User talk:Xymmax/Archives 7

This is an archive of past discussions. 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.

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

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.

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

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F10 (useless non-media files) has been deprecated.
• Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
• A request for comment is open to discuss making the closing instructions for the requested moves process a guideline.

Technical news

• The results of the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey have been posted.

Arbitration

• Remedy 11 ("Request for Comment") of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been rescinded.
• The proposed decision for the Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case is expected 7 March 2023.
• A case related to the Holocaust in Poland is expected to be opened soon.

Miscellaneous

• The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
• Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
• The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.

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Hi Xymmax. I notice in your close at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/States of Ambazonia that you did close the AFD as "delete and redirect". However the article history has not been deleted per the closed ruling. Could you please delete the page and then redirect the page to Amazonia. Thanks.4meter4 (talk) 17:07, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the heads up. I checked the appropriate box on the script and then got distracted and failed to ensure it went through. I've taken care of it now. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 04:04, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I award you this goat for your excellent user page, which I just saw today when I was thinking (what brave person closed that AFD, lol).

CT55555(talk) 17:47, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for protecting the article. I appreciate you in taking efforts to restoring the last stable version but the current version you have restored is not correct. It even rollbacks many changes on which consensus was achieved on talk page. The current dispute was mainly related to changing popular historian to biographer.This is probably the best version to restore. [1] Razer(talk) 20:48, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I may well have not chosen the best version, but given back and forth over the last several weeks, I'm inclined to leave it until editors develop consensus on the talk page. Just put an edit request on the talk page when consensus is reached and I or another admin will act on it. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 20:53, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

The current version rollbacks the consensus related to the reviews of his works painstaking achieved on here and BLP Noticeboard . It also rollbacks copy edits done to the article by Baffle gab1978. If you really want the oldest stable edit before this particular dispute, It would be this - [2] . The first edit where Historian was changed to biographer was this - [3] Razer(talk) 21:03, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Fair points all, but I still feel that this should be a consensus discussion. I will open a section on the article talk page referring to this request. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 21:19, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

This dispute was regarding changing historian to biographer. But earlier after a considerable discussion in the two links I mentioned in the comment above. A consensus was achieved to change - he wrote a two-part biography of Savarkar that was held to be an uncritical work by most critics to he wrote a two-part biography of Savarkar that received praise for its thorough detail, but was also criticised for its uncritical treatment of Savarkar Razer(talk) 21:22, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Pinging @TrangaBellam @Morbidthoughts @Kautilya3 @Tristario. Who were involved in the consensus. Razer(talk) 21:29, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I understand. However, I still would ask that this discussion occur on the article talk page. When protection ends the way forward will be discussion there. I ask everyone to respond there rather than here. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 21:34, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I have to apologies for the constant push but you have to understand the frustration when countless wiki hours have been spend on acquring a consensus only to be undone by a misunderstanding. The discussion has already happened on the talk page. It started here - [4] and then continued on BLP noticeboard - [5] where the final version was agreed to by both the parties. The current content dispute has no relation to the one I have mentioned. Razer(talk) 21:44, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

• If Razer really cares about consensus then he won't be edit warring for weeks as a WP:1AM to whitewash this pro-Hindutva writer. Dympies (talk) 02:15, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

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

Guideline and policy news

• A community RfC is open to discuss whether reports primarily involving gender-related disputes or controversies should be referred to the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard.

Technical news

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis starting this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. (T178356)
• The rollback of Vector 2022 RfC has found no consensus to rollback to Vector legacy, but has found rough consensus to disable "limited width" mode by default.
• A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will now appear in the subtitle links shown on Special:Contributions. This was voted #17 in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023.

Arbitration

• The Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case has been closed.
• A case about World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been opened, with the first evidence phase closing 6 April 2023.

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	The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
	Thank you for your intervention & protection of the page relating to the edit war on 2020 United States presidential election in Pennsylvania. ~ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 14:50, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

new@Xymmax 37.111.201.142 (talk) 02:49, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid this remark makes no sense to me. If you intend to leave me a message please try again. Thanks. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 02:53, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I read, both on WP:RPP and in the protection log, that you ramped the protection up to full protection due to semi-protection not stopping the disruption, However, the two editors that were causing disruption were only autoconfirmed, and not extended-confirmed (and one reverted their own edit), so I don't see why you didn't just use extended-confirmed protection instead, as no extended-confirmed editors edited disruptively. Let me know if there was a different reason for you using full protection. interstatefive  03:52, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I did not limit my consideration solely to the couple of edits that followed semi-protection. As you probably saw from the discussion on the article talk page, this entire edit war started as a joke on Twitter, and the attention there drove people to the article. At least one of those editors was extended confirmed. When I made the original decision to semi-protect, my hope was that I would exclude most of the problematic edits and create a chilling effect on the other editors so that they would stop edit warring. When I realized that I needed to take more drastic action, I decided to fully protect since it appeared people were still coming from Twitter. I put it at 72 hours to let thing calm down over there, but I may drop it down in a few hours if things stay quiet. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 01:46, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

And now I've reduced it as requested. [6]

Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 20:31, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Great! interstatefive  00:17, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a deletion review of List of most-liked TikTok videos. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. benǝʇᴉɯ 07:54, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I will monitor the discussion and participate as needed. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 23:52, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi there, I saw your review of the AfD I proposed. I thought that the overall sourcing of Selina Tobaccowala's page was weak and the additional sources brought up in the AfD did not solve her page's issue of being her resume. I was wondering why the page was kept despite the poor sourcing? I want to have a better understanding of the AfD process but it's been difficult considering the responses from a majority of users there. Thanks in advance. 30Four (talk) 22:24, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that there was anything wrong with your nomination. The sourcing, as you brought out during the discussion, fell short of what we hope to see from classic reliable sources. This was acknowledged by at least a couple of the editors who commented. You can get a sense of whether a nomination is likely to succeed by looking how similar noms have fared in the past. My sense is that in this case, editors felt that the defects that you mentioned could be overcome with additional editing, and that the sourcing was enough qualify her for an article. In some cases the arguments of one side are so far out of line with policy that a closer is compelled to close the case against their wishes, even if they have consensus in the discussion. More commonly though, both sides have some argument grounded in policy, and the question is which policy applies. However, these discussions are more art than science. There tends to be one subset of editors who frequents a wide variety of deletion discussions on different topics, while other tend to appear in reference to the particular article nominated. The interaction between these groups produces the result, which can vary a bit depending on who shows up. There does tend to be a middle that commonly holds in most cases. Here, the assertion that the sourcing was enough for WP:GNG won consensus, so I kept the article. Of course consensus can change so if the article is no better in a few months, you may find it appropriate to nominate the article again. I hope this helps. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 03:15, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Metal Masters Tour. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. 2600:1700:9BF3:220:4403:E009:6080:BD67 (talk) 03:59, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll chime in if they have any questions. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 01:32, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

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

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Progress has started on the Page Triage improvement project. This is to address the concerns raised by the community in their 2022 WMF letter that requested improvements be made to the tool.

Arbitration

• The proposed decision in the World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case is expected 11 May 2023.

Miscellaneous

• The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input through May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023.

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Greetings. You had closed this discussion as delete, but as the page had been moved to List of FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship qualifications, XFDcloser did not delete the article at that location. I tagged the article for a G6 speedy, but this was reverted by the sole "keep" voter from the discussion, with the justification that this was "Not discussed as a list article". This doesn't strike me as a valid objection, but I'll leave that call to you. Thanks. --Finngall ^talk 17:28, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing it to my attention. There is a kernel of truth to the argument, so I'll just watch for now. But I do appreciate the heads up. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 23:29, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi Xymmax, could you clarify your NC close a bit more me please? I think @Seraphimblade's relisting comment when the !votes were 6k-3d implied that the keep rationales were severely deficient.

The strong consensus at the NSPORT RfC last year supported the requirement that all athlete articles meet GNG and contain a citation to a SIGCOV source. So even if a subject meets a sport-specific notability criterion, there can be no presumption of GNG sourcing from that criterion if the required SIGCOV has not been identified, and furthermore having that single SIGCOV source is also not by itself sufficient to prevent deletion if reasonable BEFORE efforts do not uncover additional SIGCOV (and given multiple people performed searches in Thai within Thai news archives; the Thai WP page was consulted; and a Thai editor was active in this discussion and was asked if he found any other coverage, I think the BEFORE was more than reasonable). This was held to be the case even for pre-Internet/non-Western subjects (otherwise we would have to allow articles on every single 19th century English cricketer...). The consensus in dozens (hundreds?) of previous athlete AfDs has thus been to discount !votes that rely only on sport-specific subcriteria without pointing to the requisite NSPORT SIGCOV sources (so medaling at the Asian Games is no longer a valid rationale by itself), which means six keep !votes should be dismissed entirely. 2/3 of the remaining keep !votes are hedged as "weak keep", and all 3 allege sourcing would exist if the subject was active nowadays/was Western/Thai sources were digitized. But GNG and NSPORT are not met with vague assurances that unidentified offline sources probably cover the subject, and they certainly aren't met if the coverage isn't even alleged to exist.

That gives us 4-6 delete !votes vs ~3 !votes that could generously be described as IAR, 2 of which are prefixed as "weak" and 1 of which asserts SIGCOV is met with two partial sentences from a routine announcement...

Would you be open to reconsidering the close, or consider reopening it? Thanks, JoelleJay (talk) 02:18, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello. Generally I agree with your assessment of how policy should apply to this article in the abstract. The issue comes in how to fairly weigh the other arguments. I guess I'm reading the keeps collectively as being different facets of an IAR-style argument that the article should be given a pass based on the subject's perceived stature - that is, "surely a person who did X has been written about extensively, if only we could read the language/access the hard copy materials" or what have you. This is absolutely not an endorsement of that view, but I did feel that there were enough editors effectively espousing it that I didn't see a rough consensus to delete. I'm inclined to keep this closed, it's been open for over a month and had 3 relists already, and at some point the discussion must end. I expect this will be renominated at some point, and I would not consider this close to carry any particular weight if it is. Cheers. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 03:17, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

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

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
• As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.

Technical news

• Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous

• Following a community referendum, the arbitration policy has been modified to remove the ability for users to appeal remedies to Jimbo Wales.

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

Administrator changes

Novem Linguae

• Deckiller
• Electionworld
• MBisanz
• Penwhale
• Raul654
• Roadrunner
• Viridae
• Yannismarou

Bureaucrat changes

MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

• Contributions to the English Wikipedia are now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) license instead of CC BY-SA 3.0. Contributions are still also released under the GFDL license.

Technical news

• Discussion is open regarding a proposed global policy regarding third-party resources. Third-party resources are computer resources that reside outside of Wikimedia production websites.

Arbitration

• Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.

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

Administrator changes

Firefangledfeathers

• AlisonW
• Amberrock
• Closedmouth
• Scottywong

Interface administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Technical news

• The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. This allows hiding edits made by automated tools. (T334338)
• Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool that allows easier blocking of plain domains (and their subdomains). This is more easily searchable and is faster for the software to use than the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. It does not support regex (for complex cases), URL path-matching, or the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. (T337431)

Arbitration

• The arbitration cases named Scottywong and AlisonW closed 10 July and 16 July respectively.
• The SmallCat dispute arbitration case is in the workshop phase.

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

Arbitration

• Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
• The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
• A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

• Special:Contributions now shows the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. (T324166)

Arbitration

• The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.

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

Administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

Tamzin

Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

• Ragesoss
• TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

• The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.
• There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. Feedback on this proposal is requested.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
• Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
• Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
• Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
• Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
• Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
• An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.

Miscellaneous

• The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!

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

Guideline and policy news

• Following a talk page discussion, the Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, the Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
• The Arbitration Committee has announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)

Arbitration

• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
• Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
• Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
• The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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