Note: if I've made a clearly bad block, such as something that appears to be vandalism at first glance but actually has a good explanation, please unblock without waiting for me to come back online. If it's something less clear, please at least get consensus on AN/I first. Thanks.

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RfA candidate S O N S% Ending (UTC) Time left Dups? Report RfB candidate S O N S% Ending (UTC) Time left Dups? Report No RfXs since 14:19, 7 March 2025 (UTC).—cyberbot ITalk to my owner:Online

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

Administrator changes

• Ahecht
• DoubleGrazing
• Dr vulpes
• FOARP
• Peaceray
• Queen of Hearts
• Rsjaffe
• SD0001
• SilverLocust
• Sohom Datta
• ThadeusOfNazereth
• Voorts

• Ajpolino
• Fathoms Below
• Pppery
• Tamzin
• Worm That Turned

• Aervanath
• Christopher Sundita
• Dank
• Dennis Brown
• Dragons flight
• Fastily
• Graham87
• JaGa
• Kbh3rd
• Marine 69-71
• Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington
• Yamamoto Ichiro

Interface administrator changes

• SD0001
• Sohom Datta

Pppery

CheckUser changes

• Spicy
• TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RFC, the policy on restoration of adminship has been updated. All former administrators may now only regain the tools following a request at the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard within 5 years of their most recent admin action. Previously this applied only to administrators deysopped for inactivity.
• Following a request for comment, a new speedy deletion criterion, T5, has been enacted. This applies to template subpages that are no longer used.

Technical news

• Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10, 2024.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Yasuke (formerly titled Backlash to diversity and inclusion) has been closed.
• An arbitration case titled Palestine-Israel articles 5 has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 14 December.

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Please, don't start an edit war. If you have what to say, do it here, until the question is solved. --Tamtam90 (talk) 17:08, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RFC, Wikipedia:Notability (species) was adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether admins should be advised to warn users rather than issue no-warning blocks to those who have posted promotional content outside of article space.

Technical news

• The Nuke feature also now provides links to the userpage of the user whose pages were deleted, and to the pages which were not selected for deletion, after page deletions are queued. This enables easier follow-up admin-actions.

Arbitration

• Following the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been elected to the Arbitration Committee: CaptainEek, Daniel, Elli, KrakatoaKatie, Liz, Primefac, ScottishFinnishRadish, Theleekycauldron, Worm That Turned.

Miscellaneous

• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2025 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --17:33, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Gaurav Srivastava scandal (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I just blocked the creator of this as a UPE, mainly due to the shenanigans with the image at Stella Velon (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (it was deleted, then the licence miraculously changed at flickr). Given that, I feel quite apprehensive about us having such a negative article written by them. I'd ordinarily move it to draft, but I thought I would drop you a line since you had already restored it. SmartSE (talk) 22:34, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's so much crap from both sides, it's hard to tell what to do. If you don't think that WSJ article indicates notability strongly enough, go ahead and move it, see if anyone cares enough to fix the issues. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:41, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed! I haven't looked at it much, but I guess it's a case of whether the subject meets WP:BIO or whether the "scandal" meets WP:EVENT (I'm using quotes because I can't see any sources using that). Certainly NY post was clearly reporting it all as allegations as of August '24 which is very different to how our article portrays it. It definitely needs attention, but I don't have time to research it in depth, so I think drafting it and dropping some notes around is the best course. SmartSE (talk) 22:57, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, yes, that sounds like a good way forward. Thanks! --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 00:06, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2025).

Administrator changes

• Arcticocean
• Wugapodes

Euryalus

CheckUser changes

• Firefly
• L235

Oversighter changes

• Firefly
• Guerillero
• L235
• Moneytrees

Technical news

• Administrators can now nuke pages created by a user or IP address from the last 90 days, up from the initial 30 days. T380846
• A 'Recreated' tag will now be added to pages that were created with the same title as a page which was previously deleted and it can be used as a filter in Special:RecentChanges and Special:NewPages. T56145

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Palestine-Israel articles 5 has been closed.

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The image that was posted was from this website https://www idcrawl.com/andrew-stair I don't know why you keep removing it Ryke001 (talk) 19:33, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because the bottom of that page says "Copyright 2025, all rights reserved", which means we can't steal their photos for our articles. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:45, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

how would this matter if Randy Stair was the one who took the original picture in the 1st place? It was then archived from a different website. I might as well find the same image from a different website Ryke001 (talk) 19:51, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unless he released the photo under a free license, we can't particularly use it. There are exceptions, but they don't seem to be met here. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:55, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I found another source, https://es.pinterest.com/pin/767652699019214017/ i don't know if this is valid Ryke001 (talk) 19:57, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No free license there either that I can see. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:59, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well at least according to him, all the images and videos he posted in the "Digital Set" were intended to be freely accessible for anyone to see, as he wanted them to be used for documentation purposes. This image might have been included in his Digital Set. Ryke001 (talk) 20:16, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I even found the original image that was in the Digital Set. https://ia800409.us.archive.org/18/items/EGSPioneersProductionsDigitalSet/%5BPhotos%2C%20Screenshots%2C%20and%20Art%20Edits%5DJune%2001%2C%202017%20%281%29.jpg Ryke001 (talk) 20:17, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Digital Set where I found the original Image)

https://archive.org/download/EGSPioneersProductionsDigitalSet Ryke001 (talk) 20:18, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And that says it was uploaded by someone else after Stair's death, so it's not clear that they had the ability to release it under a free license either. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:26, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

would it even matter? Again, Randy's intent in sharing these images was to ensure they remain freely accessible for people to use for documentation purposes, they were never meant to be restricted by copyright. The individual who uploaded these images after his death aimed to archive them, maintaining their availability for public use. HECK, these images have already been utilized in various contexts, Ive seen people use this image in Youtube videos when making a documentary on him. Ryke001 (talk) 20:41, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it would matter. See WP:NONFREE for more details on why. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:44, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

even then, I don't see the Digital Set being copyrighted. Ryke001 (talk) 20:58, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Everything is copyrighted as soon as you publish it. That's why we need an explicit release. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:12, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2025).

Administrator changes

• Jarry1250
• Lethe

CheckUser changes

• AmandaNP
• Drmies

Oversighter changes

AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is open to discuss whether AI-generated images (meaning those wholly created by generative AI, not human-created images modified with AI tools) should be banned from use in articles.
• A series of 22 mini-RFCs that double-checked consensus on some aspects and improved certain parts of the administrator elections process has been closed (see the summary of the changes).
• A request for comment is open to gain consensus on whether future administrator elections should be held.

Technical news

• A new filter has been added to the Special:Nuke tool, which allows administrators to filter for pages in a range of page sizes (in bytes). This allows, for example, deleting pages only of a certain size or below. T378488
• Non-administrators can now check which pages are able to be deleted using the Special:Nuke tool. T376378

Miscellaneous

• The 2025 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, Arcticocean, Ameisenigel, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, Galahad, Nehaoua, Renvoy, Revi C., RoySmith, Teles and Zafer as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
• Following the 2025 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: 1234qwer1234qwer4, AramilFeraxa, Daniuu, KonstantinaG07, MdsShakil and XXBlackburnXx.

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Hello, SarekOfVulcan,

I was surprised you indefinitely blocked this editor while we were in the middle of a discussion on ANI and no one had suggested a block, much less an indefinite block, just an IBan. So, I was surprised to come back to the discussion and find one of the primary participants blocked and unable to participate further. And "disruptive editing" is kind of a catch-all block reason that doesn't provide much detail on what exactly you found blockworthy. But I guess it has something to do with this diff. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:41, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)As I said on ANI, their assertion that I asked him to refrain, from kindness and courtesy, from commenting on pages while his case was being discussed at COIVRT was contradicted, several times over, by the first diff supplied. And their response to the IBan proposal with If Arthur wishes to deny to the connection to his father here then of course I will accept that was doubling down on the harassment. I was trying to give the discussion time to work itself out, but those last couple of edits convinced me that it wasn't going to go well. As I said, I expect discussion to continue, I'm not assuming that my block is the last word on the subject. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:49, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For my part, User:SarekOfVulcan, I'm very grateful for your intervention. I've had quite a few of these circular discussions with Coals over the past few weeks, and I'm completely exhausted. Whether the discussion continues or not, at least it will have given me a little respite! ArthurTheGardener (talk) 20:10, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest revoking TPA from User talk:CoalsCollective, as they've decided to return and simply cast aspersions again. Though they claim to be scrambling their account password, I don't know we should trust that. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:48, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if they keep going after this, definitely something to consider. Not needed otherwise. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:27, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]