User talk:Ben MacDui

If you leave a new message on this page, I will usually reply here unless specifically asked to reply elsewhere.

Administrators' newsletter – January 2024

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

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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.
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 21

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Gisborne, New Zealand, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Kiwa.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 17:47, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024

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

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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
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Islands

Thankyou for the new article Eilean Tioram but I think its a duplicate of Dry Island though there are several others. Also do you know anything more about Soyea Island (which is tautological) and also Riska Island? Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:25, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah - you are right about Dry Island. I simply followed the link from Populated Islands which did not connect to it. There is probably something salvageable from the infobox. I'll deal with this asap but it may not be today. See also https://dryisland.co.uk/ I don't know much about Soyea. I notice the recent creation of Eilean an Fheidh which is a much smaller neighbour of Riska. See also here. Ben MacDui 08:54, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Tolkien tourism

Template:Tolkien tourism has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. --woodensuperman 16:55, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024

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

Administrator changes

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Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
• Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.

Technical news

• The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

• The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
• Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:21, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Kbdank71
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• TLSuda

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.

Technical news

• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".

Miscellaneous

• Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:47, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2024

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

Administrator changes

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Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.

Technical news

• Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2024

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

Administrator changes

Graham Beards

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Bureaucrat changes

• Deskana
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Dreamy Jazz

Guideline and policy news

• Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.

Technical news

• The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
• The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.

Miscellaneous

• WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2024

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

Administrator changes

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Technical news

• Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)

Miscellaneous

• The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:58, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Request needed for bad-faith user mass undoing cited edits

Hello,

On the African Diaspora Wikipedia article there is one particular user by the name @Xuxo who is doing bonafide bad-faith edits and refuses to engage in disputes, both in talk threads on the article itself and on their own talk page. They make rebuttals to my edits with zero citations even when asked and misrepresent sources they literally ask for when it contradicts their claims.

To give a synopsis of the issue, I recently made an edit that included the population for Brazil to include mixed-race Brazilians because for multiple other countries that is also done (US, UK, Colombia, and more) and to keep up consistency. I included almost five sources in the article itself showcasing many Brazilian authorities and genetic studies that mixed-race Brazilians have significant African ancestry across the entire country.

Xuxo has issues with this and claims many pardo Brazilians have no African ancestry when my sources in the template, the notes of the article, and additional ones in the talk pages of the article showcase that is not the case, even in the most indigenous areas of the country. They then say to go based off of what the Brazilian census (IBGE) says and only include people who identify as black, in which I link an article by The Guardian which got commentary from the IBGE about pardos being classified as African-Brazilians/afro-descendants in which they dismiss it and say that any source that says this is "afro-centric". I have proposed a middle ground of sorts that says that to keep consistency of the article, multiracial people across the board should not be included meaning for the US, UK, Colombia, etc. and therefore Pardo Brazilians would be excluded. This was ignored.

I took to their page to discuss and warn and again he refuses to engage and give zero citations and just re-edits based off of his own ethnocentrism. Based off of his talk page he has engaged in this behaviour before with another user and showcases a history of making biased edits with no credibility to fit his own confirmation bias. I would like admin intervention with this. Thanks Kyogul (talk) 15:51, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Hi Ben MacDui, I just wanted to let you know that I have added the autopatrolled user right to your account. This means that pages you create will automatically be marked as 'reviewed', and no longer appear in the new pages feed. Autopatrolled is assigned to prolific creators of articles, where those articles do not require further review, and may have been requested on your behalf by someone else. It doesn't affect how you edit; it is used only to manage the workload of new page patrollers.

Since the articles you create will no longer be systematically reviewed by other editors, it is important that you maintain the high standard you have achieved so far in all your future creations. Please also try to remember to add relevant WikiProject templates, stub tags, categories, and incoming links to them, if you aren't already in the habit; user scripts such as Rater and StubSorter can help with this. As you have already shown that you have a strong grasp of Wikipedia's core content policies, you might also consider volunteering to become a new page patroller yourself, helping to uphold the project's standards and encourage other good faith article writers.

Feel free to leave me a message if you have any questions. Happy editing! – Joe (talk) 20:00, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

In case you missed it, this was automatically granted to admits until a couple of years ago, when it was unbundled. You more than meet the usual criteria, but of course if you'd rather your articles were reviewed you can remove it from your account :) – Joe (talk) 20:01, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 21

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Eigg, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Free Church of Scotland.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 20:17, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject

Hi, I see you've contributed a lot to Orkneyinga saga, would you be interested in a taskforce on oral tradition? Kowal2701 (talk) 12:47, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Not I, I'm afraid, but thanks for asking. 12:12, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2024

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

Administrator changes

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Interface administrator changes

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Barkeep49

Technical news

• Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
• Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee appointed the following administrators to the conflict of interest volunteer response team: Bilby, Extraordinary Writ

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:59, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

A' Chùli

Thankyou for creating the article, note that there was Draft:A' Chùli which I created a few years ago, does it have anything worth merging? Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:12, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Crouch, Swale: Goodness, even accepting that it is a small island about which little can be said the similarity is remarkable. If you like I could drop the deleted text into a sandbox for you. There may be something you'd like to tweak in the article. (You had "uninhabited" which I have added as you've probaby seen already.) Ben MacDui 18:22, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

It might just be better to undelete the draft an then merge it. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:25, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure what there would be to merge! Your version has the infobox and reads:

A' Chùli is an uninhabited island of the Garvellachs, in the Firth of Lorn, in the council area of Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It is located in between Garbh Eileach and Eileach an Naoimh. Its area is 20 hectares and it rises to 35 metres. The name "A' Chùli" is Gaelic and means 'the retreat'. It once had a chapel which was founded by St Brendan but no traces remain. Ben MacDui 18:29, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

References

Administrators' newsletter – September 2024

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

Administrator changes

Pppery

Interface administrator changes

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Oversighter changes

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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!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Regarding my user talk

Hi @Ben MacDui, do you perhaps know a proper way to delete my user talk? I really want it to be deleted then re-create it under my username as it was first created by a bot when I started here in Wikipedia. 98𝚃𝙸𝙶𝙴𝚁𝙸𝚄𝚂 ^{[𝚃𝙰𝙻𝙺]} 14:28, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

@98Tigerius: I am not sure what you want. Is there something about the history of the talk page you are hoping to remove? If you are content with your User name of 98Tigerius, then you have the right talk page. If you want to change your User name than WP:RENAME is the place to go. Per WP:DELTALK User talk pages are generally not deleted, although there is nothing preventing you blanking the page. Ben MacDui 14:44, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

@Ben MacDui What I mean is, even though it is my talk page the creator of it is a bot not me and that's why I requested it to be deleted then I will recreate to be under my username. I hope I'm making more clearer. 98𝚃𝙸𝙶𝙴𝚁𝙸𝚄𝚂 ^{[𝚃𝙰𝙻𝙺]} 14:59, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

I still have no idea why you think this is necessary but if you want to pursue it I suggest having a look at WP:CFRD and/or posting a a question at CAT:HELP. I'm not prepared to delete the page without a very clear rationale that fits within existing policy. Ben MacDui 11:25, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Asilvering
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• Good Olfactory
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CheckUser changes

• Barkeep49
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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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:59, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in a research

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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.

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

Administrators' newsletter – November 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Crisco 1492

• Babajobu
• Daniel
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CheckUser changes

Maxim

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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!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:20, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to participate in Wikipedia research

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.

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

ArbCom 2024 Elections voter message

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Administrators' newsletter – December 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Ahecht
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• Ajpolino
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• Aervanath
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Interface administrator changes

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CheckUser changes

• Spicy
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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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:19, 3 December 2024 (UTC)