User talk:Dr vulpes/Archive2026

2022 2023 2024 2025 2026

700 or so pages for the IP User talk page blanking bot task

I stumbled across these 764 pages, most of which are IP user talk pages last edited by a human in 2018. Each of them has three Linter errors. If there is any way that your bot could blank them, that would be helpful. If not, I'll see if another bot will fix the Linter errors on these no-longer-usable IP User talk pages. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:22, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Also, pages with histories like that of User talk:173.19.91.26 come up quite a bit: no human edits for over five years, with the only edits in the past five years being Lint-fixing bot edits by MalnadachBot. If there is any way to identify IP user talk pages with those conditions, they should be blank-able. I have created Wikipedia:Linter/reports/IP user talk pages by Lint Errors, which may or may not be useful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:44, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Dr vulpes should have got my ping earlier, but just in case: there's an ongoing VP discussion about revoking authorization for this task, in light of the TA system.

I have to confess, I don't know why Jonesey has neglected to mention that this task might be controversial and no longer backed by community consensus, I assume it was an oversight? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 23:48, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

See WP:BOTAPPEAL for instructions on starting a discussion about reexamination of approved bot tasks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:12, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Jonesey95 and @GreenLipstickLesbian, sorry I've been off wiki for a while I'm recovering from a pretty nasty car accident back in October. Is this still something that needs to be discussed? I'm more than willing to start the bot back up again if there's a need but if we want to go over changes I'm more than willing to do that as well. Dr vulpes (Talk) 07:16, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

First of - oh dear, that does sound rather awful - I had noticed your becoming more inactive, and assumed it was life getting in the way - though I have to confess, I hadn't imagined life had gotten in the way that dramatically! Hopefully you're well on the mend and your holidays go more peacefully!

In terms of the rather less important Wiki-bots: I don't think there's anything you need to particuarly worry about, if I'm reading Anomie's comment here right, it looks like VulpesBot was only ever approved for its one-time run? So unless you want to start it up again, I don't think there's anything you need to do? Certainly nothing pressing! GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 07:24, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

Another editor and I have cleared out a few thousand of these pages, catching up to December 2020, so there is no need for the bot at this time. I hope that your recovery is going as well as possible. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:23, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

Administrator Elections - Voting Phase

The voting phase of the December 2025 administrator elections has started and will continue until Dec 15 at 23:59 UTC. You can participate in the voting phase at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/December 2025/Voting phase.

As a reminder, the schedule of the election is:

• Dec 9–15 - SecurePoll voting phase
• Scrutineering phase

In the voting phase, the candidate subpages close to public questions and discussion, and everyone who qualifies to vote has a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's vote total during the election. The suffrage requirements are similar to those at RFA.

Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for a few days, perhaps longer. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (this is a good page to watchlist), and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a non-recall candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and a minimum of 20 support votes. Recall candidates must achieve 55.0% support. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").

Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.

You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:06, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

Resurrection of WikiProject_Amateur_radio

Hi! I was trying to see if there were any active users in the project and saw elsewhere that you were also looking for volunteers. I'm organizing and adding pages to the template. I've already made changes to some pages and categories. I'm ready to help! Sinucep (talk) 11:59, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Sinucep, that's so great to hear! I've been wanting to do this for awhile, are you on Discord? I was adding DXpeditions awhile back but would love to work on other articles if you have some ideas. Dr vulpes (Talk) 07:07, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

Hello! I'm not on Discord. Nice job with the DXpeditions! I updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Amateur_radio with all the things that would need to be improved. Briefly:

• I've created the Category:Films about amateur radio: it need to be populated further
• I'm expanding the Template:Amateur radio topics: the section Technologies need to be sorted
• Would be nice to have a page on Yaesu FT-857 or FT-897 (remarkable for experimentation)...

but in the project there is the To Do List for the pages. I updated it!

Would be nice to improve few things in this Xmas time! Sinucep (talk) 11:41, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

In general i see that there is a lot of contents, but we need to make it accessible to all. That's why I started from the navigational template! Sinucep (talk) 11:51, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

Oh, another thing: POTA, SOTA and IOTA properly belongs to contesting or DXing? or they are nor radiosport at all? Sinucep (talk) 12:46, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Sinucep sorry I got busy here and in real life (I got married today!) so I have some more time to work on this. I would guess it would belong to contesting maybe? I did a lot of POTA while on VHF contests. But I'm open to leaving a pin in it until we get some more folks active, and if no one else joins up other than us then we can do whatever until/when others start helping out. Dr vulpes (Talk) 06:52, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

V V V - Reviving wikiproject Amateur radio! - V V V

In an attempt to revive the Wikipedia:WikiProject Amateur radio, I'm posting a message on the talk pages of the partecipants asking them to update their status and include ways they can contribute (as The Signpost says, the first step is updating the list of active members).

We've already started, come see! Check out the new navigational Template:Amateur radio topics!

Feel free to invite new members personally or through public postings! Sinucep (talk) 23:31, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

Barnstar for you

		The Closer's Barnstar
		For making a very detailed and excellent close of a very large and important RFC on the recall process. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 13:01, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

• Well deserved barnstar. I want to add my thanks and appreciation for all the work that went into your close. Dw31415 (talk) 13:52, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you @GothicGolem29! It was a lot of work but I'm glad I was able to help move this process along Dr vulpes (Talk) 20:05, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

About the RECALL Close

Hi, just wanted to make a comment and ask a question about the RECALL close. Thank you very much for doing that, btw. Difficult closes are always a thankless job.

First, you concluded several things as "consensus for" or "no consensus" when you only consider people who explicitly supported an option. For example, Option B "enable supports" ended in no consensus. However, that only factored people who explicitly wrote "Oppose B" and not those who said "Support A (Status Quo)". I buy that A=Keep status quo ended up being not a clear consensus of RFC, but I think people who supported A should be implicitly subtracted from all other options, just because of how the RFC ended up being structured ("10 proposals, support things" and not "10 sections, support or oppose each individually"). Could you explain your reasoning here?

Second, it's not clear to me what the path forward is. For the statements you found consensus for, are there already binding changes to RECALL from them? Is it "There's general consensus for changes, but it needs another RFC to decide specifically what"? Something else?

Again, thank you for doing this! Soni (talk) 16:19, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

The close was very good overall, and I think that the reading of the discussion was excellent. I am a little unsure about where the close leaves us in terms of moving forward. If an admin gets recalled tomorrow, is it under the 25 votes/30 days numbers that the close has explicitly called a consensus against? Do we need a follow-up RFC immediately to clarify where the numbers should be? Can we put an interim set of numbers like 40 signatures/2 weeks in place while we have that discussion to select a final value? Tazerdadog (talk) 18:48, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

@Soni and @Tazerdadog, sorry for doing this out of order but I wanted to get the shorter (and more important) question answer quickly for you.

What happens if an admin gets recalled right now in light of this RfC? What I believe this means is that we should have another RfC (sorry!) to settle and refine the issues raised on the check in. For example there was consensus that we should increase the number of required signatures, now we need to figure out how many signatures that should be. For now I think everything in the current recall process should stay as it was before this closure. I'm willing to open another RfC on this to help hone in everything but since Barkeep49 started this I think maybe they should start this again and someone other than myself should close it. Dr vulpes (Talk) 20:04, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer. Courtesy ping @Barkeep49:. Tazerdadog (talk) 21:37, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog I am still process the close, but my first thought was to move to a workshop, along the lines of what has happened before admin election RfCs. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:07, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

@Soni, I'm working on the second reply but I need to run out and do some quick wedding prep. If I do not reply by the end of the day please ping/nag me to reply to you. This is important and I don't want to let it slip through the cracks. Dr vulpes (Talk) 20:08, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

Ok I'm back @Soni, so I'm going to try and break down your points and reply to them as best as I can. I'm not trying to be a jerk or call you out or anything like that. This is just an attempt to try and organize everything since this whole RfC was complex and deep.

First, you concluded several things as "consensus for" or "no consensus" when you only consider people who explicitly supported an option.

• There were cases where an option didn't have a lot of discussion which is kind of reflected in a low overall vote count, Option I is a good example where you have 12 in support and 5 in oppose. Such low participation in the topic is why I said that there was no consensus. This is a problem when you have a lot of choices in an RfC sometimes parts will just not get picked up in face of more important matters in the RfC. This is what we saw here, the comments (and by proxy the votes) had a lot of talk about other matters in the RfC. For option B the votes were split about 50/50 and there was a lot more activity, but the content of the discussions were not really moving towards any sort of consensus. This is in part because I think people had other topics they were more interested in and that the points raised in option B bleeds into options G and H which had a lot of discussion. As an aside there were a few cases where technically an option could have been no consensus due to low participation directly tied to the option like option C and option F, but since there was also an option in the RfC that was the complete opposite I took voting/voice support for option D to mean you also opposed option C, the same was held true for options E and F.

For example, Option B "enable supports" ended in no consensus. However, that only factored people who explicitly wrote "Oppose B" and not those who said "Support A (Status Quo)"

• Vote counts were not used to determine consensus, they are used as a rough guide and in the case of the plots a way to illustrate the views of the community. For example both @Carrite and @Berchanhimez were supportive of A and B (or at least not opposed to B), in their cases they both would have been marked as supporting both A and B. Other people also supported A and then would also say they were open to another change and in their case they were counted for both A and the other option they picked. Reading the comments people left there was a class of voters who were happy with the recall process and also were ok with one or two tweaks to the process. I interpreted this as them saying they want to keep the recall process (Reject option J), they in general approve of the process as is (Support option A), and are open to or don't have strong feelings towards some small changes. I am willing to assume that if you voted to support option A and then also said you would be fine with option D that this meant that if nothing changed you were fine with it and if there was going to be a change you would fine with a conservative interpretation of option D. For example maybe raising the number of signatures from 25 to 30 instead of 50 like some folks had proposed. There were a lot more support votes than oppose votes in this RfC so I wouldn't feel comfortable using those vote counts as a hard and fast rule for determining consensus.

Dr vulpes (Talk) 21:57, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

Like others I'm grateful and impressed by the amount of work you did in this close, and also the thoroughness and transparency (posting the code and the graphs). I'm a little surprised, though, that you didn't count all "support A" votes as also meaning "oppose B-I." I would have thought that if there were ~50 "support A" votes, there would also have been ~50 oppose votes counted for each of B-I. When I voted "support A," I meant "...and oppose any change." Would you have counted my vote differently if I had explicitly said "oppose B-I"? Levivich (talk) 04:30, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

This is my primary concern with the close as well. Option A wasn't really "I am generally happy with recall, don't abolish it". It was "I want to keep the status quo, recall is working well", which felt by definition a rejection of all other outcomes. I understand that some people would say "Support A" and then also make comments that indicate support towards other smaller changes, but it feels inaccurate to consider everyone as "Reject Option J" or "Changes are fine" than what the option itself was worded as. Soni (talk) 06:02, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

@Soni, I found that the more folks talked about their position the more they led to saying things such as "I'm comfortable with..." or "I could live with option...". There were also cases with people voting for A and something else. To your point on option J one of the reasons I felt that was ok was that people didn't seem to be in favor of J and something else but there were cases of people who were in favor of A and something else. That's also why I put A and J in there own buckets, the content of the discussions didn't feel the same as the other change buckets.

I think this is a good spot to start from so we can take all of this and workshop it a bit. If there's anything in there that I got wrong or that this RfC didn't fully capture that it'll show up there. And if my analysis is wrong than that's ok! I think the most important part is to keep the ball rolling towards a better system for admin recall. Dr vulpes (Talk) 06:50, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanations! Soni (talk) 16:08, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

@Levivich, I will admit it was a judgment call to get through everything. I did think about it but after reading everything it was clear that it would have taken me a really long time to try and figure out what each person ment. Also I think for me it wasn't dichotomous, people could have also been neutral on some things and opposed others. To be fair I am not opposed to going over an RfC like this and try to figure out what everyone meant, but I would not be comfortable doing it alone and would much prefer to have some others help score and rate each person's vote/comment and then compute a reliability statistic like Cronbach's alpha. But also votes are not consensus, I only used them and the graphs to try and give a rough overview of what people were feeling. There were some votes for option A that were really short and didn't add much towards anything, then there were others who wrote a lot. I noticed that the more people wrote the more shades of gray kind of popped up, I gave a few examples of that here (I think). So with a few exceptions people had to state if they were for or against each of the options. Also I counted these by hand, if someone goes back and recounts it I am almost positive they will come up with some other numbers but I don't think they would be off by much. Dr vulpes (Talk) 06:41, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

I will say that my vote for A was a vote against changes to number of signatures required and the time. I was kind of surprised that supporting status quo was not counted as oppose to changes. PackMecEng (talk) 17:28, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

@PackMecEng, there were cases where if someone said oppose all others then I counted those as votes to oppose all others. In the case of your vote it was Support A and K, Oppose B. So A and K got support votes and B got an oppose vote. If you look in the post right under yours in tht RfC there's a good example of some of the issues that I had "Support A, open to D, K, & potentially B, strongly oppose J". A vote like that just wasn't really easy for me to hash out the intent so I just tried my best. As a reminder votes weren't used to to come to decision of consensus I used them only to give an idea of what the community was generally feeling, I legit had to write points people had in a notebook to try and make sense of everything. I did include the R code and data in my close so if you would like to repost the analysis with all of the Support A votes being oppose all others then you're more than welcome to. I promise I'm not being sarcastic or a jerk when I say that, it's why I put the code and data out there so if someone else wanted to rehash or recount the data or analysis they could do so easily. If you need a hand with getting started with R I'm more than happy to help you started on Discord sometime, it would only take a couple of minutes and is fairly user friendly.

I think if there's another RfC that is complex like this then we should make voting clearer so this kind of problem doesn't pop up again (maybe a template or something, I wouldn't mind working on something if people think it would be useful). I 100% agree that the method isn't without flaws and failures and if the RfC was less complex I wouldn't have done it the way I did. I think moving on to the workshop phase will really help iron out some of these issues. If there isn't a real demand for change then it should (I hope) come up there and be clear what the community wants. Dr vulpes (Talk) 01:05, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

I guess my issue with your method is it does not really represent people that supported A is my point. If you only counted people that said oppose all others specifically, that seems to point to a problem with your understanding of the questions.

I will also note another thing, most of your responses here note that is it not a vote, and it is not, but it is immediately followed up by all the statistics and number of votes. The number of people supporting or opposing an issue is important, it gives weight to the arguments made. PackMecEng (talk) 01:58, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

@PackMecEng, I did my best to try and distill a very complex RfC close for folks. I provided all of the data and code used to make the graphics and have openly offered to help anyone recreate them so they can run their own analysis. As I have said before I did not just count votes but baised the close on the content of discussions which took me many hours to do. I agree that the number of people supporting or opposing an issue is a useful barometer but the weight of the content in their discussions and how much it brings us closer to consensus is orders of magnitude more important. I attempted to balance the votes and my use of the vote count using quotes from people in the RfC that supported points for each of the selected options.

I like the essay (I know it is not policy) WP:SILENCE, if people had strong feelings to oppose any of the options they should have voted that way or said something. That said I think the reason we have this issue can be found in the same essay WP:WEAKSILENCE "silence is the weakest form of consensus".

If you want to re-review the close you are more than welcome to do so and if there is anyway I can help support you in that I am more than happy to do so. Just so we're clear because a lot of social context gets lost on the internet I'm not being a jerk or am talking down to you or think you're pestering me or are being rude etc. I welcome criticism, comments, and push back on all the things I do here. It's the best way to grow, strengthen our community, and create a better encyclopedia. Dr vulpes (Talk) 05:53, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

...if people had strong feelings to oppose any of the options they should have voted that way or said something.

I think that's the key dispute why multiple editors are discussing this close with you. I am claiming that people did vote that way - "Support A" is clearly "Oppose all of the other options" unless otherwise specified. The option says "no changes needed", which seems like a pretty clear cut vote against other options. Expecting every editor to also then explicitly say "Support A, Oppose B/C/D/E/F/G/H/I/J" feels needless and not in line with how I suspect most editors were interpreting those presented options. Soni (talk) 06:03, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

I can't speak for any other participants, but had I known that I had to say "Oppose B/C/D/E/F/G/H/I/J" in order for my "Support A" vote to be counted as opposing those other options, I would have written that. Given the chance, I would amend my vote to explicitly include those words, and ask the closer to reconsider it. Something tells me others would, too.

@Dr vulpes, two questions:

1. Would you agree that if you had counted all "Support A" votes as also meaning "Oppose B/C/D/E/F/G/H/I/J," that would have changed the outcome, and the "consensus for" D, C, G, and H would have resulted in "no consensus" or "consensus against" instead?
2. If no one else agrees with you about your interpretation of "Support A" votes, would you agree to revise your close to treat "Support A" as meaning "Oppose B/C/D/E/F/G/H/I/J" (except when one of those others is explicitly supported)? This modification to your close would be a lot faster and less work than you reverting the whole thing (and would preserve the large amount of work you did).

Thanks for considering this, Levivich (talk) 13:11, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

I am coming here to say the same thing - if I had known that I would have to specify opposition to every other option for it to be counted as full opposition to all of those other options, I would have specified "Oppose B/C/D/E/F/G/H/I/J".

I will note that some editors took these as "first preference", "second preference", etc (see J as first preference, followed by D, E, H and I.). If we understand the editors who supported option A and another option in this sense, we can understand they are not supporting something mutually contradictory (don't change anything but also institute this change), but offering a list of acceptable outcomes to them. Katzrockso (talk) 05:32, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

I agree with the others who are saying that supporting no changes with option A (without adding any additional qualifiers about changes they were willing to support) implicitly opposed all options for changes. They shouldn't be expected to repeat their opposition to every option. It would just add pro forma opposes to every option, making the entire RfC even longer to read. isaacl (talk) 06:23, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

What PackMecEng said. You and Barkeep49 created a mess there breaking a good process. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:10, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

@ToBeFree, if you would like me to rescind the close and have someone else do it all you need to do is ask and name another closer. I do not mean this in a confrontational or disrespectful way, if my actions were incorrect or messy it is important that we address it, correct it, and make sure it doesn't happen again. I did my best, my actions were in good faith, I am willing to accept that my best wasn't good enough, and am open to learning from this experience. The work I do here is important to me, the work we all do here is important to me. So if we need to make changes that is 100% ok with me even if that means starting over and me stepping aside. Dr vulpes (Talk) 09:10, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

The RfC itself was a mistake. Create a list of options for changing something in various ways and you'll attract people happily voting for changes they didn't wish for before reading the RfC. The voters are happy to have been asked for their opinion and to have made a choice. Barkeep49 created the essay with the view that something needs to be changed, even linking to an essay about what to do if there is "a clear consensus to make a change from the status quo" in their effectively-not-so-neutral opening question. The RfC was designed in a way that made it hard to be closed in any other way than "people want to change something", and in a way that attracted votes for change from users who wouldn't have advocated for changes. The best way to close it would be as "no consensus and broken from the start". Naming a specific desired closer, from my personal side, would only have the intention of achieving that close, and I have no idea who would be willing to do so nor should my preference thus be considered. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 09:34, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

When I last checked in on the discussion after a few days it had seemed to me that "status quo" or "no consensus" was the most likely outcome given the strong support there was for the current system.(I intentionally didn't check back in after that so as to avoid any temptation at replying more than would be appropriate). I will definitely think about the criticisms you offer here should I consider any sort of policy RfCs in the future, because I was trying to balance "hey do we need to change something or not" (a question I had opinions on but was genuinely unsure of what the community felt) while avoiding "yes we absolutely need change but never get there leaving a consensus of editors frustrated". However, I do not accept your premise that the RfC was unneeded. The concerns around recall have been regularly expressed, at times interfering with the discussion of the individual admins and seemingly slowing down a process that wouldn't have been otherwise. The chance for that segment of the community to have a chance to see if there is consensus behind them or not is an important mechanism in our community building, policy building, and dispute resolution process, and it was done after 10 recalls and well over a year of the process being in effect so hardly an unreasonable amount of time to check-in. And out of that I am glad that the community did affirm that we should have recall. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:40, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Barkeep49 that it was a reasonable point to re-examine the process to see if there was consensus for improvements. There was considerable uncertainty about the effect of various steps when the process was worked out, and so trying to benefit from the actual results of running the process a few times is a good idea. (I did not agree with urging the evaluator of consensus to look for a middle ground option, as I discussed during the RfC.) isaacl (talk) 16:35, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

Getting a working community recall process was a horrible amount of work, and I view situations like the current one as endangering the hard-fought-for process. You shouldn't have participated in it in the way you did, and perhaps noone should have. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 09:37, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

Personally, I think unless the community starts designating who it wants to evaluate consensus, it should strive to be forgiving of non-newbie editors who volunteer. All experienced evaluators start out inexperienced. Feedback is of course important for improvement and should be given as needed, but without impugning the decision to volunteer. isaacl (talk) 16:54, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

I'd kind of like to see the close rescinded because, as pointed out above, a Support A was not counted as Oppose B-I, but I'm not entirely sure that's the right thing to do (and I was a Support A, so...). SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:54, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

@SarekOfVulcan, I'm not trying to pick on @Some1 but I used them as an example below which kind of explains why this isn't as black and white as it would seem. Dr vulpes (Talk) 00:30, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Yes, but their 02:10 breakdown reflects my own issues with your initial analysis. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 04:02, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

I, like many other editors, assumed "Option A" was a vote against changing anything, not "I support not changing anything, but am ambivalent about changing a bunch of things". This whole "Check-In" was deeply flawed, and should've just been stated as "Do you support changing the recall process?", moving on to options B-I only after consensus was obtained for change. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:37, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

You might've already answered this, but what was the total number of voters in the RfC, and the total number of votes for A? Because if 52 out of 80 editors voted for A, then that means a majority of editors (65%) believe that the "[p]rocess is working well, no changes [are] needed". That does not mean that "there is consensus for a change". Some1 (talk) 00:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

@Some1, so for your vote of "Support A. Weak support for D" did you really mean that the "process is working well, no changes are needed" or did you mean that the current system works and some small changes would be ok? You did "Oppose J" which helps but didn't oppose anything else? You can see why this got complex real quick. Dr vulpes (Talk) 00:27, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Okay, good point. So let's revise my question a bit: What is the % of editors who voted for A (including votes similar to mine where there might be support--weak or not--for other options, but A is still being supported) / total number of participants? Some1 (talk) 00:49, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

It's easy for people to come here and say that they're upset with the outcome of this close, but I haven't seen anyone else step up and reevaluate the close. I haven't seen anyone point to anything except the votes or grumble about the fact this RfC happened. I would love to see someone go through the RfC again and show us how they would close it, especially after they've read everyone's comments. Bonus points if they ignore all of the votes and use only the contents of the discussion. Dr vulpes (Talk) 00:45, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Since all of the votes are not based on policy but on subjective opinions, I'll just use the numbers instead. Using your numbers from the File:Recall check-in number votes by question.png (I'm assuming the green bar is the total number of editors who supported that option, at any level), and let's just say there are 104 total voters in the RfC... I see that:

52 editors supported option A (no changes needed) out of 104 total voters. That's 50% who support a change to the recall process vs 50% who don't, so the result is no consensus for a change to the admin recall process.

Among those who support a change to recall process, option D (requiring more signatures) received the most support at 78% (41/52). E (shorter petition period) and G (new process v petition RRfA) received 52% (27/52) and 48% (25/52) support respectively.

There is consensus against option K (barring admins from voting) and option J (abolishing recall), which received only 10% (11/104) and 9% (10/104) support respectively among total voters; and consensus against F (longer petition period) and C (fewer signatures), which barely received any votes.

P.S. I hope I did the math right. Some1 (talk) 02:10, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Assuming no votes are discounted for any reason, that's pretty much how I'd have closed it, too. When the # of voters who wanted a shorter period (E) is 27, and the number of voters who said maintain status quo (A) is 52, that's almost 2:1 against. I'd call that consensus against, not consensus for, shortening the period. Same with new recall process (G, 25 supports), for the same reason. More sigs (D) had 41 supports, closer to 1:1 when compared with A, and so I'd say no consensus, not consensus for. Everything else is consensus against because they had so few support votes. Overall: consensus against abolishing recall; no consensus for any changes, but "more signatures" got the closest to achieving consensus, consensus against all other suggested changes; no consensus on K. In terms of next steps, people might want to workshop and propose a specific increase in sig threshold, which might gain consensus, or perhaps some other changes that haven't already been proposed. (Of course, being involved, I can't close this, and my view is biased.) Levivich (talk) 03:08, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

• Terrible close. Most of us voting to keep things as they are didn't scroll through the 11,000 proposed changes voting no on each. It is preposterous to conclude that there is a consensus for a shorter process WITH more signatures. Terrible close. Did I say that? Carrite (talk) 23:51, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

• Bad close. Even if we assume that all of your reasoning is valid (and there are issues with that), your closure is self-contradictory.
  • On the one hand, there is consensus for option A (no changes needed; which you for reasons unknown to me summarised as "we need to keep recall", even though users choosing option A clearly wanted no changes to recall), but also for option D (more signatures needed) and option E (collecting signatures should be <30 days). Either the community decided that no changes are necessary or we actually need some changes, i.e. more signatures/shorter recall period. G also contradicts A because people voting for G by necessity believe that some change to the process itself is necessary, but A was against any change. Can you make up your mind?
  • Also, implementing both G and H may have interactions not intended by users who chose either option. It may be that a change to RRfA is going to fix the problem so that a different petition process is not needed. Then there's the possibility that a different petition process will obviate the need for changes to RRfA. Possibly even changes contemplated by D and E would lead some users to believe that actually, we don't need that change after all.

Some of it is not your fault and is a problem of Barkeep's terrible sprawling RfC structure. We all make mistakes but as an arbitrator and long-time administrator, Barkeep49 should know better and at least read up WP:RFCBRIEF before posting. If it were not for his username, it would have been shut down as a bad RfC. This does not mean the close is any better.

I suggest we treat the RfC as the brainstorming stage (a literal request for comment) instead of a binding consensus discussion. Based on the options that, according to the closer, have consensus, there should probably be a re-run with the following questions asked:

• Question 1: Assume that the petition process stays and the process does not change. Currently, recall petitions require 25 signatures. Should we change this threshold? (Yes, higher/no/yes, lower)
• Question 2: Assume that the petition process stays and the process does not change. Currently, recall petitions last for 30 days. Should we change this period (Yes, longer/no/yes, shorter)
• Question 3: Assume that a more restrictive threshold or period is approved (say, X signatures or Y days). Do you also support making the other parameter more restrictive? (Alternatively, just ask question 1 or question 2, wait for a couple of recalls and do the other question)
• Question 4: Either Should there be a change to the existing petition process, regardless of the outcome of questions 1 and 2? (Yes/no; After we agree on yes, discuss the exact changes and get to vote on them)

or (Describe the RRfA requirements) Should there be a change to the existing process of re-acquiring administrator permissions? (Yes/no; After we agree on yes, discuss the exact changes and get to vote on them)

Other questions would have been: A. Currently, Wikipedia has three processes for removal of administrator rights - resignation, disciplinary removal by the Arbitration Committee and recall via petition. Should we abolish the recall route? (Yes/no) B. Assuming that recall stays, should we prohibit administrators from voting on discussions that involve changes to the recall process? (Yes/no). We got the answer for A, unsure about B actually.

That's what should have been done from the beginning. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 00:26, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

• Dr vulpes, I didn't expect much when I came here in response to an RfC closure that contains the text please don’t badger me about it. Anyway. You retract the closure independently of someone new having been found as a closer, or this goes to WP:AN. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:53, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

  @ToBeFree it's already open over at WP:BN. Dr vulpes (Talk) 00:57, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

  I have seen it and I don't care; we'll get this overturned at AN if you don't. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:58, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

  Calm down @ToBeFree I'll retract it just give me about an hour or so. I got married yesterday and just saw my inlaws off. Dr vulpes (Talk) 07:15, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks a lot and sorry for the impatient and unfriendly pushing especially during a time which should probably be spent in a thousand happier ways than getting scolded online. You do deserve a barnstar and a proper, longer apology after having invested this amount of work and getting it torn down this way. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:21, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

  It's all good @ToBeFree everyone is a bit tired and exhausted after the holidays. Plus we had the worst possible time differences between us, you up early in the morning and me up late at night lol. Happy New Year! Dr vulpes (Talk) 04:09, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

  Congratulations on your marriage! I was going to gently point out that after all the feedback here and elsewhere that the close would very likely get overturned at AN, so glad to see you have rescinded. Hopefully you can now enjoy your honeymoon (assuming you're having one) without being badgered. It's a win win situation :) CNC (talk) 11:25, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

  Dr vulpes, from my perspective, you have acted honorably throughout all of this, although it looks to me like editors have bullied you into retracting the close. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:13, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

New pages patrol January–February 2026 Backlog drive

January–February 2026 Backlog Drive | New pages patrol
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:22, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks :3

I want to thank you for saving all my changes from being reverted by a sockpuppet earlier today. Gigman (talk) 09:33, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks @Glebushko0703, I understood where they were coming from and the frustration of it all. But it was the wrong way to go about it. Dr vulpes (Talk) 10:20, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

They do things like this for many years now, resorting to all the legal and illegal methods in order to make related articles stand out from the rest by bending Wikipedia rules.

This behaviour is just strange to me and it's not clear what they're trying to achieve and why does it matter so much to them. I personally don't understand them.

Anyways, happy new year to you and thaks again. Gigman (talk) 20:52, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

An original barnstar

	The Tommy Carcetti Memorial Bowl Award
	For the exceptionally thankless task of trying to do the impossible in closing the AELECT survey (ie taking the bowl ) please accept this Tommy Carcetti Bowl. Mazel'tov on your marriage. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 22:53, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Bahahaha o, I feel this one. Thank you :-) Dr vulpes (Talk) 04:03, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2026 WikiCup!

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Happy New Year 2026!

Dear Dr vulpes,

I had trouble finding an appropriate way to even start this message, and I opened Wikipedia wondering what to do. Then I saw your 04:09 message above and it relieves me a lot. Because if that's the current state, things are not as broken as I was afraid, and the following might work:

Wishing you a happy 2026!

• 
• 
• 

Happy New Year!

• 
  MMXXVI Lunar Calendar

Dr vulpes,
Have a great 2026 and thanks for your continued contributions to Wikipedia.

---

   – Background color is Very Peri (#6868ab), Pantone's 2026 Color of the year

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2026}} to user talk pages.

That, and warm congratulations on your marriage!

The path to admin recall and admin elections was tough. I've previously had my hopes smashed by an RfC closure that did require an AN discussion to be overturned, and then just to "no consensus" from 72:39 for the proposal. I previously made fun of editors fighting over the capitalization of articles so vigorously that it became an ArbCom case, but I guess admin recall and admin elections are my article capitalizations. I can't even explain why, as I've never started a recall petition myself for example. Losing admin recall wouldn't remove any privilege I really used so far. I can't explain it. Must be something deeply and at least partially misguided inside me.

I was already unhappy about the RfC itself to the point of calling it unnecessary and voting for A without thinking much more than "oh come on keep it as is it finally works stop jeopardizing it".

Your RfC close was the result of hours of work, analysis, even the creation of a diagram; you took the time to get this right. You wanted it to be a good close, one that would survive the expectable attacks from people merely unhappy about the result, one rock-solid mathematically founded evaluation a majority would defend. And as Anomie pointed out in their analysis draft, its result might not even be far from what a re-evaluation reaches via a different path. That would be the greatest irony: Someone correcting the way of measuring the consensus and getting the same result. Something in me hopes it won't happen just to not have made an absurdly irrelevant complaint.

None of this justifies my approach here on this talk page, throwing the door open hard enough to make it hit the wall and shouting "you created a mess", just to return angered by a lack of progress with "You do or X" statements rather than, as CommunityNotesContributor would have properly done, simply asking carefully and pointing out that even if we have mostly only seen the complaining side so far, the closure would probably not find the needed consensus to remain unchanged at AN.

During the last months, I've noticed a general tendency in me to write "You do or X" statements and I need to stop it. There's no justification for them, they heat up any atmosphere, they hurt people and they don't even work; they make it unlikely that the demanded action actually happens, as noone wants to act just because of a threat. Even from a purely statistical perspective and just looking at the results, asking in a friendly way is objectively the better approach. In the given situation above, asking nicely might have caused you to respond something like "I'll probably retract the close, please give me a while, I'm currently occupied by off-wiki events but it will probably happen". Or even just "I'll need to sleep a night over this". All I obtained was silence for a while; it helped absolutely noone.

I have a feeling my behavior went downwards from 2024 to today and I guess I'll blame the ArbCom time; it's good that it's over, it's been a wild ride and two more years might have led to a recall petition for a sitting arbitrator. I need to get distance from all of this and return to normalcy.

I hope the stress around this closure and the discouraging feedback won't remain associated negatively with the marriage days forever but I'm afraid they'll be. I'm afraid that when you think about today in ten years, you'll think about the RfC closure and I am at least partially responsible for that damage.

I'm sorry.

Best regards
Tobias Frei / ToBeFree (talk) 20:21, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

(part of this goes towards Barkeep49 too; publicly blaming them for attempts to improve the process was at least unnecessary and pretty unfriendly as well.) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:26, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Hey @ToBeFree, it's all good I'm not upset or stressed at all, and you didn't ruin anything for me or my family. You know what did put a damper on my post wedding blis? Our water main broke and I had to go out in the rain and mud to fix it this morning lol. This isn't the first time I've had people upset with me for a close or action and I doubt it'll be the last, anyone who closes a controversial/long/old RfC is basically asking to have their talk page flooded with upset folks. I have a pretty thick skin, I don't take things here personally, and I don't really hold grudges. I know that a lot of context and social cues are lost on the internet so it's easy to give folks a lot of grace. Although this is the biggest blow up I've seen happen because of something I've done at least it didn't show up in the news (the tweets were not a fun read). Hope in the new year you'll be able to get back to doing the things you enjoy here! Dr vulpes (Talk) 22:41, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

That's a great relief Oh! Oh my god. Yeah, that sounds realistic. Thank you very much! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:51, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Seriously man, we're here to do the work that we love. If you're not loving it then you need to dig a little deeper and find things that bring you joy. I am not saying you should leave enwiki or anything like that at all! I found so much joy in working on the Clipperton Island article (ok ok in fairness I was unemployed after grad school but shhhhhhh!) and getting it to GA is a real feather in my cap. Do you know what's better than writing a long very detailed article about an island no one you know will ever visit? Writing a very long article about it on enwiki that is longer than the article on frwiki! No one has to do thankless admin work, we should all be free to create content that make the world a better place. And if we do have to admin work it should be fulfilling and joyful (see my AE close below, that's why I'm here). If you ever need anything as always please reach out and let me know. I'm on the Wikipedia Discord server so feel free to add me and ask away. If you find an article that overlaps with our shared interest I'm always open to collaborations. Dr vulpes (Talk) 10:38, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Opss forgot to tag @ToBeFree Dr vulpes (Talk) 10:38, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll keep it in mind! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:46, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

To be honest even I wouldn't like to assume what I would of done had I been more invested in the general discussion; I took the close a lot less seriously/literally then others it seems. I'm sure in the past I've said "Either revert it it goes to MR", which isn't necessarily a bad thing to say if you are actually going to do that, even if tone and context is important. These days I try and use the "Respectfully please" cheat code as it yields more results. Otherwise as vulpes points out, you have to be thick skinned (enough) to close controversial discussions, as a talkpage pile-on is to be anticipated for these occasions. Nobody should be closing such discussions unless they are willing to accept that, alongside being able to diffuse conflict should it come your way. So in summary I don't think you did much wrong, to be frank it was more the arrogance of "we'll get this overturned at AN if you don't" that surprised me, rather than the firm and direct manner of your approach. And since your reflecting, it reminds me that you were helping address issues I was raising about ECR back when I was a newbie (in Nov 2023) and you were remarkedly patient with me when others had less; so while it's not for me to judge if you've changed since then (I don't think I've interacted with you since), it's certainly not how I remember you. I can at least imagine how draining on patience arb com could be, so can understand a break being a good thing. Anyway, take care and happy 2026. Regards, CNC (talk) 00:15, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much and a happy 2026 to you too ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:47, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

2 Jan 2026

Hi Dr vulpes, I was surprised by your recent closure of the AE thread against me. Surprised in a good way.

It was nice to see the care you showed and I appreciate the advice you gave there.

I do have some questions for you.

What do you mean by "I would have preferred to see y’all work this out in meditation than come here to have me handle it"? I would love to do more mediation and things of this nature with admins such as yourself. Could you elaborate on this?

I also have a question about 1RR. If I had been informed on my talk page of the 1RR and self-reverted, I would not have received a warning. But since I was informed of it at AE I recieve a warning? Is that right? I don't really understand how that works.

Also what would be the consequences for me if I continue being a good editor but accumulating unintentional 1RR vios at my current pace of ~1/yr or so? It's hard to avoid because it can be done unintentionally and without edit warring (i.e. without reverting the same content more than once). IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 09:03, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Hey @IOHANNVSVERVS,

Thanks for reaching out and for being cool with all this.

By mediation I should have linked to the dispute resolution page. I know that I can't really know everyones thoughts and feelings but what I took for the AE was this was a content and procedural dispute. If y'all were open to it it's always ok to ask someone for help, running to an admin to solve a problem is not always the most constructive path forward (sometimes it absolutely is but I don't think this was a case for that). The dispute resolution noticeboard is an informal place to resolve content issues. Also getting a third opinion can be helpful. Even if you end up back at AE over something having taken steps to work out issues in a constructive way can be really helpful for you. Like in your case had you dug your heels in and refused to self-revert then it might have called for a temporary topic ban depending how far things went. I'm not trying to make you feel bad or anything but I want you to know you did the right thing and these other forms of dispute resolution can help address issues that come up.

On the self revert if you had not done so then a temporary topic ban would have been on the table. Getting a warning on a talk page is kind of like a heads up you did something wrong, going to AE is a little more serious since it means someone is asking that a more formal action be taken. I think if this was not a CTOP it would have ended with a note on your talk page, but CTOPs are prickly and have extra rules. I promise you if you go over my edit history I'm like 90% sure you'll find that I violated the same rule you did at some point ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. A lot of this is more attitude and behavior, if you're being a jerk and picking fights in CTOPs then you're gonna get banned from those topics real quick. You engaged with the process, explained your side, and took actions to undo the error. That goes a long way in showing that you understand you made a mistake and corrected it. Some editors will just ignore an AE or will fight tooth and nail that they did nothing wrong. I dislike having to give warning or issue editing restrictions but ArbCom has made rules to keep our community safe and to ensure that our goal of creating a better encyclopedia go forward.

On breaking 1RR, I know you won't like this but it kind of depends. Technically you could get topic banned for awhile. It all depends on what happens, how serious the revert was, if it was a mistake, did you owned up to it, how quickly did you corrected it, is there proof that you worked towards consensus, and if you explored other ways to deal with the issue. I think any reasonable admin would give you a warning and move along. I can't promise that would happen but if it ever does happen again please feel free to reach out to me and I'll do my best to explain all of this conversation and history to them.

At the end of the day did you break a rule? Yes. Was it probably an accident or after thought? Yeah probably.

But CTOPs are serious business and my hands were kind of tied. I wouldn't worry too much about all of this, just keep your nose clean and be mindful of the rules around CTOPs. Focus on the five pillars and assuming good faith. I know that sometimes when we get "in the zone" with an article it can be really frustrating having to wait for others to opine. I just pretend everyone lives in Europe (I'm in California) and they aren't responding because of time zones. But that's why the rules are there, they are designed to slow down edits and focus us towards consensus. I really do hope that you and Zanahary can work together professionally going forward. You both have a lot to offer us and our community. I had a dispute ages ago with Shushugah, he's super cool and I realized really quick that I was off base and being a jerk. I'm still glad that he was cool with me after all of it (well I hope he feels the same way!).

Feel free to ask for help of clarification any time, just be sure to ping me so I see it. If you've read the mess above this post I just got married so I'm a little busy this week and next so I might be slow to reply. Dr vulpes (Talk) 10:10, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Dr vulpes (Talk) 10:10, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Just to give you a fun example @IOHANNVSVERVS, if I went to the same article you had an issues in. Created 1/2/3/4 edits, then quickly reverted all of them. I promise you I would hear about it and depending how I reacted could even find myself over at admin recall. Dr vulpes (Talk) 10:15, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Dr vulpes, this really means a lot to me. I'll definitely be in touch with you further. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:01, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Do you think I could ask for a more direct response to my question about "If I had been informed on my talk page of the 1RR and self-reverted, I would not have received a warning. But since I was informed of it at AE I recieve a warning? Is that right?" I'm sure you can see that doesn't seem fair or logical. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 01:14, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

I think a better way to look at this is you broke a rule (probably by accident) in an area WP:CTOP that has very strict rules WP:1RR and has the most possible complaints Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#2025_Arbitration_Enforcement_statistics. Because you behaved the way you did you weren't blocked WP:BLOCKP and were given a warning. The rules around WP:CTOP are pretty strict because edit warring can spark up real quick. You'll always be notified when a case is submitted to a board like WP:AE. You were notified about the WP:CTOP rules back in Nov 2023 on your talk page and were told about WP:1RR. This entire event is the equivalent of getting pulled over by a cop for speeding and instead of getting a ticket instead just getting a warning.

Just so you know if you feel that the warning I gave you was not propper you are allowed to file an appeal at either WP:AN or WP:AE. You'll find the instructions at WP:AE just click "Appeals and administrator modifications of contentious topics restrictions" and the process will be explained there. Dr vulpes (Talk) 02:05, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Wrt: "This entire event is the equivalent of getting pulled over by a cop for speeding and instead of getting a ticket instead just getting a warning." - I'm glad you made this analogy and that makes a lot of sense. And in that sense of course the warning couldn't be more reasonable or due.

I just worry that the next time I'm vexaciously reported (which is inevitable given the nature of the topic area and the type of editing I'm doing therein) that these warnings/violations will be pointed to without responding knowing the context or details. I guess that's where I could quote from what you've explained here or even ask you to vouch for me - the latter wouldn't canvassing or otherwise inappropriate would it be? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 02:30, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Yeah just ping me and I'll be willing to explain what happened. Also you can always link to my talk page archive. I wouldn't really worry too much. Dr vulpes (Talk) 02:32, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

But yeah, that's what I'm worried about is the accumulation of warnings from vexatious reports. I've seen good editors be banned unreasonably so it's something I guess I can say I'm afraid of. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 02:32, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Is there anything similar to WP:RFCBEFORE with regards to AE? I think that would help a lot with vexatious or weaponized abuses of that forum. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 02:36, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

@IOHANNVSVERVS, the only thing technically like WP:RFCBEFORE when it comes to AE reports is that an editor having a report filled against them should have been giving a CTOP notice prior or is otherwise aware (because they have given others CTOP notices, or they have been warned at AE, or they have placed a notice at the top of their user talk indicating that they are aware).

That said, when ScottishFinnishRadish was an active AE admin, he often counselled that editors should attempt to resolve issues on their respective user talks prior to bringing issues to AE. Sound advice. TarnishedPath^talk 11:00, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Some sort of WP:AEBEFORE should probably be policy then. Would help a lot I think. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 11:05, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Yeah maybe when I have some time I'll go over all of the the 2025 AE enforcement actions and see if there are any clear cases where something like this could have prevented issues to come up. Dr vulpes (Talk) 11:10, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Would it would be worth mentioning this AEBEFORE idea at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Motions? It seems relevant per Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Motions#Direct violation reports IV. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 00:06, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Ps, see Template:Contentious topics/alert/first for details on notifying editors of CTOPs. TarnishedPath^talk 11:02, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

User:AITagReviewBot

Just noting that we (edit conflict)'d and I was unblocking this user while you were in the process of declining their request. Primefac (talk) 11:29, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

User talk:Rainbow Dash i61

You may wish to revoke TPA Cahk (talk) 07:36, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the catch @Cahk. Dr vulpes (Talk) 08:07, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Categorization of AE protection actions needed (5 January 2026)

Hello Dr vulpes,

I'm a bot that helps log arbitration enforcement (AE) protection actions on behalf of the Arbitration Committee. As a result of a September 2025 motion by the Arbitration Committee, administrators are no longer required to manually log AE protection actions. Instead, this bot is responsible for logging AE protections to the AE protection log.

While logging AE protections, this bot detected that you recently took the following page protection actions. These action(s) seemed to be AE actions based on the edit summaries, but the bot wasn't able to tell which arbitration case they related to:

• 00:31, 5 January 2026 (UTC) (Yosef Ohana (hostage))
• 06:24, 5 January 2026 (UTC) (Definitions of Zionism)

If these were AE actions, please take a moment to log the appropriate topic code at the AE protection log. If they were not, feel free to remove the actions from the AE protection log, and optionally let the bot operator know about the false positives.

Going forward, in order to help this bot categorize AE actions, please include a link to the contentious topic under which the action was taken in the protection edit summary (for example, [[WP:CT/BLP]] or [[Wikipedia:Contentious topics/Biographies of Living Persons]]).

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to the bot operator or to the arbitration clerks at the arbitration clerks' noticeboard.

Thank you! ClerkBot (talk) 23:55, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2025).

Administrator changes

• Epicgenius
• Left guide
• LEvalyn
• MPGuy2824
• The4lines
• Yue

Fathoms Below

• BaronLarf
• Firefly
• kelapstick
• Opabinia regalis
• Pbsouthwood
• Sethant
• UtherSRG
• Whouk

CheckUser changes

• Giraffer
• HouseBlaster
• SilverLocust

• Liz
• Worm That Turned
• Z1720

Oversight changes

• Asilvering
• Giraffer
• Girth Summit
• Guerillero
• HouseBlaster
• Izno
• SilverLocust

• Liz
• Worm That Turned
• Z1720

Guideline and policy news

• All general sanctions imposed by the community may now be enforced at the Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard (WP:AE) as a result of a recent RfC.
• Due to the result of a recent RFC, the administrator recall process is amended to extend the deadline for a re-request for adminship to 30 days or the next administrator election, whichever is later.
• Changes to the Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy's disclosure rules include broadening the consecutive-blocks exception to cover all admin actions and removing the requirement to revision-delete permissible disclosures once they become unnecessary (instead requiring only their removal). See WP:TAIVDISCLOSE for more information.

Arbitration

• Following the 2025 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been elected to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Asilvering, Girth Summit, Guerillero, HJ Mitchell, HouseBlaster, Izno, Sdrqaz, SilverLocust.
• The arbitration case Pbsouthwood has been suspended.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:29, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

question

Hi, I was wondering when the redirect (end of year/2025)awards as well as article reviewer awards were going to be given out, also the current redirect image might be better(with an alternate for those that are interested),thank you for your time, and a belated Happy New Year! --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:28, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026

Hello! I noticed you're a bot operator, so I thought you might be interested in a hackathon we're organizing: the Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026, on 13–14 March in Arnhem, Netherlands.

It's a two-day, technically oriented hackathon bringing together Wikimedians from the region. Whether you want to work on bot frameworks, tools, or other technical projects, this could be a great opportunity to collaborate with fellow developers. Registration closes mid-January or when full. Let me know if there are any questions. Hope to see you there! Daanvr (talk) 09:31, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

@Daanvr hey sorry for catching this now, I've been swamped at work but thank you for thinking of me. Dr vulpes (Talk) 06:19, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I have sent you a note about a page you started

Hi Dr vulpes. Thank you for your work on List of deaths in Yellowstone National Park. Another editor, SunDawn, has reviewed it as part of new pages patrol and left the following comment:

Thank you for creating the article! Have a good day!

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|SunDawn}}. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

✠ SunDawn ✠ Contact me! 12:31, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

January–February 2026 NPP drive - Phase 2

NPP unreviewed article statistics as of February 02, 2026

Welcome to Phase 2 of the January–February 2026 NPP drive. During Phase 1, we reviewed 16,658 articles and 4,416 redirects, and there is currently a backlog of 16,475 articles and 23,782 redirects in the queue. Fantastic job! Completing 22,502 patrols in the first phase made a significant dent in the backlog. Let's keep our foot on the gas for Phase 2, and I hope we can achieve even more reviews than Phase 1. Best of luck!

Start patrolling!

You are receiving this message because you added your name to the participants list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:21, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

January 2026 GOCE drive award

		The Minor Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dr vulpes for copy edits totaling between 1 and 3,999 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE January 2026 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 04:30, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2026).

Administrator changes

Vacant0

• Crisco 1492

• Deepfriedokra
• Hbdragon88
• Karl Dickman
• Worm That Turned

CheckUser changes

Daniel Quinlan

Vanamonde93

Mkdw

Oversight changes

Daniel Quinlan

Arbitration

• Due to the result of a recent motion, a rough consensus of administrators at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard may impose an expanded topic ban on Israel, Israelis, Jews, Judaism, Palestine, Palestinians, Islam, and/or Arabs, if an editor's Arab-Israeli conflict topic ban is determined to be insufficient to prevent disruption. At least one diff per area expanded into should be cited.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2026 Steward elections started on 06 February 2026 at 14:00 (UTC) and will end on 27 February 2026 at 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process for current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:08, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

WikiCup 2026 March newsletter

The first round of the 2026 WikiCup ended on 26 February. As some of you may have noticed, good article nomination reviews now receive 10 points, an increase from 5 points in the previous year, as per a consensus at WT:CUP. This point increase has been retroactively applied to all good article reviews for which competitors have claimed points in this round. Peer reviews, which continue to be worth 5 points, are now listed in the same section as featured article candidate reviews, rather than with good article reviews. Everyone who competed in round 1 will advance to round 2 unless they have withdrawn or been banned. No other changes to the round-point system have been made for this year.

Round 1 was competitive. Three contestants scored more than 1,000 round points, and the top 16 contestants all scored more than 300 round points. The following competitors scored more than 800 round points:

• Bgsu98 (submissions) with 1,467 round points, largely gained from 1 featured article, 5 featured lists, 15 good articles, and 42 FAC and GAN reviews;
• Olliefant (submissions) with 1,246 round points, largely from 4 featured lists, 9 good articles, 2 featured topic articles, 4 did you know articles, and 75 FAC and GAN reviews;
• Generalissima (submissions) with 1,095 round points, largely from 3 featured articles, 6 good articles, and 5 did you know articles;
• MCE89 (submissions) with 848 round points, largely from 1 featured article, 8 good articles, 1 did you know article, and 32 FAC and GAN reviews; and
• Rollinginhisgrave (submissions) with 838 round points, largely from 1 featured article, 8 good articles, 1 did you know article, and 14 FAC, GAN, and peer reviews.

The full scores for round 1 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 7 featured articles, 16 featured lists, 2 featured-topic articles, 168 good articles, 13 good-topic articles and more than 50 Did You Know articles. In addition, competitors have worked on 14 In the News articles, and they have conducted nearly 700 reviews. The tournament points table will be updated within the next few days.

Remember that any content promoted after 26 February but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:56, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2026).

Administrator changes

• Brendanconway
• Calmer Waters
• Hut 8.5
• Joe Roe
• VersedFenrir

CheckUser changes

Ks0stm

Oversight changes

Ks0stm

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the web archival service archive.today has been deprecated; links to the site should be removed.
• A request for comment is open to discuss retiring CSD criterion R3 in favour of handling such redirects through RfD.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, remedy 9.1 of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been amended to limit TenPoundHammer to one XfD nomination or PROD per 24-hour period.
• Following a motion, the Iskandar323 further POV pushing motion has been rescinded.
• The Arbitration Committee has passed a housekeeping motion rescinding a number of outdated remedies and enforcement provisions across multiple legacy cases. In most instances, existing sanctions remain in force and continue to be appealable through the usual processes, while some case-specific remedies were amended or clarified.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2026 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: A09, AmandaNP, Barras, Count Count, M7, SHB2000, Teles and VIGNERON.
• An Unreferenced articles backlog drive is taking place in March 2026 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) 18:35, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi

So basing myself on your reply, the IP user is guilty of nothing. Nor of having falsified sources, nor of having insulted me. And while I try to restore the harmony of a page someone is trying to destroy by insulting me, he goes away with nothing? What's the point of that? Shouldn't I be able to defend myself? Haven't you see his replies, his insults, his edits, that he falsified sources? I'm really disappointed. How can you say I run after the minimum problem raised? I tried to have a conversation, a confrontation, I stated why we users agree on a specific matter and yet I was insulted and mocked. What should I do when I face something like that? The user clearly lacked of respect towards me and the encyclopedia by adding false information and by insulting me, deleting sourced information. What should I do? Accept such a behavior and being accounted as the guilty one when I only did the best for the project? MariaAmaliaduchessadiParma (talk) 07:55, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@MariaAmaliaduchessadiParma Wikipedia doesn't work on a "someone must be punished" model. The point of any sort of intervention is to stop behaviors that are disruptive. On your point about defending yourself you can always defend yourself. That's what edit summaries, talk pages, and to my point dispute resolution is for. If you really believe that sources are genuinely being falsified, that's a serious claim. Raise it at the appropriate noticeboard, that is a far more effective use of all of our time.

Dr vulpes (Talk) 06:17, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Hello

I am the original creator of the article Safia/Safdar, I am cleaning up my own edits, and correcting repeat references. Assume good faith. You want me to base the article on single reference 5-10 times repeated? Thanks. Let me do my job. I have created this article, nothing is unexplained I have explained every edit, I am cleaning up my own contirbutions (self reverting) and removing repeat references pls assume good faith. Looks like ur experienced editor, pls pay attention to detail before assuming bad faith.Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 16:15, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

@Agnirmurdhadhiva, if an article needs that much work then you should seriously consider taking it to draftspace so things like this won't happen. Dr vulpes (Talk) 17:10, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

First of all how do u know that it is large language model generated or chatgpt generated. Secondly, the article is identical in flow, text, and grammar as any other regular hollywood film article. Tell me where is factually inaccurate information in my article? and where is inaccurate sources in this article? I think you are making a mistake thinking i did not practice wikipedia editing. I have reviewed the rules of AI on wikipedia. I have submitted manually edit version only in draft space but it was automatically rejected as LLM. Pls dont assume wikipedia rules are flawless, there are some bottle necks in these rules. Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 17:21, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

@Agnirmurdhadhiva, I'm not trying to be rude but I mean it's pretty clear when reading your replies here and then your article that you got help from an AI model. Also when I checked it with an AI checker it came up as 100% AI ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. You're not in trouble or anything you just need to be aware of the rules that's all. Dr vulpes (Talk) 17:46, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I have requested admin review on this. AI checker may say that because i have filled bare urls using AI and infobox format using AI Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 17:48, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

furthermore,

I think its time now I stop interacting on this topic with you. I requested admin help. Thank u for ur feedback Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 17:22, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

For sure if that's what you think is best. Hey @Materialscientist, hope all is well I'm pinging you so you can have some context with what is going on here. Dr vulpes (Talk) 17:50, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

let people provide context and stop deleting my constructive edits im fixing duplicate references and ur readding them what is this? Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 17:52, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

pls clean ur mess and remove duplicate references number 6 and 8 ur deliberately damaging the article so that it gets deleted Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 17:55, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

i used ai to format infobox, and instead of using refill i used ai to fill bare urls Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 18:05, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

pls stop abusing me i have deleted duplicate references ant u understand im trying my best? dont spoil the article and pls dont message me i have requested admin help to fix the article Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 17:50, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

let me edit my comments and disvusdion with u. I am trying to keep it simple Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 18:15, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

mother of god so much exolanations i need to do. Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 18:16, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Categorization of AE protection actions needed (14 March 2026)

Hello Dr vulpes,

I'm a bot that helps log arbitration enforcement (AE) protection actions on behalf of the Arbitration Committee. As a result of a September 2025 motion by the Arbitration Committee, administrators are no longer required to manually log AE protection actions. Instead, this bot is responsible for logging AE protections to the AE protection log.

While logging AE protections, this bot detected that you recently took the following page protection actions. These action(s) seemed to be AE actions based on the edit summaries, but the bot wasn't able to tell which arbitration case they related to:

• 20:41, 14 March 2026 (UTC) (Ruscism)

If these were AE actions, please take a moment to log the appropriate topic code at the AE protection log. If they were not, feel free to remove the actions from the AE protection log, and optionally let the bot operator know about the false positives.

Going forward, in order to help this bot categorize AE actions, please include a link to the contentious topic under which the action was taken in the protection edit summary (for example, [[WP:CT/BLP]] or [[Wikipedia:Contentious topics/Biographies of Living Persons]]).

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to the bot operator or to the arbitration clerks at the arbitration clerks' noticeboard.

Thank you! ClerkBot (talk) 23:55, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Hey @L235 is there an option for community sanctions? Dr vulpes (Talk) 06:49, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Draft articles which are moved to main space

Hi pls dont complicate draft article which gets accepted and moved to main space. Like u did with S. Saraswathi the draft version was accepted and moved to main space. Check edit history before randomly tagging every new article with AI header. Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 06:41, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

@Agnirmurdhadhiva I'm done and I'm not going to deal with you any more. I've tried to work with you, I've tried to help you, I've tried to point out why what you're doing is wrong, and you just refuse to budge. I just wish you wouldn't lie to me, it's rude and insulting. This entire time all you had to do was make some very minor changes in your behavior, a handful of small copy edits to some articles, and this would have been an open and shut case. All of your work is AI, 100% of it. Your English skill is almost at a high school level and it is clear that you do not know English at a high enough level to write that well or make meaningful contributions to this project. I took the comments you've left here on my talk page and it comes out to a 57 on the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test, so that means it would be challenging for 10th to 12th graders. Now if we run the same test on the S. Saraswathi article we get a 16 on the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test which is graduate school level material. Check it yourself if you don't believe me.

This entire thing has been silly, all you had to do was rewrite about 200 words in both articles. Instead you've taken everything as an attack. When presented evidence that you're using AI you double down, get emotional and lie. I don't get it, seriously the only reason I can see someone giving a shit about such a minor unimportant article/film is if you're getting paid. There are other language wikis that you can participate at and I would encourage you to see what you can contribute there. I have to run some errands and when I get back I'll see if I feel this needs to be escalated for others to opine on. The last thing we need here is someone pumping out AI slop articles all day and night. Dr vulpes (Talk) 20:08, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Your english conversation is also at high school level. This has nothing to do with any behavior you are not a psychologist or psychiatrist to assess peoples behavior. Check Khajaguda article and see my english skills. You take any article in wikipedia and run in your AI checker it will detect it as AI. Looks like you are hallucinated in AI. AI models, such as LLMs, generate confident but false, illogical, or fabricated information. Instead of retrieving accurate data, the model fabricates content based on statistical patterns, often appearing highly realistic. These errors you presented are AI hallucinations that arise from insufficient training data, flawed datasets, or overfitting. So stop messaging me. FYI all my contributions are not AI. You keep on tagging thousands of wikipedia articles as AI, I dont have any issue if you dont want to come out of AI. It is common sense that if any draft article is moved to article space then it is not AI. And stop putting false accusations on me or I may have to report abuse, everything is not money here, I am just passioante about Indian articles that is all. Stop checking every article on the earth for AI and stop wasting ur time and others time.Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 01:51, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Seeing that your talk page is full of folks warning you about AI use (well it was until your deleted it) maybe the only way forward is to take this to an abuse noticeboard. I've already taken your content to the AI noticeboard for review. Oddly enough my graduate degree is in psychology so I did find that bit amusing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Dr vulpes (Talk) 02:52, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I dont want to know about ur educatonal qualifications I dont care. I told you not to mesage me. My talk page has appreciations for creating and contributing to new articles. I have created 2 articles and one got accepted as it was manually done, and the second one also now changed to complete manual. The following are not nonsensical urls, I have manually curated these urls. It is of no use trying to explain you. Funny your issue is broken url links or llm? Now check the updated article with full manual text. Links will break over a period of time, it doesnt mean the information is false and ur still attacking me without break showing off ur 100 barnstars clout. You are welcome to take my content to 10 AI noticeboards and lobby with them. You are abusing me and not trying to help me. You dont want me to contibute and create new articles. English is not a skill it is a language, just because ur native english speaker doesnt mean u attack non english speaker. Wikipedia did not mandate editors to be PhD in English. For ur info I am a PhD in Biochemistry from the university of michigan.

• https://www.ojaivalleynews.com/news/2018-the-year-in-review----february/article_e9153f27-f444-57e2-ab80-85aab801fb86.html
• https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2018/02/18/babas-tree-burned-thomas-fire-fights-survival-ojai/339414002/
• https://www.rainierintfilmfest.com/
• https://diversityfilm.org/awards-s13.php
• https://rfiff.com/Selected/RFIFF_Fall_2025_Official_Selections.html

Agnirmurdhadhiva (talk) 03:00, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Protection of User talk:Bringingthewood

Hi there, WP:UTPROT policy says:

User talk pages are rarely protected. However, protection can be applied if there is severe vandalism or abuse.

Can you please explain how the recent activity at User talk:Bringingthewood constituted severe vandalism or abuse to the point of warranting one-month user talk page protection? (cc @Bringingthewood:) Left guide (talk) 00:35, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Just chiming in here. That ...., let me be nice, will probably come back to me and/or SuperJames888. Seems to have history brewing from User:~2026-10689-66. Just saying. I think the good doctor was just killing the inevitable. Bringingthewood (talk) 00:39, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Hey @Left guide, the content and the filter log had a lot of anti semitic content so I felt that a month long protection was warranted. I tend to bend towards protection in cases where vandalism or abuse is directed towards a protected class. As with any of my admin actions if you feel this was not propper you are more than welcome to reverse them.

Examples: Special:AbuseLog/43673120, Special:AbuseLog/43673101, Special:AbuseLog/43673283 Dr vulpes (Talk) 02:34, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I did have some concerns at first, but think I can live with the result and see it as within reasonable discretion given your explanation, the filter log data (which I hadn't considered checking), and Bringingthewood's apparent consent for it here. (as it seems we give some leeway to subjects on protection of their user talk pages). Left guide (talk) 06:54, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Yeah I only caught this one because I was reviewing accounts flagged for abuse. 99/100 times I wouldn’t have checked the abuse log either. But it’s something that I’ll have to keep in my radar now. Thanks for checking in! Dr vulpes (Talk) 17:26, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Not one to say I told you so, lol. Sorry you were added to the list, Dr. Bringingthewood (talk) 04:46, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's all good, not the first or worst. Dr vulpes (Talk) 04:49, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

True. You know the old saying .. no good deed goes unpunished. Now you have to cover yourself. :O - Bringingthewood (talk) 04:58, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

HAHAHHAHA only good thing that will i do is Holocaust ur mother" ~2026-16675-65 (talk) 05:00, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

lol there's a reason my user page is protected, it's fine I mean people can either get a cheap laugh or work towards building something greater. I hope that whoever this is one day figures out that they can either sit here and call everyone a jew or they can find real passion for something and expand the corpus of human knowledge. Trolling is only interesting for so long, but man when you find a subject that you give full fucks about that shit will take you places. Dr vulpes (Talk) 05:01, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Please, don't waste your breath. That's what the little lady wants. Bringingthewood (talk) 05:09, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Ha, I forgot that you could throw out the trash. I may have taken your fun away with the rollbacks, sometimes it could go off course in a blink of an eye. Bringingthewood (talk) 05:18, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Yeah I noticed that you protected my User Talk page, I actually did prefer that after the events that took place. You did a good job reverting that for me and protecting my talk, since both times I didn't see them messing with my Talk page until after they have been reverted. Glad you did that for me! I wonder who pinged me though. SuperJames888 (Talk to me) 14:17, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Ah yeah see what the message was, they should probably stop trying to do nonconstructive edits. I get emails saying what they pinged me about, and that is not good when they even attempt it anywhere. SuperJames888 (Talk to me) 14:21, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Holy cow, I got 19 pings from that user. This is starting to become a bigger issue. SuperJames888 (Talk to me) 14:18, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Draft: APTIM

Hello,

I’m reaching out about the deletion of Draft:APTIM.

I understand the concern around AI-generated content. While AI tools were used early in the drafting process (to ensure Wikipedia compliance), the article was reviewed and edited by me and another before submission with the goal of meeting Wikipedia’s sourcing and neutrality standards.

That said, I respect the decision and want to make sure I approach this correctly going forward.

If you’re open to it, I’d appreciate any guidance on:

• Whether it would be possible to restore the draft so I can revise it, or if it’s better to start fresh
• Any specific issues you noticed beyond the AI concern, especially around sourcing or notability

My goal is to create something that aligns with Wikipedia’s standards and avoids the same issues.

Thanks for your time. ShRenhea (talk) 18:24, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I also understand the concerns around creating an article related to my own organization.

I’m aware of the conflict of interest guidelines and will and have taken a cautious approach, focusing on independent sourcing and neutrality. My intent is not to promote the company, but to document it in a way that aligns with Wikipedia’s standards.

If needed, I’m open to using the Articles for Creation process or proposing changes rather than editing directly.

I appreciate the guidance. ShRenhea (talk) 18:25, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

It doesn't really seem like you've taken notice of the fact that AI shouldn't be used to generate talk page comments. 🚂ThatTrainGuy1945 ^{Peep peep!} 10:46, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Also, whatever you've put on the draft page isn't really how you're supposed to do it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:APTIM&diff=1343998031&oldid=1343997494. Cheers, 🚂ThatTrainGuy1945 ^{Peep peep!} 10:47, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I did write my previous response myself. I get that it may sound formal, but that’s just how I communicate professionally. I’ve spent a lot of time developing a clear, direct, and neutral writing style so there’s no confusion or bias in what I’m saying.

I understand the concerns around AI use here and will be mindful of that.

That said, I’m honestly trying to figure out what the right process is. My draft was removed, and I’m not getting much clarity on what specifically needs to change—whether that’s sourcing, structure, or how it was set up.

If you can point me in the right direction on what I should be doing differently, I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks ShRenhea (talk) 15:19, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

So, 100% AI generated above according to GPTZero. All of them are AI generated. Please stop. Talk to us in your own words. Nobody cares about how good your English is (provided you have competency). See AITALK and denying the truth (yes, I started this essay): Wikipedia:NOAILIARS. 🚂ThatTrainGuy1945 ^{Peep peep!} 15:31, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

GPTZero has on a 85%-90% identification rate, and frequently it misclassified human written text with a false positive rate of up to 29%. I am a technical writer, what do you want? This isn't slack, we aren't texting each other here. The Wiki page is called an article.

Thank you for your assistance and have a blessed day. ShRenhea (talk) 16:46, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

@ShRenhea you can lie all you want ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, I've read thousands of student papers before AI was a thing so not only can I see you used AI but I promise you that multiple AI detectors are not wrong. Also I'm sure your keyboard has an em dash on it that you use all the time. Dr vulpes (Talk) 17:19, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

With that out of the way, I'll review your request later today. Dr vulpes (Talk) 17:20, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

I like em dahes, on mac it's pretty easy, Press Option + Shift + - (hyphen) ShRenhea (talk) 17:50, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Accidentally unprotected

@Dr vulpes Apologies, it seems that I've accidentally unprotected the page of James Fishback when I restored an earlier version based on some other edit. Do you mind protecting it again please? Thanks. Wikieditor662 (talk) 03:25, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

The page is still protected @Wikieditor662, you just removed the little icon letting folks know it's protected. Dr vulpes (Talk) 03:28, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for the heads up. I was wondering how I managed to accidentally do that as only administrators can protect pages. This explains it. Wikieditor662 (talk) 03:32, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

+Template:Editnotices/Page/James_Fishback

Hi Dr vulpes, there was a restriction notice on the article's talk page; I have now created Template:Editnotices/Page/James_Fishback so that the restriction is actually in place
(see Wikipedia:Contentious topics § Restriction notices for details and Wikipedia:Contentious topics § Enforcement of restrictions for the issue – no edit notice = violations can't be sanctioned).

Best regards, ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:56, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, I got a little distracted with that one while trying to do too many things at once. Dr vulpes (Talk) 20:20, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Fortunately, at least page protection doesn't need to be logged at the AELOG anymore. Maybe one day we'll have a one-click 1RR solution as well. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:26, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The Original Barnstar
		Thank you for being such great admins for this site! (Talk) PHLOGISTON ENTHUSIAST 17:40, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you @Phlogiston Enthusiast, I have a lot of places to improve on but I try my best😊Dr vulpes (Talk) 20:19, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Naufragios y comentarios

Hi! I've seen that you speedy deleted Naufragios y Comentarios, thank you very much! I'm writing to point out to you that the user who had created it, has created also a Doppelgänger of the same article, Naufragios y comentarios. I'll leave it to you the decision wether to speedy delete also that article, otherwise I'll open a DR. --Friniate ✉ 15:21, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

January–February 2026 NPP backlog drive – Points award

		The Special Bronze Barnstar
		This award is given in recognition of Dr vulpes for accumulating at least 75 points in the January–February 2026 NPP backlog drive. Your contributions helped review 27,750 articles and 7,050 redirects during the drive. Thank you so much for taking part and helping reduce the backlog! – DreamRimmer ■ 16:55, 4 April 2026 (UTC)