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.

18:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you for the help Yellowunicorn77 (talk) 17:35, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!

Have a very happy first edit anniversary!
From the Birthday Committee, CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:41, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

23:00, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

19:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

22:27, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Dear Meno, I noticed that your bot signed a welcome message on Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia with Ghaly's name. Was that intentional or just an error? --Mahmudmasri (talk) 07:46, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Mahmudmasri: Thank you for your message. This is intentional as agreed on with Ghaly himself back in 2012. (See this old discussion.) If you wish, I can switch the bot to sign in with my name instead since Ghaly is not very active these days. Best wishes. --Meno25 (talk) 15:40, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

• I can confirm that I agreed for this to take place at the time. --Ghaly (talk) 20:25, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

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

This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:34, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

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)

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.