Simple English Wikipedia to stay open

The project closure discussion for Simple English Wikipedia was rejected by LangCom, for the following reasons:

• The community is active and robust, and spam and vandalism are handled in a reasonable way, given the size of the community.
• Because this project existed before the current new projects policy was put in place, the facts that Simple English (a) does not have its own language code, and (b) may not be considered "different enough from English" to have its own wiki, simply are not relevant.
• Because of the preceding two points, there is no policy justification to close this project.
• Additionally, given that Oppose !votes greatly outnumber Support !votes, it cannot really even be said that the community has developed a consensus to recommend that LangCom close this project.

Meanwhile, a related discussion has started on whether Simple English Wikiquote and Wikibooks (both closed) should be deleted outright. – P

Creating a stopgap Interface Administrators policy

With the interface administrator group created, how will the user right be granted? Discussion of this has been going on for some time at the user group's talk page. !Voting has now begun on the proposed policy, with the following rules for when bureaucrats may grant the user right:

1. Any admin may request the right at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.
2. Requests must stay open for 24 hours, during which if two admins object, the request is declined.

The right may also be revoked under one or more of the following conditions:

1. If they have made no edits or other logged action for at least 12 months.
2. Voluntary request by the interface administrator at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.
3. After misuse of the access, by consensus at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard.
4. By request of the Arbitration Committee.

No policy has been agreed upon yet. Other discussions include whether to give the right to admins who already edit these pages regularly (six admins have wide consensus for being granted the right), as well as an alternative granting procedure. – P

Should drafts not yet submitted to WP:AFC have the {{draft article}} template?

A proposal (permanent link) was made on the village pump asking whether {{draft article}} should be put at the top of articles in the Draft namespace that don't have another header template, like {{afc submission}}. The main disagreement between supporters and opposers in the discussion is whether the template is useful to editors. Edits to the template are being made at its sandbox in an attempt to rectify the concerns of some of the opposers. – P

Exploring the boundaries of paid editing policy

A discussion (permanent link) on the Administrators' noticeboard asks whether paid feedback for using a tool as an admin requires disclosure.

In more detail, the discussion has circled around whether compensated participation in a research study constituted paid editing subject to the disclosures required since 2014. Making it particularly puzzling was the fact that this study concerned use of a tool the study provided to assist with RfC closures and that the study was considered by some to have WMF support. Moreover, unlike usual paid editing, the compensation would be for behavior and not content. Specifically, an administrator would use the non-admin tool provided by the study to close a single RfC, even if that means reclosing an old one or testing it in a sandbox. Several administrators said they have been solicited to participate.

Administrator TonyBallioni – who has stated for this report that he was not solicited and has never received any compensation related to Wikipedia – insists in the discussion that "[p]ayment for use of a tool and providing feedback on it is not payment for contributions" and that this is an unnecessary examination of the meaning of "paid editing". Jytdog, a long-time contributor to conflict of interest matters, suggested that "people considering doing this, should not be evaluating themselves how the community should classify" compensation, bias blind spot underscoring the importance of a community discussion on the issue.

As far as The Signpost is aware, the issue was brought up before anyone engaged in the project and in fact no one may have received compensation at this point. – B

In brief

• There was a proposal on the policy village pump (permanent link) to ban political userboxes; it was snow-closed as unsuccessful.
• The Bot to deliver Template:Ds/alert discussion was recently archived without a formal close. More than a month in, the support–oppose ratio was about 5–3, but there was some debate about whether this change would be allowed to be implemented, and many users treated this discussion as purely advisory and something that would ultimately be up to ArbCom.