Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-01-01/News and notes

Wikimedia Foundation bans 16 MENA editors, including seven Arabic Wikipedia admins
On December 6, the Wikimedia Foundation enacted a group ban on 16 editors, all from the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. The announcement was made in a post to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and re-posted on Meta, saying

There was a request for comment at ar:ويكيبيديا:الميدان/إدارة (in Arabic). reflected the views of many in his community:

Ten of the banned editors, including seven admins, edited mainly on the Arabic Wikipedia. Six edited mainly on the Persian Wikipedia.

Arabic Wikipedia administrators
The Wikimedia Foundation globally banned 7 of the 26 administrators that were active in the Arabic Wikipedia. The banned accounts are listed in order of edit count on the Arabic Wikipedia. They all also had contributed to the English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata.
 * User:جار الله (with 219,488 edits to Arabic Wikipedia)
 * User:حساب ملغى 123321 (formerly User:سامي الرحيلي) (with 202,246 edits)
 * User:صالح (with 134,216 edits)
 * User:وسام (with 114,741 edits)
 * User:FShbib (with 98,572 edits)
 * User:بندر (with 59,030 edits)
 * User:Glory20 (with 35,444 edits)

Editors primarily active on Arabic Wikipedia
The Wikimedia Foundation also banned the following 3 Arabic Wikipedia editors who are listed by their edit counts in Arabic Wikipedia. They all had also contributed to Commons and Wikidata.
 * User:مصعب العبود (with 42,976 edits)
 * User:أسامة (with 8,523 edits)
 * User:حاتم العتيبي (with 5,547 edits)

Editors primarily active on Persian Wikipedia
The Wikimedia Foundation banned the following 6 editors of the Persian Wikipedia, listed in order of edit counts on the Persian Wikipedia. Most had also contributed in Arabic and English Wikipedias, as well as to Commons and Wikidata.
 * User:4nn1l2 (with 74,778 edits)
 * User:Shobhe (with 27,680 edits)
 * User:Shiasun (with 9,525 edits)
 * User:M.Nadian (with 3,966 edits)
 * User:Aye1399 (with 1,743 edits)
 * User:فاطمه_جان (with 747 edits)

Articles created on English Wikipedia by the banned editors
One of the editors also significantly softened descriptions of Saudi government detention of journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was later murdered and dismembered. – AK, Blu, Bri, SB
 * Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (June 2016)
 * Faisal F. Alibrahim (May 2022), a Saudi government minister
 * The Line (city) (January 2021), a Saudi public project
 * Saudi Art Association (July 2020), espouses government "cooperation"; not clear if it is government funded
 * 2022 Iran–Greece naval incident (July 2022), nominated for DYK by the creator, initially approved but ultimately rejected after re-review

Admin highs and lows
As of December 30, the number of active administrators for the English-language Wikipedia stood at 497, the year's high point.

In a News and notes column of January 2022, we touched on the "Administrator cadre continues to contract" issue. Since then, not much has changed and according to Signpost analysis, 2022 was the first year in modern wikihistory that the number of active administrators never rose above 500. In 2022, the high point for active administrators was 497 – compared to 521 in 2021. The low point was 449 on April 4 – compared to 434 in 2021.

During the entire year there were only fourteen new admins, the third lowest since adminship started in 2002. While not as bad as last year's low of seven, and better than the ten in 2018; fourteen a year would only maintain the current admin cadre if the average new admin lasted over thirty years as an admin. We will reiterate our statement from a 2019 special report, and say about all these data "Whether that is a problem, or how a problem would manifest, are questions still to be answered." – Bri

2022 Coolest Tool Awards
On Friday December 16 the Coolest Tool Award committee announced this year's winners. The 30-minute award presentation is on YouTube. Winners were
 * Coolest Tool – Citation Hunt – https://citationhunt.toolforge.org/en?id=0fc6e1a2
 * Coolest Tool – More Menu – meta:MoreMenu
 * reusable – PetScan – https://petscan.wmflabs.org/
 * developer – Patchdemo – https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/
 * newcomer – Bullseye – https://bullseye.toolforge.org/
 * diversity – Wiki99 – meta:Wiki99
 * impact – Scholia – https://scholia.toolforge.org/
 * mobile – TwinkleMobile – User:Plantaest/TwinkleMobile
 * eggbeater – OpenRefine – https://openrefine.org/

Brief notes

 * WikiProject Military History's newsletter, The Bugle, has reached 200 issues: It has run monthly since March 2006, with only two months skipped in that entire time.
 * Passing of Effie "Digitaleffie" Kapsalis: Digitaleffie, Wikimedian at the Smithsonian Institution, advocate for many Wikimedia community programs related to WP:GLAM, and community advocate for Wikimedia District of Columbia, passed away on December 11, 2022. Anyone may share condolences or memories on their user page at User talk:Digitaleffie.
 * New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators,, who passed the bar with 99% approval on December 15, and who passed with 100% on December 21.
 * Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Summer Palace of Peter the Great. Please be bold in helping to improve this article!