June 2017 & July 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.

---

See this Can we add more IPs?

AbuseFilter/854

Best, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:15, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

19:05, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

15:30, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Maybe this can help. Probably makes sense given my other interests/activity on-site. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:16, 13 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@BU Rob13: Awesome! Sam Walton (talk) 16:18, 13 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I wanted to check, is this you or someone impersonating you? Linguist^talk|contribs 23:01, 13 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Linguist111: Yes! Thanks for checking. If I create a test account I list it here. Sam Walton (talk) 23:05, 13 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

15:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sam. I just got a request on my talk page to userfy an article that I just deleted at AfD. As much as I would like to accommodate this request, my gut is telling me I should politely decline. The AfD ended with a consensus to delete based on a lack of notability. The author wants to work on the article in their user space but my problem is that I think this would run contrary to the spirit of AfD. The community said to delete it. And further they did so because the subject fails WP:N. There are a lot of things you can fix in an article but notability isn't once of them. It's either there or it isn't. And to userfy this article I would have to undelete it prior to moving it, again contrary to consensus at the AfD. So as much as I would like to help this editor out, in this case my instincts are saying that I really should not. Am I missing anything here or being too legalistic? It's past midnight here and I am off to bed. This is not time sensitive and I can deal with it tomorrow. Thanks for any input. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:47, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Eh never mind. After mulling it over I am fairly convinced this is something I really should not do, at least for now. I have declined their request. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:12, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Ad Orientem: Apologies for the delay in responding! Things like this are up to you. There's nothing really prohibiting you from userfying the old version, but it's likely to be a waste of time on the editors behalf if the subject isn't notable. Sam Walton (talk) 10:35, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

15:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

JustBerry (talk) 00:00, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi!

Thank you for your contribution to the UNESCO Challenge a couple of months ago.

I don't know if you have noticed, but there is a new competition starting tomorrow, that is co-arranged by UNESCO and Wikimedia Sverige – the COH Challenge. This time, the purpose is to get as many of the images uploaded as part of the Connected Open Heritage project (e.g. of world heritage sites, the images can be found here) as possible to be used in Wikipedia articles (however, at most five images – with caption – per article).

I hope you want to participate! :)

Best, Eric Luth (WMSE) (talk) 15:46, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

15:32, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

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.

---

Sam,

You may or may not be keeping tabs on this, but is your close here the latest and current consensus on granting IPBE that you're aware of? I can't find any evidence that the RFC you suggested in your close has happened. But I've been known to be clueless and miss obvious things before.

That was a reasonable, well-thought-out close, by the way. I'm disappointed there wasn't consensus to change the policy right away, but I see why you closed it the way you did. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:16, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Floquenbeam: Thanks! I'm not aware of any further developments, though I haven't been pro-actively giving it any attention. I'd think any further changes would have ended up in ANEWS though, and nothing more has been posted there about it. Sam Walton (talk) 17:23, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I looked there and on WT:IPBE and saw nothing newer. Just wanted to double check. The idea of creating a productive RFC about changing a policy (any policy) fills me with an almost paralyzing fatalism and dread, but I may think about how best to try to move it forward. Thanks. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:34, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Floquenbeam: Ha, I know the feeling. Well the consensus is there for changing, it just needs a specific wording suggestion to be implemented. Sam Walton (talk) 19:22, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

15:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

22:59, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Is this you? This account was created just now... ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 19:35, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Oshwah: Yes, thanks for checking :) Sam Walton (talk) 19:36, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You bet ;-) ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 19:39, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for supporting my run for administrator. I am honored and grateful. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 17:08, 23 July 2017 (UTC) [reply]

15:58, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

21:45, 31 July 2017 (UTC)