like we never pushed the button to deliver it, so this one contains a few months of updates. We have been busy and successful! >>> Sign up for the December Blitz! <<< Coordinator elections for the first half of 2017: Nominations are open for election of Coordinators for the first half of 2017. Please visit the election page to nominate yourself or another editor, and then return after December 15 to vote. Thanks for participating! September Drive: The September drive was fruitful. We set out to remove July through October 2015 from our backlog (an ambitious 269 articles), and by the end of the month, we had cut that pile of oldest articles to just 83. We reduced our overall backlog by 97 articles, even with new copyedit tags being added to articles every day. We also handled 75% of the remaining Requests from August 2016. Overall, 19 editors recorded copy edits to 233 articles (over 378,000 words). October Blitz: this one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 16 through 22 October; the theme was Requests, since the backlog was getting a bit long. Of the 16 editors who signed up, 10 editors completed 29 requests. Barnstars and rollover totals are located here. Thanks to all editors who took part. November Drive: The November drive was a record-breaker! We set out to remove September through December 2015 from our backlog (239 articles), and by the end of the month, we had cut that pile of old articles to just 66, eliminating the two oldest months! We reduced our overall backlog by 523 articles, to a new record low of 1,414 articles, even with new tags being added to articles every day, which means we removed copy-editing tags from over 800 articles. We also handled all of the remaining Requests from October 2016. Officially, 14 editors recorded copy edits to 200 articles (over 312,000 words), but over 600 articles, usually quick fixes and short articles, were not recorded on the drive page. Housekeeping note: we do not send a newsletter before every drive or blitz. To have a better chance of knowing when the next event will start, add the GOCE's message box to your Watchlist. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Corinne and Tdslk. >>> Sign up for the December Blitz! <<<

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup December newsletter: WikiCup 2017

On 1 January 2017, WikiCup 2017 (the 10th Annual WikiCup) will begin. This year we are trying something a little different – monetary prizes.

For the WC2017 the prizes will be as follows (amounts are based in US$ and will be awarded in the form of an online Amazon gift certificate):

• First place – $200
• Second & Third place – $50 each
• Category prizes – $25 per category (which will be limited to FA, FL, FP, GA, and DYK for 2017). Winning a category prize does not require making it to the final round.

Note: Monetary prizes are a one-year experiment for 2017 and may or may not be continued in the future. In order to be eligible to receive any of the prizes above, the competing Wikipedia account must have a valid/active email address.

After two years as a WikiCup judge, Figureskatingfan is stepping down. We thank her for her contributions as a WikiCup judge. We are pleased to announce that our newest judge is two-time WikiCup champion Cwmhiraeth.

The judges for the 2017 WikiCup are Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email).

Signups are open now and will remain open until 5 February 2017. You can sign up here.

If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:02, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary

Wishing Slon02 a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! CAPTAIN RAJU (✉) 10:27, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter - February 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes

NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67

Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13

Guideline and policy news

• A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
• Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.

Technical news

• When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
• Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
• The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.

Obituaries

• JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.

---

Discuss this newsletter • Subscribe • Archive

13:37, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors February 2017 News

Guild of Copy Editors February 2017 News Hello everyone, and welcome to the February 2017 GOCE newsletter. The Guild has been busy since the last time your coordinators sent out a newsletter! >>> Sign up for the March Drive! <<< December blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 11 through 17 December; the themes were Requests and eliminating the November 2015 backlog. Of the 14 editors who signed up, nine editors completed 29 articles. Barnstars and rollover totals are located here. Thanks to all who took part. January drive: The January drive was a great success. We set out to remove December 2015 and January and February 2016 from our backlog (195 articles), and by 22 January we had cleared those and had to add a third month (March 2016). At the end of the month we had almost cleared out that last month as well, for a total of 180 old articles removed from the backlog! We reduced our overall backlog by 337 articles, to a low of 1,465 articles, our second-lowest month-end total ever. We also handled all of the remaining requests from December 2016. Officially, 19 editors recorded 337 copy edits (over 679,000 words). February blitz: The one-week February blitz, focusing on the remaining March 2016 backlog and January 2017 requests, ran from 12 to 18 February. Seven editors reduced the total in those two backlog segments from 32 to 10 articles, leaving us in good shape going in to the March drive. Coordinator elections for the first half of 2017: In December, coordinators for the first half of 2017 were elected. Jonesey95 stepped aside as lead coordinator, remaining as coordinator and allowing Miniapolis to be the lead, and Tdslk and Corinne returned as coordinators. Thanks to all who participated! Speaking of coordinators, congratulations to Jonesey95 on their well-deserved induction into the Guild of Copy Editors Hall of Fame. The plaque reads: "For dedicated service as lead coordinator (2014, 1 July – 31 December 2015 and all of 2016) and coordinator (1 January – 30 June 2015 and 1 January – 30 June 2017); exceptional template-creation work (considerably streamlining project administration), and their emphasis on keeping the GOCE a drama-free zone." Housekeeping note: We do not send a newsletter before every drive or blitz. To have a better chance of knowing when the next event will start, add the GOCE's message box to your watchlist. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Miniapolis, Jonesey95, Corinne and Tdslk. >>> Sign up for the March Drive! <<< To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:20, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

March 2017 WikiCup newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. It would have been 5 points, but when a late entrant was permitted to join the contest in February, a promise was made that his inclusion would not result in the exclusion of any other competitor. To achieve this, the six entrants that had the lowest positive score of 4 points have been added to the 64 people who otherwise would have qualified. As a result, some of the groups have nine contestants rather than eight. Our top four scorers in round 1 were:

• Cas Liber, last year's winner, led the field with two featured articles on birds and a total score of 674.
• Iry-Hor, a WikiCup newcomer, came next with a featured article, a good article and a tally of 282 bonus points for a score of 517. All these points came from the article Nyuserre Ini, an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh,
• 1989, another WikiCup newcomer, was in joint third place at 240. 1989 has claimed points for two featured lists and one good article relating to anime and comedy series, all of which were awarded bonus points.
• Peacemaker67 shared third place with five good articles and thirteen good article reviews, mostly on naval vessels. He is also new to the competition.

The largest number of DYKs have been submitted by Vivvt and The C of E, who each claimed for seven, and MBlaze Lightning achieved eight articles at ITN. Carbrera and Peacemaker67 each claimed for five GAs and Krishna Chaitanya Velaga was well out in front for GARs, having reviewed 32. No featured pictures, featured topics or good topics yet, but we have achieved three featured articles and a splendid total of fifty good articles.

So, on to the second round. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. 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 equally.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. 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. 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. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 13:52, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2017

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

Administrator changes

TheDJ

Xnuala • CJ • Oldelpaso • Berean Hunter • Jimbo Wales • Andrew c • Karanacs • Modemac • Scott

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion on the backlog of unpatrolled files, consensus was found to create a new user right for autopatrolling file uploads. Implementation progress can be tracked on Phabricator.
• The BLPPROD grandfather clause, which stated that unreferenced biographies of living persons were only eligible for proposed deletion if they were created after March 18, 2010, has been removed following an RfC.
• An RfC has closed with consensus to allow proposed deletion of files. The implementation process is ongoing.
• After an unsuccessful proposal to automatically grant IP block exemption, consensus was found to relax the criteria for granting the user right from needing it to wanting it.

Technical news

• After a recent RfC, moved pages will soon be featured in a queue similar to Special:NewPagesFeed and require patrolling. Moves by administrators, page movers, and autopatrolled editors will be automatically marked as patrolled.
• Cookie blocks have been deployed. This extends the current autoblock system by setting a cookie for each block, which will then autoblock the user if they switch accounts, even under a new IP.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:55, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2017

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

Administrator changes

Karanacs • Berean Hunter • GoldenRing • Dlohcierekim

Gdr • Tyrenius • JYolkowski • Longhair • Master Thief Garrett • Aaron Brenneman • Laser brain • JzG • Dragons flight

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has clarified that user categories should be emptied upon deletion, but redlinked user categories should not be removed if re-added by the user.
• Discussions are ongoing regarding proposed changes to the COI policy. Changes so far have included clarification that adding a link on a Wikipedia forum to a job posting is not a violation of the harassment policy.

Technical news

• You can now see a list of all autoblocks at Special:AutoblockList.
• There is a new tool for adding archives to dead links. Administrators are able to restrict other user's ability to use the tool, and have additional permissions when changing URL and domain data.
• Administrators, bureaucrats and stewards can now set an expiry date when granting user rights. (discuss, permalink)

Miscellaneous

• Following an RfC, the editing restrictions page is now split into a list of active restrictions and an archive of those that are old or on inactive accounts. Make sure to check both pages if searching for a restriction.

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

Marshall Islands at the 2016 Summer Olympics

Thanks for the copy edit! :D --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 16:23, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2017

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

Administrator changes

Doug Bell • Dennis Brown • Clpo13 • ONUnicorn

ThaddeusB • Yandman • Bjarki S • OldakQuill • Shyam • Jondel • Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC proposing an off-wiki LTA database has been closed. The proposal was broadly supported, with further discussion required regarding what to do with the existing LTA database and defining access requirements. Such a tool/database formed part of the Community health initiative's successful grant proposal.
• Some clarifications have been made to the community banning and unblocking policies that effectively sync them with current practice. Specifically, the community has reached a consensus that when blocking a user at WP:AN or WP:ANI, it is considered a "community sanction", and administrators cannot unblock unilaterally if the user has not successfully appealed the sanction to the community.
• An RfC regarding the bot policy has closed with changes to the section describing restrictions on cosmetic changes.

Technical news

• Users will soon be able to blacklist specific users from sending them notifications.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2017 elections, the new members of the Board of Trustees include Raystorm, Pundit and Doc James. They will serve three-year terms.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:40, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

GOCE May 2017 drive bling

		The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Slon02 for copy edits totaling over 8,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE May 2017 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Miniapolis 17:47, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:ESF logo.jpg

⚠

Thanks for uploading File:ESF logo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:24, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2017 July newsletter

The third round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 288 points being required to qualify for round 4. It was a hotly competitive round with all but four of the contestants exceeding the 106 points that was necessary to proceed to round 4 last year. Coemgenus and Freikorp tied on 288, and both have been allowed to proceed, so round 4 now has one pool of eight competitors and one of nine.

Round 3 saw the achievement of a 26-topic Featured topic by MPJ-DK as well as 5 featured lists and 13 featured articles. PanagiotisZois and SounderBruce achieved their first ever featured articles. Carbrera led the GA score with 10, Tachs achieved 17 DYKs and MBlaze Lightning 10 In the news items. There were 167 DYKs, 93 GARs and 82 GAs overall, this last figure being higher than the number of GAs in round 2, when twice as many people were taking part. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.

As we start round 4, we say goodbye to the fifteen or so competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).

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. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! 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. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 05:38, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2017

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

Administrator changes

Happyme22 • Dragons flight

Zad68

Guideline and policy news

• The RFC discussion regarding WP:OUTING and WMF essay about paid editing and outing (see more at the ArbCom noticeboard archives) is now archived. Milieus #3 and #4 received support; so did concrete proposal #1.

Technical news

• Fuzzy search will soon be added to Special:Undelete, allowing administrators to search for deleted page titles with results similar to the search query. You can test this by adding ?fuzzy=1 to the URL, as with Special:Undelete?fuzzy=1. Currently the search only finds pages that exactly match the search term.
• A new bot will automatically revision delete unused file versions from files in Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old.

Miscellaneous

• A newly revamped database report can help identify users who may be eligible to be autopatrolled.
• A potentially compromised account from 2001–2002 attempted to request resysop. Please practice appropriate account security by using a unique password for Wikipedia, and consider enabling two-factor authentication. Currently around 17% of admins have enabled 2FA, up from 16% in February 2017.
• Did you know: On 29 June 2017, there were 1,261 administrators on the English Wikipedia – the exact number of administrators as there were ten years ago on 29 June 2007. Since that time, the English Wikipedia has grown from 1.85 million articles to over 5.43 million.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:59, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

User:Akhil9731

Now he is blocked an isp is keeping up the bad work Johnbod (talk) 11:39, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

RfA

Thanks for supporting my run for administrator. I am honored and grateful. ) Cullen328 Let's discuss it 23:41, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2017

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

Administrator changes

Anarchyte • GeneralizationsAreBad • Cullen328 ^{(first RfA to reach WP:300)}

Cprompt • Rockpocket • Rambo's Revenge • Animum • TexasAndroid • Chuck SMITH • MikeLynch • Crazytales • Ad Orientem

Guideline and policy news

• Following a series of discussions around new pages patrol, the WMF is helping implement a controlled autoconfirmed article creation trial as a research experiment, similar to the one proposed in 2011. You can learn more about the research plan at meta:Research:Autoconfirmed article creation trial. The exact start date of the experiment has yet to be determined.
• A new speedy deletion criterion, regarding articles created as a result undisclosed paid editing, is currently being discussed (permalink).
• An RfC (permalink) is currently open that proposes expanding WP:G13 to include all drafts, even if they weren't submitted through Articles for Creation.

Technical news

• LoginNotify should soon be deployed to the English Wikipedia. This will notify users when there are suspicious login attempts on their account.
• The new version of XTools is nearing an official release. This suite of tools includes administrator statistics, an improved edit counter, among other tools that may benefit administrators. You can report issues on Phabricator and provide general feedback at mw:Talk:XTools.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:11, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2017 September newsletter

Round 4 of the WikiCup has ended and we move forward into the final round. In round 4, a total of 12 FAs, 3 FLs, 44 GAs, 3 FLs, 79 DYKs, 1 ITN and 42 GARs was achieved, with no FPs or FTs this time. Congratulations to Peacemaker67 on the Royal Yugoslav Navy Good Topic of 36 items, and the 12 featured articles achieved by Cas Liber (5), Vanamonde93 (3), Peacemaker67 (2), Adityavagarwal (1) and 12george1 (1). With a FA scoring 200 points, and bonus points available on top of this, FAs are likely to feature heavily in the final round. Meanwhile Yellow Evan, a typhoon specialist, was contributing 12 DYKs and 10 GAs, while Adityavagarwal and Freikorp topped the GAR list with 8 reviews each. As we enter the final round, we are down to eight contestants, and we would like to thank those of you who have been eliminated for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. The lowest score needed to reach round 5 was 305, and I think we can expect a highly competitive final round.

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 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck, and let the best man (or woman) win! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 06:26, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2017

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

Administrator changes

Nakon • Scott

Sverdrup • Thespian • Elockid • James086 • Ffirehorse • Celestianpower • Boing! said Zebedee

Guideline and policy news

• ACTRIAL, a research experiment that restricts article creation to autoconfirmed users, will begin on September 7. It will run for six months. You can learn more about the research specifics at meta:Research:Autoconfirmed article creation trial, while Wikipedia talk:Autoconfirmed article creation trial is probably the best venue for general discussion.
• Following an RfC, WP:G13 speedy deletion criterion now applies to any page in the draftspace that has not been edited in six months. There is a bot-generated report, updated daily, to help identify potentially qualifying drafts that have not been submitted through articles for creation.

Technical news

• You will now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device that has logged into your account before, you will be notified after five failed attempts. You can also set in your preferences to get an email when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address, which may be encouraged for admins and accounts with sensitive permissions.
• Syntax highlighting is now available as a beta feature (more info). This may assist administrators and template editors when dealing with intricate syntax of high-risk templates and system messages.
• In your notification preferences, you can now block specific users from pinging you. This functionality will soon be available for Special:EmailUser as well.

Arbitration

• Applications for CheckUser and Oversight are being accepted by the Arbitration Committee until September 12. Community discussion of the candidates will begin on September 18.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:35, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to Admin confidence survey

Hello,

Beginning in September 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-harassment tool team will be conducting a survey to gauge how well tools, training, and information exists to assist English Wikipedia administrators in recognizing and mitigating things like sockpuppetry, vandalism, and harassment.

The survey should only take 5 minutes, and your individual response will not be made public. This survey will be integral for our team to determine how to better support administrators.

To take the survey sign up here and we will send you a link to the form.

We really appreciate your input!

Please let us know if you wish to opt-out of all massmessage mailings from the Anti-harassment tools team.

For the Anti-harassment tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 19:52, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

DYK for Jane Kitchel

On 19 September 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Jane Kitchel, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that state senator Jane Kitchel and her sister chair both of the Vermont Legislature's appropriations committees? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Jane Kitchel. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Jane Kitchel), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. 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.

Alex Shih^Talk 12:03, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2017

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

Administrator changes

Boing! said Zebedee • Ansh666 • Ad Orientem

Tonywalton • AmiDaniel • Silence • BanyanTree • Magioladitis • Vanamonde93 • Mr.Z-man • Jdavidb • Jakec • Ram-Man • Yelyos • Kurt Shaped Box

Guideline and policy news

• Following a successful proposal to create it, a new user right called "edit filter helper" is now assignable and revocable by administrators. The right allows non-administrators to view the details of private edit filters, but not to edit them.
• Following a discussion about mass-application of ECP and how the need for logging and other details of an evolving consensus may have been missed by some administrators, a rough guide to extended confirmed protection has been written. This information page describes how the extended-confirmed aspects of the protection policy are currently being applied by administrators.

Technical news

• You can now search for IP ranges at Special:Contributions. Some log pages and Special:DeletedContributions are not yet supported. Wildcards (e.g. 192.168.0.*) are also not supported, but the popular contribsrange gadget will continue to work.

Arbitration

• Community consultation on the 2017 candidates for CheckUser and Oversight has concluded. The Arbitration Committee will appoint successful candidates by October 11.
• A request for comment is open regarding the structure, rules, and procedures of the December 2017 Arbitration Committee election, and how to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:23, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2017

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

Administrator changes

Longhair • Megalibrarygirl • TonyBallioni • Vanamonde93

Allen3 • Eluchil404 • Arthur Rubin • Bencherlite

Technical news

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team is creating an "Interaction Timeline" tool that intends to assist administrators in resolving user conduct disputes. Feedback on the concept may be posted on the talk page.
• A new function is now available to edit filter managers that will make it easier to look for multiple strings containing spoofed text.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors will be invited to submit candidate statements for the 2017 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 12 until November 21. Voting will begin on November 27 and last until December 10.
• Following a request for comment, Ritchie333, Yunshui and Ymblanter will serve as the Electoral Commission for the 2017 ArbCom Elections.

Obituaries

• The Wikipedia community has recently learned that Allen3 (William Allen Peckham) passed away on December 30, 2016, the same day as JohnCD. Allen began editing in 2005 and became an administrator that same year.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2017 November newsletter: Final results

The final round of the 2017 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2017 WikiCup top three finalists:

• First Place - Adityavagarwal (submissions)
• Second Place - Vanamonde (submissions)
• Third Place - Cas Liber (submissions)

In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:

• Featured Article – Cas Liber (actually a two-way tie with themselves for an astonishing five FAs in R2 and R4).
• Good Article – Adityavagarwal had 14 GAs promoted in R5.
• Featured List – Bloom6132 (submissions) and 1989 (submissions) both produced 2 FLs in R2
• Featured Pictures – SounderBruce (submissions) improved an image to FP status in R5, the only FP this year.
• Featured Topic – MPJ-DK (submissions) has the only FT of the Cup in R3.
• Good Topic – Four different editors created a GT in R2, R3 and R4.
• Did You Know – Adityavagarwal had 22 DYKs on the main page in R5.
• In The News – MBlaze Lightning (submissions) had 14 ITN on the main page in R2.
• Good Article Review – Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (submissions) completed 31 GARs in R1.

Over the course of the 2017 WikiCup the following content was added or improved on Wikipedia: 51 Featured Articles, 292 Good Articles, 18 Featured Lists, 1 Featured Picture, 1 Featured Topics, 4 Good Topics, around 400 Did You Knows, 75 In The News, and 442 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.

Regarding the prize vouchers - @Adityavagarwal, Vanamonde93, Casliber, Bloom6132, 1989, and SounderBruce: please send Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) an email from the email address to which you would like your Amazon voucher sent. Please include your preference of global Amazon marketplace as well. We hope to have the electronic gift cards processed and sent within a week.

We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2018 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. 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 · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2018

So the 2017 WikiCup has come to an end. Congratulations to the winner, to the other finalists and to all those who took part. 177 contestants signed up, more than usual, but not all of them submitted entries in the first round. Were editors attracted by the cash prizes offered for the first time this year, or were these irrelevant? Do the rules and scoring need changing for the 2018 WikiCup? If you have a view on these or other matters, why not join in the WikiCup discussion about next year's contest? Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:59, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red World Contest

Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!

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)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Slon02. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 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 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2017 News

Guild of Copy Editors December 2017 News Hello copy editors! Welcome to the December 2017 GOCE newsletter, which contains nine months(!) of updates. The Guild has been busy and successful; your diligent efforts in 2017 has brought the backlog of articles requiring copy edit to below 1,000 articles for the first time. Thanks to all editors who have contributed their time and energy to help make this happen. >>> Sign up for the January Drive! <<< >>> Participate in the Coordinator Elections! <<< Our copy-editing drives (month-long backlog-reduction drives held in odd-numbered months) and blitzes (week-long themed editing in even-numbered months) have been very successful this year. March drive: We set out to remove April, May, and June 2016 from our backlog and all February 2017 Requests (a total of 304 articles). By the end of the month, all but 22 of these articles were cleared. Officially, of the 28 who signed up, 22 editors recorded 257 copy edits (439,952 words). (These numbers do not always make sense when you compare them to the overall reduction in the backlog, because not all editors record every copy edit on the drive page.) April blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 16 through 22 April; the theme was Requests. Of the 15 who signed up, 9 editors completed 43 articles (81,822 words). May drive: The goals were to remove July, August, and September 2016 from the backlog and to complete all March 2017 Requests (a total of 300 articles). By the end of the month, we had reduced our overall backlog to an all-time low of 1,388 articles. Of the 28 who signed up, 17 editors completed 187 articles (321,810 words). June blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 18 through 24 June; the theme was Requests. Of the 16 who signed up, 9 editors completed 28 copy edits (117,089 words). 2017 Coordinator elections: In June, coordinators for the second half of 2017 were elected. Jonesey95 moved back into the lead coordinator position, with Miniapolis stepping down to remain as coordinator; Tdslk and Corinne returned as coordinators, and Keira1996 rejoined after an extended absence. Thanks to all who participated! July drive: We set out to remove August, September, October, and November 2016 from the backlog and to complete all May and June 2017 Requests (a total of 242 articles). The drive was an enormous success, and the target was nearly achieved within three weeks, so that December 2016 was added to the "old articles" list used as a goal for the drive. By the end of the month, only three articles from 2016 remained, and for the second drive in a row, the backlog was reduced to a new all-time low, this time to 1,363 articles. Of the 33 who signed up, 21 editors completed 337 articles (556,482 words). August blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 20 through 26 August; the theme was biographical articles tagged for copy editing for more than six months (47 articles). Of the 13 who signed up, 11 editors completed 38 copy edits (42,589 words). September drive: The goals were to remove January, February, and March 2017 from the backlog and to complete all August 2017 Requests (a total of 338 articles). Of the 19 who signed up, 14 editors completed 121 copy edits (267,227 words). October blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 22 through 28 October; the theme was Requests. Of the 14 who signed up, 8 editors completed 20 articles (55,642 words). November drive: We set out again to remove January, February, and March 2017 from the backlog and to complete all October 2017 Requests (a total of 207 articles). By the end of the month, these goals were reached and the backlog shrank to its lowest total ever, 997 articles, the first time it had fallen under one thousand (click on the graph above to see this amazing feat in graphical form). It was also the first time that the oldest copy-edit tag was less than eight months old. Of the 25 who signed up, 16 editors completed 159 articles (285,929 words). 2018 Coordinator elections: Voting is open for the election of coordinators for the first half of 2018. Please visit the election page to vote between now and December 31 at 23:59 (UTC). Thanks for participating! Housekeeping note: We do not send a newsletter before (or after) every drive or blitz. To have a better chance of knowing when the next event will start, add the GOCE's message box to your watchlist. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Miniapolis, Corinne, Tdslk, and Keira1996. >>> Sign up for the January Drive! <<< >>> Participate in the Coordinator Elections! <<< To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:04, 23 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)

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)

GOCE February 2018 news

Guild of Copy Editors February 2018 News Welcome to the February 2018 GOCE newsletter in which you will find Guild updates since the December edition. We got to a great start for the year, holding the backlog at nine months. 100 requests were submitted in the first 6 weeks of the year and were swiftly handled with an average completion time of 9 days. >>> Sign up for the March Drive! <<< Coordinator elections: In December, coordinators for the first half of 2018 were elected. Jonesey95 remained as lead coordinator and Corrine, Miniapolis and Tdslk as assistant coordinators. Keira1996 stepped down as assistant coordinator and was replaced by Reidgreg. Thanks to all who participated! End of year reports were prepared for 2016 and 2017, providing a detailed look at the Guild's long-term progress. January drive: We set out to remove April, May, and June 2017 from our backlog and all December 2017 Requests (a total of 275 articles). As with previous years, the January drive was an outstanding success and by the end of the month all but 57 of these articles were cleared. Officially, of the 38 who signed up, 21 editors recorded 259 copy edits (490,256 words). February blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 11 through 17 February, focusing on Requests and the last articles tagged in May 2017. At the end of the week there were only 14 pending requests, with none older than 20 days. Of the 11 who signed up, 10 editors completed 35 copy edits (98,538 words). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Miniapolis, Corinne, Tdslk, and Reidgreg. >>> Sign up for the March Drive! <<< To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:00, 25 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)

WikiCup 2018 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. With 53 contestants qualifying, the groups for round 2 are slightly smaller than usual, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining users.

Our top scorers in round 1 were:

• Aoba47 led the field with a featured article, 8 good articles and 42 GARs, giving a total of 666 points.
• FrB.TG , a WikiCup newcomer, came next with 600 points, gained from a featured article and masses of bonus points.
• Ssven2, another WikiCup newcomer, was in third place with 403 points, garnered from a featured article, a featured list, a good article and twelve GARs.
• Ceranthor, Numerounovedant, Carbrera, Farang Rak Tham and Cartoon network freak all had over 200 points, but like all the other contestants, now have to start again from scratch. A good achievement was the 193 GARs performed by WikiCup contestants, comparing very favourably with the 54 GAs they achieved.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. 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.

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. 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. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) and Vanamonde (talk) 15:27, 2 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)

WikiCup 2018 May newsletter

The second round of the 2018 WikiCup has now finished. Most contestants who advanced to the next round scored upwards of 100 points, but two with just 10 points managed to scrape through into round 3. Our top scorers in the last round were:

• Cas Liber, our winner in 2016, with three featured articles
• Iazyges, with nine good articles and lots of bonus points
• Yashthepunisher, a first time contestant, with two featured lists
• SounderBruce, a finalist last year, with seventeen good topic articles
• Usernameunique, a first time contestant, with fourteen DYKs
• Muboshgu, a seasoned competitor, with three ITNs and
• Courcelles, another first time contestant, with twenty-seven GARs

So far contestants have achieved twelve featured articles between them and a splendid 124 good articles. Commendably, 326 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2018 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. 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; most of the GARs are fine, but a few have been a bit skimpy.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere 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. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:10, 1 May 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) 21:00, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

June 2018 GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2018 News Welcome to the June 2018 GOCE newsletter, in which you will find Guild updates since the February edition. Progress continues to be made on the copyediting backlog, which has been reduced to 7 months and reached a new all-time low. Requests continue to be handled efficiently this year, with 272 completed by the end of May (an average completion time of 10.5 days). Fewer than 10% of these waited longer than 20 days, and the longest wait time was 29 days. Wikipedia in general, and the Guild in particular, experienced a deep loss with the death on 20 March of Corinne. Corinne (a GOCE coordinator since 1 July 2016) was a tireless aide on the requests page, and her peerless copyediting is a part of innumerable GAs and FAs. Her good cheer, courtesy and tact are very much missed. March drive: The goal was to remove June, July and August 2017 from our backlog and all February 2018 Requests (a total of 219 articles). This drive was an outstanding success, and by the end of the month all but eight of these articles were cleared. Of the 33 editors who signed up, 19 recorded 277 copy edits (425,758 words). April blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 15 through 21 April, focusing on Requests and the last eight articles tagged in August 2017. At the end of the week there were only 17 pending requests, with none older than 17 days. Of the nine editors who signed up, eight editors completed 22 copy edits (62,412 words). May drive: We set out to remove September, October and November 2017 from our backlog and all April 2018 Requests (a total of 298 articles). There was great success this month with the backlog more than halved from 1,449 articles at the beginning of the month to a record low of 716 articles. Officially, of the 20 who signed up, 15 editors recorded 151 copy edits (248,813 words). Coordinator elections: It's election time again. Nominations for Guild coordinators (who will serve a six-month term for the second half of 2018) have begun, and will close at 23:59 UTC on 15 June. All Wikipedia editors in good standing are eligible, and self-nominations are encouraged. Voting will take place between 00:01 UTC on 16 June and 23:59 UTC on 30 June. June blitz: Stay tuned for this one-week copy-editing blitz, which will take place in mid-June. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Corinne, Jonesey95, Miniapolis, Reidgreg and Tdslk. >>> Participate in the June elections! <<< To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:26, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Precious

renewable energy in Russia

Thank you for quality articles such as Renewable energy in Russia, Jane Kitchel and Arctic policy of Russia, for copy-editing backlog elimination and service as GOCE cordinator, for admin services and fighting vandalism, for missing, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:18, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Two years ago, you were recipient no. 1948 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2018 July newsletter

The third round of the 2018 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round had at least 227 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• Courcelles, a first time contestant, with 1756 points, a tally built largely on 27 GAs related to the Olympics
• Cas Liber, our winner in 2016, with two featured articles and three GAs on natural history and astronomy topics
• SounderBruce, a finalist last year, with a variety of submissions related to transport in the state of Washington

Contestants managed 7 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 120 good articles, 1 good topic, 124 DYK entries, 15 ITN entries, and 132 good article reviews. Over the course of the competition, contestants have completed 458 GA reviews, in comparison to 244 good articles submitted for review and promoted. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember 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. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process; several submissions, particularly in abstruse or technical areas, have needed additional work to make them completely verifiable.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere 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. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk), Vanamonde (talk) 04:55, 2 July 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)

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)

August GOCE newsletter

'Guild of Copy Editors August 2018 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the August 2018 GOCE newsletter. Thanks to everyone who participated in the Guild's June election; your new and returning coordinators are listed below. The next election will occur in December 2018; all Wikipedia editors in good standing may take part. Our June blitz focused on Requests and articles tagged for copy edit in October 2017. Of the eleven people who signed up, eight editors recorded a total of 28 copy edits, including 3 articles of more than 10,000 words. Complete results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Thanks to everyone who participated in the July drive. Of the seventeen people who signed up, thirteen editors completed 194 copy edits, successfully removing all articles tagged in the last three months of 2017. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are here. The August blitz will run for one week, from 19 to 25 August. Sign up now! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Miniapolis and Tdslk. >>> Sign up for the August blitz! <<< To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:25, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

WikiCup 2018 September newsletter

The fourth round of the 2018 WikiCup has now come to an end. The eight users who made it to the final round had to score a minimum of 422 points to qualify, with the top score in the round being 4869 points. The leaders in round 4 were:

• Courcelles scored a magnificent 4869 points, with 92 good articles on Olympics-related themes. Courcelles' bonus points alone exceeded the total score of any of the other contestants!
• Kees08 was second with 1155 points, including a high-scoring featured article for Neil Armstrong, two good topics and some Olympics-related good articles.
• Cas Liber, with 1066 points, was in third place this round, with two featured articles and a good article, all on natural history topics.
• Other contestants who qualified for the final round were Nova Crystallis, Iazyges, SounderBruce, Kosack and Ceranthor.

During round four, 6 featured articles and 164 good articles were promoted by WikiCup contestants, 13 articles were included in good topics and 143 good article reviews were performed. There were also 10 "in the news" contributions on the main page and 53 "did you knows". Congratulations to all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

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 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck, and let the best editor win! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:31, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2018

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

Administrator changes

None

Asterion • Crisco 1492 • KF • Kudpung • Liz • Randykitty • Spartaz

Optimist on the run → Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

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.

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

Administrators' newsletter – October 2018

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

Administrator changes

Justlettersandnumbers • L235

Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter

Interface administrator changes

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

Oversight changes

Guerillero • NativeForeigner • Snowolf • Xeno

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the process for appointing interface administrators has been established. Currently only existing admins can request these rights, while a new RfC has begun on whether it should be available to non-admins.
• There is an open request for comment on Meta regarding the creation a new user group for global edit filter management.

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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:13, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

WikiCup 2018 November newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year! Our Champion this year is Courcelles (submissions), who over the course of the competition has amassed 147 GAs, 111 GARs, 9 DYKs, 4 FLs and 1 ITN. Our finalists were as follows:

1. Courcelles (submissions)
2. Kosack (submissions)
3. Kees08 (submissions)
4. SounderBruce (submissions)
5. Cas Liber (submissions)
6. Nova Crystallis (submissions)
7. Iazyges (submissions)
8. Ceranthor (submissions)

All those who reached the final win awards, and awards will also be going to the following participants:

• Cas Liber (submissions) wins the FA prize, for three featured articles in round 2.
• Courcelles (submissions) wins the GA prize, for 92 good articles in round 3.
• Kosack (submissions) wins the FL prize, for five featured lists overall.
• Cartoon network freak (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 30 articles in good topics overall.
• Usernameunique (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 24 did you know articles in round 3.
• Zanhe (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 17 in the news articles overall.
• Aoba47 (submissions) wins the GAR prize, for 43 good article reviews in round 1.

Awards will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved much this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition.

Next year's competition begins on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; it is open to all Wikipedians, new and old. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2019 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 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email) and Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · email).

Administrators' newsletter – November 2018

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

Administrator changes

Sir Sputnik

Kudpung • Liz • Lourdes

Everyking • Jackmcbarn

Interface administrator changes

Dinoguy1000

CheckUser changes

AGK • Ivanvector • Stwalkerster • TonyBallioni

Oversight changes

Amorymeltzer • Oshwah • TonyBallioni • Vanamonde93

Keilana

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment determined that non-administrators will not be able to request interface admin access.
• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the Mediation Committee should be closed and marked as historical.
• A village pump discussion has been ongoing about whether the proposed deletion policy (PROD) should be clarified or amended.
• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether pending changes protection should be applied automatically to today's featured article (TFA) in order to mitigate a recent trend of severe image vandalism.

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-enwikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:19, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Slon02. 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)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2018

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

Administrator changes

Al Ameer son • Randykitty • Spartaz

Boson • Daniel J. Leivick • Efe • Esanchez7587 • Fred Bauder • Garzo • Martijn Hoekstra • Orangemike

Interface administrator changes

Deryck 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

• Administrators and bureaucrats can no longer unblock themselves unless they placed the block initially. This change has been implemented globally. See also this ongoing village pump discussion (permalink).
• To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.
• Since deployment of Partial blocks on Test Wikipedia, several bugs were identified. Most of them are now fixed. Administrators are encouraged to test the new deployment and report new bugs on Phabricator or leave feedback on the Project's talk page. You can request administrator access on the Test Wiki here.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 3 December 2018. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

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

• Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (Raymond Arritt) passed away on 14 November 2018. Boris joined Wikipedia as Raymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.

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

December 2018 GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2018 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the December 2018 GOCE newsletter. Here is what's been happening since the August edition. Thanks to everyone who participated in the August blitz (results), which focused on Requests and the oldest backlog month. Of the twenty editors who signed up, eleven editors recorded 37 copy edits. For the September drive (results), of the twenty-three people who signed up, nineteen editors completed 294 copy edits. Our October blitz (results) focused on Requests, geography, and food and drink articles. Of the fourteen people who signed up, eleven recorded a total of 57 copy edits. For the November drive (results), twenty-two people signed up, and eighteen editors recorded 273 copy edits. This helped to bring the backlog to a six-month low of 825 articles. The December blitz will run for one week, from 16 to 22 December. Sign up now! Elections: Nominations for the Guild's coordinators for the first half of 2019 will be open from 1 to 15 December. Voting will then take place and the election will close on 31 December at 23:59 UTC. Positions for Guild coordinators, who perform the important behind-the-scenes tasks that keep our project running smoothly, are open to all Wikipedians in good standing. We welcome self-nominations, so please consider nominating yourself if you've ever thought about helping out; it's your Guild and it doesn't run itself! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators; Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Miniapolis and Tdslk. >>> Sign up for the December blitz! <<< >>> Participate in the Coordinator elections! <<< To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:05, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Mecwacarelogo.jpg

The file File:Mecwacarelogo.jpg has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Unused logo with no article used, it's also can't move to commons because of an unused logo will be deleted as of out of project scope.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated files}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Willy1018 (talk) 04:50, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Slon02,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Donner60 (talk) 04:24, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Welcome to the 2019 WikiCup!

Hello and Happy New Year!

Welcome to the 2019 WikiCup, the competition begins today. If you have already joined, your submission page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and we will set up your submissions page. One important rule to remember is that only content on which you have completed significant work during 2019, and which you have nominated this year, is eligible for points in the competition, the judges will be checking! Any questions should be directed to one of the judges, or left on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup. 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 make it to round 2. Good luck! The judges for the WikiCup are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:14, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2019

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

Administrator changes

Galobtter

Orangemike

BorgQueen • Davidruben • Ocee • Revolving Bugbear • Theda • There'sNoTime • Timc • Tijuana Brass • Tristessa de St Ange

Bureaucrat changes

Addshore

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe • SilkTork

Euryalus • Newyorkbrad • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

AGK • Joe Roe • SilkTork

Euryalus • Newyorkbrad • There'sNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• There are a number of new or changed speedy deletion criteria, each previously part of WP:CSD#G6:

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}}.

• The Wikimedia Foundation now requires all interface administrators to enable two-factor authentication.
• Members of the Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.

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

• Following the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: AGK, Courcelles, GorillaWarfare, Joe Roe, Mkdw, SilkTork.

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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

GOCE 2018 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2018 Annual Report Our 2018 Annual Report is now ready for review. Highlights: Overview of Backlog-reduction progress; Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page; Membership news and results of elections; Annual leaderboard; Plans for 2019. – Your project coordinators: Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:31, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2019

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

Administrator changes

Enterprisey • JJMC89

BorgQueen

Harro5 • Jenks24 • Graft • R. Baley

Interface administrator changes

Enterprisey

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is currently open to reevaluate the activity requirements for administrators.
• Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent request for comment has amended the blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
• A request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.

Technical news

• A discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2019 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2019, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2019, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• A new IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be identified.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:16, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2. With 56 contestants qualifying, each group in Round 2 contains seven contestants, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for Round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining contestants.

Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

• L293D, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with ten good articles on submarines for a total of 357 points.
• Adam Cuerden, a WikiCup veteran, came next with 274 points, mostly from eight featured pictures, restorations of artwork.
• MPJ-DK, a wrestling enthusiast, was in third place with 263 points, garnered from a featured list, five good articles, two DYKs and four GARs.
• Usernameunique came next at 243, with a featured article and a good article, both on ancient helmets.
• Squeamish Ossifrage was in joint fifth place with 224 points, mostly garnered from bringing the 1937 Fox vault fire to featured article status.
• Ed! was also on 224, with an amazing number of good article reviews (56 actually).

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews on 143 good articles, one hundred more than the number of good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Well done all!

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. 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.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! 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. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk).

Administrators' newsletter – March 2019

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

Administrator changes

Evad37

There'sNoTime

Alex Shih • Brian • Mushroom • Nakon • Oscarthecat • PeruvianLlama • Ragib • Reaper Eternal • Rossami • Tom

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ritchie333

CheckUser changes

There'sNoTime

Keegan • Ks0stm

Oversight changes

There'sNoTime

Ks0stm • Sphilbrick

Guideline and policy news

• The RfC on administrator activity requirements failed to reach consensus for any proposal.
• Following discussions at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the restoration of adminship policy was reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.

Technical news

• A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
  • paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
  • checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2019 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Base, Einsbor, Jon Kolbert, Schniggendiller, and Wim b.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:13, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

March GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2019 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the March newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2018. All being well, we're planning to issue these quarterly in 2019, balancing the need to communicate widely with the avoidance of filling up talk pages. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. January Drive: Thanks to everyone for the splendid work in January's Backlog Elimination Drive. We removed copyedit tags from all of the articles tagged in our original target months of June, July and August 2018, and by 24 January we ran out of articles. After adding September, we finished the month with 8 target articles remaining and 842 left in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 48 requests for copyedit in January. Of the 31 people who signed up for this drive, 24 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Blitz: Thanks to everyone who participated in the February Blitz. Of the 15 people who signed up, 13 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed 32 copyedits, including 15 requests. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Progress report: As of 23:39, 18 March 2019 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 108 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 851 articles. March Drive: The month-long March drive is now underway; the target months are October and November 2018. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the backlog. Sign up here! Election reminder: It may only be March but don't forget our mid-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:12, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2019

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

Administrator changes

Reaper Eternal • ThaddeusB

Bogdangiusca • Christopher Parham • Necrothesp • Schneelocke • Siroxo • Sarah

Mentifisto → Lofty abyss

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad

Kingturtle

Technical news

• In Special:Preferences under "Appearance" → "Advanced options", there is now an option to show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link.
• The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Please see meta:Community health initiative/User reporting system consultation 2019 to provide your input on this idea.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee clarified that the General 1RR prohibition for Palestine-Israel articles may only be enforced on pages with the {{ARBPIA 1RR editnotice}} edit notice.

Miscellaneous

• Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a 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. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
• As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:57, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 May newsletter

The second round of the 2019 WikiCup has now finished. Contestants needed to scored 32 points to advance into round 3. Our top four scorers in round 2 all scored over 400 points and were:

• Cas Liber (1210), our winner in 2016, with two featured articles and three DYKs. He also made good use of the bonus points available, more than doubling his score by choosing appropriate articles to work on.
• Kosack (750), last year's runner up, with an FA, a GA, two FLs, and five DYKs.
• Adam Cuerden (480), a WikiCup veteran, with 16 featured pictures, mostly restorations.
• Zwerg Nase (461), a seasoned competitor, with a FA, a GA and an ITN item.

Other notable performances were put in by Barkeep49 with six GAs, Ceranthor, Lee Vilenski, and Canada Hky, each with seven GARs, and MPJ-DK with a seven item GT.

So far contestants have achieved nine featured articles between them and a splendid 80 good articles. Commendably, 227 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2019 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. The judges are pleased with the thorough GARs that are being performed, and have hardly had to reject any. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere 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. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:46, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 special circular

Administrators must secure their accounts The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised. Use strong, unique passwords for your Wikipedia account and associated email Change your password now if your Wikipedia account password or email password is reused on another website, exposed, or weak Enable two-factor authentication now for improved security

View additional information

Why have I received this message? All administrators are receiving it. What prompted you to send this message? Recently, several Wikipedia admin accounts were compromised. The admin accounts were desysopped on an emergency basis. In the past, the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. The committee has updated its guidelines. Admins may now be required to undergo a fresh Request for Adminship (RfA) after losing control of their account. What do I need to do? Only to follow the instructions in this message. Check that your password is unique (not reused across sites). Check that your password is strong (not simple or guessable). Enable Two-factor authentication (2FA), if you can, to create a second hurdle for attackers. How can I find out more about two-factor authentication (2FA)? You can find out more about 2FA at m:2FA.

This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:55, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)

ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.

Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.

We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.

For the Arbitration Committee, -Cameron11598 21:04, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2019

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

Administrator changes

HickoryOughtShirt?4 • RexxS

Necrothesp

Bratsche • Kyle Barbour • Kzollman • Madman

Interface administrator changes

Pharos

Bureaucrat changes

Primefac

CheckUser changes

Reaper Eternal

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment concluded that creating pages in the portal namespace should be restricted to autoconfirmed users.
• Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.

Technical news

• XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well: Steward Stats and Patroller Stats.

Arbitration

• In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases, the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions; administrators found failing to have adequately done so will not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
• Following a formal ratification process, the arbitration policy has been amended (diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.

Miscellaneous

• A request for comment is currently open to amend the community sanctions procedure to exclude non XfD or CSD deletions.
• A proposal to remove pre-2009 indefinite IP blocks is currently open for discussion.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2019

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

Administrator changes

Andonic • Consumed Crustacean • Enigmaman • Euryalus • EWS23 • HereToHelp • Nv8200pa • Peripitus • StringTheory11 • Vejvančický

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project.
• An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
• An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.

Technical news

• The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
• Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.

Miscellaneous

• The previously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 was approved and has taken place.
• The 2019 talk pages consultation produced a report for Phase 1 and has entered Phase 2.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:49, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

GOCE June newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2019 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since March 2019. You can unsubscribe from our mailings at any time; see below. Election time: Nomination of candidates in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 1 June, and voting will take place from 16 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. June Blitz: Our June blitz will soon be upon us; it will begin at 00:01 on 16 June (UTC) and will close at 23:59 on 22 June (UTC). The themes are "nature and the environment" and all requests. March Drive: Thanks to everyone for their work in March's Backlog Elimination Drive. We removed copyedit tags from 182 of the articles tagged in our original target months October and November 2018, and the month finished with 64 target articles remaining from November and 811 in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 22 requests for copyedit in March; the month ended with 34 requests pending. Of the 32 people who signed up for this drive, 24 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. April Blitz: Thanks to everyone who participated in the April Blitz; the blitz ran from 14 to 20 April (UTC) inclusive and the themes were Sports and Entertainment. Of the 15 people who signed up, 13 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed 60 copyedits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Progress report: As of 04:36, 3 June 2019 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 267 requests since 1 January. The backlog of tagged articles stands at 605 articles. May Drive: During the May Backlog Elimination Drive, Guild copy-editors removed copyedit tags from 191 of the 192 articles tagged in our original target months of November and December 2018, and January 2019 was added on 22 May. We finished the month with 81 target articles remaining and a record low of 598 articles in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 24 requests for copyedit during the May drive, and the month ended with 35 requests pending. Of the 26 people who signed up for this drive, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:30, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2019

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

Administrator changes

28bytes • Ad Orientem • Ansh666 • Beeblebrox • Boing! said Zebedee • BU Rob13 • Dennis Brown • Deor • DoRD • Floquenbeam¹ • Flyguy649 • Fram² • Gadfium • GB fan • Jonathunder • Kusma • Lectonar • Moink • MSGJ • Nick • Od Mishehu • Rama • Spartaz • Syrthiss • TheDJ • WJBscribe

¹Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

²Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes • WJBscribe • Wizardman

Interface administrator changes

MSGJ • TheDJ

CheckUser changes

Beeblebrox • BU Rob13 • DoRD

Oversight changes

Beeblebrox • BU Rob13 • DoRD • GB fan

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment seeking to alleviate pressures on the request an account (ACC) process proposes either raising the account creation limit for extended confirmed editors or granting the account creator permission on request to new ACC tool users.

• In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.

• The scope of CSD criterion G8 has been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
• The scope of CSD criterion G14 has been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
• A request for comment seeks to determine whether Wikipedia:Office actions should be a policy page or an information page.

Technical news

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.

Miscellaneous

• In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in significant community discussion, a request for arbitration (permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an open letter to the WMF Board.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:20, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 July newsletter

The third round of the 2019 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round needed to score at least 68 points, which is substantially lower than last year's 227 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• Cas Liber, our winner in 2016, with 500 points derived mainly from a featured article and two GAs on natural history topics
• Adam Cuerden, with 480 points, a tally built on 16 featured pictures, the result of meticulous restoration work
• SounderBruce, a finalist in the last two years, with 306 points from a variety of submissions, mostly related to sport or the State of Washington
• Usernameunique, with 305 points derived from a featured article and two GAs on archaeology and related topics

Contestants managed 4 (5) featured articles, 4 featured lists, 18 featured pictures, 29 good articles, 50 DYK entries, 9 ITN entries, and 39 good article reviews. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them, and it is imperative to claim them in the correct round; one FA claim had to be rejected because it was incorrectly submitted (claimed in Round 3 when it qualified for Round 2), so be warned! 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. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2019

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

Administrator changes

Johnuniq • Kosack • Valereee

Ad Orientem • Ched • Gadfium • Jonathunder • Nick • Yelyos

Bald Zebra • Beetstra • Doug Bell • Journalist • Ruud Koot • Splash • Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

Dinoguy1000

CheckUser changes

RickinBaltimore

Oversight changes

Beeblebrox

RickinBaltimore

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the page Wikipedia:Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
• A request for comment (permalink) is in progress regarding the administrator inactivity policy.

Arbitration

• Editors may now use the template {{Ds/aware}} to indicate that they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for a topic area, so it is unnecessary to alert them.

Miscellaneous

• Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
• The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist.

  Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:24, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 454 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with over 400 points being eliminated, and all but two of the finalists having achieved an FA during the round. Casliber, our 2016 winner, was the highest point-scorer, followed by Enwebb and Lee Vilenski, who are both new to the competition. In fourth place was SounderBruce, a finalist last year. But all those points are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.

Round 4 saw the achievement of 11 featured articles. In addition, Adam Cuerden scored with 18 FPs, Lee Vilenski led the GA score with 8 GAs while Kosack performed 15 GA reviews. There were around 40 DYKs, 40 GARs and 31 GAs overall during round 4. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.

As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. 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 (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).

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 yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2019

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

Administrator changes

Bradv • Chetsford • Izno

Floquenbeam • Lectonar

DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana

CheckUser changes

Callanecc • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

Callanecc • Fox • HJ Mitchell • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Technical news

• Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
• The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2019 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

Miscellaneous

• A global request for comment is in progress regarding whether a user group should be created that could modify edit filters across all public Wikimedia wikis.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

September 2019 GOCE Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2019 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the September newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since June 2019. June election: Reidgreg was chosen as lead coordinator, and is being assisted by Baffle gab1978, Miniapolis, Tdslk, and first-time coordinator Twofingered Typist. Jonesey95 took a respite after serving for six years. Thanks to everyone who participated! June Blitz: From 16 to 22 June, we copy edited articles on the themes of nature and the environment along with requests. 12 participating editors completed 35 copy edits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. July Drive: The year's fourth backlog-elimination drive was a great success, clearing all articles tagged in January and February, and bringing the copy-editing backlog to a low of five months and a record low of 585 articles while also completing 48 requests. Of the 30 people who signed up, 29 copyedited at least one article, a participation level last matched in May 2015. Final results and awards are listed here. August Blitz: From 18 to 24 August, we copy edited articles tagged in March 2019 and requests. 12 participating editors completed 26 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Progress report: As of 03:00, 23 September 2019 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 413 requests since 1 January. The backlog of tagged articles stood at 599 articles, close to our record month-end low of 585. Requests page: We are experimenting with automated archiving of copy edit requests; a discussion on REQ Talk (permalinked) initiated by Bobbychan193 has resulted in Zhuyifei1999 writing a bot script for the Guild. Testing is now underway and is expected to be completed by 3 October; for this reason, no manual archiving of requests should be done until the testing period is over. We will then assess the bot's performance and discuss whether to make this arrangement permanent. September Drive: Our current backlog-elimination drive is open until 23:59 on 30 September (UTC) and is open to all copy editors. Sign up today! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Baffle gab1978, Miniapolis, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:58, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2019

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

Administrator changes

Barkeep49

Beetstra • KillerChihuahua • Kusma

Arcadian • Extraordinary Machine • Xeno

JamesBWatson → JBW

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Oversight changes

Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories.

Technical news

• As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.

Arbitration

• The 2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
• The arbitration case regarding Fram was closed. While there will be a local RfC focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.

Miscellaneous

• The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:55, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 November newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year! Our Champion this year is Adam Cuerden (submissions), who over the course of the competition has amassed 91 featured pictures, including 32 in the final round. Our finalists this year were:

1. Adam Cuerden (submissions) with 964 points
2. Lee Vilenski (submissions) with 899 points
3. Casliber (submissions) with 817 points
4. Kosack (submissions) with 691 points
5. SounderBruce (submissions) with 388 points
6. Enwebb (submissions) with 146 points
7. Usernameunique (submissions) with 145 points
8. HaEr48 (submissions) with 74 points

All those who reached the final will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field. Awards will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!

• Casliber (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for a total of 7 FAs during the course of the competition.
• Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 14 GAs in round 5.
• Yashthepunisher (submissions) wins the featured list prize, for 4 FLs overall.
• Adam Cuerden (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, for 91 FPs overall.
• MPJ-DK (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 7 articles in good topics in round 2.
• Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 14 did you know articles in round 5.
• Muboshgu (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 7 in the news articles in round 1.
• Ed! (submissions) wins the reviewer prize, for 56 good article reviews in round 1.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved much this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.

We have opened a scoring discussion on whether the rules and scoring need adjustment. Please have your say. 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 2020 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. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth 14:18, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2019

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

Administrator changes

GermanJoe • Girth Summit • Kees08 • Nosebagbear

DESiegel • GB fan • MSGJ • Voice of Clam • WilyD

DeltaQuad • Fang Aili • Pakaran

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad • Pakaran

Interface administrator changes

MSGJ

CheckUser changes

L235 • Mz7 • SQL • ST47

Ivanvector

DeltaQuad

Oversight changes

L235 • Mz7 • ST47 • Stwalkerster • The Blade of the Northern Lights • Xaosflux

DeltaQuad • DGG • Julia W

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC was closed with the consensus that the resysop criteria should be made stricter.

• The follow-up RfC to develop that change is now open at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2019 Resysop Criteria (2).

• A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors may now nominate themselves as candidates for the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:15, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed 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 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:12, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019

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

Administrator changes

EvergreenFir • ToBeFree

Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂

CheckUser changes

Beeblebrox

Deskana

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC on the administrator resysop criteria was closed. 18 proposals have been summarised with a variety of supported and opposed statements. The inactivity grace period within which a new request for adminship is not required has been reduced from three years to two. Additionally, Bureaucrats are permitted to use their discretion when returning administrator rights.
• Following a proposal, the edit filter mailing list has been opened up to users with the Edit Filter Helper right.

Technical news

• Wikimedia projects can set a default block length for users via MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry. A new page, MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip, allows the setting of a different default block length for IP editors. Neither is currently used. (T219126)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

Miscellaneous

• The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:48, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

GOCE December 2019 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2019 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the December 2019 GOCE newsletter, an update of Guild happenings since the September edition. Our Annual Report should be ready in late January. Election time: Nominations for the election of a new tranche of Guild coordinators to serve for the first half of 2020 will be open from 1 to 15 December. Voting will then take place and the election will close on 31 December at 23:59 UTC. Positions for Guild coordinators, who perform the important behind-the-scenes tasks that keep our project running smoothly, are open to all Wikipedians in good standing. We welcome self-nominations so please consider nominating yourself if you've ever thought about helping out; it's your Guild and it doesn't run itself! September Drive: Of the thirty-two editors who signed up, twenty-three editors copy edited at least one article; they completed 39 requests and removed 138 articles from the backlog, bringing the backlog to a low of 519 articles. October Blitz: This event ran from 13 to 19 October, with themes of science, technology and transport articles tagged for copy edit, and Requests. Sixteen editors helped remove 29 articles from the backlog and completed 23 requests. November Drive: Of the twenty-eight editors who signed up for this event, twenty editors completed at least one copy edit; they completed 29 requests and removed 133 articles from the backlog. Our December Blitz will run from 15 to 21 December. Sign up now! Progress report: From September to November 2019, GOCE copy editors processed 154 requests. Over the same period, the backlog of articles tagged for copy editing was reduced by 41% to an all-time low of 479 articles. Request archiving: The archiving of completed requests has now been automated. Thanks to Zhuyifei1999 and Bobbychan193, YiFeiBot is now archiving the Requests page. Archiving occurs around 24 hours after a user's signature and one of the templates {{Done}}, {{Withdrawn}} or {{Declined}} are placed below the request. The bot uses the Guild's standard "purpose codes" to determine the way it should archive each request so it's important to use the correct codes and templates. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators; Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Miniapolis, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. >>> Sign up for the December blitz! <<< >>> Participate in the Coordinator elections! <<< To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:05, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2020 WikiCup!

Happy New Year, Happy New Decade and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders and improvers are welcome to take part. 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. We are relaxing the rule that only content on which you have completed significant work during 2020 will count; now to be eligible for points in the competition, you must have completed significant work on the content at some time! Any questions on the rules or on anything else connected to the Cup 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. Good luck! The judges for the WikiCup are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:43, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2020

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

Administrator changes

Dreamy Jazz • Newslinger • Rosguill

Deor • Spartaz • Xeno

Angusmclellan • clpo13 • Edgar181 • Matthewedwards • NCurse

CheckUser changes

Bradv • Casliber • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno

Oversight changes

Bradv • Casliber • DGG • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno

Someguy1221

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment asks whether partial blocks should be enabled on the English Wikipedia. If enabled, this functionality would allow administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces, rather than the entire site.
• A proposal asks whether admins who don't use their tools for a significant period of time (e.g. five years) should have the toolset procedurally removed.
• Following a successful RfC, a whitelist is now available for users whose redirects will be autopatrolled by a bot, removing them from the new pages patrol queue. Admins can add such users to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist after a discussion following the guidelines at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist.

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

• This issue marks three full years of the Admin newsletter. Thanks for reading!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:07, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

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

Administrator changes

Ergo Sum • Nick Moyes • QEDK • Wugapodes

Dennis Brown

Aude • BrownHairedGirl • CALR • Jengod • John Reaves • J.smith • Kim Dent-Brown • K1Bond007 • MECU • Refdoc • RHaworth

CheckUser changes

Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

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

• Voting in the 2020 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2020, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2020, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles. Thank you everyone for your contributions!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:06, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors 2019 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2019 Annual Report Our 2019 Annual Report is now ready for review. Highlights: Overview of Backlog-reduction progress (a record low backlog!); Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page; Automated archiving of requests; Membership news and results of elections; Annual leaderboard; Plans for 2020. – Your Guild coordinators: Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:10, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 57 contestants qualifying. We have abolished the groups this year, so to qualify for Round 3 you will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two contestants.

Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with a featured article, five good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 895 points.
• Gog the Mild came next with 464 points, from a featured article, two good articles and a number of reviews, the main theme being naval warfare.
• Raymie was in third place with 419 points, garnered from one good article and an impressive 34 DYKs on radio and TV stations in the United States.
• Harrias came next at 414, with a featured article and three good articles, an English civil war battle specialist.
• CaptainEek was in fifth place with 405 points, mostly garnered from bringing Cactus wren to featured article status.
• The top ten contestants at the end of Round 1 all scored over 200 points; they also included L293D, Kingsif, Enwebb, Lee Vilenski and CAPTAIN MEDUSA. Seven of the top ten contestants in Round 1 are new to the WikiCup.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. In Round 1 there were four featured articles, one featured list and two featured pictures, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. Between them, contestants completed 127 good article reviews, nearly a hundred more than the 43 good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Contestants also claimed for 40 featured article / featured list reviews, and most even remembered to mention their WikiCup participation in their reviews (a requirement).

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. 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.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! 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. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:47, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup newsletter correction

There was an error in the WikiCup 2020 March newsletter; L293D should not have been included in the list of top ten scorers in Round 1 (they led the list last year), instead, Dunkleosteus77 should have been included, having garnered 334 points from five good articles on animals, living or extinct, and various reviews. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2020

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

Administrator changes

Money emoji

Athaenara • DeltaQuad

Fishhead64 • Kudpung • Mikaey

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad

CheckUser changes

DeltaQuad

Oversight changes

DeltaQuad

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

• Following the 2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: BRPever, Krd, Martin Urbanec, MusikAnimal, Sakretsu, Sotiale, and Tks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
• The 2020 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Ajraddatz and Uzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:21, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

GOCE March newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2020 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the March newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2019. All being well, we're planning to issue these quarterly in 2020, balancing the need to communicate widely with the avoidance of filling up talk pages. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Election results: There was little changeover in the roster of Guild Coordinators, with Miniapolis stepping down with distinction as a coordinator emeritus while Jonesey95 returned as lead coordinator. The next election is scheduled for June 2020 and all Wikipedians in good standing may participate. January Drive: Thanks to everyone for the splendid work, completing 215 copy edits including 56 articles from the Requests page and 116 backlog articles from the target months of June to August 2019. At the conclusion of the drive there was a record low of 323 articles in the copy editing backlog. Of the 27 editors who signed up for the drive, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. February Blitz: Of the 15 editors who signed up for this one-week blitz, 13 completed at least one copy edit. A total of 32 articles were copy edited, evenly split between the twin goals of requests and the oldest articles from the copy-editing backlog. Full results are here. March Drive: Currently underway, this event is targeting requests and backlog articles from September to November 2019. As of 18 March, the backlog stands at a record low of 253 articles and is expected to drop further as the drive progresses. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the backlog. Help set a new record and sign up now! Progress report: As of 18 March, GOCE copyeditors have completed 161 requests in 2020 and there was a net reduction of 385 articles from the copy-editing backlog – a 60% decrease from the beginning of the year. Well done and thank you everyone! Election reminder: It may only be March but don't forget our mid-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2020

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

Administrator changes

Cabayi • Lee Vilenski

Boing! said Zebedee

Jonny-mt • MarkGallagher • PeaceNT

Money emoji → Moneytrees

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork • WereSpielChequers

CheckUser changes

NativeForeigner

Oversight changes

Someguy1221

Daniel Case

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

• There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.

Arbitration

• Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.

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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 May newsletter

The second round of the 2020 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 75 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top ten contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 186 good articles achieved in total by contestants, and the 355 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:

• Epicgenius, with 2333 points from one featured article, forty-five good articles, fourteen DYKs and plenty of bonus points
• Gog the Mild, with 1784 points from three featured articles, eight good articles, a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews and lots of bonus points
• The Rambling Man, with 1262 points from two featured articles, eight good articles and a hundred good article reviews
• Harrias, with 1141 points from two featured articles, three featured lists, ten good articles, nine DYKs and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews
• Lee Vilenski with 869 points, Hog Farm with 801, Kingsif with 719, SounderBruce with 710, Dunkleosteus77 with 608 and MX with 515.

The rules for featured article reviews have been adjusted; reviews may cover three aspects of the article, content, images and sources, and contestants may receive points for each of these three types of review. Please also remember the requirement to mention the WikiCup when undertaking an FAR for which you intend to claim 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. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth. - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:44, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020

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

Administrator changes

Gnangarra • Kaisershatner • Malcolmxl5

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversight changes

HJ Mitchell

Guideline and policy news

• Discretionary sanctions have been authorized for all pages and edits related to COVID-19, to be logged at WP:GS/COVID19.
• Following a recent discussion on Meta-Wiki, the edit filter maintainer global group has been created.
• A request for comment has been proposed to create a new main page editor usergroup.
• A request for comment has been proposed to make the bureaucrat activity requirements more strict.

Technical news

• The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. You can review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page.
• Enterprisey created a script that will show a link to the proper Special:Undelete page when viewing a since-deleted revision, see User:Enterprisey/link-deleted-revs.

Miscellaneous

• A request for comment closed with consensus to create a Village Pump-style page for communication with the Wikimedia Foundation.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020

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

Administrator changes

CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth

Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL

CheckUser changes

SQL

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment asks whether the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) should allowed any unblock request or just private appeals.
• The Wikimedia Foundation announced that they will develop a universal code of conduct for all WMF projects. There is an open local discussion regarding the same.

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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

GOCE June newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2020 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since March 2020. You can unsubscribe from our mailings at any time; see below. All times and dates stated are in UTC. Current events Election time: Nomination of candidates in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 1 June, and voting will take place from 00:01 on 16 June. GOCE coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought about helping out at the Guild, or you know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. June Blitz: This blitz begins at 00:01 on 14 June and ends at 23:59 on 20 June, with themes of articles tagged for copyedit in May 2020 and requests. Drive and blitz reports March Drive: Self-isolation from coronavirus may have played a hand in making this one of our most successful backlog elimination drives. The copy-editing backlog was reduced from 477 to a record low of 118 articles, a 75% reduction. The last four months of 2019 were cleared, reducing the backlog to three months. Fifty requests were also completed, and the total word count of copy-edited articles was 759,945. Of the 29 editors who signed up, 22 completed at least one copy edit. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. April Blitz: This blitz ran from 12 to 18 April with a theme of Indian military history. Of the 18 people who signed up, 14 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed a total of 60 copyedits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. May Drive: This event marked the 10th anniversary of the GOCE's copy-editing drives, and set a goal of diminishing the backlog to just one month of articles, as close to zero articles as possible. We achieved the goal of eliminating all articles that had been tagged prior to the start of the drive, for the first time in our history! Of the 51 editors who signed up, 43 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Other news Progress report: as of 2 June, GOCE participants had processed 328 requests since 1 January, which puts us on pace to exceed any previous year's number of requests. As of the end of the May drive, the backlog stood at just 156 articles, all tagged in May 2020. Outreach: To mark the 10th anniversary of our first Backlog Elimination Drive, The Signpost contributor and GOCE participant Puddleglum2.0 interviewed project coordinators and copy-editors for the journal's April WikiProject Report. The Drive and the current Election of Coordinators have also been covered in The Signpost's May News and Notes page. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 15:46, 5 June 2020 (UTC).

Orphaned non-free image File:European Arboriculture Council.gif

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Thanks for uploading File:European Arboriculture Council.gif. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:35, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2020

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

Administrator changes

Malcolmxl5

John • TheCoffee • Tim!

Creffett → GeneralNotability

DeltaQuad → AmandaNP

CheckUser changes

Bbb23

Interface administrator changes

TonyBallioni

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is in progress to remove the T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) speedy deletion criterion.

Technical news

• Protection templates on mainspace pages are now automatically added by User:MusikBot II (BRFA).

Arbitration

• Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. The RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community.
• The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 July newsletter

The third round of the 2020 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it into the fourth round each had at least 353 points (compared to 68 in 2019). It was a highly competitive round, and a number of contestants were eliminated who would have moved on in earlier years. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• Epicgenius, with one featured article, 28 good articles and 17 DYKs, amassing 1836 points
• The Rambling Man , with 1672 points gained from four featured articles and seventeen good articles, plus reviews of a large number of FACs and GAs
• Gog the Mild, a first time contestant, with 1540 points, a tally built largely on 4 featured articles and related bonus points.

Between them, contestants managed 14 featured articles, 9 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 152 good articles, 136 DYK entries, 55 ITN entries, 65 featured article candidate reviews and 221 good article reviews. Additionally, MPJ-DK added 3 items to featured topics and 44 to good topics. Over the course of the competition, contestants have completed 710 good article reviews, in comparison to 387 good articles submitted for review and promoted. These large numbers are probably linked to a GAN backlog drive in April and May, and the changed patterns of editing during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember 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. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere 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. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:34, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 27

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It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 06:45, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020

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

Administrator changes

Red Phoenix

Euryalus • SQL

Jujutacular • Monty845 • Rettetast • Madchester

Oversight changes

GB fan

Keegan • Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Guideline and policy news

• There is an open request for comment to decide whether to increase the minimum duration a sanction discussion has to remain open (currently 24 hours).
• Speedy deletion criterion T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) has been repealed following a request for comment.
• Speedy deletion criterion X2 (pages created by the content translation tool) has been repealed following a discussion.
• There is a proposal to restrict proposed deletion to confirmed users.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:21, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

July 2020 GOCE drive bling

		The Minor Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Slon02 for copy edits totaling between 1 and 3,999 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE July 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Tdslk (talk) 18:15, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished, with 865 points being required to qualify for the final round, nearly twice as many points as last year. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with 598 and 605 points being eliminated, and all but two of the contestants who reached the final round having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were

• Bloom6132, with 1478 points gained mainly from 5 featured lists, 12 DYKs and 63 in the news items;
• HaEr48 with 1318 points gained mainly from 2 featured articles, 5 good articles and 8 DYKs;
• Lee Vilenski with 1201 points mainly gained from 2 featured articles and 10 good articles.

Between them, contestants achieved 14 featured articles, 14 featured lists, 2 featured pictures, 87 good articles, 90 DYK entries, 75 ITN entries, 95 featured article candidate reviews and 81 good article reviews. Congratulations to all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

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 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to 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 yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:53, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

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

Administrator changes

Eddie891

Angela • Jcw69 • Just Chilling • Philg88 • Viajero

CheckUser changes

SQL

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the minimum length for site ban discussions was increased to 72 hours, up from 24.
• A request for comment is ongoing to determine whether paid editors must or should use the articles for creation process.
• A request for comment is open to resolve inconsistencies between the draftification and alternative to deletion processes.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2020 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
• An open request for comment asks whether active Arbitrators may serve on the Trust and Safety Case Review Committee or Ombudsman commission.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:57, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors September 2020 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2020 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the September GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since June 2020.                  Current and upcoming events September Drive: Our current backlog-elimination drive is open until 23:59 on 30 September (UTC) and is open to all copy editors. Sign up today! Election reminder: our end-of-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 December. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. Drive and Blitz reports June Blitz: An uncorrected typo (even copy editors make copy editing mistakes!) led to an eight-day "leap blitz" from 14 to 21 June, focusing on requests and articles tagged in May. 19 participating editors claimed 54 copy edits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. July Drive: Over 750,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event, keeping pace with the previous three self-isolated drives. Of the 38 people who signed up, 30 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. August Blitz: From 16 to 22 August, we copy edited articles tagged in June and July 2020 and requests. 12 participating editors completed 37 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Other news June election: Jonesey95 was chosen to continue as lead coordinator, assisted by Baffle gab1978, Tdslk, Twofingered Typist, and first-time coordinator Puddleglum2.0. Reidgreg took a break after serving for a couple years. Thanks to everyone who participated! Progress report: As of 01:33, 18 September 2020 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 532 requests since 1 January and there were 38 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 433 (see monthly progress graph above). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Puddleglum2.0, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:02, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

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

Administrator changes

Ajpolino • LuK3

Jackmcbarn

Ad Orientem • Harej • Lid • Lomn • Mentoz86 • Oliver Pereira • XJaM

There'sNoTime → TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created.

Technical news

• The filter log now provides links to view diffs of deleted revisions (phab:T261630).

Arbitration

• The 2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place from September 27th to October 7th.
• Following a request for comment, sitting Committee members may not serve on either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee. The Arbitration Committee passed a motion implementing those results into their procedures.

Miscellaneous

• The Universal Code of Conduct draft is open for community review and comment until October 6th, 2020.
• Office actions may now be appealed to the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:43, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2020

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

Administrator changes

John M Wolfson

Bduke • Nilfanion • Philosopher • Rspeer • Yunshui

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

TonyBallioni

CheckUser changes

EdJohnston • Oshwah • Yamla

Yunshui

Oversight changes

Anarchyte

Yunshui

Guideline and policy news

• Community sanctions now authorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotection any article on a beauty pageant, or biography of a person known as a beauty pageant contestant, which has been edited by a sockpuppet account or logged-out sockpuppet, to be logged at WP:GS/PAGEANT.

Technical news

• Sysops will once again be able to view the deleted history of JS/CSS pages; this was restricted to interface administrators when that group was introduced.
• Twinkle's block module now includes the ability to note the specific case when applying a discretionary sanctions block and/or template.
• Sysops will be able to use Special:CreateLocalAccount to create a local account for a global user that is prevented from auto-creation locally (such as by a filter or range block). Administrators that are not sure if such a creation is appropriate should contact a checkuser.

Arbitration

• The 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections process has begun. Eligible editors will be able to nominate themselves as candidates from November 8 through November 17. The voting period will run from November 23 through December 6.
• The Anti-harassment RfC has concluded with a summary of the feedback provided.

Miscellaneous

• A reminder that standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people. (American Politics 2 Arbitration case).

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:53, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 November newsletter

The 2020 WikiCup has come to an end, with the final round going down to the wire. Our new Champion is Lee Vilenski (submissions), the runner-up last year, who was closely followed by Gog the Mild (submissions). In the final round, Lee achieved 4 FAs and 30 GAs, mostly on cue sport topics, while Gog achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on important battles and wars, which earned him a high number of bonus points. The Rambling Man (submissions) was in third place with 4 FAs and 8 GAs on football topics, with Epicgenius (submissions) close behind with 19 GAs and 16 DYK's, his interest being the buildings of New York.

The other finalists were Hog Farm (submissions), HaEr48 (submissions), Harrias (submissions) and Bloom6132 (submissions). The final round was very productive, and besides 15 FAs, contestants achieved 75 FAC reviews, 88 GAs and 108 GAN reviews. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

All those who reached the final will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field.

• Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for a total of 14 FAs during the course of the competition.
• Bloom6132 (submissions) win the featured list prize, for 5 FLs in round 4.
• Rhododendrites (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, for 3 FPs in round 3 and 5 overall.
• Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 23 FAC reviews in round 5.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 45 GAs in round 2 and 113 overall.
• MPJ-DK (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 33 articles in good topics in round 2.
• The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize, for 100 good article reviews in round 2.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 22 Did you know articles in round 4 and 94 overall.
• Bloom6132 (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 63 In the news articles in round 4 and 136 overall.

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 2021 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. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:38, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed 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 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:27, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2020

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

Administrator changes

Andrwsc • Anetode • GoldenRing • JzG • LinguistAtLarge • Nehrams2020

Interface administrator changes

Izno

Guideline and policy news

• There is a request for comment in progress to either remove T3 (duplicated and hardcoded instances) as a speedy deletion criterion or eliminate its seven-day waiting period.

Technical news

• Voting for proposals in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey, which determines what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year, will take place from 8 December through 21 December. In particular, there are sections regarding administrators and anti-harassment.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 7 December 2020 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

December 2020 Guild of Copy Editors Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2020 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the December GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since September 2020.                  Current and upcoming events Election time: our end-of-year Election of Coordinators opened for nominations on 1 December and will close on 15 December at 23:59 (UTC). Voting opens at 00:01 the following day and will continue until 31 December at 23:59, just before Auld Lang Syne. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. December Blitz: This will run from 13 to 19 December, and will target all Requests. Sign up now. Drive and Blitz reports September Drive: 67 fewer articles had copy-edit templates by this month's close. Of the 27 editors who signed up, 15 copy-edited at least one article, and 124 articles were claimed for the drive. October Blitz: this ran from 18 to 24 October, and focused on articles tagged for copy-edit in July and August 2020, and all Requests. Of the 13 who signed up, 11 editors copy-edited at least one article. 21 articles were claimed for the blitz. November Drive: Of the 18 editors who signed up, 15 copy-edited at least one article, and together claimed 134 articles. At the close of the drive, 67 fewer articles were in the backlog and we had dealt with 39 requests. Other news Progress report: As of 09:05, 3 December 2020 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 663 requests (18 from 2019) since 1 January and there were 52 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 494 (see monthly progress graph above). Annual Report for 2020: this roundup of the year's activity at the Guild is planned for publication in late January or early February. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Seasonal tidings and cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Puddleglum2.0, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:47, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2021 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. 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. We thank Vanamonde93 and Godot13, who have retired as judges, and we thank them for their past dedication. The judges for the WikiCup this year are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:11, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2021

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

Administrator changes

Hammersoft

Andres • Brion VIBBER • Rkitko • Thatcher

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek • Primefac

Oversight changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek

Joe Roe

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion T3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following a request for comment.

Technical news

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time.

Arbitration

• By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes). The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason).
• Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, L235, Maxim, Primefac.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:08, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2021

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

Administrator changes

Hog Farm

Mattflaschen • Nandesuka • Savidan • Wangi

CheckUser changes

Berean Hunter • Xeno

Oversight changes

Someguy1221 • Xeno

Arbitration

• The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover post-1992 politics of United States and closely related people, replacing the 1932 cutoff.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2021 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2021, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2021, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Wikipedia has now been around for 20 years, and recently saw its billionth edit!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:10, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021

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

Administrator changes

TJMSmith

Boing! said Zebedee • Hiberniantears • Lear's Fool • Only • WGFinley

Interface administrator changes

AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a 2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
• A request for comment is in progress to remove F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• A request for comment seeks to grant page movers the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target. The full proposal is at Wikipedia:Page mover/delete-redirect.
• A request for comment asks if sysops may place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?
• There is a discussion in progress concerning automatic protection of each day's featured article with Pending Changes protection.

Technical news

• When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
• When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
• There have been a number of reported issues with Pending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (phab:T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (phab:T275322).

Arbitration

• By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions.
• The Kurds and Kurdistan case was closed, authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AmandaNP, Operator873, Stanglavine, Teles, and Wiki13.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:15, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 March newsletter

Round 1 of the competition has finished; it was a high-scoring round with 21 contestants scoring more than 100 points. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 55 contestants qualifying. You will need to finish among the top thirty-two contestants in Round 2 if you are to qualify for Round 3. Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius led the field with a featured article, nine good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 945 points.
• Bloom6132 was close behind with 896 points, largely gained from 71 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
• ImaginesTigers, who has been editing Wikipedia for less than a year, was in third place with 711 points, much helped by bringing League of Legends to featured article status, exemplifying how bonus points can boost a contestant's score.
• Amakuru came next with 708 points, Kigali being another featured article that scored maximum bonus points.
• Ktin, new to the WikiCup, was in fifth place with 523 points, garnered from 15 DYKs and 34 "In the news" items.
• The Rambling Man scored 511 points, many from featured article candidate reviews and from football related DYKs.
• Gog the Mild, last year's runner-up, came next with 498 points, from a featured article and numerous featured article candidate reviews.
• Hog Farm, at 452, scored for a featured article, four good articles and a number of reviews.
• Le Panini, another newcomer to the WikiCup, scored 438 for a featured article and three good articles.
• Lee Vilenski, last year's champion, scored 332 points, from a featured article and various other sport-related topics.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. In Round 1, contestants achieved eight featured articles, three featured lists and one featured picture, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. They completed 97 good article reviews, nearly double the 52 good articles they claimed. Contestants also claimed for 135 featured article and featured list candidate reviews. There is no longer a requirement to mention your WikiCup participation when undertaking these reviews.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. 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 a good article candidate, a featured process, or something else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! 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) 20:27, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021

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

Administrator changes

Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.

Technical news

• When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
• Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)

Arbitration

• A community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 May newsletter

The second round of the 2021 WikiCup has now finished; it was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 61 points to advance to Round 3. There were some impressive efforts in the round, with the top eight contestants all scoring more than 400 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 110 good articles achieved in total by contestants, as well as the 216 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.

Our top scorers in Round 2 were:

• The Rambling Man, with 2963 points from three featured articles, 20 featured article reviews, 37 good articles, 73 good article reviews, as well as 22 DYKs.
• Epicgenius, with 1718 points from one featured article, 29 good articles, 16 DYKs and plenty of bonus points.
• Bloom6132, with 990 points from 13 DYKs and 64 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
• Hog Farm, with 834 points from two featured articles, five good articles, 14 featured article reviews and 15 good article reviews.
• Gog the Mild, with 524 points from two featured articles and four featured article reviews.
• Lee Vilenski, with 501 points from one featured article, three good articles, six featured article reviews and 25 good article reviews.
• Sammi Brie, with 485 points from four good articles, eight good article reviews and 27 DYKs, on US radio and television stations.
• Ktin, with 436 points from four good articles, seven DYKs and 11 "In the news" items.

Please remember 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 (except for at the end of each round, when you must claim them before the cut-off date/time). 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. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:28, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021

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

Administrator changes

Enchanter • Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that third party appeals are allowed but discouraged.
• The 2021 Desysop Policy RfC was closed with no consensus. Consensus was found in a previous RfC for a community based desysop procedure, though the procedure proposed in the 2021 RfC did not gain consensus.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

• The community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2021

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

Administrator changes

Ashleyyoursmile • Less Unless

Husond • MattWade • MJCdetroit • Carioca • Vague Rant • Kingboyk • Thunderboltz • Gwen Gale • AniMate • SlimVirgin (deceased)

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus was reached to deprecate Wikipedia:Editor assistance.
• Following a Request for Comment the Book namespace was deprecated.

Technical news

• Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.

Arbitration

• After a Clarification request, the Arbitration Committee modified Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case. This means sourcing expectations are a discretionary sanction instead of being present on all articles. It also details using the talk page or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard to discuss disputed sources.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:46, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

GOCE June 2021 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2021 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, our first newsletter of 2021, which is a brief update of Guild activities since December 2020. To unsubscribe, follow the link at the bottom of this box. Current events Election time: Voting in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 16 June and will conclude at the end of the month. GOCE coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Have your say and show support here. June Blitz: Our June copy-editing blitz is underway and will conclude on 26 June. Drive and blitz reports January Drive: 28 editors completed 324 copy edits totalling 714,902 words. At the end of the drive, the backlog had reached a record low of 52 articles. (full results) February Blitz: 15 editors completed 48 copy edits totalling 142,788 words. (full results) March Drive: 29 editors completed 215 copy edits totalling 407,736 words. (full results) April Blitz: 12 editors completed 23 copy edits totalling 56,574 words. (full results) May Drive: 29 editors completed 356 copy edits totalling 479,013 words. (full results) Other news Progress report: as of 26 June, GOCE participants had completed 343 Requests since 1 January. The backlog has fluctuated but remained in control, with a low of 52 tagged articles at the end of January and a high of 620 articles in mid-June. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Tenryuu and Twofingered Typist, and from member Reidgreg. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors at 12:38, 26 June 2021 (UTC).

WikiCup 2021 July newsletter

The third round of the 2021 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 294 points, and our top six scorers all had over 600 points. They were:

• The Rambling Man, with 1825 points from 3 featured articles, 44 featured article reviews, 14 good articles, 30 good article reviews and 10 DYKs. In addition, he completed a 34-article good topic on the EFL Championship play-offs.
• Epicgenius, a New York specialist, with 1083 points from 2 featured article reviews, 18 good articles, 30 DYKs and plenty of bonus points.
• Bloom6132, with 869 points from 11 DYKs, all with bonus points, and 54 "In the news" items, mostly covering people who had recently died.
• Gog the Mild, with 817 points from 3 featured articles on historic battles in Europe, 5 featured article reviews and 3 good articles.
• Hog Farm, with 659 points from 2 featured articles and 2 good articles on American Civil War battles, 18 featured article reviews, 2 good articles, 6 good article reviews and 4 DYKs.
• BennyOnTheLoose, a snooker specialist and new to the Cup, with 647 points from a featured article, 2 featured article reviews, 6 good articles, 6 good article reviews and 3 DYKs.

In round three, contestants achieved 19 featured articles, 7 featured lists, 106 featured article reviews, 72 good articles, 1 good topic, 62 good article reviews, 165 DYKs and 96 ITN items. We enter the fourth round with scores reset to zero; any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (one contestant in round 3 lost out because of this). 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. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

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

Administrator changes

Trialpears

AGK • Eliz81 • Mulad • ThaddeusB • Vianello • Who

Lacrimosus → Ikuzaf

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

AGK • DGG

Oversighter changes

AGK

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
• An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.

Technical news

• IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.

Arbitration

• The community authorised COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:27, 3 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

TheresNoTime

Oversighter changes

TheresNoTime

ST47

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) 14:19, 1 August 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) 13:02, 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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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

September 2021 Guild of Copy Editors newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2021 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the September GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since June 2021.                  Current and upcoming events September Drive: Our current backlog-elimination drive is open until 23:59 on 30 September (UTC) and is open to all copy editors. Sign up today! Drive and Blitz reports June Blitz: From 20 to 26 June, 6 participating editors claimed 16 copy edits, focusing on requests and articles tagged in March and April. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. July Drive: Almost 575,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 24 people who signed up, 18 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. August Blitz: From 15 to 21 August, we copy edited articles tagged in April and May 2021 and requests. 9 participating editors completed 17 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Other news June election: Jonesey95 was chosen to continue as lead coordinator, assisted by Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. New maintenance template added to our project scope: After a short discussion in June, we added {{cleanup tense}} to the list of maintenance templates that adds articles to the Guild's copy editing backlog categories. This change added 198 articles, spread over 97 months of backlog, to our queue. We processed all of those articles except for those from the three or four most recent months during the July backlog elimination drive (Here's a link to a "tense" discussion during the drive). Progress report: As of 18:26, 24 September 2021 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 468 requests since 1 January and there were 60 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 433 (see monthly progress graph above). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 30 September 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) 17:05, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

September drive bling

		The Minor Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Slon02 for copy edits totaling between 1 and 3,999 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE September 2021 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:22, 4 October 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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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 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) 19:56, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. All eligible users are allowed 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 2021 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:32, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021

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

Administrator changes

A Train • Berean Hunter • Epbr123 • GermanJoe • Sanchom • Mysid

Technical news

• Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
• The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections is open until 23:59, 06 December 2021 (UTC).
• The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, have been made permanent.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

December 2021 GOCE Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2021 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the December GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since September 2021.                  Current and upcoming events Election time: Our end-of-year election of coordinators opened for nominations on 1 December and will close on 15 December at 23:59 (UTC). Voting opens at 00:01 the following day and will continue until 31 December at 23:59, just before "Auld Lang Syne". Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. December Blitz: We have scheduled a week-long copy-editing blitz for 12 to 18 December. Sign up now! Drive and Blitz reports September Drive: Almost 400,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 27 people who signed up, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. October Blitz: From 17 to 23 October, we copy edited articles tagged in May and June 2021 and requests. 8 participating editors completed 26 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. November Drive: Over 350,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 21 people who signed up, 14 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. Other news It is with great sadness that we report the death on 19 November of Twofingered Typist, who was active with the Guild almost daily for the past several years. His contributions long exceeded the thresholds for the Guild's highest awards, and he had a hand in innumerable good and featured article promotions as a willing collaborator. Twofingered Typist also served as a Guild coordinator from July 2019 to June 2021. He is sorely missed by the Wikipedia community. Progress report: As of 30 November, GOCE copyeditors have completed 619 requests in 2021 and there were 51 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog stood at 946 articles tagged for copy-editing (see monthly progress graph above). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Distributed via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:03, 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. 20:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Wishing Slon02 a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Birthday Committee! Best wishes! CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 19:53, 20 December 2021 (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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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:25, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:14, 4 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) 14:37, 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) 15:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup & the Good Article Nomination Backlog Drive

Hi there, you're receiving this note because you're currently signed up for the 2022 WikiCup and don't yet have any points in the competition. As you may know, scoring any points in the first round is traditionally sufficient to advance to the second, and a fast way to get 5 points is to complete a good article review. Given that the January 2022 Good Article Nomination Backlog Drive is active for another 10 days, you might be interested in pitching in. Complete one review, and you'll be on to the next round in WikiCup; complete two or three, and you'll also be eligible to win some barnstars. As always, quality reviews with attention to detail are expected. Cheers, --Usernameunique (talk) 19:43, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

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

Administrator changes

AustralianRupert • Cimon Avaro • Euryalus • Jehochman • Nunh-huh

28bytes

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ragesoss

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.
• The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

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).
• A motion related to the Antisemitism in Poland case was passed following a declined case request.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2022 Steward elections will begin on 07 February 2022, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2022, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey is open until 11 February 2022.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:02, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Category:2015 establishments in Nagaland

Hello, Slon02,

Is there a reason you decided to delete this category early? Typically categories that are tagged as empty categories, CSD C1, sit for a week in Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion and they will be eligible for deletion after that tag has remained in place for seven days, in case the empty status is temporary. Sometimes category are emptied "out of process" and the emptying has to be reverted which is why there is no urgency to delete them. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:07, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

No reason other than what looks like a clear mistake on my part - thank you for catching that! I've restored the page. --Slon02 (talk) 04:42, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

219.88.224.0/21

• 219.88.224.0/21 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · block user · block log)

Thanks for blocking that range. But, would it possible to consider a longer than one week block? In my experience most people don't look at the contributions of larger ranges before reporting, and most admins also don't look before blocking. So what's going to happen after a week is that various individual IPs are going to get reported and blocked, again and again, and everyone will be satisfied to have "done something", but meanwhile thousands of more edits will be made from the range. I would think there's enough evidence for a one-year (or more) block.

And yes, I know people showing up on your talk page to yell at you is one the reasons why some admins avoid AIV. I don't usually do this. But I see an opportunity to WP:PREVENT maybe 1000-2000 disruptive edits with a single click. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:49, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate you bringing that up, and it's a fair point. I increased the block period to 3 months. I'm cautious to even do that because it's an IP rangeblock, but the edit history is pretty consistent and there isn't much evidence of constructive editors who'd be caught up in it. We haven't tried a rangeblock beyond a week before on that range, so hopefully something of this length would cause word to get around and hopefully they'll give up and stop trying to see if they can edit after a while.--Slon02 (talk) 01:02, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I've often wondered why some school ranges look like this, and others don't. Is it just the ratio of students to IPs? Is it a few "bad apples"? Are the staff at some schools clueless enough to think that any kid viewing Wikipedia is "doing research"? Do they just not care? Anyway thanks for increasing the block length. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:43, 16 February 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) 01:47, 2 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) 12:07, 3 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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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:14, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

GOCE April 2022 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors April 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the April newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2021. Election results: Jonesey95 retired as lead coordinator. Reidgreg was approved to fill this role after an 18-month absence from the coordinator team, and Baffle gab1978 was chosen as an assistant coordinator following a one-year break. Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu continued on as long-standing assistant coordinators. January Drive: Of the 22 editors who signed up, 16 editors claimed 146 copy edits including 45 requests. (details) February Blitz: This one-week effort focused on requests and a theme of Africa and African diaspora history. Of the 12 editors who signed up, 6 editors recorded 21 copy edits, including 4 requests. (details) March Drive: Of the 28 editors who signed up, 18 claimed 116 copy edits including 25 requests. (details) April Blitz: This one-week copy editing event has been scheduled for 17–23 April, sign up now! Progress report: As of 11 April, copy editors have removed approximately 500 articles from the backlog and completed 127 copy-editing requests during 2022. The backlog has been hovering at about 1,100 tagged articles for the past six months. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

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.

22:53, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

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)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022

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

Administrator changes

Colin M

David.Monniaux • Fribbler • Grue • Kpjas • West.andrew.g

CheckUser changes

Ks0stm

Oversighter changes

Ks0stm

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, a change has been made to the administrators inactivity policy. Under the new policy, if an administrator has not made at least 100 edits over a period of 5 years they may be desysopped for inactivity.
• Following a discussion on the bureaucrat's noticeboard, a change has been made to the bureaucrats inactivity policy.

Technical news

• The ability to undelete the associated talk page when undeleting a page has been added. This was the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
• A public status system for WMF wikis has been created. It is located at https://www.wikimediastatus.net/ and is hosted separately to WMF wikis so in the case of an outage it will remain viewable.

Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the St Christopher case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to place a ban on single-purpose accounts who were disruptively editing on the article St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine or related pages from those pages.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:35, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2022

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

Administrator changes

Tamzin

Barek • Darkwind • Geometry guy • ProcseeBot • RoyBoy • Sean Whitton • Valereee • Visorstuff • WAvegetarian

Sn0wflake → VersedFenrir

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

• Several areas of improvement collated from community member votes have been identified in the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines. The areas of improvement have been sent back for review and you are invited to provide input on these areas.

Technical news

• Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
• The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.

Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the Rachel Marsden case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to delete or reduce to a stub, together with their talk pages, articles related to Rachel Marsden when they violate Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy.
• An arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been closed.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

June GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June 2022 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since April 2022. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Blitz: of the 16 editors who signed up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, 12 completed at least one copy-edit, and between them removed 21 articles from the copy-editing backlog. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: 27 editors signed up for our May Backlog Elimination Drive; of these, 20 copy-edited at least one article. 144 articles were copy-edited, and 88 articles from our target months August and September 2021 were removed from the backlog. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: our June Copy Editing Blitz, starting at 00:01, 19 June and closing at 00:59, 25 June (UTC), will focus on articles tagged for copy edit in September and October 2021, and requests from March, April and May 2022. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 07:12, 14 June 2022 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 209 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 1,404 articles. Election news: Nominations for our half-yearly Election of Coordinators continues until 23:50 on 15 June (UTC), after which, voting will commence until 23:59, 30 June (UTC). All Wikipedians in good standing (active and not blocked, banned, or under ArbCom or community sanctions) are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:39, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 July newsletter

The third round of the 2022 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 180 points, which is a lower figure than last year when 294 points were needed to progress to round 4. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• BennyOnTheLoose, with 746 points, a tally built both on snooker and other sports topics, and on more general subjects.
• Bloom6132, with 683 points, garnered mostly from "In the news" items and related DYKs.
• Sammi Brie, with 527, from a variety of submissions related to radio and television stations.

Between them contestants achieved 5 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 51 good articles, 149 DYK entries, 68 ITN entries, and 109 good article reviews. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember 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. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article nomination, 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. WikiCup judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022

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

Administrator changes

AA • Gwalla • Ioeth • Laurascudder • Moriori (deceased) • Nat • Rfl

Drilnoth → AFigureOfBlue

Bureaucrat changes

Lee Vilenski

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

Technical news

• user_global_editcount is a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding conduct in deletion-related editing has been opened.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:29, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022

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

Administrator changes

Valereee

Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • Capitalistroadster • Samsara

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
• An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.

Technical news

• The Wikimania 2022 Hackathon will take place virtually from 11 August to 14 August.
• Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)

Arbitration

• The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

• You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
• Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
• Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022

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

Administrator changes

DanCherek • DatGuy • Femke • Z1720

Aldux • Graham Beards • Nyttend

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Guideline and policy news

• A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
• An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.

Technical news

• The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
• The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
• The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

• The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
• Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:13, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 September newsletter

The fourth round of the WikiCup has now finished. 383 points were required to reach the final, and the new round has got off to a flying start with all finalists already scoring. In round 4, Bloom6132 with 939 points was the highest points-scorer, with a combination of DYKs and In the news items, followed by BennyOnTheLoose, Sammi Brie and Lee Vilenski. The points of all contestants are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.

At this stage, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; 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 the remaining competitors, 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, and importantly, before the deadline on October 31st!

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 yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. The judges are Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:44, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2022

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

Administrator changes

ScottishFinnishRadish

Staxringold

Ahoerstemeier (deceased) • Ched

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678

CheckUser changes

GorillaWarfare

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that if the rationale for a block depends on information that is not available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee, a checkuser or an oversighter for action (as applicable, per ArbCom's recent updated guidance) instead of the administrator making the block.
• Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
• Community comment on the revised Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines is requested until 8 October.

Technical news

• The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.

Arbitration

• Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
• A modification to the deletion RfC remedy in the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been made to reaffirm the independence of the RfC and allow the moderators to split the RfC in two.
• The second phase of the 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review closes 3 October.

Miscellaneous

• An administrator's account was recently compromised. Administrators are encouraged to check that their passwords are secure, and reminded that ArbCom reserves the right to not restore adminship in cases of poor account security. You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to provide an extra level of security.
• Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections open 2 October and close 8 October.
• You are invited to comment on candidates in the 2022 CUOS appointments process.
• An RfC is open to discuss whether to make Vector 2022 the default skin on desktop.
• Tech tip: You can do a fuzzy search of all deleted page titles at Special:Undelete.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:43, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors' October 2022 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors October 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Drive: Of the 22 editors who signed up for our July Backlog Elimination Drive, 18 copy-edited, between them, 116 articles. Barnstars awarded are noted here. Blitz: Participants in our August Copy Editing Blitz copy-edited 51,074 words in 17 articles. Of the 15 editors who signed up, 11 claimed at least one copy-edit. Barnstars awarded are noted here. Drive: Forty-one editors took part in our September Backlog Elimination Drive; between them they copy-edited 199 articles. Barnstars awards are noted here. Blitz: Our October Copy Editing Blitz begins on 16 October at 00:01 (UTC) and will end on 22 October at 23:59 (UTC). Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 19:57, 12 October 2022 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 303 requests for copy edit – including withdrawn and declined ones – since 1 January. At the time of writing, there are 77 requests awaiting attention and the backlog of tagged articles stands at 1,759. We always need more active, skilled copyeditors – particularly for requests – so please get involved if you can. Election news: In our mid-year election, serving coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Reidgreg and Tenryuu were returned for another term, and were joined by new coordinator Zippybonzo. No lead coordinator was elected for this half-year. Jonesey95, a long-serving coordinator and lead, was elected as coordinator emeritus; we thank them for their service. Thank you to everyone who took part. Our next election of coordinators takes place throughout December. If you'd like to help out at the GOCE, please consider nominating yourself or other suitable editors (with their permission, of course!). It's your Guild, after all! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Reidgreg, Tenryuu and Zippybonzo. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Baffle☿gab 03:07, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022

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

Administrator changes

• 
  • Isabelle Belato
  • Whpq
• 
• 
  • Atama
  • Astronautics~enwiki
  • Athaenara
  • Eddie891
  • GraemeL
  • Marianocecowski
  • Natalya
  • Pratyeka
  • SB Johnny

Interface administrator changes

• TheresNoTime
• Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

• 
  • Blablubbs
  • Firefly
• Joe Roe

Oversight changes

• DGG

Guideline and policy news

• The article creation at scale RfC opened on 3 October and will be open until at least 2 November.
• An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 13 November 2022 until 22 November 2022 to stand in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The arbitration case request titled Athaenara has been resolved by motion.
• The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has entered the proposed decision stage.
• AmandaNP, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections. Xaosflux and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of two new CheckUsers.
• You can add yourself to the centralised page listing time zones of administrators.
• Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like {{rangeblock|create=yes}} or {{uw-ublock|contains profanity}}.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:23, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 November newsletter

The 2022 WikiCup has drawn to a close with the final round going down to the wire. The 2022 champion is

• Lee Vilenski (1752 points), who won in 2020 and was runner up in both 2019 and last year. In the final round he achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on cue sports. He was closely followed by
• Bloom6132 (1732), who specialised in "In the news" items and DYKs, and who has reached the final round of the Cup for the past three years. Next was
• BennyOnTheLoose (1238), another cue sports enthusiast, also interested in songs, followed by
• Muboshgu (1082), an "In the news" contributor, a seasoned contestant who first took part in the Cup ten years ago. Other finalists were
• Sammi Brie (930), who scored with a featured article, good articles and DYKs on TV and radio stations,
• Kavyansh.Singh (370), who created various articles on famous Americans, including an FA on Louis H. Bean, famed for his prediction of election outcomes. Next was
• PCN02WPS (292), who scored with good articles and DYKs on sporting and other topics and
• Z1720 (25) who had DYKs on various topics including historic Canadians.

During the WikiCup, contestants achieved 37 featured articles, 349 good articles, 360 featured article reviews, 683 good article reviews and 480 In the news items, so Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors. Well done everyone! All those who reached the final round will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or the overall leader in this field.

• Lee Vilenski wins the featured article prize, for a total of 6 FAs during the course of the competition and 3 in the final round.
• Kavyansh.Singh wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 2.
• Adam Cuerden wins the featured picture prize, for 39 FPs during the competition.
• Z1720 wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 35 FARs in round 4.
• Epicgenius wins the good article prize, for 32 GAs in round 1.
• SounderBruce wins the featured topic prize, for 4 FT articles in round 1.
• Lee Vilenski wins the good topic prize, for 34 GT articles in round 5.
• Sammi Brie wins the good article reviewer prize, for 71 GARs overall.
• Sammi Brie wins the Did you know prize, for 30 DYKs in round 3 and 106 overall.
• Bloom6132 wins the In the news prize, for 106 ITNs in round 5 and 289 overall.

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January and possible changes to the rules and scoring are being discussed on the discussion page. You are invited to sign up to take part in the contest; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to have a good turnout for the 2023 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners and finalists, 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) 19:28, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed 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 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:41, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2022

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

Administrator changes

• Eddie891
• Euryalus
• TheresNoTime

• Alex.muller
• Excirial
• RedWordSmith
• Ron Ritzman
• TheresNoTime
• Stephen

Interface administrator changes

TheresNoTime

TheresNoTime

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been found in an RfC to automatically place RfAs on hold after one week.
• The article creation at scale RfC has been closed.
• An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.

Technical news

• A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)

Arbitration

• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
• The proposed decision for the 2021-22 review of the discretionary sanctions system is open.
• The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has been closed.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
• A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add /64 to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:44, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since October. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Blitz: Our October Copy Editing Blitz focused on July and August 2022 request months; and articles tagged for c/e in December 2021 and January 2022. Seventeen of those who signed up claimed at least one copy-edit, and between them copy-edited forty-six articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: In the November Backlog Elimination Drive, thirty editors signed up, twenty-two of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Both target months—December 2021 and January 2022—were cleared, and February was added to the target months. Sixteen requests were copy-edited and 239 articles were removed from the backlog. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: Our seven-day-long December 2022 Copy Editing Blitz begins on 17 December at 00:01 (UTC)*. It will focus on articles tagged for copy-edit in February 2022, and pending requests from September and October. Barnstars awarded will be available here. Progress report: As of 22:40, 8 December 2022, GOCE copyeditors have processed 357 requests since 1 January, there were seventy-four requests outstanding and the backlog stands at 1,791 articles. We always need skilled copy-editors; please help out if you can. Election news: Nomination of candidates for the GOCE's Election of Coordinators for the first half of 2023 is open and continues until 23:59 on 15 December. Voting begins at 00:01 on 16 December and closes at 23:59 on 31 December. All editors in good standing (not under ArbCom or community sanctions) are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed. Coordinators serve a six-month term that ends at 23:59 on June 30. If you've thought about helping out at the Guild, please nominate yourself or any editor you consider suitable—with their permission, of course!. It's your Guild and it doesn't coordinate itself. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers and best seasonal wishes from your GOCE coordinators, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Tenryuu, and Zippybonzo. *All times and dates on this newsletter are UTC. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by Baffle gab1978 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:26, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter error

The GOCE December 2022 newsletter, as sent on 9 December, contains an erroneous start date for our December Blitz. The Blitz will start on 11 December rather than on 17 December, as stated in the newsletter. I'm sorry for the mistake and for disrupting your talk page; thanks for your understanding. Sent by Baffle gab1978 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:30, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Happy Eleventh Adminship Anniversary!

Wishing Slon02 a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Chris Troutman (talk) 20:19, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2023 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2023 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 ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or 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) 14:16, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023

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

Administrator changes

• ComplexRational
• Extraordinary Writ

Stephen

• Andrew Yong
• Dbenbenn
• DESiegel
• GlassCobra
• Joe Decker
• Nancy
• Pathoschild
• StuffOfInterest
• William Pietri
• Wwwwolf
• Xdamr

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

CheckUser changes

Moneytrees

• Ivanvector
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• GeneralNotability
• Moneytrees

• Guerillero
• SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.

Arbitration

• Following the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, CaptainEek, GeneralNotability, Guerillero, L235, Moneytrees, Primefac, SilkTork.
• The 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review has concluded with many changes to the discretionary sanctions procedure including a change of the name to "contentious topics". The changes are being implemented over the coming month.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
• Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).

Administrator changes

Gimmetrow

• Bjelleklang
• Bob the Wikipedian
• Leithp
• WhisperToMe
• 100 inactive admins

CheckUser changes

• BDD
• Bradv
• Donald Albury
• Maxim
• MusikAnimal

Oversighter changes

• BDD
• Bradv
• Donald Albury
• Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the administrator policy now requires that prior written consent be gained from the Arbitration Committee to mark a block as only appealable to the committee.
• Following a community discussion, consensus has been found to impose the extended-confirmed restriction over the topic areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan and Kurds and Kurdistan.

Technical news

• The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 24 February 2023.
• In December, the contentious topics procedure was adopted which replaces the former discretionary sanctions system. The contentious topics procedure is now in effect following an initial implementation period. There is a detailed summary of the changes and administrator instructions for the new procedure. The arbitration clerk team are taking suggestions, concerns, and unresolved questions about this new system at their noticeboard.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
• Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:38, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors 2022 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2022 Annual Report Our 2022 Annual Report is now ready for review. Highlights: Overview of Backlog-reduction progress Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page Membership news and results of elections Closing words – Your Guild coordinators: Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by Baffle gab1978 using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:30, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).

Administrator changes

The Wordsmith

• Fuhghettaboutit
• Spinningspark (deceased)

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F10 (useless non-media files) has been deprecated.
• Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
• A request for comment is open to discuss making the closing instructions for the requested moves process a guideline.

Technical news

• The results of the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey have been posted.

Arbitration

• Remedy 11 ("Request for Comment") of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been rescinded.
• The proposed decision for the Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case is expected 7 March 2023.
• A case related to the Holocaust in Poland is expected to be opened soon.

Miscellaneous

• The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
• Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
• The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:20, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

WikiCup 2023 March newsletter

So ends the first round of the 2023 WikiCup. Everyone with a positive score moved on to Round 2, with 54 contestants qualifying. The top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Unlimitedlead with 1205 points, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with two featured articles on historical figures and several featured article candidate reviews.
• Epicgenius was in second place with 789 points; a seasoned WikiCup competitor he specialises in buildings and locations in New York.
• FrB.TG was in third place with 625 points, garnered from a featured article on a filmmaker which qualified for an impressive number of bonus points.
• TheJoebro64, another WikiCup newcomer, came next with 600 points gained from two featured articles on video games.
• Iazyges was in fifth place with 532 points, from two featured articles on classical history.

The top sixteen contestants at the end of Round 1 had all scored over 300 points; these included LunaEatsTuna, Thebiguglyalien, Sammi Brie, Trainsandotherthings, Lee Vilenski, Juxlos, Unexpectedlydian, SounderBruce, Kosack, BennyOnTheLoose and PCN02WPS. It was a high-scoring start to the competition.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. The first round finished on February 26. Remember that any content promoted after that date but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. 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.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! 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 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:37, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors March 2023 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2023 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the March 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since December and our Annual Report for 2022. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. We extend a warm welcome to all of our new members, including those who have signed up for our current March Backlog Elimination Drive. We wish you all happy copy-editing. Election results: In our December 2022 coordinator election, Reidgreg and Tenryuu stepped down as coordinators; we thank them for their service. Incumbents Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo were returned as coordinators until 1 July. For the second time, no lead coordinator was chosen. Nominations for our mid-year Election of Coordinators open on 1 June (UTC). Drive: 21 editors signed up for our January Backlog Elimination Drive, 14 of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 170 articles totaling 389,737 words. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: Our February Copy Editing Blitz focused on October and November 2022 requests, and the March and April 2022 backlogs. Of the 14 editors who signed up, nine claimed at least one copy-edit; and between them, they copy-edited 39,150 words in 22 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: Sign up now for our month-long March Backlog Elimination Drive. Barnstars awarded will be posted here after the drive closes. Progress report: As of 12:08, 19 March 2023 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 73 requests since 1 January 2023, all but five of them from 2022, and the backlog stands at 1,872 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2023).

Administrator changes

Aoidh

KillerChihuahua

CheckUser changes

Ferret

Guideline and policy news

• A community RfC is open to discuss whether reports primarily involving gender-related disputes or controversies should be referred to the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard.

Technical news

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis starting this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. (T178356)
• The rollback of Vector 2022 RfC has found no consensus to rollback to Vector legacy, but has found rough consensus to disable "limited width" mode by default.
• A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will now appear in the subtitle links shown on Special:Contributions. This was voted #17 in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023.

Arbitration

• The Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case has been closed.
• A case about World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been opened, with the first evidence phase closing 6 April 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:11, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

WikiCup 2023 May newsletter

The second round of the 2023 WikiCup has now finished. Contestants needed to have scored 60 points to advance into round 3. Our top five scorers in round 2 all included a featured article among their submissions and each scored over 500 points. They were:

• Iazyges (1040) with three FAs on Byzantine emperors, and lots of bonus points.
• Unlimitedlead (847), with three FAs on ancient history, one GA and nine reviews.
• Epicgenius (636), a WikiCup veteran, with one FA on the New Amsterdam Theatre, four GAs and eleven DYKs
• BennyOnTheLoose (553), a seasoned competitor, with one FA on snooker, six GAs and seven reviews.
• FrB.TG (525), with one FA, a Lady Gaga song and a mass of bonus points.

Other notable performances were put in by Sammi Brie, Thebiguglyalien, MyCatIsAChonk, PCN02WPS, and AirshipJungleman29.

So far contestants have achieved thirteen featured articles between them, one being a joint effort, and forty-nine good articles. The judges are pleased with the thorough reviews that are being performed, and have hardly had to reject any. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere 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 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:15, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2023).

Administrator changes

Spicy

• Ale jrb
• Dbachmann
• DGG (deceased)
• Jimbo Wales

CheckUser changes

Jimbo Wales

Oversighter changes

Jimbo Wales

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Progress has started on the Page Triage improvement project. This is to address the concerns raised by the community in their 2022 WMF letter that requested improvements be made to the tool.

Arbitration

• The proposed decision in the World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case is expected 11 May 2023.

Miscellaneous

• The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input through May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Administrator changes

Ingenuity

• Ddstretch
• Prodego
• Resolute

CheckUser changes

Courcelles

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
• As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.

Technical news

• Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous

• Following a community referendum, the arbitration policy has been modified to remove the ability for users to appeal remedies to Jimbo Wales.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors June 2023 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2023 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since March. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Election news: Fancy helping out at the Guild? Nominations for our half-yearly Election of Coordinators are open until 23:59 on 15 June (UTC)*. Starting immediately after, the voting phase will run until 23:59 on 30 June. All Wikipedians in good standing are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed; it's your Guild and it doesn't organize itself! Blitz: Of the 17 editors who signed up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, nine editors completed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 24 articles totaling 53,393 words. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: 51 editors signed up for the month-long May Backlog Elimination Drive, and 31 copy-edited at least one article. 180 articles were copy-edited. Barnstars awarded are posted here. Blitz: Sign up here for our week-long June Copy Editing Blitz, which runs from 11 to 17 June. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 03:09 on 6 June 2023, GOCE copyeditors have processed 91 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 1,887 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybongo. *All times and dates in this newsletter are in UTC, and may significantly vary from your local time. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by Baffle gab1978 using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:39, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

Novem Linguae

• Deckiller
• Electionworld
• MBisanz
• Penwhale
• Raul654
• Roadrunner
• Viridae
• Yannismarou

Bureaucrat changes

MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

• Contributions to the English Wikipedia are now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) license instead of CC BY-SA 3.0. Contributions are still also released under the GFDL license.

Technical news

• Discussion is open regarding a proposed global policy regarding third-party resources. Third-party resources are computer resources that reside outside of Wikimedia production websites.

Arbitration

• Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:58, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

WikiCup 2023 July newsletter

The third round of the 2023 WikiCup has come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round had at least 175 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• Thebiguglyalien, with 919 points from a featured article on Frances Cleveland as well as five good articles and many reviews,
• Unlimitedlead, with 862 points from a high-scoring featured articles on Henry II of England and numerous reviews,
• Iazyges, with 560 points from a high-scoring featured article on Tiberius III.

Contestants achieved 11 featured articles, 2 featured lists, 47 good articles, 72 featured or good article reviews, over 100 DYKs and 40 ITN appearances. As always, any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember 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. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere 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 (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:18, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

Firefangledfeathers

• AlisonW
• Amberrock
• Closedmouth
• Scottywong

Interface administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Technical news

• The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. This allows hiding edits made by automated tools. (T334338)
• Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool that allows easier blocking of plain domains (and their subdomains). This is more easily searchable and is faster for the software to use than the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. It does not support regex (for complex cases), URL path-matching, or the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. (T337431)

Arbitration

• The arbitration cases named Scottywong and AlisonW closed 10 July and 16 July respectively.
• The SmallCat dispute arbitration case is in the workshop phase.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Administrator changes

• Pppery
• Theleekycauldron

• Dwheeler
• G.A.S
• Royalbroil
• Ssd

CheckUser changes

Bradv

Oversighter changes

Bradv

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
• A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

• Special:Contributions now shows the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. (T324166)

Arbitration

• The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

WikiCup 2023 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished, with anyone scoring less than 673 points being eliminated. It was a high scoring round with all but one of the contestants who progressed to the final having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were

• Epicgenius, with 2173 points topping the scores, gained mainly from a featured article, 38 good articles and 9 DYKs. He was followed by
• Sammi Brie, with 1575 points, gained mainly from a featured article, 28 good articles and 50 good article reviews. Close behind was
• Thebiguglyalien, with 1535 points mainly gained from a featured article, 15 good articles, 26 good article reviews and lots of bonus points.

Between them during round 4, contestants achieved 12 featured articles, 3 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 126 good articles, 46 DYK entries, 14 ITN entries, 67 featured article candidate reviews and 147 good article reviews. Congratulations to our eight finalists and all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

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 10 days of "earning" them and within 24 hours of the end of the final. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to 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.

I will be standing down as a judge after the end of the contest. I think the Cup encourages productive editors to improve their contributions to Wikipedia and I hope that someone else will step up to take over the running of the Cup. Sturmvogel 66 (talk), and Cwmhiraeth (talk)

Septermber GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2023 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the September 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. David Thomsen: Prolific Wikipedian and Guild member David Thomsen (Dthomsen8) died in November 2022. He was a regular copy editor who took part in many of our Drives and Blitzes. An obituary was published in the mid-July issue of The Signpost. Tributes can be left on David's talk page. Election news: In our mid-year Election of Coordinators, Dhtwiki was chosen as lead coordinator, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo continue as assistant coordinators, and Baffle gab1978 stepped down from the role. If you're interested in helping out at the GOCE, please consider nominating yourself for our next election in December; it's your WikiProject and it doesn't organize itself! June Blitz: Of the 17 editors who signed up for our June Copy Editing Blitz, 12 copy-edited at least one article. 70,035 words comprising 26 articles were copy-edited. Barnstars awarded are here. July Drive: 34 of the 51 editors who took part in our July Backlog Elimination Drive copy-edited at least one article. They edited 276 articles and 683,633 words between them. Barnstars awarded are here. August Blitz: In our August Copy Editing Blitz, 13 of the 16 editors who signed up worked on at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 79,608 words comprising 57 articles. Barnstars awarded are available here. September Drive: Sign up here for our month-long September Backlog Elimination Drive, which is now underway. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 14:29, 9 September 2023 (UTC), GOCE copy editors have processed 245 requests since 1 January. The backlog of tagged articles stands at 2,066. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

WikiCup 2023 November newsletter

The WikiCup is a marathon rather than a sprint and all those reaching the final round have been involved in the competition for the last ten months, improving Wikipedia vastly during the process. After all this hard work, BeanieFan11 has emerged as the 2023 winner and the WikiCup Champion. The finalists this year were:-

• BeanieFan11 with 2582 points
• Thebiguglyalien with 1615 points
• Epicgenius with 1518 points
• MyCatIsAChonk with 1012 points
• BennyOnTheLoose with 974 points
• AirshipJungleman29 with 673 points
• Sammi Brie with 520 points
• Unlimitedlead with 5 points

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 competition, some of whom did very well. Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from the quality creations, expansions and improvements made, and the numerous reviews performed. 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.

• Unlimitedlead wins the featured article prize, for 7 FAs in total including 3 in round 2.
• MyCatIsAChonk wins the featured list prize, for 5 FLs in total.
• Lee Vilenski wins the featured topic prize, for a 6-article featured topic in round 4.
• MyCatIsAChonk wins the featured picture prize, for 6 FPs in total.
• BeanieFan11 wins the good article prize, for 75 GAs in total, including 61 in the final round.
• Epicgenius wins the good topic prize, for a 41-article good topic in the final round.
• LunaEatsTuna wins the GA reviewer prize, for 70 GA reviews in round 1.
• MyCatIsAChonk wins the FA reviewer prize, for 66 FA reviews in the final round.
• Epicgenius wins the DYK prize, for 49 did you know articles in total.
• Muboshgu wins the ITN prize, for 46 in the news articles in total.

The WikiCup has run every year since 2007. With the 2023 contest now concluded, I will be standing down as a judge due to real life commitments, so I hope that another editor will take over running the competition. Please get in touch if you are interested. Next year's competition will hopefully begin on 1 January 2024. You are invited to sign up to participate in the contest; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors. It only remains to congratulate our worthy winners once again and thank all participants for their involvement! (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) 16:52, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).

Administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

Tamzin

Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

• Ragesoss
• TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

• The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.
• There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. Feedback on this proposal is requested.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
• Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
• Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
• Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
• Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
• Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
• An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.

Miscellaneous

• The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed 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 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:33, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2023).

Administrator changes

• Ganesha811
• JPxG

• Ajpolino
• Lourdes
• Mairi
• RockMFR
• Somno
• WilyD

Beeblebrox → Just Step Sideways

CheckUser changes

• Beeblebrox
• Opabinia regalis

Oversight changes

• Beeblebrox
• Opabinia regalis

Guideline and policy news

• Following a talk page discussion, the Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, the Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
• The Arbitration Committee has announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:54, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2023 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2023 Newsletter Hello, and welcome to the December 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since September. Don't forget that you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Election news: The Guild needs coordinators! If you'd like to help out, you may nominate yourself or any suitable editor—with their permission—for the Election of Coordinators for the first half of 2024. Nominations will close at 23:59 on 15 December (UTC). Voting begins immediately after the close of nominations and closes at 23:59 on 31 December. All editors in good standing (not under current sanctions) are eligible, and self-nominations are welcome. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term that ends at 23:59 on 30 June. Drive: Of the 69 editors who signed up for the September Backlog Elimination Drive, 40 copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 661,214 words in 290 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed here. Blitz: Of the 22 editors who signed up for the October Copy Editing Blitz, 13 copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 109,327 words in 52 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed here. Drive: During the November Backlog Elimination Drive, 38 of the 58 editors who signed up copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 458,620 words in 234 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed here. Blitz: Our December Copy Editing Blitz will run from 10 to 16 December. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 20:33, 10 December 2023 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 344 requests since 1 January, and the backlog stands at 2,191 articles. Other news: Our Annual Report for 2023 is planned for release in the new year. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Message sent by Baffle gab1978 using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:54, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy Adminship

Wishing Slon02 a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Ezra Cricket (talk) 02:40, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Unprotection request for IPod

Hello, back in 2011, you indefinitely semi-protected IPod. Since the devices are now discontinued, it seems to me that it would be reasonable to experiment with unprotection. Thoughts? Thriftycat ^{Talk • Contribs} 21:07, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2024 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2024 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 ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close on 31 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: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), and Frostly (talk · contribs · 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. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:21, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).

Administrator changes

Clovermoss

Dennis Brown

• Julia W
• Marasmusine
• PBS

CheckUser changes

• Aoidh
• HJ Mitchell
• Sdrqaz
• Spicy
• ToBeFree
• Vanamonde93
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• Aoidh
• Firefly
• Sdrqaz
• ToBeFree
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Arbitration

• Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
• The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).

Administrator changes

• Red-tailed hawk
• Robertsky

• Ameliorate!
• Ancheta Wis
• Anthony Bradbury (deceased)
• Cobi
• Ev
• Moondyne
• Worm That Turned

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

CheckUser changes

Wugapodes

Interface administrator changes

• Enterprisey
• Izno

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)

Arbitration

• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
• Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
• Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
• The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 February newsletter

The 2024 WikiCup is off to a flying start, with 135 participants. This is the largest number of participants we have seen since 2017.

Our current leader is newcomer Generalissima (submissions), who has one FA on John Littlejohn (preacher) and 10 GAs and 12 DYKs mostly on New Zealand coinage and Inuit figures. Here are some more noteworthy scorers:

• AirshipJungleman29 (submissions), with one FA on Hö'elün, two GAs on Mongolia-related articles, and two DYKs;
• Vami_IV (submissions), with one FA on Doom (2016 video game), one GA on Boundary Fire (2017), and 11 reviews;
• MaranoFan (submissions), with one FA on Holidays (Meghan Trainor song), a nine-article FT on 30 (album), and two DYKs;
• Skyshifter (submissions), with one FA on OneShot and one DYK;
• Sammi Brie (submissions), with five GAs and five DYKs on television and radio stations;
• voorts (submissions) and Elli (submissions), both with one FA and one DYK each.

As a reminder, competitors may submit work for the first round until 23:59 (UTC) on 27 February, and the second round starts 1 March. Remember that only the top 64 scoring competitors will make it through to the second round; currently, competitors need at least 15 points to progress. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, and you hope to get it promoted before the end of the round, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. However, please remember to continue to offer reviews at GAN, FAC and all the other pages that require them to prevent any backlogs which could otherwise be caused by the Cup. As ever, questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs)) are reachable on their talk pages. 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. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:58, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 March newsletter

The first round of the 2024 WikiCup ended at 23:59 (UTC) on 27 February. Everyone with at least 30 points moved on to Round 2, the highest number of points required to advance to the second round since 2014. Due to a six-way tie for the 64th-place spot, 67 contestants have qualified for Round 2.

The following scorers in Round 1 all scored more than 300 points:

• Generalissima (submissions), who has 916 points mostly from one FA on John Littlejohn (preacher), 15 GAs, and 16 DYKs on a variety of topics including New Zealand coinage and Inuit figures, in addition to seven reviews
• Vami_IV (submissions), who has 790 points from two FAs on Felix M. Warburg House and Doom (2016 video game), two GAs, one DYK, and 11 reviews
• AirshipJungleman29 (submissions), who has 580 points from one FA on Hö'elün, two GAs on Mongolia-related articles, two DYKs, and five reviews
• Sammi Brie (submissions), who has 420 points mostly from nine GAs and seven DYKs on television and radio stations
• MaranoFan (submissions), who has 351 points from one FA on Holidays (Meghan Trainor song), a nine-article FT on 30 (album), and three DYKs
• Skyshifter (submissions), who has 345 points from one FA on OneShot, one DYK and two reviews

In this newsletter, the judges would like to pay a special tribute to Vami_IV (submissions), who unfortunately passed away this February. At the time of his death, he was the second-highest-scoring competitor. Outside the WikiCup, he had eight other featured articles, five A-class articles, eight other good articles, and two Four Awards. Vami also wrote an essay on completionism, a philosophy in which he deeply believed. If you can, please join us in honoring his memory by improving one of the articles on his to-do list.

Remember that any content promoted after 27 February but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. 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. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. 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. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:41, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).

Administrator changes

• Sdkb
• The Night Watch

• East718
• Isabelle Belato
• Mzajac
• Staecker
• Stan Shebs
• Sugarfish
• Tamzin

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
• Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.

Technical news

• The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

• The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
• Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors 2023 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2023 Annual Report Our 2023 Annual Report is now ready for review. Highlights: Introduction Membership news, obituary and election results Summary of Drives, Blitzes and the Requests page Closing words – Your Guild coordinators: Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Wracking. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).

Administrator changes

• Kbdank71
• Kosack
• NrDg
• TLSuda

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.

Technical news

• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".

Miscellaneous

• Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:48, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors April 2024 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors April 2024 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the April 2024 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since December. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. We extend a warm welcome to all of our new members. We wish you all happy copy-editing. Election results: In our December 2023 coordinator election, Zippybonzo stepped down as coordinator; we thank them for their service. Incumbents Dhtwiki and Miniapolis were reelected coordinators, and Wracking was newly elected coordinator, to serve through 30 June. Nominations for our mid-year Election of Coordinators will open on 1 June (UTC). Drive: 46 editors signed up for our January Backlog Elimination Drive, 32 of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 289 articles totaling 626,729 words. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: 23 editors signed up for our February Copy Editing Blitz. 18 claimed at least one copy-edit and between them, they copy-edited 100,293 words in 32 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: 53 editors signed up for our March Backlog Elimination Drive, 34 of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 300 articles totaling 587,828 words. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: Sign up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, which runs from 14 to 20 April. Barnstars will be awarded here. Progress report: As of 23:17, 11 April 2024 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 109 requests since 1 January 2024, and the backlog stands at 2,480 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from Baffle gab1978 and your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Wracking. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

WikiCup 2024 April newsletter

We are approaching the end of the 2024 WikiCup's second round, with a little over two weeks remaining. Currently, contestants must score at least 105 points to progress to the third round.

Our current top scorers are as follows:

• Sammi Brie (submissions) with 642 points, mostly from 11 GAs about radio and television;
• voorts (submissions) with 530 points, mostly from two FAs (Well he would, wouldn't he? and Cora Agnes Benneson) and three GAs;
• Generalissima (submissions) with 523 points, mostly from 11 GAs about coinage and history;
• SounderBruce (submissions) with 497 points, mostly from a FA about the 2020 season of the soccer club Seattle Sounders FC and two GAs;
• Tamzin (submissions) with 410 points, mostly from a FA about the drink Capri-Sun and three GAs;
• Kusma (submissions) with 330 points, mostly from a FA about the English botanist Anna Blackburne and a GA.

Competitors may submit work for the second round until the end of 28 April, and the third round starts 1 May. Remember that only competitors with the top 32 scores will make it through to the third round. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, and you hope to get it promoted before the end of the round, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Please remember to continue to offer reviews at GAN, FAC and all the other pages that require them to prevent any backlogs. As a reminder, competitors are strictly prohibited from gaming Wikipedia policies or processes to receive more points.

If you would like to learn more about rules and scoring for the 2024 WikiCup, please read Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring. Further questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs)) are reachable on their talk pages. 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. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:06, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 May newsletter

The second round of the 2024 WikiCup ended on 28 April. This round was particularly competitive: each of the 32 contestants who advanced to Round 3 scored at least 141 points. This is the highest number of points required to advance to Round 3 since 2014.

The following scorers in Round 2 all scored more than 500 points:

• Sammi Brie (submissions) with 707 points, mostly from 45 good article nomination reviews and 12 good articless about radio and television;
• Generalissima (submissions) with 600 points, mostly from 12 good articles and 12 did you know nominations about coinage and history;
• SounderBruce (submissions) with 552 points, mostly from a featured article about the 2020 Seattle Sounders FC season, three featured lists, and two good articles;
• BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 548 points, mostly from a featured article about the snooker player John Pulman, two featured lists, and one good article;
• voorts (submissions) with 530 points, mostly from two featured articles (Well he would, wouldn't he? and Cora Agnes Benneson) and three good articles.

The full scores for Round 2 can be seen here. So far this year, competitors have gotten 18 featured articles, 22 featured lists, and 186 good articles, 76 in the news credits and at least 200 did you know credits. They have conducted 165 featured article reviews, as well as 399 good article reviews and peer reviews, and have added 21 articles to featured topics and good topics.

Remember that any content promoted after 28 April but before the start of Round 3 can be claimed during Round 3, which starts on 1 May at 00:00 (UTC). 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.

If you would like to learn more about rules and scoring for the 2024 WikiCup, please see this page. Further questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs)) are reachable on their talk pages. 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. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:38, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).

Administrator changes

Nyttend

• JohnOwens
• Killiondude
• MelanieN
• Nihonjoe

Bureaucrat changes

Nihonjoe

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe

Oversight changes

GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.

Technical news

• Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:24, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2024).

Administrator changes

Graham Beards

• Deskana
• Mets501
• Staxringold

Bureaucrat changes

• Deskana
• Warofdreams

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz

Guideline and policy news

• Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.

Technical news

• The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
• The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.

Miscellaneous

• WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors June 2024 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2024 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June 2024 newsletter, a quarterly-ish digest of Guild activities since April. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Election news: Wanted: new Guild coordinators! If you value and enjoy the GOCE, why not help out behind the scenes? Nominations for our mid-year coordinator election are now open until 23:59 on 15 June (UTC). Self-nominations are welcome. Voting commences at 00:01 on 16 June and continues until 23:50 on 30 June. Results will be announced at the election page. Blitz: Nine of the fourteen editors who signed up for the April 2024 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 55,853 words comprising twenty articles. Barnstars awarded are available here. Drive: 58 editors signed up for our May 2024 Backlog Elimination Drive and 33 of those completed at least one copy edit. 251 articles and 475,952 words were copy edited. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: Our June 2024 Copy Editing Blitz will begin on 16 June and finish on 22 June. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 05:23, 8 June 2024 (UTC) , GOCE copyeditors have completed 161 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 2,779 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from Baffle gab1978 and your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Wracking. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Precious anniversary

Precious

Six years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:41, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 July newsletter

The third round of the 2024 WikiCup ended on 28 June. As with Round 2, this round was competitive: each of the 16 contestants who advanced to Round 4 scored at least 256 points.

The following editors all scored more than 400 points in Round 3:

• Generalissima (submissions) with 1,059 points, mostly from 1 featured article on DeLancey W. Gill, 11 good articles, 18 did you know nominations, and dozens of reviews;
• Skyshifter (submissions) with 673 points, mostly from 2 featured articles on Worlds (Porter Robinson album) and I'm God, 5 good articles, and 2 did you know nominations;
• Sammi Brie (submissions) with 557 points, mostly from 1 featured article on KNXV-TV, 5 good articles, and 8 did you know nominations; and
• AryKun (submissions) with 415 points, mostly from 1 featured article on Great cuckoo-dove, with a high number of bonus points from that article.

The full scores for round 3 can be seen here. So far this year, competitors have gotten 28 featured articles, 38 featured lists, 240 good articles, 92 in the news credits, and at least 285 did you know credits. They have conducted 279 featured article reviews, as well as 492 good article reviews and peer reviews, and have added 22 articles to featured topics and good topics.

Remember that any content promoted after 28 June but before the start of Round 4 can be claimed during Round 4, which starts on 1 July at 00:00 (UTC). 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 for a good article, featured content, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.

If you would like to learn more about rules and scoring for the 2024 WikiCup, please see this page. Further questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs)) are reachable on their talk pages. 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. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:30, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2024).

Administrator changes

• Elli
• HouseBlaster
• Pickersgill-Cunliffe

• Brianga
• De728631
• Georgewilliamherbert
• Hyacinth (deceased)
• ProveIt
• The Night Watch

Technical news

• Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)

Miscellaneous

• The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:59, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2024).

Administrator changes

Isabelle Belato

• Ian.thomson
• Modussiccandi

Interface administrator changes

Izno

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49

Technical news

• Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
• Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee appointed the following administrators to the conflict of interest volunteer response team: Bilby, Extraordinary Writ

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 August newsletter

The fourth round of the 2024 WikiCup ended on 29 August. Each of the 8 contestants who advanced to Round 4 scored at least 472 points, and the following contestants scored more than 700 points:

• Generalissima (submissions) with 1,150 points, mostly from 3 featured articles, 2 featured lists, 7 good articles, and 13 did you know nominations;
• Arconning (submissions) with 791 points, mostly from 2 featured lists, 8 good articles, 4 did you know nominations, and plenty of reviews;
• AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) with 718 points, mostly from a high-multiplier featured article on Genghis Khan and 2 good articles; and
• BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 714 points, mostly from 1 featured article on Susanna Hoffs, 2 featured lists, and 3 good articles.

Congratulations to our eight finalists and all who participated. Contestants put in extraordinary amounts of effort during this round, and their scores can be seen here. So far this year, competitors have gotten 36 featured articles, 55 featured lists, 15 good articles, 93 in the news credits, and at least 333 did you know credits. They have conducted 357 featured content reviews, as well as 553 good article reviews and peer reviews, and have added 30 articles to featured topics and good topics.

Any content promoted after 29 August but before the start of Round 5 can be claimed during Round 5, which starts on 1 September at 00:00 (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. 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 for a good article, featured content, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Remember to claim your points within 14 days of earning them, and importantly, before the deadline on 31 October.

If you would like to learn more about rules and scoring for the 2024 WikiCup, please see this page. Further questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs)) are reachable on their talk pages. 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. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:12, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2024).

Administrator changes

Pppery

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

Oversighter changes

Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

• Courcelles
• GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
• Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
• The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.

Miscellaneous

• Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:44, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors September Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September Newsletter Hello and welcome to the September newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Election news: Project coordinators play an important role in our WikiProject. Following the mid-year Election of Coordinators, we welcomed Mox Eden to the coordinator team. Dhtwiki remains as Lead Coordinator, and Miniapolis and Wracking returned as assistant coordinators. If you'd like to help out behind the scenes, please consider taking part in our December election – watchlist our ombox for updates. Information about the role of coordinators can be found here. Blitz: 13 of the 24 editors who signed up for the June 2024 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 169,404 words comprising 41 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: 38 of the 59 editors who signed up for the July 2024 Backlog Elimination Drive copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 482,133 words comprising 293 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: 10 of the 15 editors who signed up for the August 2024 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 71,294 words comprising 31 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: Sign up here to earn barnstars in our month-long, in-progress September Backlog Elimination Drive. Progress report: As of 05:14, 11 September 2024 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 233 requests since 1 January, and the backlog of tagged articles stands at 2,824 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we do without you! Cheers from Baffle gab1978 and your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Mox Eden and Wracking. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Message sent by Baffle gab1978 (talk) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:54, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).

Administrator changes

• Asilvering
• Significa liberdade

• Good Olfactory
• Hesperian
• I JethroBT
• TommyBoy
• Woody

CheckUser changes

• Barkeep49
• Izno

• Doug Weller
• Spicy

Guideline and policy news

• Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
• Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
• An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
• Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

Miscellaneous

• If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in a research

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of Wikipedians to better understand what draws administrators to contribute to Wikipedia, and what affects administrator retention. We will use this research to improve experiences for Wikipedians, and address common problems and needs. We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous survey.

You do not have to be an Administrator to participate.

The survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement .

Please find our contact on the project Meta page if you have any questions or concerns.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 November newsletter

The 2024 WikiCup has come to an end, with the final round being a very tight race. Our new champion is AirshipJungleman29 (submissions), who scored 2,283 points mainly through 3 high-multiplier FAs and 3 GAs on military history topics. By a 1% margin, Airship beat out last year's champion, BeanieFan11 (submissions), who scored second with 2,264 points, mainly from an impressive 58 GAs about athletes. In third place, Generalissima (submissions) scored 1,528 points, primarily from two FAs on U.S. Librarians of Congress and 20 GAs about various historical topics. Our other finalists are: Sammi Brie (submissions) with 879 points, Hey man im josh (submissions) with 533 points, BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 432 points, Arconning (submissions) with 244 points, and AryKun (submissions) with 15 points. Congratulations to our finalists and all who participated!

The final round was very productive, and contestants had 7 FAs, 9 FLs, 94 GAs, 73 FAC reviews, and 79 GAN reviews and peer reviews. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

All those who reached the final will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field.

• Generalissima (submissions) wins the featured article prize for 3 FAs in round 4, and 7 FAs overall.
• Hey man im josh (submissions) wins the featured list prize for 23 FLs overall.
• MaranoFan (submissions) wins the featured topic prize for 9 articles in featured topics in round 1.
• Hey man im josh (submissions) wins the featured content reviewer prize for 110 FA/FL reviews overall.
• BeanieFan11 (submissions) wins the good article prize for 58 GAs in round 5, and 70 GAs overall.
• Fritzmann (submissions) wins the good topic prize for 6 articles in good topics in round 2.
• Sammi Brie (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize for 45 GA reviews in round 2, and 78 GA reviews overall.
• BeanieFan11 (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 131 Did you know articles overall.
• Muboshgu (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 15 In the news articles in round 1, and 36 overall.

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 2025 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. Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:49, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2024).

Administrator changes

• Crisco 1492

• Babajobu
• Daniel
• Elf
• Jayron32
• Thue
• Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

Maxim

Oversighter changes

Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, the discussion-only period proposal that went for a trial to refine the requests for adminship (RfA) process has been discontinued.
• Following a request for comment, Administrator recall is adopted as a policy.

Technical news

• Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068

Arbitration

• RoySmith, Barkeep49 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2024 Arbitration Committee Elections. ThadeusOfNazereth and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate from 3 November 2024 until 12 November 2024 to stand in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The Arbitration Committee is seeking volunteers for roles such as clerks, access to the COI queue, checkuser, and oversight.

Miscellaneous

• An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:21, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to participate in Wikipedia research

Hello,

I recently invited you to take a survey about administration on Wikipedia. If you haven’t yet had a chance, there is still time to participate– we’d truly appreciate your feedback. The survey is anonymous and should take about 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement.

Take the survey here.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 13 November 2024 (UTC)