This page is an
archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)?
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 21:03, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
[1] You mean the producer has an article that is a redirect from
Little Nobody. A9 applies.
Toddst1 (
talk) 16:38, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi! It is my understanding that
Andrez Bergenis Little Nobody. That is, the artist name he uses as a music creator. I couldn't find any indication that Little Nobody is a different person or a musical ensemble, just an alias for Bergen himself. If that understanding turns out to have been wrong, I will of course reevaluate the speedy deletion. Regards, decltype (
contact) 16:50, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
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.
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.
I'd like to invite you to join in
WikiProject Venezuela's WikiChallenge to improve Venezuela-related articles. This is a rolling challenge, covering many different topics — there's an article for everyone!
Kingsif (
talk) 22:09, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Sky international insurance company This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's
Hi Yazdan. The article seems to have been deleted as it only served to promote the company in question. For more info, see
WP:PROMO. Regards, decltype (
contact) 10:47, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
AfroCine: Join the Months of African Cinema this October!
Greetings!
After a successful
first iteration of the “Months of African Cinema” last year, we are happy to announce that it will be happening again this year, starting from October 1! In the 2018 edition of the contest, about 600 Wikipedia articles were created in at least 8 languages. There were also contributions to Wikidata and Wikimedia commons, which brought the total number of wikimedia pages created during the contest to over 1,000.
On English Wikipedia, we would be recognizing participants in the following manner:
Overall winner (1st, 2nd, 3rd places)
Diversity winner
Gender-gap fillers
For further information about the contest, the recognition categories and how to participate, please visit the contest page
here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. See you around :).--
Jamie Tubers (
talk) 00:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)