Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/News and notes

Optional: write a lede — not necessarily a WP:LEAD. Interesting > encyclopedic.

Note: Soni, the author of this lead story, was directly involved in the current review of the RfA process.

As part of WP:RFA2024, multiple RFA reform attempts completed trials or are currently under review. These were last covered by The Signpost in the 16 May issue.

There has already been consensus to add a reminder of RFA civility norms to WP:RFA. There was also consensus to increase suffrage to only voters who are Extended Confirmed and formally require all nominees to be Extended Confirmed. All of these were implemented in the last few months.

This month, the "discussion only period" trial finished. The proposal converted 5 RFAs (non SNOW-closed) to have "discussion only" for the first 2 days out of the 7 day period. After this initial trial, Phase II discussions are ongoing on if this proposal will become permanent.

With the conclusion of its Phase II discussion, admins can designate themselves as monitors for RFAs, with certain expectations for how monitors should act during the RFA. The full list can be found at WP:MONITOR. This proposal is intended to improve enforcement of civility guidelines during RFA.

Phase II for the administrator recall proposal also recently finished, after waiting for a closer for several months. This proposal will allow a community-initiated path to de-adminship by requiring certain admins to pass RFA again. Discussion is ongoing on the next steps for this.

Admin Elections procedure is expected to start trials in October. This will be a one time trial to allow an alternate path to adminship, parallel to RFAs. Candidates can sign up from October 8 to October 14, with a discussion period from October 22 to October 24. This will be followed by a Securepoll private voting from October 25 to October 31. – S

The U4C special elections concluded earlier this month with the election of just one candidate. With 613 votes cast between the 18 eligible candidates, only Ajraddatz (for the North America seat) achieved the 60% support to support+oppose ratio required. This gives U4C just enough members (8 out of 16 seats) to establish their quorum, though it remains to be seen how they will handle inactive members.

The committee was formed primarily to assist larger scale disputes with smaller wikis and enforcement of the Universal Code of Conduct across the projects. They are expected to begin hearing cases shortly. Further information can be found on the U4C announcements page.

The full results can be viewed here. The special elections were last covered in the 22 July issue of The Signpost. – S

The Wikimedia Foundation published their bulletins for late August and early September. Among other news, they covered [the new WMF Global Advocacy team https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/08/15/meet-the-wikimedia-foundation-global-advocacy-team/] and a survey to better understand WikiProjects.

Editors may also be interested in testing for the Charts Extension, reading the codified new API policy, or reading WMF's newest update on Movement Strategy Grants (Spoilers : It focuses on Hubs). – S

Comment these items out if something happens.

• CEO of the WMF opens up on the outcome of the Movement Charter vote: Maryana Iskander, the current CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, recently published an e-mail, cosigned by BoT members Natalia Tymkiv and Dariusz Jemelniak, responding to the outcomes of the discussion about the Movement Charter and thanking everyone who had been engaging with the WMF and the Trustees "with a spirit of generosity, openness, and collective problem-solving".
• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, Asilvering. Their request for adminship passed on 6 September with over 99% support.
  • But not enough?: Several new low points in the count of active administrators were reached, culminating with 419 on September 16 will need to keep checking this prior to publication, surpassing recent minima reported in The Signpost as recently as the prior issue. The month-by-month chart of successful Requests for adminship shows that 2024 is also near setting a record in another related area: the year is likely to be near the low point for number of new admins (s)elected during any year since inception of the project, with only 8 so far. Only 2021 is definitely lower, with a total of 7.
• Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects have reached milestones: TKTK
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Human geography. Please be bold in helping improve this article! Next week's Article for Improvement (beginning 30 September 2024) is Currency of Spain.
• Global bans:
  • Flamelai: see more information at n:Wikimedian blocked globally for 'trolling' Hong Kong journalists. we may say "trolling, doxxing, and intimidation", trolling alone perhaps doesn't look very serious
  • Anatoly Shariy