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I’ve added the Talk page entry on that article as you requested. The BRD page seems to state things the other way around stating: “Your edit might be reverted. The editor reverting you should be specific about their reasons in the edit summary or on the talk page.“ Czarking is the editor reverting and he had not started Talk page since Jan 17. For future reference, does not BRD require him to have started Talk page on or about Jan 17? ErnestKrause (talk) 04:10, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello ErnestKrause, thank you very much for starting the discussion on the article's talk page. Using the article's talk page instead of individual user talk pages has two main advantages: The conversation can focus on content (rather than a specific user's conduct) and others can join, perhaps as a third opinion or an RfC.
Regarding "BRD", you seem to be referring to an essay; an essay can't "require" anything. I prefer looking at policies. The verifiability policy and its section "WP:ONUS" is one of them. That said, yes, in an ideal world everyone would start a talk page discussion about their disagreements. In an ideal world, people don't edit war and instead immediately discuss things. You had both edit warred and you could both have been blocked in response, but talking seemed to be a less destructive path forwards. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:37, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2026-06

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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

  • The "Page information" feature, which gives validating information about a page (example), now automatically includes a table of contents. If there is a local MediaWiki:Pageinfo-header page created by individual users, it can now be removed. [1]
  • Recurrent item View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, VisualEditor previously added bold or italic formatting inside link descriptions, making the wikicode complex. This has now been fixed. [2]

Updates for technical contributors

  • There was no XML dump on 20 January. Additionally, from now on, dumps will be generated once per month only. [3]
  • The MediaWiki Interfaces team removed support for all transform endpoints containing a trailing slash from the MediaWiki REST API. All API users currently calling those endpoints are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. If you have questions or encounter any problems, please file a ticket in phabricator to the #MW-Interfaces-Team board.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Weekly highlight

  • Users are reminded that the Wikimedia Foundation has shared some guiding questions for the July 2026–June 2027 Annual Plan on Meta and Diff. These focus on global trends, faster and healthier experimentation, better support for newcomers, strengthening editors and advanced users, improving collaboration across projects, and growing and retaining readership. Feedback and ideas are welcome on the talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 17:42, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question

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I was going to email you about this, but saw the warnings on the email this user screen. Hypothetically speaking, if someone was indefinitely topic banned (in particular from one very specific article) in an arbitration case in 2007 and never successfully appealed it and they've been editing away in that area for the best part of 16 years including nearly 100 edits to that very specific article, is there much point in filing a report or would it be best not to poke the bear since if nobody else seems to care why should I get involved? FDW777 (talk) 20:31, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi FDW777, thanks for asking here, I do think that's the best place. The described situation sounds like a timebomb that should be resolved. If there were truly no issues with the nearly 100 edits, there's no need to revert them but the user must stop editing that article instead of judging this themselves. And then properly adhere to the ban for a year perhaps, so they have a basis for an appeal, and then create one at WP:ARCA. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:35, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The nearly 100 edits cover every year since 2008, there's no way I'm wasting my time figuring out what needs reverting especially since it's an article I have zero investment in. Emailed the arbitration committee and I'll let them decide on the best way forward. FDW777 (talk) 20:53, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
May I guess which answer you'll receive after a week of discussion? :)

Unless there are privacy concerns or other factors that are unsuitable for public discussion, emails sent to the Committee about violations will not be acted upon and may be discarded without a response by the Committee. As a general principle, good-faith reports will be directed to AR/CA, and other reports will be ignored.
— Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Direct violation reports

I'm curious; please let me know if and when that actually happens. They might be faster than a week and perhaps mention WP:AE.
I think the only non-public action you can perform that actually has an effect is sending the banned user an e-mail pointing to the idea above (stopping to violate the ban, then waiting some time and then appealing it). ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:56, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest I never saw that, but I didn't email them asking for action to be taken. More a "this is happening, does anyone really care and what should I do?" type situation. I think with the current blocking system it's a straighforward case of issuing a block for that page now anyway (my original post was slightly incorrect, I assumed it was a "broadly construed" as that's the language I'm used to seeing but it's actually only a ban from one page). FDW777 (talk) 21:02, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
You might hate me for this but I couldn't resist doing the research and identifying the user. And I'd like to be more open about this. We're probably talking about Skinny McGee's ban from the Midnight Syndicate. I have now reminded them of the ban in Special:Diff/1336271614 on their talk page and unless they continue editing the page, that should already be a fine solution. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:17, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well the breadcrumbs were there to be followed... FDW777 (talk) 21:21, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I thought you'd have at least obfuscated the year of the decision. 🙂 Thank you very much for noticing this and for the careful approach taken in response. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:22, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 2

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Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on Jan 10. Please help translate.

Highlights
Let's Talk continues

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events

"The Birthday Cake Song" is an original song created for Wikipedia's 25th Birthday, performed by the WikiChoir, featuring Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons content.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let foundationbulletin(_AT_)wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!


MediaWiki message delivery 02:05, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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