Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
  • The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.

Technical news

  • Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: ((uw-pblock)).
  • When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [1]

Arbitration

  • Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.

Miscellaneous



Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:06, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
  • A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

Technical news

  • Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.

Miscellaneous



Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:20, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).

Guideline and policy news

  • There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).

Administrator changes

removed GnangarraKaisershatnerMalcolmxl5

CheckUser changes

readded Callanecc

Oversight changes

readded HJ Mitchell

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WP:1RR

Since the discussion was closed, just so I understand this right: I can perform several reverts within 24 hours of content that has been added or modified before my first revert during that 24 hour period. Right? BeŻet (talk) 20:47, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Only if your edits are consecutive and uninterrupted. Nihlus 20:49, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
But that doesn't make sense. So if between my edits someone makes a completely unrelated change somewhere completely different in the article, suddenly I violate the rule? Surely this is absurd? BeŻet (talk) 20:51, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure if the edits were right on top of one another an administrator would be able to see that. I don't see how this is absurd at all. Nihlus 21:03, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm saying that it seems to me that the rule should discourage from people performing several reverts during 24 hours, but it seems that if you do them quickly enough in succession, or in an article that isn't busy, you're good to go. Seems like a big flaw to me that should perhaps be discussed elsewhere. BeŻet (talk) 22:52, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If the same series of edits can be done in one edit, then what does it matter? Nihlus 23:03, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Because you are reverting two or more unrelated things done by two or more different editors; and you're suddenly not allowed to do that if someone manages to squeeze in a completely unrelated edit in. I will start a discussion about this somewhere, because this seems counter-intuitive to me. BeŻet (talk) 08:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have now started a conversation about this at the village pump, hopefully expressing my concerns clearly and what issues I see. Thank you for listening, and I hope you understand I am just concerned about the implications of the rule. BeŻet (talk) 08:57, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]