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The requirement to leave contentious topic alerts was repealed in June 2026. These are some answers to common questions.
The complicated set of "awareness criteria" has been repealed by the Arbitration Committee.
The important part of the motion says:
An administrator should warn an editor whose behavior is not egregiously disruptive if the administrator believes the editor does not understand what editing in a contentious topic means. Otherwise, the administrator should issue an appropriate restriction.
You can read the entire motion, which amended many arbitration decisions to remove references to awareness. Those other amendments are unlikely to impact day-to-day editing.
Awareness was incredibly bureaucratic. This change was designed to simplify the already-complex contentious topic procedure by replacing a multi-factor test with common sense.
There were three alert templates:
No. You may remove {{ct/aware}} from your talk page.
You can politely tell them that alerts are now unnecessary. {{Don't template me}} can be used to indicate you would rather not receive templated messages.
At Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement ("AE"), you no longer need to supply evidence that a particular editor was aware of a contentious topic. Instead, you should link to any previous warnings and restrictions. The following is a non-exhausive list of reasons a warning might be unnecessary:
Conversely, the following might be reasons to warn an editor before filing at AE:
Above all, editors should use common sense.
Ask them at the arbitration clerks' noticeboard!