Wikipedia:Administrators' newsletter/Guide
Some guidance and notes for writing each section of the administrators' newsletter. For all sections, please include only information that directly affects admins.
If another way to find information for a section occurs to you, just add it!
Administrator changes[edit]
- A chronological list of successful requests for administrator rights can be found at Wikipedia:Successful requests for adminship. Simply list the administrators promoted in the previous month next to the plus symbol with a link to their RfA.
- Also check WP:BN for users who requested their rights back in the last month.
- For administrators whose user right was removed in the last month, check the bureaucrats' noticeboard (or Wikipedia:Inactive administrators if no notice has been posted) and the Arbitration Committee Noticeboard. Also view the history of Wikipedia:Administrators/Message list, which is a bot-updated list of admins.
- Bureaucrat changes should also be noted when applicable (example).
- Checkuser and oversight changes will typically be noted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard, although self-requested removals may be actioned entirely at meta:SRP.
- Interface administrator changes will typically be noted at Wikipedia:Interface administrators' noticeboard.
Guideline and policy news[edit]
For this section, try to only include changes that have been implemented since the last issue, and not ongoing RfCs or speculation of upcoming changes. The newsletter should be biased toward changes in policy, with closures resulting in no consensus or no change generally not needing to be mentioned.
- Look through the Village Pump archives for the previous month, to see if any RfCs were closed.
- See what was listed at Template:Centralized discussion one and two months ago, to see if any of the RfCs have since been closed, or look at removed entries for the last month. Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Archive includes a list of removed entries from the template.
- Check which RfCs are in the recent archives for ANRFC.
- Consider looking through the past few months of the newsletter and checking to see if any RfCs mentioned were subsequently closed.
Technical news[edit]
Technical news may include upcoming changes, provided they are relevant to admins and are expected to happen in the coming month.
- Look through last month's editions of Tech News to see if anything is relevant to administrators. Also check the "Announce in next Tech/News" and "In current Tech/News draft" columns at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/user-notice/ for upcoming changes that may be worth mentioning ahead of time.
- All WMF teams may at any time be working on things relevant to admins, but you may want to check the Community Tech Phabricator board in particular.
Arbitration[edit]
- List notices from Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard pertaining to arbitration enforcement or discretionary sanctions, but not individual users or minor clarifications.
- Looking for items at Template:ArbComOpenTasks, especially regarding recently closed or currently open cases, is a good idea.
Obituaries[edit]
- Unlikely (hopefully) to happen very often, but deceased administrators should be listed. Check Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians and remember to list them in Administrator Changes.
- Use File:Nuvola apps knewsticker.png as the section icon and see the first issue for an example. Alternatively, as deceased administrators have their rights removed for security, you can note an administrator is deceased by adding this in brackets after noting their removal in the administrator changes section. You may wish to wikilink this to the Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians page with their obituary if it exists.
Miscellaneous[edit]
- Occasionally there's something worth notifying administrators about that doesn't fit into any other category. Add it here.
- Voting for the Steward elections takes place in February.
- The meta:Community Wishlist Survey usually accepts proposals in November with voting going into December.