User talk:Sj
~ talk pages need talk pages! SJ
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Earlier[edit]

The article Blaise Agüera y Arcas has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:
- person not important enough
While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}}
notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.
Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}}
will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. LMB (talk) 10:44, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
- This is getting a bit much... the fact that the only "help fix this article" comments I get are people proposing them for deletion as nonnotable or bots suggests our social norms are lacking. B A y A for instance is a remarkably accomplished creator, director, and developer, who has been renowned in the national media for at least two different phases of his life; as a quick search would indicate. Slapping a deletion tag on an article should not be the default way to improve it. – SJ +
Wikiversity[edit]
Hi Sj, can you please come back to Wikiversity? --Goldenburg111 (talk) 23:59, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
- Very kind. I still visit and catch up on news there. I don't have an active project to work on at the moment... – SJ + 02:08, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Precious anniversary[edit]
Whole Earth
Thank you, Samuel, for ten years of sharing your experience in many languages and capacities, for quality articles such as Whole Earth and Attalus I, for seeking the peaceful resolution of disputes, - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (6 July 2009)!
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
A year ago, you were the 877th recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:41, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
- Thank you Gerda, you are wonderful and I am honored again to hear from you. Very warm regards from Texas. – SJ + 23:13, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
- Thank you! I try to stay out of this dispute, - would like a peaceful resolution but my name alone would do the opposite ;) - Did you know that an admin protected an article in a dispute like that and blocked himself? - To his memory (on the German Main page right now). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:42, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
- Two years ago, you were recipient no. 877 of Precious, a prize of QAI! - Sad to say: the admin died in January. The arguments didn't die, see Max Reger, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:32, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
- Three years now! I still miss Dreadstar. The arguments mostly died, and I don't miss them. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
- Sic years, and same. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:04, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Notes[edit]
- Possibly unfree File:Wh-earth-69-cover.jpg
- This Friday: Women in Architecture edit-a-thon @ Cambridge, MA (pharos)
- Hi, I noticed you moved the article EmDrive to RF resonant cavity thruster. Brian Everlasting (talk) 02:43, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
- Orphaned non-free image File:LIPB-cover.png
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy mailing list set up
- Facto Post newsletter started
Facto Post '18[edit]
- Metadata on the March
- Wikidata as a Hub
- Milestsone for mix'n'match
- The 100 Skins of the onion
116th Congress[edit]
Hello! I've noticed that you have a page over at User:Sj/Update Congress that I can only presume is for the purposes of keeping List of current members of the United States House of Representatives and similar pages updated. Just so you know, I'm currently working on an update over at Talk:List of current members of the United States House of Representatives/116th Congress for the 116th Congress, so if you're planning on working on the House article, it would be more efficient to just work on the update I already have going. Cheers! Westroopnerd (talk) 02:03, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
Chonqing bus disaster[edit]
A failure of knowing: This blurb on the Chonqing bus tragedy was possibly the only media coverage that accurately describes what is observed in the video, and its different interpretations. Police, major news, local news all repeated third-hand summaries that were wrong. No head contact; intent; affect. A case of organic misinfo w no beneficiary (unless somehow the driver's fam was involved).
If all of our reporting institutions (official sources, official news, investigative indie news) are broken in this way, we need a different ecology of white cloaks to be able to have basic conversations about what goes on. (It's not tha people are bad at this; we're subtle - note in contrast the average sensibility of even low-grade social media discussion of this event.) – SJ + 17:45, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
Later[edit]
- Deletion of common chemicals, claimed (c)vio of [1].
- Today's Wikipedian 10 years ago
![]() | |
Ten years! |
---|
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:58, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Halloween 2019[edit]
Hi SJ, I'm not sure you received my initial ping about this AE case when I first mentioned your name there. Your opinion on the matter might be worth hearing since your contribution is the center of the case in question. 🌿 SashiRolls t · c 13:42, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
- It is no longer possible to reply at the initial AE, very shortly after I posted this comment, the case was finally closed. I hope you enjoyed the wiki-conference. I found the presentation on WikiCite interesting today (definitely one of my interests @ wikidata, though not one of my "compétences"/skills yet). At the moment I am disinclined to help en.wp of course, but there is a chance that someday that may change, especially if some of the dys-(cor-)ruptors are dealt with. Still, given the ossification of power at en.wp, I won't hold my breath. Just out of curiosity: did you have an organizational role in this year's wiki-conference N. America? Best, 🌿 SashiRolls t · c 23:03, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
Your input is requested[edit]
at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Community view before Friday.
Only 100 or so words. It should be fun and serious at the same time.
All the best,
Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:49, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks for the invite Smallbones, another time :) – SJ + 04:15, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
Misc[edit]
- Following the 2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: BRPever, Krd, Martin Urbanec, MusikAnimal, Sakretsu, Sotiale, and Tks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
- The 2020 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Ajraddatz and Uzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.
- The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.

The file File:WE-69-p11a.jpg has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:
orphaned image, no encyclopedic use, questionable licensing
WikiLoop Battlefield new name vote[edit]
Dear Sj,
Thank you for your interest and contributions to WikiLoop Battlefield. We are holding a voting for proposed new name. We would like to invite you to this voting. The voting is held at m:WikiProject_WikiLoop/New_name_vote and ends on July 13th 00:00 UTC.
xinbenlv Talk, Remember to "ping" me 05:17, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Habari mzee![edit]
Hi Sj, I had tried to contact you a while ago at swwiki without success so I better write here. You are still listed as admin but have been a bit quiet the last years. Do you intend to continue? As per our new policy we send admins on unpaid leave after a year of non-activity, but you just came back on 1 September. Would you mind to tell us how you see your admin situation? Kipala (talk) 08:58, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
- Hiya @Kipala:! How are things with you? I have less time this year for sure, + don't mind taking unpaid leave now. – SJ + 03:14, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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The Months of African Cinema Contest Continues in November![edit]
Greetings,
Thank you very much for participating in the Months of African Cinema global contest/edit-a-thon, and thank you for your contributions so far.
It is already the middle of the contest and a lot have been achieved already! We have been able to get over 1,500 articles created in over fifteen (15) languages! This would not have been possible without your support and we want to thank you. If you have not yet listed your name as a participant in the contest page please do so.
Please make sure to list the articles you have created or improved in the article achievements' section of the contest page, so that they can be easily tracked. To be able to claim prizes, please also ensure to list your articles on the users by articles page. We would be awarding prizes to different categories of winners:
- Overall winner
- 1st - $500
- 2nd - $200
- 3rd - $100
- Diversity winner - $100
- Gender-gap filler - $100
- Language Winners - up to $100*
We are very excited about what has been achieved so far, but your contributions are still needed to further exceed all expectations! Let’s create more articles before the end of this contest, which is this November!!!
Thank you once again for being part of this global event! --Jamie Tubers (talk) 10:30, 06 November 2020 (UTC)
You can opt-out of this annual reminder from The Afrocine Project by removing your username from this list
"Cat" deletion[edit]
If I understand things correctly, you deleted the bit about her Broadway performance. Was a reason given? The matter is important and was documented by the NYT reference.Rozsaphile1 (talk) 16:50, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
- Hi Rozsaphile, it seemed to be presented in a less-than-neutral fashion, and did not have a standard reference. (Try using the "Cite" button in the editor!) Now I see the original reference, and here is a clarifying recap from Playbill about the foot surgery and ending the stage run a week early. Feel free to readd this, but please provide the full context so it reads less like innuendo. – SJ + 00:18, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message[edit]
Nomination for deletion of Template:Bootcamp[edit]
Template:Bootcamp has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:57, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – December 2020[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2020).
Andrwsc • Anetode • GoldenRing • JzG • LinguistAtLarge • Nehrams2020
Interface administrator changes
- There is a request for comment in progress to either remove T3 (duplicated and hardcoded instances) as a speedy deletion criterion or eliminate its seven-day waiting period.
- Voting for proposals in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey, which determines what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year, will take place from 8 December through 21 December. In particular, there are sections regarding administrators and anti-harassment.
- Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 7 December 2020 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.
Signpost article?[edit]
Hey SJ, it's been awhile, I hope all is well with you.
I found the Signpost article: Jimmy Wales "shouldn't be kicked out before he's ready" very disturbing (see my comment there). Can you provide any more insight on what is really happening here, and on what the community ought to try to do about any of this? Thanks, Paul August ☎ 10:48, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
- Weighing in as you have is a good start. Even the framing of this article is problematic (in shifting the window) - in a community like this (not to mention ours where Jimmy continues to be a popular mainstream figurehead), you tend to want founders actively engaged in governance for as long as they can stand it. – SJ + 15:33, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
- Can you elaborate on how the Signpost article has problematically shifted the "window"? Paul August ☎ 16:50, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the 2021 WikiCup![edit]
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. We thank Vanamonde93 and Godot13, who have retired as judges, and we thank them for their past dedication. The judges for the WikiCup this year are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:11, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2021[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).
|
|
- Speedy deletion criterion T3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following a request for comment.
- You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time.
- By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized
for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes)
. The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason). - Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, L235, Maxim, Primefac.
- By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Administrators' newsletter – February 2021[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).
|
|
- The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover
post-1992 politics of United States and closely related people
, replacing the 1932 cutoff.
- The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover
- Voting in the 2021 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2021, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2021, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- Wikipedia has now been around for 20 years, and recently saw its billionth edit!
Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment[edit]

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File permission problem with File:WE-69-p32a.jpg[edit]

Thanks for uploading File:WE-69-p32a.jpg. I noticed that while you provided a valid copyright licensing tag, there is no proof that the creator of the file has agreed to release it under the given license.
If you did not create it entirely yourself, please ask the person who created the file to take one of the two steps listed above, or if the owner of the file has already given their permission to you via email, please forward that email to permissions-en@wikimedia.org.
- This was resolved by mail before OTRS. A pity that it led to simple deletion now... haven't been able to jump through the current hoop, but will try to track them down. – SJ + 18:30, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free image File:Citogenesis.png[edit]

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 18:24, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
- [File:Citogenesis.png] seems to fit the fair use and NFCC criteria, but there is a dispute about this on the page in question. Under discussion. – SJ + 18:30, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – March 2021[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2021).
Interface administrator changes
- A request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a 2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
- A request for comment is in progress to remove F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
- A request for comment seeks to grant page movers the
delete-redirect
userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target. The full proposal is at Wikipedia:Page mover/delete-redirect. - A request for comment asks if sysops may
place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions
? - There is a discussion in progress concerning automatic protection of each day's featured article with Pending Changes protection.
- When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
- When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
- There have been a number of reported issues with Pending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (phab:T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (phab:T275322).
- By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions
authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people.
Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions. - The Kurds and Kurdistan case was closed, authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for
the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed
.
- By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions
- Following the 2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AmandaNP, Operator873, Stanglavine, Teles, and Wiki13.
WikiCup 2021 March newsletter[edit]
Round 1 of the competition has finished; it was a high-scoring round with 21 contestants scoring more than 100 points. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 55 contestants qualifying. You will need to finish among the top thirty-two contestants in Round 2 if you are to qualify for Round 3. Our top scorers in Round 1 were:
Epicgenius led the field with a featured article, nine good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 945 points.
Bloom6132 was close behind with 896 points, largely gained from 71 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
ImaginesTigers, who has been editing Wikipedia for less than a year, was in third place with 711 points, much helped by bringing League of Legends to featured article status, exemplifying how bonus points can boost a contestant's score.
Amakuru came next with 708 points, Kigali being another featured article that scored maximum bonus points.
Ktin, new to the WikiCup, was in fifth place with 523 points, garnered from 15 DYKs and 34 "In the news" items.
The Rambling Man scored 511 points, many from featured article candidate reviews and from football related DYKs.
Gog the Mild, last year's runner-up, came next with 498 points, from a featured article and numerous featured article candidate reviews.
Hog Farm, at 452, scored for a featured article, four good articles and a number of reviews.
Le Panini, another newcomer to the WikiCup, scored 438 for a featured article and three good articles.
Lee Vilenski, last year's champion, scored 332 points, from a featured article and various other sport-related topics.
These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. In Round 1, contestants achieved eight featured articles, three featured lists and one featured picture, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. They completed 97 good article reviews, nearly double the 52 good articles they claimed. Contestants also claimed for 135 featured article and featured list candidate reviews. There is no longer a requirement to mention your WikiCup participation when undertaking these reviews.
Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or something else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.
If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:27, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
File:Citogenesis.png listed for discussion[edit]
"Template:WP-Todo" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Template:WP-Todo. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 March 16#Template:WP-Todo until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Elli (talk | contribs) 05:08, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment[edit]

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Administrators' newsletter – April 2021[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2021).
Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS
- Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
- Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the
delete-redirect
userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.
- When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
- Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)
- A community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.
WikiCup 2021 May newsletter[edit]
The second round of the 2021 WikiCup has now finished; it was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 61 points to advance to Round 3. There were some impressive efforts in the round, with the top eight contestants all scoring more than 400 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 110 good articles achieved in total by contestants, as well as the 216 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.
Our top scorers in Round 2 were:
The Rambling Man, with 2963 points from three featured articles, 20 featured article reviews, 37 good articles, 73 good article reviews, as well as 22 DYKs.
Epicgenius, with 1718 points from one featured article, 29 good articles, 16 DYKs and plenty of bonus points.
Bloom6132, with 990 points from 13 DYKs and 64 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
Hog Farm, with 834 points from two featured articles, five good articles, 14 featured article reviews and 15 good article reviews.
Gog the Mild, with 524 points from two featured articles and four featured article reviews.
Lee Vilenski, with 501 points from one featured article, three good articles, six featured article reviews and 25 good article reviews.
Sammi Brie, with 485 points from four good articles, eight good article reviews and 27 DYKs, on US radio and television stations.
Ktin, with 436 points from four good articles, seven DYKs and 11 "In the news" items.
Please remember that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of Round 2 but before the start of Round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in Round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (except for at the end of each round, when you must claim them before the cut-off date/time). When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:28, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Administrators' newsletter – May 2021[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2021).
Interface administrator changes
- Following an RfC, consensus was found that third party appeals are allowed but discouraged.
- The 2021 Desysop Policy RfC was closed with no consensus. Consensus was found in a previous RfC for a community based desysop procedure, though the procedure proposed in the 2021 RfC did not gain consensus.
- The user group
oversight
will be renamed tosuppress
. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.
- The user group
- The community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.
Precious anniversary[edit]
![]() | |
Seven years! |
---|
Administrators' newsletter – June 2021[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2021).
Ashleyyoursmile • Less Unless
Husond • MattWade • MJCdetroit • Carioca • Vague Rant • Kingboyk • Thunderboltz • Gwen Gale • AniMate • SlimVirgin (deceased)
- Consensus was reached to deprecate Wikipedia:Editor assistance.
- Following a Request for Comment the Book namespace was deprecated.
- Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.
- After a Clarification request, the Arbitration Committee modified Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case. This means sourcing expectations are a discretionary sanction instead of being present on all articles. It also details using the talk page or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard to discuss disputed sources.
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment[edit]

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WikiCup 2021 July newsletter[edit]
The third round of the 2021 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 294 points, and our top six scorers all had over 600 points. They were:
The Rambling Man, with 1825 points from 3 featured articles, 44 featured article reviews, 14 good articles, 30 good article reviews and 10 DYKs. In addition, he completed a 34-article good topic on the EFL Championship play-offs.
Epicgenius, a New York specialist, with 1083 points from 2 featured article reviews, 18 good articles, 30 DYKs and plenty of bonus points.
Bloom6132, with 869 points from 11 DYKs, all with bonus points, and 54 "In the news" items, mostly covering people who had recently died.
Gog the Mild, with 817 points from 3 featured articles on historic battles in Europe, 5 featured article reviews and 3 good articles.
Hog Farm, with 659 points from 2 featured articles and 2 good articles on American Civil War battles, 18 featured article reviews, 2 good articles, 6 good article reviews and 4 DYKs.
BennyOnTheLoose, a snooker specialist and new to the Cup, with 647 points from a featured article, 2 featured article reviews, 6 good articles, 6 good article reviews and 3 DYKs.
In round three, contestants achieved 19 featured articles, 7 featured lists, 106 featured article reviews, 72 good articles, 1 good topic, 62 good article reviews, 165 DYKs and 96 ITN items. We enter the fourth round with scores reset to zero; any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (one contestant in round 3 lost out because of this). When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2021[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2021).
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- Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
- An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.
- IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.
- The community authorised COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Articles for Creation July 2021 Backlog Elimination Drive[edit]
Hello Sj:
WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to eliminate the backlog of unreviewed articles. The drive is running until 31 July 2021.
Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.
There is currently a backlog of over 3600 articles, so start reviewing articles. We're looking forward to your help!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for Creation at 21:54, 7 July 2021 (UTC). If you do not wish to recieve future notification, please remove your name from the mailing list.
Administrators' newsletter – July 2021[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2021).
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- An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.
- Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)
- Following an amendment request, the committee has clarified that the Talk page exception to the 500/30 rule in remedy 5 of the Palestine-Israel articles 4 case does not apply to requested move discussions.
- You can vote for candidates in the 2021 Board of Trustees elections from 4 August to 17 August. Four community elected seats are up for election.
WikiCup 2021 September newsletter[edit]
The fourth round of the competition has finished with over 500 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants, The Rambling Man and
Epicgenius, each scoring over 3000 points, and six contestants scoring over 1000. All but one of the finalists achieved one or more FAs during the round, the exception being
Bloom6132 who demonstrated that 61 "in the news" items produces an impressive number of points. Other contestants who made it to the final are
Gog the Mild,
Lee Vilenski,
BennyOnTheLoose,
Amakuru and
Hog Farm. However, all their points are now swept away and everyone starts afresh in the final round.
Round 4 saw the achievement of 18 featured articles and 157 good articles. Bilorv scored for a 25-article good topic on Black Mirror but narrowly missed out on qualifying for the final round. There was enthusiasm for FARs, with 89 being performed, and there were 63 GARs and around 100 DYKs during the round. As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it to the final round; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For other contestants, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.
If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:02, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
Request for help[edit]
During our discussion on lists, you mentioned Britannica's Propaedia.
That reminded me that, years ago, Wikipedia had the entire classification system from the Propaedia's Outline of Knowledge, in the Wikipedia namespace, with classes linked to Wikipedia articles. It consisted of dozens of pages, if I remember right.
It was eventually deleted for copyright concerns, at least 12 years ago. Most likely, speedy deleted.
For the life of me, I can't recall what its title was.
I'd like a list of the titles of all the pages in the set.
Since I don't have access to the deletion graveyard, I need an admin's assistance.
It was absolutely amazing.
Please find it.
Thank you.
Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 11:40, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
P.S.: By the way, is there a way to use a search engine on Wikipedia's deletion log?
- I don't know of an easy way; there have been a couple websites devoted to deleted pages, but they mainly limit themselves to the main namespace. – SJ +
- @The Transhumanist: Are you sure it wasn't merged into Propædia#Outline_of_Knowledge? That seems to be where WP:OOK redirects now. – SJ + 19:12, 1 July 2021 (UTC) And who else should we invite to the conversation? Perhaps on the talk page of the new WP:HOLOW.
- WP:HOLOW doesn't lead anywhere. Was that a typo? — The Transhumanist 22:20, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
Resuming the hunt[edit]
One reason I wish to find it is to see what version it was lifted from. The Propaedia was published from 1976 to 2010. All I know so far is that the copy in the WP: namespace predated the 2010 Propaedia. Another is for the page titles. With those, it can be accessed via the Internet Archive, where it is most likely sitting and waiting.
Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 22:20, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
WikiCup 2021 November newsletter[edit]
The WikiCup is over for another year and the finalists can relax! Our Champion this year is The Rambling Man (submissions), who amassed over 5000 points in the final round, achieving 8 featured articles and almost 500 reviews. It was a very competitive round; seven of the finalists achieved over 1000 points in the round (enough to win the 2019 contest), and three scored over 3000 (enough to win the 2020 event). Our 2021 finalists and their scores were:
The Rambling Man (submissions) with 5072 points
Lee Vilenski (submissions) with 3276 points
Amakuru (submissions) with 3197 points
Epicgenius (submissions) with 1611 points
Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1571 points
BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 1420 points
Hog Farm (submissions) with 1043 points
Bloom6132 (submissions) with 528 points
All those who reached the final round will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. Awards will be handed out in the next few days.
The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for 8 FAs in round 5.
Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 5.
Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured topic prize, for 13 articles in a featured topic in round 5.
Epicgenius (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 63 GAs in round 4.
The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the good topic prize, for 86 articles in good topics in round 5.
The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the reviewer prize, for 68 FAC reviews and 213 GAN reviews, both in round 5.
Epicgenius (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 30 did you know articles in round 3 and 105 overall.
Bloom6132 (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 71 in the news articles in round 1 and 284 overall.
Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether they made it to the final round or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup, some of whom did very well. Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from the quality creations, expansions and improvements made, and the numerous reviews performed. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.
If you have views on whether the rules or scoring need adjustment for next year's contest, please comment on the WikiCup talk page. Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2022 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:56, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
The Months of African Cinema Contest Continues in November![edit]
Greetings,
It is already past the middle of the contest and we are really excited about the Months of African Contest 2021 achievements so far! We want to extend our sincere gratitude for the time and energy you have invested. If you have not yet participated in the contest, it is not too late to do it. Please list your username as a participant on the contest’s main page.
Please remember to list the articles you have improved or created on the article achievements' section of the contest page so they can be tracked. In order to win prizes, be sure to also list your article in the users by articles. Please note that your articles must be present in both the article achievement section on the main contest page, as well as on the Users By Articles page for you to qualify for a prize.
We would be awarding prizes to different categories of winners:
- Overall winner
- 1st - $500
- 2nd - $200
- 3rd - $100
- Diversity winner - $100
- Gender-gap filler - $100
- Language Winners - up to $100*
Thank you once again for your valued participation! --Jamie Tubers (talk) 18:50, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
You can opt-out of this annual reminder from The Afrocine Project by removing your username from this list
Administrators' newsletter – December 2021[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).
- 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)
- 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.
Administrators will no longer be autopatrolled[edit]
A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Neri Oxman[edit]
Sj, thank you for reviewing my initial request for the Neri Oxman article. I hope you're able to review my second request for the "Career" section, before getting into Oxman's works. I'm happy to answer questions and address concerns. Thanks! SM at OXMAN (talk) 21:00, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
I disagree with your acceptance, I'm afraid. I have asked the community to make a decision at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abu Julia. I don't really understand your accepting it with the sources that are present. FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 20:04, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for the note User:Timtrent! The lede al-Jazeera quote, in the context of being an anchor for a diaspora, seems like reason enough to let it develop in mainspace. Unusually prominent presence online from an underrepresented and mostly-offline community; plausible coverage in Ar news media; informational + not promotional. Start-class but no reason to delete. – SJ + 23:33, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
- It is not a draft I would have accepted, and I do not believe you should have accepted it at AFC either. But the community will decide FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 23:54, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment[edit]

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Merchandise giveaway nomination[edit]
![]() |
A token of thanks
Hi Sj! I've nominated you (along with all other active admins) to receive a solstice season gift from the WMF. Talk page stalkers are invited to comment at the nomination. Enjoy! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk ~~~~~
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Administrators' newsletter – January 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2021).
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- 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.
- 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.
- The functionaries email list (functionaries-en
lists.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.
How we will see unregistered users[edit]
Hi!
You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.
When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.
Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.
If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.
We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.
Thank you. /Johan (WMF)
18:12, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup![edit]
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:37, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks, looking forward to it -- the results last year were really lovely :) – SJ + 16:41, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
Nomination of Housing in the United States by state for deletion[edit]

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Housing in the United States by state 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.
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment[edit]

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Nanthida Rakwong article AfD discussion providing unreasonable delete comments[edit]
As you are the user who accepted my article about Nanthida Rakwong, and also added some comment on its AfD page ( Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Nanthida_Rakwong#Nanthida_Rakwong which was initiated only a short time after the article was accepted!) on how to improve the article, I would like to draw your attention again to the discussion and the fact that the comments suggesting deletion appear to disregard or even misrepresent the nature of the referenced sources (e.g. implying that The Times piece is produced by the subject, or that the subject is a spokesperson), as well as Wikipedia guidelines. As you are a more experienced and senior user, may I ask if you could look into this? Considering the additional context about censorship of any republic-related content in Thailand (see my notes in the discussion related press freedom and similarity to Venezuela), there is a general concern among Thai netizens that certain users from (or with an interest in) Thailand might be making an extra effort to maintain that censorship through these kinds of actions on Wikipedia, too... It would be good if this could be escalated somehow or at least verified more thoroughly. As far as I understand Wikipedia guidelines, the article meets all requirements and may simply need more detail and improvements, rather than deletion. Would really appreciate your help and advice in moving to keep the article, especially considering both the censorship context in Thailand, as well as the comments by users who misrepresent the sources and the Wikipedia guidelines. Thank you -- ThaiFactChecker (talk) 23:56, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
- Hello ThaiFactChecker, the article is borderline, and needs a lot of work to be kept. Are you able to find more material about her? Normally you would want significant non-interview coverage in reliable sources, about at least two distinct events. The Times interview is good, but the article would benefit from at least two solid non-interview sources, which clearly indicate the subject's role (e.g., not just naming her as part of a larger suit). I accepted perhaps prematurely, because I recognize the difficulty in getting first-hand sources, and our systemic bias in the area, but the article definitely needs more work to clearly 'meet all requirements'.
- I don't think any of the delete comments so far have been unreasonable, however. If you don't want it to be deleted, you should find new sources + detail (in any language) about her work! I was not able to find any in English. And you should avoid dwelling on the AFD page, that's counterproductive; just make the article better. Regards, – SJ + 02:56, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).
- 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.
- The user group
oversight
will be renamedsuppress
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.
- The user group
- 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.
- 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.
"Wikipedia:BC" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Wikipedia:BC and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 February 14#Wikipedia:BC until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. NotReallySoroka (talk) 06:11, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Hello! I wanted to drop a quick note for all of our AFC participants; nothing huge and fancy like a newsletter, but a few points of interest.
- AFCH will now show live previews of the comment to be left on a decline.
- The template {{db-afc-move}} has been created - this template is similar to {{db-move}} when there is a redirect in the way of an acceptance, but specifically tells the patrolling admin to let you (the draft reviewer) take care of the actual move.
Short and sweet, but there's always more to discuss at WT:AFC. Stop on by, maybe review a draft on the way? Whether you're one of our top reviewers, or haven't reviewed in a while, I want to thank you for helping out in the past and in the future. Cheers, Primefac, via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
Uncited information[edit]
Hello, I'm Toddy1. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, Kamila Valieva, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at referencing for beginners. If you want to discuss it, leave message on the article talk page. YOu also introduced a typographical error by adding a stray "w" to a word elsewhere in the article. Thank you. -- Toddy1 (talk) 17:30, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – March 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2022).
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- 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.
- 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)
- Several unused discretionary sanctions and article probation remedies have been rescinded. This follows the community feedback from the 2021 Discretionary Sanctions review.
- 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.
- Following the 2022 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AntiCompositeNumber, BRPever, Hasley, TheresNoTime, and Vermont.
- The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey results have been published alongside the ranking of prioritized proposals.
WikiCup 2022 March newsletter[edit]
And so ends the first round of the WikiCup. Last year anyone who scored more than zero points moved on to Round 2, but this was not the case this year, and a score of 13 or more was required to proceed. The top scorers in Round 1 were:
Epicgenius, a finalist last year, who led the field with 1906 points, gained from 32 GAs and 19 DYKs, all on the topic of New York buildings.
AryKun, new to the contest, was second with 1588 points, having achieved 2 FAs, 11 GAs and various other submissions, mostly on the subject of birds.
Bloom6132, a WikiCup veteran, was in third place with 682 points, garnered from 51 In the news items and several DYKs.
GhostRiver was close behind with 679 points, gained from achieving 12 GAs, mostly on ice hockey players, and 35 GARs.
Kavyansh.Singh was in fifth place with 551 points, with an FA, a FL, and many reviews.
SounderBruce was next with 454 points, gained from an FA and various other submissions, mostly on United States highways.
Ktin, another WikiCup veteran, was in seventh place with 412 points, mostly gained from In the news items.
These contestants, like all the others who qualified for Round 2, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews of a large number of good articles as the contest ran concurrently with a GAN backlog drive. Well done all! To qualify for Round 3, contestants will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two participants.
Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Anything that should have been claimed for in Round 1 is no longer eligible for points. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.
Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:07, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
WikiCup 2022 March newsletter[edit]
And so ends the first round of the WikiCup. Last year anyone who scored more than zero points moved on to Round 2, but this was not the case this year, and a score of 13 or more was required to proceed. The top scorers in Round 1 were:
Epicgenius, a finalist last year, who led the field with 1906 points, gained from 32 GAs and 19 DYKs, all on the topic of New York buildings.
AryKun, new to the contest, was second with 1588 points, having achieved 2 FAs, 11 GAs and various other submissions, mostly on the subject of birds.
Bloom6132, a WikiCup veteran, was in third place with 682 points, garnered from 51 In the news items and several DYKs.
GhostRiver was close behind with 679 points, gained from achieving 12 GAs, mostly on ice hockey players, and 35 GARs.
Kavyansh.Singh was in fifth place with 551 points, with an FA, a FL, and many reviews.
SounderBruce was next with 454 points, gained from an FA and various other submissions, mostly on United States highways.
Ktin, another WikiCup veteran, was in seventh place with 412 points, mostly gained from In the news items.
These contestants, like all the others who qualified for Round 2, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews of a large number of good articles as the contest ran concurrently with a GAN backlog drive. Well done all! To qualify for Round 3, contestants will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two participants.
Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Anything that should have been claimed for in Round 1 is no longer eligible for points. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.
Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Administrators' newsletter – April 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2022).
- An RfC is open proposing a change to the minimum activity requirements for administrators.
- Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have the
deletelogentry
anddeletedhistory
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)
- Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Opening of proceedings has been updated to reflect current practice following a motion.
- A arbitration case regarding Skepticism and coordinated editing has been closed.
- A arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been opened.
- 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.
New administrator activity requirement[edit]
The administrator policy has been updated with new activity requirements following a successful Request for Comment.
Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:
- Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
- Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period
Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.
22:53, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
WikiCup 2022 May newsletter[edit]
The second round of the 2022 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 115 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top seven contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 11 featured articles and the 79 good articles achieved in total by contestants.
Our top scorers in round 2 were:
Epicgenius, with 1264 points from 2 featured article, 4 good articles and 18 DYKs. Epicgenius was a finalist last year but has now withdrawn from the contest as he pursues a new career path.
AryKun, with 1172 points from two featured articles, one good article and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews.
Bloom6132, with 605 points from 44 in the news items and 4 DYKs.
Sammi Brie, with 573 points from 8 GAs and 21 DYKs.
Ealdgyth, with 567 points from 11 GAs and 34 good and featured article reviews.
Panini!, with 549 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and several other sources.
Lee Vilenski, with 545 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and a number of reviews.
The rules for featured and good article reviews require the review to be of sufficient length; brief quick fails and very short reviews will generally not be awarded points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:39, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Request[edit]
If you know or come across or even hear about anyone who has successfully installed a Wikipedia mirror, please let me know. — The Transhumanist 09:39, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
- With real-time updates? I'll inquire. Someone who runs a modern site listed at mirrors & forks? There is a project to host distributed mirrors on ipfs here. And I know @james hare is running a mirror of Wikidata... – SJ + 12:48, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).
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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.
- 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.
- 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.
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Speedy deletion nomination of File:Reggie Lewis in Celtics uniform.png[edit]

A tag has been placed on File:Reggie Lewis in Celtics uniform.png requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section F7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a non-free file from a commercial source (e.g. Associated Press, Getty Images), where the file itself is not the subject of sourced commentary. If you can explain why the file can be used under the non-free content guidelines, please add the appropriate non-free use tag and rationale.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Whpq (talk) 14:41, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
- The image you uploaded is actually is actually a crop from a Getty Images photo which the source you used didn't credit. See this. -- 14:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Whpq: Thanks for catching that! It was a bit too shiny for that blog post. What are common fair use sources for old sports figures? There are team headshots, murals, screengrabs from TV clips... – SJ + 18:27, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
Nomination of Socialtext for deletion[edit]

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Socialtext 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.
Have you noticed this happening? (in the world)
An acceleration curve starts almost flat, curves up, until it is almost vertical.
https://milfordasset.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Accelerating-growth-in-technology-2017.jpg
As time goes on, major technological advances arrive in shorter and shorter intervals.
Currently, there appears to be a race between technological advance and existential risks (including Putin/WWIII, climate change, etc. -- see Doomsday Clock, currently set to 1 minute and 40 seconds to midnight).
Future technology has the potential to both quell existential risks and enable them.
My first question is, what do you suppose will happen, and when?
My next one is, what do you imagine Wikipedia's role will be in all of this?
And for my final query, how do you think technology could change Wikipedia? (Over the next 5, 10, 15 years)
Out of the blue, — The Transhumanist 11:29, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
P.S.: Please {{Ping}} me upon answering.
P.P.S.: Here's a link, for perspective: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DGrXXlK4H6F2xwpRfSBrryRpx3LrNBlCyQ45tLMYkeU/present#slide=id.p4
- Hello @The Transhumanist: thanks for this thought! Yes, it's on my mind. It's a sign that this is a good time for exercising free will; lots of different ways things can play out. WP should strengthen its place as a reminder of what we can accomplish together, so we don't develop a collective identity as a transactional group of local optimizers for short-term personal gain. Which doesn't map to the human condition very well, as extremely social and multifaceted creatures, but absolutely matches some popular norms that are enjoying the spotlight this generation.
- I'm not sure what our role will be, however, it would be bad to let our community fragment and dissipate, and surely lessen any role.
- The greatest change is that we can do much of the writing and formatting now automatically; machine writing has gotten enormously good. We have the tools to break through another two orders of magnitude of breadth and granularity. We need to once more bee the place where high-volume writing and editing, with preserved context, takes off. It takes constant polishing and refining to really work, just as with thousands of casual partly-wrong edits by passersby.
- Still thinking about these things... would love to hear what you think. – SJ + 12:23, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- You're welcome.
- I agree that there are many ways this could play out, but, at some point in the acceleration of technology, because technology is a geometric progression, its dynamic, and the dynamic of its effect upon civilization, will be that of an explosion. The main effect of an explosion is disruption. The question is, "Will it be like a firework (beautiful) or a mushroom cloud (ugly)?". That is, disruptively creative or disruptively destructive. Star Trek's Genesis Device, or Dr. Strangelove's doomsday bomb. Metaphorically speaking.
- We (all of us) have no way of knowing what role we will play after that fateful transition. We don't even know if we could reliably forecast the scope or form of our role in such a future. But, leading up to it, our role is (and hopefully will continue to be) within our purview.
- I find it interesting that you addressed "collective identity". Wikipedia's role, in essence, is being part of the world's collective memory and awareness -- key components of our collective consciousness: who we are as a whole.
- And that's what's at stake.
- I'm surprised that Wikipedia has held out against falling under corporate or governmental control as long as it has -- being the encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone, including propagandists. Is Ukraine being invaded, or is it merely being subjected to a "special military operation"? What is that referred to as in the Russian language Wikipedia? What's next?
- Which brings us to your last point: automation. While automating writing and formatting of collective memory has a major impact on collective intelligence, what effect would automating collective memory retrieval have on collective awareness? As a retrieval service, the Main Page presents articles, though not automatically, and not chosen by relevance or importance or urgency. And, because of WP's neutrality policy, such an algorithm would have to be 3rd-party software.
- By the way, you didn't answer my first question: "What do you think will happen and when?" — The Transhumanist 08:23, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – June 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).
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- 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.
- Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
- The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.
- 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.
![]() | |
Eight years! |
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Precious anniversary[edit]
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:10, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment[edit]

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Improved draft (Kostka Bojana)[edit]
Hi Sj, I'd appreciate it if you can take a look at the improved draft and let me know if you have any other suggestions. Thanks! Miljan Simonović (talk) 12:12, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
Looking for tips on how to break out of one's filter bubble[edit]
I've become more aware lately that I'm not very aware.
I've been trying to see on the web what I haven't seen, but search engines aren't very useful for that, because you can generally only search for what you know of.
The search query "Show me what I don't know about" doesn't work.
I encountered the same problem on Wikipedia. What haven't I read about?
Though, Wikipedia does have a feature that helps with this...
The random article item in the menu can help break out of one's sphere of awareness, especially if you use it en masse... I've started using it like this: ctrl-click (or wheel click) on it about a hundred times in rapid fashion, which opens a hundred tabs each with a random article in it, and then I explore the tabs using ctrl-tab or ctrl-w (which deletes them as you go). When there's a topic belonging to a class that I'm unfamiliar with, I explore the parent article too.
Opening many tabs helps compensate for the drivel (because you can skip past them quickly), like sports articles, articles on tiny towns out in the middle of nowhere, insect species, articles on non-distinct roads, tropical storms, etc.
Using "random article" en masse is kind of like browsing the book shelves at the library, or joining a book club.
If you have any methods you use for breaking out of your own self-imposed filter bubble, or of expanding your awareness of topics, please share.
Looking forward to any ideas you might have, — The Transhumanist 09:05, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
P.S.: I've tried perusing "All pages", but that puts me to sleep real quick.
- This is a great question. I try category surfing instead. If we had size / quality / popularity data visible from the category pages, this would be the perfect way to browse and get a sense of what you're missing. Maybe something parallel to the work the Enterprise team is thinking about for signals of reliability of recent changes: relative notability of entire articles in their context. (pinging @Wittylama: :) – SJ + 00:11, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
- On the face of it I don't think that a "Serendipity engine" (for want of a better phrase) is not something that the Enterprise team would build itself - but hopefully the kind of metadata extraction that is being pulled out and mashed together [like the 'size, quality, popularity' that you referred to] would enable someone to build such a feature. At least, something more 'intelligent' than the existing Random Article button. In the mean time, I'm going to pass this question around to some other people to see if anyone has some ideas that work with existing software. Wittylama 10:13, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
- @The Transhumanist: - there's some interesting suggestions over on the WikipediaWeekly facebook group that you might find helpful. Including "The nearby option in the commons app", the "Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club" Facebook group, Depths of Wikipedia Twitter account, Wikidata knowledge graph queries, and Browsing Featured articles, or Vital articles and its lower levels, or Article of the Day. Wittylama 14:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
- Extra suggestions, from a colleague:
- Wikipedia:Contents or more concisely Template:Contents_pages_(footer_box)
- Special:RandomInCategory which is interesting with things like...
- Category:Wikipedia pages under discretionary sanctions (for controversial/heated topics)
- Category:All Wikipedia vital articles
- Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion#Current_discussions for potentially disappearing articles
- And http://listen.hatnote.com/ for new articles!
- @Wittylama: Thank you for the suggestions. It's ironic that you mentioned Wikipedia:Contents, as I spent years helping to build it (especially outlines), yet haven't used it much lately. Didn't know about Special:RandomInCategory. Thanks! And I look forward to what you find out in your quest for a serendipity engine. Keep me posted. ;) — The Transhumanist 12:09, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment[edit]

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WikiCup 2022 July newsletter[edit]
The third round of the 2022 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 180 points, which is a lower figure than last year when 294 points were needed to progress to round 4. Our top scorers in round 3 were:
BennyOnTheLoose, with 746 points, a tally built both on snooker and other sports topics, and on more general subjects.
Bloom6132, with 683 points, garnered mostly from "In the news" items and related DYKs.
Sammi Brie, with 527, from a variety of submissions related to radio and television stations.
Between them contestants achieved 5 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 51 good articles, 149 DYK entries, 68 ITN entries, and 109 good article reviews. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article nomination, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. WikiCup judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Administrators' newsletter – July 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2022).
|
|
user_global_editcount
is a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)
- An arbitration case regarding conduct in deletion-related editing has been opened.
- 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.
Nomination of Ex (relationship) for deletion[edit]

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ex (relationship) 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.
Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health moved to draftspace[edit]
An article you recently created, Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, is not suitable as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of "Draft:
" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. Waddles 🗩 🖉 22:30, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
File permission problem with File:Maryanne Wolf (25 April 2008).jpg[edit]

Thanks for uploading File:Maryanne Wolf (25 April 2008).jpg. I noticed that while you provided a valid copyright licensing tag, there is no proof that the creator of the file has agreed to release it under the given license.
If you are the copyright holder for this media entirely yourself but have previously published it elsewhere (especially online), please either
- make a note permitting reuse under the CC-BY-SA or another acceptable free license (see this list) at the site of the original publication; or
- Send an email from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en@wikimedia.org, stating your ownership of the material and your intention to publish it under a free license. You can find a sample permission letter here. If you take this step, add {{permission pending}} to the file description page to prevent premature deletion.
If you did not create it entirely yourself, please ask the person who created the file to take one of the two steps listed above, or if the owner of the file has already given their permission to you via email, please forward that email to permissions-en@wikimedia.org.
If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Non-free content, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:File copyright tags#Fair use, and add a rationale justifying the file's use on the article or articles where it is included. See Wikipedia:File copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.
If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have provided evidence that their copyright owners have agreed to license their works under the tags you supplied, too. You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log. Files lacking evidence of permission may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described in section F11 of the criteria for speedy deletion. You may wish to read Wikipedia's image use policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. --Minorax«¦talk¦» 10:17, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
RFC on Modern Taino Identity[edit]
I'd appreciate your input on this topic to resolve some long disputed issues about modern Taino movements. https://wiki.alquds.edu/?query=Talk:Taíno#Request_for_Comment_on_Modern_Taino_Identity Poketama (talk) 22:58, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2022).
- 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.
- 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)
- The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.
- 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.
Point me in the right direction?[edit]
I'm interested in reading discussions and announcements on the future of Wikipedia and MediaWiki, especially new programming features and the application of AI to either. In a word: automation.
What such current or recent conversations and announcements are you aware of?
I look forward to your replies. — The Transhumanist 19:56, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
P.S.: Please ping me upon answering. Thank you.
- Thinking about this! Not a lot on this front, but there's the ML team at Wikimedia... :) – SJ + 15:53, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
Feedback on Vector (2022) conversation[edit]
Hello! As a member of WikiProject Usability, I wanted to draw your attention to a conversation currently underway on WP:VPR (see the beginning of the discussion) around adopting Vector 2022 as the new default skin.
The Web team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been working on Vector 2022 for the past three years, collaborating with the English Wikipedia community as well as other wikis to ensure that the skin performs better qualitatively and quantitatively for readers and communities than the previous Vector skin. The goal of the new skin is to create a more welcoming and easier to use experience for readers and editors across the wiki. For more details, see our new FAQ.
For the past couple of months, we have collected thoughts from the English Wikipedia community on what changes need to be made to the skin prior to it being considered ready for deployment. Our next step would be to start an RfC to assess whether the community considers Vedtor 2022 ready.
Prior to the beginning of the RfC, we wanted to draw your attention to the current conversation and encourage your feedback on the skin.
- The sticky header makes it easier to access tools that editors use often. It decreases scrolling to the top of the page by 16%
- The new table of contents makes it easier to navigate to different sections. Readers and editors jumped between sections 50% more than with the old table of contents
- The new search bar is easier to find and makes it easier to find the correct search result from the list. This increased the amount of searches started by 30% on the wikis we tested on
- The collapsible sidebar allows readers and editors to choose whether they want to see the main menu or not. Our testing shows that this allows people to better focus on their current task - reading with a collapsed menu, or editing with an open menu
- The language switching menu makes it possible to switch languages without scrolling
- The user menu collects all user links in a single place, making it easier to understand what each link does. In testing, 71% of surveyed editors reported positive experiences with the new menu
Thank you, OVasileva (WMF), SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 12:27, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

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Administrators' newsletter – September 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
WikiCup 2022 September newsletter[edit]
The fourth round of the WikiCup has now finished. 383 points were required to reach the final, and the new round has got off to a flying start with all finalists already scoring. In round 4, Bloom6132 with 939 points was the highest points-scorer, with a combination of DYKs and In the news items, followed by BennyOnTheLoose, Sammi Brie and Lee Vilenski. The points of all contestants are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.
At this stage, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For the remaining competitors, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them, and importantly, before the deadline on October 31st!
If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. The judges are Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:44, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment[edit]

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Administrators' newsletter – October 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections open 2 October and close 8 October.
- 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.
Vector 2022 debate - your comment is inside AHoellanders Comment[edit]
Hi, would you mind moving it down as his statement is confusing enough :-) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:18, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – November 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).
- The article creation at scale RfC opened on 3 October and will be open until at least 2 November.
- An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.
- 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.
- The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has entered the proposed decision stage.
- AmandaNP, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections. Xaosflux and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
- 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}}
.
WikiCup 2022 November newsletter[edit]
The 2022 WikiCup has drawn to a close with the final round going down to the wire. The 2022 champion is
Lee Vilenski (1752 points), who won in 2020 and was runner up in both 2019 and last year. In the final round he achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on cue sports. He was closely followed by
Bloom6132 (1732), who specialised in "In the news" items and DYKs, and who has reached the final round of the Cup for the past three years. Next was
BennyOnTheLoose (1238), another cue sports enthusiast, also interested in songs, followed by
Muboshgu (1082), an "In the news" contributor, a seasoned contestant who first took part in the Cup ten years ago. Other finalists were
Sammi Brie (930), who scored with a featured article, good articles and DYKs on TV and radio stations,
Kavyansh.Singh (370), who created various articles on famous Americans, including an FA on Louis H. Bean, famed for his prediction of election outcomes. Next was
PCN02WPS (292), who scored with good articles and DYKs on sporting and other topics and
Z1720 (25) who had DYKs on various topics including historic Canadians.
During the WikiCup, contestants achieved 37 featured articles, 349 good articles, 360 featured article reviews, 683 good article reviews and 480 In the news items, so Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors. Well done everyone! All those who reached the final round will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or the overall leader in this field.
Lee Vilenski wins the featured article prize, for a total of 6 FAs during the course of the competition and 3 in the final round.
Kavyansh.Singh wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 2.
Adam Cuerden wins the featured picture prize, for 39 FPs during the competition.
Z1720 wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 35 FARs in round 4.
Epicgenius wins the good article prize, for 32 GAs in round 1.
SounderBruce wins the featured topic prize, for 4 FT articles in round 1.
Lee Vilenski wins the good topic prize, for 34 GT articles in round 5.
Sammi Brie wins the good article reviewer prize, for 71 GARs overall.
Sammi Brie wins the Did you know prize, for 30 DYKs in round 3 and 106 overall.
Bloom6132 wins the In the news prize, for 106 ITNs in round 5 and 289 overall.
Next year's competition will begin on 1 January and possible changes to the rules and scoring are being discussed on the discussion page. You are invited to sign up to take part in the contest; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to have a good turnout for the 2023 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners and finalists, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:28, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
Nomination of Logos Group for deletion[edit]

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Logos Group 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.
Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment[edit]

You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name. Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 19:30, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
Please do not comment in archived project pages. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:56, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
- I agree the is a problem, in particular our rules against UPE should take precedence against those against outing. Coordinated UPE networks [not individuals who happen to be conflicted] are a growing failure mode of the project. This isn't just a matter of bad editing (about a pet peeve/project), there is also the higher-order of policy capture -- UPE networks tend to proliferate if unchecked, and can interfere with or influence relevant rule-drafting. – SJ + 03:24, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message[edit]
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.
If you wish to participate in the 2022 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) 00:25, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – December 2022[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).
- Consensus has been found in an RfC to automatically place RfAs on hold after one week.
- The article creation at scale RfC has been closed.
- An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.
- 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)
- 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.
- The proposed decision for the 2021-22 review of the discretionary sanctions system is open.
- The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has been closed.
- The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
- A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.
- 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.
Welcome to the 2023 WikiCup![edit]
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2023 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:16, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2023[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).
- Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.
- 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.
- 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.
Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment[edit]

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