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

Administrator changes

Justlettersandnumbers • L235

Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter

Interface administrator changes

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

Oversight changes

Guerillero • NativeForeigner • Snowolf • Xeno

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the process for appointing interface administrators has been established. Currently only existing admins can request these rights, while a new RfC has begun on whether it should be available to non-admins.
• 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.

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.

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Hi Miniapolis:

I have a quick question for you. When you do a GOCE request do you add wikilinks to the citations where you can? Someone went through an article I edited recently and linked every possible newspaper etc... many two and three times. This is the first time I've run into this. I've tried to find this in the MOS without success. Do you think I should make a practice of adding links going forward?

Many thanks,

Twofingered Typist (talk) 15:29, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking on the Chinese Calendar article. I looked at it four or five times and just couldn't get my head around how to tackle it! I'll make a point of going through it when you're done.

Hi, TT. According to {{Cite news}} and other citation templates I've seen, the work parameter and its aliases "may be wikilinked if relevant" so it's a judgement call; I generally wikilink a work once, per WP:DL. I wouldn't make an issue of it, though, unless it was my GAN and FAC and someone was violating WP:OL. FWIW, I don't watchlist articles I've copyedited (past or present); WP can be aggravating enough as it is. Yeah, Chinese calendar is more like a backlog article than a request, but I'm used to those :-). BTW, when you do your drive totals please don't pipe links or add stuff in parentheses (like "partial count"). We use a .vbs script to generate the barnstar table, and it hangs up on extraneous stuff like that. Thanks for your help and all the best, Miniapolis 15:46, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this. And I'll stop noting partial counts. Twofingered Typist (talk) 18:00, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Template:User wikipedia/Arbitration clerk. Hhkohh (talk) 10:23, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for copy-editing the article! I've nominated it for GA, your edits will help a lot in getting it to GA status! --Michail (blah) 20:43, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My pleasure; I enjoy helping out with rail articles. Good luck at GA and all the best, Miniapolis 22:52, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Miniapolis; I've checked both the requester's edit history [here] and that of the "new" editor whose work interrupted you c/e [[here]. I noticed the same behaviour from both accounts; new, apparently wiki-experienced accounts appear, create a blank user page and make substantial changes to the article. It looks like the same person is operating them. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 18:55, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing the research, Baffle. Looks like socking, but I can't figure out why. It confirms my belief, however, that we should decline the request. Makes no sense to me why they shot themselves in the foot like that, but life is too short for this nonsense. I've started Hong Kong, which looks like a four-day job :-). Have fun and all the best, Miniapolis 19:49, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking it could be an undisclosed paid editor so I've opened an SPI request here. You're right, life's too short and we're not paid enough to worry about it. Besides, there's copy-editing to do... :) Cheers, Baffle gab1978 20:20, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work and yes, the article reads like a resume (which I tried to tone down). Sorry I don't have checkuser; two arbs asked me to apply last year :-). All the best, Miniapolis 20:43, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No fuss, no muss; guess we can decline. You have a good eye; let me know when you want to submit an RfA (although it's not for the squeamish; my request for CU was a mini-RfA, which I wasn't expecting :-)). All the best, Miniapolis 00:53, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Aww shucks, Mini, I thort you'd never ask! Nah, I think I'll stay out of the RfA arena bear-pit for now, I kinda like the quiet wiki-life and I don't really need the extra pay. ;-) It was rather obvious though, either that or I've been around here too long... :-D I'll pop a note on REQ talk for the archives and decline tomorrow if it's still there. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 04:17, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wise move. I'd thought of submitting an RfA in the vague future, when Razr Nation (then Hahc21) made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Braving RfA is similar to standing for political office: what you need to do to get the job has little to what you need to do to do the job. I didn't realize until I had the bit how much I could do without it :-). Thanks for taking care of that request. All the best, Miniapolis 14:27, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for copyediting the article. I highly appreciate your hard work. I made some minor changes. If you had time, please check them ([1]). Borsoka (talk) 02:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work. I hadn't copyedited one of your articles in a while, and it was a pleasure. I ended up sticking with "Gabriel"; there was a reference to "Báthory" far down the page, but I changed it to "Gabriel" for clarity and consistency (so a casual reader wouldn't think it was a different person). But then there's Gabriel Bethlen :-). Good luck with GA and all the best, Miniapolis 13:19, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for taking a look at the article and doing all of that copyedit work on it! Definitely appreciate your work on it. All I adjusted was a place where I thought hyphening the name of an office didn't seem right (here), but besides that, everything looked great to me. Cheers, Horserice (talk) 20:22, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You're very welcome, and no problem about the change; you're more familiar with the subject than I am :-). All the best, Miniapolis 21:52, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]