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Administrators' newsletter – January 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2017).

Administrator changes

added Muboshgu
readded Anetode • Laser brain • Worm That Turned
removed None

Bureaucrat changes

readded Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

  • A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the administrator policy should be amended to require disclosure of paid editing activity at WP:RFA and to prohibit the use of administrative tools as part of paid editing activity, with certain exceptions.

Technical news

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2018).

Administrator changes

added None
removed Blurpeace • Dana boomer • Deltabeignet • Denelson83 • Grandiose • Salvidrim! • Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC has closed with a consensus that candidates at WP:RFA must disclose whether they have ever edited for pay and that administrators may never use administrative tools as part of any paid editing activity, except when they are acting as a Wikipedian-in-Residence or when the payment is made by the Wikimedia Foundation or an affiliate of the WMF.
  • Editors responding to threats of harm can now contact the Wikimedia Foundation's emergency address by using Special:EmailUser/Emergency. If you don't have email enabled on Wikipedia, directly contacting the emergency address using your own email client remains an option.

Technical news

  • A tag will now be automatically applied to edits that blank a page, turn a page into a redirect, remove/replace almost all content in a page, undo an edit, or rollback an edit. These edits were previously denoted solely by automatic edit summaries.

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:51, 4 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Meanings of asteroid names/navigator

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Template:Meanings of asteroid names/navigator has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Frietjes (talk) 18:22, 12 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2018).

Administrator changes

added Lourdes†
removed AngelOfSadness • Bhadani • Chris 73 • Coren • Friday • Midom • Mike V
† Lourdes has requested that her admin rights be temporarily removed, pending her return from travel.

Guideline and policy news

  • The autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) is scheduled to end on 14 March 2018. The results of the research collected can be read on Meta Wiki.
  • Community ban discussions must now stay open for at least 24 hours prior to being closed.
  • A change to the administrator inactivity policy has been proposed. Under the proposal, if an administrator has not used their admin tools for a period of five years and is subsequently desysopped for inactivity, the administrator would have to file a new RfA in order to regain the tools.
  • A change to the banning policy has been proposed which would specify conditions under which a repeat sockmaster may be considered de facto banned, reducing the need to start a community ban discussion for these users.

Technical news

  • CheckUsers are now able to view private data such as IP addresses from the edit filter log, e.g. when the filter prevents a user from creating an account. Previously, this information was unavailable to CheckUsers because access to it could not be logged.
  • The edit filter has a new feature contains_all that edit filter managers may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.

Miscellaneous

Obituaries

  • Bhadani (Gangadhar Bhadani) passed away on 8 February 2018. Bhadani joined Wikipedia in March 2005 and became an administrator in September 2005. While he was active, Bhadani was regarded as one of the most prolific Wikipedians from India.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:00, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Violation of WP:COMPUNITS

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Hi. I reverted your changes to Unit Control Block and List of floppy disk formats because your edits violate WP:COMPUNITS, a part of MOS. COMPUNITS specifies that The IEC prefixes kibi- (symbol Ki), mebi- (Mi), gibi- (Gi), etc., are generally not to be used except [...]. None of the exceptions apply to the uses in those articles. From your edit history I then found that you have made similar changes to about a dozen other articles. Please revert them. Thanks. Jeh (talk) 21:02, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. Personally I prefer the IEC prefixes and I make a point of using them in my professional work. But their routine use in WP has been the subject of a couple of very prolonged arguments. There was a brief period where their use was supported, but the opponents made a point that the vast majority of our sources do not use them, and we must follow our sources. This point won the day and there has been no significant change in the situation, so I don't think opening up the discussion again would be fruitful. Thank you for your understanding. Jeh (talk) 21:06, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I was just about to leave a similar message. I just reverted the Commodore 64 edit, even though I personally prefer IEC prefixes. byteflush Talk 21:24, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'll look into WP:COMPUNITS and see how one is supposed to lift the ambiguities that this (silly) policy causes. Probably some parenthetical additions or a standard disclaimer near the top (or in the footnotes). That'll teach me to try to improve things. Urhixidur (talk) 22:01, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There is nothing "silly" about it, it's quite well thought out. Thanks for following it. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:30, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There, done. We need a {{convert}}-like template to handle these decimal-to-powers-of-1024 conversions.
And it is silly to preserve an ambiguous, error-inducing, obsolete tradition when a clear, unambiguous solution exists. Not to mention the attack on SI that this perversion of the prefixes represents. Urhixidur (talk) 22:33, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Preaching to the choir, you are. I believe the past discussions can be found in the MOSNUM talk page archives. Jeh (talk) 23:16, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2018).

Administrator changes

added 331dot • Cordless Larry • ClueBot NG
removed Gogo Dodo • Pb30 • Sebastiankessel • Seicer • SoLando

Guideline and policy news

  • Administrators who have been desysopped due to inactivity are now required to have performed at least one (logged) administrative action in the past 5 years in order to qualify for a resysop without going through a new RfA.
  • Editors who have been found to have engaged in sockpuppetry on at least two occasions after an initial indefinite block, for whatever reason, are now automatically considered banned by the community without the need to start a ban discussion.
  • The notability guideline for organizations and companies has been substantially rewritten following the closure of this request for comment. Among the changes, the guideline more clearly defines the sourcing requirements needed for organizations and companies to be considered notable.
  • The six-month autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) ended on 14 March 2018. The post-trial research report has been published. A request for comment is now underway to determine whether the restrictions from ACTRIAL should be implemented permanently.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee is considering a change to the discretionary sanctions procedures which would require an editor to appeal a sanction to the community at WP:AE or WP:AN prior to appealing directly to the Arbitration Committee at WP:ARCA.

Miscellaneous

  • A discussion has closed which concluded that administrators are not required to enable email, though many editors suggested doing so as a matter of best practice.
  • The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team has released the Interaction Timeline. This shows a chronologic history for two users on pages where they have both made edits, which may be helpful in identifying sockpuppetry and investigating editing disputes.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:23, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Help request for mapping section titles

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Hi. We (the Research Team at Wikimedia Foundation) are building an algorithm that will align Wikipedia article sections across languages. For improving this algorithm we need the help of multilingual Wikipedia editors to provide true statements to the algorithm. You are contacted because based on your Babel template and/or content translation tool usage you know at least two of the following languages: ar (Arabic), fr (French), ja (Japanese), en (English), es (Spanish), ru (Russian).

(Note: by clicking the links in the following paragraph, you will be taken to Google spreadsheet.) If you'd like to help us with translating a subset of the section titles on or before 2018-05-01, please read and follow the instructions. If you see instructions in another language, please scroll down to find your preferred language. If you have questions about this message, you can contact us via Diego. Thank you! :) --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:01, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Help request for mapping section titles

[edit]

Hi. We (the Research Team at Wikimedia Foundation) are building an algorithm that will align Wikipedia article sections across languages. For improving this algorithm we need the help of multilingual Wikipedia editors to provide true statements to the algorithm. You are contacted because based on your Babel template and/or content translation tool usage you know at least two of the following languages: ar (Arabic), fr (French), ja (Japanese), en (English), es (Spanish), ru (Russian).

(Note: by clicking the links in the following paragraph, you will be taken to Google spreadsheet.) If you'd like to help us with translating a subset of the section titles on or before 2018-05-15, please read and follow the instructions. If you see instructions in another language, please scroll down to find your preferred language. If you have questions about this message, you can contact us via Diego. Thank you! :) --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:58, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2018).

Administrator changes

added None
removed Chochopk • Coffee • Gryffindor • Jimp • Knowledge Seeker • Lankiveil • Peridon • Rjd0060

Guideline and policy news

  • The ability to create articles directly in mainspace is now indefinitely restricted to autoconfirmed users.
  • A proposal is being discussed which would create a new "event coordinator" right that would allow users to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit.

Technical news

  • AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new equals_to_any function can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability to see which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access to Logstash.
  • When blocking anonymous users, a cookie will be applied that reloads the block if the user changes their IP. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. This currently only occurs when hard-blocking accounts.
  • The block notice shown on mobile will soon be more informative and point users to a help page on how to request an unblock, just as it currently does on desktop.
  • There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.

Arbitration

Obituaries

  • Lankiveil (Craig Franklin) passed away in mid-April. Lankiveil joined Wikipedia on 12 August 2004 and became an administrator on 31 August 2008. During his time with the Wikimedia community, Lankiveil served as an oversighter for the English Wikipedia and as president of Wikimedia Australia.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2018).

Administrator changes

added None
removed Al Ameer son • AliveFreeHappy • Cenarium • Lupo • MichaelBillington

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in June. This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
  • The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team will build granular types of blocks in 2018 (e.g. a block from uploading or editing specific pages, categories, or namespaces, as opposed to a full-site block). Feedback on the concept may be left at the talk page.
  • There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups.
  • It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked.

Arbitration

  • A recent technical issue with the Arbitration Committee's spam filter inadvertently caused all messages sent to the committee through Wikipedia (i.e. Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee) to be discarded. If you attempted to send an email to the Arbitration Committee via Wikipedia between May 16 and May 31, your message was not received and you are encouraged to resend it. Messages sent outside of these dates or directly to the Arbitration Committee email address were not affected by this issue.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:00, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2018).

Administrator changes

added Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor
readded Gogo Dodo
removed Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD

Bureaucrat changes

removed Andrevan • EVula

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
  • A request for comment closed with a consensus that the {{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.

Technical news

  • Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.
  • Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon () in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates.
  • IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.

Miscellaneous

  • Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:22, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2018).

Administrator changes

added Sro23
readded KaisaL • Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

  • After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
  • Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.

Technical news

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:31, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2018).

Administrator changes

added None
removed Asterion • Crisco 1492 • KF • Kudpung • Liz • Randykitty • Spartaz
renamed Optimist on the run → Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

added Amorymeltzer • Mr. Stradivarius • MusikAnimal • MSGJ • TheDJ • Xaosflux

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.

Technical news

  • Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
  • Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title.
  • Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age.

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:23, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2018).

Administrator changes

added Justlettersandnumbers • L235
removed Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter

Interface administrator changes

added Cyberpower678 • Deryck Chan • Oshwah • Pharos • Ragesoss • Ritchie333

Oversight changes

removed Guerillero • NativeForeigner • Snowolf • Xeno

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
  • The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
  • Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
  • The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
  • Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
  • Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:13, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2018).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
  • A user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
  • The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.

Arbitration

  • Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
  • The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-en@wikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:19, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:TOC001.5a

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Template:TOC001.5a has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  01:53, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:TOC001.5b

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Template:TOC001.5b has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  01:53, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:TOC1001

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Template:TOC1001 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:33, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

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Hello, Urhixidur. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2018

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2018).

Administrator changes

readded Al Ameer son • Randykitty • Spartaz
removed Boson • Daniel J. Leivick • Efe • Esanchez7587 • Fred Bauder • Garzo • Martijn Hoekstra • Orangemike

Interface administrator changes

removedDeryck Chan

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, the Mediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
  • A request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
  • A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
  • A proposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page to interface administrators in order to mitigate the impact of compromised accounts.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
  • Wikipedia policy requires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.

Obituaries

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:37, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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