The October 2026 administrator elections have concluded with all nine candidates being elected to serve as admins: notably, eight of the nine received over 300 supports in the process. This is the first election to not have any unsuccessful candidates, and it happens to also be the first election without any self-nominations. Congratulations to TonySt, A412, Tenshi Hinanawi, Bridget, Dreamyshade, Ethmostigmus, Iseult, R Prazeres, and Bsherr on becoming our newest admins. – QJR

A well-known Russian Wikimedian has been arrested at a Moscow airport. The first arrest was for "petty hooliganism" and he was held for two weeks. As soon as he was released, he was arrested again on the same charge. The third and most recent arrest was for treason, which would have cost him a sentence of 10–15 years in a prison camp. The Wikimedian was accused of awarding Telegram Stars worth about $26 to Ukrainian websites which purportedly help Ukrainians finance the ongoing war against Russia.

The story was first reported on a Russian-language Polish website, and then reported again on a Russian-language Latvian website. Several Russian Wikimedians have discussed these events on a Russian website. The most interesting topic was whether the story should be loudly reported in the international press to help persuade Russian president Vladimir Putin to let the accused man go, but this was not viewed as being an effective method, given the current state of the Russian-Ukrainian war. But neither was doing nothing considered to be an effective method. The main purported facts of the case are known, even if we can't independently confirm them, but this reporter has not decided yet which course to pursue. – SB

In one of the last RFCs from the August GAN mega-RFC to be closed (see previous Signpost coverage), consensus was reached to allow featured articles to be demoted to good articles, instead of fully de-listed, if they still meet the GA criteria and FARC consensus approves it. The RFC was very close, with the closer having to use strength of arguments to determine a consensus preference between two options (both of which would have allowed for demotions straight to GA, but with different processes). The implementation of this change is still pending as the details are worked out on the FAR talk page.

Other major changes made by the August RFC include mentioning an article's vital status on GAN (closed at the same time as the FAR RFC) and requiring certain accessibility measures, chiefly alt text, as part of the GA criteria (closed in September, but overlooked by previous Signpost issues). – QJR