User talk:Visorstuff

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Barnstar

This long overdue Barnstar is awarded to Visorstuff for, well, a ton of reasons.

Like 'em or not, you should've received one of these a long time ago. Since monitoring the LDS Wikiproject several months ago, I've admired and appreciated your tireless work ethic in maintaining and improving articles, your welcoming attitude towards newcomers and willingness to explain how WP works to them, your excellent contributions and effort to remain NPOV, your quickness to notice and neutralize vandalism, and your leadership to others at WP, whether they've been here for years or days. And while my name may be tagged to this edit, I feel that I speak for a number of others at WP and the LDS project that would say the same. Thanks for what you do. Deadsalmon 07:04, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject LDS

Hello! I noticed you were on the list of members in the LDS WikiProject, and I was wondering if you were still interested in helping out there. You see, over the past few months, it appears that it has slowly drifted into inactivity. But you CAN help. Please consider doing both of the following:

1. Take ONE thing form the To-Do list and do it. Once you're done with it, remove it from the list, and from the<>{{Template:LDSprojectbox}}<>, so we know its done. Keep the page on your watchlist. We have a backlog going for more than half a year. Please help to work on it, and remove it.
2. Vote on the LDSCOTF, and work on it!
3. Tell your friends (esp. LDS friends, & esp. Wikipedian friends) about this WikiProject, and enocourage them to join (and be active).

Remember: your involvement in this WikiProject is just that - involvement! Please help us out.

(Note: I'm sending this out to everyone who's name was on the membership list, so I will NOT be watching this page for a response. If you want to contact me, do it on MY talk page, please.)

Thanks for all that you do -Trevdna 15:44, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

es:WP:SUD (LDS)

Spanish is going to be a challenge. I obviously can't do much writing myself as a non-native, much less solo, though I have begun porting a few articles. What I am mainly trying to do is catch every anon who happens by and try to lasso him as a es:WP:SUD participant. It will take at least a year, I am sure, before anything at all begins to happen. But I did get my first recruit the other day. I do regret a CofC guy appears to have got away this week though. The anons who show up at the es articles pretty much just bear their testimonies on talk page and split, which I guess is probably what initially happened a lot here. Come to think of it, the fact that we don't get a lot of testimonies on our talk pages anymore is a good indicator that our articles are at least fair to the LDS Church traditional perspective. And that is good. I hope someday to say the same about es:WP:SUD.

ARMA dispute

Hey, there's currently a dispute over at the ARMA article that I'm not sure what to do about. About a third of the article is a criticism section which seems to be heavily POV and original research. I feel it doesn't belong in the article. No other martial arts organisation has a criticism section at all (I checked every single article in the category), and even most religions don't have a criticism section so large, particularly when compared to the rest of the article. User:209.233.102.4 has violated the Three Revert Rule to keep the section in there (and he also tried deleting my comments on the talk page), while I have been working to make the rest of the article more NPOV (he correctly pointed out that the tone of the article is inappropriate for Wikipedia).

I've never really been in a dispute before like this, and I just sort of stumbled upon it. I know you're an admin, and I was wondering if you could either help out there or tell me what the best thing to do is. The Jade Knight 01:18, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jade Knight, I'm actually taking off right now, but will try to monitor later. Please report the 3RR at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR and they will make sure it is taken care of in a timely manner.

Congratulations on your first dispute. :^) j/k Seriously, though, remind the anon on his user page the seriousness of registering and becoming a real wikipedian in order to be taken seriously. I find that kindness will help in disputes like this. Also, let them know that they have violated rules and could be banned for an edit war. Good luck - I'll check in as soon as I can. -Visorstuff 12:18, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Mountain Meadows massacre

Thank you for your recent efforts on the talk page. Although I haven't had much Wiki time, I have been keeping an eye on the "action" on the article. Lots of reverts. I would appreciate your comments on my suggested outline/content for the article, which should allow us to include much of the current information (a good edit is always useful) and other information as well. Thank you. WBardwin 09:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I will review and provide comments. I suspected that this article would turn into a dispute a few days ago, and have therefore stayed out of the dispute in order to monitor as an admin. Hope issues get resolved. -Visorstuff 12:07, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

coincidence theory

Hi, V. Your reference to coincidence theory doesn't fit with the explanation given in the article linked. You may want to check the term. It seems completely diametrical to me. Tom Haws 22:10, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Your Baby

Congratulations on the birth of your baby boy! I have been checking out a lot of articles on mormonism and found that you are a common denominator in a lot of them, especially with keeping them neutral. Good job Epachamo 07:21, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Enoch legend

I'd like to see a better source for this than a Geocities reference. From what I can gather from google, it's a theory put forth by Knight and Lomas in The Second Messiah, and unbfortunately, it's more about alternative history than anything else. Every other Enoch page on Google seems to have been suspended. However, what does exist is the fact that there is supposedly a Scottish Rite degree dealing with this, which is outside the scope of the article, as Smith was never AASR and wouldn't have known about it. MSJapan 15:11, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I look forward to working with you on this. First a small side note: as you undoubtedly know, masonic legends exist both in and out of the current modern Freemasonry movement. I won't go into all the details on where else they can be found (especially in Templar lore, descriptions of Washington's apron, Sphinx lore, etc., but those are getting off topic). I have provided three seperate references online to Enoch legends in my references for quick reference - all three work as of Feb 13. One is a paper from Reed Durham on similarities to Mormonism and Masonry - which is insightful and of course pre-dates Lomas and Knights work. The second is the Geocities reference, and a third is from an academic setting. Here are a couple other sites dealing with similar legends: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] and even the unflattering and not-as-reliable [7].

If you'd really, really like, I can track down a number of books I have that reference these. Depending on the tradition, the lodge, etc. the legends are interconnected or disconnected greatly. The interpretation of these texts differ greatly and are emphasized differently in different settings. For Example, Enoch is only mentioned in the first degree lecture used by nearly all lodges, but lectures and legends are very different.

Two questions: Have you read "Freemasonry in Context?" Or "The Craft, A History of English Freemasonry And are you a Freemason?" Or the Enoch entry in "Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia?" - Also, please give more details on the lodge, tradition, degree and status. I am a bit puzzled that you are the first to dispute such a legend in the two-three years that the info has been on the Wikipedia in some form or another and should have been explained to you (Even though I'm puzzled, I also know that not all wikipedia info is correct, but its interesting that its been uncontested for this long). Because of that, I'm trying to understand where you are coming from on this, as you should know the enoch legend, but perhaps not this interpretation of it? To be honest, your dispute is all a bit confusing to me, so I'm trying to understand where you are coming from. Hopefully we can get down to the bottom of your concern and address answer your questions. Hopefully our work will make the said pages more sound and reliable. -Visorstuff 17:34, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I will certainly read the pages you have posted. I don't own the other works you mentioned, but i do know that Enoch does not appear in the first degree lecture in all regular jurisdictions. from the nature of the cites you give, I would be inclined to believe Enoch appears only in UK Emulation ritual, and not the Duncan or Webb iterations (I believe that ours is Webb, but I would need to check). In our first degree lecture, for example, Enoch is not mentioned. Therefore, there is at the very least a historical/modern dichotomy regarding ritual content, and it is also possible that Enoch appears in Scottish or York Rite, which raises the issue of if it's really Freemasonry, in that while everyone who is a Mason needs to go through the three degrees, everything else is optional (at least in the US). I'll have more to say once I get the background from those pages. MSJapan 18:12, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

As I thought, they occur either in the Scottish tradition (unclear) or in the York and/or Scottish Rites (as per the GLNB link), which are not the same as Craft Freemasonry. Therein lies my objection, as noted above. The assumption is made by the article that every Mason knows this legend and considers it important to Freemasonry, and that is not the case. MSJapan 18:21, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Good point. It is still freemason legend, but we should clarify that not all rites/schools, etc. use all of Masonic legends. Do you discuss how the lodge faces in your lectures?

Let me know what you think about editing in this direction to clarify that not all study all of masonic legends. -Visorstuff 18:28, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Looks like a system update took place. I've updated Hiram Abif to read that the legend is not used contemporarily in all masonic rituals. As I've studied the history or Masonry as it relates to other things, I believe this is an accurate point of view. Many things have changed over time. Let me know what you think. -Visorstuff 22:26, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

The blank was unintentional, and I think it was because of system issues. As long as the Enoch legend is put in a historical context, it's certainly legitimate. I'm still not sure that there's any relation whatsoever (I personally think they appear in unrelated contexts), but I would have to ask around to get more info.

The definition of "Masonic ritual" is also tricky. It usually refers to Blue Lodge ritual, and not ritual performed by any other appendant or related bodies. Therefore, generalizing about Masonry is a hard position to support; jurisdictions are independent entities, and what they do is up to them. The only similarities occur when the source is the same (Preston-Webb or Duncan for example.

Furthermore, it is important to consider the quality of research. Mackey, Pike, and others (such as Knight and Lomas) were very much concerned with creating a Masonic history that goes further back than objective historical proof shows, and I'm very sure they created connections that never really existed for purposes of "proving" a point. Therefore, to me, the status of The Hiram Key as nonfiction is debatable - the so-called "Masonic Testament" Knight and Lomas created is cobbled together from a lot of obscure and sometimes Lodge-specific ritual, so its application to Masonry in general is questionable. Neither Knight nor Lomas are trained historians, so their ability to judge critically vs. writing to make a point is debatable. Most Masons I know consider them to be a fun read, but not serious research. For example, in Hiram Key, the main point is that Freemasnory goes back to prehistoric Venus-worshipping cults, and while they use recent sources, the validity of the sources is unclear - i.e., they may not be accurate. There is certainly a lot more to be done on the topic, though. MSJapan 04:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Not a problem - after I relized the servers were having issues, I realized it was Wikipedia's blanking. Not a big deal. I appreciate your patience with my rants. :^)

How does the Hiram Abif article read now - I know it's not perfect, but it is moving in the right direction? I actually, from my own research, believe that Masonry does date back farther than the Modern Freemason movement. As I alluded to earlier, you can find remenants of the rituals in many older belief systems - from ancient egypt, to early christianity, to the middle ages, to Jewish legends. I disagree that it originated with Venus-worshipping cults, and have found little to support that. Just becuase rituals and such are similar, does not mean that is where the originated. It only means that it was seen as significant to groups of people who borrowed and used it in other settings. I'm undecided on your assessment of Knight and Lomas, but due to the lack of universally compiled work on Freemasonry, it is difficult to determine. You've definitely given a good argument, and I'll be more careful in my reading of them. -Visorstuff 16:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Better, although the connection between Enoch and Hiram should be at the head of section, not the very end, otherwise the purpose of the section is unclear (you've got Hiram, and all of a sudden Enoch pops up for no reason until you read the end). I fixed that, and also completely removed "nonfiction", as "revisionist historian" covers it. I don't like the K&L sentence structure, though, as I've had to add two qualifying commas to make the sentence break properly for reading. I'll fix it later if I get an idea. MSJapan 18:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I did some followup on the Cephas page, and apart from a reference to a gold plate and the Temple of Enoch in the 13th (as quoted in the paper), the other references are no longer correct (as far as the NMJ is concerned). MSJapan 01:32, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Question about Mormon Godhead

Is there a reason why you reverted the note that Mormonism denies monotheism on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints article? Thanks. JordanBarrett 21:20, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Because it is not accurate. It may seem so at face value, but it is not. Even, if you consider the concept of the trinity polytheistic, it is not accurate. The doctrine is that Latter-day Saints worship God and pray to the Eternal Father in the name of Jesus Christ.

How this doctrine is interpretated is subject to one's interpretation of other doctrines and culture.

Because of this, although Latter-day Saints generally believe that The Father, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are three distinct individuals and all are God (and Gods), they are not considered polytheistic (which is the belief and worship in multiple gods [8]) because of the doctrine stated above. The Supreme creator, God the Father is worshipped. If Mormonism is condisered polytheistic in this strain, then the rest of Christianity is moreso, as Latter-day Saints worship the father, not three Gods.

Second, the LDS strain of Mormonism is much more monotheistic than most critics allude to. Although allowing for the existence of other gods (in the bible, the terminology gods is sometimes translated angels - so there is some scholarly dispute on this point as to what it means within Mormonism), Latter-day Saints worship one Eternal God. The rest is speculation as to whether or not there are gods above or below the Father. We worship God the Father in the name of Christ.

Lastly, Some feel that Mormons are polytheistic because Latter-day Saints believe they can become 'gods' (see undefined definition above) and 'like' God (see theosis or deification). This does not neccessarily mean that they can become omnipotent creators of technicolor worlds with purple dinosaurs. It does mean that they will be co-inheritors of exaltation - something our mortal minds do not comprehend. President Hinckley was criticised when he told Mike Wallace that he understands the philosophy behind us becoming creator-gods, but that he doesn't think that the church teaches it. To me, that was funny, because those who realize that the doctrine is much more complex than how most culturally believe it, accepted his explanation, while others thought that is strange that President Hinckley would deny that. It was simply a clarification of doctrine.

To sum, most Mormons would consider themselves Monotheistic.

Questions for you: What is your relationship to Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement? How did you come up with this summation of Mormon belief? -Visorstuff 23:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

First of all, I appreciate your reply. You were concise and clear in your presentation of the Mormon view of the Godhead and yet gave a full representation as well. On another note, my relationship can be described in that I am not LDS - I am an Evangelical Christian. My summation of the Mormon view of the Godhead has come through a personal study of their Scriptures, literature, and theological teachings. My issue with Mormonism comes in their definition of "God" and "Monotheism". A biblical view of monotheism appears to add more than just "You shall have no other gods before me" (Ex 20:3) as if the issue is simply how many we are worshipping. It seems to also bring with it an understanding that there exists no other being similar to the one God. There exists, numerically, only one God and no more than one. If my definition of monotheism is correct, then Mormons are not monotheistic despite the fact that they only worship God the Father.

Futhermore, LDS, to keep from contradicting the idea that they are in fact not polytheistic must redefine what "God" means. For if both the Father and Jesus are God, why are both not worshipped? Does not God (singularly) deserve worship? Why only the Father? If Jesus is God but is not worshipped then LDS must redefine "God" as more of an attribute (or even property). That is, one can hold the attribute of deity, and this, in my mind, must be what the Jesus in Mormon thought does - he holds the property or attribute of divinity but must remain unlike God the Father. He becomes a lesser god than Heavenly Father, and if in turn he is said to be as fully God as God the Father then we again have the issue of why he does not receive worship. That's the stuff that has gone through my head as I have studied LDS literature. If monotheism is reduced to simply "the worship of one God", then (1) either Jesus is a lesser god (Arianism), or (2) Jesus is as fully God as God the Father but for some reason (which I am interested in hearing) does not receive worship. It also gets fun when we add the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost) into the mix. What are your thoughts? JordanBarrett 23:07, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I imagine this is the issue that other (and more truly) monotheistic religions such as Deism, Zorastrianism, Sikhism, Islam, Bahá'í, Taoism, Hinduism, have with Trinitarian Christianity (well, maybe less so with Hinduism). You may want to read each of their concepts of monotheism at Monotheism. It is a very interesting read. As an avid student of world religions, American Evangelical Protestantism is very healthy worldwide (and an important cultural/ideological U.S. export), but its belief set is relatively new to the Christian scene. Your definition and doctrine of monotheism is defined by American Evangelical Protestantism, which would also call Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox polytheistic because of what is labeled by Evangelicals 'Mary-worship.'

You stated 'My issue with Mormonism comes in their definition of 'God' and 'Monotheism. Let's not use Mormon definition or Evangelical Christian definitions. We both know the bible is interpreted differently by different groups (and I would love to hear more of a exposition on the 'biblical view of monotheism' that adds more to the first of the ten commandments: Thou shalt have no other gods before Me' or to the words of Christ: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind').

Using your definition, the only true 'monotheistic' Christian sect I know existing today in practice is the Jehovah's Witnesses. Certainly a belief in a tri-theistic god is polytheism. However, for now, let's use the Wikipedia definition, as this is Wikipedia. Monotheism is 'is the belief in the one, single, universal, all-encompassing God.' Polytheism is 'belief in, or worship of, multiple gods or divinities.'

Mormons and Evangelicals both hold a belief in 'the one, single, universal, all-encompassing God.' Mormons allow for other deities, but do not concern themselves with them. Outside of the Godhead, gods are speculatory. Evangelicals also allow for other deities. However, for the most part they come in the form of idols and possession worship. Evangelical's definitions of 'angels,' which by definition are lesser gods, from a non-christian perspective would be seen as worship in and belief of other gods.

In addition, Mormonism does not allow for equality of opposition between Christ and Satan, as do some forms of American Protestantism – meaning that some Protestant sects believe that Satan as pure evil, is opposite to Christ, which is pure goodness, righteousness and light. In Mormonism, Michael (the archangel) and Satan are the opposites (see Jude 1:9 and Revelations 12:7), something that has been lost in most American Protestantism sects.

The Mormon concept is well-explained by Paul in 1 Corinthains 8:4-6:

We know that an idol [is] nothing in the world, and that [there is] none other God but one.

For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,)

But to us [there is but] one God, the Father, of whom [are] all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom [are] all things, and we by him.

We are only concerned with worship of God. There may be other things that are gods, or other beings that are gods, or other things - toys, possessions and even angels - that can be worshipped, Mormons worship God.

Evangelicals use the word 'Trinity.' Mormons do not. They use the term 'Godhead' or God. The Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon plates state 'And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God.' This is not to say 'one person.'

The Mormon belief is 'The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.' (D&C 130:22).

In any case, Mormonism believes that the Father and the Son both have bodies of flesh and bone (not flesh and blood), and the Holy Ghost is a spirit – and they are distinct. Trinitariansim believes that the Son has a body of flesh and bones, but that the Father and Son are spirits – and they are not distinct. The only difference is that Mormonism believes in the distinctness of the persons within the Godhead.

Now, you raised some good questions in your reading of LDS Literature. You are obviously more thought-provoked than most. I'm impressed with your insight. What you are reading and wondering about is similar to the arguments on the matter within Traditional Christianity – or between denominations over the past 2000 years. What is the interpretation of the Niceane creed. In Mormonism, it is what is the interpretation of the Standard works on the matter. Here is a run down on the main schools of thought:

Some Mormons speculate that God is a priesthood office or a title. Like 'Father McKenzie' from the Beatles song 'Eleanor Rigby,' in this view, God would be a title that anyone can attain to based on righteousness and eternal progression. After all a child becomes like his Father –'I have said, Ye [are] gods; and all of you [are] children of the most High (Psa 82:6). 'Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device' (Acts 17:29). However, this view is speculatory.

Some Mormons believe that by 'divine investiture,' Christ is worshiped the same as the Father as worshipping Christ is worship in the Father. (similar to the concept you referred to as Arianism above). Some believe that the Father alone is worshipped and/or that Christ is merely the conduit to worship him. And Jehovah is the one who gave the law that he was to be worshipped, and Mormons believe that Jehovah is Jesus, not the Father (Elohim).

Some believe that Christ is now an exalted being, and has progressed to become a 'god' yet we still worship the Father. Some of this group believes that Christ has always been a god but also experienced mortality.

Some believe that Christ, as their savior is their God. By worshipping and giving honor to him, they are worshipping and giving honor to the Father. Or that because Christ and the Father (and the Holy Spirit) are God, and that is who we worship, but that we pray to the Father in the name of the Son.

Some combine parts of all of the above. I personally do.

And I haven't even addressed the concept of the Holy Ghost and/or Holy Spirit (which is as complex as it is in traditional Christianity).

You see, this is much more complex than an easy perusal. Mormonism is nearly 14 million and beliefs do differ within Mormonism. Most Mormons go by the stated doctrinal statements and don't concern themselves with the speculative details. Others dig into the doctrine and try to figure it out, which is likely what you've read. Look past their speculation and into the points they are trying to make by it, and then you'll understand the culture of Mormonism, but I wouldn't go to them to understand the doctrines of Mormonism.

I modified the statement above. I was hasty to type it, and did so improperly. Hope this helps, and I am enjoying this dialogue. I look forward to your response. -Visorstuff 01:01, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Just a quick note that I haven't bailed on ya. Things have been quite busy since your reply, and I should be able to reply as well in the next few days. Thanks for your patience. JordanBarrett 05:20, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I am back. I appreciated your thoughts above, but I do have some questions, as well as some concerns. First, I would appreciate if you could expand on why you found my definition of monotheism to only encompass JWs. My hunch is that I either wasn't clear or that you may misunderstand the doctrine of the Trinity. I'm confused as to how you drew that conclusion.

At any rate, if we use Wikipedia's definition of polytheism, then I still don't see how this helps the LDS view of the Godhead. It states, "belief in... multiple gods or divinities." If Mormonism is correct, and if Jesus is a God and Heavenly Father is another God, then we have two divinities (or "multiple gods"). Futhermore, you said that "Mormons allow for other deities." Does this not imply a polytheistic belief despite who you worship? Again, the definition of monotheism does not appear to be limited to "how many gods do you worship", but also "how many gods do you believe exists?". Maybe I am being oversimplistic.

I'm curious why you believe that Evangelicals also allow for other deities? Evangelicalism is what it is because of a strong belief in Trinitarian theology which explicitly denies the existence of any other deity. Perhaps you've read those who say this and want to fall under the umbrella of Evangelicalism? I'm interested where this came from. Lastly, Angelology in Evangelical theology does not imply other deities. They are creatures, that is, they are created while God is not and this - especially in Evangelical theology, although not in LDS theology - adds a huge chasm between God and man. Another time, though. :)

I have seen LDS often cite 1 Cor 8:4-6. Personally, I think LDS put their own spin on what Paul meant. The "to us" factor does not imply as some LDS want it to that other deities existed (or exist) although Paul says that for Christians they don't. He explicitly states, "There is non other God but one." In other words, no other God exists. The idea of "gods many, and lords many" he says "though there be that are called gods" in the sense that they are simply called gods but that is it. Turning to Galatians 4:8 Paul explains that they were enslaved to those who "by nature" were not gods. This is important, for I find that his thought continues in 1 Cor 8 in that "by nature" these so-called gods are nothing for for us - for Christians - for what's true - there is no God but one.

I appreciate the other comments you made, especially admitting that not all LDS agree on who to worship. I think it's good when people from any faith can admit that all do not agree as is evident in my own faith. I do apologize for not answering all of your comments. I'm afraid this would get too long and that too many rabbit trails would be produced. Are you up for staying on the topic of the Godhead and monotheism? I think there is still a lot to be discussed and dealt with and I'm interested in going further with that.

A last question would be this: Being that Jesus is Jehovah, the God of the OT, why do LDS not worship him anymore? Going with this theological conviction, Jesus was clearly worshipped in the OT by Israel. Maybe this is what Mormonism's divine investiture is all about, but I think this brings up problems. In the NT, Heavenly Father is then worshipped and Jesus is not. Are you familiar with Gnosticism? or even Marcionism? I'm not saying this is exactly like one of those two (or even both). Yet, Mormonism's distinction between the God of the OT and the God of the NT (again, in my mind, two Gods, both were worshipped = polytheism) reeks of Gnostic belief. Although Marcion rejected the God of the OT (which LDS don't), he still made a clear distinction between the two whereas early Christianity affirmed that the God presented in the OT and NT are the same God, nothing different. Just thinking out loud here. I look forward to your thoughts. JordanBarrett 20:34, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

One last question - could you explain to me your concept of the Trinity, even if you believe it's contradictory? If so, why? If you believe it's false, why? Perhaps this will have to wait for a later time, but I want to know what it is I'm dealing with regarding your thought on the Trinity. That can make a big difference in my replies. Thanks. JordanBarrett 20:37, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

My apologies in the tardiness of response. I've been traveling quite a bit over the past several weeks, and that combined with a new child... well you get the idea.

Let me take your thought one-by-one.

1 - Jehovah Witnesses as only monotheists within Christianity. By your definition, that Monotheism is defined by a belief in "one God" they are. Trinitarianism is dualistic in essense. One God embodied in three (or two, depending on sect belief) forms, is the same as a being with three different manifestations, and three forms, and therefore is, like buddhism, multiple representations of a force or being that is supernatural and is therefore polytheistic in nature, according to that definition. JWs (I apologize in advance for the abbreviation to those who may be offended) believe that there is one being, God, and that Christ is the Son of God, but not a God. Therefore according to their theology, they are monothestic. Once you have God manifesting himself to Christ, you have two beings, even if they eminate from the same force and again is polytheistic. I hope this makes sense. Therefore, by Wikipedia's standards, Christianity, aside from JWs are polytheistic: as Christianity believes in "multiple gods or divinities" or at least multiple manifestations of divinity acting in concert, but seperately. Christians all use the word "they" implying multiple, regardless of "dogma," or Niceanic "doctrine" in application they are multiple.

2- Second you wrote: "If Mormonism is correct, and if Jesus is a God and Heavenly Father is another God, then we have two divinities (or "multiple gods")." To be completely honest. Probably so. But it is not that different than what was explained above in regard to traditional christianity. Mormons believe they have seperate bodies. You believe they have seperate manifestations. Both emply different entities.

3-Polytheism refers directly to worship of other beings than one god. That is why Hinduism and others are considered monotheistic religions, as stated above. Many biblical scholars believe that the original hebrew/abrahamic religion was polytheistic - the religion that we both descend from. The beauty in this is that monotheism came to be, according to legend, when Abraham made a pact to only worship one god - Jehovah - rather than any others or idols. That seems very basic, but the bible quotes God as saying that we shouldn't have any other gods before Jehovah (not that there are no others). I could try to wax eloquent about the deuteronomists and King Josiah's reforms, but I'll abstain.

4-You mention that angels are created by god and/or are subordinate to God. Would you consider Greek mythologoy monotheistic then? Most polytheistic religions believe in a main or father god who created or fathered other gods, as is the case with Zeus. Angels often equate to gods in mormon theology, just their ministration is different. Any Mormon who believes they can become a "god" still believes that he will be subordinate to the Father and Christ, and was created by them. Apparently evangelical's angelogy and Mormon's "gods" can be equated.

Hopefully I answered the rest of the questions you had in the body of this answer. This has been a good discussion. I hope it continues. -Visorstuff 23:37, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey - sorry I have once again taken so long. I was out of town, and interestingly enough part of that was at the Society of Mormon Philosophy and Theology. It was a great experience, and yet another post.

I agree with you that if you simply require the Godhead to be viewed through a monotheistic lense then it includes more than just Evangelicals. However, this is what I'm trying to say here - Mormons and Evangelicals agree that there are 3 persons in the Godhead. Granted, I would say they aren't beings, while you would agree they are. Where we begin to take different roads is how we define their unity. My belief and conviction is to preserve Judaic monotheism, from which Christianity has it's roots. I think the term "many biblical scholars" is overstated. There have been very few that believe 1st century Judaism was in fact polytheistic, however, I think the majority of scholarship has actually refuted this idea (see esp. books by Larry Hurtado). There is one and only one God, meaning he is the only being that exists, is to be worshipped, and there is no other. The Christian belief is allowing three persons to exist within the one being of God. So, I define their unity ontologically, whereas LDS theology won't.

You mentioned that "You believe they have seperate manifestations." This is actually not the case. Or, I guess I would say, I wouldn't word it that way. "Manifestations" implies that the one God manifests himself through different modes or manifestations, and in my mind this implies modalism which I find heretical (i.e., unbiblical). Maybe I'm meaning the same thing you meant, but I would say that God has revealed himself through the three persons, all of which are distinct from one another, yet are not separate beings or personages (in the LDS sense of the latter term).

My fear here is that you have a misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. I'm not exactly sure where you're gathering your information. For example, if you gather it from Unitarian sources, this would be incorrect information. If you gather it from Oneness Pentecostal or even other so-called Christian churches then this would also give you a wrong view of what we believe. Although the doctrine may be approached different in the East than is the West (or in other terms, a Latin or Social Trinity), they all end up affirming that there is one God and three persons. Hopefully this makes some sense. Thanks for your patience. JordanBarrett 21:09, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

No big deal at all, but if you reply please leave a note here. If not, that's totally cool and know that I enjoyed our conversation. I pray that you continue searching after God, his truth, and through his Spirit. Blessings, JordanBarrett 04:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Mormon missionaries merge

Visorstuff, just wanted to let you know that I have proposed merging Mormon missionary with Mormon missionaries. I noticed you have contributed to these pages in the past, so please stop by one of the article's talk pages and leave your input on the merge. Thanks! --Hetar 07:36, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I've responded with my opninion at Talk:Mormon missionaries -Visorstuff 23:43, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Rootpage - help please with straw poll

You asked how you could help get Root page through. We're struggling a bit and keen to finalise the idea and get it in place. You can help by giving your support in the straw poll at Talk:Root page and by giving your opinions on whether we allow multiple levels and whether we put a 'backlink' at the top of a page (see recent objections there). --Lindosland 01:02, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Discussion moved from Talk: Joseph Smith, Jr. (Sock puppetry accusations)

I really have little hope that any discussion with you will produce any of the results that it should. This is indicated right in the message that I am now replying to:

• (bcatt): You know, you aren't doing a very good job as an admin if you hold double standards based on what religion an editor is (something I've seen frm you in other issues on this article as well)
• (visorstuff): This is a personal attack directed towards me...It is frankly immature to repay my offered help in this way (no offense meant, just stating the facts)

Hmmm...so, if I make a valid point that you are engaging in questionable practices due to your bias (which is especially disruptive due to your "authority" on wikipedia, that is a personal attack...but if you call me immature in an attempt to "shoot the messenger", that is not a personal attack? Hmm, I wonder where I get the impression that you have double standards? Maybe because you put your double standards on clear display in response to my pointing them out?

Dispute it if you want, I am prepared to go through the history and show how you let Storm Rider get away with repeated nasty ad hominem attacks and biting of newcomers, and cookiecapers incivilities, and ignored Trodel's disruptive behaviour, then, instead of properly reprimanding them, you made excuses for them, and reprimanded me for not bending myself to suit them...and on top of that, you threatened that you had "noted my behaviour" and implied that you had informed other admins that I was "behaving badly" (though I would like to know why these other admins were not informed of storm Rider's behaviour which warranted a block, since - surprise, surprise! - he never once stopped his vicious attacks and has been extremely and intentionally disruptive in an attempt to derail discussion and therefore prevent NPOV edits to the article) as though I was doing something inappropriate by trying to introduce the world outside of Mormonism into the article. And just so you know, Mormon editors may consider you "helpful", but you in no way "helped" me, so don't congratulate yourself for it. bcatt 04:05, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I am saddened to read that you do not want, or have thought, that I have been trying to help. I was hoping that you would assume good faith. In any case, I take this accusation very seriously as my wikipedia duties have been directed in the area you suggest I am violating. Therefore, I am asking other Non-mormon admins to step in. I will be asking those who have been with Wikipedia for a long time for help - those who are trusted in the community - and who have built solid reputations for helping settle disputes and for staying neutral. You'll likely notice them over the next few days.

Please note, I hold nothing against you, nor was my intent to "reprimand" you or "defend" mormon editors. I've made plenty of Mormon editors unhappy with me, as I've sought to point them away from cultural doctrines that are promulgated taht are not supported by LDS scripture or church teachings - some of which you have re-introduced into the article, and are under dispute currently.

Your reaction to my offering of help and to track down a sockpuppet suprised me. An offer to help. That is all it was, and I did find your response impatient, temper-filled and immature. I'm sure that is not who you are as a person, but that the situation is bringing out that side of your personality. Please accept the comments with the intent of which they are meant - to help you not to over-react as others do. Just because I don't suggest the same (which I have done via email to other editors) publicly to others does not mean I do not hold them up to the same standards. -Visorstuff 22:33, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Tiresome

A member of your faction is trolling again. Are you going to do anything about it this time? Or are you going to make excuses, and in effect encourage them to continue violating wikipedia policy? Maybe you are going to employ double standards by failing to address the immaturity involved in these kinds of behaviours, even though you were quick to label me as immature for pointing out that you do not address the disruptive behaviours of your faction? bcatt 15:23, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Now more members of your faction are joining in with a mobbing of verbal violence in order to persecute me (to use the terminology they like to use in regards to those who oppose(d) Smith)...are you going to do anything about it? This is a gross violation of wikipedia policy. bcatt 23:10, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

As you see my offer for help as mobbing, etc. as I stated above, I am asking trusted (by all) Wikipedians to help. This whole situation is mind-boggling to me, as the page was relatively stable until recently, and now there are many glaring errors and POV from both sides. In this case, the dialogues have not made this page better (as all involved know) but much, much worse. Happy editing, and I will still monitor the article, but as a whole am recusing myself from it for a time due to your accusation of my misuse of my administrative powers. If others do not think I've misused those powers I think I'll be very upset that i've recused myself for the time being, and will not likely not ever recuse myself again. -Visorstuff 22:33, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Joseph Smith

I took a quick look at the Joseph Smith talk page and added a couple comments there. I'm not going to take the time to read up on the whole history right now, but just reading the last couple days gave me a feel for what's happening. I'll try to stay involved for at least a few days and see how things shape up. Thanks for calling my attention to it; I only hope I can help. Wesley 17:10, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure you can help. Bringing a non-Mormon admin can only help - especially one who is respected across wikipedia as you are (and who has been around since this all began). I really think that the page has derailed, and that the content is getting worse as a result of the interactions. As you know, for the past year, I monitor LDS pages mostly to help clear up confusion, fix doctrinal mistakes (both Mormon and non-Mormon) and try to help guide discussions. It is unfortunate that in this case, I've been labeled as a contributor to the problems when we've worked so hard to build a group of editors that will work toward NPOV and inclusion. I feel that this interaction has led to the few non-LDS editors we've recurited to give up on the LDSM project (WP:LDS), just as we had good collaboration going. Perhaps I shouldn't have pushed so hard to get non-LDS to edit in the project, perhaps it is just an unfortunate series of events, and perhaps they will return. In any case, this is a defining moment in the WP:LDS and to be honest, I can't believe this small dispute on a relatively stable page until a few months ago has turned into this.

Also, as to the accusation of my misuse of admin powers, I would appreciate your thoughts on that as well. As I stated earlier, I take this suggestion seriously. Thanks again. -Visorstuff 22:13, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I've taken a quick look through the recent part of this talk page, and haven't managed to find any serious accusations. I did see where bcatt thought you weren't doing enough to "rein in" or scold fellow LDS members and were asking her to do all the accomodating. In my mind, that isn't a use of admin powers, good or bad, because anyone can suggest that people take a wikiholiday, or that this or that person compromise more. Such suggestions from and admin may or may not carry more weight than when coming from others. In my experience, they often don't carry extra weight, but that might be partly because I often work with other admins so that's not a big differentiator. Abuse of admin powers would (just in my opinion) include things like blocking a user because you disliked the user and/or their POV, protecting or unprotecting a page as it suited your side of a debate, that sort of thing. And of course violating the 3RR or other Wikipedia policies would be a violation of wikipedia policy and should be taken seriously, perhaps all the more so if the violation is by an admin, but would not be an abuse of admin privileges; that sort of thing is an abuse of general user privileges, since any editor can violate the 3RR. So those are my off the cuff thoughts on that subject. Hope you find it helpful. Wesley 12:56, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Tied up

Visorstuff, I'm so grateful that you thought of me as a potentially helpful mediator in your conflict; but I've not had time recently to do anything as a Wikipedian. I continue to think that the project is worthwhile, and a serious social experiment, but I have set limits on myself that I dare not go past for the present, lest I neglect issues that are more pressing. I sincerely hope that you'll find the help that you are looking for. — Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 22:44, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

JS mediation, etc

Don't get me wrong, I don't think mediation would be a bad idea, by any means, I'm just concerned that the more you try to press her with a limited range of options, the more she'll object. I did also try to reassure her as to the nature of mediation. I see no reason why you shouldn't edit the article. If I were you, I'd try to avoid removing anything significant for the time being; in preference, try to NPOVify it, add a {{fact}} template, or add a discrete item on the talk page asking for a reference, or describing why it's problematic as it stands, and see if that gets better results. Alai 18:45, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Visor, not everyone has accepted mediation as of today, March 29th. It appears we have until April 6th before the mediation request gets bounced by the committee for lack of agreement between all the participants. Do you think we should go directly to arbitration? Without some type of definitive conclusion, I see the situation devolving into what it was before. I have taken two vacations and I don't think I will be willing to back off again. I will keep my emotions in check, but I will not allow edits without references or without some basis in fact or reality. WIKI is too important for it to be dominated by those without some expertise in a chosen field/article. Storm Rider ^(talk) 21:13, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Only two active Wikipedians haven't signed on board - FreedominThought and Bcatt. Of the 21 who could, 3 are not active and those 2 look like they'll decline. I do think the issues are important enough to get resolved, so, yes, the next step is arbitration. Bcatt and FreedominThought and the Mormon and ex-Mormon and other editors that are not Mormon have raised important questions that need to be resolved.

On a side note, of the 21 editors involved on the page that have been invited to the mediation 16 have agreed it needs it (3 will not as they are not active), so I think the committee will take that into account. Getting sixteen editors to agree to a mediation is quite an accomplishment for the page (and Wikipedia) - and shows that these editors realize the importance of deciding on the issues raised.

Of these 21 editors, 11 are either confirmed or likely LDS, 5 are confirmed not LDS, at least 1 is an exmormon (probably two), and 4 are unknown, but appear that they are not Mormon. We've got a good balance of folks who are willing to be involved, and shows the efforts of WP:LDS to be inclusive of all Wikipedians (one of the goals of the project early on). It is much appreciated that they have agreed to participate. Now I just hope those two agree to the mediation, as these are important issues. -Visorstuff 22:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Joseph Smith, Jr.

A request for mediation has been filed with the Mediation Committee that lists you as a party. The Mediation Committee requires that all parties listed in a mediation must be notified of the mediation. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Joseph Smith, Jr., and indicate whether you agree or refuse to mediate. If you are unfamiliar with mediation, please refer to Wikipedia:Mediation. There are only seven days for everyone to agree, so please check as soon as possible.

I think you're missing a key parameter there... (Number 2, that is.) Alai 19:56, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing - I'll add in and re-do. I really don't have time for this today, but needs to be done. -Visorstuff 20:01, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey, Visorstuff. I just noticed the conflict at this article and wanted to let you know that if you could use another head who'd like to work towards making it neutral, I'd be glad to help. I don't really want to edit the article (I don't want to get involved in the conflict, so to speak), but I could offer my opinion on any disputes. I have training in both Linguistics and History, for what it matters. The only reservation I have about getting involved is that I would want to make particular care that Alienus doesn't feel antagonized by me; as you may have noticed, he seems to sometimes get somewhat zealous in his defense of Anti-Mormon content that I delete for not being notable, or that I try to keep NPOV as much as possible (the Ex-Mormon Forum incident is such an example).

One issue I picked up on I'll offer some advice on here:

• Polygyny: That form of polygamy in which one man has several wives at the same time; plurality of wives (or concubines).
• Polygamy: Marriage with several, or more than one, at once; plurality of spouses; the practice or custom according to which one man has several wives (distinctively called polygyny), or one woman several husbands (polyandry), at the same time. Most commonly used of the former.

Both these definitions are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, and should make it clear that while "polygamy" is accurate, "polygyny" is more accurate by virtue of its being more specific. Anyway, if there's anything I can do, just send me a note. The Jade Knight 07:02, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for making me aware of the mediation request, which I wholeheartedly support. On a side note, while I think both sides have some good points to make in the whole issue, the question of you "abusing admin power" is just garbage. Sorry that it got tagged onto this; I, for one, have always appreciated your level-headedness (is that a word?) and willingness to explain things to other editors. At any rate, I'm looking forward to finally putting some of these disputes to rest so we can focus time on the other articles. Thanks for your patience. Tijuana Brass 00:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah, the name. I was using the old one since I was 13 or so and needed a name for America Online that didn't end with a bunch of numbers. But it didn't seem quite... ah... academic enough for my current needs, so I changed it. Of course, one could make a very good argument that my current name doesn't inspire images of higher education either. What can you do. Tijuana Brass 20:33, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Too funny - I've often thought of changing my user name as well, but it has stuck. Now its all about brand recognition and reputation. I like the new name.

I also look forward to putting this dispute behind us. I think that getting this mediated will help get the article more NPOV and will be better off for the future of the WP:LDS - for Mormon, ex-Mormon and non-Mormon editors alike. -Visorstuff 22:44, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, now that the Mediation request is refused, ready to RfC it? Seems like a logical next step.`Tijuana Brass 03:18, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Not sure - I've actually considered re-filing the request for myself and Bcatt (and Storm Rider). Its already gone up for RfC, but with no takers. If I don't refile the request, I may end up going straight to arbitration, depending on Bcatt's apparent wikiholiday. If this really is an important issue to her, I'm sure she'll agree to it. -Visorstuff 21:45, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I suspect that Bcatt's recent holiday from WIKI will be ended now that the Mediation has been rejected. It is nice to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. It would be wise to do all that is necessary to prepare to move quickly to an RfC should things return to the condition of our tortuous recent past. Let me know if there is some way I can help. Storm Rider ^(talk) 19:00, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

We'll see. I'm fine either way at this point. I am dumbfounded though at her comment that the RfM was not "honest." I can't figure out how it is not honest. I've read and re-read the request. Personally, I think it's funny that she said "It's all fine and dandy that you added it, but the request is still based on mischaracterization of events, as well as complete fabrications. In case you haven't noticed, Visorstuff, I have a personal policy of being honest, which means I also don't endorse lies." Yet she has edited and signed her name to "mischaracterizations of events" in Smith's life, added in "complete fabrications" and have "endorsed lies" in her understanding of history by adding material that is accurate, let alone is not historically sound. Just because it referenceable (by Southpark, etc.) does not mean it is based in any sort of truth. And then there are her accusations that I've misued admin power, which have been dismissed as false. I can't understand where she is coming from, but I'd like to.

I do wish her luck, I just don't understand the rationale. It has taught me to not edit those things that I don't understand, as I'm not sure there is much difference between ignorance and fabrication in the long run. Both are not based in truth.

She's a strong and gifted writer, and sees the POV items we sometimes miss. I think had she approached the page (and editors) a bit differently, she could have made a solid contribution to it, and helped make it a featured article, instead of the state it is in now. I'd like to get back to that goal. I'm trying to pull research on the topic now, and will work to get the article where it should be. If we can get editors to place citation and fact check claims everywhere that needs to be checked, that would be a good first step. -Visorstuff 21:45, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I get the feeling that it's not going to die down that easily, but far stranger things have happened. I think there's quite a few of us still following the whole issue closely. Arbitration seems likely to me, and there's plenty of parties who could participate. Ahh, wikibureaucracy! Tijuana Brass 01:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I plan to wait until she comes back to discuss with her what she feels best next steps will be. However, if she refuses to work with me on the issues, then I'll go to arbitration to see if they will hear the case. Any other suggestions? -Visorstuff 19:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... continued patience? I like having the backup of arbitration, myself, so it sounds good to me. Really, as an ex-Mormon-gone-Protestant-minister who still loves Mormonism, I guess I have an interest in seeing both "sides" fairly represented, and I just don't seem to see the problems being as big as some people have made them out to be. At any rate, thanks for keeping us up to date. Tijuana Brass 05:06, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Idolatry in Christianity

There's a question from someone anonymous about the LDS position on idolatry in Christianity at Talk:Idolatry in Christianity that I thought you might be able to answer, if you have the time. Wesley 13:24, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll take a look - been a busy last two days... -Visorstuff 22:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Root Page concept - help us please

Hi, I note that you said you loved this idea and asked how you could help. The idea is now under attack despite months of effort my myself and User:Light current and numerous changes that overcome objections. We think we now have a very neat system in action, using special templates, which you can see in action in several places. Would you please take a look and consider supporting us by voting to keep at the link given on Wikipedia talk:Root page --Lindosland 17:58, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I need more time to decide this issue, Lindosland, I'm sorry. I need more time to study out the issue before voting. I support the root page concept, but I'm not sure I agree with the subpage structure. There must be a better way. I actually like the "list" pages better than, or in conjuction with the categorization system, but the sub-page structure is not wise on Wikipedia, as we've already experienced. I'll need more time to decide this issue, and I'm afraid that it may be decided upon before I have a strong enough opinion on the matter. I do believe in the root page concept, and appreciate your hard work on the project. Please keep me informed of the status of the request. My apologies in advance, I think I'll abstain from voting at this point. -Visorstuff 21:52, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Exmormonism

Anonymous user 70.160.56.157 keeps linkspamming the article on Exmormonism. I have given several reasons why the link does not belong in the article on the talk page there, but the user has ceased to discuss and instead continues to re-add the link without discussion. Have any suggestions as to what I should do? The Jade Knight 20:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I've dropped a note at the page, reverting and I'll leave a note on his user page. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. If this continues to happen, we'll look into how to compromise/get him to obey the rules of the community. -Visorstuff 13:32, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Need a comment

Have a favor to ask, if you have a few minutes (I know you mentioned being busy lately). I recently nominated Hardy Jackson for deletion. Jackson was a Mississippi resident that was frequently interviewed by the media following Hurricane Katrina, but I didn't consider him to be of sufficient note to merit a Wikipedia article. The vote has gained more attention than I expected, and seems to have generated some hard feelings for some people.

Since I respect your ability to keep a cool head and make good judgments on POV disputes, could you take a look at the article and tell me what you make of it? It's short, so it shouldn't take too long. Also, lest I be accused of spamming other Wikipedians to try and garner votes for any one side, it may be better if you didn't vote yourself — I just wanted an outside opinion from a trusted editors.

I understand if you don't have the time. Thanks. Tijuana Brass 16:51, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

It is an interesting case to read, but not beneficial to Wikipedia. Rather, info should be taken from it and merged into some type of survivors or effect article - as the story is unusual. Just my two cents. -Visorstuff 18:03, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, I appreciate it. Tijuana Brass 16:20, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Attention: LDS Categories up for deletion or movement

Visorstuff, the following categories have been targeted for deletion or movement by User:Bhoeble. Please express your opinions ASAP. Thank you. WBardwin 08:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

5.2.22 Category:Latter Day Saint history to Category:History of Mormonism 5.2.23 Category:Latter Day Saint History Books to Category:History books about Mormonism 5.2.24 Category:Latter Day Saint Historians to Category:Historians of Mormonism

Timeline of Christian missions

Would you mind adding this article to your watchlist? Editors there have an occasional tendancy to, quietly, remove the LDS entry in the 19th century. Thank you. WBardwin 01:28, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Citations

Is there a Wikipedia guideline on creating a Wikipedia article just for the sake of having a citation to use in another Wikipedia article? Timothy 2066 seems to have done this with Official Statements of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to have a citation for his statement on the Blacks and Mormonism article. The Jade Knight 01:39, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes - it needs to go up for speedy deletion, but with the info saved elsewhere, IMHO. No citations. Context is wrong. Good info, but not in right place. -Visorstuff 21:25, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

LDS Cult issue again

Visorstuff - User:Hypernick1980 just left the Category:Cult on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I promptly reverted. From his user page, he's a Utah kid from Clinton. I left a message referring him to the cult pages/issues that Tom worked very hard on, and suggested that he begin discussions there. As Tom is away, are you monitoring this issue? Who else was involved? I've copied our notes on my talk page for reference. Best wishes. WBardwin 06:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi - I've not monitored the issue in depth for some time, as I thought the in-article explanation would suffice. Not sure I have the time and energy to continue to monitor that specific article for this. I'll re-add to my watchlist, however. -Visorstuff 23:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Picture on Garment Talk page

Visor, do you know how to remove the "nightie" picture currently associated with the talk page on Mormon garment? I could not find a way to do. It is that silly pink nightie that keeps coming back to the page. Thanks. Storm Rider ^(talk) 00:55, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

We cannot remove the photo from Wikipedia, but we could from the talk page. As I placed it there, I'll remove, and instead I'll place a link to the image for historical reasons. -Visorstuff 23:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the note on my userpage - work/family/church is crazy so I can't be on as much but I am throwing in my 2 cents when I can. I noticed bcatt completely disappeared during my avoidance of the JS page - what happened? I made som recent edits to the CJCLDS page that you may want to review.

talk page tangents

Awesome man. I think everyone should be able to argue out their views with each other frankly while remaining personally friendly and decent, which I think has been the case. - Reaverdrop 23:09, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Blacks and the priesthood

I didn't want to make that subject any longer than it was, but your last response was awesome. I feel unworthy to edit articles related to the church now, but at least I know they're in good hands. Aranhamo 21:43, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I've responded on your talk page. Please don't leave Wikipedia or the WP:LDS because of my faults, which are many. I really don't try to be condescending... -Visorstuff 22:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Liahona

I've been reading this Russian's talk page and he says that in his religion, a moral compass is like a device called the Liahona. I saw that you were Mormon, so I thought I would ask. Is the Russian right? Here's a link to his talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kaspersky_Trust

It's at the very bottom. unsigned by User:Playmate

I think you are misreading the post of Kaspersky. You should ask him to clarify his religion and for clarification on what he means. I don't speak russian, so am not familiar with the responses. I'll ask my wife or brother in law to interpret, but you should just ask the source.

Metaphorically, the Liahona (some sort of compass found by Lehi, a prophet in the Book of Mormon, consisting of a brass ball with two spindles that pointed the way that Lehi and his family should go, and it worked by faith and obedience, similar to Urim and Thummim [9]) can be compared to a moral compass. Liahona has its roots in Hebrew, and some scholars have demonstrated it means 'Of God is light' or 'from God is light' or something similar. For more about the Liahona, please visit this link or read the book of mormon. Interestingly enough, it is not called the Liahona in the text of the Book of Mormon until the Book of Alma [10]. Interesting tidbit. Hope this helps - if not, feel free to ask more questions. -Visorstuff 05:31, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

rfa

Thanks for the support on my RFA. Unfortunately, it did not achieve consensus. I look forward to your support in a couple months when I apply again. Holler at me if you need anything. ⇒ SWATJester ^Ready Aim _Fire! 19:21, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Exmormonism

I'd be glad to help with the exmormon and mormon subjects. Maybe I'll be better able to convince some to edit the "WP way" without being called a Mormon POV pusher. Haven't looked at any recent additions yet, but personal anecdotes alone would seem likely to run afoul of WP:NOR.

Would you be willing to take a look at Jesus-Myth? The article is intended to discuss the idea that Jesus was not an actual person who lived in first-century Palestine, but someone that people made up based on various Jewish prophecies and pagan myths, or maybe some other person that than had these myths tacked onto him. The main editing issues are how much criticism of the idea to include, and whether to include such criticism interspersed throughout the article, in its own section, or not at all, or just a brief mention that there is criticism; which material requires citations to be in the article; how good citations should be to "count" (i.e. www.bede.org is described as a personal web site that references several decent sources); and the typical accusations of POV pushing both ways. Though not recently discussed much, a background issue is how to divide material between this article and Historicity of Jesus. Any help would be appreciated. Wesley 20:26, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Definitely. I'll check it out later this afternoon. Looks in need of a lot of citation work at first glance. -Visorstuff 21:34, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for Thanks

It's really not a problem. I wanted to take the existing article and pull all bias (instead of only bias for one side or the other), but the current controversy is making that difficult. The article is readable only if one is familiar with it, but attempts to improve readability seem to be thwarted for the moment as well. Hopefully we can build a good article in the coming weeks. I think it's human nature to pre-judge people (not that it's necessarily a bad thing, since it was originally a defense mechanism if I remember correctly), and there have been misunderstandings among both Mormons and ExMormons editing the article. Unsigned by User:Dianelowe

Nice one.

Dude you're smoking dope. Read :"why we believe" by Michael Shermer. Or Maybe "How we know what isn't so." Your coincidences add to up wishful thinking. If you want the truth, as you claim you need to want it more than you want the church to be true. You may be surprised. I sure was. You cannot find the truth if you already think you’re right. Before you start your search for truth you need to ask yourself a few questions. 1: What would make the church false? (For me it was basically that the church isn’t what it claims it is.) 2. If Joseph Smith lied, would I want to know? 3: If Joseph Smith lied, how would I know? It’s not easy after you find the truth, but it is worth it. unsigned by User:65.208.108.89

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although its not specifically named in the Word of Wisdom, I don't smoke Dope.

Incidentally, Shermer's book is called "Why People Believe Weird Things, How We Believe" and if I recall, there is a series of them, no (at least two or three if I remember correctly)? And Thomas Gilovich is a decent author, but that topic is not of great interest to me. Well. Hmmm. Don't quite know what to say. I don't think that convinces me that my own wishful thinking leads to my belief system (which is what I assume your point was by those particular sources).

Incidentally, have you read "A Short History of Nearly Everything, " by Bill Bryson [11]? Its also a pretty good one that actually brings in science. It helps readers understand how theories such as big bang and evolution are created, how man evolved from an amoeba to a mammal, and more. Very good book written from the standpoint of a scientist. I keep it in my entertainment center. I also like Journal of Discources and am currently in Volume 3 of history of the church again (and of course my daily scripture study). Any others you recommend? I'm always looking for a good book, but it may have to wait until after I'm done with Volume 6. ;^)

My guess is that I have thoroughly studied every issue you have with Mormonism and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I very much doubt you have any "new" information to shed light on. The difference is that I have spent time with the primary documents - reading primary sources whether in libraries or in the Church Historical Office and Church Archives. I've cut through the speculative conclusions of many historians when there are places that no conclusions are to be made. I doubt you have taken the same effort, but instead, you like many others probably rely on the work of others (secondary or tertiary sources). Some church critics have called it "blind obedience" when church members rely on others for information to determine what they believe and how they act, so then why do you do it as well? Of course I could be wrong. But I doubt it from reading your note to me. Most arguments don't seperate, for example, the cultural beliefs with the church doctrines. You probably still think the plan of salvation chart shown to you by some sunday school teacher reflects church doctrine. Or that the standard works say that a deacon's responsibility is to pass the sacrament. But those are topics for other discussion. But yes, I have asked myself those questions, and I have found some answers. Others I do expect any answers on.

Let me clarify something about your comment: "You cannot find the truth if you already think you’re right." I have studied the church from every angle I could/can. I know there are many things that I don't know for sure - even about the church - and that most members assume they know something about a particular doctrine when in fact nothing has been taught on the matter. When you have experienced what I have, you cannot doubt the church's truthfulness. I know the church is true - and not just saying that as many missionaries do because of a good warm feeling. However, I do rely on my testimony from the Holy Ghost. Personal revelation is a very, very real thing to me. As Brigham Young said "to know, one must experience" - which you apparently have not. You can still find out - it takes great effort, but it is your choice.

I have no hard feelings for you and find it interesting that you have spent time and effort on me - someone of no consequence. I normally would not be of sufficient importance to attract your attention, aside from my belief in the Mormonism. It is simply amazing that you've taken time out of your day to let me know you disagree with my belief. Thank-you for the compliment.

There are more answers to your questions than you realize in primary documents. Try cutting past the cultural teachings and folklore of Mormonism (as you know, Mormonism is full of it) and study the primary sources. Yes it may be dry to read page after page of misspellings in journals, newspapers and letters. I believe reading primary sources will help. Of course, you can rely on the "testimony" of others, as you seem to be doing. But, again, I call that "blind obedience." -Visorstuff 21:54, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Reverts on B of M

Hey, Visorstuff, you can revert mine edit to yours, if you like, but the IP guy was just putting "if it can be believed" and other crap like that all through the article, and I really didn't feel that it was so much NPOV as his/her own POV. Bo-Lingua 19:03, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

You did better than I - and went back to a version that was more appropriate. I was being generous. Keep up the good work. -Visorstuff 20:15, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

exmormon

Took a look at the article. It needs a lot of work: I added {{fact}] tags to about a half dozen spots, and removed some inappropriate links. Let me know if any of my edits get reverted on that. ⇒ SWATJester ^Ready Aim _Fire! 20:52, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Need some additional opinions

Visor, if you've got time, I'd value your input on some changes I've made to Criticism of Mormonism. I worked about halfway through it, trying to work towards neutrality (as you've seen, there's some POV content from both sides there), and made some progress. However, another user disagreed and reverted my work. You have a knack for keeping a level head, so I'd appreciate comments from you on what you think worked well and what didn't. Thanks, I appreciate it. Hope things are going well for you. Tijuana Brass^¡Épa!-E@ 22:57, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll try to take a look, but won't be much use until tomorrow, as I'm trying to sort out the past few weeks of edits. Incidentally, your help could be used at Exmormonism. -Visorstuff 23:53, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I have determined not to get in an edit war again - but Gellerson reverts contrary to the views expressed on the talk page - can you help??? Trödel 21:15, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I misunderstood what Trödel was doing - and have left Trödel's edit as-is except for fixing spelling and a duplicative heading. Denvoran 21:26, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Reply to Question about your beliefs?

• Hey, I know you have strong ties to Mormonism. Are you a member of the LDS church? -Visorstuff 22:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC) (from User_talk:Reaverdrop#Question_about_your_beliefs.3F)

I told my wife and my bishop three years ago that I do not believe there's any such thing as God, and I've been "out" as an atheist since then. That was after several years of investigating, and concluding that leaving the church was the morally compelling thing to do. I am a sixth generation Mormon - part of my ancestry has been in the church since 1834 in Kirtland, and includes general authorities and several polygamists, and I have nth-removed-nth-cousins among the current general authorities. I served a two-year mission, graduated from BYU, and got married in the Salt Lake Temple, where my grandparents and great-grandparents got married. I've been an overnight houseguest at Mitt Romney's Utah house and at President Hinckley's son Dick Hinckley's house in the Salt Lake federal heights. My wife is fully active and is in the Relief Society presidency. I go with her occasionally to sacrament meeting still, and I'm still a member of the church on paper. The bishopric and missionaries try to BRT with me every time I show up, like I did to inactives when I was a missionary. Two of my close friends have also "apostatized". Other than no longer going to church meetings, praying, reading the BoM, etc. my life is pretty much exactly the same as before. Of course I still have many close friends and most of my family in the church, and I loitered outside the temple when my sister got married last fall.

I'm still really interested in the church and religion in general as a matter of history and as a window into the human mind, and also to continue studying how and why I used to believe in it fervently. As you know there are aspects of it that I'm critical of, but I also take pains to correct people when they are unfair or incorrect in criticizing the church. I think and hope my edits on church-related articles have reflected that interest in fairness and accuracy. - Reaverdrop 23:11, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Very intersting background - your status is as I surmized. Would you then consider yourself an Exmormon or a cultural mormon?

In any case, your help would be much appreciated at Exmormonism. As one who understands the issues being presented there, and as a trusted wikipedian (even though we've not always seen eye to eye on historical matters) your help there would be appreciated. I'm trying to help, but because I'm active LDS, some editors refuse to let me help - even though I've researched the topic to a great degree. Your background and work toward NPOV on Mormon-related articles qualify you in their eyes better than any credentials I could provide.

Who was your Kirtland family? I have much ancestry from the area as well... -Visorstuff 23:17, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Edward Stevenson was the first in my family to join (in Kirtland). I hope writing about one's historically notable ancestor doesn't violate the "don't write about yourself" policy.

I don't suppose it was tough to surmise that. I don't know if I have any preference between "ex-Mormon" and "cultural Mormon", both seem equally applicable. I see it as less important to describe myself by what I used to be as by what I am now, an atheist and secular humanist.

I'll look at Exmormonism sometime soon, though I'm about to head out the door for now. - Reaverdrop 00:05, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Criminey. That Exmormon talk page is a war zone. - Reaverdrop 03:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

List of temples page

Thanks so much for stepping in here. Even after a 3RR block, they have just kept going. Sue Anne 00:58, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Joseph Smith, Jr. and Polygamy

Hi Visor. Maybe you could help with this: an RLDS guy at Joseph Smith, Jr. and Polygamy is trying to argue that whether JS ever practiced polygamy is in factual dispute and describing it as fact would be NPOV. I've never heard or seen of reasonable evidence for the proposition that JS never married anyone but Emma. But I know you have a far greater mastery of church historical material. It's obvious that he practiced polygamy and an RLDS would be motivated by his beliefs to deny that historical fact, but is there any historically based argument that could possibly make it reasonable to avoid describing JS's polygamy simply as fact, rather than to describe it as he-said-she-said? - Reaverdrop 19:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Lost Boys

I'm thinking of making an article for Lost Boys.[12] I looked at the disambiguation page when I looked up the term "Lost Boys" and didn't find anything about the type of Lost Boys I'm thinking about. From your talk pages, it looks like you've already got a lot on your plate, but if you're interested I would appreciate some input. Greenw47 17:17, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I just went ahead and wrote the article. Please let me know if you have any input. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Boys_of_Polygamy Greenw47 21:11, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Joseph Smith, Jr

Would you keep an eye on User Talk:Hoboken, who is insistant that "polygamy" is preferred over "polygyny" in all cases? I believe I reverted him a time or two before he created a user name, and now I've reverted Hoboken twice. Please see my notes on his talk page, and his response on mine. I'll be signing off soon, so he will probably post again. Best....... WBardwin 06:55, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the can of worms will be opened again. Hopefully this time it will be more peaceful. -Visorstuff 16:46, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Re your note on the JS talk page. I had no intention of 3RR with the fellow, that's why I passed it off to you and the LDS group. I suspect he is the anon we have both been reverting for the past week or so. He seems knowledgeable about Wikipedia procedures, but doesn't want to come to the article talk pages. Our controversial little corner does attract attention, huh? Thanks for your help. WBardwin 20:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed it does. The warning was meant as a general warning and caution not to let it move to an edit war. No worries - hope no offense was taken. -Visorstuff 21:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

69.155.47.76 edits to Joseph Smith, Jr.

Again, a persistent editor User:69.155.47.76 has been working on Joseph Smith, Jr. This one is pro-LDS, and the edits are quite Brighamite/POV. Sounds like Sunday School. I've reverted twice, and left an encouraging (I hope) note on his/her talk page. Passing the ball to you, if you will. Best wishes. WBardwin 05:56, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Kolob Order link

The link kolob order had been present for several months, and met a great success among the visitors. We are not a Spam or other, but a true site, free people, who try to study the mormonism in a spirit of independence and are interested on several related subjects. Your decision to withdraw the link is a little strong, can you, please, reconsider that, and subject to approval the link in an official way, because we had been there for 2 months!

The articles are of a good level, and come to enrich in a consequent way the links. Please, give us a chance to be present here, because moreover, people came many, proof that the bond is interesting. In waiting of your answer.

Best regards. Adama

Hi Adama - I'm trying to find out how that particular site adds to the article. It is not referenced in the article, it doesn't provide any new information that is not already there.

According to Wikipedia:External links, "Wikipedia is not a web directory...Wikipedia always prefers internal links over external links. However, adding a certain number of relevant external links is of valuable service to our readers." The policy further states, that Wikipedians should avoid "any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article here would have once it becomes an example of brilliant prose [and] Links that are added to promote a site. See External link spamming."

Inclusion of the link also violates Wikipedia:Spam#External_link_spamming and Wikipedia:Vanity guidelines rules.

You may want to read: Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_mirror_or_a_repository_of_links.2C_images.2C_or_media_files

Please note that I have nothing against you or your beliefs and research. But there is not a compelling or educational benefit to having the URL in the article that cannot be obtained in the article. I'm a stickler about this with the folks from LDS linking sites to exmormon blogs. Wikipedia is best served by strong online references that support the article, and offline citations. Perhaps someday your site will be referenced, but for now, there is no need. Happy editing, and good luck. -Visorstuff 15:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Kolob order - continuation

Dear Sir, I Understand well what you say, I must add in my site, a personal thesis on Kolob and Hypocephalus. I gave a communication at the time of a conference in Paris within a university framework. I think that this time, that will be a useful bond. In any case I thank you for your gentiless, I like much the American culture, and I hope to be able to well better contribute to that by my future article and the acceptance of my site. However allow me to say to you, that the new article on Abraham and astronomy were already completely new in its information compared to what is present on Wiki! But it is not serious, important is to communicate. If not, I am LDS member in activity in France, and I am impassioned by the history and Mormon theology. I am also a free man, and I like to study completely, the subjects which interests me. I would subject soon my article to you which this time, will bring something again, within a serious framework. Cordialy. Adama

Adama, if research from articles can something to add to the article, by all means edit it into the article and then reference the article from your web site. However, in its present form, it simply doesn't meet wikipedia standards. I wish you the best and hope you will contribute additional content to wikipedia. I would look forward to any research that you have and hope that I can read through whatever you'd send. I'm also glad to hear that the restored gospel has folks like you in france - we need good men and women to spread the gospel in their own ways. Good luck in all you do, my brother. -Visorstuff 19:47, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Visorstuff and Adama: my response to Adama's similar question to me is pasted on both my talk page and Adama's IP number discussion page. I hope my reply makes sense and provides my perspective on the issues. Best to you both. WBardwin 07:44, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your comment.

Dear Brother, I thank you for this nice super comment. Yes, in France, we are very few, but each member is a missionary. I have create my site, to make known to the maximum of people "blog", on my small level, the beauties of the work of Joseph Smith. I like my Church, and I like the work of the Restored Gospel. Well has and are blessed to you. With soon. Adama.

Article really enriching

My Brother On your council, I come to finish the first part of a great article on Kolob and the Arka planet described in Jeremiah. I placed the link on the Kolob section of the encyclopaedia. I let it to you discover, I think that should you really like it and I am very happy to divide that with you, and Net surfers. I hope of all my heart that it will be accepted. And I will still work there, to develop it completely. I remotely study with BYU astronomy, by passion for the Book of Abraham and his enigmas around Kolob. Fraternally. Adama

Temple in France ;-) Hurra

Dear Brother, I wanted to teach you a brilliant news! The Prophet Gordon B. Hinclkey decided the construction of a Temple in France, we are all very happy of this news. Lastly, that made years that we await it is a rain of blessings for our country. I am also "super happy". Live the Church, lives the USA, lives France! Yours sincerely. Adama

The Project and template

I agree we should make better use of templates throughout the project - I created a list of the templates I know of and a subpage for templates in response to your commment. I like the page notice re the LDS Project - additionally I have been thinking about whether we should have two LDS Infoboxes - one {{LDS Movement}} - like the current {{LDS}} and one for {{LDS Church}} for information specific to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I like the idea of a Portal as well - but just haven't had time to try to do anything towards making it happen. Trödel 17:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I've created the template - let me know what you think: {{LDSproject}} -Visorstuff 22:41, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Thx - looked quickly - only comment - seems to say you need permission to edit this article - would want to reword that - otherwise - great!! Trödel 23:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I've edited accordingly. I'll ask for feedback from User:Storm Rider, User:Tijuana Brass, User:WBardwin, User:Val42 and User:Nerd42 (the most active WP:LDS participants) before implementing. -Visorstuff 00:12, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I'm back from a short Wikiholiday, since Saturday. I hope that I don't spark the fire that I did last time when I was a few days behind.

The template looks good, except for this sentence: "If you would like to participate in the project, please edit this article or visit List of articles about Mormonism or the project page where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion." There are too many conjunctions. I suggest a rewrite. Maybe something like, "To participate in the project, edit this article, visit the List of articles about Mormonism, the project page, and/or join the discussion." Val42 21:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

speedy delete of { {user LDS} }

This template was the victim of a speedy delete campaign. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Template:User_LDS

On the Wikipedia:Userboxes/Religion page are religion userboxes of all sorts, so it seems reasonable to undelete this one.

Thanks. ekimd 02:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

In the meantime, I've added the one on the Category:LDS Wikipedians page. Val42 22:27, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Article proposal

Visorstuff, would you mind commenting on my proposal at Talk:Mormonism? Thx! --AuntieMormom 15:51, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Storm Rider

I would certainly support him as he is a great editor. He was the first person to make me feel welcome on wikipedia and I have always respected his thoughtful posts that lack the ego and force that make working with some editors so difficult (I suspect I'm one of them sometimes!). Does he have any interest in becoming an admin? I'm not sure if he chases vandals round or participates in AfD etc. It's worth checking with him as some editors have no interest in these areas. I hope he does want to go for it as he would be a great calming influence as an admin in some of tricky situations that blow up. Let me know if you nominate him and I'll add my support vote immediately. Sophia 21:19, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Agree --Trödel 21:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd be happy to support Storm Rider's nomination for adminship. Most of the time he does stay very level headed, and seems to have a good understanding of NPOV and does a good job pursuing that. I'm confident that he'd exercise his admin powers responsibly. Wesley 15:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Please have a word?

Will you consider visiting the following AfD nominations and merge proposals, and commenting?

Table of books of Judeo-Christian Scripture Lost books of the Old Testament (several daughter articles, as well as merge proposition.)--AuntieMormom 01:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Book of Abraham

Hello. I have put the article under peer review and eventually I would like to list it as a Good Article nominee. For this to go ahead, the article needs to have those Sunstone or Dialogue cites. If you have them, could you put them in? Thanks. RelHistBuff 16:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm on wikiholiday right now, but will add them in on my return... -Visorstuff 17:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Quote of Brigham Young

Hello and thank you for your varied contributions. Perhaps to can help me locate a quote attributed to Brigham Young. The essense of the quote chides a "fool" who thinks he has been maligned, when no insult was intended. Are you familiar with it? Thanks, Dr. Dan 04:16, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I know the quote well - but don't believe it uses the word "fool," but am pretty sure it is Brigham Young. Unfortunatley, I'm traveling a lot in July, and will not likely be able to grab it for you until early August. If I can grab it earlier, I will. -Visorstuff 17:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Joseph Smith, Jr.

As an admin, when you get a minute (I saw your wikiholiday note) take a look at the emerging edit conflict between User:Denovo and User:Storm Rider. Trodel has also stepped in. I haven't said too much, but simply tried to keep everyone on the talk page rather than messing up the article. But, Denovo is quite insistent about doing things his/her own way. Have you ever noticed that these insistent "new" editors seem to be very knowledgable about Wikipedia? Interesting. WBardwin 05:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Welcome back

Welcome back! I am sorry to hear about the death threats. Our dear anti-Mormon friends are very liberal minded unless you think differently than they do. Unfortunately, at that point some are still prepared to burn us at the stake. It never ceases to surprise me at the animosity expressed by some of them. Although it is hard to understand they do it without any concious thought. I am grateful you are willing to return and provide your valued input. You have been missed.

I would give a quick look at Mormonism and Christianity, Mormonism, and Temple (Mormonism). We have had more activity on the Temple article and one editor has gotten obstinate and not interested in facts. Storm Rider ^(talk) 22:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Welcome back - I see you already identified the Temple discussion. I'd say the Anti-Mormonism article that has an open RFC/REL coiuld also use some input. Some new additions that need review include First Vision, my proposed intro at List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is a proposal to break the doctrines part off of Joseph Smith, Jr., what to do about stuff like Animals in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is a battle lately between those that want Community of Christ to not be part of the Latter Day Saint movement and those that want to make sure they are part of it :), Archaeology and the Book of Mormon needs some work still - basically, incremental improvements have been made but the same old stuff needs review and watching :) --Trödel 01:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a Latter day saints site.

I had no reason to edit anything, I'm still learning about this system and will try to use something besides AOL. When I went to Mozilla, the block message came up again without me editing anything. Am I now blocked forever?

Arizona, the Grand Canyon State

Hey Visorstuff, I saw on your user page you are from Arizona too. I'm trying to improve the articles on the state's politics and politicians (our beloved governor's page was rather POVish, etc.) and would invite you to do the same. Thanks (if you are interested, but if not oh well), Pahoran513 21:59, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Assistance desired

Visor, have you got any time to spend on the Mormonism and Christianity page? I would like another set of eyes on recent edits of today. Thanks. Storm Rider ^(talk) 20:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I've also seen DJ's work as of late - was watching, and will go in and edit soon. One of my big concerns is that he keeps removig references that say that Latter Day Saints don't think other churches are bad, just apostate and without autority -instead, he uses some "corrupt" quote - but anything that is not pure is corrupt. The LDS church has long taught that other churches do much good, the people are good, but the organizations are acting without God's authority - - and thus an "abomination" in the Lord's sight. People fail to understand that the opposite of truth is error, not falsehood. In otherwords, corruption shoudl not be equated with damned. -Visorstuff 20:48, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Golden plates page POV war...

Please help me out here, there is a person that has edited in many speculative statements into the Golden Plates page and is fighting my attempts to flag the article as POV. I need more input from other sources, if you can roundup a few of your LDS and non-LDS wikipedians to sort out the issues presented on the Golden Plates page I would appreciate it. John Foxe is the guy who has been slowly editing this controversial and misleading info into the page even going as far as citing controversial literature to support his claims. I need help so I don't look like the only one who is making a fuss about this. Thanks, Twunchy 03:32, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

This fellow John Foxe is so artful that he sometimes even reads other people's talk pages. --John Foxe 00:17, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Dispute at anti-Mormon

In order to gain a consensus concerning the issue at anti-Mormon, would you please comment here? --uriah923^(talk) 04:23, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I want to help

Hey, I know that we never had much to do with each other before your wikiholiday, but I too am easing my way back in. Is there anything LDS related to which I could be of help? Keep in mind I'm not from Utah, so don't tell me that kind of stuff. Pahoran513 04:33, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm also an Arizonan (avondale) - although I grew up in Utah. My particular areas of concern are the anti/former/exmormon sections, including mormonism and christianity, etc. I also think that the book of mormon area is stuggling. Another suggestion, I'd recommend that someone spend time updating List of articles about Mormonism and fixing the categories structure for the project. -Visorstuff 16:18, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Adminship

I would be happy to accept - though I do think you overstate how many FA I've worked towards - and am grateful for your confidence and kind words. --Trödel 18:08, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Thx - will need to draft responses to the questions tonight - and notify you on your talk. --Trödel 21:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you need to transclude the subpage on the main one, or can I do that now that I have accepted the nomination. --Trödel 04:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I cannot - you must do that according to what to do if you are nominated. (also don't forget to change the time, etc.) -Visorstuff 05:43, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Re: thanks

Thanks for the support, I haven't contributed in the last few days since tempers were running hot and I didn't want to add fuel to the fire.

I'm used to editing pages about lakes, Utah, and occasionally fish, which generally don't receive very many edits, but recently I have been almost exclusively editing LDS related pages, which has taken some getting used to since opinions and tempers are quite strong, and a lot more people contribute. Also, reliable sources seem difficult to find, but I did reserve a copy of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling that Bytebear recommended, hopefully I can cite some of the info in the LDS Church article with it.

Anyway, thanks for getting involved with the discussion on the talk page at Talk:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I didn't really have the stomach to deal with it anymore. --Lethargy 13:27, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

First Vision

Visor, could you review the First Vision article when you have a chance? My opinion is not to treat the experience as a historical event, but rather as an event of spiritual experience within Mormonism. Currently the article attempts to focus on the historical perspective without any real explanation of the spiritual significance to a religious movement. The result is that a reader would come away with very little understanding of the event and most certainly assume that it is so full of conflict that it is a hoax. I would appreciate your input. Thanks. Storm Rider ^(talk) 18:04, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Let me review over the weekend - got all day meetings tomorrow. -Visorstuff 00:15, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Bubblicious

Just a note to say, howdy. How's that local housing market? Looks like the pricing and inventory bubble is finally start to unwind. B| ^talk 00:07, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Mormon mysticism

Visor, are you familiar with this article and any of its claims? I have read anti-Mormon literature that would make the allegation, but not any for of movement with any of the Latter Day Saint churches that encourage or support anything in this vein. Storm Rider ^(talk) 17:59, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Straw poll

Please provide me with a list of questions you want to be asked in the upcoming straw poll on my talk page. Or post them here [13]WikieZach| talk 21:07, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Anyway with patience I think a consensus can be had, even if it means summarizing the "disputes" as such :) Gwen Gale 18:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

So what do you think they want, anyway? I mean does this boil down to the words murder and kidnapping along with Brigham did it cuz he looked like a duck and quacked like a duck or what? Gwen Gale 00:04, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

LOL. Honestly, their short history across all of Wikipedia, religious-based articles or otherwise is that they just seem to want to fight and argue. One of the editors has accused at least five admins of mis-behavior in the past two weeks alone. I wouldn't be suprised if they were just testing the system to see how far they can go, but I'm trying to assume good faith. For me, it boils down pretty much to those words and use of repititious long quotes to push POV. I think the majority of those involved just want the reader to be able to decide for themselves, and to have as much information as is available.

The bigger issue is that Duke53 refuses to work with anyone in any sort of collaboration. Sjrin seems to be egged on by Duke53's behavior in my assessment, and is really a fine editor when not encouraged to be argumentitive, so he will end up okay (he and folks like you bring needed balance to articles such as this, which Mormon editors are grateful for). Tinosa, I haven't figured out. This is the only page he/she really ever edits, and is very familiar with the wikipedia process, so I'm led to believe Tinosa is a sock puppet (though I haven't checked), however, I don't think of anyone involved in the dispute as he has a different wordprint, so it really doesn't matter who it is, nor does it affect the discussion at all (to me sock puppets don't matter, aside from voting for wikipedia buracracy changes - ie, admins, arbitrators, etc). Interesting that Tinosa has two awards in only 40 edits. They both have a lot to lose by choosing to move forward in mediation, so I don't think they'll accept it. I don't think they want the type of visibility and scrutiny they will get. However, I could be wrong - I've been wrong before, and will be wrong again - and hope I am on this one. -Visorstuff 00:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

...for the note. I have been reading frequently but not editing, because I am too busy with work these days. I hope to have time to get back into a little editing in the new year. - Reaverdrop (talk/nl/w:s) 00:27, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Request for Mediation

A Request for Mediation to which you are a party was not accepted and has been delisted. You can find more information on the mediation subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Mountain Meadows massacre. For the Mediation Committee, Essjay (Talk) This message delivered by MediationBot, an automated bot account operated by the Mediation Committee to perform case management. If you have questions about this bot, please contact the Mediation Committee directly.

This message delivered: 04:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC).

Temple Architecture

Thanks for looking at the Temple architecture (Latter-day Saints) page. I have added some references, but do need to do more research on the Boston Massachusetts Temple. Here is a great site for sources [14]. Let me know how you think I can improve the article. Bytebear 02:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Request to delete image

Would you please delete this image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TXIplant.jpg I took the picture and mistook it for something else. I have corrected the picture as: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HolcimCementPlant.jpg I didn't know who else to ask or where to go. Thanks. B 04:39, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. Sorry for the delay. -Visorstuff 23:11, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Protecting Cosmo

There has been someone who continually vandalizes the article Cosmo the Cougar. He does it from different computers, so I don't know if just blocking him would stop the vandalism. Is there any way we could semi-protect that article? Or do you think we should just block all the IP addresses he uses? Epachamo 01:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Although it is consistent, the page does not warrant a semi-protect yet, as it is one user. I've placed vandalism warnings at User talk:75.180.28.229 and User talk:71.37.77.101. Please let me know the next time one of these users vandalises and we'll initate a block. -Visorstuff 23:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The user is now vandalizing the page from a different set of computers. If you could initiate a block of that user that would be great. ThanksEpachamo 00:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

I appreciate your additions to "Three Witnesses."--John Foxe 22:37, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Anytime, it is not often that I get a chance to put in details of this sort, as most of my time is spent on talk pages trying to keep the peace. Hope it's helpful. That said, there is a lot of historical and doctrinal errors on the page that still need to be addressed. -Visorstuff 23:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice call on that one-word change as well. I'm sure we won't always agree on substantive matters, but it's heartening to find another who takes words seriously.--John Foxe 15:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Is it possible to not agree with everything I do? J/K. I'm not too sympathetic to New Mormon history, however, I'm not pre-decided on most matters - I realize there is too much I don't know. -Visorstuff 16:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, i'm quite new to editing wikipedia, and i'm still struggling with how to relegate the full quote to the reference section - i've only just discovered how to do referencing at all.Glyns 20:57, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Role of administrator

Visorstuff, I seem to remember that you are a Wiki administrator. I have recently been nominated to become an administrator. Before I decide whether or not to accept, I was wondering what your experience is being an administrator? I'm especially interested in the additional time that being an administrator takes. Thanks for taking the time to respond. You can answer here or on my user page. Val42 05:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

That is one of the toughest questions anyone could ask another administrator.

On one hand, I agree with Jimbo that being an administrator is not a big deal; on the other hand, being an administrator carries a great deal of weight as far as your opinion and respect in the community. It can effectively be used in dispute resolution and to help build consensus. People are always upset when you have to take administrative actions, and the better of an admin you are, the more "enemies" you have.

When I became an administrator (one of the first 200), it was more a sign of recieving a certain level of respect and trust placed in you for work done - now it is slightly different. I doubt I would be voted to become an admin now. I would actually encourage you to read User:NoSeptember/Adminship_is_a_big_deal and other links at User:NoSeptember/The_NoSeptember_Admin_Project.

My big focuses in my admin duties are vandalism, broken links and welcoming newbies - none of which you need to be an admin to do. In my opinion, being an admin should be a natural extension of what you are already doing. But in being a administrator, you need to demonstrate a certain level of level-headedness and ability to work for the good of Wikipedia, and have a solid working history.

Being an admin gives you tools to work more quickly and to help the community. I believe you do this now, but without the tools you could use. I'd support your adminship, but you may also want to ask User:COGDEN and User:Trodel. COGDEN isn't very active as an admin, but was very involved in citation systems and other mini-projects. Trodel is a very active admin and does a great job at his work.

Bottom line is that I don't think you'll notice much of a change in your day to day work between being an admin and being a normal editor, other than having more tools to help the community in a faster way, and respect to help in stressful situations, that hopefully you've already built. -Visorstuff 17:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

MMM

Heya Visorstuff, I only now reread your long post on my talk page from a month back and wanted to let you know I think my response was a bit lame, I was so busy at the time. I did neglect to mention I thought your take on LDS, from a perspective of faith, is not so far from my naturalistic one in that we both seem to think LDS has come a long way from its origins. Anyway (so too belated) thanks for your thoughtful post, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Gwen Gale 17:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Khor Rori plates

These bronze plates are more of a mystery than they should be. I don't blame you as much as the folks who wrote the Nephi Project piece. Could you find a non-LDS source for the existence of these plates? Phillips was a millionaire and self-promoter, hardly a typical archaeologist.--John Foxe 21:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

As you can find them in the local museum, I don't think a stronger reference is needed, but I'll see what I can find - I've read about them in other places, but was reminded of them today. Nor do I think these are that significant of a find. What do you mean by "mystery?" -Visorstuff 21:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I only meant that if they exist, they should be written up in the academic literature.--John Foxe 21:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Gotcha - they do. Khor Rori is best known for its pottery and ropes, though. These types of plates are not unusual, but they are rarely perserved due to the value of the metal. They exist in nearly all cultures around the globe, which is why I'm questioning whether or not the biggest sample of bound plates is eight plates.

As far as Non-LDSL referenes for the Khor Rori plates, a simple google search of Khor Rorhi and Bronze yeilded a number of hits that are relevant - I think i originally read about it in a journal of archeaology article about the bronze age.

In any case, here are some links showing or discussing the plates [15], [16], [17], and teh world heritage site all discuss the plates and other bronze artifacts. I beleve the first link acutally has a picture of the said plates. Other sites dicuss the more elaborate bronze finds including the city gates and snakes [18], [19], [20], [21].

Hope this helps. -Visorstuff 22:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought this discussion important enough to move to the Talk: Golden Plates.--John Foxe 19:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Another good call

on your last edit on "Golden Plates."--John Foxe 19:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Mormonism sub-pages

Actually, as you probably saw, the assessment department, which has recently been added, was added by me. Partially as a way to ensure that the articles get assessed, partially as because I thought it might be in the best interested of the project itself. If you believe that this is counterproductive and likely to be eliminated, please let me know. I am personally not a Mormon and much as I like to see that as many articles as possible get assessed, having one less project to work with (and one less banner to remember the code for) would not be something that would upset me too much. Badbilltucker 20:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the idea behind the assessment project. I don't agree with sub-pages outside of a user's page sub-pages, unless they are used for administrative and/or conflict resolutions items such as sandboxing and drafts. I think that the assessment sub-pages are fine, as they fit within the scope I mentioned. Hope this makes sense - what you are doing is great - keep up the good work. Not sure I'm the right guy to assess articles, but let me know how I can help. -Visorstuff 21:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

116 pages

Looking over the article again, I noticed that the Anthon transcript business is still there, and Mark Hofmann is in a footnote as a "rumor" with no citation.--John Foxe 19:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism

I am so very happy that you're keeping such good track of me. When editors are joining Wikipedia to edit one (and only one) article and aren't seen again anywhere else it gives me a pretty good indication that their edits are simply vandalism or censorship. You worry about your style of editing and I will worry about mine, okay? Some of the things you do here don't exactly thrill me either. Duke53 | ^Talk 19:04, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I suspect this pleasantry was actually aimed at me because of this. Just in case you were wondering what in heaven's name this was all about. alanyst ^/talk/ 19:19, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Wrong place. Sorry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Duke53 (talk • contribs)

Editor's note: I am restoring the thread of this post as I feel that the historical context of all dialogue on my talk page is important. As a courtesy, please don't edit any comments (aside from your own spelling and grammar errors) on my talk page - let alone other's comments. The thread edits may be found at sequentially here, here and here. -Visorstuff 16:57, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Random comment

I just thought I'd say that you're one of my favorite Wikipedians. Thanks for all you contribute. The Jade Knight 05:36, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Admin nomination of Wrp103 (Bill Pringle)

Visorstuff, I just wanted to invite you to vote on the admin nomination of Bill Pringle here: Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Wrp103. COGDEN 20:48, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Like to see more of you

Visor, how is the new job going? You have been sorely missed of late. I hope things open up and that you can be more active. Cheers. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 17:46, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Tom

Unfortunately, I'm not very much present, if you know what I mean. Just see my edit history since I reappeared. Nevertheless, I will be probably checking in on occasion. It sounds like you've been a bit weary and absent too. Thanks for the welcome. Tom Haws 17:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

User:Milogardner and Archibald Gardner article

HI! Glad to see your name once again. If you have the energy and patience, could you join several editors who have been trying to guide this newby in creating a well-documented article that meets Wiki standards? So far -- well, no real progress. Notability and sources appear to be the major issues. Archibald Gardner is mildly notable in LDS history, and may have (as MiloGardner asserts) made contributions in industry and commerce in the American West. But many of the editor's sources appear to be simply LDS style family history. Trödel has been extremely patient, but has recently put out a request for comment on the article. Hope to see you around more. WBardwin 05:53, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Merkey

There are not any legal issues between myself and the Foundation or Wikipedia nor are there any legal threats of any kind here. That RFC is closed and no longer in force, BTW. Jeffrey Vernon Merkey 18:08, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I do not care if the RFC is closed or not, as my question is unrelated to it, but questioning content from it. Legal threats of any kind at WP need to be handled appropriately and such users prohibited from editing IMHO. As another clarified that was not the case, the point is irrelevant.

That said, your editing style is very rough, controversial and you are harsh on other editors. As a part of the welcoming committee and as an admin, I'd encourage you to become familiar with the culture of wikipedia, and seek to build consensus on talk pages - especially on controversial issues - before making major changes. It is the wiki way - and it is easy to do. Welcome aboard - I hope to see more of you around. -Visorstuff 19:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the same rules apply to your edits as well as anyone else's. I am finding a large number of POV edits with unsourced statements. My editing style is very accurate and passionate -- just as described of the Nephites of old in LDS religious writings.  :-) Jeffrey Vernon Merkey 19:28, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

You are correct - you'll notice most of my edits are on talk pages rather than on the article space - i try to point people to adding in more sources and concepts that they may have forgotten. When I do edit in the article space, my additions are well-sourced. Please see my response at Talk:Mormon_teachings_about_extraterrestrial_life, and assume good faith. The note above denotes that you don't think I agree with you, when you have no idea what I think until I say it. Please assume good faith, and accept feedback - it is not meant to criticize, but to help wikipedia be a better encyclopedia. -Visorstuff 19:39, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I also have been doing a great deal of time discussing with other editors items of concern on talk pages. I agree with you this is a good approach to get to know folks working on certain articles. I also edit articles directly when I feel I have good materials to accurately reflect the history of the LDS movement rather then the POV based faith inspiring materials which seem to plauge any serious attempts to delve into research of LDS History. Jeffrey Vernon Merkey 19:46, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Then that is the right approach to take. In looking at your edit history, it didn't seem that way, but if that is your mindset, keep up the good work, as you'll quickly get used to the wikipedia way. I've also addressed your "concern" about my usage of the term "Anti-mormon activists" I hardly think you need to discuss how the term is used with me, as I've fought how it is used on wikipedia for years - for example [22]. -Visorstuff 20:02, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. For example, we do not have a classification "articles about servants of the devil" nor do we have a category of sources wth this term, so it is better if it be dropped in internal WP discussions. Writing about it is ok, but we should not use it any more than any other denigrating slur. Jeffrey Vernon Merkey 20:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Not sure I completely agree (too many absolutes in your statement). We do have artilces about anti-semitism and other anti-groups. As there are groups that say they are "anti-Mormon," such as ed decker's group who self-identifies that way. In addition, Anti-semitism and Anti-mormonism both have the -ism suffix which denotes that there is a systematic belief and teachings against those groups - this is very different than someone who disagrees with doctrines or teachings or that is a anti-Mormon or an anti-semite. In academic interviews i've conducted with anti-Mormon activists, they admit they hate all Mormons. Very different than outreach groups to "save" Mormons. Further it is behavior. Someone wiping their feces with temple garments at a General Conference protest is not there to show their crticism for the LDS Church, but their utter distain and lack of respect for the people and things of mormonism. Such activism is considered behavior, not an appelation. I rarely say so and so is an anti-Mormon, but (using racism as an example) rather such and such an act was anti-Mormon behavior. In the same way, someone who is or is not racist may engage in racist behavior regardless of what their intent is. All of us have engaged in behavior that is stupid, but that doesn't mean that we are anti- anything. And the comparison to racism is a good one, as Mormonism is a culture, a decendancy, a belief system and a location. Why race cannot be changed, those born into Mormonism often feel the discrimiation, whether or not they adhere to Mormonism. To have the term in wikipedia is fine - but all of us need to educate on the correct usage of the term - or find a better way to talk about behavior versus criticism. -Visorstuff 20:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

None of this justifies throwing rocks the other direction. Turn the other cheek is the best approach here. It also does not justify any of us taking the low road. A very sincere and honorable LDS man I worked with at Novell told me in 1994, "People are always tempted to take low road and respond tit for tat with criticism and perceived attacks. What all of us should do is always take the high road, no matter what comments or attacks are leveled at us." We should take the high raod with all of this and refrain from using reciprocal attack terms like "anti-mormon". Jeffrey Vernon Merkey 21:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more. Use of the term from an academic perspective is fine, but to pound down others is not wise. -Visorstuff 21:28, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Extermination comment

Visorstuff, I recall from an earlier discussion on Extermination Order that you were searching for an earlier reference to the use of the word "extermination." (Maybe you already found it...) I just found this in Brodie's book, although I haven't been able to determine yet whether it pre-dates or post-dates Rigdon's speech. It was written by General Lucas to Governor Boggs after the siege of DeWitt: "If a fight has actually taken place, of which I have no doubt, it will create excitement in the whole of upper Missouri, and those base and degraded beings will be exterminated from the face of the earth." (Brodie, No Man Knows My History, p. 228, referencing Correspondence, Orders, etc., pp. 34-5.). Regards, Bochica 03:04, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Interesting form of personal attack

Visor, I am curious about our new User:Thewayandthelight. Could you check out his edit history; he seems to be adding the same edits across many LDS related articles and all of the begin with the same statement:

- All of the information on this page is based on supposition and belief. As I do not wish to suppress others writings, I will simply present contrasting information. This page is constantly over written by Storm Rider ^(talk). Please help this gentleman to know that suppression of information will not be tolerated.

I find this to be a personal attack given the large number of articles he is editing and I am not sure if I have even edited some of them; I have been around a while so its possible.

I will add a warning to his discussion page about personal attacks, but an administrator would be helpful. Thanks. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 03:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Response to welcome and a warning

Mr. Visorstuff,

I've received your note and I wanted to take the chance to responded. You have accused me of a great deal of wrongdoing in an effort to suppress the facts that I have enter in. My posting are all well written and factual. It seems interesting to me that the only ones that I hear complaining are members of the LDS church. One could easily argue to the neutrality of the pages is already in voilation because it is based on belief - not fact and that non-LDS information in constantly suppressed. The information that you put up your position and beliefs. Definately an indicator of the lack of neutrality. Neutrality can only be maintained by someone outside of the mormon religion. You want me to adhere to rules and regulations yet you dont apply them to yourself. Seems hypocritical. I dont think that the LDS church should be allow to control this forum. The fact that your pages can't stand with other facts that point out the massive holes about your religion speaks completely about the way in which your religion operates itself. The Cruasdes were an attempt to control individuals through violent suppression of those that chose to believe different. The Catholic leaders felt justified in the destuction of all others with different beliefs. Your religion teaches that same principles through passive-aggression obviously. Though you steadfastly believe in your information, it is not fact and only facts should be used on this site.

I am going to be complaining to the powers that be about this subject as I feel that you and the other mormons constantly guarding these pages should understand that all information should be available to the users of this site - not just your opinions. I will have non-LDS editors review my additions to your pages and then I will be posting them. Non-LDS people have just as much right to post as you do. Sorry. I know that Wikipedia will agree. I'm sure that's why you and your extreme right wing partners have not ask someone else to address this matter. Good luck in your quest to rid the world of non-believers. I'm sure that we will be speaking again soon.

There is opposition in all things,

Thewayandthelight

I'm not quite how to respond to you, as you are not attacking "LDS POV," but are attacking the way Wikipedia does things.

You wrote: "You have accused me of a great deal of wrongdoing in an effort to suppress the facts that I have enter in." Thewayandthelight, I would venture to guess that nearly all wikipedia administrators would agree with my assertions by reviewing your edit history. You seem to be a Wikipedia:Newbie and need guidance. I'm happy to help you in that, if you are willing.

You wrote: "My posting are all well written and factual." I'm sure one such example you are referring to is what you contributed to Celestial Kingdom: "The defination (sic) for non-LDS people (sic). The place where God puts the Mormons (sic) so that they may continue in thier (sic) misguided belief that they are the only ones in Heaven." (in this instance, "sic" means there is an grammatical or spelling error in the sentece that has not been changed by me). I could continue with other "well-written" mistakes and errors that you've included. As for factual, you cite joseph smith's "false" prophecies - which is fine - did you know the Bible records similar "false" prophecies for Jesus? Your issue with the overthrowing of the US, is that it is time-based. Within a "few years" or "in this generation." Jesus used similar language to describe events yet to come.

You wrote: "It seems interesting to me that the only ones that I hear complaining are members of the LDS church." Ummm. you've only edited LDS articles. AND not only LDS editors have addressed you and reverted you.

You wrote: "One could easily argue to the neutrality of the pages is already in voilation because it is based on belief - not fact and that non-LDS information in constantly suppressed." Again, please read WP:NPOV, as you clearly don't get it. According to social relativity, there is no such thing as "fact." Wikipedia only is concerned if something is verifible (ie someone significant has written about it). Your life is based on your beliefs, so according to your reasoning, you are not neutral, and therefore shouldn't edit the Wiki.

You wrote: "Neutrality can only be maintained by someone outside of the mormon religion." You know, once a long time ago, there was a movement to have Mormon editors banned from editing wikipedia. Same with Jehovah Witness editors. And Catholic editors. And once a longer time ago, there were laws that these groups should be killed. I'm not a victim, but that statement is pure biogotry. That statement shows prejudice and/or discriminatory against Mormons.

"You wrote: You want me to adhere to rules and regulations yet you dont apply them to yourself. Seems hypocritical. I dont think that the LDS church should be allow to control this forum." Can you share with me an example where I violated any of the policies I think you have? I don't believe that anyone should control wikipedia. However, as an admin, I uphold and enforce policies against people whether they are mormon or not.

About the statement "Seems hypocritical." The point of religion is to take hypocrites and cause tehm to be better. I am a hypocrite. I preach that all mankind should live Christ-like lives. I am grateful for the Atonement in this regard, which allows repentence, change, grace sanctification and justification.

You wrote: "The fact that your pages can't stand with other facts that point out the massive holes about your religion speaks completely about the way in which your religion operates itself." I find no massive holes, but as you say you have an opposing opinion. I find answers and more questions. Mormonism doesn't answer every question in religion, but neither does any other religion.

"You wrote: The Cruasdes were an attempt to control individuals through violent suppression of those that chose to believe different. The Catholic leaders felt justified in the destuction of all others with different beliefs." Actually, so did the Biblical Exodus and the Muslims, and many other religious groups. I think such atrocities are saddening.

You wrote: "Your religion teaches that same principles through passive-aggression obviously." Can you share with me that sunday school lesson? I missed it.

You wrote: "Though you steadfastly believe in your information, it is not fact and only facts should be used on this site." What is fact? Scientific law? even in geometic math 1+1 does not always equal 2. If we removed non-fact and philosophy from wikipedia, 99 percent of the site would be gone. Theory and belief are that: theory and belief. Not fact. No one ever claimed on wikipedia that religion is fact. I firmly believe that when we all die there will be a number of things we'll be suprised about that we hold to as "fact" in this life.

You wrote: "I am going to be complaining to the powers that be about this subject as I feel that you and the other mormons constantly guarding these pages should understand that all information should be available to the users of this site - not just your opinions. I will have non-LDS editors review my additions to your pages and then I will be posting them." Good. Do it. We welcome more all kinds of editors as long as they adhere to wikipedia policies. No Mormon editor is trying to "control" these pages. We all (Mormon and non-Mormon alike) watch for vandalism and other policy violations. And i'm sure that drawing attention by you to your own editing will not bode well for you, however, I'd love to have the general wikipedia community weigh in on your edits so you can see Mormons are not discriminating against you.

You wrote: "Non-LDS people have just as much right to post as you do." I agree with you.

You wrote: "I'm sure that's why you and your extreme right wing partners have not ask someone else to address this matter." Umm. I'm not right wing. My family thinks I'm liberal. And some of the editors you've been dealing with are quite liberal Democrats. I consider myself a moderate.

You wrote: "Good luck in your quest to rid the world of non-believers." Thanks, I need it. I hope all will accept Christ before his coming. That said, I don't proselytize on Wikipedia.

You wrote: "I'm sure that we will be speaking again soon." I look forward to it.

I didn't mean to take every sentence word for word, but the latter half was easier for me to address in this way. If I missed any sentences that were not addressed by other responses, please let me know and I'll re-address, as it was kind of fun to break down the statements to address.

Please know that I'm glad you have an opinion on Mormonism. Too many people don't care about religion. However, Wikipedia is not a place to proselytize for or against a religion. -Visorstuff 00:40, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Mormon teachings about extraterrestrial life

An article that you have been involved in editing, Mormon teachings about extraterrestrial life, has been listed by me for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mormon teachings about extraterrestrial life. Thank you. -SESmith 23:08, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

On Reformed Egyptian

I appreciate the message you left on my talk page, and I'm sorry I wiped out the redirect--which I believe was a wise move on your part--but I will continue to revert the Reformed Egyptian page until the Cherokee business gets scholarly documentation. As I'm able and within Wikipedia rules, I feel responsible to check such determined silliness.--John Foxe 00:27, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

NPA

Accusing someone of being mentally ill, no matter what weasel wording you employ, is pretty much a straight-up personal attack. Don't do it. --Calton | Talk 02:03, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

My apologies if it came across as accusing him of being mentally ill. That was not what was meant. I was questioning whether or not he understood what I was asking. Having asked the same question at least five times, I questioned that he was capable of understanding my question or if there was a language barrier. -Visorstuff 02:07, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

That was not what was meant. I was questioning whether or not he understood what I was asking. But that's not what you actually wrote: I'm actually starting to question...your mental ability to edit Wikipedia. Weasel-worded rephrasing into "capable of understanding my question" doesn't alter the obvious message. --Calton | Talk 02:14, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

You are correct. I should have chosen my words more carefully. I led with the wording "language abilities" to show that I felt there was some sort of barrier, not that he was defunct in any way. However, I can see how he would take it that way, for which I am sorry. It was not my intent nor my intended message. Curious from a third party perspective, did you think my questions in that section were hard to understand? -Visorstuff 02:20, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

When you write "[A] or [B]", as in "...to question [your language abilities] or [your mental ability]", you're assigning equal weight to A and B, not having one be a precursor to the other. And to answer your question, yes, he appears to be misinterpreting your request and/or assuming bad faith, but calling him crazy or an idiot is not the way to deal with it. --Calton | Talk 02:30, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your candor. You are right. Thank-you for bringing me back into reality. -Visorstuff 02:32, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome

Thanks for your e-mail. I didn't know what was up with Merkey (a great Pilgrim's Progress name), but I was determined to help put a stop to it. All the best, John Foxe

First Vision

Thank you for stepping in and trying to restore order to this article. It has gone completely out of hand with some openly hostile attitudes about how and in what form the content should be added to the article. Nearly every edit I have made has been reverted completely, including things so completely innocent (like categories and links to other articles where I haven't even changed the wording) were reverted because it seemed as though I was making a POV edit to a certain editor.

I don't know where to go from here, but it isn't going to be easy to put this back on track. The current environment on this article is very hostile to any new user to Wikipedia... and if this were my only experience of using Wikipedia, I would have been gone a long time ago.

I have formally complained about the POV of this article, and even proposed changes to wording on the talk page in an attempt to clean up some of the content. None of which was with much success other than it did spur on some additional action. But as can be seen on the edit history, a full scale edit war is going on that is not really conductive to the development of a quality encyclopedia article.

Unfortunately, trying to restore order here may not be an easy task, particularly when one editor in particular invoked Winston Churchill saying "never, never, never". I suggest that you read that particular (archived) discussion. --Robert Horning 00:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the temporary page protection. I appreciate your patient spirit.--John Foxe 13:52, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with discussion. Let them discuss. But if you want to protect the page again, that's fine with me too.--John Foxe 15:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

John you need to discuss as well. -Visorstuff 15:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll be happy to do that. Let them go first, for they "are many."--John Foxe 15:19, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

John, why not take the high road and say "here are the changes I want to make in the next hour, what are your thoughts?" -Visorstuff 15:21, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd be buried in words and nothing would ever be accomplished. From yesterday's FV talk page, you'd think it was the John Foxe talk page. One of the difficulties here is that I am the only non-Mormon at FV. So you have two legitimate points of view but many spokesmen for one side and only one for the other (although sometimes Cogden makes an appearance and provides some cogent thoughts). My opponents have a consensus for any position they choose to agree on, and no words of mine would be persuasive.--John Foxe 15:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I should have gotten involved earlier in the edit war to help stop the personal attacks and fighting, but personal life often prevails. I agree that there are a lot of bitter feelings, but you can go a long way to fix them, if you are willing to try. And consensus doesn't always mean who has the most people to vote.

John, I hope you know me well enough by now to know that I don't always take the apologetic view, as do other editors including Storm Rider and Cogden. I would say that the three of us typically add in a third viewpoint that neither you nor "your opponents" provide. I would encourage you to reach out to another non-LDS editor to help that is knowledgeable about Mormonism and wikipedia. User:Alai comes to mind first.

In the interest of full disclosure, my problems with your edits have traditionally been how you lead the reader to conclusions; seemingly WP:OWN articles and are unwilling to compromise on adding in sources that exist that don't support your position. It is not your conclusions that are the problem, it is how you get there that many editors have issues with. I have therefore tried to take a macro view for this particular discussion, which has not made me very popular with you or the Mormon editors on the page. But I feel it is the right approach.

I think offering an olive leaf by pre-discussing changes, being willing to request outside help, and being willing to allow for compromise would be seen as a positive step and move the talk page back into a productive discussion. Even a RfC may be helpful. I am willing to help guide the process. -Visorstuff 15:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I have a great deal of respect for you, Visorstuff. Cogden is also very knowledgeable. I think if the three of us were suddenly given triumvirate power over FV, we'd put it in the GA category in no time. Interestingly, if you look at where the article stands right now, there's not much of significance at issue. Best case scenario, my opponents will be satisfied with some cosmetic changes, and we can all take a break from this for awhile.--John Foxe 16:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Fortunately, only Jimbo Wales has absolute power on Wikipedia. As this is an open source project, like Linux, process is just as important as the result. That is what sets Cogden apart from so many editors, he is willing to work through the process. None of us are above the process. I do think it would be helpful to explain what you did this morning on the talk page as an step in the right direction, and see what comments come back. At worse, it can help you understand the folks you are editing with better. -Visorstuff 16:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

One of the fascinating things about participating at Wikipedia is how quickly folks reveal their characters in their writing. The timid, the boastful, the ignorant, the intemperate all lay out their personal weaknesses for others to see and that within a very short period. In any case, I have now officially discussed.--John Foxe 21:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I honestly can't believe that you want to claim such powers here John and become a "triumvirate" over the flow of this article. Or to deny that anybody else has anything else worthwhile to contribute to this article. This is not in keeping with the philosophy of "anybody can edit" at all, and is particularly discouraging to new Wikipedia users. If you want this FV article to reach GA quality, you may need to humble yourself a bit and acknowledge that there are others with valid opinions besides yourself and a handful of special selected individuals. --Robert Horning 23:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Visorstuff, you might want to look at First Vision again. I thought we were going to discuss and then edit, but John Foxe has once again made a string of edits with no discussion. His edit summary comment is "see discussion". Either I'm missing the entire point of page protection, or John is. I would be curious to hear your thoughts. -- wrp103 (Bill Pringle) ^(Talk) 13:55, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate your effort to resolve the situation at First Vision. I now understand that you were hampered by your past involvement in this article and with John Foxe, and I apologize for my criticism of your handling of the situation. No one is editing the article right now, but I believe that John Foxe's comments on the talk page demonstrate that he either cannot understand or refuses to comply with the WP:NPOV policy. I'm trying to gain a consensus on his inappropriate behavior, and I invite you, as a past contributor to this article, to add your comments to this discussion. If you think that my behavior also warrants criticism, I invite that as well. I will be posting this invitation on several other user talk pages, but with your past history on this article you might be aware of other editors who have walked away. Please feel free to let them know what is going on and invite their input at Talk:First_Vision#Time_for_action. 74s181 13:29, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Molly Mormon

You said it should be deleted as a neologism before. Do you still feel this way? I want to nominate it for deletion. Most of the content can't be sourced and is essentially original research in my view. The word is used in contradictory ways, and it seems little more than a dictionary definition even with this shoddy copy. I'm asking because at least one good editor disagrees, and I need to make sure I'm not missing something. Cool Hand Luke 06:10, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

What he is trying to say is that he just wants to find a reason to delete the article, one way or another. He doesn't even believe the term is a neologism himself (he even said so only 6 hours before). If this isn't talking out of both sides of one's mouth, I don't know what is. The article already contains references to print to show the term to have been in current use for at least 28 years. I also have never met a Mormon who has not heard this term before. I am not sure, under those circumstances, why one would be canvassing to declare this a neologism without some other significant bias. Use common sense here. Reswobslc 13:16, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I never said it was a neologism. Even definitions of well-known terms don't have dictionary entries. See WP:NOT#DICT. I don't appreciate the personal attack, and I've nominated it for deletion. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Molly Mormon. Cool Hand Luke 01:16, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Swedenborg and Celestial Marriage

Can you explain the edit you added to Celestial Marriage? It doesn't make much sense when compared to the paragraph above it, so I removed it.Descartes1979 05:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I think you are referring to a paragraph added in by an anonymous editor, User:201.220.15.66. My edits were to remove the "some historians" and other weasel language and pro and con POV language. My edits are still currently unchanged in the article. -Visorstuff 19:04, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion :).Descartes1979 19:06, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Noob Saibot

Please see email. Thanks Visor. - Reaverdrop (talk/nl) 02:06, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Re. recent email - thanks. I've been busy but still interested. - Reaverdrop (talk/nl) 21:47, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

In other news... Walker Lewis

Hi,

I tagged the Walker Lewis article for cleanup - is there a specific tag for "cleanup desperately needed"? I thought I'd call your specific attention to it too. Thanks, - Reaverdrop (talk/nl) 06:18, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Submitted WP:RfC on John Foxe

For more info, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/John Foxe.

One other person needs to certify the RfC within 48 hours or it will be deleted. More information 74s181 06:33, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Care to comment? LDS issue

Care to comment here Talk:The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ#Proposed_compromises. Someone referred me to you as knowledgeable re:Latter Day Saint issues. Rich Uncle Skeleton ^(talk) 23:52, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I would support your efforts to rename The Church of Jesus Christ. See my comments there. Rich Uncle Skeleton ^(talk) 01:05, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi, sorry to bother you again Visorstuff, but I'm a relatively new registered member and I'm just not sure where I go from here with The Church of Jesus Christ. Were you serious about proposing a name change to the article? I definitely think it could and should be done, but I don't know if I have the self-confidence to propose such a "controversial" change. I really don't think making the change is that troublesome or controversial; I just don't know how to deal with members of an organization that seem to want to extend ownership over "their" page. I have familiarized myself with WP policies and procedures as they are currently written and I'm fairly confident I know what I'm talking about—I just don't know how to deal with some of the folks on that page because they are so aggressive and defensive about any critical comment about the article. I thought I was doing the right thing in trying to forge a consensus with them; but now that I look at it in light of your and others' editors, I rather think maybe I was pandering too much to their demands. ...

I also find it troublesome that editors keep popping up at Talk:The Church of Jesus Christ that have made no edits since May 2007 to respond to the issues I bring up. If these are not in fact sockpuppets they at least look like sockpuppets "in practice", even if they are controlled by different people. But again, I just don't have the experience background to know what to do. If you were to propose the name change I'd be behind it; I'm just not sure I can handle this on my own. I think I may have to start editing pages about something less controversial—like dust.

Thanks, and sorry again to bother you. Rich Uncle Skeleton ^(talk) 02:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

"I also find it troublesome that editors keep popping up at Talk:The Church of Jesus Christ that have made no edits since May 2007 to respond to the issues I bring up. If these are not in fact sockpuppets they at least look like sockpuppets "in practice", even if they are controlled by different people."

The technical term you're looking for there, Skeleton, is "meatpuppet". - Reaverdrop (talk/nl) 03:37, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes, thank you. Somehow I must have missed that page in my "intensive study" of these policies, but I see now the discussion of them is included on the WP sockpuppet page. Thanks. Rich Uncle Skeleton ^(talk) 03:44, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Category nomination

A nomination for renaming Category:The Church of Jesus Christ has been made and I figured you would like to weigh in your vote. See the discussion HERE. JRN 16:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

SAD AND CONFUSE

I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY YOU DID THIS RESEARCH ABOUT GARMENT. WHERE DID YOU GET THE PICTURES OF THE GARMENTS TROUGH THE YEARS AND WHY YOU PUT THEM ON THE INTERNET . IM A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAYS SAINTS AND I TRULY BELIEVE THAT THIS CLOTHES ARE SACRED. AND I GIVE ALL OF YOU MY TESTIMONY THAT THE THINGS THAT WE LDS DO ON THE TEMPLE ARE NOT TO BE SAID AT LOUD TO THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD. MY HUSBAND AND I HAVE SACRIFIED SO MUCH TO GET TO THE TEMPLE,AND RECIEVE THE SACRED GARMENT THAT IT MAKES ME CRY TO SEE THOSE THING ABOUT THE GARMENT THAT ARE SO IMPORTANT TO ME . I EXPECT THAT MAYBE IN A FUTURE NOT SO FAR ALL THIS WEB SITES DISSAPEAR AND ALL OF YOU KNOW ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE TEMPLE FOR YOURSELF.IM GONNA MAKE A PRAYER FOR ALL OF YOU. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.160.212.214 (talk) 04:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Church of Jesus Christ (Not Bickertonite)

Interested parties who voiced opinions on this in the past, read all about it - the raging debate on moving the article on the Church of Jesus Christ (a.k.a. Bickertonite, or not) has flared up again, at Talk:The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ#Requested_move.2C_take_two. Come back for more fun and games if you care to - thanks for playing... - Reaverdrop _(talk/nl) 05:08, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, good faith, where art thou?

What's with denouncing my opinion on the article about black people and the Mormon church just because I haven't been around long? With all due respect, there's no point in doing that just because I have "less than 500 edits"...it just makes you seem snobby and intolerant of other viewpoints. BTW, I've changed my username. Fitzy's Claw (talk) 17:16, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Degrees of Glory Merge

As you have been a recent contributer to Degrees of glory or a related page, I wanted to give you heads up on my Merger proposal: Talk:Degrees of glory#Merger proposal —Preceding unsigned comment added by Descartes1979 (talk • contribs) 18:04, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Mormonism and history merge proposal

Please weigh in on the merger proposal between History of the Latter Day Saint movement and Mormonism and history. I saw that you were a recent contributor of one of the pages in question, and thought you would be interested.--Descartes1979 (talk) 21:29, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Book of Joseph Papyri with rubrics (red characters)

I just uploaded another image of Joseph Smith Papyrus IV - which clearly shows the red writing that Oliver Cowdery mentions in his writings. The red characters are quite clear, so I am confused when you say there are no red characters in the Joseph Smith papyri.--Descartes1979 (talk) 08:14, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

BOA - what we agree on

I went back through the thread on the BOA talk page, and think we might be misunderstanding each other, and I think we can actually agree on a lot. Please see my recent post there. --Descartes1979 (talk) 19:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

1831 polygamy revelation

Visor: I see you've found the 1831 polygamy revelation article. If you like that, you're going to love the 1843 polygamy revelation companion article. :-) --MrWhipple (talk) 23:43, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I've seen this. What a mess these are. 1843? Try 1832. But we'll deal with both fring theories and try to work to get them into real articles... -Visorstuff (talk) 23:45, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

About as WP:Coatrack as they come. (sigh) --MrWhipple (talk) 01:49, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

You might also want to take a look at other articled edited here: Special:Contributions/Écrasez_l'infâme. There have been a number of significant revisions to polygamy articles by this user. Someone's got a hobby horse. --MrWhipple (talk) 02:04, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to see some movement on merging this article with Joseph Smith, Jr. and polygamy. Is there some way to start a discussion leading to a vote? (I'm unclear on the procedure for this.)--MrWhipple (talk) 15:34, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

NPOV edits at the Book of Mormon Requested

Your NPOV inputs to the article the Book of Mormon would be greatly appreciated. I added highly relevant verifiable facts from reliable sources summarizing the origin of the Book of Mormon in the section Origin of the Book of Mormon, namely Smith's method of translation and the role of the Harris's, yet two editors are deleting this information without justification. It appears that this is being done in violation of WP:PRESERVE, and possibly in violation of WP:OWN based upon the discussion at the talk page, in which one editor appears to demand that all edits be cleared by him first. Please take a look if you have a chance—it looks like a group effort to keep some facts off of the page. Écrasez l'infâme (talk) 20:30, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Utah Wikipedia Meetup

Interested in attending a Utah Wikipedia Meetup?
If you are interested in a Utah meetup, please visit Wikipedia talk:Meetup/Utah and voice your interest. Not in the Utah area? Check out other meetups around the world!

--Admrb♉ltz (talk) 22:16, 15 September 2008 (UTC) via AWB

File:LDSGrowth.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:LDSGrowth.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Skier Dude (talk) 05:17, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello!

Hi! I'm looking for someone to connect with to help with the LDS WikiProject and contact if needed.Bye!Narnia2514 (talk) 21:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

What to do with very good links?

Hello, I have some very good links about LDS Jewish-Christian tradition and Open Theism.

Professor Emeritus W. D. Davies, a famous scholar in theology (and not a member in LDS) said: Mormonism is the Jewish-Christian tradition in an American key. He explained in "Israel, the Mormons and the Land"

http://rsc.byu.edu/pubWDaviesIsraelMormonsLand.php

Also the famous lutheran theologian Krister Stendahl was active in Jewish-Christian dialogue and was a close friend of LDS and helped them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krister_Stendahl

There was a seminar with many important non-LDS scholars at BYU in 1978 (one of them was W. D Davies). A book was published. Reflections on Mormonism : Judaeo-Christian parallels : papers delivered at the Religious Studies Center Symposium, Brigham Young University, March 10-11, 1978

http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/rsc&CISOPTR=36013

LDS are strictly Open Theists, says professor emeritus Louis Midgley at BYU.

http://www.fairblog.org/2010/01/20/lcm_open_theism/

90.231.11.211 (talk) 00:03, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

December 2011 Newsletter for WikiProject United States

The December 2011 issue of the WikiProject United States newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

 
--Kumioko (talk) 03:23, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

January 2012 Newsletter for WikiProject United States and supported projects

The January 2012 issue of the WikiProject United States newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

 
--Kumi-Taskbot (talk) 19:52, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Ichthus: January 2012

ICHTHUS

January 2012

In this issue...

• From the Editor
• What are You doing For Lent?
• Fun and Exciting Contest Launched
• Spotlight on WikiProject Catholicism

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Ichthus is published by WikiProject Christianity
For submissions and subscriptions contact the Newsroom

Happy Adminship Anniversary

Wishing Visorstuff a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 00:31, 12 March 2012 (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 over 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 Wikipedia: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 and that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions). 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. MadmanBot (talk) 19:30, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm still around and lurking for now due to safety issues noted on my user page . Will comply with the above to keep my privileges. Hopefully I'll be able to be a more active contributor and admin again soon. Visorstuff (talk) 21:59, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Loves Libraries Seattle

Decemmber 8 - Wikipedia Loves Libraries Seattle - You're invited

Seattle Public Library

Date Saturday, December 8, 2012 Time 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Location Seattle Public Library Meeting Room 1 on Level 4, Central Library, 1000 4th Avenue, Seattle WA, 98104 Event An editathon on Seattle-related Wikipedia articles with Wikipedia tutorials and Librarian assistance on hand. Hashtag #wikiloveslib or #glamwiki. Registration http://wll-seattle.eventbrite.com or use on-wiki regsistration. Yours, Maximilianklein (talk) 03:08, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, but i'm not from seattle. Visorstuff (talk) 04:20, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Joseph Smith - FAC

Hello Visorstuff,

I have put the article on Joseph Smith up as a nominee for Featured Article Status! I think the article has come a long way, and has a very good chance of being featured this time around. I would personally appreciate it if you took a moment to review the article and vote for it (or against it, I suppose) at it's FAC.

Thanks! --Trevdna (talk) 19:38, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment

Hello there, a proposal regarding pre-adminship review has been raised at Village pump by Anna Frodesiak. Your comments here is very much appreciated. Many thanks. Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:47, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

General Conference (LDS Church)

As an uninvolved admin that is familiar with the LDS Church, could you please talk a look at Talk:General Conference (LDS Church), as well as the recent edit history of General Conference (LDS Church), and take whatever actions you feel are necessary for the two involved parties (one of which is me). ^—Asterisk*^Splat→ 00:13, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:52, 23 November 2015 (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 Wikipedia: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. MadmanBot (talk) 00:30, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. Much appreciated. Visorstuff (talk) 20:22, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

A cupcake for you!

I stumbled upon some of your edits and comments, and found them very helpful and constructive. I wish you will continue making a positive presence in WP. Caballero/Historiador (talk) 10:45, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. I would love to contribute more if personal safety wasn't an issue. I hope to return to full editing and helping out with admin duties in 2016. Visorstuff (talk) 20:21, 28 December 2015 (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 Wikipedia: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. MadmanBot (talk) 00:30, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I am hoping that some of my recent edits will suffice for activity. I do plan t return, but still am dealing with personal items outlined on my page. Visorstuff (talk) 20:21, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection

Hello, Visorstuff. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.

Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.

In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:

• Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
• A bot will post a notification at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard of each use. MusikBot currently does this by updating a report, which is transcluded onto the noticeboard.

Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you.
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Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins

Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

A new user right for New Page Patrollers

Hi Visorstuff.

A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.

It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:48, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Visorstuff. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. Mdann52 (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Visorstuff. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

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

NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67

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.
• Wikipedia: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)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Visorstuff. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Visorstuff. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (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 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 Wikipedia: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, that you have not been inactive for a three-year period of time, and that you have not been inactive from administrative tasks for a five 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. Further, following a community discussion in March of 2018, administrators suspended for inactivity who have not had any logged administrative activity for five years 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. — JJMC89 bot 00:07, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks - made edits to keep rights. Visorstuff (talk) 14:31, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi Visorstuff. Good to see another Wikipedian who is also a believer. I've been encouraging inactive administrators to rejoin the project in earnest, and your name came up because you've been inactive for a year. There are some resources here that may be helpful if you wish to re-engage. I do note that it has been many years since you contributed regularly, and if you don't foresee that changing soon, I would encourage you to consider resigning your admin status by leaving a note at WP:BN to that effect. The community has expressed various concerns regarding dormant admin accounts. Thanks for all you've done. Yours in Christ, UninvitedCompany 01:58, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks UninvitedCompany. I don't plan on resigning my admin status. I'd love to edit more regularly and plan to in the future. However, I still fear for my family's safety due to my edits and comments on Wikipedia due to some things that happened years ago. Until I feel that there are more safety protocols in place, I am sure my edits will be sporadic. Visorstuff (talk) 14:50, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).

Administrator changes

Galobtter

Orangemike

BorgQueen • Davidruben • Ocee • Revolving Bugbear • Theda • There'sNoTime • Timc • Tijuana Brass • Tristessa de St Ange

Bureaucrat changes

Addshore

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe • SilkTork

Euryalus • Newyorkbrad • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

AGK • Joe Roe • SilkTork

Euryalus • Newyorkbrad • There'sNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• There are a number of new or changed speedy deletion criteria, each previously part of WP:CSD#G6:

1. G14 (new): Disambiguation pages that disambiguate only zero or one existing pages are now covered under the new G14 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-disambig}}; the text is unchanged and candidates may be found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
2. R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
3. G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.

• The Wikimedia Foundation now requires all interface administrators to enable two-factor authentication.
• Members of the Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.

Technical news

• Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:

1. At least 8 characters in length
2. Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
3. Different from their username

User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.

• Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
• {{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.

Arbitration

• Following the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: AGK, Courcelles, GorillaWarfare, Joe Roe, Mkdw, SilkTork.

Miscellaneous

• Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
• Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2019).

Administrator changes

Enterprisey • JJMC89

BorgQueen

Harro5 • Jenks24 • Graft • R. Baley

Interface administrator changes

Enterprisey

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is currently open to reevaluate the activity requirements for administrators.
• Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent request for comment has amended the blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
• A request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.

Technical news

• A discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2019 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2019, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2019, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• A new IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be identified.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:16, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2019).

Administrator changes

Evad37

There'sNoTime

Alex Shih • Brian • Mushroom • Nakon • Oscarthecat • PeruvianLlama • Ragib • Reaper Eternal • Rossami • Tom

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ritchie333

CheckUser changes

There'sNoTime

Keegan • Ks0stm

Oversight changes

There'sNoTime

Ks0stm • Sphilbrick

Guideline and policy news

• The RfC on administrator activity requirements failed to reach consensus for any proposal.
• Following discussions at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the restoration of adminship policy was reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.

Technical news

• A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
  • paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
  • checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2019 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Base, Einsbor, Jon Kolbert, Schniggendiller, and Wim b.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:13, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2019).

Administrator changes

Reaper Eternal • ThaddeusB

Bogdangiusca • Christopher Parham • Necrothesp • Schneelocke • Siroxo • Sarah

Mentifisto → Lofty abyss

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad

Kingturtle

Technical news

• In Special:Preferences under "Appearance" → "Advanced options", there is now an option to show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link.
• The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Please see meta:Community health initiative/User reporting system consultation 2019 to provide your input on this idea.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee clarified that the General 1RR prohibition for Palestine-Israel articles may only be enforced on pages with the {{ARBPIA 1RR editnotice}} edit notice.

Miscellaneous

• Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
• As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:57, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 special circular

Administrators must secure their accounts The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised. Use strong, unique passwords for your Wikipedia account and associated email Change your password now if your Wikipedia account password or email password is reused on another website, exposed, or weak Enable two-factor authentication now for improved security

View additional information

Why have I received this message? All administrators are receiving it. What prompted you to send this message? Recently, several Wikipedia admin accounts were compromised. The admin accounts were desysopped on an emergency basis. In the past, the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. The committee has updated its guidelines. Admins may now be required to undergo a fresh Request for Adminship (RfA) after losing control of their account. What do I need to do? Only to follow the instructions in this message. Check that your password is unique (not reused across sites). Check that your password is strong (not simple or guessable). Enable Two-factor authentication (2FA), if you can, to create a second hurdle for attackers. How can I find out more about two-factor authentication (2FA)? You can find out more about 2FA at m:2FA.

This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:17, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)

ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.

Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.

We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.

For the Arbitration Committee, -Cameron11598 21:04, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).

Administrator changes

HickoryOughtShirt?4 • RexxS

Necrothesp

Bratsche • Kyle Barbour • Kzollman • Madman

Interface administrator changes

Pharos

Bureaucrat changes

Primefac

CheckUser changes

Reaper Eternal

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment concluded that creating pages in the portal namespace should be restricted to autoconfirmed users.
• Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.

Technical news

• XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well: Steward Stats and Patroller Stats.

Arbitration

• In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases, the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions; administrators found failing to have adequately done so will not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
• Following a formal ratification process, the arbitration policy has been amended (diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.

Miscellaneous

• A request for comment is currently open to amend the community sanctions procedure to exclude non XfD or CSD deletions.
• A proposal to remove pre-2009 indefinite IP blocks is currently open for discussion.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).

Administrator changes

Andonic • Consumed Crustacean • Enigmaman • Euryalus • EWS23 • HereToHelp • Nv8200pa • Peripitus • StringTheory11 • Vejvančický

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project.
• An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
• An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.

Technical news

• The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
• Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.

Miscellaneous

• The previously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 was approved and has taken place.
• The 2019 talk pages consultation produced a report for Phase 1 and has entered Phase 2.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:49, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).

Administrator changes

28bytes • Ad Orientem • Ansh666 • Beeblebrox • Boing! said Zebedee • BU Rob13 • Dennis Brown • Deor • DoRD • Floquenbeam¹ • Flyguy649 • Fram² • Gadfium • GB fan • Jonathunder • Kusma • Lectonar • Moink • MSGJ • Nick • Od Mishehu • Rama • Spartaz • Syrthiss • TheDJ • WJBscribe

¹Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

²Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes • WJBscribe • Wizardman

Interface administrator changes

MSGJ • TheDJ

CheckUser changes

Beeblebrox • BU Rob13 • DoRD

Oversight changes

Beeblebrox • BU Rob13 • DoRD • GB fan

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment seeking to alleviate pressures on the request an account (ACC) process proposes either raising the account creation limit for extended confirmed editors or granting the account creator permission on request to new ACC tool users.

• In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.

• The scope of CSD criterion G8 has been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
• The scope of CSD criterion G14 has been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
• A request for comment seeks to determine whether Wikipedia:Office actions should be a policy page or an information page.

Technical news

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.

Miscellaneous

• In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in significant community discussion, a request for arbitration (permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an open letter to the WMF Board.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:20, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).

Administrator changes

Johnuniq • Kosack • Valereee

Ad Orientem • Ched • Gadfium • Jonathunder • Nick • Yelyos

Bald Zebra • Beetstra • Doug Bell • Journalist • Ruud Koot • Splash • Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

Dinoguy1000

CheckUser changes

RickinBaltimore

Oversight changes

Beeblebrox

RickinBaltimore

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the page Wikipedia:Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
• A request for comment (permalink) is in progress regarding the administrator inactivity policy.

Arbitration

• Editors may now use the template {{Ds/aware}} to indicate that they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for a topic area, so it is unnecessary to alert them.

Miscellaneous

• Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
• The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist.

  Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:24, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).

Administrator changes

Bradv • Chetsford • Izno

Floquenbeam • Lectonar

DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana

CheckUser changes

Callanecc • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

Callanecc • Fox • HJ Mitchell • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Technical news

• Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
• The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2019 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

Miscellaneous

• A global request for comment is in progress regarding whether a user group should be created that could modify edit filters across all public Wikimedia wikis.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).

Administrator changes

Barkeep49

Beetstra • KillerChihuahua • Kusma

Arcadian • Extraordinary Machine • Xeno

JamesBWatson → JBW

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Oversight changes

Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories.

Technical news

• As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.

Arbitration

• The 2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
• The arbitration case regarding Fram was closed. While there will be a local RfC focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.

Miscellaneous

• The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:55, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

2019 US Banknote Contest

	US Banknote Contest
	November-December 2019
There are an estimated 30,000 different varieties of United States banknotes, yet only a fraction of these are represented on Wikimedia Commons in the form of 2D scans. Additionally, Colonial America, the Confederate States, the Republic of Texas, multiple states and territories, communities, and private companies have issued banknotes that are in the public domain today but are absent from Commons. In the months of November and December, WikiProject Numismatics will be running a cross-wiki upload-a-thon, the 2019 US Banknote Contest. The goal of the contest is to increase the number of US banknote images available to content creators on all Wikimedia projects. Participants will claim points for uploading and importing 2D scans of US banknotes, and at the end of the contest all will receive awards. Whether you want to claim the Gold Wiki or you just want to have fun, all are invited to participate. If you do not want to receive invitations to future US Banknote Contests, follow the instructions here

Sent by ZLEA at 23:30, 19 October 2019 (UTC) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).

Administrator changes

GermanJoe • Girth Summit • Kees08 • Nosebagbear

DESiegel • GB fan • MSGJ • Voice of Clam • WilyD

DeltaQuad • Fang Aili • Pakaran

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad • Pakaran

Interface administrator changes

MSGJ

CheckUser changes

L235 • Mz7 • SQL • ST47

Ivanvector

DeltaQuad

Oversight changes

L235 • Mz7 • ST47 • Stwalkerster • The Blade of the Northern Lights • Xaosflux

DeltaQuad • DGG • Julia W

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC was closed with the consensus that the resysop criteria should be made stricter.

• The follow-up RfC to develop that change is now open at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2019 Resysop Criteria (2).

• A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors may now nominate themselves as candidates for the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:15, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:03, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).

Administrator changes

EvergreenFir • ToBeFree

Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂

CheckUser changes

Beeblebrox

Deskana

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC on the administrator resysop criteria was closed. 18 proposals have been summarised with a variety of supported and opposed statements. The inactivity grace period within which a new request for adminship is not required has been reduced from three years to two. Additionally, Bureaucrats are permitted to use their discretion when returning administrator rights.
• Following a proposal, the edit filter mailing list has been opened up to users with the Edit Filter Helper right.

Technical news

• Wikimedia projects can set a default block length for users via MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry. A new page, MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip, allows the setting of a different default block length for IP editors. Neither is currently used. (T219126)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

Miscellaneous

• The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:48, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).

Administrator changes

Dreamy Jazz • Newslinger • Rosguill

Deor • Spartaz • Xeno

Angusmclellan • clpo13 • Edgar181 • Matthewedwards • NCurse

CheckUser changes

Bradv • Casliber • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno

Oversight changes

Bradv • Casliber • DGG • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno

Someguy1221

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment asks whether partial blocks should be enabled on the English Wikipedia. If enabled, this functionality would allow administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces, rather than the entire site.
• A proposal asks whether admins who don't use their tools for a significant period of time (e.g. five years) should have the toolset procedurally removed.
• Following a successful RfC, a whitelist is now available for users whose redirects will be autopatrolled by a bot, removing them from the new pages patrol queue. Admins can add such users to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist after a discussion following the guidelines at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist.

Arbitration

• The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted rather than reasonably construed.
• Following the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Bradv, Casliber, David Fuchs, DGG, KrakatoaKatie, Maxim, Newyorkbrad, SoWhy, Worm That Turned, Xeno.

Miscellaneous

• This issue marks three full years of the Admin newsletter. Thanks for reading!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:07, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

Administrator changes

Ergo Sum • Nick Moyes • QEDK • Wugapodes

Dennis Brown

Aude • BrownHairedGirl • CALR • Jengod • John Reaves • J.smith • Kim Dent-Brown • K1Bond007 • MECU • Refdoc • RHaworth

CheckUser changes

Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Interface administrator changes

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 Wikipedia: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. [23]

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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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:06, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).

Administrator changes

Money emoji

Athaenara • DeltaQuad

Fishhead64 • Kudpung • Mikaey

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad

CheckUser changes

DeltaQuad

Oversight changes

DeltaQuad

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
• A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

Technical news

• Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: BRPever, Krd, Martin Urbanec, MusikAnimal, Sakretsu, Sotiale, and Tks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
• The 2020 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Ajraddatz and Uzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:21, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).

Administrator changes

Cabayi • Lee Vilenski

Boing! said Zebedee

Jonny-mt • MarkGallagher • PeaceNT

Money emoji → Moneytrees

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork • WereSpielChequers

CheckUser changes

NativeForeigner

Oversight changes

Someguy1221

Daniel Case

Guideline and policy news

• There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.

Technical news

• There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.

Arbitration

• Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.

Miscellaneous

• The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).

Administrator changes

Gnangarra • Kaisershatner • Malcolmxl5

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversight changes

HJ Mitchell

Guideline and policy news

• Discretionary sanctions have been authorized for all pages and edits related to COVID-19, to be logged at WP:GS/COVID19.
• Following a recent discussion on Meta-Wiki, the edit filter maintainer global group has been created.
• A request for comment has been proposed to create a new main page editor usergroup.
• A request for comment has been proposed to make the bureaucrat activity requirements more strict.

Technical news

• The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. You can review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page.
• Enterprisey created a script that will show a link to the proper Special:Undelete page when viewing a since-deleted revision, see User:Enterprisey/link-deleted-revs.

Miscellaneous

• A request for comment closed with consensus to create a Village Pump-style page for communication with the Wikimedia Foundation.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:20, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).

Administrator changes

CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth

Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL

CheckUser changes

SQL

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment asks whether the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) should allowed any unblock request or just private appeals.
• The Wikimedia Foundation announced that they will develop a universal code of conduct for all WMF projects. There is an open local discussion regarding the same.

Arbitration

• A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).

Administrator changes

Malcolmxl5

John • TheCoffee • Tim!

Creffett → GeneralNotability

DeltaQuad → AmandaNP

CheckUser changes

Bbb23

Interface administrator changes

TonyBallioni

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is in progress to remove the T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) speedy deletion criterion.

Technical news

• Protection templates on mainspace pages are now automatically added by User:MusikBot II (BRFA).

Arbitration

• Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. The RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community.
• The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020).

Administrator changes

Red Phoenix

Euryalus • SQL

Jujutacular • Monty845 • Rettetast • Madchester

Oversight changes

GB fan

Keegan • Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Guideline and policy news

• There is an open request for comment to decide whether to increase the minimum duration a sanction discussion has to remain open (currently 24 hours).
• Speedy deletion criterion T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) has been repealed following a request for comment.
• Speedy deletion criterion X2 (pages created by the content translation tool) has been repealed following a discussion.
• There is a proposal to restrict proposed deletion to confirmed users.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:21, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2020).

Administrator changes

Eddie891

Angela • Jcw69 • Just Chilling • Philg88 • Viajero

CheckUser changes

SQL

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the minimum length for site ban discussions was increased to 72 hours, up from 24.
• A request for comment is ongoing to determine whether paid editors must or should use the articles for creation process.
• A request for comment is open to resolve inconsistencies between the draftification and alternative to deletion processes.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2020 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
• An open request for comment asks whether active Arbitrators may serve on the Trust and Safety Case Review Committee or Ombudsman commission.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:57, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2020).

Administrator changes

Ajpolino • LuK3

Jackmcbarn

Ad Orientem • Harej • Lid • Lomn • Mentoz86 • Oliver Pereira • XJaM

There'sNoTime → TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created.

Technical news

• The filter log now provides links to view diffs of deleted revisions (phab:T261630).

Arbitration

• The 2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place from September 27th to October 7th.
• Following a request for comment, sitting Committee members may not serve on either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee. The Arbitration Committee passed a motion implementing those results into their procedures.

Miscellaneous

• The Universal Code of Conduct draft is open for community review and comment until October 6th, 2020.
• Office actions may now be appealed to the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:44, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2020).

Administrator changes

John M Wolfson

Bduke • Nilfanion • Philosopher • Rspeer • Yunshui

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

TonyBallioni

CheckUser changes

EdJohnston • Oshwah • Yamla

Yunshui

Oversight changes

Anarchyte

Yunshui

Guideline and policy news

• Community sanctions now authorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotection any article on a beauty pageant, or biography of a person known as a beauty pageant contestant, which has been edited by a sockpuppet account or logged-out sockpuppet, to be logged at WP:GS/PAGEANT.

Technical news

• Sysops will once again be able to view the deleted history of JS/CSS pages; this was restricted to interface administrators when that group was introduced.
• Twinkle's block module now includes the ability to note the specific case when applying a discretionary sanctions block and/or template.
• Sysops will be able to use Special:CreateLocalAccount to create a local account for a global user that is prevented from auto-creation locally (such as by a filter or range block). Administrators that are not sure if such a creation is appropriate should contact a checkuser.

Arbitration

• The 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections process has begun. Eligible editors will be able to nominate themselves as candidates from November 8 through November 17. The voting period will run from November 23 through December 6.
• The Anti-harassment RfC has concluded with a summary of the feedback provided.

Miscellaneous

• A reminder that standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people. (American Politics 2 Arbitration case).

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:53, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2020).

Administrator changes

Andrwsc • Anetode • GoldenRing • JzG • LinguistAtLarge • Nehrams2020

Interface administrator changes

Izno

Guideline and policy news

• There is a request for comment in progress to either remove T3 (duplicated and hardcoded instances) as a speedy deletion criterion or eliminate its seven-day waiting period.

Technical news

• Voting for proposals in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey, which determines what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year, will take place from 8 December through 21 December. In particular, there are sections regarding administrators and anti-harassment.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 7 December 2020 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).

Administrator changes

Hammersoft

Andres • Brion VIBBER • Rkitko • Thatcher

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek • Primefac

Oversight changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek

Joe Roe

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion T3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following a request for comment.

Technical news

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time.

Arbitration

• By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes). The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason).
• Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, L235, Maxim, Primefac.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:08, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).

Administrator changes

Hog Farm

Mattflaschen • Nandesuka • Savidan • Wangi

CheckUser changes

Berean Hunter • Xeno

Oversight changes

Someguy1221 • Xeno

Arbitration

• The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover post-1992 politics of United States and closely related people, replacing the 1932 cutoff.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2021 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2021, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2021, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Wikipedia has now been around for 20 years, and recently saw its billionth edit!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:10, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2021).

Administrator changes

TJMSmith

Boing! said Zebedee • Hiberniantears • Lear's Fool • Only • WGFinley

Interface administrator changes

AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a 2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
• A request for comment is in progress to remove F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• A request for comment seeks to grant page movers the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target. The full proposal is at Wikipedia:Page mover/delete-redirect.
• A request for comment asks if sysops may place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?
• There is a discussion in progress concerning automatic protection of each day's featured article with Pending Changes protection.

Technical news

• When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
• When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
• There have been a number of reported issues with Pending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (phab:T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (phab:T275322).

Arbitration

• By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions.
• The Kurds and Kurdistan case was closed, authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AmandaNP, Operator873, Stanglavine, Teles, and Wiki13.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:15, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2021).

Administrator changes

Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.

Technical news

• When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
• Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)

Arbitration

• A community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2021).

Administrator changes

Enchanter • Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that third party appeals are allowed but discouraged.
• The 2021 Desysop Policy RfC was closed with no consensus. Consensus was found in a previous RfC for a community based desysop procedure, though the procedure proposed in the 2021 RfC did not gain consensus.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

• The community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2021).

Administrator changes

Ashleyyoursmile • Less Unless

Husond • MattWade • MJCdetroit • Carioca • Vague Rant • Kingboyk • Thunderboltz • Gwen Gale • AniMate • SlimVirgin (deceased)

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus was reached to deprecate Wikipedia:Editor assistance.
• Following a Request for Comment the Book namespace was deprecated.

Technical news

• Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.

Arbitration

• After a Clarification request, the Arbitration Committee modified Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case. This means sourcing expectations are a discretionary sanction instead of being present on all articles. It also details using the talk page or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard to discuss disputed sources.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:46, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2021).

Administrator changes

Trialpears

AGK • Eliz81 • Mulad • ThaddeusB • Vianello • Who

Lacrimosus → Ikuzaf

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

AGK • DGG

Oversighter changes

AGK

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
• An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.

Technical news

• IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.

Arbitration

• The community authorised COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:27, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2021).

Administrator changes

BusterD

Kees08 • Nickshanks • Protonk • Schissel • Ultraexactzz • Wknight94

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversighter changes

TheresNoTime

ST47

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.

Technical news

• Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)

Arbitration

• Following an amendment request, the committee has clarified that the Talk page exception to the 500/30 rule in remedy 5 of the Palestine-Israel articles 4 case does not apply to requested move discussions.

Miscellaneous

• You can vote for candidates in the 2021 Board of Trustees elections from 4 August to 17 August. Four community elected seats are up for election.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:19, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2021).

Administrator changes

Jake Wartenberg

Emperor • Viridian Bovary

Ashleyyoursmile → Viridian Bovary

Guideline and policy news

• Feedback is requested on the Universal Code of Conduct enforcement draft by the Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee.
• A RfC is open on whether to allow administrators to use extended confirmed protection on high-risk templates.
• A discussion is open to decide when, if ever, should discord logs be eligible for removal when posted onwiki (including whether to oversight them)
• A RfC on the next steps after the trial of pending changes on TFAs has resulted in a 30 day trial of automatic semi protection for TFAs.

Technical news

• The Score extension has been re-enabled on public wikis. It has been updated, but has been placed in safe mode to address unresolved security issues. Further information on the security issues can be found on the mediawiki page.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is in progress to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules. Comments and new proposals are welcome.

Miscellaneous

• The 2021 RfA review is now open for comments.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Administrator changes

Blablubbs

Alvestrand • Black Falcon • Deathphoenix • Dppowell • Mark Arsten • JGHowes (deceased)

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Mkdw

Interface administrator changes

Galobtter

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, extended confirmed protection may be used preemptively on certain high-risk templates.
• Following a discussion at the Village Pump, there is consensus to treat discord logs the same as IRC logs. This means that discord logs will be oversighted if posted onwiki.

Technical news

• DiscussionTools has superseded Enterprisey's reply-link script. Editors may switch using the "Discussion tools" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features.

Arbitration

• A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
• Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
• The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

• Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
• The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:05, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2021).

Administrator changes

Clpo13

Brian0918 • JDoorjam • Karanacs • MrDarcy • Mindspillage

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Dreamy Jazz • Ferret • GeneralNotability • Girth Summit • RoySmith

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz • LuK3

Guideline and policy news

• Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.

Technical news

• Toolhub is a catalogue of tools which can be used on Wikimedia wikis. It is at https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/.

Arbitration

• GeneralNotability, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections. Ivanvector and John M Wolfson are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves to stand in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections from 07 November 2021 until 16 November 2021.

Miscellaneous

• The 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of five new CheckUsers and two new Oversighters.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).

Administrator changes

A Train • Berean Hunter • Epbr123 • GermanJoe • Sanchom • Mysid

Technical news

• Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
• The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections is open until 23:59, 06 December 2021 (UTC).
• The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, have been made permanent.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrators will no longer be autopatrolled

A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:07, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2021).

Administrator changes

Amalthea • Ihcoyc (deceased) • Kateshortforbob • Kirill Lokshin • Rifleman 82 • Ryan Norton • Wrp103

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

CheckUser changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Oversighter changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Guideline and policy news

• Following consensus at the 2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.

• Additionally, consensus for proposal 6C of the 2021 RfA review has led to the creation of an administrative action review process. The purpose of this process will be to review individual administrator actions and individual actions taken by users holding advanced permissions.

Arbitration

• Following the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Cabayi, Donald Albury, Enterprisey, Izno, Opabinia regalis, Worm That Turned, Wugapodes.

Miscellaneous

• The functionaries email list (functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to the Arbitration Committee.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:25, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:12, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).

Administrator changes

AustralianRupert • Cimon Avaro • Euryalus • Jehochman • Nunh-huh

28bytes

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• The Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines have been published for consideration. Voting to ratify this guideline is planned to take place 7 March to 21 March. Comments can be made on the talk page.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
• The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

Arbitration

• Community input is requested on several motions aimed at addressing discretionary sanctions that are no longer needed or overly broad.
• The Arbitration Committee has published a generalised comment regarding successful appeals of sanctions that it can review (such as checkuser blocks).
• A motion related to the Antisemitism in Poland case was passed following a declined case request.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2022 Steward elections will begin on 07 February 2022, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2022, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey is open until 11 February 2022.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:02, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2022).

Administrator changes

Modussiccandi

BOZ • Brookie (deceased) • Jackmcbarn • Jamesday • Jonathunder • Master of Puppets • Saravask

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• A RfC is open to change the wording of revision deletion criterion 1 to remove the sentence relating to non-infringing contributions.
• A RfC is open to discuss prohibiting draftification of articles over 90 days old.

Technical news

• The deployment of the reply tool as an opt-out feature, as announced in last month's newsletter, has been delayed to 7 March. Feedback and comments are being welcomed at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project. (T296645)
• Special:Nuke will now allow the selection of standard deletion reasons to be used when mass-deleting pages. This was a Community Wishlist Survey request from 2022. (T25020)
• The ability to undelete the talk page when undeleting a page using Special:Undelete or the API will be added soon. This change was requested in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. (T295389)

Arbitration

• Several unused discretionary sanctions and article probation remedies have been rescinded. This follows the community feedback from the 2021 Discretionary Sanctions review.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 appointees for the Ombuds commission are Érico, Faendalimas, Galahad, Infinite0694, Mykola7, Olugold, Udehb and Zabe as regular members and Ameisenigel and JJMC89 as advisory members.
• Following the 2022 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AntiCompositeNumber, BRPever, Hasley, TheresNoTime, and Vermont.
• The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey results have been published alongside the ranking of prioritized proposals.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have not made any edits or logged actions in the preceding twelve months. Because you have been inactive, your administrative permissions will be removed if you do not return to activity within the next month.

Inactive administrators are encouraged to rejoin the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to rejoin the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.

Thank you for your past contributions to the project. — JJMC89 bot 00:05, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2022).

Administrator changes

Firefly • Sdrqaz

Ad Orientem

Geschichte • Ryan Postlethwaite • Sabine's Sunbird • Wassupwestcoast

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open proposing a change to the minimum activity requirements for administrators.

Technical news

• Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have the deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights. This means that those in the Researcher user group and Checkusers who are not administrators can now access Special:RevisionDelete. The users able to view the special page after this change are the 3 users in the Researcher group, as there are currently no checkusers who are not already administrators. (T301928)
• When viewing deleted revisions or diffs on Special:Undelete a back link to the undelete page for the associated page is now present. (T284114)

Arbitration

• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Opening of proceedings has been updated to reflect current practice following a motion.
• A arbitration case regarding Skepticism and coordinated editing has been closed.
• A arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been opened.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines has closed, and the results were that 56.98% of voters supported the guidelines. The results of this vote mean the Wikimedia Foundation Board will now review the guidelines.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:14, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

New administrator activity requirement

The administrator policy has been updated with new activity requirements following a successful Request for Comment.

Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:

1. Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
2. Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period

Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.

22:53, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Imminent suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have not made any edits or logged actions in the preceding twelve months. Because you have been inactive, your administrative permissions will be removed if you do not return to activity within the next several days.

Inactive administrators are encouraged to rejoin the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to rejoin the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.

Thank you for your past contributions to the project. — JJMC89 bot 00:01, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have not made any edits or logged actions in the preceding twelve months. Because you have been inactive, your administrative permissions have been removed.

Subject to certain time limits and other restrictions, your administrative permissions may be returned upon request at WP:BN.

Thank you for your past contributions to the project. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:24, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).

Administrator changes

Colin M

David.Monniaux • Fribbler • Grue • Kpjas • West.andrew.g

CheckUser changes

Ks0stm

Oversighter changes

Ks0stm

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, a change has been made to the administrators inactivity policy. Under the new policy, if an administrator has not made at least 100 edits over a period of 5 years they may be desysopped for inactivity.
• Following a discussion on the bureaucrat's noticeboard, a change has been made to the bureaucrats inactivity policy.

Technical news

• The ability to undelete the associated talk page when undeleting a page has been added. This was the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
• A public status system for WMF wikis has been created. It is located at https://www.wikimediastatus.net/ and is hosted separately to WMF wikis so in the case of an outage it will remain viewable.

Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the St Christopher case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to place a ban on single-purpose accounts who were disruptively editing on the article St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine or related pages from those pages.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:35, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).

Administrator changes

Tamzin

Barek • Darkwind • Geometry guy • ProcseeBot • RoyBoy • Sean Whitton • Valereee • Visorstuff • WAvegetarian

Sn0wflake → VersedFenrir

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

• Several areas of improvement collated from community member votes have been identified in the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines. The areas of improvement have been sent back for review and you are invited to provide input on these areas.

Technical news

• Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
• The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.

Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the Rachel Marsden case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to delete or reduce to a stub, together with their talk pages, articles related to Rachel Marsden when they violate Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy.
• An arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been closed.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2022).

Administrator changes

AA • Gwalla • Ioeth • Laurascudder • Moriori (deceased) • Nat • Rfl

Drilnoth → AFigureOfBlue

Bureaucrat changes

Lee Vilenski

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

Technical news

• user_global_editcount is a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding conduct in deletion-related editing has been opened.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:29, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2022).

Administrator changes

Valereee

Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • Capitalistroadster • Samsara

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
• An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.

Technical news

• The Wikimania 2022 Hackathon will take place virtually from 11 August to 14 August.
• Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)

Arbitration

• The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

• You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
• Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
• Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).

Administrator changes

DanCherek • DatGuy • Femke • Z1720

Aldux • Graham Beards • Nyttend

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Guideline and policy news

• A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
• An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.

Technical news

• The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
• The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
• The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

• The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
• Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:13, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).

Administrator changes

ScottishFinnishRadish

Staxringold

Ahoerstemeier (deceased) • Ched

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678

CheckUser changes

GorillaWarfare

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that if the rationale for a block depends on information that is not available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee, a checkuser or an oversighter for action (as applicable, per ArbCom's recent updated guidance) instead of the administrator making the block.
• Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
• Community comment on the revised Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines is requested until 8 October.

Technical news

• The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.

Arbitration

• Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
• A modification to the deletion RfC remedy in the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been made to reaffirm the independence of the RfC and allow the moderators to split the RfC in two.
• The second phase of the 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review closes 3 October.

Miscellaneous

• An administrator's account was recently compromised. Administrators are encouraged to check that their passwords are secure, and reminded that ArbCom reserves the right to not restore adminship in cases of poor account security. You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to provide an extra level of security.
• Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections open 2 October and close 8 October.
• You are invited to comment on candidates in the 2022 CUOS appointments process.
• An RfC is open to discuss whether to make Vector 2022 the default skin on desktop.
• Tech tip: You can do a fuzzy search of all deleted page titles at Special:Undelete.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:43, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).

Administrator changes

• 
  • Isabelle Belato
  • Whpq
• 
• 
  • Atama
  • Astronautics~enwiki
  • Athaenara
  • Eddie891
  • GraemeL
  • Marianocecowski
  • Natalya
  • Pratyeka
  • SB Johnny

Interface administrator changes

• TheresNoTime
• Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

• 
  • Blablubbs
  • Firefly
• Joe Roe

Oversight changes

• DGG

Guideline and policy news

• The article creation at scale RfC opened on 3 October and will be open until at least 2 November.
• An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 13 November 2022 until 22 November 2022 to stand in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The arbitration case request titled Athaenara has been resolved by motion.
• The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has entered the proposed decision stage.
• AmandaNP, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections. Xaosflux and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of two new CheckUsers.
• You can add yourself to the centralised page listing time zones of administrators.
• Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like {{rangeblock|create=yes}} or {{uw-ublock|contains profanity}}.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:24, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).

Administrator changes

• Eddie891
• Euryalus
• TheresNoTime

• Alex.muller
• Excirial
• RedWordSmith
• Ron Ritzman
• TheresNoTime
• Stephen

Interface administrator changes

TheresNoTime

TheresNoTime

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been found in an RfC to automatically place RfAs on hold after one week.
• The article creation at scale RfC has been closed.
• An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.

Technical news

• A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)

Arbitration

• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
• The proposed decision for the 2021-22 review of the discretionary sanctions system is open.
• The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has been closed.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
• A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add /64 to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:45, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).

Administrator changes

• ComplexRational
• Extraordinary Writ

Stephen

• Andrew Yong
• Dbenbenn
• DESiegel
• GlassCobra
• Joe Decker
• Nancy
• Pathoschild
• StuffOfInterest
• William Pietri
• Wwwwolf
• Xdamr

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

CheckUser changes

Moneytrees

• Ivanvector
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• GeneralNotability
• Moneytrees

• Guerillero
• SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.

Arbitration

• Following the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, CaptainEek, GeneralNotability, Guerillero, L235, Moneytrees, Primefac, SilkTork.
• The 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review has concluded with many changes to the discretionary sanctions procedure including a change of the name to "contentious topics". The changes are being implemented over the coming month.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
• Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).

Administrator changes

Gimmetrow

• Bjelleklang
• Bob the Wikipedian
• Leithp
• WhisperToMe
• 100 inactive admins

CheckUser changes

• BDD
• Bradv
• Donald Albury
• Maxim
• MusikAnimal

Oversighter changes

• BDD
• Bradv
• Donald Albury
• Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the administrator policy now requires that prior written consent be gained from the Arbitration Committee to mark a block as only appealable to the committee.
• Following a community discussion, consensus has been found to impose the extended-confirmed restriction over the topic areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan and Kurds and Kurdistan.

Technical news

• The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 24 February 2023.
• In December, the contentious topics procedure was adopted which replaces the former discretionary sanctions system. The contentious topics procedure is now in effect following an initial implementation period. There is a detailed summary of the changes and administrator instructions for the new procedure. The arbitration clerk team are taking suggestions, concerns, and unresolved questions about this new system at their noticeboard.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
• Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:38, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).

Administrator changes

The Wordsmith

• Fuhghettaboutit
• Spinningspark (deceased)

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F10 (useless non-media files) has been deprecated.
• Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
• A request for comment is open to discuss making the closing instructions for the requested moves process a guideline.

Technical news

• The results of the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey have been posted.

Arbitration

• Remedy 11 ("Request for Comment") of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been rescinded.
• The proposed decision for the Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case is expected 7 March 2023.
• A case related to the Holocaust in Poland is expected to be opened soon.

Miscellaneous

• The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
• Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
• The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:20, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2023).

Administrator changes

Aoidh

KillerChihuahua

CheckUser changes

Ferret

Guideline and policy news

• A community RfC is open to discuss whether reports primarily involving gender-related disputes or controversies should be referred to the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard.

Technical news

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis starting this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. (T178356)
• The rollback of Vector 2022 RfC has found no consensus to rollback to Vector legacy, but has found rough consensus to disable "limited width" mode by default.
• A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will now appear in the subtitle links shown on Special:Contributions. This was voted #17 in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023.

Arbitration

• The Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case has been closed.
• A case about World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been opened, with the first evidence phase closing 6 April 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2023).

Administrator changes

Spicy

• Ale jrb
• Dbachmann
• DGG (deceased)
• Jimbo Wales

CheckUser changes

Jimbo Wales

Oversighter changes

Jimbo Wales

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Progress has started on the Page Triage improvement project. This is to address the concerns raised by the community in their 2022 WMF letter that requested improvements be made to the tool.

Arbitration

• The proposed decision in the World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case is expected 11 May 2023.

Miscellaneous

• The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input through May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Administrator changes

Ingenuity

• Ddstretch
• Prodego
• Resolute

CheckUser changes

Courcelles

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
• As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.

Technical news

• Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous

• Following a community referendum, the arbitration policy has been modified to remove the ability for users to appeal remedies to Jimbo Wales.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:34, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

Novem Linguae

• Deckiller
• Electionworld
• MBisanz
• Penwhale
• Raul654
• Roadrunner
• Viridae
• Yannismarou

Bureaucrat changes

MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

• Contributions to the English Wikipedia are now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) license instead of CC BY-SA 3.0. Contributions are still also released under the GFDL license.

Technical news

• Discussion is open regarding a proposed global policy regarding third-party resources. Third-party resources are computer resources that reside outside of Wikimedia production websites.

Arbitration

• Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

Firefangledfeathers

• AlisonW
• Amberrock
• Closedmouth
• Scottywong

Interface administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Technical news

• The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. This allows hiding edits made by automated tools. (T334338)
• Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool that allows easier blocking of plain domains (and their subdomains). This is more easily searchable and is faster for the software to use than the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. It does not support regex (for complex cases), URL path-matching, or the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. (T337431)

Arbitration

• The arbitration cases named Scottywong and AlisonW closed 10 July and 16 July respectively.
• The SmallCat dispute arbitration case is in the workshop phase.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:55, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Administrator changes

• Pppery
• Theleekycauldron

• Dwheeler
• G.A.S
• Royalbroil
• Ssd

CheckUser changes

Bradv

Oversighter changes

Bradv

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
• A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

• Special:Contributions now shows the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. (T324166)

Arbitration

• The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).

Administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

Tamzin

Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

• Ragesoss
• TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

• The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.
• There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. Feedback on this proposal is requested.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
• Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
• Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
• Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
• Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
• Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
• An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.

Miscellaneous

• The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2023).

Administrator changes

• Ganesha811
• JPxG

• Ajpolino
• Lourdes
• Mairi
• RockMFR
• Somno
• WilyD

Beeblebrox → Just Step Sideways

CheckUser changes

• Beeblebrox
• Opabinia regalis

Oversight changes

• Beeblebrox
• Opabinia regalis

Guideline and policy news

• Following a talk page discussion, the Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, the Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
• The Arbitration Committee has announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:55, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).

Administrator changes

Clovermoss

Dennis Brown

• Julia W
• Marasmusine
• PBS

CheckUser changes

• Aoidh
• HJ Mitchell
• Sdrqaz
• Spicy
• ToBeFree
• Vanamonde93
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• Aoidh
• Firefly
• Sdrqaz
• ToBeFree
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Arbitration

• Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
• 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.
• The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).

Administrator changes

• Red-tailed hawk
• Robertsky

• Ameliorate!
• Ancheta Wis
• Anthony Bradbury (deceased)
• Cobi
• Ev
• Moondyne
• Worm That Turned

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

CheckUser changes

Wugapodes

Interface administrator changes

• Enterprisey
• Izno

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC 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.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• 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
• The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).

Administrator changes

• Sdkb
• The Night Watch

• East718
• Isabelle Belato
• Mzajac
• Staecker
• Stan Shebs
• Sugarfish
• Tamzin

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
• Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.

Technical news

• The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

• The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
• Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).

Administrator changes

• Kbdank71
• Kosack
• NrDg
• TLSuda

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.

Technical news

• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

Arbitration

• An arbitration 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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:48, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).

Administrator changes

Nyttend

• JohnOwens
• Killiondude
• MelanieN
• Nihonjoe

Bureaucrat changes

Nihonjoe

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe

Oversight changes

GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.

Technical news

• 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

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2024).

Administrator changes

Graham Beards

• Deskana
• Mets501
• Staxringold

Bureaucrat changes

• Deskana
• Warofdreams

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz

Guideline and policy news

• Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.

Technical news

• The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
• The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.

Miscellaneous

• WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2024).

Administrator changes

• Elli
• HouseBlaster
• Pickersgill-Cunliffe

• Brianga
• De728631
• Georgewilliamherbert
• Hyacinth (deceased)
• ProveIt
• The Night Watch

Technical news

• Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)

Miscellaneous

• The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:59, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2024).

Administrator changes

Isabelle Belato

• Ian.thomson
• Modussiccandi

Interface administrator changes

Izno

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49

Technical news

• Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
• Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee appointed the following administrators to the conflict of interest volunteer response team: Bilby, Extraordinary Writ

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2024).

Administrator changes

Pppery

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

Oversighter changes

Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

• Courcelles
• GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
• Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
• The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.

Miscellaneous

• Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:45, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).

Administrator changes

• Asilvering
• Significa liberdade

• Good Olfactory
• Hesperian
• I JethroBT
• TommyBoy
• Woody

CheckUser changes

• Barkeep49
• Izno

• Doug Weller
• Spicy

Guideline and policy news

• Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
• Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
• An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
• Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

Miscellaneous

• If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2024).

Administrator changes

• Crisco 1492

• Babajobu
• Daniel
• Elf
• Jayron32
• Thue
• Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

Maxim

Oversighter changes

Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, the discussion-only period proposal that went for a trial to refine the requests for adminship (RfA) process has been discontinued.
• Following a request for comment, Administrator recall is adopted as a policy.

Technical news

• Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068

Arbitration

• RoySmith, Barkeep49 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2024 Arbitration Committee Elections. ThadeusOfNazereth and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate from 3 November 2024 until 12 November 2024 to stand in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The Arbitration Committee is seeking volunteers for roles such as clerks, access to the COI queue, checkuser, and oversight.

Miscellaneous

• An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:22, 3 November 2024 (UTC)