The Earwig
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Administrators' newsletter – July 2025
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2025).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following a talk page discussion, speedy deletion criterion G13 has been amended to remove "Userspace with no content except the article wizard placeholder text."
- WP:Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts was upgraded to a guideline following a RfC discussion.
Miscellaneous
- The 2025 Developing Countries WikiContest will run from 1 July to 30 September. Sign up now!
- Administrator elections will take place this month. Administrator elections are an alternative to RFA that is a gentler process for candidates due to secret voting and multiple people running together. The call for candidates is July 9–15, the discussion phase is July 18–22, and the voting phase is July 23–29. Get ready to submit your candidacy, or (with their consent) to nominate a talented candidate!
The Signpost: 18 July 2025
edit- News and notes: Is no WikiNews good WikiNews? — Election season returns!
- In the media: How bad (or good) is Wikipedia?
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Medicine reaches milestone of zero unreferenced articles
- Recent research: Knowledge manipulation on Russia's Wikipedia fork; Marxist critique of Wikidata license; call to analyze power relations of Wikipedia
- News from the WMF: Form 990 released for the Wikimedia Foundation’s fiscal year 2023-2024
- Discussion report: Six thousand noticeboard discussions in 2025 electrically winnowed down to a hundred
- Comix: Divorce
- Traffic report: God only knows
Broken image link on wikispecies
editHi, this is a bit silly, but your wikispecies page species:User:The_Earwig/morebits.js is (right now) the only page left in species:Category:Pages_with_broken_file_links. This seems to be because of line 1633, where a comment includes some image syntax and the js renderer actually links it for some reason. Obviously it's not an actual problem in any sense, but if you changed Foobar.png to Commons-logo.svg (or some other existing image name) then it'd clear the error and empty out the category. Thanks! Tungolen (talk) 23:16, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- No worries, I fixed it. — The Earwig (talk) 23:23, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2025
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2025).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, a new speedy deletion criterion, G15, has been enacted. It applies to pages generated by a large language model (LLM) without human review.
- Following a request for comment, there is a new policy outlining the granting of permissions to view the IP addresses of temporary accounts. Temporary account deployment on the English Wikipedia is currently scheduled for September 2025, and editors can request access to the permission ahead of time. Admins are encouraged to keep an eye on the request page; there will likely be a flood of editors requesting the permission when they realize they can no longer see IP addresses.
Technical news
- Administrators can now restrict the "Add a Link" feature to newcomers. The "Add a Link" Structured Task helps new account holders get started with editing. Administrators can configure this setting in the Community Configuration page.
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Indian military history has been closed.
- South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as
All pages related to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
- The contentious topic designations for Sri Lanka (SL) and India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (IPA) are folded into this new contentious topic.
- The community-authorized general sanctions regarding South Asian social groups (GS/CASTE) are rescinded and folded into this new contentious topic.
- South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as
- The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case closed on 31 July.
- The arbitration case Transgender healthcare and people has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 11 August.
Miscellaneous
- Wikimania 2025 is happening in Nairobi, Kenya, and online from August 6 to August 9. This year marks 20 years of Wikimania. Interested users can join the online event. Registration for the virtual event is free and will remain open throughout Wikimania. You can register here now.
The Signpost: 9 August 2025
edit- News and notes: Court order snips out part of Wikipedia article, editors debate whether to frame shreds or pulp them
- Discussion report: News from ANI, AN, RSN, BLPN, ELN, FTN, and NPOVN
- Disinformation report: The article in the most languages
- Community view: News from the Villages Pump
- Crossword: Accidental typography
- Traffic report: I'm not the antichrist or the Superman
Using the archiver on another wiki
editHi, I'm an admin here as well as on the Minecraft Wiki at https://minecraft.wiki - and we've been in need for an auto-archiver for some time. I must admit to being ignorant about operating a bot. Would the current installation of User:lowercase sigmabot III work on another wiki, or would it have to be hosted separately somewhere else? I suspect the answer is "no it won't work on another wiki", in which case I'm interested to know what's involved in porting it. ~Anachronist (talk) 01:21, 13 August 2025 (UTC)
- Hi Anachronist. The short answer is the current instance of the bot won't work on another wiki, but if you want to run it yourself and feel comfortable modifying and running Python code, the bot's source code is here: User:Lowercase sigmabot III/Source.py. You would need to update enwiki-specific references and find a place to host it, as the bot's current host (Wikimedia Cloud Services) is for WMF projects specifically. — The Earwig (talk) 02:28, 13 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks. There are a handful of people running bots on the Minecraft Wiki, although I suspect most of them might be self-hosted, run manually when needed. I'll ask around if there's a bot host if it's different from the wiki's hosting provider. ~Anachronist (talk) 15:10, 13 August 2025 (UTC)
Floating the Archives box right on /Header
editHi, I come here from Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard to ask if you can fix an issue with your template, which is transcluded in the /Header of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard. At the bottom of the header in the actual noticeboard (below the table, but above the ongiong discussions), there is a lot of wasyed space, because two templates are transcluded:
- Template:DRN case status, which includes a sentence below the table, and
- {{Archives}}, which is supposed to displa a box that floats right
However, since the sentence (taken from {{DRN case status/footer}}) is part of the same template {{DRN case status}} that makes the table, the archives box can't properly float right and is stuck under the footer.
Could you make it so the footer still allows the archives box to float directly under the table, instead of under the footer, which creates a lot of wasted space? thanks FaviFake (talk) 14:01, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
- I can't see the issue you're referring to. — The Earwig (talk) 07:31, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the link. I'm using the default skin with the default width, and this is what it looks like. Even if I zoom out to the max the archives box still doesn't float right and is forced below the footer text. Is there a way to make the footer and the box float starting from immediately below the table? FaviFake (talk) 08:20, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
