Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-11-19/News and notes

Page patrolling enabled
Page patrolling has been enabled for Special:Newpages. The feature, active for all users registered for at least 4 days, allows users to mark new pages as patrolled, meaning that they're either appropriate pages, have been tagged with appropriate maintenance templates, or tagged for speedy deletion. A log is also available to provide oversight as to who made specific tagging decisions on any given page.

ArbCom nominations continue, age requirement imposed
Nominations for the December 2007 Arbitration Committee Elections remained open this week. This week, Alexia Death, Danny, John Reaves, and Mercury nominated themselves for the position. Meanwhile, NHRHS2010 and Phil Sandifer withdrew from the election, and Messedrocker and Cbrown1023 were forced to withdraw due to a new age requirement for the position, bringing the number of candidates in the election back to 27.

This age requirement is the result of discussion on the private Arbitration Committee's mailing list. Candidates must be both 18 years of age, and of legal age in their jurisdiction. This requirement was added, according to arbitrator James Forrester, because:

"It is the considered consensus of the Arbitration Committee that our working practices are incompatible with having a minor as a member of the Committee, and that any changes to facilitate this would be impractical and severely damage the effectiveness of the Arbitrators. Specifically, a minor could not take part in discussion of or even be shown privileged information, including that sourced from the CheckUser and OverSight tools, without violating the confines of the Foundation's privacy policy and related terms which govern our practices. This is a significant part of the work of the Committee, and would result in, at best, a two-tier Arbitration Committee with some members unable to participate in, or even be aware of, most of the activity."

Of the five current arbitrators, only Raul654 will stand for re-election. Fred Bauder, Mackensen, Neutrality and SimonP have all indicated they will not run for another term. These five seats will expire in 2007; it has not yet been noted whether any other seats will be added or replaced.

Fundraiser continues
The Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser continued this week. In the first four weeks of the fundraiser, about 25,200 people had donated at least US$1, and the Foundation had raised about $763,000.

The large bump realized from changing the sitenotice displayed at the top of all Wikimedia projects has since disappeared; November 19's donations reached a fundraiser-low $17,522.75.

Large donations this fundraiser include a $10,000 donation by Michael Minor, and a $3,000 donation by Andrew MacMillan.

Briefly

 * Steward elections are set to commence on November 26. New stewards will be up for election, and current stewards will be up for re-confirmation.  Among other requirements, stewards must be at least 18 years old, of legal age in their jurisdiction at the time the elections end (December 16), and must be willing to identify themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation.  Prospective candidates can apply until the elections begin.
 * The Aromanian Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
 * The Lithuanian Wiktionary has reached 10,000 articles.
 * The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles.