User talk:ST47/Archive29

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

Administrator changes

Pppery

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

Oversighter changes

Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

• Courcelles
• GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
• Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
• The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.

Miscellaneous

• Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

I am being blocked from editing the articles of Nick Land and Lyotard's libidinal economy... The book by Lyotard contains explicit pedophilia and interestingly there hasn't been much negative public judgement on the book. I am being blocked no reason, something about an IP address, but I know that the block is random. Anthonycrc (talk) 17:13, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

• Asilvering
• Significa liberdade

• Good Olfactory
• Hesperian
• I JethroBT
• TommyBoy
• Woody

CheckUser changes

• Barkeep49
• Izno

• Doug Weller
• Spicy

Guideline and policy news

• Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
• Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
• An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
• Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

Miscellaneous

• If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of Wikipedians to better understand what draws administrators to contribute to Wikipedia, and what affects administrator retention. We will use this research to improve experiences for Wikipedians, and address common problems and needs. We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous survey.

You do not have to be an Administrator to participate.

The survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement .

Please find our contact on the project Meta page if you have any questions or concerns.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC) [reply]

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

Administrator changes

• Crisco 1492

• Babajobu
• Daniel
• Elf
• Jayron32
• Thue
• Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

Maxim

Oversighter changes

Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, the discussion-only period proposal that went for a trial to refine the requests for adminship (RfA) process has been discontinued.
• Following a request for comment, Administrator recall is adopted as a policy.

Technical news

• Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068

Arbitration

• RoySmith, Barkeep49 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2024 Arbitration Committee Elections. ThadeusOfNazereth and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate from 3 November 2024 until 12 November 2024 to stand in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The Arbitration Committee is seeking volunteers for roles such as clerks, access to the COI queue, checkuser, and oversight.

Miscellaneous

• An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 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!

Hello,

I recently invited you to take a survey about administration on Wikipedia. If you haven’t yet had a chance, there is still time to participate– we’d truly appreciate your feedback. The survey is anonymous and should take about 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement.

Take the survey here.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 13 November 2024 (UTC) [reply]

Hello! Voting in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 2 December 2024. All eligible users are allowed 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 2024 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:13, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

• Ahecht
• DoubleGrazing
• Dr vulpes
• FOARP
• Peaceray
• Queen of Hearts
• Rsjaffe
• SD0001
• SilverLocust
• Sohom Datta
• ThadeusOfNazereth
• Voorts

• Ajpolino
• Fathoms Below
• Pppery
• Tamzin
• Worm That Turned

• Aervanath
• Christopher Sundita
• Dank
• Dennis Brown
• Dragons flight
• Fastily
• Graham87
• JaGa
• Kbh3rd
• Marine 69-71
• Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington
• Yamamoto Ichiro

Interface administrator changes

• SD0001
• Sohom Datta

Pppery

CheckUser changes

• Spicy
• TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RFC, the policy on restoration of adminship has been updated. All former administrators may now only regain the tools following a request at the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard within 5 years of their most recent admin action. Previously this applied only to administrators deysopped for inactivity.
• Following a request for comment, a new speedy deletion criterion, T5, has been enacted. This applies to template subpages that are no longer used.

Technical news

• Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10, 2024.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Yasuke (formerly titled Backlash to diversity and inclusion) has been closed.
• An arbitration case titled Palestine-Israel articles 5 has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 14 December.

Hi ST47, could you please unblock the IP adresses 81.209.128.120/29? They are blocked without reason, which hinders us from creating an account in order to update several pages. Thank you very much! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:599:727:F5D6:7917:A989:A904:CE6 (talk • contribs)

That IP address is not blocked "without reason". It's possible the reason is not valid (or no longer valid) but you haven't made that case. Additionally, you could create an account from your current IP address. --Yamla (talk) 15:08, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Precious

Six years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:29, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Heya! I notice from [1] that this range is marked Colocation webhost, dedipath. But it looks like DediPath shut down operations a year ago. Have the ranges in question been rechecked recently? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 23:51, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

Sennecaster

• Daniel
• Hog Farm

• BozMo
• Ferret
• John M Wolfson
• MaxSem
• Panyd
• Tide rolls
• Titoxd

CheckUser changes

• Daniel
• Elli
• Liz
• ScottishFinnishRadish
• Theleekycauldron

Worm That Turned

Ferret

Oversight changes

• Daniel
• Elli
• Liz
• ScottishFinnishRadish
• Theleekycauldron

Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RFC, Wikipedia:Notability (species) was adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether admins should be advised to warn users rather than issue no-warning blocks to those who have posted promotional content outside of article space.

Technical news

• The Nuke feature also now provides links to the userpage of the user whose pages were deleted, and to the pages which were not selected for deletion, after page deletions are queued. This enables easier follow-up admin-actions.

Arbitration

• Following the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been elected to the Arbitration Committee: CaptainEek, Daniel, Elli, KrakatoaKatie, Liz, Primefac, ScottishFinnishRadish, Theleekycauldron, Worm That Turned.

Miscellaneous

• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2025 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Sign up here to participate!

you have blocked my IP from editing on English Wikipedia because of an open proxy, however I have acquired global IP block exempt status, but your block overwrites it, but only sometimes so I would like a local exception as well so I can edit at all times PharaohCrab (talk) 18:37, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2025).

Administrator changes

• Arcticocean
• Wugapodes

Euryalus

CheckUser changes

• Firefly
• L235

Oversighter changes

• Firefly
• Guerillero
• L235
• Moneytrees

Technical news

• Administrators can now nuke pages created by a user or IP address from the last 90 days, up from the initial 30 days. T380846
• A 'Recreated' tag will now be added to pages that were created with the same title as a page which was previously deleted and it can be used as a filter in Special:RecentChanges and Special:NewPages. T56145

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Palestine-Israel articles 5 has been closed.

Hi! I'm trying to do some research involving enwiki block logs. Proxy blocks were, of course, a large percentage of overall blocks, and then they suddenly dropped off last spring. I hear from Izno that this was because your bot, which had been doing a lot of these blocks, turned off. Total blocks went from about a half million per month to about 11,000.

I'm just trying to get a handle on the story behind the bot -- why you created it, how it worked (in basic terms), where the lists of proxies came from, where I might find some relevant discussions about it (like about preemptively blocking proxy IPs), and why you shut it down.

Also a courtesy ping to Slakr who looks to have run a similar bot until 2020.

Much appreciated! — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:52, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Rhododendrites: So while I can't speak for ST47's bot, mine went offline when the server it was on was abruptly yoinked by the dedicated-hosting provider as part of decommissioning a datacenter. Unfortunately I was given little warning and sorta just postponed setting it all back up due to other stresses (and depression) happening in life. When nobody burned down my talk page with urgency, and then when I heard someone else took up the task, I deprioritized it and shelved it, as real-life priorities were of greater importance to me.

As for its genesis in the first place, it arose from a side-wide, constant, difficult-and-time-consuming-to-cleanup, proxy-hopping series of massive vandalism attacks that started a month or so prior to its official BRFA (when it was just me stopping the hemorrhage ASAP by blocking via my account in true WP:IAR fashion). I surmised the troublemakers weren't, themselves, mass-scanning the internet for proxies just to vandalize Wikipedia—that would take a modicum of talent, skill, and/or effort, which usually leads someone away from that path in the first place—and instead they must have been finding proxy lists that were publicly posted and scraping them. So I automated finding those lists preemptively (and dangerously better, bypassing all of those sites' countermeasures to prevent that), while also confirming anything blocked was actually usable at the same time, thereby ensuring the right entry IP and port information was stored in the block messages for admins to later check and verify unblock requests, should the proxy later close and someone be affected by a stale block (which was rare, given initial block durations).

This stopped the attack dead in its tracks, and the rest is history.

With any luck, it's not currently needed at the moment or there's another solution in place, but I do stand at the ready to spin it all back up if ever it recurs and/or if the existing solutions are insufficient for other reasons (e.g., stopping that method of attack had the spillover benefit of also stopping a lot of low-investment sockpuppetry). It's, at worst, a day of work, and I actually do have some spare time now.

So lemme know if that's ever the case via email, talk page, maybe even people like Reedy (who might still know how to contact me via alternate means :P); flood all of them, if you want. I'm not as active as I used to be, but I will 100% drop everything to respond to any emergency like that again, happily.

Cheers =) --slakr^\ talk / 02:27, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Slakr. I'm trying to wrap my head around the implications for stopping preemptive blocking. Are the lists of proxies still somehow integrated so that, for example, an edit filter might flag if the IP a known proxy? Would we expect to see a surge in vandalism (and vandalism blocks) that would've been preempted? Is it possible we'd see a larger number of people editing while circumventing censorship? Are these efforts helped or hampered by the various project the foundation has cooking regarding anonymity? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:34, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Rhododendrites: I created it because we have seen a persistent pattern of our most sophisticated LTAs (including those who are the most damaging in terms of harassing and stalking contributors) using open proxies to essentially ignore blocks. It worked using a combination of web scraping, port scanning, attempting to access the Wikipedia API via proxies (which returns the IP that Wikipedia sees), and using the block functions in pywikibot. The ways it found lists of proxies are private due to WP:BEANS. Discussions would be in the WP:BRFAs for this bot and ProcseeBot. Finally, I shut it down because it was consuming a large percentage of my NAS' computing resources and generating a large number of talk page complaints and unblock requests, largely because blocking is flawed as a solution to this problem: dynamic IPs mean that block expiration will rarely coincide with an IP stopping to be a proxy, and dialing in that time requires resources to run multiple scanners and a database to facilitate re-checking and unblocking. Unfortunately, WMF has resisted expanding the excellent TorBlock to also use commercially-available threat intelligence feeds from people who are actually qualified to run this kind of scanning, leaving projects vulnerable to block evasion from vandals who can find the right VPN apps. ST47 (talk) 03:45, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In case it is news, User:MolecularBot (BRFA) is being developed by MolecularPilot. When running, it would maintain a list of exit IP addresses used by VPNgate. An admin bot could use that list to block the known proxies. Johnuniq (talk) 05:07, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The coding is all done, all that's needed now is community approval as to the policy for blocking (i.e. how long, which setting etc.), I've been preparing an draft guideline to be sent to WP:VPP for review but it's not done yet and also I need to ask for permission from the WMF to run on Cloud VPS (not tool forge as I can't open vpn connections from there). :) MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 05:09, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2025).

Administrator changes

• Jarry1250
• Lethe

CheckUser changes

• AmandaNP
• Drmies

Oversighter changes

AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is open to discuss whether AI-generated images (meaning those wholly created by generative AI, not human-created images modified with AI tools) should be banned from use in articles.
• A series of 22 mini-RFCs that double-checked consensus on some aspects and improved certain parts of the administrator elections process has been closed (see the summary of the changes).
• A request for comment is open to gain consensus on whether future administrator elections should be held.

Technical news

• A new filter has been added to the Special:Nuke tool, which allows administrators to filter for pages in a range of page sizes (in bytes). This allows, for example, deleting pages only of a certain size or below. T378488
• Non-administrators can now check which pages are able to be deleted using the Special:Nuke tool. T376378

Miscellaneous

• The 2025 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, Arcticocean, Ameisenigel, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, Galahad, Nehaoua, Renvoy, Revi C., RoySmith, Teles and Zafer as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
• Following the 2025 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: 1234qwer1234qwer4, AramilFeraxa, Daniuu, KonstantinaG07, MdsShakil and XXBlackburnXx.

Hi. I demand for Darkgrizs account blocks to be lifted and the user pages to be back.They do not deserve to be blocked and it is okay for them to continue sincr a Darkgriz98 is gone anyway. Spongebob796 (talk) 07:40, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2025).

Administrator changes

• Giraffer
• Goldsztajn

Dennis Brown

• Cyclonebiskit
• Nohat
• Someguy1221

Bureaucrat changes

Barkeep49

CheckUser changes

0xDeadbeef

Oversighter changes

GB fan

Moneytrees

Miscellaneous

• Sign up for The Core Contest, a competition running from 15 April to 31 May to improve vital articles.

Hello there. I want to report this user "180.252.89.254", who keeps adding nonsense and unconfirmed news on "List of Running Man Episodess (2025)" wikipedia page.

I was wondering if that user can be blocked for nonsense and unconfirmed edits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/180.252.89.254

thank you. 139.0.217.151 (talk) 06:31, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bonjour, je ne comprends pas pourquoi je suis ban ip, je n'ai jamais rédigé quoi que ce soit sur wikipédia 2A01:E0A:56E:5360:B4AE:D9D1:493C:9C2D (talk) 18:35, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2025).

Administrator changes

Rusalkii

NaomiAmethyst (overlooked last month)

• Master Jay
• Orderinchaos
• Roger Davies
• Tinucherian

Interface administrator changes

Galobtter

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, administrator elections were permanently authorized on a five-month schedule. The next election will be scheduled soon; see Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections for more information. This is an alternate process to the RfA process and does not replace the latter.
• An RfC was closed with consensus to allow editors to opt-out of seeing "sticky decorative elements". Such elements should now be wrapped in {{sticky decoration wrapper}}. Editors who wish to opt out can follow the instructions at WP:STICKYDECO.
• An RfC has resulted in a broad prohibition on the use of AI-generated images in articles. A few common-sense exceptions are recognized.

Miscellaneous

• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2025 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Sign up here to participate!

Je tiens à préciser que le bouddhisme n’est pas une secte mais une croyance, je trouve cela offensant de mettre de tel injure dans vos documents que tous le monde peut voir et se faire une fausse idée sur les bouddhistes, merci de corriger cela le plus vite possible 2A04:CEC0:1057:41A9:B120:4A9A:19B5:CD52 (talk) 06:00, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2025).

Administrator changes

• DDima
• Gimmetrow
• Huon
• Johan Elisson
• Spangineer
• The Land

Interface administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

CheckUser changes

L235

Oversight changes

L235

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to determine whether the English Wikipedia community should adopt a position on AI development by the WMF and its affiliates.

Technical news

• A new feature called Multiblocks will be deployed on English Wikipedia on the week of June 2. See the relevant announcement on the administrators' noticeboard.
• History merges performed using the mergehistory special page are now logged at both the source and destination, rather than just the source as previously, after this RFC and the resolution of T118132.

Arbitration

• An arbitration case named Indian military history has been opened. Evidence submissions for this case close on 8 June.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 17 June 2025. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!
• An Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in June 2025, with over 1,600 drafts awaiting review from the past two months. In addition to AfC participants, all administrators and new page patrollers can help review using the Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!
• The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in June 2025 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!

Hello!

I can't for the heck of me not understand why you would block my IP address.

Which I just found out when trying to correct incorrect English to German translations (being a business English certified wiki user I oftentimes can't help but... do so).

If you could either remove this block, or at the very least exain it, I would be very grateful, as it is my opinion that Wikipedia has few enough helpful users as is, without destroying any interest to help keep the facts and or language "correct".

Thank you. 2001:871:263:AD96:CDC1:B860:F15:EB39 (talk) 14:35, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And yet you are able to edit here? Which other IP address do you use? Some IP addresses are blocked due to the presence of proxies or VPN on the IP addresses. We will not be able to evaluate whether the block can be removed without knowing the IP address. – robertsky (talk) 14:43, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OK, that did sound quite passive aggressive.

. I might be wrong, if so, I am sorry, but I normally only use my home IP address, unless of course I try to edit something on the way to and from work..

So, if you'd be so kind and explain to me the reasoning behind making it impossible for me to Co tribute, I'd be grateful.

Thoigh my wish to add k ow ledge and grammar is downing rapidly, given the way I have been treated so far.... 2001:871:263:AD96:CDC1:B860:F15:EB39 (talk) 11:33, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Again we need to know the IP address to know why it is blocked. What is the message stated in the block banner? – robertsky (talk) 12:02, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi you blocked me from editing and I don’t know why. I’ve never edited in bad faith or vandalized. There really is no reason to ban me. It’s one of my great joys, working on Wikipedia and frankly it’s a bit hurtful for you to do this. Could you please tell me why? Thank you Wikitoddia (talk) 06:53, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Wikitoddia, ST47 has not been editing for a while. I don't see a block on your account. It might be one of the IP addresses that you were on that's blocked, typically for having a proxy or VPN active on it. You may read more about the guidelines here: WP: OPENPROXY. – robertsky (talk) 01:34, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2025).

Administrator changes

NuclearWarfare

Interface administrator changes

L235

Guideline and policy news

• Following a talk page discussion, speedy deletion criterion G13 has been amended to remove "Userspace with no content except the article wizard placeholder text."
• WP:Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts was upgraded to a guideline following a RfC discussion.

Miscellaneous

• The 2025 Developing Countries WikiContest will run from 1 July to 30 September. Sign up now!
• Administrator elections will take place this month. Administrator elections are an alternative to RFA that is a gentler process for candidates due to secret voting and multiple people running together. The call for candidates is July 9–15, the discussion phase is July 18–22, and the voting phase is July 23–29. Get ready to submit your candidacy, or (with their consent) to nominate a talented candidate!

Thanks for all the time you have invested in being a checkuser, and for all the tools and scripts you have developed to help us all be more effective. I will miss you on the team. Risker (talk) 22:12, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Arbitration Committee acknowledges the resignation of ST47 (talk · contribs) from the CheckUser team and thanks them for their service.

On behalf of the Committee, Sdrqaz (talk) 00:58, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Change to the CheckUser team, July 2025

Thank you, ST47, for all of the knowledge, common sense and experience you brought to the job. You will be missed! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:26, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]