User talk:Alanscottwalker

User talk:Alanscottwalker/archive1

User talk:Alanscottwalker/archive2

User talk:Alanscottwalker/archive3

I started using one-click-archiver in 2017, it labeled the new page with a Capital 'A':

User talk:Alanscottwalker/Archive 1

Good Ref on Lake Michigan

		The Original Barnstar
		Neat fact, I think it's worth a barnstar. Good job. Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 16:39, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Seven years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:30, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for caring about Jessye Norman and her article, borrowing her smile --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:51, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi, invite to join new RfC on Bruno Bettelheim

Hi, thanks for participating in last May's RfC (Request for Comment).

I wish to invite you to join a new one with the specific question of:

Should our lead sentence describe Bettelheim as a "self-proclaimed psychologist"?

RfC on lead sentence

started: Feb. 25, 2020

Any time and effort you wish to spend on this will be most appreciated. Thanks. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 01:30, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

ITN recognition for Joseph Lowery

On 29 March 2020, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Joseph Lowery, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. —Bagumba (talk) 03:50, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

John Lewis

Thanks for moving that paragraph into chronological order - I had intended to do that while I was editing that section, thought I had, in fact! Glad you picked it up. Tvoz/talk 00:14, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Eight years!

I enjoyed having the TFA yesterday, DYK? --Gerda Arendt (talk)

Thank you. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:22, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

US intellectual tradition in political reforms

Hey. Thank you for your considered statements over the last couple weeks at Talk:United States Electoral College. I wanted to expand on a string of Congressional reform addressing state mal-apportionment in federal elections. I noted previously, efforts to curb state majority abuses included three Acts of Congress passing both House and Senate in an effort to shape political communities that resembled the underlying populations geographically, socially, and ideologically (the culturally-related basket of religion, ethnic practice, and politics): contiguity (1842), and compactness (1872), including equal population (1911) (but only for a few sessions at a time, and never enforced).

If we expand the observation from listing Acts of Congress to exploring who was sponsoring them, the topic takes on an interesting aspect of US political intellectual history. The 1842 legislation was sponsored by Jacksonian Democrats, the 1872 by Lincoln Republicans, and the 1911 by Republican and Democratic Progressives. Wiki-fencing on Talk pages notwithstanding, I understand the impulse to the National Popular Vote generally to be aligned with that intellectual tradition. To take another page from the same democratizing impulse, if the states abuse their Constitutional duty to elect US Senators by their legislatures for thirty consecutive years as they did in the Gilded Age, then the American people will pass a Constitutional Amendment taking the abused trust away from the bad actors subverting their democratic republic.

So it is, that if the states do not refrain from the egregious anti-democratic practice of winner-take-all selection of their presidential electors, I expect that in due time the American people will take away the state legislature role in choosing a president, in one way or another. I will regret the loss of political community that might follow uniform standards for redistricting by equal population, contiguous boundaries, compact shapes, and respecting political boundaries aligned with the state geography. But the voting people are sovereign, at the very least, even if the non-voting populations of the voters' neighbors who are immigrants, young, and transients are left out of the national equation the future.

But whenever a persistent political majority takes form of the same opinion, it must be allowed to prevail, or we lose the American experiment that the London Economist last week noted is the political reason that Americans respect themselves and why others around the globe in turn respect them. - TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 16:46, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Per history, it rather seems inertia will prevail, unless there is sustained political crises in multiple states over multiple elections (we maybe in the middle of such, but perhaps not and over-time the College will continue to most often produce outcomes most everyone can live with and endure, regardless of whatever principles some people see as being served or not). The College was and is a compromise, and it seems hardly surprising that in every generation the compromise will be questioned, and that talk of recalibration will arise, this is especially so in that ideas of what or who a democracy encompasses, change. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:11, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

WP 20

Thank for your help with Jerome Kohl! - Happy Wikipedia 20, - proud of a little bit on the Main page today, and 5 years ago, and 10 years ago, look: create a new style - revive - complete! I sang in the revival mentioned. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:24, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

On the Main page today, remembered in friendship --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:12, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Electoral college edits

Hello. Former NARA employee here. One certificate is for public inspection as mandated by law - that is what is uploaded. There is a difference between a certificate of vote and ascertainment hence why my edit says "certificate of vote." However, since in the immediate one is available to the public - there is no real difference in the change made. Furthermore, I was simply replacing a certificate of vote from 2012 from one from 2020, hardly a controversial edit. Please refrain from making subtle jabs at other users. I am fully up to speed on the American electoral process. Cliffmore (talk) 15:36, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Cliffmore, Hi. Sorry, I did not think the image was controversial, I thought it was redundant, uninformative of the Process, and ultimately misleading in its redundancy. And since the two Certificates are different, created at different times in the process with different info, etc., and both events recently proved to be controversial, in addition to essential to the links in the chain from popular vote to inauguration, it makes sense in the Process section to illustrate the process with both certificates. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:46, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Got it. Appreciate your clarification --Cliffmore (talk) 17:15, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Green for hope

Lenten Rose

Today, we have a DYK about Wilhelm Knabe, who stood up for future with the striking school children when he was in his 90s, - a model, - see here. - Thank you for your position in the arb case request, - I feel I have to stay away, but there are conversations further down on the page, in case of interest, - in a nutshell: "... will not improve kindness, nor any article". - Yesterday, I made sure on a hike that the flowers are actually blooming ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:23, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Modest flowers

Thank you for what you said on Yoninah's talk, - see also Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-03-28/Obituary! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:55, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Time flies...

Hey, Alanscottwalker. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! CommanderWaterford (talk) 08:31, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

CommanderWaterford (talk) 08:31, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for participating in my RFA

Nice to see your datestamp in support. Trust is especially valuable when given by contributors with whom I interact regularly. Please help me by keeping sharp eyes on my foibles as they arise. I'm happy to learn something new. BusterD (talk) 21:07, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Nine years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:16, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

RfA 2021 review update

Thanks so much for participating in Phase 1 of the RfA 2021 review. 8 out of the 21 issues discussed were found to have consensus. Thanks to our closers of Phase 1, Primefac and Wugapodes.

The following had consensus support of participating editors:

1. Corrosive RfA atmosphere

   The atmosphere at RfA is deeply unpleasant. This makes it so fewer candidates wish to run and also means that some members of our community don't comment/vote.

2. Level of scrutiny

   Many editors believe it would be unpleasant to have so much attention focused on them. This includes being indirectly a part of watchlists and editors going through your edit history with the chance that some event, possibly a relatively trivial event, becomes the focus of editor discussion for up to a week.

3. Standards needed to pass keep rising

   It used to be far easier to pass RfA however the standards necessary to pass have continued to rise such that only "perfect" candidates will pass now.

4. Too few candidates

   There are too few candidates. This not only limits the number of new admin we get but also makes it harder to identify other RfA issues because we have such a small sample size.

5. "No need for the tools" is a poor reason as we can find work for new admins

The following issues had a rough consensus of support from editors:

6. Lifetime tenure (high stakes atmosphere)
   Because RfA carries with it lifetime tenure, granting any given editor sysop feels incredibly important. This creates a risk adverse and high stakes atmosphere.
7. Admin permissions and unbundling
   There is a large gap between the permissions an editor can obtain and the admin toolset. This brings increased scrutiny for RFA candidates, as editors evaluate their feasibility in lots of areas.
8. RfA should not be the only road to adminship
   Right now, RfA is the only way we can get new admins, but it doesn't have to be.

Please consider joining the brainstorming which will last for the next 1-2 weeks. This will be followed by Phase 2, a 30 day discussion to consider solutions to the problems identified in Phase 1.

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There are 2 future mailings planned. One when Phase 2 opens and one with the results of Phase 2. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Best, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:08, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

RfA Reform 2021 Phase 2 has begun

Following a 2 week brainstorming period and a 1 week proposal period, the 30 day discussion of changes to our Request for Adminship process has begun. Following feedback on Phase 1, in order to ensure that the largest number of people possible can see all proposals, new proposals will only be accepted for the for the first 7 days of Phase 2. The 30 day discussion is scheduled to last until November 30. Please join the discussion or even submit your own proposal.

There is 1 future mailing planned with the results of Phase 2. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

16:13, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2021).

Administrator changes

Clpo13

Brian0918 • JDoorjam • Karanacs • MrDarcy • Mindspillage

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Dreamy Jazz • Ferret • GeneralNotability • Girth Summit • RoySmith

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz • LuK3

Guideline and policy news

• Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.

Technical news

• Toolhub is a catalogue of tools which can be used on Wikimedia wikis. It is at https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/.

Arbitration

• GeneralNotability, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections. Ivanvector and John M Wolfson are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves to stand in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections from 07 November 2021 until 16 November 2021.

Miscellaneous

• The 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of five new CheckUsers and two new Oversighters.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Six (musical)

Hi Alanscottwalker! Could you please help me understand why you reverted my bot's edit? My bot's edit was to delete a duplicated author from a reference. I'm not sure what "removal of TOC" means, as my bot's edit did not remove a table of contents. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 23:46, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Must have been some kind of glitch, because when I went through it at the time the TOC had disappeared and I scrolled through history to see it was the bot edit but now the history does not show that, so, now, all I can say is, apologies. Alanscottwalker (talk) 05:47, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

The TOC issue was discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Missing TOC? Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 15:13, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2021 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:19, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

End of slavery in former Confederate states

Hey Alan, thanks for your work on Slave states and free states, but I want to clarify the edit of mine you've reverted a couple of times. The Emancipation Proclamation did not end the institution of slavery in areas under Confederate control. It just freed the slaves currently held there — an action enforced by Union forces as they moved through the south. ("...all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State...shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.") Slavery as an 'institution' continued until it was legally eliminated by individual states or by the 13th Amendment. That's one reason former Confederate states were required to ratify the 13th as a condition of readmission.

For example, if someone who owned a slave in a non-emancipated place (like, say, Kentucky, Delaware, or New Orleans) moved them to a place covered by the Proclamation (say, Alabama or Georgia), that slave was still a slave under the law. That's why the individual state changes and 13th Amendment were necessary: to end the institution itself. The Proclamation was the equivalent of a governor commuting the sentences of everyone on his state's Death Row: It protects everyone currently facing a death sentence, but it doesn't ban the death penalty or prevent future people from being sentenced to death. Flaggingwill (talk) 13:09, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Not convinced. The states were under matial law, and martial law ended slavery -- it is also practically certain that should there have arisen a second Dred Scott v. Sandford (of claimed enslaved moving between states) that the courts would never make that horrific mistake again, after the war they just went through. ~~ Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:21, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that's not accurate. Neither the Proclamation nor Union military control "ended slavery" anywhere, legally speaking. Black leaders, as well as Northern Republicans, expressed fears that as soon as Union forces returned home, freedmen would be re-enslaved so long as slavery was still on the books as legal. (From the Toledo Blade: "When the rebellion is suppressed, the same Constitution will be operative as before. Although every Slave in the South be emancipated, the institution in its legal sense would not be destroyed. The Slaves, if they remained in the States, could all be reenslaved as soon as the army that liberated them was removed.") The Proclamation had been made in the narrow context of Lincoln's war powers, and those powers would at some point end.

The Wade–Davis manifesto in 1864 specifically complained that Lincoln's Reconstruction plan "does not secure the abolition of Slavery; for the proclamation of freedom merely professed to free certain slaves, while it recognized the institution. Every constitution of the rebel States at the outbreak of the rebellion may be adopted without the change of a letter, for none of them contravene that proclamation." The whole point of each of the state actions in this article, as well as the 13th, was to remedy the fact that slavery 'as an institution' was still legal until it was made illegal by state or federal legislation. A few months before Lincoln was shot, his Secretary of State William Seward made a speech that made it very clear slavery in the Confederate states would still be a live matter at the war's end:

While the rebels continue to wage war against the Government of the United States, the military measures affecting Slavery, which have been adopted from necessity, to bring the war to a speedy and successful end, will be continued, except so far as practical experience shall show that they can be modified advantageously, with a view to the same end. When the insurgents shall have disbanded their armies, and laid down their arms, the war will instantly cease, and all the war measures then existing, including those which affect Slavery, will cease also, and all the moral, economical and political questions, as well questions affecting Slavery as others which shall then be existing between individuals and States and the Federal Government, whether they arose before the civil war began, or whether they grew out of it, will, by force of the Constitution, pass over to the arbitrament of courts of law, and to the councils of legislation.

And here's his Interior Secretary John P. Usher around the same time:

The moment they submit to the Government and support the Constitution the war must cease, an a matter of course, and peace will be the natural result. Then the question as to whether the President's Proclamation has in fact freed the slaves of the people of the South will come up for decision. It is a question of law, and can be decided only by the courts. The President believes the Proclamation is constitutional and lawful, and that it has effected all it was intended to effect, but if it should turn out, as it may, that the Proclamation does not in fact free all the slaves, the law must take its course over the President's Proclamation, for we are a law-abiding people.

Flaggingwill (talk) 19:09, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Your thesis is still not convincing. Martial law did end slavery, and you can quibble about it not being civil law, but that does not matter - it was the law of the land and it did end slavery. And Lincoln insisted that for a state to ever get out of being under martial law it had to affrim the EP. It seems like you contend the Emancipation Proclamation was illegal, and the courts would have found it illegal, but that is a pipe dream. And of course no court did find the Emancipation Proclamation illegal. Indeed, people argued for more beyond martial law, but that does not mean that martial law where it was in effect did not end slavery - in law, and ´´in fact´´ it did. (Nor did martial law end when the war ended, in some ways it only just began.) By law, martial law ended slavery where it was in effect, or as predicted there would have been nothing to be in court to fight over afterward, were it ever to get to court. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:50, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 3

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited John H. Johnson, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Arkansas City.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 05:55, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).

Administrator changes

A Train • Berean Hunter • Epbr123 • GermanJoe • Sanchom • Mysid

Technical news

• Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
• The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections is open until 23:59, 06 December 2021 (UTC).
• The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, have been made permanent.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

AE

Do you know how many times these parties have been to AE over the last decade? [1] An AE filing often results in an immediate retaliatory filing, and so much mud slinging that it's very hard for the uninvolved to determine who's in the wrong. El C, is that a fair summary of the dynamic? Jehochman ^Talk 18:09, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Pretty much. It's an exceptionally challenging subject matter for the non-expert to orient themselves in. And on the WP:APL side of WP:ARBEE, there's also WP:APLRS to contend with. El_C 18:26, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

One editor has appear on 76 AE archive pages, and the other on 110 pages. They could be AE's most frequent customers. I think it's time to come up with a more systematic solution rather than continuing this revolving door. Jehochman ^Talk 18:49, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Jehochman, you're here (and at the RfAA [2]) falsely insinuating that there have been 110 AE filings against me. Of course you don't say that explicitly ... because it's so blatantly false that if you did say it explicitly people would laugh at you and you yourself could be sanctioned for WP:ASPERSIONS. So instead, being careful, you only INSINUATE it. ... It's still blatantly false. Yes, there's passing mentions of me at WP:AE [3], or me commenting on someone else's report [4], or even some sock puppets trying to sling mud at me [5] [6] and getting themselves blocked in the process. If you've been editing in controversial areas for 12 years the number of times you get mentioned adds up. And here's another false insinuation - most of these mentions don't even have anything to do with Eastern Europe. They're about Donald Trump, or Race and Intelligence, or Economics, or Mexican history or some other unrelated topic. You either know this, in which case your "some statistics" comment is made entirely in bad faith, or you don't know this, which means you haven't even bothered to do a basic fact check before spouting off.

I also see that you're doing the same type of mealy mouthed insinuation here. Buddy? If you think that I'm guilty of "falsifying history in Eastern Europe for nationalistic ends" then have the guts to say that outright and name me by name, rather than doing this cowardly hint-hint-whisper-whisper crap on people's talk pages. And guess what? At that point, when you actually make the accusation explicitly, I will ask you to back it up with diffs. And if you can't provide such diffs, then *I* will report you myself for WP:ASPERSIONS and WP:NPA. If you can't do that then stop with this "everybody's talking about it" Trumpian nonsense. Volunteer Marek 19:01, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

(ec) No, Jehochman, the editor who has made most trips to AE is actually.... Icewhiz, you know, the guy who you're busy carrying water for right now. Volunteer Marek 19:01, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

He's been banned. So you're saying that a lot of trips to AE correlates with users being banned. Are you sure you want to point out that correlation? Jehochman ^Talk 20:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Bang head against table. No J, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. I believe others already pointed out to you how ... specious (at best) your argument is [7]. Volunteer Marek 20:20, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Not sure why this conversation should be here. What issue has AE not been able to deal with -- if the issue is whether someone should be banned from the project or a topic, put in your filing to Arbcom, who should be banned, why, diffs and what steps have been taken to secure the ban prior to Arbcom. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:30, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

AE has had trouble dealing with some of the editors who are its most frequent customers. No process is going to handle every situation perfectly. This looks like an exceptional case where delegation to AE probably won't solve the problem. The problems are outlined in the four threads I linked. I will respect your wish to end this. You asked and I answered. Thank you for your indulgence and please have the last word if you wish. Jehochman ^Talk 20:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

RFA 2021 Completed

The 2021 re-examination of RFA has been completed. 23 (plus 2 variants) ideas were proposed. Over 200 editors participated in this final phase. Three changes gained consensus and two proposals were identified by the closers as having the potential to gain consensus with some further discussion and iteration. Thanks to all who helped to close the discussion, and in particular Primefac, Lee Vilenski, and Ymblanter for closing the most difficult conversations and for TonyBallioni for closing the review of one of the closes.

The following proposals gained consensus and have all been implemented:

1. Revision of standard question 1 to Why are you interested in becoming an administrator? Special thanks to xaosflux for help with implementation.
2. A new process, Administrative Action Review (XRV) designed to review if an editor's specific use of an advanced permission, including the admin tools, is consistent with policy in a process similar to that of deletion review and move review. Thanks to all the editors who contributed (and are continuing to contribute) to the discussion of how to implement this proposal.
3. Removal of autopatrol from the administrator's toolkit. Special thanks to Wugapodes and Seddon for their help with implementation.

The following proposals were identified by the closers as having the potential to gain consensus with some further discussion and iteration:

1. An option for people to run for temporary adminship (proposal, discussion, & close)
2. An optional election process (proposal & discussion and close review & re-close)

Editors who wish to discuss these ideas or other ideas on how to try to address any of the six issues identified during phase 1 for which no proposal gained are encouraged to do so at RFA's talk page or an appropriate village pump.

A final and huge thanks all those who participated in this effort to improve our RFA process over the last 4 months.

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This is the final update with no further talk page messages planned.

01:46, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you and request

Thank you for catching the missing "an" in my description of the second inaugural address. Please explain your other change, which was adding }} to the end of the block quote. I don't understand what it did.Maurice Magnus (talk) 19:24, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2021).

Administrator changes

Amalthea • Ihcoyc (deceased) • Kateshortforbob • Kirill Lokshin • Rifleman 82 • Ryan Norton • Wrp103

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

CheckUser changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Oversighter changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Guideline and policy news

• Following consensus at the 2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.

• Additionally, consensus for proposal 6C of the 2021 RfA review has led to the creation of an administrative action review process. The purpose of this process will be to review individual administrator actions and individual actions taken by users holding advanced permissions.

Arbitration

• Following the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Cabayi, Donald Albury, Enterprisey, Izno, Opabinia regalis, Worm That Turned, Wugapodes.

Miscellaneous

• The functionaries email list (functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to the Arbitration Committee.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:24, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

RfC

I believe you are being disruptive, although at this point I'm not willing to say that you are doing so deliberately. I respect your right to express your opinion, but not repeatedly and not in the wrong place. I don't plan to repeat myself about the "malformed" issue. I think you have made your point quite clearly. The resolution isn't for you and me to repeatedly disagree with each other. I'll respectfully ask you to take that issue to an administrators' board. Thanks. Sundayclose (talk) 04:25, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

As I said, the discussion of malformation and the misleading nature of the RfC belongs in the RfC, not elsewhere. Alanscottwalker (talk) 04:42, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).

Administrator changes

AustralianRupert • Cimon Avaro • Euryalus • Jehochman • Nunh-huh

28bytes

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• The Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines have been published for consideration. Voting to ratify this guideline is planned to take place 7 March to 21 March. Comments can be made on the talk page.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
• The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

Arbitration

• Community input is requested on several motions aimed at addressing discretionary sanctions that are no longer needed or overly broad.
• The Arbitration Committee has published a generalised comment regarding successful appeals of sanctions that it can review (such as checkuser blocks).
• A motion related to the Antisemitism in Poland case was passed following a declined case request.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2022 Steward elections will begin on 07 February 2022, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2022, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey is open until 11 February 2022.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:01, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2022).

Administrator changes

Modussiccandi

BOZ • Brookie (deceased) • Jackmcbarn • Jamesday • Jonathunder • Master of Puppets • Saravask

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• A RfC is open to change the wording of revision deletion criterion 1 to remove the sentence relating to non-infringing contributions.
• A RfC is open to discuss prohibiting draftification of articles over 90 days old.

Technical news

• The deployment of the reply tool as an opt-out feature, as announced in last month's newsletter, has been delayed to 7 March. Feedback and comments are being welcomed at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project. (T296645)
• Special:Nuke will now allow the selection of standard deletion reasons to be used when mass-deleting pages. This was a Community Wishlist Survey request from 2022. (T25020)
• The ability to undelete the talk page when undeleting a page using Special:Undelete or the API will be added soon. This change was requested in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. (T295389)

Arbitration

• Several unused discretionary sanctions and article probation remedies have been rescinded. This follows the community feedback from the 2021 Discretionary Sanctions review.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 appointees for the Ombuds commission are Érico, Faendalimas, Galahad, Infinite0694, Mykola7, Olugold, Udehb and Zabe as regular members and Ameisenigel and JJMC89 as advisory members.
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Hi Alanscottwalker,

In case you missed it, you added here Roosevelt issuing Executive Order 8802, but unfortunately ref name="Leuchtenburg" appears not to have been defined, so it was removed by another editor.

Best, == Peter NYC (talk) 22:47, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Would you consider

starting an article on the Arrest of User:Pessimist2006? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:25, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Another article

Note that there is an article under a different name now. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:22, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Station name in infobox

The name in the infobox should reflect the same common name used for the article title. The |other_names= parameter should be used for names not in common use, such as tribute names that are not used on station signs, schedules, etc. See 30th Street Station and South Station for typical usage. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 17:12, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2022).

Administrator changes

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Ad Orientem

Geschichte • Ryan Postlethwaite • Sabine's Sunbird • Wassupwestcoast

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• An RfC is open proposing a change to the minimum activity requirements for administrators.

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• Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have the deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights. This means that those in the Researcher user group and Checkusers who are not administrators can now access Special:RevisionDelete. The users able to view the special page after this change are the 3 users in the Researcher group, as there are currently no checkusers who are not already administrators. (T301928)
• When viewing deleted revisions or diffs on Special:Undelete a back link to the undelete page for the associated page is now present. (T284114)

Arbitration

• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Opening of proceedings has been updated to reflect current practice following a motion.
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Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines has closed, and the results were that 56.98% of voters supported the guidelines. The results of this vote mean the Wikimedia Foundation Board will now review the guidelines.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:12, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Founding Fathers of the United States#RFC on Continental Association​

As a major editor of the article this may be of interest. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:53, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).

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David.Monniaux • Fribbler • Grue • Kpjas • West.andrew.g

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Ks0stm

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• Following an RfC, a change has been made to the administrators inactivity policy. Under the new policy, if an administrator has not made at least 100 edits over a period of 5 years they may be desysopped for inactivity.
• Following a discussion on the bureaucrat's noticeboard, a change has been made to the bureaucrats inactivity policy.

Technical news

• The ability to undelete the associated talk page when undeleting a page has been added. This was the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
• A public status system for WMF wikis has been created. It is located at https://www.wikimediastatus.net/ and is hosted separately to WMF wikis so in the case of an outage it will remain viewable.

Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the St Christopher case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to place a ban on single-purpose accounts who were disruptively editing on the article St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine or related pages from those pages.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:33, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).

Administrator changes

Tamzin

Barek • Darkwind • Geometry guy • ProcseeBot • RoyBoy • Sean Whitton • Valereee • Visorstuff • WAvegetarian

Sn0wflake → VersedFenrir

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Guideline and policy news

• Several areas of improvement collated from community member votes have been identified in the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines. The areas of improvement have been sent back for review and you are invited to provide input on these areas.

Technical news

• Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
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Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the Rachel Marsden case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to delete or reduce to a stub, together with their talk pages, articles related to Rachel Marsden when they violate Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy.
• An arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been closed.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:55, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

End date disputed?

Please see my entry, which I've titled "End date disputed?", on the Talk page of American Civil War. I am also asking CaptainEek to look at it. Thanks.Maurice Magnus (talk) 14:35, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I've added a further comment.Maurice Magnus (talk) 18:48, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Just, fyi, I usually watch where I comment so no need for this extra step. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:29, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

A messenger award for you!

		Messenger award
		Thank you for trying to get the message out there at DYK! Bruxton (talk) 19:35, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2022).

Administrator changes

AA • Gwalla • Ioeth • Laurascudder • Moriori (deceased) • Nat • Rfl

Drilnoth → AFigureOfBlue

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• user_global_editcount is a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding conduct in deletion-related editing has been opened.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

This is essay-worthy

Hello. Just popping in to suggest that you might consider expanding your recent Talk:V post into a little essay/checklist.

:::::The thing is, the onus, or responsibility, does not first arise when there is a dispute, it arose at the time an author's first article addition, including at article creation. The principle for adding content is that it improves the pedia, we judge what improves the pedia by whether it accords with editing policies and guidelines: an irrevancy does not improve the pedia, a mangled context does not improve the pedia, a misplaced context does not improve the pedia, a lack of context does not improve the pedia, an overstated or misunderstood source does not improve the pedia, a trivia does not improve the pedia, a POV does not improve the pedia, a CVIO does not improve the pedia, an original research does not improve the pedia, etc. The onus, the responsibility, never moves, it is always on the author. No author is perfect or can be perfect but they do have to work to improve the pedia, and show it to the world, in their work.-- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:21, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

My personal, pessimistic observation is that important articles are increasingly overwhelmed by inexperienced or ill-informed editors who consider the extent of their personal knowledge to be the extent of all human knowledge. Lots of bad content is being promoted without enough research into the broader sources that would ensure useful NPOV narratives for our readers. One telltale sign comes in articles relating to current events where we see citations to local news media or third-tier broadcast reports rather than globally recognized journalism or academic sources. SPECIFICO talk 13:26, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, I think it was ever thus, that is the nature of the beast, we can't expect people to know how to write an encyclopedia or Wikipedia, we must still continue to insist that they do it right. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:42, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

I see it getting quite a bit worse in articles relating to current events, perhaps because of media silos that reinforce some editors' casual conclusion that they are well enough informed to differentiate valid content from POV or NOTNEWS. Also, the number of politics-related articles has proliferated to such an extent that the relatively small number of well-informed editors is spread too thin. They are easily overwhelmed by perhaps well-intentioned, perhaps partisan, newcomers. SPECIFICO talk 15:11, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2022).

Administrator changes

Valereee

Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • Capitalistroadster • Samsara

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
• An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.

Technical news

• The Wikimania 2022 Hackathon will take place virtually from 11 August to 14 August.
• Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)

Arbitration

• The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

• You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
• Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
• Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:44, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

13th Amendment

Let me tell you more about my most recent edit. Instead of changing "Congress" to "the House of Representatives," I considered changing "By late 1864" to "In 1864," and leaving it as "Congress." But I have no evidence that Lincoln lobbied the Senate as he did the House. I have the Holzer and Gabbard book, and the pages cited do not mention the Senate. Neither does another relevant essay in the book.

Also, the book is a collection of essays, and the footnote should cite the essays and then say "in Holzer and Gabbard." I didn't make that edit, because I am not familiar with the abbreviated form of the footnote, and I'd have to redo the footnote in an unabbreviated form. If you'd like to work on this, the essay that includes 172-174 is Belz, Herman, "The Constitution, the Amendment Process, and the Abolition of Slavery." But equally relevant is Vorenberg, Michael, "The Thirteenth Amendment Enacted," pp. 180-182. The entire essay is on 180-194; the entire Belz essay is on 160-179. Maurice Magnus (talk) 00:28, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

I simplified it, the aside is better noted in other articles. As general context (not for this Civil War article) Lincoln was very much keyed to election promises/mandates, he ran on non-expansion of slavery in 1860 and would not bend on that when he won, even to avert the civil war; he ran on the 13th amendment in 1864, and pursued it when he won in November. Also, Lincoln generally ascribed to an older Whiggish institutional philosophy where the law making lead was in the people's legislature, while the executive was more suggestive in that regard (whereas, the suppression of the rebellion power was in the executive). Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:03, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Did the South secede?

Please see my comment at Talk:American Civil War - Wikipedia. I posted it moments before CaptainEek edited the article. Maurice Magnus (talk) 01:10, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).

Administrator changes

DanCherek • DatGuy • Femke • Z1720

Aldux • Graham Beards • Nyttend

Interface administrator changes

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Guideline and policy news

• A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
• An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.

Technical news

• The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
• The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
• The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

• The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
• Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:11, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Always precious

Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:03, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 4

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Soldiers' Home, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Camp Douglas.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 09:18, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).

Administrator changes

ScottishFinnishRadish

Staxringold

Ahoerstemeier (deceased) • Ched

Interface administrator changes

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Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that if the rationale for a block depends on information that is not available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee, a checkuser or an oversighter for action (as applicable, per ArbCom's recent updated guidance) instead of the administrator making the block.
• Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
• Community comment on the revised Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines is requested until 8 October.

Technical news

• The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.

Arbitration

• Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
• A modification to the deletion RfC remedy in the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been made to reaffirm the independence of the RfC and allow the moderators to split the RfC in two.
• The second phase of the 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review closes 3 October.

Miscellaneous

• An administrator's account was recently compromised. Administrators are encouraged to check that their passwords are secure, and reminded that ArbCom reserves the right to not restore adminship in cases of poor account security. You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to provide an extra level of security.
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• You are invited to comment on candidates in the 2022 CUOS appointments process.
• An RfC is open to discuss whether to make Vector 2022 the default skin on desktop.
• Tech tip: You can do a fuzzy search of all deleted page titles at Special:Undelete.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:42, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

"1933 Chicago World´s Fair" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect 1933 Chicago World´s Fair and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 October 15#1933 Chicago World´s Fair until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 15:13, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).

Administrator changes

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Guideline and policy news

• The article creation at scale RfC opened on 3 October and will be open until at least 2 November.
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Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 13 November 2022 until 22 November 2022 to stand in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The arbitration case request titled Athaenara has been resolved by motion.
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• AmandaNP, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections. Xaosflux and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of two new CheckUsers.
• You can add yourself to the centralised page listing time zones of administrators.
• Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like {{rangeblock|create=yes}} or {{uw-ublock|contains profanity}}.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:22, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Booth's comment

Thanks again for catching my error; I had forgotten Booth's comment. But any reader who was unfamiliar with the comment or had forgotten it might be confused by Wikipedia first quoting Lincoln advocating Black suffrage and then stating that Booth reacted by wanting to kill Lincoln for supporting Black citizenship. I propose that we change "became determined to kill Lincoln for supporting citizenship for blacks. Booth is reported to have remarked: 'That is the last speech he will ever make'" to "and reacted by saying, 'That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I'll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.'" I would footnote that to Ronald White's A. Lincoln, p. 672. Would you go along with that? Wikipedia quotes "nigger" where appropriate, as I think it is here. Maurice Magnus (talk) 00:18, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

No. I think, it's clear and direct the way it is, and already sourced. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:14, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

First, I explained why the version you prefer is unclear. To repeat, it jumps without explanation from Lincoln's advocating Black suffrage to Booth's opposition to Black citizenship. You have not attempted to dispute that, but only to assert without offering a reason that it is clear.

Second, you imply that my version is unclear, which is patently false, and you do not explain why it is unclear.

Therefore, I will revert back to my version. Maurice Magnus (talk) 17:26, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

I know that editing wars are frowned upon, so I will not undo your change now. But I intend to pursue this, after I figure out the arbitration procedure, which I've never used. In light of the fact that I offer reasons for my version and you rudely do not, I expect to prevail. Maurice Magnus (talk) 17:40, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

1st, I reverted to the longtstanding version, you made a mistake by reverting back, see BRD. If you don't understand my reasons you can ask and discuss.

2nd: Any reader with a modicum of sense, can see the connection between voting and citzenship. (both in the way the sentences are structured and in substance)

3rd: A simple declarative statement is always more clear. What we are to do here is summarize, simply and straitforwardly. (the point there is simply that someone wanted to kill him for giving that speech, and that's because voting means citizenship, the details of the speech and Booth belong in other articles.Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:59, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

(drive-by commenter) I agree here that the interest of encyclopedic brevity should be served. Any clarity added by the longer quotation is negated by the strong words used by Booth. The longer version of Booth's words seems to belong in Booth's biography, as it serves to characterize Booth's state of mind in more detail. This article talk page concerns Lincoln. Quisqualis (talk) 20:05, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Quoting versus paraphrasing

Please see my comment with the above title at Talk:Abraham Lincoln and slavery. Maurice Magnus (talk) 13:14, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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Administrators' newsletter – December 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).

Administrator changes

• Eddie891
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• Alex.muller
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Interface administrator changes

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Oversight changes

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Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been found in an RfC to automatically place RfAs on hold after one week.
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Technical news

• A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)

Arbitration

• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
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Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add /64 to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:43, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Stating an individual's convicted felon status in the opening paragraph

This is very common, normal procedure on other articles, as I'm sure you know. It is the 'standard' in a descriptive rather than prescriptive way. You brought to my attention that this is actually contrary to Wikipedia's standards. Would you recommend generally that, if a person's convicted felon status isn't what makes them notable, that information be excluded from the opening paragraph if it is mentioned in the body of the article? Philomathes2357 (talk) 16:04, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Sure, and not just that, (every subject has some differences), but Fred Hampton's (like other famous people's) biography is already written-up in formal encyclopedia articles, so there is already good guidance for due encyclopedic presentation for such subjects. (As far as me knowing about so-called "normal" procedure, I just can't agree) Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:00, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Actually I restored it. So far as I can see, Hampton’s charge was dropped, Duke’s was not. A summary of hos article should include the felony. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Duke#Legal_difficulties_and_felony_conviction Doug Weller talk 19:54, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I find only three instances of the word "drop" or "dropped" in Fred Hampton's Wikipedia page, none of which reference his felony charges being dropped. Nor do I find any record of it from any reliable source, or any source at all on Google, Bing, or Yahoo Search. I considered that you meant that Hampton was posthumously pardoned, but I can't find any record of this either.

On the contrary, the USA Today article by Rasha Ali from 13 Feb 2021 entitled "Fact-checking 'Judas and the Black Messiah': Was Fred Hampton drugged or arrested for ice cream?" concludes discussion of the matter by stating "The Black Panther Party leader denied Suitt's accusations and claimed he was denied a fair trial. Regardless, Hampton spent some time in prison.". There is no mention of a later dropping of charges or pardon.

However, the matter was appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court. They upheld the decision of Cook County, and their affirmation is linked below. Either I've made a major oversight, in which case I welcome a citation, or Hampton was never pardoned, and the charges were never dropped.

I'll be happy to see some links to citations if you have them, since the fact Hampton's charges were dropped, if true, is not even mentioned on his Wikipedia page to date. I won't revert the Fred Hampton page back until we've actually sorted out the question of whether his charges were dropped, whether he was pardoned, or not. Of course, if they weren't dropped, it makes no logical sense to include one individual's felon status in their introductory sentence and not another. This fact should either be stated on both Hampton and Duke's opening sentences (as it's stated on the pages of other individuals), or it should be stated in neither. Given the strongly negative connotations of a felony conviction, I err on the side of neither.

https://law.justia.com/cases/illinois/supreme-court/1969/42474-5.html Philomathes2357 (talk) 04:24, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi all. I see that Alanscottwalker took it upon himself to re-revert my edit to the Fred Hampton page, even though nobody has challenged anything I said above. The only reason I took matters into my own hands and edited the page was because I interpreted a lack of communication as tacit agreement - since we're all on the same page that Fred Hampton's convicted felon status was never dropped (unless evidence can be presented) we can agree that it is pertinent, even though it's mentioned later in the article.

Another reason I thought this was agreed upon is that David Duke's page, which I picked at random from a sample of pages that include "convicted felon" in the opening sentence, was reverted when I removed the "convicted felon" piece, suggesting that the consensus was that "convicted felon", if the charges have not been dropped or expunged, is pertinent and important information to include in the introductory sentence.

I cannot see any reason whatsoever beyond raw editorial bias why "convicted felon" should be included in *some* opening sentences, while buried in the body of other bios. Either "convicted felon" should be included in the summary of every individual who's been convicted of a felony, or it's not appropriate to do so, and any criminal background should be relegated to the body of the bio, while leaving the introductory sentence to provide a more general overview of *why* this individual is significant enough to warrant a Wikipedia article.

If anything, you could argue that Hampton's felony conviction is *more* significant than Duke's, since Hampton's incident allegedly involved physical violence and Duke's is tax and finance related. But again, I think a clear policy or rule of thumb needs to be developed on this issue, rather than shooting from the hip and letting the specter of editorial bias sneak in.

I propose to remove the statement "convicted felon" from the opening sentence of David Duke's page, as well as every other page in which similar language is used, unless a person's convicted felon status is a major part of what makes them significant public figures (i.e. Jeffrey Epstein). I believe that is the most reasonable policy in regards to announcing an individual's felon status in the first sentence. If anyone wants to chime in, great, otherwise I'll go forward, and hope for an honest engagement rather than snark and misinformation. Philomathes2357 (talk) 21:33, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

@Philomathes2357 I see the word felony only once:" In exchange for having his felony charges dropped and receiving a monthly stipend, O'Neal agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a counterintelligence operative.". Doug Weller talk 10:48, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

You can't create policy, which is what you seem to be trying to do. I've suggested either an RfC on the talk page or try to get this into BLP, but I doubt that will work as it is so specific. Doug Weller talk 10:52, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Doug, thanks for engaging. As far as I can tell, the quote you just shared about felony charges being dropped refers to O'Neal, the informant, not Hampton. Also, I know I can't snap my fingers and single-handedly create policy, but I'd be happy to go through to proper channels to attempt to do so once something resembling a consensus has been established here. Thanks again for chiming in with some substance. Philomathes2357 (talk) 16:50, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

You are right, nothing in the article said at least directly Hampton was convicted of a felony, and ordinary assault is not a felony. So why is there an issue about felony not being in the lead? Doug Weller talk 17:08, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

You're right, the fact that Hampton was convicted of a felony isn't directly mentioned in the article - which is kind of strange, since it's true. He wasn't convicted of "ordinary assault", he was convicted of robbery, which most certainly *is* a felony. I'm glad you pointed out this omission, as it shows that the body of the Hampton article needs work, too. I think the exact charge he was convicted of belongs in the body, but the phrase "convicted felon" shouldn't be in the lead - here or anywhere. Philomathes2357 (talk) 17:27, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

So he was. But unless it’s changed recently, that wasn’t in the article so at that point it shouldn’t have been an issue. But all of this belongs on Duke’s talk page really. Doug Weller talk 17:50, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

I think these conversations are best had on Duke's page, Hampton's talk page, and the thread I created at "biographies of living persons". As you'll see, a clear consensus has emerged. Thanks for your input and I look forward to hearing your dissenting opinions on one of those talk pages. I agree, let's stop spamming Alanscottwalker's page, as he clearly has no interest in being engaged on this topic at this time. Will no longer reply to posts on this thread. Philomathes2357 (talk) 20:31, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Seasons Greetings

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, whether it's Christmas or some other festival, I hope you and those close to you have a happy, restful time! Have fun, Donner60 (talk) 00:16, 23 December 2022 (UTC)}}

Donner60 (talk) 02:11, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).

Administrator changes

• ComplexRational
• Extraordinary Writ

Stephen

• Andrew Yong
• Dbenbenn
• DESiegel
• GlassCobra
• Joe Decker
• Nancy
• Pathoschild
• StuffOfInterest
• William Pietri
• Wwwwolf
• Xdamr

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

CheckUser changes

Moneytrees

• Ivanvector
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• GeneralNotability
• Moneytrees

• Guerillero
• SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.

Arbitration

• Following the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, CaptainEek, GeneralNotability, Guerillero, L235, Moneytrees, Primefac, SilkTork.
• The 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review has concluded with many changes to the discretionary sanctions procedure including a change of the name to "contentious topics". The changes are being implemented over the coming month.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
• Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Chicago Mercantile Exchange page request

Hello [[User:Alanscottwalker|Alanscottwalker]]. I noticed you recently did some copyediting on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange article. I recently posted a request on the article's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chicago_Mercantile_Exchange Talk page] concerning the Mergers and Productions sections that I'm hoping you could take a look at. I have a conflict of interest, so I'm not going to be editing the article directly. Any feedback you can provide would be appreciated! ~~~~ Lbischel (talk) 19:39, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi Alanscottwalker, just checking to see if you've had a chance to review the proposed update to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange article's Products section. I replied to your comment and tried to address the timeline issue that you raised. Any additional guidance would be much appreciated. Lbischel (talk) 17:12, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello again, Alanscottwalker. I recently posted a proposal on the CME Group Talk page that attempts to correct conflation between Chicago Mercantile Exchange and CME Group. Would appreciate any feedback you can provide. Lbischel (talk) 22:14, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).

Administrator changes

Gimmetrow

• Bjelleklang
• Bob the Wikipedian
• Leithp
• WhisperToMe
• 100 inactive admins

CheckUser changes

• BDD
• Bradv
• Donald Albury
• Maxim
• MusikAnimal

Oversighter changes

• BDD
• Bradv
• Donald Albury
• Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the administrator policy now requires that prior written consent be gained from the Arbitration Committee to mark a block as only appealable to the committee.
• Following a community discussion, consensus has been found to impose the extended-confirmed restriction over the topic areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan and Kurds and Kurdistan.

Technical news

• The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 24 February 2023.
• In December, the contentious topics procedure was adopted which replaces the former discretionary sanctions system. The contentious topics procedure is now in effect following an initial implementation period. There is a detailed summary of the changes and administrator instructions for the new procedure. The arbitration clerk team are taking suggestions, concerns, and unresolved questions about this new system at their noticeboard.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
• Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:37, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).

Administrator changes

The Wordsmith

• Fuhghettaboutit
• Spinningspark (deceased)

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F10 (useless non-media files) has been deprecated.
• Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
• A request for comment is open to discuss making the closing instructions for the requested moves process a guideline.

Technical news

• The results of the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey have been posted.

Arbitration

• Remedy 11 ("Request for Comment") of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been rescinded.
• The proposed decision for the Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case is expected 7 March 2023.
• A case related to the Holocaust in Poland is expected to be opened soon.

Miscellaneous

• The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
• Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
• The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:18, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

World War II and the history of Jews in Poland: Arbitration case opened

Hello Alanscottwalker,

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland/Evidence. Please add your evidence by April 04, 2023, which is when the first evidence phase closes. Submitted evidence will be summarized by Arbitrators and Clerks at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland/Evidence/Summary. Owing to the summary style, editors are encouraged to submit evidence in small chunks sooner rather than more complete evidence later.

Details about the summary page, the two phases of evidence, a timeline and other answers to frequently asked questions can be found at the case's FAQ page.

For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration.

For the Arbitration Committee,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:12, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2023).

Administrator changes

Aoidh

KillerChihuahua

CheckUser changes

Ferret

Guideline and policy news

• A community RfC is open to discuss whether reports primarily involving gender-related disputes or controversies should be referred to the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard.

Technical news

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis starting this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. (T178356)
• The rollback of Vector 2022 RfC has found no consensus to rollback to Vector legacy, but has found rough consensus to disable "limited width" mode by default.
• A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will now appear in the subtitle links shown on Special:Contributions. This was voted #17 in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023.

Arbitration

• The Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case has been closed.
• A case about World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been opened, with the first evidence phase closing 6 April 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:10, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2023).

Administrator changes

Spicy

• Ale jrb
• Dbachmann
• DGG (deceased)
• Jimbo Wales

CheckUser changes

Jimbo Wales

Oversighter changes

Jimbo Wales

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Progress has started on the Page Triage improvement project. This is to address the concerns raised by the community in their 2022 WMF letter that requested improvements be made to the tool.

Arbitration

• The proposed decision in the World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case is expected 11 May 2023.

Miscellaneous

• The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input through May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Administrator changes

Ingenuity

• Ddstretch
• Prodego
• Resolute

CheckUser changes

Courcelles

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
• As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.

Technical news

• Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous

• Following a community referendum, the arbitration policy has been modified to remove the ability for users to appeal remedies to Jimbo Wales.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:32, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

Novem Linguae

• Deckiller
• Electionworld
• MBisanz
• Penwhale
• Raul654
• Roadrunner
• Viridae
• Yannismarou

Bureaucrat changes

MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

• Contributions to the English Wikipedia are now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) license instead of CC BY-SA 3.0. Contributions are still also released under the GFDL license.

Technical news

• Discussion is open regarding a proposed global policy regarding third-party resources. Third-party resources are computer resources that reside outside of Wikimedia production websites.

Arbitration

• Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:57, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 7

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Royal Exchange, London, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Neoclassical.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:05, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

SmallCat dispute case opened

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/SmallCat dispute. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/SmallCat dispute/Evidence. Please add your evidence by August 4, 2023, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/SmallCat dispute/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 13:04, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

Firefangledfeathers

• AlisonW
• Amberrock
• Closedmouth
• Scottywong

Interface administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Technical news

• The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. This allows hiding edits made by automated tools. (T334338)
• Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool that allows easier blocking of plain domains (and their subdomains). This is more easily searchable and is faster for the software to use than the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. It does not support regex (for complex cases), URL path-matching, or the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. (T337431)

Arbitration

• The arbitration cases named Scottywong and AlisonW closed 10 July and 16 July respectively.
• The SmallCat dispute arbitration case is in the workshop phase.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:53, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Proposed decision posted for the SmallCat dispute case

The proposed decision in the SmallCat dispute has been posted. You are invited to review this decision and draw the arbitrators' attention to any relevant material or statements. Comments may be brought to the attention of the committee on the proposed decision talk page. For the Arbitration Committee, Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 10:53, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Administrator changes

• Pppery
• Theleekycauldron

• Dwheeler
• G.A.S
• Royalbroil
• Ssd

CheckUser changes

Bradv

Oversighter changes

Bradv

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
• A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

• Special:Contributions now shows the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. (T324166)

Arbitration

• The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:21, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 18

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited McLean House (Appomattox, Virginia), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Union.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:02, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

RfC on the "Airlines and destinations" tables in airport articles

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § RfC on the "Airlines and destinations" tables in airport articles. I saw that you participated in a discussion on a similar topic. Sunnya343 (talk) 17:51, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 15

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited National Bureau of Economic Research, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Carnegie Foundation.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:02, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).

Administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

Tamzin

Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

• Ragesoss
• TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

• The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.
• There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. Feedback on this proposal is requested.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
• Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
• Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
• Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
• Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
• Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
• An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.

Miscellaneous

• The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:22, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

You've been around a while so I won't template you

...but please do not edit war, as you are currently doing at Ida B. Wells. [8][9] I ask you to self-revert pending a new consensus and instead engage substantively on the talk page. Generalrelative (talk) 22:40, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Please

If you're going to insist that edits like this remain in articles, you are responsible for cleaning them up. That edit not only added many sources that aren't appropriate for that article but also added categories and a template that is already in the article or also inappropriate. You've taken responsibility for the material so I expect you'll clean them up yourself. ElKevbo (talk) 14:54, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Incorrect. Per Wikipedia's MOS, templates that are in the article are appropriate where as here, the citation section is very long. And you're the only one who knows what you think about various sources with the vague personal phrase 'appropriate', as a matter of the MOS and Preserve -- so it is incumbent on you to edit in not delete but do not remove any just because they are also in the long citation section. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:06, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

If you are talking about other templates than cite templates (which you did not mention in your edit summary), I have removed those from the section, which could have easily been done by you with an actually informative edit summary, without your mistaken wholesale deletion. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:21, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:33, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Baptists

Please keep an eye on the Baptists article. Nathan B2 has made many changes that remove important links (like those to Christian denomination) from the article. There seems to be an effort to put all Baptists under the umbrella of evangelicalism when there are mainline Baptist denominations, such as the American Baptist Churches USA. desmay (talk) 18:36, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello Desmay (talk · contribs) and Alanscottwalker (talk · contribs). I continued the conversation here Talk:Baptists#Association_of_churches.Thanks for your help. My best wishes of peace and love (Wikipedia:WikiLove).--Nathan B2 (talk) 15:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2023).

Administrator changes

• Ganesha811
• JPxG

• Ajpolino
• Lourdes
• Mairi
• RockMFR
• Somno
• WilyD

Beeblebrox → Just Step Sideways

CheckUser changes

• Beeblebrox
• Opabinia regalis

Oversight changes

• Beeblebrox
• Opabinia regalis

Guideline and policy news

• Following a talk page discussion, the Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, the Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
• The Arbitration Committee has announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:53, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).

Administrator changes

Clovermoss

Dennis Brown

• Julia W
• Marasmusine
• PBS

CheckUser changes

• Aoidh
• HJ Mitchell
• Sdrqaz
• Spicy
• ToBeFree
• Vanamonde93
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• Aoidh
• Firefly
• Sdrqaz
• ToBeFree
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Arbitration

• Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
• The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Windsor Castle plan

The plan has actually all the letters but the letter K, indicating the Henry VIII gate, is black on dark brown and black and almost impossible to see. I tried to download the original, unlettered, diagram to redo the lettering but don't appear to be able to. It really needs a new version to include the East Terrace but that is beyond my graphics abilities. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 17:13, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, I found the K (and the O) after my comment. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:16, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I've managed to relable it, I was trying to drag it direct into photoshop, which doesn't accept svg files! Strangely it now appears in the colours indicated in the alt parameter, not sure how. I also tried to add a letter for the East Terrace but it doesn't display. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 17:56, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Administrator Conduct Case 2024-1: Mzajac opened

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Administrator Conduct Case 2024-1: Mzajac. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Administrator Conduct Case 2024-1: Mzajac/Evidence. Please add your evidence by January 30, 2024, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Administrator Conduct Case 2024-1: Mzajac/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 17:55, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Marble Hill and the Harlem Ship Canal

As described at length in my edit summary at this edit for the article for Marble Hill, Manhattan, there is no Harlem Ship Canal. Harlem Ship Canal is a redirect to Spuyten Duyvil Creek which says "Today, Spuyten Duyvil Creek, the Harlem River Ship Canal, and the Harlem River form a continuous channel, referred to collectively as the Harlem River". The article for Harlem River says that is "flowing between the Hudson River and the East River", which covers the same definition as provided in the article for Spuyten Duyvil Creek. As a compromise in the Marble Hill article, I refer in the image caption to the body of water as the Harlem River and mention in as the long-ago site of the Harlem Ship Canal. I hope that serves as a satisfactory alternative. Alansohn (talk) 16:54, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

None of you what wrote demonstrates there is "no Harlem Ship Canal". Just because the Harlem River also exists, in no way means that the Harlem Ship Canal does not exist. Indeed, that claim of yours is complete nonsense. As already discussed on the article talk page, the canal does exist and its what's in the picture of Marble Hill. The canal has existed ever since it was dug, and it exists today, it's never moved. The Harlem Ship Canal, the man-made channel south of Marble Hill, that separates it from Manhattan, is very much completely still there. And where it is today, is practically the most important thing that explains Marble Hill, Manhattan (like why it's part of Manhattan). Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:59, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

While I firmly disagree, what I am asking is are willing to accept the compromise wording added to the caption in the article? Alansohn (talk) 03:15, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Other than your fanciful nonsense about a canal disappearing, your bogus reliance on broad unsourced Wikipedia statements (read Wikipedia is not a reliable source) to jump to your fanciful nonsense (which do not support your preposterous conclusion, anyway), and that the caption is rather less efficient than when it gets straight to the canal, which is what is relevant to the neighborhood - I've edited compromise in. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:45, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Red-tailed hawk
• Robertsky

• Ameliorate!
• Ancheta Wis
• Anthony Bradbury (deceased)
• Cobi
• Ev
• Moondyne
• Worm That Turned

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

CheckUser changes

Wugapodes

Interface administrator changes

• Enterprisey
• Izno

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)

Arbitration

• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
• Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
• Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
• The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for February 18

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Invitation to join New pages patrol

Hello Alanscottwalker!

• The New Pages Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles needing review. We could use a few extra hands to help.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:20, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Sdkb
• The Night Watch

• East718
• Isabelle Belato
• Mzajac
• Staecker
• Stan Shebs
• Sugarfish
• Tamzin

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
• Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.

Technical news

• The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

• The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
• Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:21, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Conflict of interest management: Case opened

Hello Alanscottwalker,

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conflict of interest management. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conflict of interest management/Evidence. Please add your evidence by March 20, 2024, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conflict of interest management/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration.

For the Arbitration Committee,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:03, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Nomination of Where is Kate? for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Where is Kate? is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Where is Kate? (3rd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

IgnatiusofLondon (he/him • ☎️) 11:56, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Kbdank71
• Kosack
• NrDg
• TLSuda

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.

Technical news

• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".

Miscellaneous

• Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:47, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2024

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

Administrator changes

Nyttend

• JohnOwens
• Killiondude
• MelanieN
• Nihonjoe

Bureaucrat changes

Nihonjoe

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe

Oversight changes

GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.

Technical news

• Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to vote now to select members of the first U4C

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to other languages.

Dear Wikimedian,

You are receiving this message because you previously participated in the UCoC process.

This is a reminder that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) ends on May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 23:17, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

RFA2024 update: phase I concluded, phase II begins

Hi there! Phase I of the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review has concluded, with several impactful changes gaining community consensus and proceeding to various stages of implementation. Some proposals will be implemented in full outright; others will be discussed at phase II before being implemented; and still others will proceed on a trial basis before being brought to phase II. The following proposals have gained consensus:

• Proposals 2 and 9b (phase II discussion): Add a reminder of civility norms at RfA and Require links for claims of specific policy violations
• Proposal 3b (in trial): Make the first two days discussion-only
• Proposal 13 (in trial): Admin elections
• Proposal 14 (implemented): Suffrage requirements
• Proposals 16 and 16c (phase II discussion): Allow the community to initiate recall RfAs and Community recall process based on dewiki
• Proposal 17 (phase II discussion): Have named Admins/crats to monitor infractions
• Proposal 24 (phase II discussion): Provide better mentoring for becoming an admin and the RfA process
• Proposal 25 (implemented): Require nominees to be extended confirmed

See the project page for a full list of proposals and their outcomes. A huge thank-you to everyone who has participated so far :) looking forward to seeing lots of hard work become a reality in phase II. theleekycauldron (talk), via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:08, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Outside ourselves and not ontological in which sense? It seems interesting.

You wrote a bunch of agreements outside ourselves we have to make for measurement, standards, etc., and it is decidedly not an ontological exercise. Ontological has been given different meanings in different contexts. I suspect you refer to ontology as in the study of what is. This is in opposition to a study of knowledge (about what is) and how we know, etc. It would make sense that the agreements have to be at this other level. Now, assuming I am not totally lost, I still need to understand why you say "outside ourselves". Perhaps, you mean outside ourselves as individuals. That would make sense, because it has to be intersubjective if it is shared. That is interesting, because it is both intersubjective (outside ourselves) and yet not ontological. Dominic Mayers (talk) 14:52, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Note added: Ah ! I think you wanted me to be aware that there is a serious challenge when we discuss a policy. Yep, this is deep. It is not obvious at all from where to start to obtain these agreements. Ontologically speaking, it could be that it is fundamentally impossible, but this is an ontological position (if we view it as the outcome of our brain structures) that is also an epistemic position. Dominic Mayers (talk) 15:17, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2024

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

Administrator changes

Graham Beards

• Deskana
• Mets501
• Staxringold

Bureaucrat changes

• Deskana
• Warofdreams

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz

Guideline and policy news

• Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.

Technical news

• The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
• The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.

Miscellaneous

• WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Pings?

Quick question: did you get a ping for the Telegraph RFC? I ask because there's still a lot of people from the previous discussion who haven't commented, so I wonder if maybe pinging people didn't work even the second time. Loki (talk) 15:49, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

The ping worked for me. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:54, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Yay! Loki (talk) 18:47, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Elli
• HouseBlaster
• Pickersgill-Cunliffe

• Brianga
• De728631
• Georgewilliamherbert
• Hyacinth (deceased)
• ProveIt
• The Night Watch

Technical news

• Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)

Miscellaneous

• The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:58, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 22

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Cahokia, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Earthworks.

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Discovery doctrine

Hello there

I reverted your edit to the lead of this article because it looked like an editorial comment which isn't a summary of the article. Happy to discuss on the article Talk Page. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 22:55, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2024

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

Administrator changes

Isabelle Belato

• Ian.thomson
• Modussiccandi

Interface administrator changes

Izno

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49

Technical news

• Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
• Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee appointed the following administrators to the conflict of interest volunteer response team: Bilby, Extraordinary Writ

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:59, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for August 12

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Illinois General Assembly, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Whig Party.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 19:56, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for August 25

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Chicago Athletic Association, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Michigan Avenue.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 19:53, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2024

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

Administrator changes

Pppery

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

Oversighter changes

Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

• Courcelles
• GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
• Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
• The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.

Miscellaneous

• Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

BLP art collector and businessman

Hi Alanscottwalker, I uploaded an article draft for Carl Thoma, an art collector and businessman whose foundation supports various arts and education initiatives. Thoma is a board member of the Art Institute of Chicago, and I discovered your name there. Would you mind looking over my draft? I certainly would appreciate any input that would help in moving the article to main space. Thank you very much! JBarTB (talk) 14:57, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 21

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Richard Lippold, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Ad Astra.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 07:52, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Arbitration case opened

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Backlash to diversity and inclusion. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Backlash to diversity and inclusion/Evidence. Please add your evidence by October 10, 2024, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Backlash to diversity and inclusion/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Party Guide/Introduction. For the Arbitration Committee, SilverLocust 💬 12:20, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Proposed decision posted

In the open Backlash to diversity and inclusion arbitration case (also called Yasuke), the proposed findings and remedies have been posted—though you are not mentioned in any of them. If you wish, you may review this decision and draw the arbitrators' attention to any relevant material or statements. Comments may be brought to the attention of the committee on the proposed decision talk page. For a guide to the proposed decision, see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Party Guide/Proposed decision. SilverLocust 💬 00:23, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

RFA2024 update: Discussion-only period now open for review

Hi there! The trial of the RfA discussion-only period passed at WP:RFA2024 has concluded, and after open discussion, the RfC is now considering whether to retain, modify, or discontinue it. You are invited to participate at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Discussion-only period. Cheers, and happy editing! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:38, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Asilvering
• Significa liberdade

• Good Olfactory
• Hesperian
• I JethroBT
• TommyBoy
• Woody

CheckUser changes

• Barkeep49
• Izno

• Doug Weller
• Spicy

Guideline and policy news

• Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
• Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
• An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
• Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

Miscellaneous

• If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:58, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 18

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Interstate 55 in Illinois, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Adlai Stevenson.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 19:54, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Grammatical Edit on New York State Wikipedia Article

Dear Mr. Walker,

I hope this finds you well.

You recently reverted a change of mine on the New York State Wikipedia article. Upon further review, you are indeed correct and I learned something new today!!

Thank you for your dedication to a grammatically accurate Wikipedia.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Airbus Capitan (talk) 23:00, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Crisco 1492

• Babajobu
• Daniel
• Elf
• Jayron32
• Thue
• Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

Maxim

Oversighter changes

Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, the discussion-only period proposal that went for a trial to refine the requests for adminship (RfA) process has been discontinued.
• Following a request for comment, Administrator recall is adopted as a policy.

Technical news

• Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068

Arbitration

• RoySmith, Barkeep49 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2024 Arbitration Committee Elections. ThadeusOfNazereth and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate from 3 November 2024 until 12 November 2024 to stand in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The Arbitration Committee is seeking volunteers for roles such as clerks, access to the COI queue, checkuser, and oversight.

Miscellaneous

• An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:20, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Greem Book edit

Your edit to Green Book (film) left a sentence that is, well, not a sentence. You may wish to review it. (I'd fix it myself, but I have a Green Book-related COI.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 18:46, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

ArbCom 2024 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 2 December 2024. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2024 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:21, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Propose to create page of block discussion in noticeboards

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Propose to create page of block discussion in noticeboards. JPPEDRA2 ^{why not?} 21:10, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2024

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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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:19, 3 December 2024 (UTC)