Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/News and notes

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News and notes

Front-page issues for the community

Encyclopedias for Deletion banner campaign proposal

Screenshot of the top-half of the English Wikipedia main page with the banner "To all our readers in Germany" at the top
Prior informational banner seen from a German IP address in July, 2018
For more background, see "European copyright law moves forward" from the October 1, 2018 Signpost

Subsequent to the adoption of the final version of EU Copyright Directive / Article 13, a Village pump proposal appeared for a Wikipedia banner campaign in protest. The discussion continues on whether this constitutes advocacy in "Wikipedia's voice". WMF News (formerly "blog") also posted a piece on this, "Problems remain with the EU's copyright reform". B

Passing of Corinne

Pale Blue Dot displayed by User:Corinne on her userpage.
"Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam." – Carl Sagan
Posted to wikimedia-l by Pine

Dear colleagues of wikimedia-l,

I learned today of the 2018 passing of User:Corinne. I feel that Corinne's substantial contributions to Wikimedia merit forwarding the news of her passing to this email list. Corinne had a Master's degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. User:Miniapolis wrote, "Corinne was a fellow coordinator of the Guild of Copy Editors, and we had come to know each other off-wiki as well. Corinne's specialty was request articles, and her copyediting skill (second to none) was a factor in many Good and Featured Articles." Corinne made over 25,000 contributions to English Wikipedia.

Contributors have written memorials on her talk page. She was posthumously added to the Guild of Copy Editors Hall of Fame.

May she rest in peace.

Brief notes

Welcome image on userpage of English Wikipedia's newest admin, Evad37
  • Wikimania scholarships: Scholarships for Wikimania 2019 are available. Deadline to apply is March 15, 2019, 23:59 UTC.
  • Elections for WMF board: Community affiliate selected WMF Board seats are up for election. See details at this month's In focus report.
  • Partial blocks: Partial blocks are under development as a software feature by WMF. They could be used to enforce topic bans on English Wikipedia. They were announced as functional as of February 13 and could be applied pending policy decisions on logging, notices and a few other issues.
  • New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, Evad37 also a frequent contributor to The Signpost. Seven administrators were desysopped due to inactivity in February.