Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
@Geardona: sorry for the delayed reply, have been away from the desk for most of the day. Will have a quick review of your recent edits in a little while and see if I have any useful advice. As a general point there is no prohibition on doing vandalism reverts, and it's an essential task for the wiki overall. So provided you proceed carefully, all should be fine. :) -- Euryalus (talk) 23:41, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd wait a couple of months. It's not essential for anti-vandalism work and the request is more likely to be approved if there's a reasonable time between removal and application. -- Euryalus (talk) 06:41, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Graham87: thanks for that. Have to admire their persistence but they're aware that this is commercial link spam and seem to think brute forcing it back into articles will eventually pay off. Ah well. Oh and Happy New Year. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:19, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
AnRfC 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.
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
Hi, you protected this page back in 2020. I don't really think this article needs to be protected anymore - there's been no disruption in the page history whatsoever except for a brief spurt of IP editwarring in 2020 when you protected it. Can you please unprotect this page? Regards, Prodraxis(talk)16:50, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Jonathan Engel (researcher): thanks for the email. Happy to complete a survey but prefer to do so on-wiki. If you post the questions on this page I'll answer them here.
Hi - I honenstly struggle to see how the expression "Skullbreaker" is not blatantly violent. The example I cited and every example you cited are direclty related to violence and harm (actual or depictions of). In indicating that you feel this is not a blatant expression of violence - would you mind elaborating on what then constitutes a blatant expression of violence? If it is possible to link me to some examples of deleted usernames that fall within this category it would help (I did try searching the page history at UAA, but did not have much luck). Thank you, Goldsztajn (talk) 13:45, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For the sake of transparency, I've asked the editor in question ({{noping|SkullbreakerDFA}}) about the origin of their username. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 13:57, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An update: following my engagement with the editor they changed their useranme. I still remain interested in understanding your views on what is (and isn't) a blatant expression of violence. To be clear, I'm glad you declined as this produced a far better outcome than a blocked editor, rather at first instance we have an editor who is engaged with others and editing. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 21:39, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the delay, was away a few days. Agree that talking to the user generated a good outcome, well done with that. It doesn't seem like they meant any harm with the name but am glad they've decided to go with something else. It also indicated why they'd picked this name (the Fortnite reference and not the stupid falling-over meme). As mentioned at UAA the "Skullbreaker" name has other possible interpretations such as a character in Call of Duty, an obtainable weapon in World of Warcraft and an alternate name for a medieval samurai blade. Or a username from another website, as in this case. Where the name is ambiguous some follow-up is usually required.
Re violent usernames, am reluctant to highlight too many but as examples of usernames that are blatantly violent and deserving of an immediate block perhaps have a look at the Special:ListUsers starting at with "Kill all." A more specific example is this one from a troll of yesteryear. What these have in common is their unarguable call for violence against named groups or individuals. This contrasts with usernames which simply mention objects you could hit someone with, or actions that might cause generic harm. There's nothing unarguably wrong, for example, with a User:Hammer or User:Drivingtoofast. Of course context also matters: had the user called themselves "Skullbreaker" and then edited to promote breaking people's skulls they would likely have been blocked. However in this case the name alone, without supporting evidence or follow-up, didn't meet the policy standard for an immediate block.
Hope that explains what I was thinking in this case. People's mileage can also vary in interpreting any policy, but for me personally the outcome in this case seems to support the decisions to not block on first sight. Either way, happy to discuss further if required. -- Euryalus (talk) 02:25, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Euryalus - thank you for taking the time to explain with nuance. For some context, my initial response to this was to engage the editor, but when using Twinkle to tag the user page, the instruction contained there indicated that in cases of violence to go straight to UAA and *not* engage. The links you provide and the elements you describe in your consideration are all very helpful. Again, appreciate you taking the time. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 19:30, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)
Arbitration
Anarbitration 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.
I saw you just reverted this edit. Please see these twoedits, as well. I'm not sure what's going on, but this editor is causing (rather than addressing) disruption, and I think they need some admin attention. Grandpallama (talk) 21:00, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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
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Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)
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