User talk:James086/Archives/2017

Administrators' newsletter - February 2017
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13

Guideline and policy news
 * A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
 * Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
 * Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.

Technical news
 * When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
 * Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
 * The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration
 * The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.

Obituaries
 * JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.

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13:38, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

March 2017 WikiCup newsletter
And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. It would have been 5 points, but when a late entrant was permitted to join the contest in February, a promise was made that his inclusion would not result in the exclusion of any other competitor. To achieve this, the six entrants that had the lowest positive score of 4 points have been added to the 64 people who otherwise would have qualified. As a result, some of the groups have nine contestants rather than eight. Our top four scorers in round 1 were:


 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Cas Liber, last year's winner, led the field with two featured articles on birds and a total score of 674.
 * 🇪🇺 Iry-Hor, a WikiCup newcomer, came next with a featured article, a good article and a tally of 282 bonus points for a score of 517. All these points came from the article Nyuserre Ini, an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh,
 * 🇯🇵 1989, another WikiCup newcomer, was in joint third place at 240. 1989 has claimed points for two featured lists and one good article relating to anime and comedy series, all of which were awarded bonus points.
 * Peacemaker67 shared third place with five good articles and thirteen good article reviews, mostly on naval vessels. He is also new to the competition.

The largest number of DYKs have been submitted by Vivvt and The C of E, who each claimed for seven, and MBlaze Lightning achieved eight articles at ITN. Carbrera and Peacemaker67 each claimed for five GAs and Krishna Chaitanya Velaga was well out in front for GARs, having reviewed 32. No featured pictures, featured topics or good topics yet, but we have achieved three featured articles and a splendid total of fifty good articles.

So, on to the second round. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 13:52, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Halo 1 2 and 3 covers.jpg
 Thanks for uploading File:Halo 1 2 and 3 covers.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 18:35, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

May 2017 WikiCup newsletter
The second round of the competition has now closed, with just under 100 points being required to qualify for round 3. YellowEvan just scraped into the next round with 98 points but we have to say goodbye to the thirty or so competitors who didn't achieve this threshold; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. Our top scorers in round 2 were:


 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Cas Liber, led the field with five featured articles, four on birds and one on astronomy, and a total score of 2049, half of which came from bonus points.
 * 🇯🇵 1989 was in second place with 826 points, 466 of which were bonus points. 1989 has claimed points mostly relating to anime and Japanese-related articles.
 * Peacemaker67 took third place with two FAs, one GA and seven GARs, mostly on naval vessels or military personnel, scoring 543 points.
 * Other contestants who scored over 400 points were Freikorp, Carbrera, and Czar. Of course all these points are now wiped out and the 32 remaining contestants start again from zero in round 3.

Vivvt submitted the largest number of DYKs (30), and MBlaze Lightning achieved 13 articles at ITN. Carbrera claimed for 11 GAs and Argento Surfer performed the most GARs, having reviewed 11. So far we have achieved 38 featured articles and a splendid 132 good articles. Commendably, 279 GARs have been achieved so far, more than double the number of GAs.

So, on to the third round. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 13:16, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2017 July newsletter
The third round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 288 points being required to qualify for round 4. It was a hotly competitive round with all but four of the contestants exceeding the 106 points that was necessary to proceed to round 4 last year. Coemgenus and Freikorp tied on 288, and both have been allowed to proceed, so round 4 now has one pool of eight competitors and one of nine.

Round 3 saw the achievement of a 26-topic Featured topic by MPJ-DK as well as 5 featured lists and 13 featured articles. PanagiotisZois and SounderBruce achieved their first ever featured articles. Carbrera led the GA score with 10, Tachs achieved 17 DYKs and MBlaze Lightning 10 In the news items. There were 167 DYKs, 93 GARs and 82 GAs overall, this last figure being higher than the number of GAs in round 2, when twice as many people were taking part. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.

As we start round 4, we say goodbye to the fifteen or so competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 05:38, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Notification of pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity
Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in more than one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions will be removed pending your return if you do not return to activity within the next month. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated should this occur, please post to the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e. as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised, that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions, and that you have not been inactive for a three-year period of time). If you remain inactive for a three-year period of time, including the present year you have been inactive, you will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. — xaosflux  Talk 21:21, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Notification of imminent suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity
Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in more than one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions will be removed pending your return if you do not return to activity within the next several days. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated should this occur, please post to the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e. as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised, that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions, and that you have not been inactive for a three-year period of time). If you remain inactive for a three-year period of time, including the present year you have been inactive, you will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. — xaosflux  Talk 00:41, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity
Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in more than one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions have been removed pending your return. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated, please post to the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e. as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised, that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions, and that you have not been inactive for a three-year period of time). If you remain inactive for a three-year period of time, including the present year you have been inactive, you will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. — xaosflux  Talk 00:49, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2017 September newsletter
Round 4 of the WikiCup has ended and we move forward into the final round. In round 4, a total of 12 FAs, 3 FLs, 44 GAs, 3 FLs, 79 DYKs, 1 ITN and 42 GARs was achieved, with no FPs or FTs this time. Congratulations to Peacemaker67 on the Royal Yugoslav Navy Good Topic of 36 items, and the 12 featured articles achieved by Cas Liber (5), Vanamonde93 (3), Peacemaker67 (2), Adityavagarwal (1) and 12george1 (1). With a FA scoring 200 points, and bonus points available on top of this, FAs are likely to feature heavily in the final round. Meanwhile Yellow Evan, a typhoon specialist, was contributing 12 DYKs and 10 GAs, while Adityavagarwal and Freikorp topped the GAR list with 8 reviews each. As we enter the final round, we are down to eight contestants, and we would like to thank those of you who have been eliminated for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. The lowest score needed to reach round 5 was 305, and I think we can expect a highly competitive final round.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews Needed. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck, and let the best man (or woman) win! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 06:26, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2017 November newsletter: Final results
The final round of the 2017 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2017 WikiCup top three finalists:
 * First Place -
 * Second Place -
 * Third Place -

In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:
 * Featured Article – Cas Liber (actually a two-way tie with themselves for an astonishing five FAs in R2 and R4).
 * Good Article – Adityavagarwal had 14 GAs promoted in R5.
 * Featured List – and  both produced 2 FLs in R2
 * Featured Pictures – improved an image to FP status in R5, the only FP this year.
 * Featured Topic – has the only FT of the Cup in R3.
 * Good Topic – Four different editors created a GT in R2, R3 and R4.
 * Did You Know – Adityavagarwal had 22 DYKs on the main page in R5.
 * In The News – had 14 ITN on the main page in R2.
 * Good Article Review – completed 31 GARs in R1.

Over the course of the 2017 WikiCup the following content was added or improved on Wikipedia: 51 Featured Articles, 292 Good Articles, 18 Featured Lists, 1 Featured Picture, 1 Featured Topics, 4 Good Topics, around 400 Did You Knows, 75 In The News, and 442 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.

Regarding the prize vouchers - please send  an email from the email address to which you would like your Amazon voucher sent. Please include your preference of global Amazon marketplace as well. We hope to have the electronic gift cards processed and sent within a week.

We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2018 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. ,, and MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:42, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2018
So the 2017 WikiCup has come to an end. Congratulations to the winner, to the other finalists and to all those who took part. 177 contestants signed up, more than usual, but not all of them submitted entries in the first round. Were editors attracted by the cash prizes offered for the first time this year, or were these irrelevant? Do the rules and scoring need changing for the 2018 WikiCup? If you have a view on these or other matters, why not join in the WikiCup discussion about next year's contest? , and. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:59, 17 November 2017 (UTC)