Similar to last week, Star Wars is present (#1), another TV show makes an appearance at #2. Unlike last week, however, there are an ungodly number of royals peppering this list – in fact, another TV series, The Crown, is responsible (#3, #4, #5, #8, #9).

Even if late due to a delay with the WP:5000, the Report is actually early with a topic: Star Wars got a #1 one month before it is supposed to with the Disney+ (#16) series The Mandalorian (#1, #11), and is also present in a new video game (#20). Aside from eight pages that remained from last week, there's politics (#7), television (#8).

The eleventh month started spearheaded by the subjects of two streaming productions, meaning Netflix is the cause of boosted views for 15th century English kings and World War II Soviets working with the Nazis. More history is found in the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall (#14), men who inspired holidays (#24) and Google Doodles (#21), a land dispute to be settled (#12) and a battle to be documented by Bollywood (#7). Speaking of movies, #3 and #5 are the same Hollywood blockbusters from last week(s), now joined by a horror flick (#15) and an actor (#10) who found love (#9) years after a tragedy (#19). The recently deceased (#4, #11), video games (#6), books adapted by HBO (#13), MMA (#18, #20), politicians from both sides of the Pond (#16, #17), and a changed landmark (#23) close the list.

External videos
Revolution 1 (slow version), (4:15)
The Beatles – Revolution (fast version), (3:27)

Everybody wants to change Wikipedia in some way. Our model of knowledge production and distribution depends on it. Be bold! If you see something in the encyclopedia you don't like, change it. Many people want to change the Wikipedia model and use it for purposes other than building an encyclopedia. Good luck to them!

But not all change is good. This month saw examples of people striving to systematically change the content of our encyclopedia, Wikipedians and others trying to tweak the Wikipedia model of many small content contributors and many small financial contributors, and governments trying to dictate what an online encyclopedia should look like.

• "If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao": How Baidu Baike has faced off against Wikipedia to build the world’s largest online Chinese encyclopaedia. The South China Morning Post, based in Hong Kong, reports on the on-going controversy surrounding the Chinese Wikipedia and compares it to Baidu Baike, the giant Chinese encyclopedia with more than 16 million entries owned by Baidu, the giant Chinese internet company.

Baidu Baike offers its editors prizes, experience points, and wealth points in order to incentivize text contributions. Entries are reviewed before publication to filter out "reactionary content", racial and religious provocations, and the promotion of superstitions and cults. Advertisements, porn, fraud and gambling promotion are banned.

Some Chinese editors prefer Wikipedia because of the difference in review processes. According to the SCMP, one editor said "The operation process at Wikipedia is transparent – you can see why entries are published or deleted. At Baidu, the [review] process is in a 'black box'."

Hong Kong editors respond by editing articles on the Hong Kong Police Force, the current protests, and Carrie Lam. Reuters has published an interactive graph that displays the editing activity to show how the Hong Kong Police Force page has changed over time.

Previous coverage in The Signpost: Chinese Wikipedia and the battle against extradition from Hong Kong, The BBC looks at Chinese government editing, Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars, and Observations from the mainland

• "You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow": For the third month in a row, the media have announced Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposed Wikipedia replacement as if it were something new. Putin says the Russian language is being attacked by "cave-dwelling Russophobes". He says "It would be better to replace it (Wikipedia) with the Great Russian Encyclopedia in electronic form. At least this would be credible information." If you don't read the stories very closely, you might think that Putin is proposing a new online encyclopedia designed to replace the Russian Wikipedia with neutral and more reliable content, strongly supported by the Russian state budget.

  That would be completely correct except:

  • The Great Russian Encyclopedia, which traces its predecessors back to the 1926 Great Soviet Encyclopedia, has published in print since 2004.
  • The GRE has been publishing on-line since 2016.
  • It will continue to be written by experts associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences and published by the RAS.
  • The state funding increase is only about $10 million per year for 3 years.

If you have a calm and conservative attitude, you might instead conclude, along with Moscow Times contributor Ilya Klishin, that the additional funding is just a way to siphon off state funds to favored individuals. Or, if you have a less trusting attitude, perhaps by reading stories in Euronews and Reporters without Borders, you might conclude that the attacks on Wikipedia could be related to Russia's contingency planning to separate itself from the outside world's internet.

• "You better free your mind instead": Finding Truth Online Is Hard Enough in The New York Times Magazine is a story on internet censorship in Turkey, of which a ban on Wikipedia is only a part. The entire issue of the magazine is on the future of the internet. Over the last decade the Freedom House's index of Turkey's internet freedom has fallen sharply, following Russia's index level down, but still well above China's. Different countries experience censorship differently and this report emphasizes the quirks and contradictions of Turkey's experience.
• "You say you got a real solution": The Financial Times (paywalled) reports in Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales launches Twitter and Facebook rival that WT:Social is operating as a social media site, trying to avoid "clickbait", misleading headlines, and the other flaws of Facebook. The site had about 50,000 users as of a few weeks ago, but "obviously the ambition is not 50,000 or 500,000 but 50m and 500m" says Jimmy. Users and wait-listers number about 270,000 as of November 27. The BBC podcast "Tech Tent" interviews Jimmy (starts at 1:35), who says that the site is not optimized for addiction.
• "You tell me it's the institution": National Library of Wales to Lead on Welsh Wikipedia Project in Business News Wales. The library in Aberystwyth will prepare Welsh-language material from Wikipedia for the 100 most important topics and themes in the school curriculum in Welsh history. Much of the work will be done by Jason Evans, who is the library's National Wikipedian, presumably a promotion from Wikipedian-in-residence.

Meanwhile, folks at the Milner Library at Illinois State University have completed their own revolution by connecting Wikipedia's List of African-American writers to the library catalog records.

Taking it a step further, ISU archivist April Anderson-Zorn and grad student Stephanie Collier document women and minority archivists on Wikipedia, including Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler, Brenda Banks, Sara Dunlap Jackson, and Kathleen D. Roe. "It’s really important that we get this information out there; we fight to make sure that all voices are heard," said Anderson-Zorn.

• "We all wanna see the plan": Larry Sanger in Introducing the Encyclosphere states that "If you want to participate in the world's largest encyclopedia, you must collaborate with a shadowy group of anonymous amateurs and paid shills ... If you're new, you won't be treated very nicely. If you don't play their strange game, you'll be summarily dismissed. Like the social media giants, Wikipedia has become an arrogant and controlling oligarchy." Sanger's blog post includes an 18 minute lecture.
• "You say you'll change the constitution": Building a More Honest Internet in the Columbia Journalism Review divides the internet into three business models: the main current global model that they call "surveillance capitalism", the Chinese and Russian model "where the unfettered capitalism of the US internet is blended with tight state oversight and control", and the "public service" model, which is exemplified by Wikipedia.
• "We all wanna change your head": How the Iranian Government Shut Off the Internet. According to Wired, Netblocks calls the impact "near total".
• "Don't you know it's gonna be all right":
  • Young Ghanaians create Wikipedia pages on migration at an edit-a-thon in Accra. The articles created include information on how to properly apply for visas to Germany. Funding was supplied by the German Foreign Office.
  • Is Wikipedia telling the truth? Addressing systemic bias in Wikipedia entries in The Daily of the University of Washington reports on an Editing is Activism: Edit-a-Thon about the Seattle General Strike of 1919. According to the The Daily, four articles were created at the edit-a-thon, eighteen other articles were edited, and 44 references were added.
  • Re-editing Wikipedia in the name of Pacific Northwest womxn: Perhaps The Daily is getting a bit carried away. Another edit-a-thon, this one on women artists, resulted in seven new articles, 17 other articles edited, and 66 added references. A participant explained "We want to address omissions in history as a form of social justice activism."
• "You ask me for a contribution/ Well, you know/ We're all doing what we can":

Nobody has started writing about the usual end-of-the-year Wikimedia fundraising campaign yet, not even the WMF, but expect it this month. So whatever type of revolution you want, you can decide on whatever type of contribution you can make. All right? All right.

Readers' comments are requested below in the talk section. How much "social justice activism" is acceptable on Wikipedia? How much governmental or institutional participation? How much revolution? Or should we all park our consciences at the door before editing?

• Rise of the bots: Stevens team completes first census of Wikipedia bots: Researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology analyze Wikipedia's 1,601 bots and how they interact with human editors. Altogether bots account for about 10 percent of edits. The researchers divide bots into 9 types, including "fixers", "protectors", "connectors", and "advisors". The 1,200 fixer-bots are the most active type, but advisor- and protector-bots are especially important in interacting with human editors.
• Argentine Wikipedian-in-Residence Mauricio Genta: La Nacion (in Spanish) reports that Genta works at both the Circe library and the National Academy of History. His watchlist includes 1,200 articles. His work in digitization supports not just Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, but also Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikibooks, and Wikivoyage. His personal editing, which began after he attended Wikimania in 2009, focuses on transportation articles.
• Geschlechterungleichheit!? Oh Nein!: St. Galler Tagblatt writes (in German) on Wikipedia's gender inequality (Geschlechterungleichheit). Women have a hard time on Wikipedia in Switzerland as well as in other countries.
• Katherine Maher stays on message: As the video suggests, Maher always stays on message.
• Wikipedia the latest battleground in Lebanon's protests in Arab News. Grievances in Lebanon over perceived government corruption amid an economic crisis have led to a wave of protests which, in addition to triggering the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, have apparently led to some IP vandalism of the article about the Parliament of Lebanon. A user changed a section heading to "Lebanese Robbery", the type from Unicameral to "Unicameral (useless altogether)", and added a comment accusing the members of "contribut[ing] one way or another in keeping the rotten system alive". The edits were quickly reverted before an admin protected the page.
• An edit war erupts in the Himalayas: After India published a new map of the Kalapani territory, Nepali editors objected. Total edits to the article almost doubled from about 125 to 220 within two weeks. Three maps were added to the article and OpenStreetMaps was linked. The size of the article quadrupled. The article is now semi-protected, but that doesn't seem to be helping.
• The Most Popular Wikipedia Pages, 2007–2019, an eight minute video, shows how the top 12 most viewed articles changed over 12 years. The bars in the bar graphs dance up and down, as "Barack Obama" rises to the top early on, but is later overtaken by "United States" and inevitably by "Donald Trump". About half the articles listed at any time are about entertainment, mostly singers. "Lil Wayne" was popular early on but fell quickly as "The Beatles" rose, who in turn fell below "Michael Jackson", "Lady Gaga", "Eminem", and "Game of Thrones."
• Our crowning achievement: The Washington Post follows how ‘The Crown’ has returned, and royal Wikipedia pages are exploding in page views.

• Scorsese's The Irishman doesn't make the list: With only 136 uses of the term, The Irishman (2019 film) doesn't make it onto the List of films that most frequently use the word "fuck". The current lower cutoff is 150, but there are at least 15 uses of an obscene phrase, which may make up for any other shortcomings.
• Maren Morris Sings Jimmy Kimmel a Birthday Song on Jimmy Kimmel Live (via YouTube). The lyrics of the song were taken from the Wikipedia article on Jimmy Kimmel, with some scripted confusion at the end including lyrics from the article on Jimmy Carter. Two questions for all the copyright experts reading this: Since the lyrics are all licensed CC BY-SA 3.0, is the entire song including the music now licensed CC BY-SA 3.0? Is the video clip on YouTube also licensed CC BY-SA 3.0? Later the same evening Morris won the Country Music Awards Album of the Year for Girl.

• Socked Into the Puppet-Hole on Wikipedia. Wired columnist Noam Cohen laments the loss of Noam Cohen, then is bemused by the article's reinstatement.
• The Ministry of Wiki-Truth in Dissident Voice: A radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice. C.J. Hopkins discusses edits to C.J. Hopkins. He gets bonus points for the article title.

A new beta feature has been deployed which allows you to preview references by hovering over the inline footnote. Reference Previews display the reference and its type in a popup with a link to navigate to the reference. Similar functionality has been available through gadgets on several wikis, such as Navigation popups and Reference Tooltips.

Several userscripts stopped working suddenly on October 21, as reported on the technical Village Pump. This was due to code being deprecated and removed over a shorter timeframe than usual and without much forewarning. Following this incident, XFDcloser was made into a gadget.

The Contributions special page had its limit of 5,000 results per page decreased to just 500. The lower limit was implemented to prevent potential denial of service attacks due to the impact of certain queries with long date ranges.

Extraneous semicolons started appearing on the Watchlist and other listings on November 8. The issue arose from improvements to the mobile watchlist that unexpectedly impacted the desktop view.

The Community Wishlist Survey 2020 is open for voting until December 2nd. The WMF's Community Tech team, as per previous years, will work on the top wishes decided on by the community. Unlike previous years, this survey is exclusively for the smaller sister projects, with wishes for Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata specifically excluded. There are a total of 72 wishes in the survey, mostly for Wikisource, Wiktionary, and Wikiversity.

This month's essay is WP:ADMINITIS, an essay started in 2006. It has over 80 contributors; those with four or more edits include Kim Bruning, PhilKnight, 71.174.240.210, Pine and Physchim62. The essay provides some humor but also reminds the reader of the serious subject of occupational burnout.– P

Adminitis is a state of mind in which some Wikipedians find themselves at times. Though generally confined to administrators, the condition has been observed in some non-administrators. Although the exact causes are unknown, there is thought to be some correlation towards extensive and prolonged anti-vandalism activity. The mystery is that that form of disease is not only found in humans, but in all the creatures of the planet (even to things created from humans, the most common case being cars and refrigerators, although the symptoms found on items vary significantly from the ones that appear in humans) (except plants (yet)), and the way these things are showing the symptoms of adminitis is yet unknown. Adminitis is being studied by very many scientists (especially doctors) but the results from these studies only confuse the situation. It has been ranked the top most dangerous disease in the entire Wikiverse by the Community Health Initiative.

It is generally advised that when you see anything suffering from adminitis, human being or anything else, call the nearest hospital (for humans), the nearest service center (for items) or the local building inspector (for buildings). If they do not respond, immediately call the local police department to report a public health hazard, because the entity with adminitis may harm or infect others.

• Strongly believes that all users are equal but admins are more equal than others
• Assumes bad faith frequently
• TLAitis (see WP:WOTTA)
• Stops editing articles, but continuously pontificates about "writing the encyclopedia"
• Impatience
• Exhibits immediatism
• Hangs out in project namespace
• Has no time for featured articles
• Frequently refreshes pages to catch the latest change that (of course) needs to be reverted
• Believes that they are always right (sorry, EVula...)
• Believes anyone who uses the word 'vote' for 'express a view in a straw poll' should be banned for life
• Originally hailed as the nicest person on the wiki, now reviled as the most hated troll
• Prevents pages from being edited in encyclopedic fashion for policy reasons
• General BOFHness
• Strict adherence to "Wikipedia policy" while not using common sense or conversely,
• Strict adherence to ignore all rules, as a strict rule... while not using common sense
• Self-denial. "This page cannot possibly apply to me"
• Humor breakdown. "This page is not funny"
• Sudden spike in use of specific admin tools, or use of admin tools in areas where they haven't been using them before
• Requires less and less evidence to be convinced of sock puppetry until confidently asserting that all new users are the same person
• Spends hours writing sarcastic pages about admin behavior
• Believes they are the only real claimant to the "Defender of the Wiki" barnstar
• Exhibits signs of MPOV:

• Thinks people are attacking them when they're only trying to be nice
• Has a habit of removing criticism while pretending it's a personal attack
• Indulges in biting delicious newcomers
• Revokes talk page access in response to any and all unblock requests
• They try to remove this essay or any such essay or try to vandalize it.

• Chides people by asking them how Jimbo Wales would react if he sees (insert your favorite example) à la asking how your mother would feel if she sees you doing (insert your favorite example).
• However, argues that Jimbo is Big Brother whenever Jimbo's opinions go against them, but couches it in language such as "benevolent dictator".

It is a near-universal truth that sufferers from this illness will reject any diagnosis of the condition by an outside party. With that in mind, it's important for those who have received this diagnosis to conduct a self-test. If more than three of the following apply to you, you may be suffering from this illness:

• You frequently feel that pages are broken and must be deleted (protection is for the weak!).
• "Everyone is a vandal or a troll, and must be blocked" is a recurrent thought.
• "Blocking people is a punishment! (not a tool to get people to cool down and edit the wiki)" is a mantra, not anti-wiki.
• If you nominate this page for MfD even though it's only 2 minutes since the last revision, you may possibly be suffering from adminitis.
  • Corollary: If you are speedy, you are certainly suffering from adminitis.
• If you accuse the creators of this article of making a WP:POINT, especially if you forget that making a point does not imply disruption (you need to disrupt to make a point, not make a point to disrupt! :-P), you are probably infected.
• And if you buy the above line of thought, you are definitely infected.

The infectious nature of this illness is unknown at this time. More study needs to be conducted in order to identify transmission mechanisms. No effective containment mechanisms have been identified. So far anti-vandal bots have proved immune to this condition, although as yet there is no convincing explanation concerning this anomaly.

Observational studies have noted that sufferers will seek the counsel of their Wikipedia friends, but end up infecting them in the process. Other studies have noted the evolution of a Wikipedia editor as potentially having a causal role in this illness.

Treatment varies from case to case. As of 2025, no consensus exists on the best methods for recovery. Some methods that have been used:

• Write some articles. That stuff on the pages with a white background. (You may remember it if you think back to when you started on Wikipedia.)
• Taking a wikibreak (short or long depending on severity of infection)
• Submitting an RfC with yourself as the party. Note: Can lead to worsening of the infection, if all your friends come out to say what a great person you are. Do NOT tell your friends about the RfC.
• Ask Bishzilla for a second opinion.
• Self de-adminship.
• Spend time editing on wikis where you are not an admin.

Mortality rates from this illness have not been clearly supported by research. Frequently, what appears to be a wikideath becomes a wikiresurrection in the form of a user who is considerably more circumspect, and often more detached from processes. Some resurrectees have exhibited shortness of temper, but with considerably lower flameout levels. Reinfection is rare, but if it occurs is almost always unrecoverable.

If the initial condition is not fatal, it may take months for a patient to recover, even if under the care and treatment of WP:ARBCOM.

• User:Daniel Quinlan/gaming: If you are doing this, you have adminitis
• How to win an argument (from Meta): the internationally accepted case description
• User:Mindspillage/admin: If you are doing this, you are fine, you do NOT have adminitis
• Siege mentality Same concept, different context
• Wikipedia:Don't edit for power
• Wikipedia:Disruptive sanctions
• Wikipedia:Misuse of administrator privileges
• Occupational burnout

There are currently 6,942,764 articles on Wikipedia.

The English Wikipedia will reach six million articles around January 1 or perhaps a bit later, according to our estimate. Previous milestones are noted below.

• Astronaut Christina Koch, aka User:Astro Christina made the first direct edit from space on November 17, 2019, correcting an article about a space walk that she had made. Earlier edits have been composed in space, but had been relayed through an Earth-bound editor. For example, in a November 2017 edit the first content made for Wikipedia in space—a voice recording—was published. Editor Darenwelsh, who is an extravehicular activity flight controller at NASA, helped organize the new edit and first reported it on Reddit. Darenwelsh and his coworkers have set up 10 wikis at NASA.

• Amazon donates $1 million.
• .ORG registry sold to for-profit company: .ORG domain names will be registered by a new for-profit company, which is likely to cost the WMF some money. Sj reports that Ethos Capital—which has two staff—is buying the non-profit Public Interest Registry (PIR) at an estimated price of a billion dollars. The Electronic Frontier Foundation objects, as does the Wikimedia Foundation and 25 other non-profits, in an open letter to the Internet Society.
• New user-groups: The Affiliations Committee announced the approval, on September 25, of three new Wikimedia movement affiliates, the Wikimedia Stewards User Group, Wikimedians of Santali Language User Group, and meta:Wikimedians of Saint Petersburg User Group.
• Tim Berners-Lee approves: Tim Berners-Lee's Contract for the Web received notice in The Guardian and The Verge. He also wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, saying the World Wide Web that he invented needs a re-do, although he lists Wikipedia as an example of what he's OK with.
• FRAMBAN denouement: WMF published a statement, "Community consultation on partial and temporary office actions".
• Translation pilot project: WMF is hiring up to six paid translators for each of these languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Russian and Spanish.
• UNC Edit-a-thon: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Hussman School of Journalism and Media and the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center hosted a Newspapers in North Carolina Edit-a-thon on 24 October. The edit-a-thon sought to improve articles on newspapers in the U.S. state of North Carolina to give readers context for the sources they use, and to combat fake news.
• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators, EvergreenFir and ToBeFree (11 November 2019), Girth Summit (26 October 2019), Kees08 (14 October 2019), GermanJoe (6 October 2019), Nosebagbear (3 October 2019), and Barkeep49 (11 September 2019).

Risker has held multiple positions within the Wikimedia community and is a member of the Roles & Responsibilities strategy working group.
FULBERT has worked with several WikiEdu programs and is a member of the Capacity Building strategy working group.
Jackiekoerner holds a doctorate in Higher Education and is a member of the Community Health strategy working group.-S

Organizations and movements develop a strategic plan to guide their activities and planning over an extended period. A strategic plan helps the parts of the movement to work together to achieve overall goals. The last Wikimedia movement strategy covered 2010-2015. Since then there's been no consistent, global direction to guide the movement. The absence of a high-level plan creates challenges for different parts of the movement to work together toward shared goals. The movement began to address this gap in 2017, when the 2030 strategic direction was developed with community consultation, and was endorsed by many organized movement groups and individual contributors. The Wikimedia Foundation has been the financial sponsor of this process.

After the strategic direction was defined, nine working groups were formed to focus on different strategic areas, and started their work in mid–2018. Extensive workshops and sessions were held at the Wikimedia Summit in March 2019 and each group carried out research, consultations, community conversations, and formulated ideas that led to the first iteration of their recommendations.

There were "strategy salons" held around the globe, both in-person and online, which generated ideas for the working groups to consider and incorporate into their recommendations. Almost 90 recommendations were developed by the working groups, released in mid-2019 for further discussion within the community. Each group presented and workshopped its draft recommendations at Wikimania in August 2019.

Both contract and volunteer strategy liaisons worked with online communities, affiliates, and working groups, and held two regional conferences in East Africa and the East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Regional Cooperation.

Developing a longterm strategy is difficult even in straightforward circumstances. Doing so is even more challenging for a global volunteer movement that values diversity and community input, and also values knowledge-sharing and high quality information. Every working group received feedback from both organized and informal movement groups, as well as consultants, the coordination team, and of course individual community members. That feedback was considered, and was taken into account as the working groups prepared their second round of recommendations in preparation for the harmonization meeting in September 2019.

The participants of the September harmonization meeting refined key principles and identified groups of similar recommendations, but the session did not result in a fully synthesized set of draft recommendations. The working groups finished their work at the beginning of November. Some members of the working groups volunteered to complete the written draft recommendations, and this synthesis is ongoing.

Once the draft recommendations are written, other members of the former working groups will review the document. Other working group members will be going through all of the accumulated research, consultation, and feedback to ensure that key points have been addressed in the synthesized set of recommendations. In January 2020, a further round of conversations with the movement will review the proposed recommendations prior to final revisions before submission to the WMF Board of Trustees.

Early next year, once the draft recommendations are public, the Strategy Core Team will reach out to the English Wikipedia to review the recommendations and understand what proposed changes would be relevant to this community. Community members from all areas of Wikimedia will be invited to participate in this round of conversations, which will start in January 2020. The invitations will be posted on noticeboards, mailing lists and other key community discussion points. Discussions will likely take place in a centralized location, although this process has not yet been finalized.

Two requests for arbitration committee cases were filed at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case in November. One was withdrawn and one has been accepted.

A new request, "Drmies salting", was initiated by Wumbolo on November 9. The request was about a mainspace article that has never been created and has been salted by an administrator in order to prevent its creation. In place of the actual title, the placeholder "XYZ" was used in the request. The userpage note left for the filing party in conjunction with the salting has been oversighted and The Signpost has no further details on the page's contents.

The case request was closed as "withdrawn" by a clerk on November 10. The same day, Wumbolo was oversight blocked indefinitely. The Signpost has no further details on the reason for the user block.

A new request, "Conduct in portal space and portal deletion discussions", was initiated by ToThAc on November 18. ToThAc described the issue as follows:

As summarized in Robert McClenon's essay on issues surrounding portals, the necessity of portals in general has been heavily debated over the course of several months. In April 2018, The Transhumanist started an RfC on deprecating portals, which was closed with a rough consensus to not delete all portals.

The complainant said that despite the prior RfC, uncivil discussion of individual portal creations and deletions has ensued, and named 20 other involved parties.

The case was accepted and opened, with arbitrator Joe Roe commenting This has proved to be a long-running and intractable dispute.