Requesting a block? Wikinews:Blocking policy states that administrators may block users who "excessively and consistently break site policy. Admins should only do this as a last resort - efforts to educate must be made first, followed by warnings." Admins can not and will not block unless this policy is followed. Please do not raise an alert here unless efforts to educate the user have been made, and warnings have been given. If you have an ongoing problem with another user, you should consider Wikinews:Dispute resolution.

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Spam. Tenshi! (Talk page) 09:16, 31 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Done —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:14, 31 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Route 2026 (talk · contribs) This username is similar to mine, but it has absolutely no connection to me. Furthermore, when this user created his/her user page, he/she sets it to redirect to my user page (not created), which I felt was an intentional attempt to cause confusion. I believe he/she should be blocked for using an inappropriate username.Route 2025 (talk) 16:48, 31 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Done That is just weird. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:48, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi, can you please unprotect my user page (User:Daniel)? It has some sort of legacy protection that prevents me from editing it. Need to clean up. Thanks, Daniel (talk) 02:02, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Done —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:47, 1 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Could the admins check with the Foundation to find out what time on May 4 they intend to make Wikinews read-only? (I'm not saying that this information should necessarily be publicized, since someone might exploit it to sneak some self-promotion onto the site at the last minute. But the admins should know.)

On a related note, could the admins make sure that the Newsroom is cleared out by the last day? The list of "Incorrectly flagged articles", for example, is baffling enough with Wikinews being active; we don't need to have them confuse people for the rest of the Internet's lifespan. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:07, 11 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

could the admins make sure that the Newsroom is cleared out by the last day
Yes. I am working through as much of the archival work as I can. At present, I am not aware of any other administrator undertaking similar efforts. I have reached out to one administrator who has left a number of incomplete changes, but they appear to have disengaged. Given that, I am focusing on what can reasonably be addressed without taking on additional cleanup beyond routine, shutting-things-down-type work.
There are some things the 'crats typically need to do and I've pinged them in some cases to close discussions such as requests for permissions. As we get closer to D-Day, if nothing is done, I'll close more things down myself if necessary.
Regarding the incorrectly flagged articles, one major issue is the absence of a documented procedure for retracting articles, particularly in relation to Category:No publish. A practical short-term fix would be to include all retracted stories in that category, or alternatively disable the DPL as the project winds down (DPL would likely be disabled as part of the mothballing process anyway).
That approach would leave the record as-is, including its shortcomings. At minimum, it preserves a complete account of how these issues were or were not handled, which may be of value to anyone reviewing the project in the future.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 01:36, 11 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Michael.C.Wright: What's DPL? Thanks for what you are working on. If there is anything that non-admins can do to help, let us know. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 20:09, 11 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
DPL is mw:Extension:DynamicPageList (third-party). It is used not only on the Newsroom page, but also on the main page and all infoboxes (and more).
Our use of it (or rather ru.WN's use) has some history. We should have migrated off of it long ago. Part of me wonders if that factored in to the SPTF's decision to close Wikinews.
At any rate, it will no doubt be disabled, leaving an error on every page that uses it. I'm not sure how to change all of our infoboxes so that they still return something useful once DPL is disabled and the site is read-only. And there isn't enough of a community left to try to figure it out, either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 13:17, 12 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
I didn't receive any pings for 'crat tasks. If you would like me to get them done, then, please leave a message on my talk page. Please do not rely on notifications to engage me in tasks or discussions in the next four weeks here, I would really appreciate it. Gryllida (talk) 11:16, 15 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Please do not rely on notifications to engage me in tasks or discussions in the next four weeks here...
Alternatively, you could take responsibility for monitoring requests for bureaucrats and step in proactively where bureaucrat action is needed.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 13:05, 15 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

I've started working through Category:Event infoboxes removing DPL and replacing it with static lists. It's time-consuming and I alone won't get through all infoboxes, before the project is marked read-only and DPL likely is disabled.

All admin are encouraged to help. See the edit histories of the following as examples of how I do it:

Template:2005 London bombing infobox
Template:2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
Template:2006EuropeanChampionshipsAthletics
Template:2007 Iranian seizure of Royal Navy personnel
Template:2007 Taipei 101 Run Up
Template:2007 Taipei IT Month

We'll need to do similar work on normal infoboxes, which are more complicated, as well as the Main page, etc.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 14:40, 12 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

I was going to suggest raw HTML or even subst: the templates. How were you doing it, Michael? Are you looking at the web page's code and copy/pasting the HTML? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:30, 12 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Some of the infoboxes are not admin-protected, so I will help with replacing the DPL with static lists where I can. I just did that for Template:War in Georgia (2008). --Metropolitan90 (talk) 15:55, 12 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Using subst might be a much better solution...Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 12:26, 13 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Are you looking at the web page's code and copy/pasting the HTML?
Yes, that is essentially what I'm doing. Several categories of infoboxes are 'cookie-cutter' in that they are set up the same. For example, most of the Category:Country infoboxes are set up the same, so it's relatively easy to rebuild them slightly and copy/paste the DPL output as a static list using wikitext. I linked to two examples below and have since done several in the same manner. It is more pragmatic than ideal, and better alternatives are welcome.
We still have roughly 7,174 pages using DPL—most of them are likely articles with infoboxes that use DPL. So there is less work than actually having to touch that many individual pages.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 19:16, 13 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Courtesy link: Category:Infoboxes. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:05, 12 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
I have also done the following:
Template:WDSC2007
Template:Tour de France 2007
So I recommend that the admins focus on the protected templates and leave the unprotected templates for editors like me to handle. Each template takes only a few minutes to edit. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 16:07, 12 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Much appreciated and I'll start focussing only on protected first.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 12:27, 13 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
I just tested and do see that some of the changes aren't propagating as expected. I tested with Tour de France: Alberto Contador wins the grand tour and tried to purge that page using ?action=purge on the end of the URL and that didn't pull in the changes. However, when I used {{subst:Tour de France 2007}} at that article, it did indeed pull in the changes. So I imagine (hope?) that we can carry on and eventually the changes will propagate. I have seen in the past, notably when I created categories such as Category:Peer reviewed/Passed (exception)/Michael.C.Wright, that it took days for the categories to be populated as expected.
Unless of course someone else knows what's going on under the hood and knows a better approach.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 13:12, 13 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T423512. It is possible that our disabling FlaggedRevs in the template namespace affected how pages transclude templates that were previously controlled by FlaggedRevs (which was what reviewers use to "sight" stable versions).
The work-around for the Main page was to recreate the templates, which is not feasible here given the number of templates we're updating.
I've updated the Phabricator ticket with this information in hopes that a more systemic solution is available, considering pending closure, DPL being disabled, etc., etc.,Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 22:28, 15 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Courtesy link to all pages using DPL (note that pages in the main and category namespaces have it transcluded from a template): Category:Pages using the DynamicPageList extension. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:19, 13 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

I am now rebuilding Category:State infoboxes to be static. See the following, completed examples:

I'm working in alphabetical order. Feel free to start at the bottom and work upwards if you'd like to lend a hand. The first two were fully protected, so this may be a job only for admins, unfortunately.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 15:49, 13 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Done The states infoboxes are now converted from DPL to staticMichael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 16:55, 13 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

I am now rebuilding Category:Country infoboxes to be static, following the same process as done for State infoboxes. See the following, completed examples:

One was protected, one was not. Feel free to jump in where you can. Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 17:10, 13 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Infoboxes in sections J, K, and L of Category:Country infoboxes are completed. I'll continue down the list from M later today or tomorrow (Pacific Time), unless someone else gets there first.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 18:02, 13 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
I will add that should we migrate and are able to continue our use of DPL (which remains unclear) these changes should be easily revert-able. Most of my updates to these infoboxes were a single edit.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 21:28, 13 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
The good news is that Miraheze would support our DPL should we fork to them.
The bad news is we don't know if WMF NY is going to assume stewardship of the project (we need a parent, 501(C)(3) to operate), if the WMF is going to relinquish the name and logo, or when those decisions are even expected to be made.
Therefore, I think we should continue our work winding things down. The older pages using DPL can remain static long-term or even permanently if we do migrate and the newer pages/templates can have DPL restored easily by reverting the changes.
I think later today I'll try to set up a project page to track and document what we've done to wind-down the project.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 12:32, 14 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
I have created the following page to ID and track work we want to do before the project is marked read-only:
Wikinews:2026 Wind-down Wikinews
This work assumes no migration will be done. If we migrate, some or even all of the work may need to be reverted. See m:Migration of Wikinews and future hosts for any updates on a potential migration.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 15:54, 15 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hello,

I stopped reviewing for next few weeks to allocate resources for migration. I am requesting you to please let me know what I can do to help. Link to the migration discussion "meta:Migration of Wikinews and future hosts", and I would like to invite you to participate. For now there is one possible venue with joined Miraheze and Wikimedia NYC hosting but their communication appears to be happening off-wiki as far as I know and I do not know their possible result nor the timing of that discussion. I am grateful for anything that you may do to help.

If the migration is completed I am willing to commit to reviewing more timely and to build an infrastructure and workflow that results in reasonably accurate and fresh stories being published and to help the group grow.

I refused to help with article archival, because I do not wish to be involved in quality checks at this stage. If there are specific non-controversial tasks related to migration that you would like my help with, please let me know.

Many thanks.

Regards, -- Gryllida (talk) 11:12, 15 April 2026 (UTC)Reply