User talk:JBW

This account was previously known as JamesBWatson, but was renamed to JBW on 19 September 2019. James B. Watson is not my real name.

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Administrators' newsletter – April 2020

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

Administrator changes

Cabayi • Lee Vilenski

Boing! said Zebedee

Jonny-mt • MarkGallagher • PeaceNT

Money emoji → Moneytrees

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork • WereSpielChequers

CheckUser changes

NativeForeigner

Oversight changes

Someguy1221

Daniel Case

Guideline and policy news

There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.

Technical news

There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.

Arbitration

Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.

Miscellaneous

The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

self-block request

Hi, I've seen you on the list of self-blocking admin. I'm requesting an indefinitely block as I intend to stop editing after being blocked. Thank You. Dfdooger (talk) 07:15, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Use of talk page as a forum

Hey, It's AsmrSasquatch, thanks for the post, I was just wondering why it's a rule to not ask general questions about a subject on its talk page? thanks for letting me know though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AsmrSasquatch (talk • contribs) 23:20, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@AsmrSasquatch: I had no part in creating that policy, but as I see it is the situation is more or less as follows. (1) Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopaedia. If we were to start allowing people to use the Wikipedia servers for other purposes, such as using user talk pages as blogs, article talk pages as general discussion forums, user space pages as free web storage space for personal web pages or promotional pages for businesses, bands, clubs, etc etc, then Wikipedia would become swamped by such uses. It would become largely indistinguishable from all the personal blogging sites, web forums, fan sites, and so on that are out there, and most of which are full of junk. Wikipedia would lose its position as something different, and lose the special status which makes it more respected than those sites. It would lose much of its credibility, and that might be the beginning of the end. (2) Running Wikipedia costs a huge amount of money, which is provided by voluntary donations. Allowing all those additional uses would certainly increase the cost, so that more money would be needed, and it would also very probably reduce the amount of money that people would donate. Many people who are willing to give money to support a free encyclopaedia serving anyone who wishes to find out information would be far less likely to be so generous if they saw that what they were funding was largely just a duplication of all the blogs, forums, and so on that are already there, and which serve mainly the personal interests of the people who post there. Very simply, Wikipedia serves one purpose, other web sites serve other purposes, and allowing Wikipedia to try to serve all those other purposes would be to the detriment of serving the one purpose which it was created to serve. JBW (talk) 19:56, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey JBW, is AsmrSasquatch, so, just a question, name the sites you're talking about and comparing to Wikipedia. oh and are you referring to me as using wiki as a blog, or the people who were planning to answer my question.