Commons talk:Commons Gazette

Let's draft Commons Gazette! Please use this page for coordination and discussion, and feel free to submit any news for inclusion in future issues.

Guide

Keep it succinct. Write in a neutral tone. Commons Gazette serves to inform the community of facts.

Agenda

• Appointment and removal of Commons:Administrators, Commons:Bureaucrats, Commons:Checkusers and Commons:Oversighters.
  • Details of appointment (vote results, links to request pages) or removal (reason, e.g. resignation, inactivity, decease). Grouped by appointment, honourable removal, or other removal, and arranged in this order. Sorted within each group first chronologically and then alphabetically.
  • Appreciation for users who are honourably removed.
• Notices of major Wikimedia Commons events.

Schedule

• 1st draft due 30th day.
• 1st day asap, no later than 2nd day.
  1. check for additional changes.
  2. finalise text.
  3. publish on Commons:Commons Gazette/Latest, Commons:Commons Gazette/2024, COM:VP, etc.

     {{subst:Commons:Commons Gazette/Latest}}

• help update Commons:List of former administrators.

Cheatsheet

=== Staff changes ===
Currently, there are <!-- [{{canonicalurl:Special:ListUsers/sysop|limit=500}} {{subst:NUMBERINGROUP:sysop}} sysops]. -->

=== Other news ===
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Edited by .<!-- sign your name ~~~ on this line (sorted alphabetically by surname or username) if you helped with drafting -->
<!-- {{subst:Commons Gazette/footer}} -->

Draft 2024-07

Currently, there are

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Edited by RZuo (talk). --RZuo (talk) 20:06, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

@JWilz12345 info from 2023 and 2021 is not "news" anymore. RZuo (talk) 05:59, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

@RZuo how about the recent discovery of the FoP in Mongolia by Chinneeb when they looked for the copyright law changes in theie country? Not news too? JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 06:24, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: i removed them because neither was recent.

if the scope of the newsletter is expanded to old news, then there will be endless things worth mentioning.--RZuo (talk) 18:58, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Draft 2024-08

Currently, there are

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Edited by RZuo (talk). --RZuo (talk) 16:29, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Draft 2024-09

Volunteer staff changes

In August 2024, 1 sysop was removed. Currently, there are

• User:Rubin16 was removed on 13 August due to inactivity. He had served as sysop from 14 November 2010 to 18 February 2018, and from 13 January 2021.

We thank him for his service.

Other news

• Gadget Cat-a-lot was modified to edit at a much slower rate due to website reliability problems.
• Commons:Report Special:UncategorizedCategories was newly compiled to provide a version of Special:UncategorizedCategories with more details.
• Commons:Report UncategorizedCategories with infobox was also compiled to list category pages without categories but only an empty infobox.

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Edited by RZuo (talk). --RZuo (talk) 19:47, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

@Enhancing999: can you give some links to substantiate your statements? like where can people see "...deactivated by WMF in lieu of a performance fix"?

a final draft must be due in a few hours. please be quick.--RZuo (talk) 10:59, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I added some. Do you want more?
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:21, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

thx. phab links are good enough and self explanatory for the readers. RZuo (talk) 11:23, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Not sure: phab:T369024 lead to the wrong special page to be deactivated.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 11:26, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

what do you mean?

if it's not substantiated then i will have to exlude it from the text. RZuo (talk) 13:11, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

No, I meant to say that even for developers, the two tickets aren't easy to read.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 17:22, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999: final draft. i excluded things that were either unsubstantiated or of trival importance.--RZuo (talk) 19:47, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

What's trivial about 200,000 images used on OSM being geocoded or Special:UncategorizedPages?
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 19:50, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Please remove my username from the summary, I don't share the POV on cat-a-lot.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 19:52, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

i see no evidence that support "200,000 images used on OSM being geocoded" or that it was done recently. RZuo (talk) 19:54, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

And about Special:UncategorizedPages?
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 19:56, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

how often did it reach zero?

is it not going to list another set of pages in future and then get cleared to reach zero again? if that happens every month will it be perennially mentioned?

there're hundreds kinds of Category:Commons backlog. clearing some of them is mostly trivial. RZuo (talk) 20:00, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I doubt it ever happen given the discussion on VP/T and it wont ever happen as the report was deactivated. In any case, please remove my name.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 20:09, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

i dont see the evidence for that. only its update frequency got reduced. RZuo (talk) 20:30, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

i refuse to sign off to possibly erroneous statements.

revisit next month and see if that's correct. RZuo (talk) 20:32, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

and that's the problem, when statements are made without any explanation for the lay users. i had to read the whole ticket and follow more links to decipher what actually has happened and how that might be related to the statement.

next time i'll just throw out unsubstantiated, unexplained submissions. save my time. RZuo (talk) 20:36, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't mind signing my contributions, but it just seems time I should spend otherwise. So 1 line about how many admins there is probably more suitable as a scope.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 20:46, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I find your comment about "unsubstantiated" submissions inappropriate, as I had warned you not to rely exclusively on phab tickets and offered you to provide additional links (which you implicitly declined). Weirdly, you don't seem to be aware of the goings on around here and still post this monthly "gazette". I don't think anybody cares about the number of administrators. We do care about every active one, just as we do about every other active contributor.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 21:30, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

any evidence to support your claim that that page is deactivated? that it will not be updated in september?

i only see the contrary, after researching by myself. RZuo (talk) 22:02, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

and even if that were true, a trivial stats page getting deactivated is unimportant. as you admitted, it's a page which users have long neglected. lots more bots/reports that contribute to maintenance on a bigger scale than that have gone without most users noticing. yet commons maintenance is still not severely restricted.

if it doesnt have a noticeable impact, it's trivial. if trivial things deserve mention, a long list of useless fun facts renders the newsletter useless. RZuo (talk) 22:08, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

if statements are not understandable from a reader's perspective, and no links are supplied to adequately explain them, they will be thrown out.

"200k images geocoded". wow great news! who did them? when did they do them? how? no info.

"deactivated". where was the code change? by whom? why? no info.

readers become only more confused and not more informed after reading such esoteric texts, which dont answer basic 5W1H questions.

despite these murky statements being submitted on the last day, i have waited for plenty of hours for better rewrites. i have other preoccupations too. RZuo (talk) 22:24, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Weirdly, you make plenty of comments but don't seem to have actually read the statements and followed the links, pff.. Commons must be esoteric for you, I guess.
 ∞∞ Enhancing999 (talk) 22:29, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

i only came back after 19:47. between the morning and 19:47 there was plenty of time for you to write legible texts.

1st draft was confusing, so i asked for links.

2nd draft still confusing, so i waited until 19:47, when i noticed you were active at 17 but still had not given better texts. only then did i try working on the texts to preserve as much accurate info as possible and began falling down the rabbit hole of the codes i read for the 1st time.

what were you waiting for to add essential explanation? by not making other users' work easier, dont expect other users to have a high opinion.

anyway, as i said, next time i'll just throw them out straightaway. RZuo (talk) 22:48, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Possible content

Some statistics on media? New features and other stuff WMF came up with? Enhancing999 (talk) 12:39, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

you can write them down in the draft whenever you have. RZuo (talk) 13:38, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Draft 2024-10

Volunteer staff changes

In September 2024, 1 bureaucrat was elected. Currently, there are

• User:CptViraj was elected (55/0/1) on 1 September.
  • The last addition to the bureaucrat team was elected in 2015. Abzeronow (talk) 17:47, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Other news

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Edited by RZuo (talk).