User talk:Lord Roem/Archives/2020/February

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Ergo Sum • Nick Moyes • QEDK • Wugapodes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Dennis Brown
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Aude • BrownHairedGirl • CALR • Jengod • John Reaves • J.smith • Kim Dent-Brown • K1Bond007 • MECU • Refdoc • RHaworth



CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Ragesoss

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 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.

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
 * Voting in the 2020 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2020, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2020, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
 * The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles. Thank you everyone for your contributions!

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:05, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

COI editing
Hi there. I’m having some issues engaging with an article and saw that you have a lot of experience writing in the legal space so I was hoping you could provide some insight. The article in question belongs to W. Mark Lanier. I’m a COI editor and Mark is a client (both facts have been previously disclosed). If you take a look at the article’s revision history, you’ll see that several edits made in Oct. of last year (requested by me and made by editor Spintendo) were taken out. As I had a clear COI, I wanted to make sure any edits to the page were made by an experienced editor who could vet and approve them. A short time afterward, editor Smartse removed several of the changes and explained his reasoning in the article’s talk page in the section titled COI.

He claimed there was information about Lanier that was being misrepresented, although I’m not entirely sure what he’s referring to. Again, all the of the edits I had suggested were sourced and approved by another editor. Smartse also claimed there was information that might appear damaging to Lanier being left out of the article. This was confusing because it seemed he was saying that extra effort needed to be made to find unfavorable information on a topic, should it exist. My purpose in writing you today is to get the opinion of an experienced and valued member of the editor community. And someone who, until now, hasn’t been involved in this process. Thanks for any help or guidance you can provide. WriteJames (talk) 20:37, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Hello again. I wanted to follow up on the above message and see if you had any advice on the matter. Thanks again for your help. WriteJames (talk) 21:49, 21 February 2020 (UTC)