User talk:Spencer/Archive 29
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ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
Hello, Spencer. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 November 2016
- News and notes: Arbitration Committee elections commence
- Featured content: Featured mix
- Special report: Taking stock of the Good Article backlog
- Traffic report: President-elect Trump
WikiCup December newsletter: WikiCup 2017
On 1 January 2017, WikiCup 2017 (the 10th Annual WikiCup) will begin. This year we are trying something a little different – monetary prizes.
For the WC2017 the prizes will be as follows (amounts are based in US$ and will be awarded in the form of an online Amazon gift certificate):
- First place – $200
- Second & Third place – $50 each
- Category prizes – $25 per category (which will be limited to FA, FL, FP, GA, and DYK for 2017). Winning a category prize does not require making it to the final round.
Note: Monetary prizes are a one-year experiment for 2017 and may or may not be continued in the future. In order to be eligible to receive any of the prizes above, the competing Wikipedia account must have a valid/active email address.
After two years as a WikiCup judge, Figureskatingfan is stepping down. We thank her for her contributions as a WikiCup judge. We are pleased to announce that our newest judge is two-time WikiCup champion Cwmhiraeth.
The judges for the 2017 WikiCup are Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email).
Signups are open now and will remain open until 5 February 2017. You can sign up here.
If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:02, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 December 2016
- Year in review: Looking back on 2016
- News and notes: Strategic planning update; English ArbCom election results
- Special report: German ArbCom implodes
- Featured content: The Christmas edition
- Technology report: Labs improvements impact 2016 Tool Labs survey results
- Traffic report: Post-election traffic blues
- Recent research: One study and several abstracts
Happy New Year, Spencer!
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Fuochi_d%27artificio.gif/212px-Fuochi_d%27artificio.gif)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Happy_new_year_01.svg/177px-Happy_new_year_01.svg.png)
Spencer,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Donner60 (talk) 06:03, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.
Share your experience and feedback as a Wikimedian in this global survey
Hello! The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey. We want to know how well we are supporting your work on and off wiki, and how we can change or improve things in the future.[1] The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation. You have been randomly selected to take this survey as we would like to hear from your Wikimedia community. To say thank you for your time, we are giving away 20 Wikimedia T-shirts to randomly selected people who take the survey.[2] The survey is available in various languages and will take between 20 and 40 minutes.
You can find more information about this project. This survey is hosted by a third-party service and governed by this privacy statement. Please visit our frequently asked questions page to find more information about this survey. If you need additional help, or if you wish to opt-out of future communications about this survey, send an email to surveys@wikimedia.org.
- ^ This survey is primarily meant to get feedback on the Wikimedia Foundation's current work, not long-term strategy.
- ^ Legal stuff: No purchase necessary. Must be the age of majority to participate. Sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation located at 149 New Montgomery, San Francisco, CA, USA, 94105. Ends January 31, 2017. Void where prohibited. Click here for contest rules.
Thank you! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
I saw that you had refused a G6 deletion of Dalreena poonam gill. I'm not sure why we need to keep this redirect. There are no incoming links and the capitalisation is incorrect anyway. Most pages of this type are usually moved without leaving a redirect. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 18:05, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
- Eh, it's not necessarily needing to keep the redirect, rather imo not needing to delete it either. It's pretty neutral either way in this situation imo, and I lean toward not deleting them, keeping in mind WP:R#SUPPRESS "we usually neither suppress nor delete redirects." If you feel strongly toward deletion, please go ahead and re-add the g7 tag and I won't remove it. Best, SpencerT♦C 18:32, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 17 January 2017
- From the editor: Next steps for the Signpost
- News and notes: Surge in RFA promotions—a sign of lasting change?
- In the media: Year-end roundups, Wikipedia's 16th birthday, and more
- Featured content: One year ends, and another begins
- Arbitration report: Concluding 2016 and covering 2017's first two cases
- Traffic report: Out with the old, in with the new
- Technology report: Tech present, past, and future
On this day, 10 years ago...
Administrators' newsletter - February 2017
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.
NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67
Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13
- A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
- Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
- Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.
- When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
- Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
- The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.
- The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.
- JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.
13:37, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 6 February 2017
- Arbitration report: WMF Legal and ArbCom weigh in on tension between disclosure requirements and user privacy
- WikiProject report: For the birds!
- Technology report: Better PDFs, backup plans, and birthday wishes
- Traffic report: Cool It Now
- Featured content: Three weeks dominated by articles
Your feedback matters: Final reminder to take the global Wikimedia survey
Hello! This is a final reminder that the Wikimedia Foundation survey will close on 28 February, 2017 (23:59 UTC). The survey is available in various languages and will take between 20 and 40 minutes. Take the survey now.
If you already took the survey - thank you! We won't bother you again.
About this survey: You can find more information about this project here or you can read the frequently asked questions. This survey is hosted by a third-party service and governed by this privacy statement. If you need additional help, or if you wish to opt-out of future communications about this survey, send an email through EmailUser function to User:EGalvez (WMF) or surveys@wikimedia.org. About the Wikimedia Foundation: The Wikimedia Foundation supports you by working on the software and technology to keep the sites fast, secure, and accessible, as well as supports Wikimedia programs and initiatives to expand access and support free knowledge globally. Thank you! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 08:25, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 27 February 2017
- From the editors: Results from our poll on subscription and delivery, and a new RSS feed
- Recent research: Special issue: Wikipedia in education
- Technology report: Responsive content on desktop; Offline content in Android app
- In the media: The Daily Mail does not run Wikipedia
- Gallery: A Met montage
- Special report: Peer review – a history and call for reviewers
- Op-ed: Wikipedia has cancer
- Featured content: The dominance of articles continues
- Traffic report: Love, football, and politics
Administrators' newsletter – March 2017
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2017).
Amortias • Deckiller • BU Rob13
Ronnotel • Islander • Chamal N • Isomorphic • Keeper76 • Lord Voldemort • Shereth • Bdesham • Pjacobi
- A recent RfC has redefined how articles on schools are evaluated at AfD. Specifically, secondary schools are not presumed to be notable simply because they exist.
- AfDs that receive little participation should now be closed like an expired proposed deletion, following a deletion process RfC.
- Defender, HakanIST, Matiia and Sjoerddebruin are our newest stewards, following the 2017 steward elections.
- The 2017 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Góngora, Krd, Lankiveil, Richwales and Vogone. They will serve for approximately 1 year.
- A recent query shows that only 16% of administrators on the English Wikipedia have enabled two-factor authentication. If you haven't already enabled it please consider doing so.
- Cookie blocks should be deployed to the English Wikipedia soon. This will extend the current autoblock system by setting a cookie for each block, which will then autoblock the user after they switch accounts under a new IP.
- A bot will now automatically place a protection template on protected pages when admins forget to do so.
March 2017 WikiCup newsletter
And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. It would have been 5 points, but when a late entrant was permitted to join the contest in February, a promise was made that his inclusion would not result in the exclusion of any other competitor. To achieve this, the six entrants that had the lowest positive score of 4 points have been added to the 64 people who otherwise would have qualified. As a result, some of the groups have nine contestants rather than eight. Our top four scorers in round 1 were:
Cas Liber, last year's winner, led the field with two featured articles on birds and a total score of 674.
Iry-Hor, a WikiCup newcomer, came next with a featured article, a good article and a tally of 282 bonus points for a score of 517. All these points came from the article Nyuserre Ini, an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh,
1989, another WikiCup newcomer, was in joint third place at 240. 1989 has claimed points for two featured lists and one good article relating to anime and comedy series, all of which were awarded bonus points.
Peacemaker67 shared third place with five good articles and thirteen good article reviews, mostly on naval vessels. He is also new to the competition.
The largest number of DYKs have been submitted by Vivvt and The C of E, who each claimed for seven, and MBlaze Lightning achieved eight articles at ITN. Carbrera and Peacemaker67 each claimed for five GAs and Krishna Chaitanya Velaga was well out in front for GARs, having reviewed 32. No featured pictures, featured topics or good topics yet, but we have achieved three featured articles and a splendid total of fifty good articles.
So, on to the second round. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 13:52, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – April 2017
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2017).
TheDJ
Xnuala • CJ • Oldelpaso • Berean Hunter • Jimbo Wales • Andrew c • Karanacs • Modemac • Scott
- Following a discussion on the backlog of unpatrolled files, consensus was found to create a new user right for autopatrolling file uploads. Implementation progress can be tracked on Phabricator.
- The BLPPROD grandfather clause, which stated that unreferenced biographies of living persons were only eligible for proposed deletion if they were created after March 18, 2010, has been removed following an RfC.
- An RfC has closed with consensus to allow proposed deletion of files. The implementation process is ongoing.
- After an unsuccessful proposal to automatically grant IP block exemption, consensus was found to relax the criteria for granting the user right from needing it to wanting it.
- After a recent RfC, moved pages will soon be featured in a queue similar to Special:NewPagesFeed and require patrolling. Moves by administrators, page movers, and autopatrolled editors will be automatically marked as patrolled.
- Cookie blocks have been deployed. This extends the current autoblock system by setting a cookie for each block, which will then autoblock the user if they switch accounts, even under a new IP.
Administrators' newsletter – May 2017
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2017).
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/ANEWSicon.png/150px-ANEWSicon.png)
Karanacs • Berean Hunter • GoldenRing • Dlohcierekim
Gdr • Tyrenius • JYolkowski • Longhair • Master Thief Garrett • Aaron Brenneman • Laser brain • JzG • Dragons flight
- An RfC has clarified that user categories should be emptied upon deletion, but redlinked user categories should not be removed if re-added by the user.
- Discussions are ongoing regarding proposed changes to the COI policy. Changes so far have included clarification that adding a link on a Wikipedia forum to a job posting is not a violation of the harassment policy.
- You can now see a list of all autoblocks at Special:AutoblockList.
- There is a new tool for adding archives to dead links. Administrators are able to restrict other user's ability to use the tool, and have additional permissions when changing URL and domain data.
- Administrators, bureaucrats and stewards can now set an expiry date when granting user rights. (discuss, permalink)
- Following an RfC, the editing restrictions page is now split into a list of active restrictions and an archive of those that are old or on inactive accounts. Make sure to check both pages if searching for a restriction.
Administrators' newsletter – June 2017
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/ANEWSicon.png/150px-ANEWSicon.png)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2017).
Doug Bell • Dennis Brown • Clpo13 • ONUnicorn
ThaddeusB • Yandman • Bjarki S • OldakQuill • Shyam • Jondel • Worm That Turned
- An RfC proposing an off-wiki LTA database has been closed. The proposal was broadly supported, with further discussion required regarding what to do with the existing LTA database and defining access requirements. Such a tool/database formed part of the Community health initiative's successful grant proposal.
- Some clarifications have been made to the community banning and unblocking policies that effectively sync them with current practice. Specifically, the community has reached a consensus that when blocking a user at WP:AN or WP:ANI, it is considered a "community sanction", and administrators cannot unblock unilaterally if the user has not successfully appealed the sanction to the community.
- An RfC regarding the bot policy has closed with changes to the section describing restrictions on cosmetic changes.
- Users will soon be able to blacklist specific users from sending them notifications.
- Following the 2017 elections, the new members of the Board of Trustees include Raystorm, Pundit and Doc James. They will serve three-year terms.
The Signpost: 9 June 2017
- From the editors: Signpost status: On reserve power, help wanted!
- News and notes: Global Elections
- Arbitration report: Cases closed in the Pacific and with Magioladitis
- Featured content: Three months in the land of the featured
- In the media: Did Wikipedia just assume Garfield's gender?
- Recent research: Wikipedia bot wars capture the imagination of the popular press
- Technology report: Tech news catch-up
- Traffic report: Film on Top: Sampling the weekly top 10
The Signpost: 23 June 2017
- News and notes: Departments reorganized at Wikimedia Foundation, and a month without new RfAs (so far)
- In the media: Kalanick's nipples; Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill
- Op-ed: Facto Post: a fresh take
- Featured content: Will there ever be a break? The slew of featured content continues
- Traffic report: Wonder Woman beats Batman, The Mummy, Darth Vader and the Earth
- Technology report: Improved search, and WMF data scientist tells all
WikiCup 2017 July newsletter
The third round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 288 points being required to qualify for round 4. It was a hotly competitive round with all but four of the contestants exceeding the 106 points that was necessary to proceed to round 4 last year. Coemgenus and Freikorp tied on 288, and both have been allowed to proceed, so round 4 now has one pool of eight competitors and one of nine.
Round 3 saw the achievement of a 26-topic Featured topic by MPJ-DK as well as 5 featured lists and 13 featured articles. PanagiotisZois and SounderBruce achieved their first ever featured articles. Carbrera led the GA score with 10, Tachs achieved 17 DYKs and MBlaze Lightning 10 In the news items. There were 167 DYKs, 93 GARs and 82 GAs overall, this last figure being higher than the number of GAs in round 2, when twice as many people were taking part. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.
As we start round 4, we say goodbye to the fifteen or so competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).
If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 05:38, 30 June 2017 (UTC)