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

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

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

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

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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Thanks again for pointing that out - I'll go through the article tomorrow and fix the other examples. I have to confess that some areas of the MOS frighten and confuse me sometimes... Cheers! GirthSummit _(blether) 21:45, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@ Girth Summit: As a former copyeditor, I sometimes tend to get persnickety about such things to a degree that frightens and confuses nearly everyone. Probably just a desire to spead my own constant fright and confusion. Misery loves company. Deor ( talk) 14:44, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

By definition, confectionery includes multiple types of confections, including chocolate confections. More importantly, another title already used in the page is Jimmies, which also refers to chocolate sprinkles, just like chocolate vermicilli, or simply vermicilli in the UK, does. See the second sense "vermicelli". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. n.d. See also Mackley, Lesley; Handslip, Carole (1996). The Chocolate Book. Wigston: Salamander. Chocolate vermicilli (sprinkles) are available in milk and semisweet chocolate. Please further explain your reversion. Assem Khidhr ( talk) 16:28, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

The article is primarily about sugar-candy sprinkles rather than chocolate analogues, and the second sense on the Oxford page specifies that the word is used in Britain to denote "shreds of chocolate" rather than bits of sugar candy. As far as I know, jimmies is used in some regions of the United States to refer to such sugar-candy bits as well as to chocolate bits. (Also, your edit created a ParserFunction error message in the ref, which is what attracted me to the article in the first place. Why did you use {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}, {{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}, and {{subst:CURRENTDAY2}} for the access date instead of just entering the date of the day on which you consulted the source?) Rather than just fix the ParserFunction error, I decided to revert the edit, since it seemed to add a somewhat problematic synonym. Deor ( talk) 16:56, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

@ Deor: I did fail to replace the template placeholders. However, I don't think good editing should only be judged by technical knowledge of wiki markup and Wiki conventions, which I'm still trying to be all informed of. As for the semantic discussion, the nearest visit to any respective dictionary entry would tell you jimmies denote chocolate sprinkles in particular, even if seldom used as a synechdoche to refer to any bits of confectionery. See e.g. "jimmies". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary.; jimmies (you can confirm I'm not the editor if in doubt).

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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Hi there, I noticed that you moved Portland Regency Hotel & Spa to a draft. However, I added a number of independent, non-trivial and reliable sources about the building and restored it to the mainspace.-- User:Namiba 21:12, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

As time permits, I plan to work on a few of the Doncram creations that you moved to draft space. Today, I reworked Draft:Ojai Valley Inn with extensive independent sourcing. It is now ready to be moved back to main space. Thanks, Cbl62 ( talk) 06:20, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

@ Cbl62:  Done. In the future, you can move these to mainspace yourself when you think they have been sourced enough. Deor ( talk) 11:26, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I just didn't want to offend by moving without first asking. Cbl62 ( talk) 16:43, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

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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hey, just wondering why you keep shifting the s-line template's from the body of an article to its infobox. both are acceptable location per this policy and by doing it i you've removed some additional information about the services and sources documenting that such services exist. see edit on Aguilcourt-Variscourt halt as an example. happy to change how i am editing articles in this category, just wanted a bit of clarification. all the best. Epluribusunumyall ( talk) 09:01, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Partly, my changes were a response to situations like that brought up here, where the layout of the article left a massive amount of vertical white space between the heading "Services" and the services box that the templates create. Partly, they were just to get rid of the unsightly rectangle at the bottom of the infobox when there's text but no s-rail templates in the infobox's "services" field. I see that in some cases I did remove refs, but I don't think I removed any "additional information about the services", since the lines or networks served by the stations and the endpoints of the lines ("Regional services (TER Grand Est C10) Reims ... Laon" in the example you cite) are still present in the s-line templates in the infobox. Deor ( talk) 16:07, 18 June 2020 (UTC)