User talk:JackFromWisconsin/Newsletters

Welcome, subscribers, to the second Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Michael Krasnow: A recent AfD survivor, this article is currently a single-paragraph stub, but has substantial expansion potential in online, print, and archival sources alike. This piece is a particularly useful starting point for such a unique article.
Injury: A start-class Vital Article with the common problem of medical articles of list-formatted content that'd work better as prose.
Fetish Con: This eccentric topic that I absolutely do not apologise for placing right under "Injury" survived AfD in March. Though currently in poor stub-and-table shape, the AfD made it clear substantial expansion potential exists.

Category 2

Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

Home: Another start-class Vital Article, this one is at level 2, making it one of the 100 core topics. It's also...I think it's a Million Award candidate? Honestly, man, I don't know, I checked three years and they all had frankly weird charts. This one has good bones, but the internal sections are all in need of expansion. Someone able to work on them could certainly take this to GA.
Tea: The world's most popular drink (inb4 water) was an FA back in the Brilliant Prose era, but no longer. Attempts since to bring it back to standard have failed. Will you succeed?
Mazes and Monsters: Tom Hanks' first leading role, an early DYK, and an unusual quirky topic, this article bears real potential for expansion.

Category 3

Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Death Cab for Cutie: This GA is up for GAR primarily due to uncited text. A motivated editor could save this article's plus sign by hunting down verification.
Doctor Who missing episodes: An FA at FAR and in danger of moving to FARC without engagement. This significant chunk of television history has tons written on it, and yet a number of the sources in the article are subpar. Can you save it?
Windows RT: Though this GA has been recommended for GAR since last September, it hasn't been brought to the process. No reasons are given on the talk, but the lead looks in need of a trim to bring its information to the body, and there's more than a bit of WP:OVERCITE.

Letter from the Editor

Updates on articles from last issue:

Grunge has been delisted following an unsuccessful FAR. Anyone who wants to get this important article back to FAC is strongly encouraged.

Reader suggestion:
BOZ, a founding member of the new WikiProject Cemeteries, has an additional suggestion for anyone looking for further inspiration:

Bohemian National Cemetery (Chicago): A Czech cemetery in Chicago and the first I've heard of with an area dedicated specifically to fans of a given baseball team, this cemetery has ties to outsider art, historical shipwrecks, and one of the city's founding ethnic communities.

Thank you all, once again, for your subscription and your work on Wikipedia!
Vaticidalprophet 18:33, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You have received this newsletter because you opted into the Discontent Content mailing list. To opt out from future newsletters, go to Wikipedia:Discontent Content/mailing list and remove your talk page.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:40, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Views/Day	Title	Tagged with…
89	Bourne, Lincolnshire (talk)	Add sources
74	Interstate 39 (talk)	Add sources
203	Saputo Inc. (talk)	Add sources
91	Port of Chicago (talk)	Add sources
8,987	MrBeast (talk)	Add sources
301	Armillaria ostoyae (talk)	Add sources
89	Harcourt Butler Technical University (talk)	Cleanup
3	Carl L. Linde (talk)	Cleanup
52	National University of Distance Education (talk)	Cleanup
11	Wisconsin Highway 16 (talk)	Expand
19	U.S. Route 45 in Wisconsin (talk)	Expand
2,407	Legality of bitcoin by country or territory (talk)	Expand
674	SCP – Containment Breach (talk)	Unencyclopaedic
221	Minecraft modding (talk)	Unencyclopaedic
8	Pic River (talk)	Unencyclopaedic
541	Fire engine (talk)	Merge
266	Star Wars video games (talk)	Merge
91	Antigenicity (talk)	Merge
4	Olympiacos (table tennis club) (talk)	Wikify
61	The One with Unagi (talk)	Wikify
516	Raw milk (talk)	Wikify
5	Jagjeet Singh (talk)	Orphan
6	Manistique Lakes (talk)	Orphan
3	Bot Soccer (talk)	Orphan
3	Wisconsin Highway 89 (talk)	Stub
39	They Are Among Us (talk)	Stub
10	Lucy Appleby (talk)	Stub
5	Krung Thon Buri BTS station (talk)	Stub
198	Semantic Scholar (talk)	Stub
22	Fox Crossing, Wisconsin (talk)	Stub

Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping.

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please tell me on SuggestBot's talk page. Thanks from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 03:14, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 18, 2021)

Watches are one type of fashion accessory.

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Fashion accessory

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Huizhou • Do-rag

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 3 May 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021

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

Administrator changes

Enchanter • Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

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.

Technical news

The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 19, 2021)

Tattooing among women of the Koita people of Papua New Guinea traditionally began at age five and was added to each year. The V-shaped marks on the chest, with certain others, indicate that the woman is marriageable. Photo taken in 1912.

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Tattoo

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Fashion accessory • Huizhou

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 10 May 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

Discontent Content Issue 3

Discontent Content Issue #3

Welcome, subscribers, to the third Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Gambling in Nevada: An unusual move -- a redirect? But if you look at the history, you'll see why. This sweeping and expansive topic about the home of Reno and Las Vegas was recently converted to a redirect due to its almost complete lack of useful content. Nonetheless, this subject is bursting with potential and can have a full article written about it.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Original Theme Highlights: This recent AfD survivor was the first soundtrack written for the popular series. More unorthodox, for a children's animation album, it features songs by Pantera and Ween and was given a vinyl re-release in 2016 for the...ironic market? Certainly some market. There's a fair amount of coverage here to write a solid article on.
Death by misadventure: A surprisingly major topic to be a one-paragraph stub, this is a legal and colloquial term both. The article is currently sourced in whole to a single page in a single book!

Category 2

Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

Rope (film): Hitchcock's classic attempt to shoot an entire film in a single shot, Rope is both a significant note in cinematic history and, in recent years, conceptualized as an important piece of Hays Code-era gay cinema. It's a good watch, and the article should be just as solid. Currently it's a C-class with some unsourced content and an overreliance on block quotes.
Rachel Pollack: One of the major occult writers of the 20th and 21st centuries (a book of hers is prominently involved in my quixotic "bring the Major Arcana to FT" plan), not to mention a significant fiction and comics writer collaborating with names such as Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, Pollack's article has quite a bit of room for improvement to quality-assessed levels. Though her article's lead is short and the work as a whole underreferenced, plenty of opportunities exist to improve it.
Narrative paradigm: Despite this article's High or Top importance across multiple wikiprojects, it's in a sorry state. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was subjected to a WikiEd course some time back. Significant potential lies within the idea that all human communication is narrative; the article must be accordingly strong.

Category 3

Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Jaime King: This GA on a famous model of the 1990s has been recommended for GAR. Unreferenced sections and low-quality references are a problem for this BLP.
Dartmouth College: This FA is at FARC and on the brink of delisting, but the issues mentioned -- accessibility, WP:LEADCITE compliance, and overreliance on primary sources -- are far from insurmountable, and an editor could certainly polish off this star.
Tamil language: Another FARC, this is the native language of 75 million people (including my own stepmother) and the language of one of the world's great classical traditions. It's afflicted by a lack of sourcing and particularly issues with inline citations.

Letter from the Editor

This issue's subscriber suggestion, again from BOZ, is:

Dice: This former GA was delisted in 2009. It's a big topic to a lot of different subjects, and deserves a top-quality article.

This is ridiculously late, and I apologise -- I've been writing articles :) I've also, excitingly, landed a couple 'real publishing' writing gigs, which I'll be plenty excited to talk about when they're published. Due to the current increased amount of writing I have to do on a regular basis both on- and off-wiki, I'm planning to drop this down to monthly so I can spread out my responsibilities a bit.
Vaticidalprophet 09:08, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You have received this newsletter because you opted into the Discontent Content mailing list. To opt out from future newsletters, go to Wikipedia:Discontent Content/mailing list and remove your talk page.

This week's article for improvement (week 20, 2021)

A computer lab equipped with desktop computers

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Desktop computer

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Tattoo • Fashion accessory

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 17 May 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 21, 2021)

Cooked pork chops on a plate

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Pork chop

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Desktop computer • Tattoo

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

Discontent Content Issue 4

Discontent Content Issue #4

Welcome, subscribers, to the fourth Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Lineage (anthropology): A shocking subject to be a sourceless stub, this Vital 4 obviously has so much more to write about than its three sentences. In this state, even a basic improvement would do a ton.
Police memorabilia collecting: Survived AfD not long ago, with plenty of sources given in the discussion to use in the article. "Further reading" may in particular be of use.
Koror City: Palau may be a small island nation, but having its largest city by far be a stub is unacceptable. (We've managed to write much more about it over at Wikivoyage, where it's guide-class and about to make a Main Page appearance.) Vital 5 with a healthy couple hundred pageviews a day, the widespread use of English in its native land makes it a more accessible topic than editors afraid of working in countries they're unfamiliar with might worry.

Category 2

Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

List of premature obituaries: A former FL, an eccentric and popular topic, and a refreshing change from the sports statistics and "list of awards received by X" that populate FLC. This list was demoted in 2009 for sourcing concerns, which even at the time were mentioned as potentially fixable.
War: Let's just jump straight into the Overtopics, shall we? This Vital 2 really shows what "Top-importance to the whole encyclopedia" means. Currently B-class -- more B- in my estimate, maybe -- it stands out that non-editor readers on the talk page have qualms with the scope, in particular omissions they expected to find.
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Once GA, now C. ~~Still relatable.~~ This seminal work of literature can certainly be returned to where it was.

Category 3

Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Byzantine Empire: From the metapedian perspective, this is perhaps our most important FA -- the oldest, promoted in 2001 (older than some of this newsletter's subscribers!), to retain FA status unbroken to the present day. Speaking exopedianly, it's still decidedly vital, with nearly three million page views in the last year. FAR was suggested late last year; it hasn't been brought to the chopping block yet, but an article this important both inside and outside of the project deserves to remain in top shape.
Underoath: This GA is recommended for GAR, with complaints about long-unaddressed maintenance tags and sections in dire need of updates. The article gets hundreds of views a day and is translated across plenty of projects.
Acute myeloid leukemia: Medical articles aren't scary! Really! They're not! If I can work on them, so can you! That aside, this FA was given a FAR notice in January. There are sourcing concerns, conveniently assisted by sources left on the talk page. Non-editor readers on the talk have raised concerns about inaccurate prognostic statements.

Letter from the Editor

This issue's reader suggestion is brought to you by Sennecaster:

Margery Wolf: Perhaps the fastest GA delist known to the project, this article was delisted two days after promotion upon discovery of foundational copyvio. Though it was reduced to just four short paragraphs, the sourcing obviously exists to create a high-quality article.

Yes, I know I said I was going to switch to monthly. Let's just go "Vat doesn't really Get Time" and run with it.

The Core Contest is on its last day of entries, and I've picked articles here with an eye to that. It's the first time it's running since 2017, and I for one am looking forward to overhauling Prehistoric religion. If you feel inspired by anything here, get in there quick!
Vaticidalprophet 17:06, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You have received this newsletter because you opted into the Discontent Content mailing list. To opt out from future newsletters, go to Wikipedia:Discontent Content/mailing list and remove your talk page.

This week's article for improvement (week 22, 2021)

A trench digger being used in Baku, Azerbaijan

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Trench

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Pork chop • Desktop computer

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 31 May 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 23, 2021)

200th Anniversary of Berlin Academy, 1900

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Learned society

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Trench • Pork chop

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 7 June 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2021

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

Administrator changes

Ashleyyoursmile • Less Unless

Husond • MattWade • MJCdetroit • Carioca • Vague Rant • Kingboyk • Thunderboltz • Gwen Gale • AniMate • SlimVirgin (deceased)

Guideline and policy news

Consensus was reached to deprecate Wikipedia:Editor assistance.
Following a Request for Comment the Book namespace was deprecated.

Technical news

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.

Arbitration

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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:45, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 24, 2021)

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Savoriness

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Learned society • Trench

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 14 June 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 25, 2021)

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Alida Morberg

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Savoriness • Learned society

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 21 June 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

Discontent Content Issue 5

Discontent Content Issue #5

Welcome, subscribers, to the fifth Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Isolar – 1976 Tour: A substantial musical event for one of the most influential albums of its era, but with a rather spindly, table-focused article (I also note no one seems to have given post-inflation numbers for any of the figures).
Occultism (Islam): "Major topic that's a literal stub because it's about something outside the comfort zone of the average editor" of the day. Esotericism in one of the world's major exoteric religions is, of course, something which can be written about extensively.
G & G v Wikimedia Foundation Inc: Going meta for a moment...This is an interesting case, and it's a shame we discuss it only as a paragraph. It would be fascinating to read further on this topic.

Category 2

Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

Misophonia: A concept, symptom, or disorder -- no one's quite yet drawn the borderlands -- where people are unusually upset at noises such as chewing sounds. The idea may sound odd, but it does distress people with it and those around them. The subject is very popular, with Half Million Award-tier page views, but the readers are served by a rather weak article.
Sparks (band): This eccentric, creative band was a GA long ago, but delisted in 2010. Though undersourced, the article certainly has potential to return to its old status.
Han Xin: One of the great military leaders of ancient China is graced by a massively undersourced article. Several sections have none at all.

Category 3

Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Wind: This FA is on a huge, important topic, but its star needs some polishing. FAR notice has been given for significant uncited passages. To quote the talk page, the article has good bones, and it can certainly be restored to modern FA status if anyone is able to work on it.
Jeopardy!: The article for perhaps one of the most famous game shows of all time is at GAR for citation issues. Most of the issues brought up can be fixed quite easily, such as locating page numbers.
French fries: Tasty, but needs more sauce. The GAR discusses unsourced sections and unreliable sourcing; I also notice some pretty blatant prose issues and a spindly lead.

Letter from the Editor

This issue's reader suggestion from Sennecaster:

Maasai people: The Vital 4 article for this major East African ethnic group was recently significantly reduced due to copyvio. It needs urgent work to restore cored-out content, but the references are still available in the article to simplify the process.

One topic I've been broadly thinking about lately is the concept of GA sweeps. There hasn't been one in well over a decade; discussion of a new one is traditionally stymied by the sheer number of GAs that would need sweeping, considering there are over ten times as many as there were at the last sweep. Nonetheless, there's no dispute that many GAs don't really count as 99.5th percentile articles, or even decent-quality articles (whether one's own personal reading of WIAGA is closer to the former or the latter, and how different those things are, is an exercise for the reader).

I've been brainstorming ideas, and I've been wondering if we can tackle the problem with limited-scope sweeps. One idea would be sweeping popular or vital articles -- those that get enough views to make up a significant proportion of the "GA experience" to readers. Another would be focusing on shorter GAs, which might trend towards a less in-depth treatment of the topic than could really justify the rating. There may very well be a path here to maintaining GA standards, and either of those would have the benefit that they might be more likely to encourage people to work on rather than simply delist articles -- popular topics with lots of interested parties willing to help, or smaller topics that don't seem like too big a challenge to pick up.
Vaticidalprophet 04:16, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You have received this newsletter because you opted into the Discontent Content mailing list. To opt out from future newsletters, go to Wikipedia:Discontent Content/mailing list and remove your talk page.

The Signpost: 27 June 2021

News and notes: Elections, Wikimania, masking and more

In the media: Boris and Joe, reliability, love, and money

Disinformation report: Croatian Wikipedia: capture and release

Recent research: Feminist critique of Wikipedia's epistemology, Black Americans vastly underrepresented among editors, Wiki Workshop report

Traffic report: So no one told you life was gonna be this way

News from the WMF: Searching for Wikipedia

Humour: Wikipedia's best articles on the world's strangest things

WikiProject report: WikiProject on open proxies interview

Forum: Is WMF fundraising abusive?

Discussion report: Reliability of WikiLeaks discussed

Obituary: SarahSV

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:15, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 26, 2021)

A Finnish Christmas ham

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Christmas ham

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Alida Morberg • Savoriness

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 28 June 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

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

Administrator changes

Trialpears

AGK • Eliz81 • Mulad • ThaddeusB • Vianello • Who

Lacrimosus → Ikuzaf

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

AGK • DGG

Oversighter changes

AGK

Guideline and policy news

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.

Technical news

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.

Arbitration

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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:26, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 27, 2021)

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Organized religion

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Christmas ham • Alida Morberg

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 5 July 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 28, 2021)

Participant countries of the 2019 International Army Games.

Participants

First time participants

Previous games participants, but not this time

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

International Army Games

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Organized religion • Christmas ham

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 12 July 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 29, 2021)

The Hittite version of the Treaty of Kadesh, among the earliest extant examples of an international agreement

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

International law

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: International Army Games • Organized religion

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 19 July 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

The Signpost: 25 July 2021

News and notes: Wikimania and a million other news stories

Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong

In the media: Larry is at it again

Board of Trustees candidates: See the candidates

Recent research: Gender bias and statistical fallacies, disinformation and mutual intelligibility

Traffic report: Football, tennis and marveling at Loki

News from the WMF: Uncapping our growth potential – interview with James Baldwin, Finance and Administration Department

Humour: A little verse

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 30, 2021)

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Episode

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: International law • International Army Games

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 26 July 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

Discontent Content Issue 6

Discontent Content Issue #6

Welcome, subscribers, to the sixth Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Floating match on card: This famous magic trick is a microstub with an empty section and no meaningful discussion of its methods or effects. Some useful information is available on the talk page.
Erotic horror: A significant literary (or, well...look, you know) genre with significant academic and critical coverage, which you wouldn't know from reading its three-sentence article.
Black ribbon: Currently in poor shape, with unnecessary lists attracting spurious examples, this article nonetheless has potential to cover a coherent topic on a sensitive subject.

Category 2

Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

Violin: This twice-candidate at GAN has good bones, but suffers from expanses of uncited content (and indeed expanses of "people slapping CN tags on literally every sentence"). Much of this information should be citable, and potential exists for this article to stand tall amongst other core music articles.
Art museum: Though this looks a little underrated as a soi-disant "Start", it's nonetheless an important cultural article with significant improvement potential. This was a former candidate for the Team-B-Vital campaign ran by members of the Wikimedia Discord to bring Vital Articles to B-class status, and while not selected, it has strong potential for anyone interested in working on it.
Grocery store: Daily life has always been one of Wikipedia's coverage gaps. Though this topic is something virtually anyone deals with on a regular basis, the article struggles with cleanup tags, sandwiching, and the weird fear of prose that drives people to put everything they can in a list. With hundreds of views a day, readers deserve an article with a stronger core.

Category 3

Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Slackers CDs and Games: This GA hasn't had significant content edits since 2008. As much of its content references then-recent controversies, it needs a good look for updating.
Potential superpowers: GA with a multiple issues template, with concerns of outdated information, lack of citations, and potential OR.
Alzheimer's disease: This major medical FA is at FAR due to outdated information, an unfortunately common scourge of medical articles over time. Such an important article needs people willing to get it in good shape.

Letter from the Editor

After my prior thoughts on GA sweeps and their viability, work is beginning to break down what parts of the backlog can be tackled. Planning is beginning at User:Vaticidalprophet/GA reform and its talk; feel free to give your opinion, participate in current GARs, and assess articles. The current plan is to look at GAs with outstanding cleanup tags as our first priority.

Sorry for the delay this time around -- I've been having A Month healthwise. I expect to maintain this at an approximately monthly schedule and will try not to let it slip further. I'm enthused by the work going on at GAR lately and hope to work something excellent out of it.
Vaticidalprophet 01:54, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You have received this newsletter because you opted into the Discontent Content mailing list. To opt out from future newsletters, go to Wikipedia:Discontent Content/mailing list and remove your talk page.

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

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

Administrator changes

BusterD

Kees08 • Nickshanks • Protonk • Schissel • Ultraexactzz • Wknight94

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversighter changes

TheresNoTime

ST47

Guideline and policy news

An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.

Technical news

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)

Arbitration

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.

Miscellaneous

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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:18, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 31, 2021)

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Organ (anatomy)

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Episode • International law

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 2 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 32, 2021)

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Act (drama)

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Organ (anatomy) • Episode

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:06, 9 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 33, 2021)

Crème brûlée a dessert consisting of a rich custard base topped with a layer of hardened caramelized sugar.

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Crème brûlée

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Act (drama) • Organ (anatomy)

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:06, 16 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 33, 2021)

Crème brûlée a dessert consisting of a rich custard base topped with a layer of hardened caramelized sugar.

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Crème brûlée

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Act (drama) • Organ (anatomy)

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 02:15, 16 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 34, 2021)

An employee and customer at a grocery store in The Netherlands, April 1, 1955

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Grocery store

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Crème brûlée • Act (drama)

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 23 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

The Signpost: 29 August 2021

News and notes: Enough time left to vote! IP ban

In the media: Vive la différence!

Wikimedians of the year: Seven Wikimedians of the year

Gallery: Our community in 20 graphs

News from Wiki Education: Changing the face of Wikipedia

Recent research: IP editors, inclusiveness and empathy, cyclones, and world heritage

WikiProject report: WikiProject Days of the Year Interview

Traffic report: Olympics, movies, and Afghanistan

Community view: Making Olympic history on Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:43, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 35, 2021)

Mona Sahlin is a Swedish politician who was leader of the opposition and leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 2007 to 2011. Pictured is Sahlin in 2010.

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Mona Sahlin

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Grocery store • Crème brûlée

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:06, 30 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021

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

Administrator changes

Jake Wartenberg

Emperor • Viridian Bovary

Ashleyyoursmile → Viridian Bovary

Guideline and policy news

Feedback is requested on the Universal Code of Conduct enforcement draft by the Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee.
A RfC is open on whether to allow administrators to use extended confirmed protection on high-risk templates.
A discussion is open to decide when, if ever, should discord logs be eligible for removal when posted onwiki (including whether to oversight them)
A RfC on the next steps after the trial of pending changes on TFAs has resulted in a 30 day trial of automatic semi protection for TFAs.

Technical news

The Score extension has been re-enabled on public wikis. It has been updated, but has been placed in safe mode to address unresolved security issues. Further information on the security issues can be found on the mediawiki page.

Arbitration

A request for comment is in progress to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules. Comments and new proposals are welcome.

Miscellaneous

The 2021 RfA review is now open for comments.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:45, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 36, 2021)

The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. Pictured is the oil on canvas painting Everything is in the past, painted by Vassily Maximov in 1889.

Hello, JackFromWisconsin. The article for improvement of the week is:

Past

Please be bold and help improve it!

Previous selections: Mona Sahlin • Grocery store

Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:06, 6 September 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

The Signpost: 26 September 2021

News and notes: New CEO, new board members, China bans

In the media: The future of Wikipedia

Opinion: Wikimedians of Mainland China were warned

Op-Ed: I've been desysopped

Disinformation report: Paid promotional paragraphs in German parliamentary pages

Discussion report: Editors discuss Wikipedia's vetting process for administrators

Recent research: Wikipedia images for machine learning; Experiment justifies Wikipedia's high search rankings

Community view: Is writing Wikipedia like making a quilt?

Traffic report: Kanye, Emma Raducanu and 9/11

News from Diff: Welcome to the first grantees of the Knowledge Equity Fund

WikiProject report: The Random and the Beautiful

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:55, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

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

Administrator changes

Blablubbs

Alvestrand • Black Falcon • Deathphoenix • Dppowell • Mark Arsten • JGHowes (deceased)

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Mkdw

Interface administrator changes

Galobtter

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, extended confirmed protection may be used preemptively on certain high-risk templates.
Following a discussion at the Village Pump, there is consensus to treat discord logs the same as IRC logs. This means that discord logs will be oversighted if posted onwiki.

Technical news

DiscussionTools has superseded Enterprisey's reply-link script. Editors may switch using the "Discussion tools" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features.

Arbitration

A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 October 2021

From the editor: Different stories, same place

News and notes: The sockpuppet who ran for adminship and almost succeeded

In the media: China bans, and is there intelligent life on this planet?

Opinion: A photo on Wikipedia can ruin your life

Discussion report: Editors brainstorm and propose changes to the Requests for adminship process

Recent research: Welcome messages fail to improve newbie retention

Community view: Reflections on the Chinese Wikipedia

Traffic report: James Bond and the Giant Squid Game

Technology report: Wikimedia Toolhub, winners of the Coolest Tool Award, and more

Serendipity: How Wikipedia helped create a Serbian stamp

Book review: Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality

WikiProject report: Redirection

Humour: A very Wiki crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:14, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021

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

Administrator changes

Clpo13

Brian0918 • JDoorjam • Karanacs • MrDarcy • Mindspillage

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Dreamy Jazz • Ferret • GeneralNotability • Girth Summit • RoySmith

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz • LuK3

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 November 2021

In the media: Denial: climate change, mass killings and pornography

WikiCup report: The WikiCup 2021

Deletion report: What we lost, what we gained

From a Wikipedia reader: What's Matt Amodio?

Arbitration report: ArbCom in 2021

Discussion report: On the brink of change – RFA reforms appear imminent

Technology report: What does it take to upload a file?

WikiProject report: Interview with contributors to WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers

Serendipity: "Did You Know ..." featured a photo of the wrong female WWII pilot

News from Diff: Content translation tool helps create one million Wikipedia articles

Traffic report: Reporting ticket sales on the edge of the Wiki, if Eternals should fail

Recent research: Vandalizing Wikipedia as rational behavior

Humour: A very new very Wiki crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:46, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021

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

Administrator changes

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

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

The Signpost: 28 December 2021

From the editor: Here is the news

News and notes: Jimbo's NFT, new arbs, fixing RfA, and financial statements

Serendipity: Born three months before her brother?

In the media: The past is not even past

Recent research: STEM articles judged unsuitable for undergraduates below the first paragraph

Arbitration report: A new crew for '22

By the numbers: Four billion words and a few numbers

Deletion report: We laughed, we cried, we closed as "no consensus"

Gallery: Wikicommons presents: 2021

Traffic report: Spider-Man, football and the departed

Crossword: Another Wiki crossword for one and all

Humour: Buying Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:07, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2022

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

Administrator changes

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

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

CheckUser changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Oversighter changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Guideline and policy news

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

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

The Signpost: 30 January 2022

Special report: WikiEd course leads to Twitter harassment

News and notes: Feedback for Board of Trustees election

Interview: CEO Maryana Iskander "four weeks in"

Black History Month: What are you doing for Black History Month?

Deletion report: Ringing in the new year: Subject notability guideline under discussion

WikiProject report: The Forgotten Featured

Arbitration report: New arbitrators look at new case and antediluvian sanctions

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2021

Gallery: No Spanish municipality without a photograph

Obituary: Twofingered Typist

Op-Ed: Identifying and rooting out climate change denial

Essay: The prime directive

Opinion: Should the Wikimedia Foundation continue to accept cryptocurrency donations?

In the media: Fuzzy-headed government editing

Recent research: Articles with higher quality ratings have fewer "knowledge gaps"

Serendipity: Pooh entered the Public Domain – but Tigger has to wait two more years

Crossword: Cross swords with a crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:21, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

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

Administrator changes

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

28bytes

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

The Signpost: 27 February 2022

From the team: Selection of a new Signpost Editor-in-Chief

News and notes: Impacts of Russian invasion of Ukraine

Opinion: Why student editors are good for Wikipedia

Special report: A presidential candidate's team takes on Wikipedia

In the media: Wiki-drama in the UK House of Commons

Serendipity: War photographers: from Crimea (1850s) to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022)

Technology report: Community Wishlist Survey results

WikiProject report: 10 years of tea

Featured content: Featured Content returns

Deletion report: The 10 most SHOCKING deletion discussions of February

Recent research: How editors and readers may be emotionally affected by disasters and terrorist attacks

Arbitration report: Parties remonstrate, arbs contemplate, skeptics coordinate

By the numbers: Does birthplace affect the frequency of Wikipedia biography articles?

Gallery: The vintage exhibit

Traffic report: Euphoria, Pamela Anderson, lies and Netflix

News from Diff: The Wikimania 2022 Core Organizing Team

Crossword: A Crossword, featuring Featured Articles

Humour: Notability of mailboxes

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:20, 27 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022

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

Administrator changes

Modussiccandi

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

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

The 2022 appointees for the Ombuds commission are Érico, Faendalimas, Galahad, Infinite0694, Mykola7, Olugold, Udehb and Zabe as regular members and Ameisenigel and JJMC89 as advisory members.
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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Growth Newsletter #20

Welcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Suggested edits

As of February, 300,000 suggested edits have been completed since the feature was first deployed in December 2019.

Add a link is the team's first structured task, deployed in May 2021. It has improved outcomes for newcomers. The team is now working on a second iteration based on community feedback and data analysis. Improvements will include: improved algorithmic suggestions, guardrails to prevent too many similar links to be added, and clearer encouragement for users to continue making edits. After adding these improvements, we will deploy this task to more Wikipedias.

Add an image is the second structured task built by our team. It was deployed in November 2021 to four pilot Wikipedias. This is a more challenging task for newcomers. However, it adds more value to articles (so far, over 1,000 images have been added). We are currently learning from communities and from the data on what is working well and what needs improvements. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. We will soon deploy this task to more Wikipedias as a test.

"Add a link" and "Add an image" now both have a limitation on how many of these tasks newcomers can do per day. It is meant to discourage careless newcomers from making too many problematic edits.

Positive reinforcement

Over the last two years, the Growth team has focused on building suggested edits: easy tasks for newcomers to start with. We have learned with this experience that these tasks help many newcomers to make their first edits. Now, the team is starting a new project : "positive reinforcement". Its goal is to make newcomers proud of their editing and to make them want to come back for more of them. With the positive reinforcement project, we are considering three kinds of features:

Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.

This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!

News for mentors

The mentor dashboard is available at all wikis. It helps mentors see who their mentees are and keep track of their activity. It is automatically activated where a list of mentors has been created. If you need assistance to create a list of mentors, please contact us.
The mentor dashboard has a new module: settings. It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away). They can specify the volume of questions they want to receive, and they can claim mentees in an easier way. It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign their mentees to other mentors.
We are working on an ability for a mentee to opt-out (and back in) to having a mentor.
Previously, in the table that displays mentees activity, the filters displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. Mentors can change this value in their filters.
We are currently working on a special page for mentors to sign-up.

Some wikis have created userboxes that mentors can display on the user pages. If your wiki has one, please link it to Wikidata!

Scaling

Previously, at most Wikipedias, only 80% of newcomers were getting the Growth features. This was done for experimentation, to have a control group. We have changed this setting. Now 100% of new accounts at all Wikipedias get the Growth features (except a few, kept as test wikis). We invite communities to update their onboarding documentation and tutorials. Please include the Growth features in it. To help you, we have created an help page that can be translated and adapted to your wiki.

How to help

Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work. We regularly update it.

Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 March 2022

From the Signpost team: How The Signpost is documenting the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

News and notes: Of safety and anonymity

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Kharkiv, Ukraine: Countering Russian aggression with a camera

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Western Ukraine: Working with Wikipedia helps

Disinformation report: The oligarchs' socks

In the media: Ukraine, Russia, and even some other stuff

Recent research: Top scholarly citers, lack of open access references, predicting editor departures

Wikimedian perspective: My heroes from Russia, Ukraine & beyond

Discussion report: Athletes are less notable now

Technology report: 2022 Wikimedia Hackathon

Arbitration report: Skeptics given heavenly judgement, whirlwind of Discord drama begins to spin for tropical cyclone editors

Traffic report: War, what is it good for?

Deletion report: Ukraine, werewolves, Ukraine, YouTube pundits, and Ukraine

Gallery: "All we are saying is, give peace a chance..."

From the archives: Burn, baby burn

Essay: Yes, the sky is blue

Tips and tricks: Become a keyboard ninja

On the bright side: The bright side of news

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:50, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022

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

Administrator changes

Firefly • Sdrqaz

Ad Orientem

Geschichte • Ryan Postlethwaite • Sabine's Sunbird • Wassupwestcoast

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Opening of proceedings has been updated to reflect current practice following a motion.
A arbitration case regarding Skepticism and coordinated editing has been closed.
A arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been opened.

Miscellaneous

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

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:13, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 April 2022

News and notes: Double trouble

In the media: The battlegrounds outside and inside Wikipedia

Special report: Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary (Part 2)

Technology report: 8-year-old attribution issues in Media Viewer

Featured content: Wikipedia's best content from March

In focus: Editing difficulties on Russian Wikipedia

Gallery: A voyage around the world with WLM winners

Interview: On a war and a map

Serendipity: Wikipedia loves photographs, but hates photographers

Traffic report: Justice Jackson, the Smiths, and an invasion

Recent research: Student edits as "civic engagement"; how Wikipedia readers interact with images

News from the WMF: How Smart is the SMART Copyright Act?

Essay: The problem with elegant variation

Humour: Really huge message boxes

From the archives: Wales resigned WMF board chair in 2006 reorganization

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:40, 24 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022

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

Administrator changes

Colin M

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

CheckUser changes

Ks0stm

Oversighter changes

Ks0stm

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:34, 9 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 May 2022

From the team: A changing of the guard

News and notes: 2022 Wikimedia Board elections

Community view: Have your say in the 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board elections

Opinion: The Wikimedia Endowment – a lack of transparency

In the media: Putin, Jimbo, Musk and more

Special report: Three stories of Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war

In focus: Measuring gender diversity in Wikipedia articles

Discussion report: Portals, April Fools, admin activity requirements and more

WikiProject report: WikiProject COVID-19 revisited

Technology report: A new video player for Wikimedia wikis

Featured content: Featured content of April

Interview: Wikipedia's pride

Serendipity: Those thieving image farms

Recent research: 35 million Twitter links analysed

Tips and tricks: The reference desks of Wikipedia

Traffic report: Strange highs and strange lows

News from Diff: Winners of the Human rights and Environment special nomination by Wiki Loves Earth announced

News from the WMF: The EU Digital Services Act: What’s the Deal with the Deal?

Video: How the entire country of Qatar was blocked from editing

Gallery: Diving under the sea for World Oceans Day

From the archives: The Onion and Wikipedia

Essay: How not to write a Wikipedia article

Humour: A new crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:46, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2022

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

Administrator changes

Tamzin

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

Sn0wflake → VersedFenrir

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

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

The Signpost: 26 June 2022

News and notes: WMF inks new rules on government-ordered takedowns, blasts Russian feds' censor demands, spends big bucks

In the media: Editor given three-year sentence, big RfA makes news, Guy Standing takes it sitting down

Special report: "Wikipedia's independence" or "Wikimedia's pile of dosh"?

Discussion report: MoS rules on CCP name mulled, XRV axe plea nulled, BLPPROD drafting bid pulled

Opinion: Picture of the Day – how Adam plans to ru(i)n it

Featured content: Articles on Scots' clash, Yank's tux, Austrian's action flick deemed brilliant prose

Essay: RfA trend line haruspicy: fact or fancy?

Recent research: Wikipedia versus academia (again), tables' "immortality" probed

Serendipity: Was she really a Swiss lesbian automobile racer?

News from the WMF: Wikimedia Enterprise signs first deals

Traffic report: Top view counts for shows, movies, and celeb lawsuit that keeps on giving

Gallery: Celebration of summer, winter

Humour: Shortcuts, screwballers, Simon & Garfunkel

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:31, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #21

Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!

New project: Positive reinforcement

The Growth team started a new project: Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
We summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
Please let us know what you think of this project, in any language.

For mentors

We have worked on two new features, to inform them about the mentorship:
- In the Mentor module, we now provide more information about the public nature of the mentors/newcomer relationship and the fact that talk pages are public.
- We now allow newcomers to opt-in and opt-out of mentorship.

Scaling

"Add a link" available at more wikis ― Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure locally how this feature works.
"Add an image" available at more wikis ― Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: Greek Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. These communities will be able to configure locally how this feature works. [1]

Suggested edits

Selecting topics ― We have created an "AND" filter to the list of topics at Special:Homepage. This way, newcomers can decide to select very specific topics ("Transportation" AND "Asia") or to have a broader selection ("Transportation" OR "Asia"). At the moment this feature is tested at pilot wikis.
Changes for Add a link ― We have built several improvements that came from community discussion and from data analysis. They will be available soon at the wikis.
- Algorithm improvements ― The algorithm now avoids recommending links in sections that usually don't have links and for first names. Also, it now limits each article to only having three link suggestions by default (limited to the highest accuracy suggestions of all the available ones in the article).
- User experience improvements ― We added a confirmation dialog when a user exits out of suggestion mode prior to making changes. We also improved post-edit dialog experience and allow newcomers to browse through task suggestions from the post-edit dialog.
- Community configuration ― We allow communities to set a maximum number of links per article via Special:EditGrowthConfig.
- Future change for Add a link feature ― We will suggest underlinked articles in priority. [2]
Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge. We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further, please let us know, in any language.

Community configuration

Communities can configure how the features work, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.

Communities can set the maximum number of "add an image" suggested tasks a newcomer can complete daily. [3]
Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [4]

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022

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

Administrator changes

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

Drilnoth → AFigureOfBlue

Bureaucrat changes

Lee Vilenski

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:29, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 August 2022

From the editors: Rise of the machines, or something

News and notes: Information considered harmful

In the media: Censorship, medieval hoaxes, "pathetic supervillains", FB-WMF AI TL bid, dirty duchess deeds done dirt cheap

Op-Ed: The "recession" affair

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary (part 3)

Election guide: The chosen six: 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections

Community view: Youth culture and notability

Opinion: Criminals among us

Arbitration report: Winds of change blow for cyclone editors, deletion dustup draws toward denouement

Deletion report: This is Gonzo Country

Discussion report: Notability for train stations, notices for mobile editors, noticeboards for the rest of us

Traffic report: US TV, JP ex-PM, outer space, and politics of IN, US, UK top charts for July

Featured content: A little list with surprisingly few lists

Tips and tricks: Cleaning up awful citations with Citation bot

In focus: Wikidata insights from a handy little tool

On the bright side: Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war — three (more) stories

Essay: How to research an image

Recent research: A century of rulemaking on Wikipedia analyzed

Serendipity: Don't cite Wikipedia

Gallery: A backstage pass

From the archives: 2012 Russian Wikipedia shutdown as it happened

Humour: Why did the chicken cross the road?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:38, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022

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

Administrator changes

Valereee

Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • Capitalistroadster • Samsara

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

The Signpost: 31 August 2022

News and notes: Admins wanted on English Wikipedia, IP editors not wanted on Farsi Wiki, donations wanted everywhere

Special report: Wikimania 2022: no show, no show up?

In the media: Truth or consequences? A tough month for truth

Discussion report: Boarding the Trustees

News from Wiki Education: 18 years a Wikipedian: what it means to me

In focus: Thinking inside the box

Tips and tricks: The unexpected rabbit hole of typo fixing in citations...

Technology report: Vector (2022) deployment discussions happening now

Serendipity: Two photos of every library on earth

Featured content: Our man drills are safe for work, but our Labia is Fausta.

Recent research: The dollar value of "official" external links

Traffic report: What dreams (and heavily trafficked articles) may come

Essay: Delete the junk!

Gallery: A Fringe Affair (but not the show by Edward W. Feery that was on this year)

Humour: CommonsComix No. 1

From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 years ago

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:59, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022

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

Administrator changes

DanCherek • DatGuy • Femke • Z1720

Aldux • Graham Beards • Nyttend

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #22

Welcome to the twenty-second newsletter from the Growth team!

Newcomers tasks reach the 500,000 edits milestone — more data publicly available

As of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.

About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.

We have added some new data to Grafana. You can now check the number of edits and reverts by task types, or the number of questions asked to mentors. You can filter the data by wiki.

If you have any questions, or there is more data you want access to, please let us know.

Ongoing projects and explorations

We are continuing our work on our new project, Positive Reinforcement. User testing of initial Positive Reinforcement designs was just completed. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The outcome has been published on the Positive Reinforcement page. We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior community feedback to iterate and improve designs.

We are exploring the idea of a Copy Edit structured task. We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: LanguageTool and Hunspell. We will share more details here and on the associated Copy Edit page once the evaluation is complete.

Add an image was utilized at GLAM events in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. For an overview of what was learned from these events, read: #1Pic1Article I: how Latin American heritage experts added images to Wikipedia (in English).

Experiments analysis

Add a Link Experiment Analysis has been published. The most important points are:

Newcomers who get the Add a Link structured task are more likely to be activated (i.e. make a constructive first article edit).
They are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another constructive article edit on a different day).
The feature also increases edit volume (i.e. the number of constructive edits made across the first couple weeks), while at the same time improving edit quality (i.e. the likelihood that the newcomer's edits aren't reverted).

Newcomer task edit type analysis has been published.

Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were structured tasks wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a Newcomer task edit type analysis to see if this was indeed the case.
Results from analysis indicate that this likely isn’t a significant concern. More than 70% of users who start with the easy task "Add a link" also make another task type. Read the full analysis and methodology here.

News for mentors

A new system for the mentors list

The configuration of the mentors list will change over the next weeks. In the future, mentors will sign up, edit their mentor description and quit using Special:MentorDashboard. This new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.

At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected. With the new page, mentors will be able to edit only their own description, while administrators will be able to edit the entire mentors' list if needed.

The deployment will happen first at the pilot wikis, then at all wikis. Existing lists of mentors will be automatically converted, no action will be needed from the mentors. [5][6]

Mentors will be informed about the next steps soon, by a message posted on the talk page of existing Mentor lists.

Learn more about this new structured page on mediawiki.org.

A tip for mentors

Did you know that mentors can filter their mentees' changes at Special:MentorDashboard (and star the ones that require attention)? This feature helps to keep an eye on newcomers' edits, helping mentors to fix minor details, and encourage them if necessary.

And did you know that mentors have special filters to highlight their mentees' edits at Special:RecentChanges? Look for the following filters in RecentChanges: Your starred mentees, Your unstarred mentees.

Other improvements

Some improvements will be made to the mentor dashboard in the coming weeks:

While we now offer some options for mentors to take a break, the option to quit mentoring was not easy to find. This will be improved. [7]
Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [8]
Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [9]

Recent changes and fixed bugs

We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [10]
Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are Greek Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia. [11]
Add an image has been disabled for a few days due to technical issue. "Add an image" added a blank line instead of an image. This has been fixed. [12]
In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [13]

Have a question? A suggestion?

Please let us know! You can also read our FAQ page.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 September 2022

News and notes: Board vote results, bot's big GET, crat chat gives new mop, WMF seeks "sound logo" and "organizer lab"

In focus: NPP: Still heaven or hell for new users – and for the reviewers

In the media: A few complaints and mild disagreements

Special report: Decentralized Fundraising, Centralized Distribution

Discussion report: Much ado about Fox News

Interview: ScottishFinnishRadish's Request for Adminship

Opinion: Are we ever going to reach consensus?

Serendipity: Removing watermarks, copyright signs and cigarettes from photos

Recent research: How readers assess Wikipedia's trustworthiness, and how they could in the future

Traffic report: Kings and queens and VIPs

Featured content: Farm-fresh content

Gallery: A Festival Descends on the City: The Edinburgh Fringe, Pt. 2

CommonsComix: CommonsComix 2: Paulus Moreelse

From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 Years ago: September 2022

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:01, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2022

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

Administrator changes

ScottishFinnishRadish

Staxringold

Ahoerstemeier (deceased) • Ched

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678

CheckUser changes

GorillaWarfare

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

An administrator's account was recently compromised. Administrators are encouraged to check that their passwords are secure, and reminded that ArbCom reserves the right to not restore adminship in cases of poor account security. You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to provide an extra level of security.
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.

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

The Signpost: 31 October 2022

From the team: A new goose on the roost

News and notes: Wikipedians question Wikimedia fundraising ethics after "somewhat-viral" tweet

News from the WMF: Governance updates from, and for, the Wikimedia Endowment

In the media: Scribing, searching, soliciting, spying, and systemic bias

Disinformation report: From Russia with WikiLove

Recent research: Disinformatsiya: Much research, but what will actually help Wikipedia editors?

Interview: Isabelle Belato on their Request for Adminship

Featured content: Topics, lists, submarines and Gurl.com

Serendipity: We all make mistakes – don’t we?

Traffic report: Mama, they're in love with a criminal

From the archives: Paid advocacy, a lawsuit over spelling mistakes, deleting Jimbo's article, and the death of Toolserver

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:42, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022

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

Administrator changes

- Isabelle Belato
- Whpq

Interface administrator changes

CheckUser changes

Oversight changes

DGG

Guideline and policy news

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.

Arbitration

Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 13 November 2022 until 22 November 2022 to stand in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections.
The arbitration case request titled Athaenara has been resolved by motion.
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.

Miscellaneous

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

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:23, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 November 2022

News and notes: English Wikipedia editors: "We don't need no stinking banners"

In the media: "The most beautiful story on the Internet"

Interview: Lisa Seitz-Gruwell on WMF fundraising in the wake of big banner ad RfC

Opinion: Privacy on Wikipedia in the cyberpunk future

Disinformation report: Missed and Dissed

Op-Ed: Diminishing returns for article quality

Book review: Writing the Revolution

Technology report: Galactic dreams, encyclopedic reality

Essay: The Six Million FP Man

Tips and tricks: (Wiki)break stuff

Recent research: Study deems COVID-19 editors smart and cool, questions of clarity and utility for WMF's proposed "Knowledge Integrity Risk Observatory"

Featured content: A great month for featured articles

Obituary: A tribute to Michael Gäbler

Concept: The relevance of legal certainty to the English Wikipedia

Traffic report: Musical deaths, murders, Princess Di's nominative determinism, and sports

From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

CommonsComix: Joker's trick

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:41, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #23

Welcome to the twenty-third newsletter from the Growth team!

Highlights

Mentorship: We released the new structured mentor list to all wikis. This change makes mentorship easier to setup, manage and use.
Positive reinforcement: An improved impact module is available for testing.

Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test

The goal of the Growth team is to encourage newcomers to try editing for the first time, and encourage them to keep editing. We want to increase newcomers' motivation by showing them how impactful their edits are.

Newcomers have access to an impact module; you can find yours at Special:Impact. The revised impact module provides new editors with more context about their impact. It will display the number of edits, the number of thanks received, the last time they edited, the number of consecutive days they edited, and the number of views for the articles they edited.

This module will soon be available at our pilot wikis starting December 1. You can already test this new module at Beta Wikipedia. For safety reasons, do not use your regular account and password at Beta wiki. Create a new, specific account for this wiki, with a different password.

Structured tasks: improvements based on patroller feedback

After the deployment of Structured tasks, we received feedback from various communities regarding how patrollers of recent changes were feeling overwhelmed by an increase in edits to check, and how some edits were poor quality or of poor relevance.

We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:

Patroller fatigue:
- By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.

Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
- Add a Link
  - Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
  - The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
  - The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
- Add an Image
  - Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
  - Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
  - We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023. [14]

The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.

Recent changes

All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request. [15]
The quality score for "add a link" suggestions will change. We will suggest less links for each article, but they will be more accurate. We will first deploy it at our pilot wikis, and then to all other wikis where this feature is available. [16][17]
Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.

News for mentors

All Wikipedias can now setup and manage a mentorship program in an easier way.
- We changed the process to make it more reliable, easier to improve and easier to use.
- Wikipedias where mentorship hasn't been enabled yet can turn mentorship on following a new process. When done, mentors can sign-up by visiting Special:MentorDashboard.
- Wikipedias where the list of mentors already existed have been converted to the new system.
- A new special page — Special:ManageMentors — now displays the list of mentors. This page can be transcluded on any other page. There are also new processes to signup as a mentor or to quit mentorship, and we improved community mentorship management.
The Mentor dashboard's "Your mentees" module will have a new footer, called "Recent changes by your mentees". This footer will include a link to Recent changes, where mentors can see only edits made by their own mentees. [18]

Deployments

Add a link has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis. [19]

Improving this newsletter

We plan to have a more regular newsletter, every two months. We also want to know if the current format suits you! Let us know what you like, what you like less and your suggestions of improvements: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2022

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

Administrator changes

Interface administrator changes

TheresNoTime

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

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.

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:44, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 January 2023

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation ousts, bans quarter of Arabic Wikipedia admins

In the media: Odd bedfellows, Elon and Jimbo, reliable sources for divorces, and more

Interview: ComplexRational's RfA debrief

Technology report: Wikimedia Foundation's Abstract Wikipedia project "at substantial risk of failure"

Essay: Mobile editing

Arbitration report: Arbitration Committee Election 2022

Recent research: Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement in talk page disputes

Serendipity: Wikipedia about FIFA World Cup 2022: quick, factual and critical

Featured content: Would you like to swing on a star?

Traffic report: Football, football, football! Wikipedia Football Club!

CommonsComix: #4: The Course of WikiEmpire

From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:45, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023

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

Administrator changes

Stephen

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

CheckUser changes

Moneytrees

Oversighter changes

Guideline and policy news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

The Signpost: 16 January 2023

From the team: We heard zoomers liked fortnights: the biweekly Signpost rides again

Special report: Coverage of 2022 bans reveals editors serving long sentences in Saudi Arabia since 2020

News and notes: Revised Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines up for vote, WMF counsel departs, generative models under discussion

In the media: Court orders user data in libel case, Saudi Wikipedia in the crosshairs, Larry Sanger at it again

Technology report: View it! A new tool for image discovery

In focus: Busting into Grand Central

Serendipity: How I bought part of Wikipedia – for less than $100

Gallery: What is our responsibility when it comes to images?

Humour: New geologically speedy deletion criteria introduced

Opinion: Good old days, in which fifth-symbol-lacking lipograms roam'd our librarious litany

Featured content: Flip your lid

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2022

From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:13, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #24

Welcome to the twenty-fourth newsletter from the Growth team!

Newcomer experience projects

The Growth team partnered with other WMF teams to conduct several experiments around increasing account creation and new editor retention. Results from four of these experiments are now available:

Thank you pages & banners - Encourage donors to create accounts through thank you pages and banners.
Marketing experiment - Run ads on-wiki and off-wiki to see how this impacts account activation.
"Add an image" GLAM events - Host GLAM events that focus on using the "Add an image" tool.
Welcome emails - Experiment sending welcome emails to newly created accounts.

Newcomer tasks

Several communities suggested improving "add a link", by suggesting underlinked articles first. We released this change to Growth pilot wikis. We will review the data and collect feedback before considering releasing it to more wikis. [20]
The deployment of the "add a link" to all Wikipedias is still in progress. Suggested links use a prediction model, which has to be trained. The deployments will resume after we finish training all models. [21]

Mentorship

When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [22]
Workshop hosts asked us to have workshop attendees assigned to them. They can soon use a custom URL parameter. This way, workshop hosts will continue mentoring the event's attendees after the workshop. It will be available in February. [23]
Have you considered to help new editors on your wiki, by signing up to be a Mentor?
- Please visit Special:MentorDashboard to check on the conditions to be a mentor, and sign up.
- If your wiki does not have Mentorship enabled, consider setting it up. The Growth team can provide advice and assist as needed. Please ping Trizek (WMF) for assistance.

Other news

In Special:SpecialPages, Growth experiments now have their own section. [24]
This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.

Translations

Newsletter translation: We are looking for translators for this newsletter. If you are interested and have the needed English language proficiency to assist, then please add your name to this list. You will receive an invite on your talk page to translate the newsletter when it is ready.
Interface translation: You can also help by translating the interface, or reviewing translations to make them more inclusive. Interface translations are hosted at translatewiki.net.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.• Help with translations

14:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023

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

Administrator changes

Gimmetrow

CheckUser changes

Oversighter changes

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:38, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]