This is an archive of past discussions with User:R'n'B. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
There is an open request for comment on Meta regarding the creation a new user group for global edit filter management.
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.
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.
As you have already demonstrated your ability to edit the protected page Rus', can I persuade you to add {{R from ambiguous term}} to it? I don't see any need to reduce the world edit war level of protection, it strikes me as the sort of page which various breeds of nationalist might start to squabble over at any time, and it's unlikely ever to need editing again. Yrs, Narky Blert (talk) 19:48, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
I have a theory that disambiguation pages with large numbers of intentional incoming links from mainspace are likely candidates for dabconcept articles. Would you be able to generate a list of, for example, the top one-thousand "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects by number of incoming links from articles that are not themselves also disambiguation pages? bd2412T03:25, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Interesting - thanks for the tip. I see that a lot of the titles with many incoming links are through templates. I can weed those out, though. bd2412T01:02, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
I suspect that a lot of the links in that list are from given name or surname pages to something which could be split out from a DAB page. However, splitting out can attract attention from WP:TWODABS and WP:PTOPIC cops who have nothing more useful to do, and is therefore not without risk. I tend to do so only if a DAB page has collected a 'name' infobox and a bunch of citations (in which case the split is unlikely to fall foul of TWODABS anyway), or has grown overlarge, and a split is clear.
I only like see-also hatnotes if a reader might have landed on a page without typing in the correct qualifier. However, it's safer to correct such than to remove them – you're less likely to get reverted. If I think I might be reverted, I want to be in a position to hurl the relevant bits of WP:MOS at the perpetrator without wasting too much effort. Narky Blert (talk) 02:30, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
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-enwikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.
I have reverted a few edits by RussBot which resolved American to United States in the context of "Fred was/is an American", resolving to Americans instead, for example: Jim Pagliaroni. Americans is an article about the people rather than the country and other corrections I have seen resolve corresponding dab links like that.
You are welcome to change these links if you think it is appropriate. However, as a general matter, I interpret "Fred was an American physicist" to mean that Fred was a physicist who was active in the United States. Without more context, it is not clear whether Fred was a "national or citizen of" the United States. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:47, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Hello, R'n'B. 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 have any thoughts on improving Draft:Open source, please have at it. I have already made the move request, but discussion has not yet taken hold, so there is still time to smooth the rough edges. Cheers! bd2412T03:37, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
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".
Administrators and bureaucrats can no longer unblock themselves unless they placed the block initially. This change has been implemented globally. See also this ongoing village pump discussion (permalink).
To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.
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.
Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (Raymond Arritt) passed away on 14 November 2018. Boris joined Wikipedia as Raymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.
Hi. I just wanted to give you a heads-up that I moved the rotating red star to Commons, and since "File:Red star.gif" was already an occupied title there, I moved it to File:Rotating red star.gif. The wiki-fu that invokes the star should be changed to reflect that for future monthly contests. Cheers! bd2412T21:50, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
I noticed that you had placed Empty Category tags on categories in Category:London stations without latest usage statistics. I have tagged other categories in this category with CSD C1 tags so they will be deleted as empty categories. Do you expect these other categories to eventually have contents?
I am reluctant to remove the tags you placed if these categories will eventually no longer be empty. But if not, they should be tagged & deleted. What do you think? What led you to tag these categories? LizRead!Talk!03:47, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
Hello, Liz. I must admit that this was not a very sophisticated decision process. I didn't look into the content of the categories or puzzle out how they were populated; rather, I just assumed that since some of the categories in this group were populated, it seemed reasonable that the empty ones might be populated at some point in the future as well. Now that you've raised the issue and I've looked at the template(s) that are invoked to populate these categories, it does seem most unlikely that once one of these time-limited categories has been emptied it will ever be populated again. So, if you want to remove the tags I had placed, please feel free to do so. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:52, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the cordial and thoughtful response, R'n'B. I should admit that this is a current interest of mine as there are over 20,000 categories that are marked as empty categories and shouldn't be deleted when I don't think all of the situations warrant that conclusion. I think many are empty categories that will likely stay empty! So, this was the first time that I tested the waters to see if the tags could be removed. Thank you again, LizRead!Talk!01:10, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.
Members of the Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.
Technical news
Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.
Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
{{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.
Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
I see you have deleted the talk pages under the criteria G8 for HMS Wear and three other warships which I had performed round robin page moves on. Did I do something wrong in my moves or is this an error? There are SI pages under these names Lyndaship (talk) 08:13, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
The talk pages were redirects to themselves, with no substantive history (all previous versions were redirects, too). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:18, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent request for comment has amended the blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
A request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.
Technical news
A discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.
A new IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be identified.
Following discussions at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the restoration of adminship policy was reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.
Technical news
A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.
Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.
The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Please see meta:Community health initiative/User reporting system consultation 2019 to provide your input on this idea.
Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.
Recently, several Wikipedia admin accounts were compromised. The admin accounts were desysopped on an emergency basis. In the past, the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. The committee has updated its guidelines. Admins may now be required to undergo a fresh Request for Adminship (RfA) after losing control of their account.
What do I need to do?
Only to follow the instructions in this message.
Check that your password is unique (not reused across sites).
Check that your password is strong (not simple or guessable).
Enable Two-factor authentication (2FA), if you can, to create a second hurdle for attackers.
How can I find out more about two-factor authentication (2FA)?
Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)
ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.
Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.
We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.
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