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Centralized discussion
  • RFC on adding a more prominent link to Special:MyContributions for IP editors
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Requests for Comment on User Conduct

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Certified pages

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Kolins – potential editing against consensus and lack of discussion on talk pages.

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Fæ - allegedly misleading citations, disputes over BLP sourcing and WP:CLEANSTART.


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Contents



[edit] Requests for closure

This section is transcluded from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure.


[edit] Admins needed at WT:NOT

Please could an uninvolved admin (or possibly several) take a look at sections 1-11 of WT:NOT (the discussions about Wikipedia and censorship) and preferably close some (or all) of the discussion threads. This has been going on for the several weeks now and tempers are showing signs of fraying. There is 740k of text on the page now, almost all of it related to the censorship issue (108,000 words / 169 A4 pages of wikitext in 12pt text). Thryduulf (talk) 17:11, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I have moved the close request for WT:NOT from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive229#Admins needed at WT:NOT but not the subsequent discussion. Cunard (talk) 09:10, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
I have to comment on the fact that there (now what's left because I only see 1-8) is quite a bit of discussion going on there, and discussion by itself does not need closing. Now as for the RFC proposals, and please excuse my WP:TLDR on some of them, your asking for (an / a group of) impartial admins/non-admins to close the comments on a proposal of a proposal? Drafts of proposals exist for a reason, but to sum up and say "x is the best proposal" or "X has the most support" I think is counter-productive because the points that are opposed in the current draft are just going to be objected to on the actual request for comment if it actually comes from all that discussion. Feel free to object, and maybe I missed something, like I said, quite a bit of WP:TLDR involved, but this is not something I'm willing to close per what i've said above. -- DQ (t) (e) 14:09, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
The landscape has changed a bit since I made the request. The request was made because of persistent repetitive argument perceived as WP:IDHT by many commenters; since then though people appear to have mostly got the message that repeating the same arguments will not make people agree with them when they haven't done before. There is a lot of TLDR there, but basically there were three sections:
  • A specific question regarding whether WP:NOT "protect[s] incidental material" or not (which if you look at the comments in both the "does" and "does not" sections looks like a consensus that the answer is neither and that NOTCENSORED is irrelevant)
  • Several nebulous proposals about altering WP:NOT in someway regarding how we should defer to what images are used by reliable sources. The whole discussion is/was a mess because various people appeared to be treating it as a specific discussion about images (specific or general) used in certain articles (particularly Pregnancy and Muhammed, although others were mentioned) while others were discussing general principles, sometimes using specific articles as examples.
  • Proposals that image use (and possibly article content/article choice) should be governed by the overriding principle of not offending "cultural norms".
All three went round in circles with lots of WP:IDHT and not getting the point.
From my partisan point of view, I'd say that the first section should be closed somehow to make it clear that there is consensus that whether material is included or not depends only on its relevance to the topic; and that as there was no consensus on what "incidental" or "protected" meant that the question cannot be answered further by that RfC.
The second, I'd probably close as no consensus without prejudice to future discussion about a more clearly defined proposal/question about a proposal where it is clear what is being asked.
The third, I'd close as rejected based on consensus that the proposal is fundamentally incompatible with NPOV. I repeat though I am highly partisan.
Even though they're starting to lapse into the archive, I think that formal closure would be of benefit to the almost inevitable next round, wherever that might be, as certain editors (clearly named elsewhere) have been trying very similar proposals in many places for several years, each time resulting in no consensus or rejection. Thryduulf (talk) 13:34, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
I'd be happy to close such sections above, but with them flying into the archive (yes, i'll go through the archive), I am not 100% sure which sections you are referring to, could you please link them? -- DQ (t) (e) 11:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
And anything else you think would benefit from a closure statement in archives 37-40.
You should be aware (if you're not already) though that there is a pending request for arbitration that might (or might not) take into account the happenings at WT:NOT. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Muhammad Images. Thryduulf (talk) 13:28, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Since this is already at ArbCom and deals with the specifics of the RfC and the user conduct on it, i'm going to put this close on hold. -- DQ (t) (e) 20:04, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
Call us up when the Arb Case is over, for now...lets collapse this thread. -- DQ (t) (e) 20:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
The Muhammad images case was closed today at 06:29 (UTC), the final decision can be found there. Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 11:01, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, this request has been up for weeks now. I was involved there, but I don't see any of those archived proposals having had consensus then or now. I think no formal closure is needed for any of those other than the removal of this request. As for the "almost inevitable next round", I hope ArbCom managed to make it less inevitable. I also note that in the mean time we had a separate discussion on the WP:POLA page. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 14:30, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Ugg boots#RFC on Concerns about quality section & Talk:Ugg boots#RFC on inclusion/exclusion of court cases involving counterfeits

Two ongoing disputes. The first was a formally listed RfC that finished a little while back. The second wasn't formally list. Any help closing them would be much appreciated. - Bilby (talk) 22:36, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

{{notdone}} One, I can not find, the other I don't follow and seems to me like basic policies, and US Law already cover this, but i'd prefer someone with more insight, but not involvement into what's going on here look into the latter one that I can see. -- DQ (t) (e) 21:11, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
Something odd happened in the archiving of the first one - probably my fault. I've fixed it, and if there's a chance to formally close it one way or the other it would be much appreciated. :) - Bilby (talk) 14:55, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Of note, I think the discussions should be closed together, so i'm going to leave this one. Sorry, -- DQ (t) (e) 20:29, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
No hassles. That makes a lot of sense. :) - Bilby (talk) 01:19, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

YesY Done Talk:Ugg boots#RFC on Concerns about quality section --Salix (talk): 19:22, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Improving PORNBIO

Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Improving PORNBIO was initiated on 26 December 2011 and was listed at Template:Centralized discussion. Would an admin assess whether there is consensus on what to improve in WP:PORNBIO? If there is no consensus on what to improve, would an admin initiate an RfC about deprecating or maintaining the guideline per the consensus in the previous discussion?

The previous closer at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)/Archive 2011#Pornographic actors/actresses who started this discussion wrote: "A suggested outcome for this discussion is that a reasonable amount of time is allowed for people to improve the guideline, and after that a new RfC may be opened specially with the focus of 'deprecating or maintaining' it." Thanks, Cunard (talk) 06:28, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates#Overturned delisting

I tried posting this at AN, but it was archived without comment. There has been a discussion on the featured picture candidates talk page over the last few weeks about how "delist" discussions should be dealt with. It would be good if we could get some closure- there have been no comments for some days. Can I request that an experienced editor who was not involved in the discussion close it, and post any conclusions reached? Please see Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates#Overturned delisting. If there is a more appropriate place for this request, please point me to it. J Milburn (talk) 11:20, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Bump Nikthestoned 14:27, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Try posting at WP:AN/RFC; it's transcluded above, but the bot knows not to archive until it's actually closed, and editors do patrol that page looking for discussions to close. --Rschen7754 09:36, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
A little correction. WP:ANRFC is archived manually, the bot wouldn't know, if a discussion is closed or not. Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 11:51, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

YesY Done HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:57, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Taiwan (disambiguation)#Move request

This RM was recently relisted due to lack of consensus; but several editors are waiting for this RM to close before we start a new (bigger and better) RM proposing to move ROC to Taiwan. In other words, very shortly after the Talk:Taiwan (disambiguation)#Move request discussion closes (pressumably with no consensus), a new RM will begin at Talk:Republic of China. This has been building for quite some time, and I think a few editors are itching to get the ball rolling (we even have the future RM proposal pre-written here). Thanks, Mlm42 (talk) 02:03, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

This was closed by Mike Cline, and reverted by Eraserhead1. Kanguole 23:33, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Pakistan#Request for comment

Debate about contentious label... the debate seems to have died out after heavy opposition. Kindly close this as it is wasting time for further improvement for FAC. Thanks. --lTopGunl (talk) 10:01, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

  • Editors are still commenting on this RFC, far too early to close it. Darkness Shines (talk) 15:58, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
There are only six editors opposing... the discussion has died down. There's clearly no chance of this getting a consensus. The closer can decide that. --lTopGunl (talk) 15:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Inter-Services Intelligence#Support for domestic terrorists

Needs closure, although contentious, but no comments for support except nominator's as of yet. Open since nearly a month. --lTopGunl (talk) 10:12, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

  • This can be archived, there are no consensus on the RFC. Darkness Shines (talk) 15:57, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
This RFC has been restarted in another section weaseling around the same. Please close that too per WP:POINT. --lTopGunl (talk) 16:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics#Mentioning_caste_of_Individuals

The discussion and poll have now become dormant and the poll needs closure. AshLin (talk) 10:45, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Fæ

Ok, we need an uninvolved admin to come over and close Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Fæ. The RfC degenerated to a pissing match last week and nothing material has emerged since then. There have only been a few edits related to Fae at all, while most of the edits are in regards to Wikipedia Review, editor behavior, and personal attacks. 3 of the last 5 "views" have nothing to do with Fae whatsoever. The talk page is even worse ALL of the comments on the talk page since last Friday have dealt with the ages of Mohamed and King John's wives---don't ask me, I stopped reading that thread a long time ago. Nothing meaningful has been gianed over the past week and nothing is going to be gained by keeping it open, except to serve as a forum for further bickering. I opened a proposal today to close and everybody seems to agree, there is no sense keeping it open.---Balloonman Poppa Balloon 05:04, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

LOL, that's a pretty tempting sales pitch there, Balloonman! 28bytes (talk) 05:17, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm concerned that admins were busy hatting some threads, but did not intervene to move off-topic views (actually proposals) like this to the talk page. It turned the RfC into another WP:BADSITES draft. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Discussion is ongoing, and one "attempted summary" has been posted. One week is not going to destroy Wikipedia, I rather think. Collect (talk) 17:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Week's up, Wikipedia is still here. I'd say it's time to put this one to bed (or out of its misery?) ReverendWayne (talk) 13:21, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Swiftboating#RfC - NPOV and "Smear"

This RfC listing is about to reach has reached 18:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC) its 30 day expiration. The closing assistance of an uninvolved administrator with some experience and interest in the resolution WP:NPOV issues would be greatly appreciated. Please be aware that there are also 2 additional RfCs on this talk page (already beyond 30 days) in want of closure one of which, IMHO, may be rendered moot by a closing determination for this RfC. Thanks very much for your consideration and anticipated assistance. JakeInJoisey (talk) 16:21, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2012_February_15#File:Supermushroom.png

Could someone please close this discussion? Thanks, FASTILY (TALK) 00:31, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Copyrights#General discussion

Could someone please close this discussion? I think the consensus is fairly straightforward that files should be tagged as Template:PD-US (this is a neutral third-party, non-administrator observation). Whenaxis talk · contribs | DR goes to Wikimania! 00:42, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:External links/Perennial websites#RfC: Proposal for promotion of Wikipedia:External links/Perennial websites to a guideline

Would an admin close Wikipedia talk:External links/Perennial websites#RfC: Proposal for promotion of Wikipedia:External links/Perennial websites to a guideline? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 01:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 February 14

Would an admin or admins close:

  1. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 February 14#Mawashi Protective Clothing
  2. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 February 14#Paul J. Alessi YesY Done by Fastily (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights). Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 16:25, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
  3. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 February 14#Salvador Tercero YesY Done by King of Hearts (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights). Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 10:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
  4. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 February 14#User:Bittergrey/CAMH_Promotion

Thanks, Cunard (talk) 01:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] WP:VPP#Should editors be blocked for legitimate postings on other wikis?

I think it's time to close that. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 13:30, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

YesY Done HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:07, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Bahrain_Air#Proposed merger

Could an uninvolved editor close this. It's pretty simple, but I'm involved. Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 00:59, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Topic_ban_proposed

This discussion was opened ten days ago and it should be closed now by an uninvolved admin. Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 16:41, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Jeremy Bamber#Requested move

Could an uninvolved admin take a look at this with a view to closing and moving if appropriate? It is a proposal to split Jeremy Bamber into a biography and an article about the murders he was convicted of carrying out. The discussion took place in three stages. I have summarized them, with links, at Talk:Jeremy Bamber#Summing up for the closing admin 2. Many thanks, SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 18:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] WP:TFD deletions by admin User:Fastily

Probably many of you admins have heard of me since I have been around for quite a while and have done a lot of stuff. Although my main responsibilities are a bit out of the way (WP:CHICAGO, WP:FOUR and WP:WAWARDS) and, generally, I don't like to spend a lot of time in lengthy discussions, I am pretty experienced at them. My two most recent WP:TFD nominations have ended with closures that were surprising to me based on my experience. In January, Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_January_10#Template:OlivierAward_DanceAchievement was closed one opinion to delete (plus the nominator) and three opinions to keep as a consensus to delete. I spent several days seeking an explanation at User_talk:Fastily/Archive_5#Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion.2FLog.2F2012_January_10.23Template:OlivierAward_... and the long and the short of it was that after a few days of ignoring my queries, he claimed to be happy to explain his decision and felt the proper way to explain such a decision was to delegate the responsibility of explaining it to the nominator. Eventually, the nominator and I agreed that these should be restored with minor modifications based on discussions now located in three places:

Today, I found another odd closure decision at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_January_24#Template:New_York_cities_and_mayors_of_100.2C000_population when a discussion with four deletes and three keeps was closed as consensus to delete. In my experience at various WP:XFD, even if you count the nominator if 3-5 out of 8 people are on one side of and issue and 3-5 out of 8 are on the other, generally, this is regarded as a no consensus. This particular decision may effect a total of 35 similar templates (most of which are listed at Category:United States mayors templates by state) in the near future. My alternatives are to pursue a WP:DRV. However, since the first step in a DRV is to talk to the discussion-closing editor, I would be back on Fastily (talk · contribs)'s page. He has already expressed a belief that the proper way to explain your decision is to ask the nominator to do so, I feel pursuing that would be fruitless.

I am curious about the closure because there is a possibility that no consensus is no longer considered a discussion resolution. I see my options as follows:

  1. Accept the decision
  2. Pursue a WP:DRV
  3. Find a place to discuss
    1. whether no consensus is still used in TFD resolutions
    2. whether Fastily's understanding that the nominator is responsible for explaining a TFD closure for DRV purposes
    3. whether Fastily may be too aggressive in closing TFD discussions I have been involved in.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:41, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Remember that the number of !votes on either side is irrelevant - the quality of the arguments matter. Number 57 14:51, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed; the arguments for keeping the NY mayors template amounted to "It's useful" (without actually specifying how) and "You didn't nominate all these other templates at the same time". Fastily was perfectly justified in analyzing the quality of the arguments rather than just counting numbers. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I nominated the NY mayors template for deletion.) Powers T 15:09, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
The whole point of templates is that they're useful. WP:USEFUL isn't a valid reason for keeping an article, but it's the only valid reason for having templates such as {{Pp-meta}}. Nyttend (talk) 02:42, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
You might want to read WP:USEFUL again, Nyttend. It says that being useful can be a valid reason for keeping (whether article or not), but it has to be explained rather than simply asserted. Powers T 03:00, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
Umm, navboxes are pretty much always useful for navigating from article to article within related topics, which these are. It's definitely on those advocating deletion to explain why a specific example of such a common type of template is an aberration from the common pattern. Nyttend (talk) 18:30, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
That doesn't make a simple declaration of "it's useful" in any way a valid argument for keeping. Powers T 19:26, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Have you READ what you're citing? "There are some pages within Wikipedia which are supposed to be useful navigation tools and nothing more", which CLEARLY encompass navboxes. Just because the exception is poorly written is no reason not to apply common-sense in interpreting it with regard to templates! Circéus (talk) 23:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

If you disagree with what the closer says take it to DRV. I think you are reading way too much into Fastily asking the nominator to comment. To me it looks like he was fed up of you badgering him, so asked someone else who might be able to explain without getting annoyed at you. I could be wrong of course. Also, you don't have to look very hard to find no-consensus closes by fastily (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_January_22#Template:Closed_down). Polequant (talk) 15:03, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

It is hard to disagree with what a closer says if he won't say anything and hard to take it to DRV when the first step is to talk with the closer when the closer won't say anything.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:16, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Well DRV will in fact hear it in cases like this; and it frequently does get the occasion to hear it, because Fastily does not explain his closes at the time he makes them, and often not on his talk p. either. Considering that a reasonable number of his closes have been overturned there, I don't think his continuing this way is constructive behavior for an admin. For everyone who take s the matter to DRv, there are probably ten who are not willing to undergo the further bureaucracy. Since many of these are people who would be making their first contribution here, closing discussions in this way, let alone avoiding discussing them, is has the effect of discouraging new contributors, at a time when we should be doing everything possible to encourage them (Most of his closes are good, of course, but an editor, especially a new editor, deserves an explanation--a good explanation of why something must be deleted will often keep the editor. Some of this should be dealt with by a rule requiring meaningful rational for non-unanimous XfD closings, but changing deletion process in practice seems to require unanimous consent. In the meantime, we can strongly urge Fastily to change his work habits in this respect. Yes, he wouldn't be able to do as many closes, but there are a few hundred other good administrators. DGG ( talk ) 19:24, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
I proposed just that a couple of years ago. It was shot down in flames by other admins circling the wagons to defend their own laziness and highhandedness: Wikipedia talk:Deletion process/Archive 5#Closing rationales - optional or not?. Fences&Windows 00:32, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Dare I suggest that Wikipedia:Requests for Comment/Fastily may be in order? If this is a long term, widespread problem then that would seem the next logical step. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:40, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
  • AFAIK, this is appears to be a personal vendetta of Tony's. Awhile back, he contested one of my TfD closes on my talk page. I informed him that I would userfy the templates and that I was busy in RL and would provide my reasoning shortly, but he immediately dismissed it as fallacious. Annoyed by the lack of collegiality and respect I was being shown, I asked a participant in the TfD to comment in the meantime. Somehow, Tony perceived this as an attack, and literally accused me of canvassing and conspiracy. At any rate, User:Frietjes was able to work out a compromise, and the templates were moved back to the mainspace. I had believed the matter to be resolved, and so did not feel it necessary to provide rationale, granted that the concern was moot. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I will always provide rationale for my closures when they involve contentious and/or complicated matters. I do not provide rationales when the result of the discussion is, IMO, unambiguous; nonetheless, I have never had any issues with explaining my closes/correcting errors (with and without publicly stated reasons) when requested. If that approach is so wrong, my god, we'd better start RfCs on some 20 other-odd admins who follow similar procedures. -FASTILY (TALK) 07:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
    • You are in some twisted universe where when I note your consistent efforts to close discussions regarding templates I have created as delete, when normal closing procedure would be to either keep or no consensus close them as my personal vendetta. All I am doing is noting your apparent vendetta to close my TFDs as delete even when to do so is non-sensical. You sound like someone explaining to the police officer that the victim's face was in front of my fist as I innocently moved my arm forward repeatedly at high velocity. Then, he went on a vendetta of screaming about how I was abusing him.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 07:26, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
      • Lol, if you're determined to resort to personal attacks, my job is done here. Cheers, FASTILY (TALK) 07:32, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
        • Is that a personal attack? I was making an analogy. You have no reason to be running around deleting my templates in contravention of procedures and then claiming I am on a vendetta for pointing out your actions.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 07:42, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I hate to say it, because I hold Fastily in high esteem, but his talk page has been on my watchlist for a couple of years, and Beeblebrox is right. This is a regular issue—whether it's files, articles, or templates, somebody seems to dispute Fastily's deletion of something every few days.

    Fastily, don't get yourself dragged into a nasty RfC—you need to slow down a little and properly explain your rationale when closing a deletion debate and when people come to your talk page disagreeing with your close. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 08:47, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

    • Not only deletions, keeps as well of course. I haven't asked for an explanation of his close of Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 January 30#Template:Persondata, but a TfD with that many comments, and with rather divided and lengthy opinions, could do with an argued close (e.g. indicating why it isn't closed as a no consensus instead of a keep, and what the opinion, if any, was about the other elements in the nomination) instead of a simple "keep". I'm planning to start an RfC on this template anyway, so it won't make a huge difference probably, but I felt that the close of that TfD was rather disappointing, not because of the actual result, but the manner it was presented. Fram (talk) 08:58, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict) @HJ Mitchell, I agree with this sentiment. Just yesterday I had an unclear deletion of an image and Fastily gave an unsatisfactory explanation of the deletion reason and the process followed. I asked for further clarification and I'm still waiting. We can't require everybody to devote time to Wikipedia, but administrators should be held to a higher standard since their actions can't be reversed by us entry-level editors. Great power, great responsibility; if Fastily is not willing to explain his actions in detail then s/he should refrain from closing controversial discussions. Diego (talk) 09:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
    • I cannot comment on any long-term trends, but in this specific case, I think it's clear Tony was being unreasonable in demanding immediate explanations, to the point of checking Fastily's contributions log to see when Fastily had been editing most recently. Can we agree, at least, that if better explanations are required, that they at least be requested in a calm and civil manner? Powers T 01:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
      • Did I say anything uncivil? I was using the contributions log to get an understanding of the likelihood that he was ducking me. He has yet to give any explanation why he considered three keep votes and one delete vote consensus to delete. I continue to await an explanation by anyone who might be able to expalain that one. We may never know since we worked out a compromise.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:40, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
        • The discussion on Fastily's talk page looked to me like you were badgering Fastily (due, apparently to your own admitted "impatience"). Furthermore, you jumped immediately to the conclusion that Fastily was "ducking" you rather than acknowledging that Fastily might be busy and is volunteering his/her time to this project. Powers T 15:47, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
  • comment I'm noticing a trend here. But as it is, I've repeatedly seen Fastily's name come up over disputed deletions and other related matters, and it's beginning to give me a sense of deja vu. There comes a point where we have to stop saying "it's every body else" maybe there is a problem with the way this user is going about things and their process should be improved. I've found him a little quick on the trigger when a cursory examination of something might solve the problem. This comes across as a binary mindset that has gotten other editors in conflicts in the past, often over similar issues.--Crossmr (talk) 14:23, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Diffs? - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 02:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
      • [1], [2], [3] here he seems to jump into a situation he just isn't really informed on and revert a bunch of stuff that doesn't need it, [4] while old, this is simply to show that it's an on-going and long-term issue for him, etc. I don't have time right now to paw through the AN/I archives for all the times I've seen his name come up over questionable behaviour, or deletions just my opinion based on the interactions I've had with him and the discussions I've seen come up.--Crossmr (talk) 05:21, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
In my defense, all of these are extremely old, resolved, and irrelevant to the matter at hand. If anything, I hereby agree to self-abstain from closing long, contentious discussions without providing a statement of some sort. At any rate, I no longer plan on closing such discussions anyways, so I guess that makes the concerns we're having here moot :P Cheers, FASTILY (TALK) 10:48, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Not fair, we won't get our dose of wikidrama now. Diego (talk) 11:17, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
December 2011 is "extremely" old? You have a rather interesting definition of "extremely". The concerns were not just about closing discussions. [5] This is talking about deletions, so I can't see how this makes anything moot.--Crossmr (talk) 00:27, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • There may be an issue here that goes beyond closing deletion discussions. I have no particular memory of previously interacting with Fastily, but for what it's worth, I am semi-regularly editing DRV and I remember closing (or commenting in) an uncommonly high number of review requests that concerned an clearly mistaken speedy deletion by Fastily.  Sandstein  07:49, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Comment Is it appropriate to ask that Fastily explain his reasoning for the two closes that caused me to initiate this discussion.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:42, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Fastily thankfully deletes a whole lot of things - templates, images, etc. So much so that he has a simple page that describes his reasonings. Typically, if you approach them, they point you there and if you want more info, simply ask for a follow-up ... usually, unless the question is already answered the first time, Fastily is more-than-willing to give some extra explanation. By sheer ratio, I would actually bet that the number of just fine deletions to questionable is better than most of us. Just like the average American has heard of more problems with Plymouth Sunfire automobiles than Jaguar XJC's, it's a matter of quantity for the most part (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 12:51, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Unfortunately, in coping with the large number of inquiries about deletion, the boilerplate responses may come off badly with good faith editors who recognise the general concern, but don't understand the specifics as to what was wrong with their article. I understand that this is a wider issue, especially with over-use of warning templates, and I don't necessarily think that Fastly should be specifically highlighted here, but it does seem to cause issues. Otherwise there is no question that Fastly does lots of great work, and the one time I raised a problem it was fixed quickly and without any hassles at all. - Bilby (talk) 13:20, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I support the suggestion of an RfC/U on Fastily per the comments here by Beeblebrox and Sandstein above; there have been related problems raised on ANI and with his bot Fbot. In all cases administrative tasks were performed in a mechanized manner without the need to provide careful justification either at the time or later when queried. Mathsci (talk) 17:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I was troubled by this recent (4 days ago) section at ANI. Article is deleted as G11, the editor asks if they can have a copy, Fastily's response is a link to G11 that ignores the clear request for a userfied version (and then another admin cleans up after Fastily at ANI). If Fastily has enough time to delete a hundred articles, but not enough time to adequately communicate with the users he affects, then Fastily doesn't have enough time to delete a hundred articles. Theoldsparkle (talk) 17:31, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
  • In fairness to Fastily, he has done over 170,000 deletions, so this instance and those cited above represent a vanishingly small percentage of his actions and I suspect are in-line on a percentage-basis with all other administrators. He's just doing more work, so more people notice any mistakes. MBisanz talk 17:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
If the proportion is no higher than others it would explain mistaken deletions; but it also explains, though does not excuse his frequent failure to give adequate reasons or engage in genuine dialog. It would seem to show that he is doing too many deletions to work accurately or keep track or deal with the people involved. Bu I'm not sure that;s true. But that the proportion is no higher remains to be shown. As I take an opposite approach than he, while still finding plenty to delete--though my count is only 8% of his-- I have generally refrained from challenging his deletions, in order to facilitate the necessity of working together. Perhaps others have done likewise. NPP and related activities can not be done accurately fast. DGG ( talk ) 17:30, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
That is true. I would say he probably is working accurately, but doesn't have time to deal with the people involved. Otherwise, I would agree with you. MBisanz talk 17:37, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
That's a huge problem since we're a community after all. We've seen similar behaviour from other long term users that ends up generating endless drama. Often eventually leading to them getting blocked, banned, etc. As DGG said, above he dismissed the links I provided to earlier AN/I discussion claiming they were all "extremely old" and yet one of them is from December. Good faith doesn't extend to time travel.--Crossmr (talk) 00:00, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment - This is not related to deleted templates but it's along the same lines. It seems Fastily just speedy deleted the article Aunt Bam's Place under G8. G8 states: Examples include talk pages with no corresponding subject page; subpages with no parent page; image pages without a corresponding image; redirects to invalid targets, such as nonexistent targets, redirect loops, and bad titles; and categories populated by deleted or retargeted templates.. Now, this was an ARTICLE, not a talk page, subpage, image page, redirect or anything of the sort. EVEN IF somehow this article qualified for speedy deletion, G8 is obviously the wrong reason. The thing is that IT DID NOT qualify for a speedy deletion. What has been going on is that an anon IP has been going around monkeying around with articles related to Tyler Perry [6], and has been repeatedly nominating this page for speedy deletion, seemingly for laughs (or who knows, anyway, "disruptively"). Now I'm not THAT familiar with Mr. Perry's ouvre, and maybe I'm missing something, but "Aunt Bam's Place" appears to be an actual play [7] (by one of the highest paid producers in Hollywood). Unless there's some widespread internet wide hoax going on, the article deserved at the very least an AfD. It's obvious that Fastily didn't bother to check details, or even glance at the subject but just saw a "speedy delete" template and then deleted it. And then made up a bs reason - or at least gave a completely wrong reason - for the deletion. Per discussion above, it's obvious that this isn't the first time this kind of thing happen. And unlike with TonyTheTiger I can't be accused of perusing a grudge here. So either Fastily is a bit out of control, or s/he simply doesn't know what the heck he's doing. Either way this is going towards sufficient reasons for removal of admin tools. Before that happens, how about a topic-ban from deletions (including closing AfDs and speedies) is tried?VolunteerMarek 02:36, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
That was a fairly silly deletion; just because something is tagged G8, doesn't mean it is a G8. You have to look at it. I've restored the article and its talk page. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:44, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm starting to think that the "170,000 deletions" is actually a symptom of the problem rather than an indication that everything's ok. You do that many deletions, they're gonna be sloppy. It's very much "quantity over quality" and I don't see a point of trying to up one's deletion/edit count this way if it just keeps causing work for others.VolunteerMarek 02:49, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I've seen Fastily around doing good work, also (and only recently) a couple of things I'd have questioned. Maybe it's just perceived "pressure of work"? (I will add, as I often do, that every time I have looked at any deletion process in detail I have seen stuff being deleted that should be kept, this however is not just about deletes.) Rich Farmbrough, 11:35, 16 February 2012 (UTC).
I'd buy that for a dollar. Give his attempt above to misdirect/dance around the issue and these kinds of on-going deletion issues, a break might be in order. If he doesn't want to take it himself, then perhaps he should be encouraged to do so.--Crossmr (talk) 00:30, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Fastily's commitment above not to close complicated discussions without an explanation solves only one small part of the problem. The major part of the problem is the way his referral to the page of his boilerplate - - and his refusal to discuss further affects newcomers. When they ask someone here a question, they expect an answer. There are frequent and continual complaints that Wikipedia acts mechanically, and some of the things we do at speedy are necessarily mechanical. But when someone goes to the trouble of making a personal request to explain what an admin did, it is outrageous not to be given a personal answer. If an admin is doing too many deletions or other admin actions to respond to every good faith query about them with enough specificity to show they read and understood the article in question and are willing to help the user be more successful here, they are doing too many. to then refer them to DelRev adds to the insult, as a newcomer would see it as one of the most bureaucratic and specialized of all our procedures, a place where speaking in jargon and contention about basic policies is expected and unavoidable, Admins are expected to make themselves accessible. What is needed here is a commitment by Fastily to respond to every good faith question, and not use his page of boilerplate to discourage them. Perhaps it needs an MfD, as user page contrary to policy -- not in what it says, but in the effect it has. DGG ( talk ) 16:24, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment. Frankly Fastily's tendency to act unilaterally and respond with indigence (or not at all) to the concerns of other community members reminds me a bit too much of Betacommand. If this is the path he wants to go down, I imagine an RFC/U will soon be in order. Kaldari (talk) 20:52, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
He's one of the hardest working admins on the project. The percentage of deletion edits inaccurately made is miraculously low. There is nothing wrong with his direction to his subpage it accurately describes the reasoning for the action and points the user to what they can do and MFD on a useful page is a waste of time. If they ask for help he generally gives itEdinburgh Wanderer 00:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
That's not excuse, and I'm starting to get some extreme Deja vu here. There has never been a time in wikipedia's history where anyone has provided the exchange sheet where it shows how many good contributions you have to make or how hard you have to work in order to be excused for certain bad behaviour. This is a whole package thing. Making a few deletion mistakes is not a serious issue, it's how we handle it when called on it, and from what I'm seeing it doesn't seem to be good, and we've seen these kinds of problems before. Editors "working for the good of the community" who don't want to take the time to work with the actual community.--Crossmr (talk) 02:08, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
  • It's been my experience as well that Fastily is short with explanations during a debate, and takes umbrage it being asked to explain himself. The kerfuffle over File:Centpacrr.jpg is an excellent example (see Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 December 3 for a flavor of the discussion). It seems Fastily often thinks users are being rude or some such. That's no excuse for not giving an explanation. If he doesn't have the time maybe he should do fewer deletions. The world isn't going to end. There's another issue open farther down this page (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#ImageRemovalBot) where his haste led a horrible mess. Mackensen (talk) 00:49, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
    That was absolutely ridiculous. I'll give another example of fastily being careless with his deletions. Last month he deleted File:Perfect_World_logo.png because it was orphaned. Of course, it still had it's FUR on it. He deleted it without checking, but the article in question had been vandalized and the infobox damaged. He easily could have taken 2 seconds to click the article in the FUR and check why it had become orphaned (new version?) and noticed that that had happened, it was the last edit when he deleted it. That kind of robotic deletion isn't what we expect from a human editor and if we're just going to delete stuff without even a cursory check (He must have had to go to the article to verify it had in fact been orphaned and that it wasn't tagged in error) why not just run a deletion bot to empty the orphaned image category daily right?--Crossmr (talk) 02:08, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Rescue

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The TfD has been closed as delete (by me). Hopefully that will be the end of the drama. Thryduulf (talk) 15:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Having been deleted following Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 January 13#Template:Rescue, the deletion reviewed at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 January 27 the template has been re-created, I have taged to for WP:G4 (which was removed with the edit sum Its no longer been added to anything. I don't think you can speedy delete it. No harm in leaving it for historical reasons and to prevent broken links) I then restored it to the Deteted template messages version which has also been reverted. Can a administrator please look into what's going on and protect the page. Mtking (edits) 00:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Historical retainment of templates (and many other things) is commonplace. It is clearly not meant to be in use, as it states on the page, but is retained so that old page revisions that would contain it do not have broken links instead. I don't see the problem here. Historical things shouldn't be deleted. SilverserenC 00:29, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Mtking, not sure you realize, but the rescue template is wrapping inside of a template of it's own that marks it as an old template on any pages it's used on. Go try to use it in the Sandbox and see for yourself.--v/r - TP 00:40, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but no, the ARS should not be allowed to retain it in this fashion like some sort of martyr's rock. If it is to remain as something other than a redlink, then it should be clearly labeled as a deleted template and not still fly the lifesaver imagery. Tarc (talk) 00:48, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Tarc, that seems a bit harsh. We don't need to hold over their head our 'victory' in TfD and DRV. The template is clearly marked and wraped in another template that prevents it from being used. It only exists in this fashion to prevent the redlink {{rescue}} in old revisions of articles.--v/r - TP 00:50, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Why is the "This template is deprecated" text not enough? Reyk YO! 01:02, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Agreed the "This template is deprecated" text is enough, it is not as if the template contains any information that related to the article it was placed on. Mtking (edits) 01:16, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Note. Due to the (silly) ongoing edit war on the template, I have just protected it for three days. I'm off to sleep now; fellow admins, feel free to unprotect without asking me should a consensus emerge here. Salvio Let's talk about it! 01:20, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't {{Tdeprecated}} be used in these cases? →Στc. 01:35, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think so: it says that the deprecated template has been replaced by another one, while it was my impression that the TFD said that this one should be removed and not replaced. Nyttend (talk) 01:46, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Keep Its not being used any longer, nor hurting anything at all. What possible reason would there to be to destroy it? You won. You somehow got enough people to show up to convince the opinion of the closing administrator to prevent it from being placed on any articles in need of Rescue. For historical places that link to it, its best to show what it was, instead of a dead red link. Dream Focus 01:49, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
This isn't a deletion discussion; you don't need to add a vote to your comment. By the way, is this edit considered simple enough and housekeeping-like enough that it's appropriate while the template is protected? I immediately self-reverted; the only reason I did it was to make it easy for you to understand what I'm asking about. Nyttend (talk) 01:50, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't think it much matters either way on the categories. Those categories could only show up if the template was transcluded from a live page with a revisionid older than the template deletion. Since all such transclusions were removed, these categories can never show up on a live version of a page because any new edits will have a higher revisionid. --Tothwolf (talk) 03:15, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry, but this is an obvious G4 speedy. Kept because article histories contain its usage? Seriously? There are literally hundreds of deleted templates that show up as redlinks in article histories. I'd like to see a very good reason why this one deserves special treatment. Resolute 01:54, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
    • I agree. There doesn't seem to be any real need to keep it around, other than some kind of shrine. Reyk YO! 01:58, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • We generally delete templates because they're unfixable, because they're redundant, because they're unused and won't be used, or because they violate core policies. As this one was deleted because of the way it was frequently used, rather than because of a design problem or because it was never used, deletion isn't as helpful of a solution. The discussion's goal was to ensure that this template wasn't transcluded or substed in other namespaces; its preservation with the notice of deprecation will go along with the result of the TFD without causing the problems with tons of article histories that would result from deletion. Nyttend (talk) 02:13, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • One of the prominent arguments in the deletion debate was that this was redundant to the real AfD template. Also, this is now unusued and won't be used. So tell me again why this shouldn't be speedy deleted? Resolute 05:42, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • If you look at the discussions at AFD and DRV, it's clear that the consensus was not for pseudo-deletion or faux-deletion, but for deletion. How is this not a {{db-repost}}?
    Tangentially, I tagged {{ARS/Tagged}} and {{Afdrescue}} for CSD yesterday (although the former was removed, for some reason). Both of them should go to the same place that {{ARSnote}} is now, and where {{rescue}} ought to be. Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 02:27, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • As soon as it is unprotected, I will file another TfD, then. This isn't about lording over ARS...if I wanted to do that I would have joined the recent ANI attacks against their deletion discussions...it is about respecting the consensus of the Wikipedia community. The consensus was that this thing should be deleted, not left intact with some weird "we won't use it" pledges. Tarc (talk) 03:53, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
    • And shit like this is why ARS has the reputation it does. Creating nothing but pointless drama. Resolute 05:40, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Question Do we keep other old transcluded templates to help make sure previous versions of articles appear correct? If or if not, why is {{rescue}} special such that it should deviate from the norm? In other words, can we de-politicalize this and look at the underlying (at least, as stated) issue. Jclemens (talk) 04:02, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Templates are routinely deleted without any consideration as to how they will make old versions of the page look. I happen to think that's a mistake (it is probably technically feasible to have articles display the template as it looked at the time the revision was made, even if the template has been edited since), but common practice is what it is at the moment. NW (Talk) 04:19, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
In this case since the template added nothing of significance to the article, why not just have it produce "white space" then fully protect the template. Mtking (edits) 06:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Jclemens' question is the relevant one here. I've never seen a deleted template get re-created for the sole purpose of ensuring that old revisions look nice. It may be that it happens from time to time and I've never come across it, or it may be that it happens rarely or never. If it does happen from time to time, I highly doubt it would happen on something that doesn't affect the content of an article, like a maintenance template. I can't imagine it would ruin someone's day to see Template:Rescue on an old revision instead of the life-preserver template. If this type of template re-creation is truly as uncommon as I think it is, then I see no reason to apply special treatment to this particular template. —SW— yak 08:58, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Right, who cares if our articles look like crap, as long as the bureaucratic niceties are preserved? Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:50, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
It's old article revisions. They arn't exactly pretty with or without the template because of that big red bar at the top. I personally don't care if the template is kept for historical purposes, but that argument is flawed.--v/r - TP 14:06, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Delete. ((TFD==Delete) && (DRV==Endorse) == Redlink). Page histories are full of redlinks and other brokeness; relax and breath normally; this is ok. This is a camel's nose to get this all overturned. Alarbus (talk) 16:22, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I knew the ARS radicals were getting desperate, but his is just stupid. We don't need to discuss this, because we already did, twice as a matter of fact. The community has already spoken, and it said to delete thos template, and then it said it again. Whoever recreated it needs to be blocked for deliberate disruption per WP:POINT and the template, in accordance with the already clearly expressed will of the community, needs to be deleted. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:07, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
It wasn't recreated; it was restored, along with the talk page. Kanguole 02:56, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Actually, not quite: it was first recreated (as an empty, and non-functional, {{Deleted template}} stub) by the previous deleting admin Ironholds [8]; then the old content was recreated on top of that by Rich Farmbrough [9] and the prior history restored. The first step may not have been speedy-worthy but didn't technically do what was intended; the second step should never have been done without authorization from a DRV, and in my view does fall under speedy-repost. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Question: Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the instructions for the template that after the article survived the AfD the template was to be removed? I ask because if the only argument for restoring the deleted template is that it preferves the look and feel of the article historically at that point it shouldn't be restored in it's full glory. A simple 1 liner of "This article was tagged with the Rescue template" that links to the ARS (or it's successor) page explaining about what the rescue template was. It satisfies the need to indicate that the article was tagged and also minimizes the amount of influence said tag has. Hasteur (talk) 01:31, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
One (of the meany issues) that were discussed at the TfD was the wikiproject "advert" in main space, so any link to the ARS would not be acceptable, I also don't see it as acceptable to keep a template for only history reasons (see my comments below). Mtking (edits) 03:19, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
So you're all for confusing future editors in wondering what this template was intended to do just so you can stick it to ARS? Take your pound of flesh and move on. The template is consensus deleted, we're just quibbling over the final disposition of a few edge cases. Unless your permanently volunteering to provide a NPOV explanation of what the template was about every single time an editor asks about what the template was supposed to do. Hasteur (talk) 12:52, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
  • not to mention the fact that it was recreated (albeit just with the "this template was deleted" text) by the admin who deleted it in the first place! 169.231.55.218 (talk) 03:06, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Can you point me to the community discussion about using this {{Deleted template}} ? as it seams to be the work of just one editor ? I can perhaps see the logic for having while current versions of articles use a deleted template, however when all examples have been removed then the template should just be removed.Mtking (edits) 03:19, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
We generally use {{being deleted}} while removing templates. {{deleted template}} was the work of quite a number of people and has never been controversial in and of itself. There was a community discussion about {{deleted template}} and there was also a notification left at WT:TFD after it was created. There was also further discussion on AN and probably elsewhere. --Tothwolf (talk) 18:08, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Seriously? There was no consensus in either discussion for it to stay as a deprecated template. And the ARS wonders why they have such a bad reputation for creating such needless drama. Are we seriously going to have to go through another tfd. This should definitely be speedied. -DJSasso (talk) 13:53, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

  • The "Us vs Them" comments by a small number of editors above are part of the reason we've ended up here in the first place.

    To clarify a few things which others commented or touched upon:

    I asked Ironholds to restore {{rescue}}'s talk page and edit history and add {{deleted template}}. He indicated he was swamped with other community issues and with his blessing I asked Rich Farmbrough to handle it. I knew Rich Farmbrough would know how to apply {{deleted template}} since he had done some of the initial work on the template (I've made quite a few complex logic code changes to improve it since then).

    Talk pages of templates are routinely deleted under CSD G8 and the talk page of a template which has a long history and lots of discussion should be left intact for historical purposes. Using {{deleted template}} makes this fairly straight forward and easy.

    Using {{deleted template}} also further discourages someone from creating a new template with the same name. This has happened a number of times and that really tends to break old page revisions.

    The logic code used for {{deleted template}} works like this:
    Old page revisions prior to the template's deletion show the original message box of the {{rescue}} template.
    New transclusions and edits display the red notice and do not display {{rescue}}'s original message box, and are categorized in the Category:Pages containing deleted templates maintenance category.
    The template page for {{rescue}} itself shows both the red notice and the original message box.

    {{rescue}} does not fall under CSD G4 and I would caution the handful of individuals who are threatening to TfD {{rescue}} yet again that doing this is not productive and will further waste the community's time. It does not harm Wikipedia in any way to preserve the talk page and edit history of the template, and while doing so had not historically been routinely done, we didn't have a working solution for doing this until the latest {{expand}} discussion in January 2011.

    With the above out of the way, the handful of individuals ranting about Ironholds, Rich Farmbrough, and ARS need to double check who they are ranting about. If they really want to rant about someone, they can rant about me, since I'm the one who asked Ironholds and Rich Farmbrough to handle this task. ARS didn't have anything to do with it, and while I've occasionally "rescued" some "hopeless" articles at AfD, I'm not a "member" of ARS and I have rarely participated in discussions at WT:ARS. That said, I'm likely to ignore any ranting directed my way because it doesn't serve any constructive purpose and doesn't help improve Wikipedia. --Tothwolf (talk) 16:43, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Tothwolf asserts that G4 doesn't apply to that template. I think that's a grey area, and it might be worthy of a WT:CSD discussion. But essentially for G4 to apply to a page, the page would have to be:
  • A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy of the page that was deleted.
  • Given a deletion result per consensus during its most recent deletion discussion.
  • A page where the reason for the deletion must still apply.
  • Not "userfied".
  • Not undeleted via DRV.
That third criterion above might be the sticky point. If a template is no longer in active use, does the reason for its deletion still apply? With the text stating that it's a deprecated template, it won't be effective as canvassing or a rallying cry or an advertisement for ARS or whatever objection someone would have to it even if someone does try to use it. Does that deprecation effectively remove that criterion from any template? In that case, why don't we just add such text to every template at TfD that should no longer be used rather than deleting them? -- Atama頭 23:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Well, and as I mentioned above, should someone attempt to transclude {{rescue}} via a new edit, it will only display the red text and if the page is saved anyway, it will be added to the maintenance category where we can monitor and remove the transclusion. This is far better than having confused editors who didn't know of the TFD getting a red link when they attempt to use the template, etc.

I know some editors thought such an approach might work for all templates, but I'm not sure we would really need that. The current design of {{deleted template}} works well for message box templates, but might not work well for other templates in it's current form. For message box templates which have previously been heavily used, {{deleted template}} seems right now to be the best way to handle them. --Tothwolf (talk) 01:50, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Atama, if a template is no longer in active use, it would be deleted at TFD anyway. And Tothwolf, clearly if the template is deprecated it would be better for it to show up as a red link that doesn't work than to allow it to exist in any fashion any more. If it is necessary to keep the template so it can be prevented from use, then simply include the coding that allows it to be tracked but remove the former functionality and formatting.—Ryulong (竜龙) 09:27, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Or you could simply salt the template so it doesn't get recreated. -DJSasso (talk) 16:54, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


Ryulong, please go back and re-read what I wrote above. New transclusions of the template do not display any "former functionality of formatting". Only old page revisions accessed via edit history links with a revisionid prior to the template's deletion will display the original template's message box. Any new transclusions display a red notice and are added to a maintenance category.

While I think a small number of people have been blowing a lot of things out of proportion, the very idea some have put forth that "ARS is going to continue to use {{rescue}} now that its history and talk page have been restored" is simply absurd. The code in {{deleted template}} simply doesn't work that way or allow it.

<soapbox>
I can understand how some editors might not understand how {{deleted template}} works, which is why I explained its logic code above, but beyond that, I'm growing tired of the anti-ARS propaganda (both blatant and disguised) that I've been seeing both here and elsewhere. Such propaganda and fear mongering fly in the face of our policies and if it were being done towards any other "group" of editors here on Wikipedia, such as say new page patrollers or FA writers or whatever, it would have been stopped and/or brought before ArbCom long before it got to the point where it is at with the current anti-ARS crowd. In fact, if ARS itself simply didn't exist, those pushing the anti-ARS propaganda would certainly be doing the same thing to some other group.

On an individual level, members of ARS appear to be very tolerant and I've noticed that despite the persistent attacks by the anti-ARS camp, while a few ARS members tend to fall into a pattern of being baited and then finally lashing out, the majority of ARS' members simply ignore the anti-ARS rhetoric. I can't say the same for the opposing camp however. At times I've been astonished at the level of intolerance I've seen from the anti-ARS camp.

Individual members of ARS apparently genuinely feel that keeping whatever material they are discussing is in the best interests of Wikipedia and helps improve our coverage of a particular subject. While that may or may not be the case depending on the particular discussion, everyone is entitled to their own opinions and beliefs and should still be able to feel secure that they won't be persecuted here on Wikipedia for voicing them.

So... why am I speaking out if I'm not even a "member" of ARS? As a community, this is our problem, and somebody needs to say it.

To the anti-ARS crowd: The majority of the community has been able to co-exist with ARS just fine. The problem is you, not them. Suck it up, work things out, and go write an article or find something else constructive to do. --Tothwolf (talk) 17:12, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

You tell others to assume good faith while assuming stunningly bad faith of them. You tell your perceived opponents to stop being intolerant, while comparing them to nazis. What is wrong with you? Reyk YO! 20:50, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
My perceived opponents? I think you need to re-read some of what I wrote above because I've made it quite clear that I'm not in either of these camps. I've been sitting back and watching people go at it for weeks and I'm now simply calling it as I see it. If you feel offended by my reference to First they came… above then I apologize. My intent however was to point out the apparent "persecution" of ARS by a small anti-ARS minority within the Wikipedia community who've chosen to turn the TFD of {{rescue}} into a cause célèbre and use it as a staging ground to further propagandize and attack their perceived enemies within ARS. Given that, I feel my reference was spot on. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:45, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
  • This is a blindingly obvious G4. The deleted revisions thing is BS many templates that no longer exist appear in deleted revisions. This is slighting the community concencus by bringing back a contraversial template without discussion. --Guerillero | My Talk 06:24, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Are you in the right place? Please see the top of the page: "Review of a deletion or undeletion of a page → deletion review.". The template was at TfD multiple times and so it seems right and proper that it should have several performances at DRV too. See also WP:LIGHTBULB. Warden (talk) 10:13, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
  • On a related note, if an administrator could restore the documentation subpage and add {{Historical}}, this should allow the red notice to properly display directly below the original message box on the template page itself (see {{Expand}} for an example). Right now the preloaded documentation message box is being displayed in between the original message box and the red notice and it might be possible for some people to miss seeing the red text on the template page itself. This doesn't have any effect on the logic code used by {{deleted template}} so any potential transclusions will display the red notice text correctly anyway. --Tothwolf (talk) 16:35, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
  • YesY Done I think. MBisanz talk 16:48, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
  • The |name= parameter for {{Ambox}} was what was causing the restored documentation page box to display in the wrong location. I'm not sure why just yet, but I've removed that parameter so it displays the red notice text correctly now. --Tothwolf (talk) 17:34, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Ah, here as go. {{Ambox}} includes the code which would cause this to happen:
{{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|Template:{{PAGENAME:{{{name}}}}}
 |{{#ifeq:{{{doc}}}|no|
  |{{Documentation}}<!-- Transclude documentation on template page -->
 }}
}}
It also looks like the |subst= parameter cannot be used without |name=, so either |doc=no has to be passed to {{Ambox}}, or the subst: check has to be done externally to {{Ambox}} when {{deleted template}} is used. --Tothwolf (talk) 18:04, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
  • This is absurd. Consensus at the TfD and DRV was clear, and that was that the template should be deleted. Not quasi-pseudo-half way deleted but retained as some kind of memorial. Deleted. Are we going to start restoring articles because other articles have redlinks in their histories now? How ridiculous can you get? And congratulations to Tothwolf, who with his extensive explanations of the coding feasibility and "BAWWW! I'm, like, totally neutral but the ARS are blameless angels fighting the evil hordes" handwringing, has managed to deflect from the real issue- which is that the template should not have been undeleted at all. The consensus is what it is, and people simply need to accept that. G4 and salt. Reyk YO! 21:51, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
    • From my viewpoint, neither "side" is particularly happy with the current situation. ARS doesn't have their template anymore, and the hardcore anti-ARS camp isn't happy that the template has been wrapped in {{deleted template}} in order to prevent new transclusions and allow old page revisions to continue to work.

      As a member of the larger community, I for one am glad that the talk page which had been speedied under CSD G8 is visible to non-administrators now. Deletion of the talk page resulted in a loss of transparency as to the discussions which had been taking place there prior to the TFD and incoming links to the talk page had been made non-functional. --Tothwolf (talk) 00:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

  • Things I see above: "Sorry, but no, the ARS should not be allowed to retain it in this fashion like some sort of martyr's rock." "And shit like this is why ARS has the reputation it does. Creating nothing but pointless drama." "knew the ARS radicals were getting desperate, but his is just stupid." "And the ARS wonders why they have such a bad reputation for creating such needless drama." Ummm, Really?. You guys are creating your own drama. Who cares about this, really? You are arguing about the proper treatment of a deleted template for historical purposes. As some are doing above, figure out the standard rule, discuss it, come to a result. Meanwhile I'll work on building an encyclopedia.--Milowent • hasspoken 14:39, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] TfD once again

[edit] Nomination for deletion of Template:Rescue

Ambox warning pn.svgTemplate:Rescue has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.

It is a shame that some just refuse to accept the community consensus and edit was to keep a sentimental/historical copy of what was deleted in project space, but it seems an official TfD is the only thing that will work here, as one wikiproject saw fit to edit war to keep speedy tags off and keep the old template itself in. Tarc (talk) 14:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

  • Yes, the ARS is sitting around a fire perusing the template history and listening to [10].--Milowent • hasspoken 14:50, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • NOTICE - It seems the deletion discussion has moved into the backlog. Took me a while to find it so I am leaving the link here for anyone still interested in commenting there.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 17:40, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Talk page archives

Could an administrator please restore the talk page archives and sandbox edit history?

I've been able to find 4 talk page archives and another talk page so far, but there may be others as well. --Tothwolf (talk) 19:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Could an administrator like, not do that, and not take any more admin actions related to this until the current TFD is closed? Thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:25, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
With your comment at TFD and now here, I certainly don't understand what exactly it is you don't want us to see in the talk page archives. --Tothwolf (talk) 19:33, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't know or care what is in them so I'll thank you to leave your backhanded accusations at the door. They were deleted as a result of a community decision to delete the template. A decision that was upheld at DRV. None of this should have been restored without a new discussion first that clearly overturned the previous consensus. That's how WP works, as I'm sure you are already aware. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:48, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
If you don't particularly care what is in the talk page archives, then you shouldn't really be all that concerned if they are restored for transparency reasons, either. The talk page was not deleted per any sort of community discussion so it might be best if you stop attempting to mislead others who may be following this discussion. If the deletion of the template itself was as non-controversial as you and a few others have tried to claim, then there also wouldn't be any reason for a small minority of individuals to try to prevent non-administrators from seeing the talk page archives now would there? --Tothwolf (talk) 21:59, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Because speedy deletion is supposed to only be used for non-controversial deletions, and because the G8 criteria for speedy deletions specifically excludes talk page archives:
    "This excludes any page that is useful to Wikipedia, and in particular deletion discussions that are not logged elsewhere, user pages, user talk pages, talk page archives, [...]"
    I again ask that an administrator please restore these pages for the purposes of transparency. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:17, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • And I again ask that they not for issues of ignoring a clearly established consensus that we are now being asked to ignore for completely specious reasons. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • This is on the verge of being seen as disruptive, IMO. The Template is gone; it only exists at the moment because of the extremely poor judgement of Rich Farmbrough, and will likely be deleted for good as no one has put forth an actual argument as to why a prior finding of delete should not be honored. There is no need to retain discussions abotu a template that does not exist. Tarc (talk) 04:23, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Actually, I think the talk page archives will likely provide a useful insight into how the template evolved, how it was perceived, and the problems that led to its removal. I do not see the value in leaving those discussions deleted, lest we reinvent the same issues and errors again. Jclemens (talk) 07:57, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
      • I wouldn't be terribly opposed to moving the contents of the talkpage and related subpages to some subsection of the ARS project page if you really wish to preserve the conversations. Tarc (talk) 17:23, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
        • I think Tarc's suggestion makes a lot of sense, frankly. 28bytes (talk) 18:48, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • The fact that this is even at TfD again is frankly deplorable. It should have been speedily deleted (which is why I again CSDed it; Milowent reverted me). What little esteem I had for the ARS is now completely gone; they refuse to respect two consensuses Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 16:45, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • It's back at AFD. If there is a consensus in that discussion, then whatever that consensus is can we please please please please please please please please please just implement it and put an end to these layers of meta-discussion? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Though it may not often happen, I agree with Tarc: the simplest place to put the discussions is as a subpage of the ARS WikiProject, with the appropriate indication that they are historical; I'm pleased he acknowledges the legitimacy of the project at least to that extent. From the standpoint of anyone who cares about XfD/deletion/inclusion, from any point of view, this is not a matter of principle, or a matter which will either way greatly impair the efficiency and effectiveness of either deleting or keeping articles. What does interfere with both deleting deletable articles, and keeping keepable ones ,is spending any more effort on this. We do still need to design what a good template to indicate that there is an especially urgent need & practical possibility of better sourcing or otherwise strengthening an article. A good many unimprovable articles get challenged, and sourcing is not always easy, & so it helps to have something to focus attention on the most likely and important candidates. DGG ( talk ) 06:39, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
    • How would we deal with existing incoming links and pointers to the original location though? How are editors in the future who wonder "What the heck was this {{rescue}} template and why was it deleted?" going to know that the talk page archives can be found in a different location in project space? This could be solved with a soft redirect of course, but that too would end up deleted under CSD G8 due to the use of automated tools and would defeat the stated purpose for maintaining the talk page archives in project space anyway.

      It seems the most logical and straightforward thing to do is simply leave the archives in their original location and use {{deleted template}}. If not for the apparent vendetta some people seem to have for certain ARS members, this would most certainly be a non-issue. Even with {{expand}} we never had this much drama, and the TfD for {{expand}} was pretty darn contentious. --Tothwolf (talk) 04:33, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.


[edit] Topic ban proposed

Moved from Related discussion on ANI Nobody Ent

A proposal: User:The Devil's Advocate may not bring up threads at ANI or any other noticeboard regarding the Article Rescue Squad, broadly construed, and may not nominate for deletion any pages that are part of the ARS project or bring them up for Deletion Review. [someone please rephrase this for necessary comprehensiveness.] This includes pages and templates used by the ARS and complaints about ARS members (loosely defined) as regards their activities as ARS members (loosely defined).

  • Rationale: too many fishing expeditions and divisive, disruptive, and time-wasting threads in various forums. Violating this ban may be punishable by tickle death or a block. Please phrase this better if you can. Drmies (talk) 05:13, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Funny that you would say "complaints about ARS members (loosely defined)" as you would probably be including complaints about yourself in that situation. Also, it would appear to deny me the ability to make any note of the numerous uncivil remarks you and other editors involved with ARS have made about me pretty much from the outset. You are making this out like I am just going after the ARS for no discernible reason.
The reality is that I saw an article that should be deleted, nominated it for deletion, and saw the ARS was back to its old tricks just weeks after they got a big wake-up call from the rest of Wikipedia (anyone is free to look at that first ANI discussion and the TfD about the rescue tag). I am not repeatedly bringing up the same issue to try and get a different result. The first ANI thread in this latest instance did not directly name a case and focused instead on the fact that the editor most complained about in the previous discussion created the list almost immediately after the rescue tag got deleted in what would seem to be a blatant case of WP:IDHT. That discussion was closed by you, an involved admin (having commented at listing there before going to vote keep in the AfD I started), within five hours based on the MfD result.
I asked another admin how I should proceed given your involvement and he said the close was premature, but suggested that if I have a specific case to mention I should start a new ANI thread about it and so I did. The result was that more editors came in and several expressed serious concerns about the list and the way it was being used by the editors in question. However, several editors insisted the MfD settled the matter and when that ANI discussion got closed within 17 hours, not including the repeated disruptive closings by involved editors, based on "no consensus for action" (not claiming that there were no legitimate issues as some are insisting) I decided to move the discussion to the MfD. An hour after it was re-opened, before I could even leave my delete vote, an admin stepped in and closed the discussion after a single hour based on there not being a delete vote. So, I asked the admin to re-open, but the admin did not wish to reverse the action and suggested I could put it up for review, which I did.
This ANI discussion is about someone closing that discussion inappropriately even as more votes were coming in favoring relisting. How exactly could this editor know there would not be more editors who might take an interest and see cause for relisting? Why did this editor not consider the fact that a significant portion of the votes were from members of the project whose page was up for deletion and were not actually providing reasons against relisting? Did this editor intend, as he seems to state, on closing it as having been endorsed either way and just waited until it had a little more input so as to avoid making it look premature? So, you see, it is not about me raising the same issue over and over. Only my call for the closing admin to re-open the MfD and the DRV was trying to restart an old discussion, a discussion that I myself think was initiated prematurely before more people could be drawn to the issue at ANI so that it wouldn't essentially just get ARS members and people who frequent the list voting to keep their beloved page.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 07:05, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Devil's Advocate, "complaints about ARS members (loosely defined)" is an incomplete citation: notice the second part, "as regards their activities as ARS members (loosely defined)" (that should be amended to "in regard to"). You are free to complain about any one of those people, including me (hell, I'll sign up with the ARS if that makes it easier for you to pigeonhole me), Northamerica1000, Dream Focus, the Colonel, Milowent, S Marshall, Spartaz...(let's paint with a broad brush), but not in their activities as ARS members--that is, related to that list or templates or whatever. And I'm not saying you're going after the ARS for no discernible reason: I think there probably are a couple of reasons, but that's not relevant here. Finally, a deletion review may have been the proper step, formally speaking, but that doesn't make it a smart thing to do. You have been told, time and again, that the horse is dead. S Marshall is only the last one of a couple of editors who tried to put it out of its misery. I want to prevent further animal carcass abuse.

I got nothing against you, and I have had few interactions with you outside of those ARS discussions. You were trolled, for instance, and I offered what little help I could give you. Others have complained on your talk page about endless discussions and your tenaciously holding on to sticks (well, straws, probably), and that won't make you any more friends. But I'm focused on this one. I hope you have other things to do beside what appears to be a vendetta against the ARS; I can assure you that those things are probably more likely to be rewarding to you as a Wikipedia editor. Drmies (talk) 14:54, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

  • Support, for reasons I detailed almost immediately above this section. Kevin (talk) 05:17, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support He doesn't seem to be likely to give up, no matter how many people try to reason with him. No sense having the same exact discussion every few days from the same determined editor. Dream Focus 08:13, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support TDA's editing here is becoming disruptive and a time-sink. Mathsci (talk) 08:42, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. The Devil's Advocate needs to go do something else for a while. 28bytes (talk) 10:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I was doing something else before Marshall's closure brought me right back into it. Even if the only the result of my efforts was the MfD going from keep to no consensus I would be satisified, because it would at least not be presented as a consensus in favor of what ARS is doing (something that I think should go without saying). The funny thing is, I was once more dragged into the ARS stuff because I was trying to cool off from another topic area by going on recent change patrol only to step into this shit again while doing that without even trying. Should you want to make this about conduct, I say you stow this talk of banning me from discussing this and let us all have a broader discussion about ARS in general that isn't going to get closed every few hours. I can provide more than enough evidence of disruptive behavior by more than "a few" editors.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 10:23, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Then do so. Your constant nebulous hints about "having evidence I could provide" are weakening your position and making it seem more like you have an anti-ARS WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality. (And a preemptive caution with regards to WP:CIVIL might not be amiss.) - The Bushranger One ping only 12:44, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Nobody Ent 13:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Sadly to be sure. Noting that the ban does not prevent you from !voting on any issues - just that you need to take a break from being Sisyphus yourself, as a minimum. Note: "bring up" should be "initiate", and change the "ANI or any other noticeboard" to "any page in projectspace" as being clearer and slightlyy more encompassing, and thus removing the stuff about "deletion review" etc. as it is covered as being in "projectspace".
      • User:The Devil's Advocate may not initiate anything on any page in projectspace directly or indirectly referring to the Article Rescue Squad.
    • Hoping this is pretty clear. Collect (talk) 13:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
      • Collect, thank you for rephrasing. As I said to Nobody Ent on my talk page (they kindly left me a note about having moved the section here and retitled it), I was tired when I wrote this up but I wanted to get it started. As for Nobody Ent's move, I've seen such topic ban discussions on ANI and thought it best to keep it in the ANI section that spawned it, but I have no problems with it being moved or edited. Thanks again, Drmies (talk) 14:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support, tendentious and disruptive crusading. postdlf (talk) 13:50, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Yup, support. User needs help to drop the stick and leave the deceased equine in peace.—S Marshall T/C 14:05, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • yes please, and I'm most definitely not aligned with ARS... Spartaz Humbug! 14:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. If there's evidence in the future of the type of behavior that TDA believes he's witnessing, then someone else will bring it to wider attention. TDA's recent contributions on this topic are rapidly approaching disruptive, and a topic ban will allow him to keep contributing elsewhere, unlike a full block for disruptive editing. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:47, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • support — Ched :  ?  14:51, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Not that I necessarily agree with Advocate's arguments, but this isn't the way to fix the problem. Shutting an editor up with a topic ban is more likely to frustrate that editor and cause him to quit the project than it is to make him see the errors of his ways. I see no reason why these concerns can't be resolved through normal means, i.e. allow his DRV to last the full 7 days, and when it closes the way we all know it will, then Advocate will have no further place from which to argue. Forcibly suppressing the good faith complaints of an editor is very "un-wiki", and should only be considered in extreme cases. —SW— comment 14:56, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Honestly, all I want is to have a discussion that actually lasts for a reasonable duration and is reviewed fairly by someone who doesn't have some sort of bias on the outcome (whatever the bias might be). So far the only discussion that has made it past a day was the deletion review.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 15:02, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Scotty, I think we are dealing with an extreme situation here. And if The Devil's Advocate is the only one to bring up these issues, then maybe that means it isn't much of an issue. Drmies (talk) 15:10, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I disagree that it is extreme enough that we have to tell Advocate the equivalent of "Just shut up already!" Advocate is being reasonable in his communication, he's not being uncivil, and he's not asking for unreasonable things (it's not uncommon for someone to complain about an early snow closure when the votes aren't unanimous). Unless I'm unaware of the full history of the situation (in which case, please enlighten me), a topic ban to prevent an editor from even expressing his opinions about a protected class of editors seems pretty extreme. Banning someone from starting ANI threads on a particular topic is one thing, but restricting someone from even mentioning certain editors is overly authoritarian. —SW— spill the beans 17:28, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't want him to shut up. I am not proposing a topic ban that would disallow him from expressing an opinion. The topic ban is to disallow him to start ANI threads, deletion reviews, etc (think TfD, for instance) about the ARS. "Restricting someone from even mentioning certain editors"--that's not what I said. Drmies (talk) 19:29, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
The topic ban includes a restriction preventing Advocate from making "complaints about ARS members (loosely defined) as regards their activities as ARS members (loosely defined)". I'd say that's pretty close to "restricting someone from even mentioning certain editors". It's like using a hatchet instead of a scalpel. —SW— confabulate 23:47, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict)Oppose pretty much per ScottyWong; I think that there has been quite enough discussion already about the various Arstefacts, but clearly The Devil's Advocate disagrees. It is difficult to know the best way to proceed with a such a dedicated horse-percussionist, but if the substance of his current complaint is that discussion is being stifled, it makes little sense to stifle it further. pablo 15:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment Drmies, I am the one starting the ANI discussions, but definitely not the only one who has concerns. The ANI discussion several weeks ago clearly revealed a lot of disapproval towards the Article Rescue Squadron as a whole. CrossMR and Mbisanz are two I can think of most readily who raised objections about the list this time around.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 15:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Sure, but there has always been disagreement with the ARS. Their rescue template is gone now, which I'm sure has appeased a lot of people. (For the record, I don't disagree with the deletion, but I was always more bothered by its injudicious application, which all of a sudden became a topic due to one single editor's activities). But how those threads evolved and were closed reveals a greater impatience with the complaint on the part of the community than it does disagreement with the ARS and how it operates. And here we are again, caught up in yet another discussion. Drmies (talk) 15:33, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Further note, look at all the delete votes in the TfD over the rescue tag. Most of those editors I have not seen comment on this recent issue at all.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 15:31, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Ahem. I believe I commented on a thread involving the ARS list that it looked open to collusion and maybe they were trending in that direction, but my comments were refuted and the broader community didn't care; so I dropped it. I then supported the quick closure of the MFD on that topic at DRV as procedurally proper. I haven't been the one starting these discussions or filling walls of text in them. MBisanz talk 15:47, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Moving to oppose, based on the draconian phrasing of the topic ban and TDA's agreeing to use more appropriate DR venues. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 01:14, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Weak support, mostly because, whether he's right or wrong about the ARS, it ought to be clear to TDA that his threads about it are not gaining traction on ANI, and aren't likely to. The Devil's Advocate, if you feel that the ARS or its members are being disruptive, you need to take it to an RfC at this point, rather than continually tilting at windmills here on the admin noticeboards. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:49, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Can't exactly take it to an RfC if I am banned from bringing it up altogether. Honestly, if editors here committed to having an RfC on this general issue of the Article Rescue Squadron I would have no issue accepting a ban from mentioning this at places like ANI for some fixed duration of time so long as there is allowance that I be able to contribute to that RfC discussion.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 16:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Hm. I think the wording that's up there now is not the wording I saw when I made my initial comment here, or else I wasn't totally awake when I read it. In any case, I'll specify now so I make more sense: I would support TDA being prohibited from opening new AN, ANI, VPP, etc threads about the ARS, to encourage him to use an RfC as the next step in dispute resolution. I very strongly oppose a comprehensive topic ban that prevents him from participating in discussions with or about the ARS, or nominating articles under their protection for deletion and the like. The objective here is to funnel the dispute into proper dispute resolution procedures, not to protect the ARS from criticism. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Fluffernutter, my proposal (or Collect's rewording) does not prevent, I hope, DA from participating in discussions. Please check to see if your phrasing, TDA [is] prohibited from opening new AN, ANI, VPP, etc threads about the ARS, agrees with my (poorly written) proposal or Collect's proposition. I think it does. Drmies (talk) 16:37, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
The wording "This includes [...] complaints about ARS members (loosely defined) as regards their activities as ARS members (loosely defined)" is the sticking point in your proposal, Drmies. It would prohibit him from following dispute resolution procedures or, quite frankly, ever criticising ARS members' activities, anywhere, no matter who started the discussion or where it was. Basically, I'm on board with "don't do this here," but I can't support "and also, you may not express a negative opinion about this protected class of people or their club, period." A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:46, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I want them to not initiate such complaints about the ARS or about editorsinregardtotheirARSactivities, so to speak. My concern is that complaints will be filed about individual members that turn out to be, in a more or less direct way as the case may be, about the ARS as a whole--such as the very existence of a list of articles that are brought to the attention of the ARS. But I will leave this to the community. What about Collect's short and sweet sentence? Drmies (talk) 16:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Collect's sentence ("User:The Devil's Advocate may not initiate anything on any page in projectspace directly or indirectly referring to the Article Rescue Squad.") would also prevent TDA from pursuing dispute resolution via places like RfC entirely (and might, in effect, end up banning him from AfD and DRV, since creating anything in those spaces could be considered an indirect reference to the project that patrols them), so I also can't agree with that one. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:05, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support per fluff --Guerillero | My Talk 15:55, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support I'm going to support this to try to help this area of the project calm down. MBisanz talk 15:57, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Question - per sandwich, any chance on allowing him one RfC, on whatever this is? Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:25, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Here are the relevant pages: first ANI discussion involving the list, second ANI discussion involving the list, and deletion review on the list.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 20:01, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I see there seems to be a dispute about canvassing. I see allot of disputes about what is canvassing and what is notice, in allot of areas, so I don't know if you can be blamed for that. Perhaps, an RfC or mediation can help you guys out.Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:10, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support: if for no other reason than that he's not exactly telling the truth about the timing of the DRV closure...it was closed less than 24 hrs. early according to the signature Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 17:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
That's not true. I can only assume you misunderstood something. The discussion was placed in February 10, but I had actually posted it on February 11th so that may be the cause of your confusion.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 19:27, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
The discussion wasn't closed until February 16... Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 20:05, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose The Devil's Advocate doesn't seem especially annoying and I don't see why he should be singled out when there are other editors with a longer history of such agitation: Snotty, Reyk, Tarc, &c. Warden (talk) 20:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Firstly, I want to say that Warden has shown a lot of maturity by the first part of his oppose and I just want to note that it has increased my respect for him. Secondly, although I strongly respect Drmies, I can't help but feel this is retaliation by the ARS. I don't mean to assume bad faith here and I know TDA's ANI threads have become a bit tedious, but trying to silence his concerns is inappropriate. The specific part I disagree with is "complaints about ARS members (loosely defined) as regards their activities as ARS members (loosely defined)." I would prefer a tighter definition, not a loose one.--v/r - TP 21:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment I kinda agree with this. I think the best approach would be TDA pursuing an RFC at this point. He wants a broader discussion about the ARS, and he should be afforded the option of pursuing it rather than squelching him altogether. I don't think he really wants to continue piddling away with canvassing accusations around one specific AFD at a time. I do think the repeated ANI listings have become somewhat disruptive, so I support the nomination only insofar as it might prevent that practice from continuing, but I oppose it being so loosely-defined as to prevent TDA from pursuing the most valid avenue for his concerns: an RFC. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 21:07, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I am not opposed to a rewrite. I can live with Fluffernutter's TDA being prohibited from opening new AN, ANI, VPP, etc threads about the ARS. Tparis, I am not a member of the ARS; if I'm retaliating, it's not on their behalf. (I'm actually not sure if they have membership; I don't have their card or user box.) As for Colonel Warden, I began respecting him a lot more a few years ago already, though I make it a matter of principle to always disagree with him even when he's right. Drmies (talk) 21:48, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose This seems like overkill. There are a lot of users with much more of a history of anti-ARS activism. AniMate 21:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support It's just gotta stop! Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Start the RFC and have wider community involvement. But silencing an editor on a wiki-political topic through a ban? Wow. It was a silly DRV but that leads to this? Tellingly we don't see the laundry list of links to disruptive actions that we normally would in this instance. I'm a little stunned that this was even proposed. Shadowjams (talk) 22:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
    • That's probably because this was started at AN/I, where the regulars have gotten to be able to set their clocks by the anti-ARS threads this editor has created. - The Bushranger One ping only 23:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
      • What is? That there's no laundry list? You'll have an inaccurate watch if this is how you set it. I saw 2 ANI discussions (linked above), the one from over a month ago, and then the DRV. One of which was closed by Drmies. Is this the low bar for disruptive now? These seem to be separate complaints in each one, each in response to separate actions by different people. All seem reasonable issues to open (although none of them have consensus for the action TDA wants). TDA should probably cool it only because these generate senseless walls of text that don't seem to go anywhere (which is why we should have an RfC, which might be a senseless wall of text that has the potential to go somewhere). But nowhere in any of this is a reason for a topic ban, particularly when the primary supporters seem to be the people that TDA aggravated. Shadowjams (talk) 23:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
        • "TDA should probably cool it only because these generate senseless walls of text that don't seem to go anywhere" - yes, that's pretty much the reason there's a topic ban proposal. If you can persuade him to cool it without a topic ban I'll be happy to switch to "oppose". 28bytes (talk) 23:17, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
          • I see a distinction between what he should choose to do for sake of efficiency and what the community might force him to do. Silencing someone for what is the wiki equivalent of political speech sets a dangerous precedent. Undoubtedly someone will declare that this is in fact disruptive, but I don't think an objective outside viewer would see this as disruptive, and especially not rising to the level of a ban. Shadowjams (talk) 23:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
            • That's a fair distinction, but at some point I didn't hear that kicks in, and I think we've reached that point. Really, if TDA were to say "OK, I get that this is annoying a lot of people, I'll drop the stick", we could just archive this and move on. 28bytes (talk) 23:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
            • Well, there was another ANI discussion about the DRV close provided at the tippy-top of this section, which is what sparked this proposal. All the cards have been played here as far as I am concerned, though, and obviously the deck is stacked against me when it comes to this area of the site. Seems an RfC is the next logical step.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 00:23, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment None of this prevents anyone from participating in a discussion - it simply prevents TDA from being the one initiating anything about the "ARS" - which seems the prevailing consensus at this point. Cheers. Collect (talk) 00:10, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • oppose Did you take this to RfC? or try other forms of dispute resolution? What were the results when you tried mediation? No compelling reason for a ban other than a group that can't take the heat.--Crossmr (talk) 00:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Move to close No action. Looks like DA agreed to drop any stick he may have been holding, at least with respect to running around with it on AN/I and AN. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • comment If this can all be resolved without more fuss, I'm fully willing to withdraw my support of a ban. I always prefer to see fewer restrictions, unless they are needed. — Ched :  ?  01:44, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Devil's Advocate, what do you say? Will you drop this stick? Drmies (talk) 04:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Actually, that's what I want to know as well. Someone else saying that TDA dropped the stick is no substitue for a direct statement from the user. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:21, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
      • I was referring to his last comment in response to the Shadowjams Oppose above, where DA is responding to 28 bytes, which is about 7 comments above, this one. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:45, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
    • I don't think WP:HORSE ever applied, but I don't think there is anything else to do at ANI or DRV. My opinion is that all options have been exhausted here and so it is time to move it somewhere more appropriate where disruption is a lot less likely, such as an RfC as has been suggested.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:55, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support the AN[I] part, oppose the XfD part. I'm tired of this repeated drama over virtually nothing. If more templates need to be deleted etc., there are clear venues for that. AN[I] is not among them. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 04:39, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Reluctant support [Edit: Switched to oppose, below] Based on the reply to Shadowjams and this reply to Drmies above, it still doesn't appear TDA will let this go without the community stepping in. I watched many other editors and administrators attempt to convince TDA to let this go and not make additional posts without evidence of wrongdoing, but it simply hasn't stopped. I myself stated in the discussion TDA initiated regarding ARS and myself: "although if he continues the behaviours he has been exhibiting, is it highly likely the community itself will ultimately put a stop to it" so it isn't like he had no way of knowing what would happen if he continued these same behaviours. --Tothwolf (talk) 20:31, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Toth, your comments towards me elsewhere can certainly give people an idea of why I wouldn't really pay your objections much mind. Indeed, anyone can go to your talk page right now to see what you did there in response to a comment I left asking you to stop making accusations of bad faith. You saying that your support for a ban is "reluctant" is belied by your comments elsewhere.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 21:17, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Sigh. This doesn't really help you. Yes, perhaps I was a little grumpy when I hatted your comments on my talk page earlier in the week. Perhaps I even could have just ignored them instead of hatting them. You immediately turning around and filing another discussion thread while lashing out at me because I hatted them only served to further escalate matters though. In fact, if it would help deescalate things, I suppose I can unhat them. --Tothwolf (talk) 02:48, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
[Edit: To clarify, TDA took issue with the wikilinks I included while hatting his comments on my talk page. --Tothwolf (talk) 08:01, 18 February 2012 (UTC)]
Just so anyone here understands. It was not just that he hatted my comments, but how he hatted them. Last comment here on this personal dispute.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 06:27, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Good grief. I offer an olive branch and you try to bite off my arm? --Tothwolf (talk) 07:27, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment As some are wanting me to be clear, I don't see anything more that should or could be reasonably brought to ANI or deletion. You can call it "dropping the stick" if you like, though I see it as all legitimate options being exhausted with regards to this area and the MfD. I should also note that, in the ANI discussion that prompted this proposal, I raised more issues about the DRV close than S Marshall not being an admin. As I had no interaction with the user prior to the DRV I had no reason to think he was in such good standing concerning that space that mentioning his non-admin status would spark the reaction it did. Had I known that, I would have focused on those other issues I had with his closure so as not to offend him or others who know him. All the same, I see no good reason to try and re-argue his closure given the level of support given for it.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 07:07, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support The Devil's Advocate is heading to arbcom sooner or later...disruptive in numerous forums and articles...tedious, time consuming and not here for anything other than general anarchy...folks need to open their eyes...he was on a 30 day topic ban on 9/11 related articles...once the ban was lifted, he resumed his regularly scheduled programming...has two frivilous Wikiquette Assistance requests going on at the same time...been blocked twice in the last 3 months...now disruptive to the ARS...what's next one wonders.--MONGO 07:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Hmm, I was wondering when you would show up MONGO.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 07:19, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
The other issue was just settled through a bit of kind and thoughtful discussion. Maybe you should try it MONGO. Feel free to come to my talk page to sort out our dispute amicably.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 08:27, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Colonel Warden has a point, but there is much more to it than that. The more I look at this, the more I get the sense that TDA honestly doesn't realize how he comes across to others. Maybe some of this is overenthusiasm, maybe some of it is just not stopping long enough to consider others' views, I really don't know. Regardless of the outcome of this discussion, I hope TDA will slow down and consider how his actions might come across to others. --Tothwolf (talk) 08:40, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Although I may disagree with the delete nominations, and the number of them may have been excessive TDA seems responsive to what is going on and bans may not be needed. There does seem to be adequate opposition to TDA's proposals to make them more than a waste of time. In my opinion a deletion review about a close happening too early, should not have been closed early, despite an overwhelming consensus. So I do have support for a fraction of TDA's issues. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support I was not going to comment or !vote in this whatsoever - until I saw the "defence of my actions" below. Now I have zero choice. The actions are not defendable - especially in the way they claim! (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 11:42, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support per the "defence". Wow. Begoon talk 12:35, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. Count me among the numbers who wasn't going to vote until I read the defense. McJEFF (talk) 02:41, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
I realize that was a mistake. That is why I crossed it out.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 16:30, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment I would be willing to accept a ban from creating threads at ANI/AN about ARS or nominating ARS project pages for deletion or review if it would not preclude me from initiating an RfC or other forms of dispute resolution. That, I believe, will address any concerns about disruption.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:00, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Would an admin please close this along those lines?--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 23:46, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Just because you struck the comments, it clearly does not mean that you don't believe them. Right about now, this is probably for your own good (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 11:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
It is for my own good to deny me any form of dispute resolution on the basis of a proposal from someone like Drmies? Sorry, but that is not even for Wikipedia's good to let an editor with a vendetta dictate how an opponent is to be dealt with.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 17:20, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Has got to end. The defense suggests the problem has been here before and addressed previously. . --DHeyward (talk) 05:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't know why people are reading something I struck out. Those remarks I made were incredibly vague and simplistic and having read them again I realize why people reacted the way they did. Unfortunately, it's a very complicated issue and I don't think anything short of a very long explanation or exhaustive list of diffs will adequately portray the nature of what has taken place. Right now, I probably have more than enough evidence building up to make a compelling case at an RfC. I don't see why I should be denied that on the basis of me going to ANI creating a mess, isn't going to ANI almost always going to create a mess?--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 17:19, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Topic ban proposed: Motion to close

... with no action; let TDA open an RFC if required, this will at least attract wider participation and perhaps be a better opportunity to gauge the opinion of the wider community. pablo 20:21, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

With 17/24 in support of the topic ban (a support ratio of 70.8%), this should be closed, but with the topic ban enacted. McJEFF (talk) 05:40, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I would be in favor of leaving this open a little longer. I may yet change my support above, depending on TDA's response. There are a few other editors above who are also on the fence. --Tothwolf (talk) 05:52, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
While I am the subject of this proposal and my comments don't mean too much, it should be noted that several people who supported a ban on creating discussions at ANI about ARS oppose other aspects of the proposal Drmies put up. Also, while not approving of the "stick" description of the situation, I do think there is nothing left to bring up at ANI. Honestly, I am thinking that ANI just may not be the place to bring up such divisive issues at all with its "wild west" tendencies.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 08:34, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
A close with "no action" = a position that a clear consensus != a clear consensus, alas. More people have opined than at most topic bans. Cheers. Collect (talk) 08:38, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
You're certainly right about the current consensus, this was a perhaps premature attempt. I would like to see this boil lanced for once and for all; I thought this had been done here, here, here, and especially here, (as well as various other TfD and MfD, but it seems not). pablo 11:21, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
"Consensus" does not mean a head count. People need to remember this, especially when talking about a community ban of any nature. The person proposing this wording, it should be noted, has been one of the editors whose conduct was at issue in one of those ANI discussions and has made vexatious and uncivil remarks towards me in several places.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Continued discussion

After I changed my opinion from support to oppose above, discussion with TDA has continued on my talk page here and on Crossmr's talk page here. Given the current direction of these discussions, I don't think TDA is willing to drop the issue and it would appear that he intends to simply continue this same mess in an RFC. --Tothwolf (talk) 18:49, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Several people support an RfC as the next step of dispute resolution. Involved editors have moved that I be denied any means to bring this issue up anywhere ever again, but two editors have changed their votes to opposing the ban on the basis of me suggesting an RfC as opposed to continued activity at ANI.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 23:16, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
The only way TDA ever drops an issue is via a block or topic ban...as I said above, this editor is here primarily to create drama and cause anarchy.MONGO 20:03, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
If so, the topic ban would have to be more broad than what had been proposed above. As proposed it would not prohibit him from continuing via RFC. In fact, is the village pump even considered a noticeboard? If not, then that leaves yet another hole in the proposed topic ban. --Tothwolf (talk) 23:33, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
The term "broadly construed" would likely mean an RfC and any other form of dispute resolution would be denied to me. Something that should be understood is that Drmies is responsible for the wording and he has not only been the subject of one of the ANI discussions he is suggesting are disruptive (on top of having closed the previous one despite having been involved in use of the rescue list), but has repeatedly made vexatious and uncivil remarks towards me (in the DRV he literally voted "endorse anything this editor tries to overturn"). I think an uninvolved admin should just toss his proposed wording aside.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:31, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not about winning. TDA, let it go. You've voiced your concerns in numerous places and if the behaviours of individual ARS members become disruptive, there are more than enough editors who are aware of your concerns to handle it. --Tothwolf (talk) 07:20, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
I get tired of people saying "let it go" because behind that is an implication that my concern is trivial and opposed by a consensus, but that is not accurate at all as canvassing is a very serious issue and several editors echo my concerns about ARS. Part of the reason I also object to people citing WP:HORSE is because that essay explicitly refers to a debate coming to a "natural end" and that implies again that a clear consensus of uninvolved editors has had sufficient time to review the issue and conclude in favor of one side. That is not what has happened. What has happened is that involved editors have repeatedly been trying to shut down the discussion either by flooding it with votes or repeatedly closing the discussions way too early. The result is all discussions save the DRV were never continually open more than ten hours, and not a single thread made it past a day. Sorry, but I am not going to accept being disallowed from so much as starting an RfC or otherwise taking it to the next step of dispute resolution.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:01, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Defense of my actions

I would like this to be my final comment on the proposal above and the focus of any administrative review. I opened just two ANI discussions regarding the list (the first just focused on the list, with the second being to note a specific case where it was being used for canvassing). An MfD was initiated almost immediately during the first discussion and closed within an hour-and-a-half. When the rapid MfD close was repeatedly being cited as reason for why those ANI discussions should not be happening (a close I felt was inappropriate as most of the comments came from ARS members or regular defenders of the ARS) I decided to take the issue there. As the MfD was reclosed before there was even time allowed for me to comment, let alone to notify editors who had participated in the ANI discussions, I went to DRV and asked for it to be relisted. I didn't ask it be overturned mind you, only that it be allowed to remain open for a decent amount of time, rather than just an hour. When an editor closed the DRV as a "snow endorse" I noted to him that most of the endorse votes were from people who were in the ARS or voted keep in the MfD and that there were several strong votes for relisting, but he essentially responded that he was planning to close the discussion that way from the beginning but was just waiting for enough votes to "prove to me" that it could not turn out any other way. So, I brought up his comment at ANI and asked that the DRV be re-opened and allowed to run its course. This is what is being called disruptive and WP:NOTBURO.

It wasn't like I was trying to re-argue the issue in a separate and unrelated avenue after a full airing of discussion because one avenue proved unfavorable. When the ANI discussions kept getting closed either directly or indirectly because of the MfD, I tried to take the issue to the MfD. Given that I was unable to actually take the issue to the MfD because a very rapid reclose by an involved admin prevented me from leaving a comment, I went to DRV to get it re-opened. When an editor who closed it on the basis of WP:SNOW responded to my request that it be re-opened in a way that blatantly indicated a preconceived bias towards endorsing the MfD close I brought that bias up at ANI to try and get the DRV re-opened. All of this was prompted, not because I was somehow "keeping my eye" on the ARS to find ways to "get them" (I had actually pretty much stopped paying attention to them after the TfD), but because I nominated an article for deletion that was subsequently put on the rescue list when the discussion was favoring delete. No heinous agenda, just me, on new page patrol, saying "that doesn't belong here" and being met with a whole lot of ARS canvassing for the second time in a month.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 23:18, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* Sigh. --Tothwolf (talk) 07:23, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
"I'm going to put down my machine gun soon. Right after I finish expending the 12,350,000,000,998 rounds I have left." ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 11:35, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Apparently those 2 rounds were spent shooting themself in each foot with the poorly-considered "defense" above. I expect a whack of !vote changing now (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 11:45, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I tried every way I knew of to talk TDA out of continuing with this mess. A number of other editors and administrators have also tried. I don't know what else I can possibly say to him. --Tothwolf (talk) 12:00, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Mind you, I said rather plainly before that I was not going back to ANI with this. All I did above was summarize what I have already said so people get the full picture.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 14:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Let me get this straight: "second time in a month" refers to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Luxology and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Modo (software)? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 12:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
No, it refers to the Sal's Pizza AfD. It is linked right there in the second ANI discussion.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 14:44, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Here is the AfD that prompted it: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sal's Pizza (Dallas). My first ANI discussion about the list is here. It was a response to the AfD. It was not because of some sort of "vendetta" but simply because of me running into the ARS twice in two separate deletion discussions within a month. The second discussion mentioning the list was the first one where I mentioned the AfD, because with the first discussion I didn't want it to look like I was just trying to get votes. However, when that first discussion got closed I asked admin Salvio about it and he said if I had a specific case I should file a new ANI report about it.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 15:23, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Allow me an RfC and I will be fine with anything else.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 15:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

That is somewhat like saying "fine, I'll stop tossing bottle rockets at your person if you'll let me fling a tactical nuke at your metropolitan area," but I actually support an RFC on this subject. Since I inexplicably joined ARS a few weeks ago, I think about 90% of the Content Rescue List submissions have been fine, helpful things, but some of them do feel a bit problematic; and I think, either way, it would be to the community's long-term benefit (if, certainly, also its short-term pain) to hash this out formally. FWIW, I didn't think the Sal's Pizza bit was problematic in the slightest, but perhaps I'm speaking with a different set of filters from your own. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 20:25, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
No, it is more like, "I'll stop having pedantic arguments about every little issue and if you'll let me discuss the underlying cause." Part of the reason a ban is a problem is because each of these instances was prompted by an article I put at AfD getting tagged by ARS. What am I to do if that happens again? This proposal will essentially mean I won't be able to do anything at all about the issue. Honestly, I don't see why I would want to get involved with AfD if any discussion I start could be hit with canvassed keep votes from ARS without me so much as being able to draw attention to it.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 16:44, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Campaign for "santorum" neologism RFC close request

YesY Done--v/r - TP 14:57, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This close is on the near horizon - there is no objection to the fact that it is ready for closing - one user just wants to say - please close this - the comments below are mine - this is a hotly disputed issue and needs a strong close to resolve the dispute -

  • Involved Users are looking for two combined experienced administrators, that have no ascertainable involvement in this sector under discussion and are willing to close the complicated and lengthy RFC discussion on the "santorum" neologism article. - Talk:Campaign for "santorum" neologism#RfC - Youreallycan 22:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • They should also not have a strong history of taking a particular POV on BLP issues. Be——Critical 22:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
WP:BLP - is an en wikipedia policy not an issue - Youreallycan 22:26, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
There might be people who have been, just for example, involved in forming the policy, and would have the policy go further. At any rate, the admin should come to this fresh without strong POVs about how the policy should be applied. Be——Critical 23:01, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes, it's a policy, and one which people can have different views on. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:34, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Right, and as with any policy, editors can have a strong POV on how it should be applied. That's all I was saying. Be——Critical 23:01, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Colleagues, the administrator who chooses to close this will make sure they are uninvolved. You don't need to propose criteria for who can close this. Jehochman Talk 23:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Just a side observation on one of the comments above, while BLP is a policy, there can still be “BLP issues” with an article….it’s standard terminology. Dreadstar ☥ 23:49, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I see no harm in letting the RfC run the nominal 30 days; although the count seems clear, a new argument was presented only a few days ago. Perhaps, if it is let run, a really convincing argument will be presented on one side or the other. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:23, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
    The harm, though not deadly, is that the talk page is already at 592,000 bytes, about twice the length of The Great Gatsby and not exactly the great American novel. The longer we wait, the more noise the closing administrator will have to sort through. Ongoing discussion is still civil, but is mostly a matter of repeating the same points and soapboxing. 59 editors weighed in during the first 14 days but we've had only 1 new editor per day since then. If we were making popcorn it's safe to say all but the last few kernels have popped and if we leave it on the stove much longer it's only going to smoke. - Wikidemon (talk) 08:25, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
    So move the RfC to a subpage; it's been done before. The problem (aside from protecting the RfC from archiving while active) is that other discussions arguments are ongoing; for example, the renaming sections need to be closed and possibly reopened as a discussion to find an acceptable name. Personally, I find it possible for a neutral admin to find that WP:BLP would be clearly violated, which would override WP:CONSENUS; I think it would be violated, but not clearly so. A close might not be in favor of the majority. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:36, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I think we can take our chances, as even you feel it's not a clear violation. If you feel that way, an admin will be hard pressed to say that the consensus on the proper interpretation of BLP is with the minority. Nice metaphor Wikidemon (; Be——Critical 09:36, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I think Arthur was not making that claim as "clearly" as you indicate. The political editors may not be as attuned to BLP as the ones who deal with BLP every week. This is one case where the background of editors with specific regard to the issues raised should be weighted by any closing admin. Cheers. Collect (talk) 09:40, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Volunteer I'm willing to volunteer as an uninvolved admin. I previously closed a Santorum RFC on whether or not to use the word 'vulger' in the lead. I've not participated at the article on the politician or the neologism at all. My only concern is that I've been involved in a dispute with BeCritical in the past so if s/he feels I can't be impartial then that's fine.--v/r - TP 14:01, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Volunteer - No past history whatsoever. Xavexgoem (talk) 01:15, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I can help out too if needed. Closed the recent merge RFC, but otherwise I don't remember any other history. T. Canens (talk) 05:45, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
As a comment / request, please don't encourage the involved users on the page to get into opposition research on the suitability and bias of all the potential closers. There's been some attempt to negotiate the closing procedure and specify the choice of admins, and a lot of discussion on that. Speaking as one of the involved editors myself (though I don't think the issue is terribly important, I do have a strong opinion), I trust the integrity of any admin who feels they are impartial and knowledgeable enough to weigh in. The fairest result, if not the most predictable, is to take our chances and let the admin corps do what they're elected to do. Some people asked for two or even three independent admins. Now we have three volunteers so why not huddle or something amongst your administrator selves, and get to it? - Wikidemon (talk) 07:49, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I've followed that discussion (and talk page) for the last little while as an administrator. I would recommend that three uninvolved admins get together and decide on a close. It's going to be a contentious decision either way, so better to do by committee - no-one knows which way any of the three "voted", so you will all be hated equally but only a third as much. Franamax (talk) 05:17, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

So is somebody going to actually do it?? Be——Critical 15:00, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Triumvirate

New subsection for the triumvirate of closing admins—TParis (talk · contribs), Timotheus Canens (talk · contribs), and Xavexgoem (talk · contribs)—to discuss the close.

For background about a triumvirate panel of closing admins, see the January 2011 discussion at User talk:Mkativerata/Archive9#Triumvirate, where Mkativerata (talk · contribs) wrote:

Here's an informal proposal that I'm minded to take to WT:Deletion process for approval to proceed on a trial basis.

Proposal: An administrator closing a highly contentious XfD may choose to refer the closure to a panel of three administrators. Highly contentious XfDs usually mean XfDs with an exceptionally high number of contributors, where it appears to the closing administrator that different administrators could reasonably close the debate with different outcomes.
The closing administrator is to refer the closure to a panel by posting at WP:AN to solicit the input of two other uninvolved administrators. The three administrators will then discuss at the talk page of the XfD how the debate should be closed. The administrator who referred the close to the panel shall act as the informal chair of the panel. After a reasonable period for comment (preferably within 24 hours), the chair shall close the XfD on the basis of the discussion and give reasons for the close that reflect the discussion. If the administrators on the panel disagree on the appropriate outcome and there is a clear 2-1 majority in support of one outcome, the majority view is to prevail.
I think for this proposal or something like it to win community acceptance, it would have to:
  • impose as minimal bureaucracy as possible;
  • make a convincing case that there is a problem to be fixed; and
  • make a convincing case that it will help fix the problem. --Mkativerata (talk) 22:12, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
The first use of a triumvirate was at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive227#RFC on the primary topic of China, where the admins discussed the close at WP:AN. Their discussion and analyses and the result were then posted to Talk:Chinese civilization/Archive 26#Requested move August 2011 and Talk:Chinese civilization/Archive 26#Discussion among the triumvirate panel.

I have contacted TParis, Timotheus Canens, and Xavexgoem to review the discussion at Talk:Campaign for "santorum" neologism#RfC - Should spreadingsantorum.com be hyperlinked within the article body and/or "External Links"?. Cunard (talk) 02:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

One preliminary matter: should we do this at a subpage of the talk page, or at AN? I'm more inclined to believe that doing it on a subpage is better than AN. T. Canens (talk) 09:30, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Never mind, looks like we are using a subpage. T. Canens (talk) 19:04, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

[edit] Update on the meta-wiki RfC

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
As you might have imagined, the "univolved" meta-wiki admin who preemptively closed [11] the RfD on the "RfC" initiated there by User:Mbz1 on User:Gwen Gale, was also the one who kept it after "judging consensus" after he allowed the RfD discussion to proceed, pro forma. [12] This is after he decided there is no defamation [13] in the RfC itself. He also refused to pinpoint any previous discussion where RfCs had been kept at RfD, although claiming it's some sort of tradition of meta-wiki [14]. Furthermore he previously stated that the RfD (and not the RfC) was an "abuse of the project" (i.e. of meta-wiki) [15]. And this closure by User:Nemo bis is the 2nd "uninvolved" closure of that RfD. The first was performed by another meta-wiki admin User:Micki [16], who had outright !voted in the RfD [17].

I'm still pondering what to do about the whole situation. One would be to start one of those undeletable RfC/Us on his conduct as an administrator on meta-wiki itself. Another would be to ask stewards or the WMF to desysop him for aiding and abetting harassment, and for disregarding community consensus. Right now, a discussion (itself refactored by one of the "uninvolved" administrators in question) about the closure is taking place on m:Meta_talk:Requests_for_deletion#What.27s_a_proper_closure_and_how_to_deal_with_closures. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 14:12, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

(ec)Just a note but this is probably the wrong place for this. Since the intent is clearly to discuss the conduct of an Admin it should be taken to ANI rather than here. I again notice that no one bothered to info the user on the discussion. --Kumioko (talk) 14:14, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
The previous discussion on this topic was held on WP:AN, so this seemed the proper venue for the followup. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 14:17, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I see I'm not the only one to describe the situation in those terms [18][19][20] or propose similar courses of action [21]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 14:16, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Fair enough but it still seems appropriate to let the affected editor/admin know about the discussion. --Kumioko (talk) 14:27, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
They have been notified. In the case of Nemo bis, again. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 14:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
The simplest effective thing to do may be to stay cool and allow things to sort themselves out without provocation. Insulting other users, or othe wikis, is rarely constructive - certainly not in this case.
The original request could have been resolved sensibly without this drama if it had not been presented in an inflammatory way. For similar examples of 'apparent canvassing' by experts in a field who visit a deletion discussion without full context, visit AfD any week of the year. The response is often overreaction against whatever position benefited from the alleged canvassing, no matter how valid the assumptions of the inflammatory arguments are. – SJ + 02:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • At this point, there is no other conclusion to draw other than the administrative function of Meta is completely broken. They lack the structure to conduct reviews of administrative actions, they block users on capricious whim. Several are completely incapable of reconsidering actions they have taken and just plow through with a "you're from en.wiki so just GTFO" mentality. From the beginning, this has been less about Mbz1's harassment of an en.wiki admin and more of a territorial pissing match when Meta admins long used to running that place like a feudal estate had no idea what to do when called out. If there were ever a time for the WMF to intervene at the project level, to delete that atrocious RfC on Gwen Gale and to emergency desysop several admins (Nemo, Micki, probably others), this is it. Meta is an embarrassment. Tarc (talk) 15:31, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Note that meta:Requests for comment/Meta-wiki requests for comment on users is still open, where a proposal to limit the scope of the RfC process on Meta is currently running at something like 26 to 15 in favor. If successful, that would end RfCs like the one above. I can understand how the Meta admins could be unhappy about a proposal to quash one of their own procedures as useless, but only for the benefit of one specific person who has friends on en.wiki; limiting the scope overall sounds like a fairer approach. Wnt (talk) 16:12, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Given how admins there judge consensus, it's probably a waste of time at this point. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:50, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
      • I would be careful with generalising too much, AsCIIn2Bme. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
        • Yeah, right. See below. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:05, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
      • ASCIIn2Bme - I don't like that tone you set here. There are enough admins on meta who do not involve themselves with that type of politics. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
        • I'm willing to assume that that is true. (I see that you're an admin there too.) Why was then this discussion closed by two involved admins in a row? What are the meta-wiki safeguards against that happening (again)? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
          Both admins felt they were closing neutrally, not according to their personal opinions, and explained their choices. Both indicated they were open to someone else reverting their decision, which is standard. Reasonable questions have been raised about the second closing admin's involvedness, so another admin may well review or remove the current closing rationale while that happens. This can take a couple of days to sort out, for long discussions where many people have already been involved. (there does not seem to be urgency here, else there are other options for fast resolution.) The real missing element is a Meta-group that can handle requests touching on user behavior across wikis, including this RfC-RfD-crosswikidebate. Most Meta admins and editors disapprove of the sort of drama represented by this set of discussions, and treat it by ignoring it. For the record, this often works better than "insult, block, rinse, repeat".
          Comments on the Requests_for_comment/Global_requests_committee proposal and help making it better (this likely does not mean "more like en:wp arbcom" :-) would be welcome. – SJ + 02:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
      • I don't know, and I don't know. Also here on en.wikipedia, there are administrators who are totally ignorant about certain parts of the processes that take place in other corners of en.wikipedia. I am, on meta.wikipedia, totally ignorant of that part of the process. I do note, that I know that on some wikis processes are harsh (and actually, I am really afraid that en.wikipedia is going to follow suit), and I am willing to entertain the idea that that harshness has already penetrated meta.wikimedia. The problem is, en.wikipedia does not have any authority over meta, and meta does not have any authority over Wikipedia. I'll try to have a quick look at the situations there (but I do not promise anything). Until now, I agree that wikis should as much as possible keep things to themselves, and if editors go to another wiki, then that other wiki has to deal with it. I don't know the full situation, but I think that if editors here suggest that something on meta needs deletion because it has already been discussed on en.wikipedia, or even shut down meta because things don't need to be discussed there may be in basis correct, but it is out of the authority of en.wikipedia, and there will be undue weight on the discussions in such cases. Just as en.wikipedia would not accept an influx of de.wikipedia editors who would try to get something deleted here on en.wikipedia because they don't like it on de.wikipedia, I think that meta.wikimedia has similar issues - things on meta don't get deleted because one wiki pounds the discussion and pushes it to one side. I'll have a look, but as I said, I don't guarantee anything. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:45, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
        • Sorry, but can we please root out, once and for all, that old "Just as en.wikipedia would not accept an influx of de.wikipedia editors..." canard? I've said it before, but apparently it needs repeating: No, en-wp editors going to Meta is not in any way comparable to editors from one content wiki going to another. That's what Meta is all about. Unlike every other project, Meta is the one project that is not supposed to have a local dedicated community of "regulars", but where every experienced editor from every other project automatically has the status of a regular, at any time. That's why it's called Meta. And any of the self-styled "regulars" there that react with this kind of reservation to people coming over to deal with a situation that affects them need their butts kicked, is what. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:53, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
          That's ok, as I advocated both on Meta and in the above topic. However, some of the en.wp editors coming to Meta in good faith, assume that the procedures and policies over there are or should be exactly the same as they are on en.wp, and sometimes they just insist on this and are not prepared to make concessions. This, I must say, does not particularly help to reach consensus. One example of this, but not even the most prominent one, is that some users request that mbz1 were globally blocked - even though it clearly contradicts to the existing practices and the proposed policy, which says that someone can only globally blocked if they are in trouble and have been banned in more than one project, not if they are clearly disruptive on one or even two projects. And changing this policy can be dangerous - for instance, I was once banned on a minor project I had zero edits on. I can give more relevant examples pertaining to the Meta closure request and the deletion request, but I hope I made my point clear.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
          • There's even an essay there about that m:Enwikipediathink, and there probably are others. However, as Fut.Perf. said a few times in similar discussions over there, some of the rules in en.wiki are based in basic ethics, e.g. not closing a discussion in which you participated as "uninvolved", particularly not claiming "strength of arguments" when the closer's argument was in a 1:2 minority. I suppose this one of the ethical behaviors we take for granted in the West, but perhaps admins whose main experience is in Balkans' Wikipedias just don't see this as an obvious necessity. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 10:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
  • ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ In response to the above comment, whilst I am mildly irritated to learn that there is a page on Meta discussing en.wp as if it were part of the Nineteen Eighty-Four universe, I do not think that disparaging users' countries of origin is appropriate. On a more general point, I would like to take the opportunity to defend m: here, because, although I have not had to use it too often, on those occasions that I have gone over there to request something of them, I have felt that my requests were treated courteously and effectually. For instance, I found myself liaising with Meta just a few days ago regarding some clickjacking vandalism over here, and found their actions helpful and prompt; earlier, I had witnessed similarly satisfactory results in the field of fixing holes in the HTTPS switchover. It Is Me Here t / c 16:30, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
    • I think Dirk Beetstra's comment above effectively saying that there is a silent majority of meta-wiki regulars who avoid dramaz and do good work is probably accurate. But they are perhaps too silent when it comes to the functioning of their own wiki. I suspect they need a local ArbCom because there doesn't seem to be any mechanism over there for dealing with sysops who would clearly get at least an admonishment in the en.wp system for the kind of behavior we've seen above. (I've also discovered that Nemo blocked User:Alanscottwalker over there during the dispute over the RfD closures, but at least he lifted that block quickly.) ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:52, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
      Just so. Meta is low-bureaucracy; the mechanism usually used is friendly personal criticism by another user. Often that is enough to cause a wiki-break or resignation. That hasn't happened very visibly at present in part because many admins who looked into it sympathize with the kneejerk reaction against hostile drive-by commentors, and are looking for ways to correct bad behavior without encouraging assumptions of bad-faith. – SJ + 02:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Thank you, ASCIIn2Bme, I think that is one of my points there, indeed. I am certainly not disputing that there will be admins there which do not avoid drama, and there will be those that do. I do not regard meta 'my own wiki', I do not like the insinuation that I should step up there.
Setting up an own ArbCom there may be an option, but I am not sure whether that is going to help.
  • @FutPerf. Yes, meta should be a wiki where everyone would be at home. But that does not mean that if one wiki has a problem with what is happening on meta and where a lot of editors come and rush in wanting something changed or deleted on meta (or even the whole wiki shut down), that that then should happen because the 'consensus' seems that way due to all the editors coming from one wiki. I know that it is not exactly the same as having a rush of overflow from one content wiki to another content wiki, but the effect on 'consensus' could be the same. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:54, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
    • This isn't about "projects" and they collectively "want" or "have a problem with". It's about individuals and their individual opinions. Some people on Meta have been going on whining about how "en.wp", collectively, is trying to unduly influence Meta. That's BS. The only thing that counts is that each individual editor: you, me, every one of us, has the exact same weight and influence in the debate. I don't care about whether my personal opinion happens to be in line with the opinions of many other people from a large wiki. If that happens to be the case, then that's just that. Good luck, or bad luck, whichever way you want to see it. So what? It's not about giving "en.wp" collectively "more" power than other wikis; it's about giving each individual the same power. And anything other than that is simply outrageously unacceptable. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Closure of meta-wiki discussion closed right after being proposed

See m:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of meta-wiki. Discussion immediately closed by... meta-wiki admins, of course. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:12, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and with that I agree. Meta is more than only RfC's. Parts of it can be shut down, but other parts certainly need to be maintained somewhere suitable. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
I think the discussion should be allowed to run its course and closed by someone who isn't involved. Dirk I think you make a good point however. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:07, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Reading the proposal beyond its page title shows it to be a reasonably well argued proposition for devolving part of meta-wiki appropriately, using past precedent for guidance. Still, it was closed within the hour. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:23, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Yeah that's pretty shocking. I'm trying to get it re-opened. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:29, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
By the way, the policy linked from there says "the Board of Trustees has final authority over the member's decision." So it seems that the meta-wiki admins have overstepped their authority in this matter. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:36, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Good point. But I want to give them 48 hours to respond. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:45, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Per this I've reopened the discussion. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
The request was not closed down by "meta-wiki admins", it was closed down by an active member of the Language committee: Robin Pepermans (m:User:SPQRobin). Mr. Pepermans' account is not an administrator on Meta (Translation administrator is not the same thing as Administrator). The closing of the proposal was completely in line with the Closing projects policy, which gives Language Committee members authority (subject only to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees) to handle all requests for closing projects. J.delanoygabsadds 00:59, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
And then that same user agreed that the thread should be re-opened. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
  • View from Outside Observer I think you all should formulate a policy as to the relationship with Meta. As of now it's unclear. 140.247.141.165 (talk) 01:50, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
  • View from inside observer with shared loyalty If you (generic) go in beating sticks and cracking heads, people will defend themselves. Whereas if people could approach this with an open-mind and do some listening whilst looking to achieve a functional solution, rather than looking to do blame and find people culpable, then I am sure that the differences and misunderstandings can be sorted out. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I tried that approach, and when I asked for help with a technical problem I was personally attacked by an admin. When I asked other admins for help with that situation, they basically told me to shut up and that it is now ok to attack me if somebody doesn't like me or my proposal. Something is very, very, wrong at Meta if opening a policy discussion is considered disruptive and asking for help makes it ok to for an admin troll a user talk page. I suspect they are trying to bait me into calling someone an asshole again so they can be rid of me, and I'm appalled that such behavior is actually being defended by other admins, who are basically telling me I deserve it for being from this project and for heaving a part in an abusive but apparently beloved admin there flaming out and resigning in huff when his abusive actions were pointed out. It's disgusting. I'm hoping that, like last time I had a problem there, an admin who is able to see how awful this is will show up at some point, but it seems the nasty ones who hat en.wp are there more often. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:12, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I've been watching this from a distance and the behaviour of some of the admins on Meta is farcically abusive, though there are also some good sysops there like Peter Symonds. Frankly, I'm not that surprised at the actions of Nemo bis. The guy is primarily active on Italian Wikipedia and received a series of blocks [22] in December 2011 (i.e. only two months ago), culminating in a 15-day block for "uncollaborative editing" and violating WP:POINT. He was RFCUed here [23]. He had his autopatroller rights removed there in December [24]. He's not worried that he's going to have to account for his actions on Meta because - according to him - no admin has been removed there "by force" since 2006 [25]. --Folantin (talk) 18:33, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I think he is a former sysop on it.wiki. I'm not sure how he ceased to be a sysop there. On Dec 18 he got a two-day block on it.wiki for running an unauthorized bot. And there have been two RfC/Us on him on it.wiki. The 2nd RfC/U on him was also about the unauthorized bot. Apparently, he kept using it, because he was then blocked for two weeks. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:16, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure these stuffs are vaguely in topic over there. --Vituzzu (talk) 22:04, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm still waiting for your reply about your inappropriate closure. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure you were serious about it. --Vituzzu (talk) 22:11, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I am serious, and therefore I expect a reply. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:13, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Basically you made everything possible to depict yourself as behaving in a trollish way, would you mind if I plonk you for a while? Btw reason for my closure has been always readable on protection log, so... --Vituzzu (talk) 22:18, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
The reason for your closure is incorrect. That is why I have challenged it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Is it? --Vituzzu (talk) 22:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes. My diff is later. People change their minds from time to time. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't want to spend my time on this kind of endless discussions, so feel free to reopen... should I believe you're not mocking me? Well, let's come back to the plonk. --Vituzzu (talk) 22:33, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Right, so what's the problem with re-opening the discussion? And I don't really think you are following our civility policies yourself here. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:34, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Feel free to point me where I was uncivil over there. --Vituzzu (talk) 22:41, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Its self-evident from your comments here. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:47, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm definitely dense, can you quote my own offensive words? --Vituzzu (talk) 22:53, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I really don't see any possibility of this discussion going anywhere useful. If you really want to know ask me on my talk page in a week. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I'll probably forgot to do it, you can call me both unrancorous (actually I'm not sure this word exists) and fuddled :D
Btw it's quite clear I didn't lack of civility, that's enough for me.--Vituzzu (talk) 23:11, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] better idea to end the feud

  • I've pretty much given up trying to make any real changes there, the admin corps does what we are always accused of, the old "circle the wagons" technique. I'm being told to just accept it and move on when an administrator trolls my talk. I can't work in that environment and am now advocating a different approach for en.wp users, best summarized as WP:IGNOREMETA. They don't want us there and they have no real impact on what we do here, so fuck it. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:21, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Not really, simply you made a many proposals in the worst moment possible, in a sort of vortex of drama and wikiwar. There's no anti-en.wiki bias over there but you simply have to consider it's a different project from en.wiki, with different habits: most of it.wiki's (my homewiki) habits would seem even ridiculous over there, the same for many en.wiki's customs moved on it.wiki. I really don't like the idea of an ArbCom and I really dislike close ballots, but I gave my help as a scrutineer for ACE2011. Simply because I wanted to help the English Wikipedia. If you want to improve meta, well, the only pre-requisite is the will to understand it. --Vituzzu (talk) 22:10, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Frankly given the RFC issue I would expect you to give the Lao Wikipedia more respect.
The only reason meta should be interfering with other projects blocking policies is if they aren't dealing with the issue appropriately. That might apply to a project like the Lao Wikipedia - though if they have handled the matter fairly they should be left to it.
Certainly all the major language Wikipedias (so French, German, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Russian and so on) should be allowed to solve their own issues as they should be fully capable of doing it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:20, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Did you ever took a look at the steward policy? --Vituzzu (talk) 22:26, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Have you? Which part of the Stewards policy makes it appropriate to interfere on what is essentially an internal matter for en.wiki? Of note I would make the same point about any other major Wikipedia project - I don't think en.wiki should get special treatment here. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Vituzzu, I made one proposal. one. I made it at Meta and asked for users there to comment on it. I tried to add a request for translation and couldn't figure it out, so I asked for help. The only response I got to that request was an obvious trolling comment from an administrator, and you and others defended this by basically telling me I deserved it. I don't want to work on a project where trolling is ok if you are in the club, but using a "bad word" gets you a block if you aren't. Not interested, not needed, not relevant to this project. Easier for everyone involved if we ignore this broken disaster of a wiki. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:37, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
@Eraserhead1: So you agree with me, the proposal was definitely useless since steward policy doesn't allow any kind of action from us over there here you can check I didn't stop using {{delete}} even if I have all the deletion buttons everywhere.
@Beeblebrox: nope it wasn't trolling, it was a, definitely, harsh answer, and I tried to make you accept as it was, simply an harsh answer from one of meta's sysops. --Vituzzu (talk) 22:39, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
What complete and utter bullshit. It wasn't in any way an response to my request for help figuring out the technical aspects of requesting translation, it was a slam against me, pure and simple. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:47, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
While it was poorly titled Rd232's proposal was designed to get a serious discussion going about meta, its clear from the fact that the Goings-on page is only translated into one other language apart from English, and that the meta:Language committee page is only in English that there are serious concerns to be addressed - I'm sure if they were asked there would be loads of people who would be keen to help translate stuff. With regards to Beeblebrox, well he's never come across to me as anything other than a no-nonsense user - if the answer was merely a little harsh I'm sure he'd live with it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:46, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Well, to me the reaction wasn't proportional to the action. Dealing with the proposal it started from a useless RfC got into a drama, ever, did you ever consider it has been seen has an appendix to this drama? --Vituzzu (talk) 22:51, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I personally didn't think that's the case - but maybe you are right and it has been interpreted poorly. I tell you what, why don't we forget about Rd232's proposal for now and come back with a fresh and better titled proposal for discussion in a few weeks. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:03, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I also suggest to get in touch with both meta and other wikis. When I was a global sysop I did some mistakes because I had no experience with small wikis. --Vituzzu (talk) 23:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
That sounds sensible. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:33, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] More drama and another poor close

[26] [27]. Where is the appropriate place to request action against this admin on Meta? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:15, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

At the general discussion page: Babel. You can also directly ask for admin help, if you have admin action in mind or want to propose deadminship. Censuring another user for poor judgement is not limited to admins, and is how such situations are usually handled (via Babel or directly on the talk pages of the person in question or an uninvolved editor who can help mediate). – SJ + 02:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Nowhere. That's part of the meta problem with meta. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:23, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
So I guess I'll have to take this to Jimbo then and see what he says. It seems beyond a joke that there's literally no recourse.
Maybe en.wiki should start co-ordinating with other language projects directly. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:25, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Done so. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
(edit-conflict)Seriously, we're dealing with the closure of a RfD about a RfC userless (because it cannot influence its subject) already closed...well, I think I gave all the possible explanations to anyone who was in good fatih, so, for me, it's time to come back to rc patrol. --Vituzzu (talk) 23:34, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The actual point is that its an involved close that has been called out by multiple editors. This is really something that should just get sorted. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:11, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Clarify, please

I'm very confused. Is en:User:Vituzzu the same person as meta:User:Nemo bis? If so, why different usernames? If not, why is Beeblebrox criticising V for N's actions? Or am I simply misunderstanding B's comments and he's not criticising V for N's actions? Nyttend (talk) 23:41, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Nope, two different closes by two different meta admins. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 23:45, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I really think you all need to formulate a police vis-vis meta. 140.247.141.165 (talk) 00:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Here's mine again WP:IGNOREMETA. Rest assured that's what I'll be doing from this point forward. We don't need a policy to tell us that they have no real power of this project and that they can manage the few actual useful things they do there such as stopping cross wiki-vandalism without our input. Best to let it lie. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:34, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Either meta needs to get their house in order or we need to make that a policy. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:10, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Meta cannot be totally ignored unless you want to have the foundation remove all CU and OS bits from EnWiki; they chose to centralize the privacy-related privs there. global user sets is handled through Meta. As for ignoring local Meta policies when living in a different project, that has pretty much always been the case. The issue with the GG RfC blew up way out of proportion to its actual effect, in my opinion, and, personally, I believe that everyone would have been better served by ignoring Mbz1, and putting the page up for RfD, and if that failed, blanking the page (as was done). Lastly, I think almost all of this would have been greatly prevented had people just acted with respect towards one another instead of salvos of demands and refusals and proposals and counter-proposals, and a whole lot of unnecessary emotion and righteous indignation on all sides. Going forward, unquestionably Meta could use some polishing, and EnWiki could realize that 1) there are many customs it takes for granted that are not universal and 2) not everything is a major deal. Gievn enough time, patience, and courtesy, almost everything can be worked out in a non-combative manner. Come to think of it, that applies here as well Face-smile.svg. In summary, by all means, take part in Meta conversations, but please don't do so while driving a wrecking ball. You know those warnings on medicine, "don't drive while taking"? We should have one that says "Operating a wrecking ball while editing Wikipedia may be hazardous to your sanity." Where is C. Everett Koop when you need him? -- Avi (talk) 18:10, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I'll grant that one of the proposals floated over there was indeed a "wreaking ball." I fail to see how that justifies the admins there supporting trolling the user talk page of a user who asked for technical help with a different proposal aimed at preventing further misunderstandings of this nature in the future. When I asked what to do about being trolled by an admin, I was essentially told I deserve it, and then banned users from this project showed up to support that position. It's a mentally ill environment, not just one in need of "polishing." And as an oversighter I don't know what you mean when you say my privacy-related privileges are over there. I got them here, and they only work here. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:20, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Technical note for Beeble, while ArbCom decides who gets the CU and OS bits, the only place they can be flipped is CentralAuth on Meta. A local crat cannot assign or remove those bits. -- Avi (talk) 19:06, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree, if Meta currently had remotely competent adminship then the deletion request would have been closed by an uninvolved admin and/or Nemo would either have been de-sysoped or reverted by another administrator to send a clear message. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:26, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Let me give you an example of a similar reasoning and may be you will get an idea that smth is wrong with the reasoning itself. I was previously editing Russian Wikipedia, where I was administrator for three years and was twice elected to arbcom. As everywhere, over there we had disruptive users who would eventually be banned by Arbcom or just by an admin (there is no community ban). These users eventually would go to English Wikipedia just to use it for communication between themselves and stalking of Russian wikipedia users they do not like. One example is Serebr, who created several Encyclopaedia Dramatica-like sites with the only purpose of stalking users. He keeps links to two of these sites on his user page. He does not speak English and has very little to no contribution to the content, and all of his contribution is either stalking or complaining to Jimmy. In Russian Wikipedia, this activity would be enough to permablock him (and, as a matter of fact, he was permablocked since 2008). However, if here I would bring his case to ANI, I would be very much surprised if any of the admins would react - at best, by speedily closing my request. (The user last edited in 2010, and I quit Russian Wikipedia in May, so that I am not going to check this). How would you react if I subsequently open a page on Russian Wikipedia saying "Ignore English Wikipedia, their admins help disrupting users"? probably saying smth like "these Russians gove crazy again"?--Ymblanter (talk) 19:04, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I think there's a difference between users talking to each other on talk pages and putting up a ED-like 100KB RfC/U. If someone did that here attacking an admin from ruwiki or some other non-enwp wiki, s/he'd be laughed out the door and the RfC/U deleted with no fuss. And Jimbo is Jimbo. People appeal to him for various reasons, even when he has no power or inclining to do anything about a matter. The conversation you alluded to [28] does not seem out of the ordinary. As far as I know, nobody requested that users banned from enwiki be prevented from communicating on meta. In fact such users have been keeping each others' company over there for quite some time. What's new on meta is the exploitation of a loophole for putting up material there that is substantially similar to stuff previously published by WP:SPAs on ED and MyWikiBiz about the same enwiki admin. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but the meta wiki RfC/U could not even be excluded from search engines while it was up, despite the __NOINDEX__ tag, because it was in meta's mainspace, where the tag has no effect. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Eraserhead, desysoping was not called for. Remember, there are many, many, fewer (actually pretty much no) "edit war" areas on Meta. EnWIki has a whole host of areas where there has been long-term, virulent edit warring, such as Macedonia-Greece, Israel-Palestine, Cold fusion, Global Warming, and so on. The potential for administrator abuse is much, much greater. On Meta, there is nothing like that. So you feel an adminstrator made an error in judgment, even a grave one, the first thing you do is point out to that person that they made the error. People are human after all. Note how some stewards addressed the issue; they made it clear to Nemo that they thought what he did was wrong, and that he shouldn't have done it, but no one called for his head. It is not an unreasonable assumption to work under that people will give legitimate and constructive criticism its due thought and weight. Sadly, on EnWiki, there is so much political bickering, and so much history of true bad-faith editing, edit wars, wheel wars (we just had a desysop yesterday) that many of us have not undeserved hair-trigger responses. In a perfect world, we would be able to handle things without the rancor; I fear that is not possible for EnWiki anymore (at least without a sea change in editing philosophy) but it is not the case on Meta. Decisions one believes are mistakes should be pointed out, and allowed to be explained. Remember, just because you and I think something is a mistake does not automatically make it so. We may be the mistaken ones. One should always allow somoene the opportunity to explain their actions; even if the explanation is a mea culpa. So, as I said, you think an admin made a mistake, there are two ways to go about telling him or her. You tell me which of the following two responses you think would better serve to solve the underlying problem of a potentially mistaken close (now ESPECIALLY keep in mind that, if you want to bring the EnWiki love for bureaucracy, there is no codified policy against it, it's just common sense:

  1. So-and-so, your close was against policy and common sense, revert it now or I will file a request for desysoping and send a letter to the board.
  2. So-and-so, I think your close may be seen as problematic, because you were involved in the discussion, and may appear to be biased. I think that common sense alone would say that in cases where the discussion was contentious, and the outcome not clear cut, that someone who can be seen as truly impartial should make the decision. Would you please revert your close for the greater good of all parties to the discussion?

You tell me, which is more likely to get a reasonable response, even if it isn't an immediate reversion. Which one will more likely lead to discussion that will result in the impartial close taking place? Which one is less likely to cause a defensive "battening down of the hatches" mentality?
Lastly, each and every one of us has to ask ourselves, on each and every edit, what is our true intention with this edit? If it isn't to make the project a better resource for all, then don't make the edit. If it is, ask yourself, "am I saying it in a way that will best serve all of us?" Sometimes, a firm word is needed. Level-4 warnings, repeat vandals, someone who persists in POV edits after it being explained multiple times, sure. Of course, firm never means insulting, at least in my opinion. My overall takeaway from these incidents is that there are people on EnWiki and Meta who are really interested in having the gerater Wikimedia experience and projects work better, but we, as a whole, sadly, are sometimes too quick to accuse and could all use (myself at the fore) a healthy does of patience. -- Avi (talk) 19:02, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Avi, while my comment about writing to the board was overly aggressive Nemo had already been asked by multiple editors in good standing to re-open the discussion. Your "option 2" had already been attempted at the point I made my commentary. So I think that a firm word wasn't totally out of place.
Additionally Nemo insisted on reverting my edit without using an appropriate edit summary - something that is certainly at the very least uncivil.
With regards to de-sysopping, I think its perfectly legitimate as multiple editors in good standing have politely asked Nemo to reconsider his actions and he has refused to do so. Additionally none of the other admins on meta have taken the step of reverting him themselves to make it clear that they also think his actions are problematic.
The whole drama can be ended with no further escalation required if you guys can get your house vaguely in order by allowing a truly uninvolved admin to close the discussion. I really don't see why this is so difficult a goal to achieve. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:27, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
With regards to other controversies - sure en.wiki has them - but if an admin makes a WP:INVOLVED close of a discussion and multiple editors in good standing complain about it then it actually gets sorted - unlike Meta where everyone just seems to wring their hands and try and pretend that nothing is wrong.
While you guys might consider this to be a "minor" incident - it has attracted vast amounts of complaints here and on Nemo's talk page. Therefore its pretty clear that its an issue that actually needs solving, I absolutely will take it to desysoping request and a letter to the board if needed.
And actually that its attracted as much attention as it already has (apparently even Jimbo Wales seems to follow WP:IGNOREMETA) means that even if I give up it becomes more and more likely that we do an end run around Meta and deal with the other projects directly. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:31, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Conclusion + teh lulz

[29] [30]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 13:36, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Addendum

As typical in these cases. Retired doesn't mean retired [31]. Nor does globally locked mean much. m:Meta:Requests_for_help_from_a_sysop_or_bureaucrat#User:WizardOfOz. [32] ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:00, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

ASCII, I know you're just trying to keep the en community informed, but it's starting to come across as, at best pointing and laughing at Meta, and at worst, continual meddling. I think any interested users from here have, at this point, watchlisted the important pages over there, and there's no real continuing need to drop notices here every time someone says something over there. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:08, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

[edit] Request that an uninvolved admin re-close the Mbz1 ban

Resolved: Re-closed by Salvio, and the off-wiki stuff continues... (this one will run and run) Rich Farmbrough, 13:13, 24 February 2012 (UTC).

Per comments [33], I think we should also avoid the appearance of impropriety in this case. Discussion found at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive231#Persistent_off-wiki_and_cross-wiki_harassment_.2F_Community_ban_proposal. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 10:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Why? Look, mbz1 is never going to recognize the legimacy of anything done here, so why jump thru hoops for her? Do you think someone else closing it will make her shut up? Does anyone on the planet think she isn't banned? I thought that thread was a silly waste of time and electrons, and even I think she's banned. Indeed, she was basically banned before that discussion. Almost everyone seems to think ignoring meta is a good plan, but step one of that plan is to... you know... ignore meta. I'm not going to archive this after only one comment, but the best outcome I can think of is that no one else comments on this thread, and it dies a natural death. --Floquenbeam (talk) 12:35, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I simply think closure by an uninvolved admin would be the professional way of handling this, if I may recycle a term recently drummed up by ArbCom. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 14:46, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Meh, so, if it's needed, I'll take over Night Ranger's closure as uninvolved admin. Salvio Let's talk about it! 15:50, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
There you go. Salvio Let's talk about it! 15:55, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
So now someone else gets to bear the brunt of her persecution complex. Thanks Salvio! Night Ranger (talk) 02:36, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
And as I suspected, the fight has started anew over at meta with mbz1 wikilawyering on Salvio's talk page and Kwork saying the usual stuff about lynchings. You know, you really cannot invent this stuff. It's even more entertaining whilst listening to Singing a Song in the Morning. Night Ranger (talk) 02:58, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
FWIW, she's talked everybody's ears off about it on WR for months, and has proven to be un-derailable. Maybe the devs can make you an "ignore" button like we have there. --SB_Johnny | talk 03:17, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
We have something like that—it's called Meta Wiki! ;) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 03:28, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes. Oh, and she now says she was bullied by ArbCom [34] on a WMF staff page. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 12:14, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
  • People, please, just. stop. paying. attention. to. Mbz1. She has become nothing but a troll, but she can't troll here, so we don't have to worry about it. Nothing we do short of unbanning her, offering a written apology, and burning a certain admin at the stake are going to satisfy her. Eventually, even meta will tire of her shenanigans and she'll be blocked there too. Let them handle it, it's not our problem anymore. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:13, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Indeed - this entire matter has been a great example of Streisand effect. I strongly suspect that had the original meta RFC been ignored here, it wouldn't have gone anywhere except give a very small group of people a chance to rant in a place that essentially nobody would see. Instead, this created an avenue for a much large audience. Ravensfire (talk) 13:34, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Policy change proposal to make off-enwiki behavior unsanctionable here

[edit] Suggested topic ban for NYyankees51 (talk · contribs) on LGBT-related articles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Moved from WP:ANI: Nobody Ent 20:10, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Result: User:NYyankees51 is indefinitely topic banned from editing all LGBT-related articles, broadly construed. Xavexgoem (talk) 08:31, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps we can the topic ban proposal moved to it's own section, instead of being appended on a seperate complaint. Please be aware that this editor is currently topic banned on abortion related articles. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 12:31, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

  • Support topic ban on LGBT-themed articles, broadly construed, for NYyankees51 (talk · contribs), and a {{trout}} for his WP:IDHT that has gotten things to that point. - The Bushranger One ping only 11:01, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
    Why? NYyankees51 (talk) 19:24, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
    Comment - NYY51 is pretty clearly a POV warrior and at some point really soon he's going to need to decide for himself whether to knock it the hell off and to start to build constructively or to be topic-banned off the planet. The choice is pretty clear. Carrite (talk) 19:43, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - a topic ban on LGBT-related subjects for NYY51 is pretty clearly indicated here. Black Kite (talk) 19:53, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - although I also support Santorum and I'm opposed to abortion, I try my best to remove any bias from my opinions, and, if I feel it hard to maintain a NPOV, I refrain from editing. Unfortunately, NYY51 has not been able to do this. PaoloNapolitano 20:37, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support: This editor brought me to ANI because I complained about his horrible AFD nominations. His motto must be "if its gay, it can't stay," leading to a series of extremely poor and POINTy AfD nominations that are closing as keep/snow keep universally. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Candace Gingrich-JonesWikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gathering Storm (advertisement)Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A Union in WaitWikipedia:Articles for deletion/Metropolitan Community Church of New York (2nd nomination)Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Udaan Trust. Instead of acknowledging any of this (look at his one word "why?" comment above--like he doesn't know), he recently amended his talk page to make clear "I stand by the content of my edits, AFDs, and points I have made" and that "I intend to continue my purge of LGBT brochure articles." I am prone to hyperbole, but I'm not joking when I say this editor is dangerous.--Milowent • hasspoken 20:50, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. The recent series of nominations, which demonstrate a total lack of interest in WP policy or practice, is really the last straw in a history of POV-motivated editing against LGBT subjects. His statement that he believes there was nothing wrong with this behavior and intends to continue it is also troubling, indicating that a topic ban is an appropriate preventative measure. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:57, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • supportIf not for his recent statement of intent on his talkpage appearing after much well-meaning advice, I might have been satisfied with giving him a chance to change his behavior before taking this step.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:01, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support – I'm sorry it's come to this, but the points at WP:PUSH#The Problem pretty much describe his editing style. I reminded him earlier this week of the advice HJ Mitchell and I gave him a year ago after HJ removed his indef block for socking. But nothing seems to be getting through to him despite numerous attempts by editors offering advice, several blocks, ARBCOM ban, etc. So, I guess, slap him with another ban and maybe he'll eventually get the message. Mojoworker (talk) 21:08, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support seems like a reasonable step. Continuing the AfD nominations after being taken to ANI seems to be pretty unwise. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:13, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support per my earlier comments on WP:ANI. Disclaimer - I just found out (moments ago) that this editor previously vandalized my user page under a different account after perusing NYY51's block log. The fact has not informed my opinion of this matter, which would've been the same regardless. -- Scjessey (talk) 21:27, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. His edits are problematic and obviously strongly pov-motivated. His AfD noms are awful, many of them are among the most obvious keeps I've ever seen. Kevin (talk) 21:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
    You should assume good faith - from his point of view he was probably just making it prettier.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:42, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. Per Maunus, he seems intent on continuing to cause disruption. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:34, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support, seems appropriate for this situation. Tony Fox (arf!) 21:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support per Milowent Raul654 (talk) 21:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose And the use of topic bans to affect editing on any articles is a bad precedent to seek for anyone. Cheers - draconian solutions do not work, and using them for any outside rationale is worse. Collect (talk) 21:44, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Had the series of edits been constructive, rather than repeatedly disruptive, we'd not be here. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 23:36, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Per Milowent, Mojoworker and Roscelese, although I think the problem will not disappear with topic ban.--В и к и T 21:57, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support This is not the way to edit controversial topics. --Moni3 (talk) 22:11, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. User doesn't listen to concerns, won't change behavior, and persists in annoying the community to no end. Viriditas (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - User appears to be editing and AfDing with a distinct POV. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. The editor was blocked for one week for edit warring at Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality. NYY defended his behavior as "righteous reverting"; a tactic that did not get him unblocked. His stated intent to "purge" LGBT articles from Wikipedia is unwarranted POV pushing and clearly politically motivated. Previously, he has used sockpuppets and edit warring to put forward his beliefs on abortion-related topics. He was almost topic banned during a MedCab hearing about abortion during which time administrator and oversighter User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry said he expected that a proposed one-year abortion topic ban on NYyankees51 would not be effective enough, that it would make this problem editor "move on to the same behaviour on political articles". Recently, NYyankees51 did indeed get a topic ban becaus of his abortion battleground mentality. Previous to that, I opened a discussion about his conflict of interest regarding his working for (and editing from) the right-wing political advocacy group Susan B. Anthony List, but nobody else commented. It is obvious that NYyankees51 had but one purpose here: to push his political beliefs as hard as possible. Like The Cavalry, I believe a topic ban is just the start, that NYY is not going to give up until he is indeffed or banned. Binksternet (talk) 23:30, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
With respect, I don't think NYyankees51 ever stated he intended to purge Wikipedia of LGBT articles in totality (prove me wrong I guess with a diff), but put it as purging Wikipedia of "LGBT brochures". Although this is pretty sloppy wording and invective, I took this to mean nominating poorly sourced LGBT-related articles for AfD, which he has been doing. This seems like hair-splitting, but we are discussing kicking him off the site, so we should be as clear as possibly while giving him whatever benefit of whatever doubt he has allowed. --Moni3 (talk) 23:35, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
You're right, NYY's "purge" statement was against LGBT "brochure articles". I took that term to mean pro-LGBT articles judged by NYY to have little notability. I am still certain that NYY cannot edit neutrally at Wikipedia. Binksternet (talk) 20:50, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Suport In studying the years-long history of personal agenda and POV-pushing, I had actually considered performing this action myself, and it would have been the fisrt time I would have done so. Wikipedia is not for pushing one's personal agenda, and must absolutely respect being neutral and balanced in all veiwpoints. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 23:38, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support His talk page statement makes it clear that in this topic he has adopted a WP:BATTLEGROUND approach to editing, contrary to wikipedia editing policies. Mathsci (talk) 10:32, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - his personal beliefs have, and will continue to affect, his ability to edit such articles. GiantSnowman 10:47, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Although I fear we'll be back when he discovers what his next political hobbyhorse is. —Tom Morris (talk) 13:03, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - arrogant declarations such as aspiring to eliminate all LGBT articles is nothing more than proof of his homophobia. Given what the others said here, they compromise his ability to edit without stepping on others' toes. --Eaglestorm (talk) 00:23, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - user is incapable of editing neutrally in this topic.   Will Beback  talk  02:30, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - This seems to be the best route for now.--Amadscientist (talk) 03:40, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support topic ban on LGBT articles, as well as articles in Project:Politics and Project:Conservatism. It's clear that the disruptive aspects of NYYankees51's edits are all ideologically driven. Removing the bulk of those articles from his editing will hopefully give him a chance to focus on being productive instead of focusing on ideological conflict areas. aprock (talk) 18:07, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Something like that might work, with Raul654's "Culture wars" and politics (broadly interpreted) added in. Probably along with an extension of his 3 month ban from the topic of abortion (broadly construed) which is now about half over. And it likely should be at least 9 months duration, since the elections in November would seem like too much of a temptation. Mojoworker (talk) 19:31, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

[edit] Narrow-purpose account?

Judging from his contribs, NYyankees51 has showed signs of POV editing on a narrow set of articles on LBGT topics and conservative politics. He has repeatedly reverted material per WP:MISSION, a relatively low-profile essay and in some cases it looks like he treats it as a policy. Some of his problematic edits include [35] [36] [37], and several others. As the user is showing signs of POV single-purpose editing, the effect of a site ban vs a topic ban should be considered. PaoloNapolitano 21:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Being an SPA is not against policy.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Having no productive contributions outside of one narrow category of problematic editing makes him far more likely to be community banned. Raul654 (talk) 21:43, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
That is not my experience unfortunately.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:46, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I have mixed feelings on this. While I'm doubtful that a topic ban will prompt him to edit in accordance with Wikipedia policy in the future - after all, he was topic-banned from abortion and that didn't exactly serve as a wake-up call, he just stepped up his disruption in another topic area - we could see what happens with a topic ban and then community-ban him if his behavior does not improve. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:52, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Oh, I was not aware of the previous ban. In that case, would it not make more sense to ban him from all culture-wars articles, to be broadly interpreted? Raul654 (talk) 22:16, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
  • As I unblocked him, I suppose it's my prerogative, possibly even my responsibility, to re-block him if he continues to disrupt the project after the unblock. As such, I have blocked him until such time as he can convince me, another uninvolved admin, or the community, that he can edit without causing problems. It's a shame that it's necessary, but I think the displacement rather than cessation of the disruption upon the topic ban proves that it is, and that a second topic ban would only mean continued disruption in a third topic area. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:42, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't think it is either your prerogative or responsibility no. It is the communitys prerogative and responsibility - and the community was leaning towards a more lenient remedy.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:44, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Personally I think its reasonable if its not the first topic ban. I don't get the impression its an unreasonable stretch or is beyond the current status quo. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:07, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
It's certainly your prerogative HJ, after all, one of the unblock conditions was that he edit constructively. He also promised to work hard to gain the trust of the community. I don't fault you at all – either for the unblock or for rescinding it now. I have great respect for your judgement and I think you've assumed good faith with him – probably far more than many would have – but I can't shake the feeling that he took advantage of your good will. I'm not happy that this has come to pass. Mostly I'm sorry he didn't take our advice. Ultimately it comes down to personal responsibility and NYyankees51 doesn't need to look far for the reasons that this all happened. Mojoworker (talk) 23:11, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
This was a good block. Implementing a second topic ban would just have pushed the disruption to a third topic area. There are some serious competency issues with him that the community shouldn't have to deal with any longer. Shrigley (talk) 23:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Comment, As Earserhead may remember, an Arbcom member recently said with respect a now one year banned user that if they're banned from one topic, already, it does not make sense to just consider another topic ban, they should go off the project, FWIW. It may figure in to treating like matters, alike. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:21, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I remember that, but I couldn't find the diff. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:28, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Comment: I support a topic ban, but do wonder about the efficacy of one in this case as this editor has repeatedly been cautioned and yet repeatedly returned to the same behavior in related areas. In studying the years-long history of personal agenda and POV-pushing, I had actually considered performing this action myself, and it would have been the fisrt time I would have done so. Wikipedia is not for pushing one's personal agenda, and must absolutely respect being neutral and balanced in all veiwpoints. User:NYyankees51 need not agree with other editor's articles, but he MUST respect existing policy and guidleine. In this he has so-far failed. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 23:39, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Some questions to think about re the below proposal, that I have thought about recently (I don't know the user's work and I won't opine): 1) Does the user mistake POV for NPOV regularly in different topic areas. 2) Does the user mistake tendentuos editing/commenting for consensus building in different areas. 3) Does the user not understand copyright or plagerism in several areas. 4) Does the user view this as a battleground in several areas. 5) Does the user demonsrtrate misaprehension of sources or sourceing policy, in several areas 6) Will this avoid some more eventual major disruption, like an Arbcom case. These are ideas, just pick the central needs of working here and ask yourself about it, with refernce to evidence (everyone should, but not eveyone can work -- at this time in thier lives -- on this project) Also, for the below return restriction? or time limit? And the user should be allowed to respond by a limited unbanning (if he/she would like).Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:13, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Site ban

Resolved: I'm going to be bold and close this. First, it does not appear to be likely to pass. Second, the topic ban above has been implemented and is a valid first step. Should violations occur, then this discussion can be revived at a later date (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 13:40, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Per the discussion above, do you think a site ban is a better remedy than a topic ban? PaoloNapolitano 10:25, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm barely familiar with the background here. From what I could glean from the discussion above, it seems this is an editor who is now getting a 2nd topic ban, in a different area. Perhaps a site ban would be more appropriate, or a much broader topic ban, although I'm not sure such a ban can be drafted. Topic ban from hobbyhorses of US conservatives maybe? Or "culture-wars articles" as Raul suggested above? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:54, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
On rethinking it, "Culture wars" doesn't go far enough. I can think of other conservative hobbyhorses that wouldn't fall under that aegis (Supply side voodoo economics, just to name one). A ban from all articles having to do with politics (broadly interpreted) might do it. But frankly I now think a site ban would be better. He's obviously not here to contribute productively, so there's no sense in taking the chance that he could find a loophole. Raul654 (talk) 17:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
A broad topic ban and a site ban may be equal in NYyankees51's view. I don't know if this is still germane to the discussion, but here he stated: "As you can tell, the vast majority of my edits are on political or otherwise controversial articles. I didn't get the impression that HJ Mitchell wanted me to avoid controversial articles, and I apologize that I didn't. I just don't really think I have a whole lot to contribute outside of those topic areas." By the way, back then I told him I thought it was bullshit insincere to say that he didn't have much to contribute outside those topics, but maybe he really was being truthful. Mojoworker (talk) 19:47, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
The user was very active on abortion-related articles where he was POV editing before he was topic-banned. Afterwards, he started editing LBGT articles with the same POV and bias. I fear that another topic ban will lead to him shifting focus of his editing to a third topic; I can list some areas that are easy to suspect that he could get involved in::
  • Republican party and politicians
  • US presidential elections
  • Religion

As the user is here with a single-purpose POV agenda, I recommend a community-imposed site ban, and I want to hear your opinions. PaoloNapolitano 17:36, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

  • Support community ban - It's senseless to issue topic bans when he simply migrates his disruption from one topic to another. Raul654 (talk) 20:09, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. I agree with Chase Me Ladies [38] that NYyankees51 cannot be channeled into a useful area of contribution, that he will only switch battlegrounds following a topic ban. Binksternet (talk) 20:54, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - but on the other hand - why not make it clear that if the current (and clearly supported) topic ban above does not have the requisite response, and disruption continues, then any uninvolved admin may indefinitely block without further warning? Last chance saloon. Black Kite (talk) 21:49, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Gosh - youda thunk folks would understand that draconian solutions do not work for the benefit of Wikipedia as a rule. Collect (talk) 22:52, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
    • What's the evidence for that? I'm certainly pretty thick skinned and I've got involved in multiple controversial areas - but I certainly prefer editing in a more professional editing environment. Sometimes you have to raise the tempo a little and/or you do because you get a bit upset about something, but this has gone beyond that.
    • There's a hell of a lot of people who have far less confidence than I do who undoubtably would prefer an even less confrontational environment - but they aren't going to comment here about it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:05, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - After having been meted two topic bans, you'd think the guy would have learned his lesson and reformed himself, but no! A site or community ban would be in order.--Eaglestorm (talk) 00:23, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Oppose [Changing view as agreeing with comment directly below. Seems excessive at this time] - It is my belief that opponents of some subjects can help keep articles neutral...but only if their edits are such. This is an activist editor with an agenda he clearly admits to in bold lettering on his talk page. I see nothing in his immediate history to show that he isn't a SPA and for very destructive reasons. If this is true I would actually support an indeff block entirely (site ban). If he is just active recently with this warrior attitude then a topic ban would have been a good course.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:57, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose, as excessive at this time. I disagree with Richard/Chase Me, for whom I have the utmost respect, in that I think NYY51 does have the potential and the desire to contribute constructively. We haven't yet worked out how he can be a part of this community in a way that is unambiguously beneficial to the project. That is why he is indefinitely blocked, and he will remain so until some way of channelling his edits to non-controversial areas is found. A community ban only makes it more difficult to find a mutually agreeable solution if there is one to be found, and does absolutely nothing if one can't be found because the indefinite block isn't going anywhere. This eagerness among some parts of the community to turn any indefinite block into a community ban is quite concerning—let's save the bans for the truly malicious. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 03:10, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
    You don't think sock puppetry and vandalism are malicious enough? -- Scjessey (talk) 13:42, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
    That was over two years ago. He was blocked for it shortly afterwards and remained blocked for over a year, so I think we can safely say he's served his sentence for that. There have been recent problems, which is why he's blocked again, but I don't think those problems are motivated by malice. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support, as long overdue: This editor has consistently engaged in highly disruptive editing with a clear mission that is completely at odds with WP's own, despite a indeffinite block for sock-puppetry, numerous blocks for edit-warring, a topic ban, and now another topic ban. He states himself that he has no interest in editing articles outside of those on which his strong POV makes him incapble of productively editing. I see no reason to extend him yet once more the benefit of a doubt when he has so amply demonstrated that he intends to continue to disrupt the project. He is incapable or unwilling to change his behavior, and I would question the sincerity of any promises on his part. There is simply no place for him on WP. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 04:42, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Support: He never responded or defended some of the worst AfD nominations I've ever seen, where his whole purpose is apparently to delete articles about gay people. You run off good editors from the project if you don't call a spade a spade when you see one.--Milowent • hasspoken 17:06, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose, I think a site ban is too draconian. I believe that NYyankees51 can make productive edits, and I feel like he wants to be productive to the project. On the other hand, free reign is too lenient. I think something more like a 0RR restriction plus a six month topic ban from all articles in Project:Conservatism might make more sense, and give NYyankees51 a chance to prove himself outside of his zone of contention. aprock (talk) 18:03, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose – but I'm not surprised at the number of support !votes. It shows how frustrated the community has become with his behavior. There's a limit to how long good faith can be assumed in an editor who is persistently acting in a way that is detrimental to the encyclopedia. I'm hopeful this will finally serve as a wake up call for NYY. After reading the details of some of the linked incidents, I think he needs an extremely short leash however. As I mentioned in the LGBT section above, aprock's suggestion might work, along with the LGBT topic ban above, which appears certain to pass, and with Raul654's "Culture wars" and politics (broadly interpreted) added in. Probably along with an extension of his 3 month ban from the topic of abortion (broadly construed) which is now about half over. And it likely should be at least 9 months duration, since the elections in November seem like too much of a temptation. Mojoworker (talk) 19:58, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose - The day for a site ban is fast approaching, it would seem. Here's hoping he decides to say "screw it, I'm gonna write about baseball from now on." I'm not expecting that outcome, but it remains theoretically possible... Carrite (talk) 21:25, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose rather premature.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Compromise proposal: Propose extending the topic bans currently in place into a permanent topic ban on all controversial areas of politics, religion and sexuality, broadly construed. It's clear that the editor does not intend to ever refrain from POV pushing in those areas. Also include a "one strike and you're out" clause. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 11:19, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Agreed - if there's no consensus for a site ban, that's probably best. Raul654 (talk) 13:31, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

[edit] User conduct archive

Most of the entries below the table in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct/Archive (i.e. circa 2006 & before) are without context - no links to discussion or evidence, no mention of outcomes. Should they be removed, and the history be expunged? Disclosure: I'm mentioned there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:37, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

"no links to discussion or evidence, no mention of outcomes" What are you talking about? They link directly to the RFC/U.--v/r - TP 21:18, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
For example, the second one on the list:

Certified.Gangsta Revert warring

We have to go to the RFC page to learn anything about it, while the things in the table have substantially more information. I have to disagree with Andy; I'd say that it's better to have the barebones stuff than to have nothing at all. Nyttend (talk) 23:40, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, but Andy said there are no links to discussions or evidence. Even the example you provided has a link directly to the discussion full of evidence.--v/r - TP 11:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Those are links to the pages themselves, not specifically to sections or pages of discussions and evidence — you have to go through everything to find what you want. Nyttend (talk) 20:29, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] The "Collateral Damage" of Deletions

[edit] New Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard: ready for production

As some of you may know, I have been working on a new Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard (WP:FUW) designed to overcome some of the problems newcomers evidently have with the old system of guided forms at Wikipedia:Upload (currently c.70% of all files uploaded by newcomers get deleted within the first month after upload, mostly for reasons related to copyvio / bad sourcing / bad licensing etc.) This new interface is now in a reasonably stable state. It has been tested on several browsers (including IE9+, FF9+, Chromium) and has had generally positive feedback, including newcomers asked to review it after they ran into problems with the old system.

So, I'd like to be bold and get this thing rolled out to our new editors for wider testing. Question is: what's the best way?

  1. conservative version: just add links to Wikipedia:Upload and to some of the file-related user talk notifications, pointing to WP:FUW as a new alternative.
  2. radical version: temporarily replace Wikipedia:Upload with the new system outright. This could most easily be done by changing MediaWiki:Uploadwizard-url to make the "upload" link in the sidebar point to the new page. Obviously, this could very quickly be changed back if there should be any problems.

Also, obviously, the traditional plain Special:Upload for experienced users will remain in place.

Thoughts? Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:22, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Option two, please. Sometime we talk too much. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 11:27, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Will the Wizard upload to Commons if the user chooses the "free work" option?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:51, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
It can't do that automatically, for technical reasons. But it offers two alternative submit buttons, the first of them redirecting to Commons and the second doing a local upload. It also features a nag screen reminding the user of the recommendation to use Commons. Try it out. Also, please feel free to tweak the wording – it's all simple wikitext and can be edited normally. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I'd skip the first button "click here to go to the upload form" - just go to the form already! (And it looks like a great improvement.) Rich Farmbrough, 14:03, 24 February 2012 (UTC).
Thanks :-) That initial link is necessary to get the Javascript loaded though. There doesn't seem to be any other way of getting a script associated with a page, short of moving the script into Common.js (and I didn't have the courage to do that.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:07, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: I spoke to Steven about this, and he had some good suggestions:
  1. The best way to test this is just to do it; links are okay but probably too low-volume if you actually want to see whether or not it will be able to handle the average Wikipedia file-uploading traffic.
  2. That said, you should timebox your test to a week and then analyze the results. Data is your friend.
  3. Be sure to put some kind of banner on top alerting folks to the fact that this is a week-long test, and direct them to an FAQ page where you explain what's different about this system and why you're testing it out. Not everybody reads the VPs, of course, and there will definitely be some confused (possibly aggravated) people who'll want to know what's going on.

All of this might already be obvious to you, but just thought I'd put it out there :) Good luck, and I'm looking forward to seeing the results! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. Yeah, I guess the thing with the FAQ might be useful. Actually, right now, it has already been online for about two hours (I was impatient, you know.) So, you also lost the chance of being the first user to make an upload with it. Somebody else earned that bottle of champagne :-) Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:50, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Have you tested it with IE 7 and 8? Both of them are still widely used. IE 9 isn't enough - really all the browsers supported by jQuery should probably be supported. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 16:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm working on the older IE versions. Some weird stuff going on in those. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] IP range contribs

User:X! used to have a tool that checked all the contributions by IPs within a particular range (it was located here). Is there any tool that does the same thing? The one that's in the Gadgets is OK, but doesn't puts edits in chronological order. NW (Talk) 14:12, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, HelloAnyong made one when X!'s broke. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? —Preceding undated comment added 18:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC).
And I think TParis resurrected all of User:X!'s tools, so you can now find that tool at http://toolserver.org/~tparis/rangecontribs/ – Just replace ~soxred93 with ~tparis in the URL and all the tools should work – at least all of them I've tried have. Mojoworker (talk) 20:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I clicked on your link and then clicked on the menu items and they do not appear to work. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:48, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
No, the links don't work – you actually need to edit the URL again after you click one of the hyperlinks, but the tools themselves work. I left a note for TParis asking him if he can fix the hyperlinks if it's not too big a task. Mojoworker (talk) 18:25, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] WP:RFPP backlog

Resolved: Backlog cleared, no pending requests. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:27, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:RFPP has quite a backlog at the moment with 24 requests pending. If some admins could swing by there it would be helpful; I'd work on it myself but I'm about to get relatively busy for the next few hours. Ks0stm (T•C•G•E) 15:57, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] block-evader giving me the runaround

(Cross-posted from WT:UKRAIL)

I've been dealing with a guy for the last few days who keeps changing usage statistics and adding commentary about ticket barriers etc on various station articles, particularly those in Scotland. Kilwinning railway station and First ScotRail seem to be favourite haunts, but there are new ones with each block-evading IP. It started with User:JakeNeill1, who was briefly blocked, but has evaded the block through various BSkyB IP addresses (usually starting 90.xxx... and 2.2xx.xxx..). Any assistance dealing with him (or suggestions short of semi-protecting every article on a station with services to/within Scotland or blocking every Scottish BSkyB customer) would be greatly appreciated. I'm hoping he'll get bored or run out of IP addresses, but in the meantime, please revert and block on sight or report to AIV (and please let me know so I can keep track). Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:17, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Is there a specific related changes page I can patrol? (E.g. [40]). Marcus Qwertyus 22:50, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Railway_stations_served_by_First_ScotRail probably catches most of his targets, though there are a few others. Thanks for the suggestion—much more efficient than waiting for him to a get to a page on my watchlist. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Antiquated spelling

[edit] Requesting an unblock on another user's behalf

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive232#Requesting reappraisal of a block. I'm trying to get User:Edgeform unblocked, because I feel that the block was made in error, and I think that this was also the consensus of the now-archived discussion here. (Based on User talk:Tryptofish#Help Needed, I believe that Edgeform is, technically, requesting an unblock, even though they didn't do so according to official procedure.) Anyway, I really dislike the thought of an erroneous block, and I request that an administrator review the situation and make an unblock. Thank you. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:44, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

  • From reading the archived discussion and looking at the links, it does appear that Edgeform might have been the victim of a false flag operation. I lean towards unblocking, but let's hear what HelloAnnyong has to say first. Reyk YO! 01:04, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
    • I've left a note at HA's talk page. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:59, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
  • If Edgeform think they're unrightly blocked, they can simply ask ... not trying to sound bureaucratic, but silence is actually more damning in this case (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 12:01, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
    • I do appreciate that you are doing this carefully, and I don't think at all that you are being bureaucratic. It looks to me like Edgeform now has placed such a request at his talk, so he appears to be watching these discussions and is, in fact, interested in being unblocked. Above, I linked to where he sought my help. I would urge caution about attributing damning silence here. There's a big difference between damning silence and a lack of familiarity with all the rules around here. It's not like people are born knowing these things. (After all, I'm an experienced editor, and I didn't know until you told me that I couldn't put an unblock request template on someone else's talk page.) It looks to me like this is someone who simply doesn't know all the procedures, and I don't want to see the injustice of a bad block compounded by attribution of guilt to inexperience. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:59, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I'd like to see what the Checkusers have to say about this one. On the face of this there's no reason (that I cans see) to overturn the previous CU block--Cailil talk 21:17, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
  • It was my block, and I did it based on the CU findings - specifically that it was a possible to likely connection. If other admins want to unblock, I suppose that's fine. I do, however, find it curious that Tryptofish has been campaigning for this user for more than two months now... — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 23:31, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
    • I am disappointed that you made that crack about "curious". I thought that you were better than that. Silly me, I just think that we should be trying to do the right thing. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:34, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Look folks, I was the one who opened the SPI in the first place. As time went on, I changed my mind and had serious doubts about it (see the archived AN thread linked above). My only agenda here is getting things right. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:47, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I have to agree with Tryptofish here. IP checking doesn't always prove "Two users, one IP = one person". Only edits made in rapid succession from multiple accounts truly raise a red flag. But it's possible that two people could share in IP. It's best to investigate and ask for a second opinion before taking action. That way, the action taken is justified with a consensus (one of the principle foundations of Wikipedia). –BuickCenturyDriver 23:44, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
  • As Tryptofish asked me to do so, I'm revisiting this. I would ask fellow administrators not to do anything just for the moment. WilliamH (talk) 00:12, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
  • OK, both accounts have a strong overlap in articles edited, and similar points of view. Both accounts edit from exactly the same point of geolocation. Both accounts are a stickler for using a) full stops and capital letters in b) comprehensive edit summaries that c) frequently begin with the past participle. I'm not sure how meatpuppetry entered the equation, because my editorial perspective of this is that it's one individual, and the technical perspective suggests that too. Combining both perspectives, my view is that it's the same individual using one account from one IP and the other account at the other. Unless there is other information I am lacking which would shed more light on this, I see this as a quintessential violation of WP:SOCK in using another account to spread scrutiny while editing in a certain subject area, and see no reason for this block to be lifted. WilliamH (talk) 01:00, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Edits to the same articles by both user accounts definitely raise a red flag. If the edits are done in rapid succession, then it's safe to say they belong to a single user. The smoking gun here is the edits to the same articles. Thanks for explaining, WilliamH. –BuickCenturyDriver 13:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Based on all the above I've declined the unblock request[42]. Feel free to overturn if there's a substantive reason to do so--Cailil talk 15:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps you could have waited until the discussion was complete. Having an open request is just fine, while discussion is ongoing. There is no deadline for this sort of thing. Risker (talk) 16:27, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm afraid I don't see what we have left to discuss. CU evidence came back as "probable", edit comparison shows significant overlap, edit summaries (as discussed by WilliamH) are structurally the same. Therefore both technical CU evidence and behavioural SPI evidence say this is a sock. The unblock request gives me no reason to ignore or overturn that evidence. But I've got no problem with anyone unblocking, overturning me or ignoring my decline if they have or can see a substantive reason to ignore the SPI & CU evidence (but then again if there isn't one, then perhaps this discussion should be closed)--Cailil talk 18:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

This is very difficult. I recognize that the evidence is such that intelligent people can look at it and reach different conclusions. I especially thank WilliamH for carefully analyzing the evidence, and I acknowledge that this includes evidence that I cannot see. There's a big part of my thinking that says that I should just accept the conclusion reached by several administrators here, and I should move on. But there are things that just don't sit well with me. Please, everyone, understand that I'm not criticizing anyone by persistently raising questions, but I feel that, as intelligent people, we should be able to discuss these things.

  1. WilliamH: how do you fit into your analysis the edits by IPs, geolocating to various public computers around San Diego (like the public library), in which the edits consist of just removing a period or the like, and where the edit summaries (now deleted) are of the form "edit by [name], aka Neurorel/Edgeform"? If a single person is making the edits from the Neurorel account, the Edgeform account, and these "look at me, I'm socking" IP edits, does that make sense? To me, it seems pretty dodgy, and I've offered an alternative explanation at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive232#Requesting reappraisal of a block. Both there and here, several users have said that that explanation appears more credible.
  2. WilliamH: if I understand you correctly, you see both the Neurorel and Edgeform accounts geolocating to the same place, but each one consistently coming from a different IP address. How do you reconcile your analysis of the checkuser data with the analysis by Tiptoety in the earlier round of the SPI, where his conclusion was that the checkuser indicated that they were unrelated? (I've asked Tiptoety that question at his talk, linked above, and he said he didn't know.) How do you reconcile your analysis of the edit summaries with that by EyeSerene in the archived AN discussion?
  3. BuickCenturyDriver: you probably didn't literally mean it, but you said that the two accounts' edits "are done in rapid succession". That's not the case. Neither I nor a couple of others who have looked have seen evidence of tag-team editing. Editing in the same areas of interest, yes. Edits from pretty much the same editorial point of view, yes. But edits in a manner that appears coordinated, well, that's in the eye of the beholder.
  4. Anyone: OK, let's assume for argument's sake that Neurorel is indeed socking as Edgeform. If so, why leave this with Neurorel unblocked? At this point, the conclusion would be that the single person has (1) socked as Edgeform, (2) disrupted by making the "edit by [name]" edits, and (3) disrupted by asking as Edgeform at Edgeform's talk, and as an IP at my talk, for unblocks, based on lying about supposedly not really socking. I understand the rationale of limiting the sockmaster to a single account, but this no longer seems to me to make sense, if we really think the person is so disruptive.

--Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Tryptofish just wrt point 2 above (and not putting words in WilliamH's mouth but giving my 2c as I have the same POV as William on the edit summaries) a) I have two Broadband hotspots near where I live operated by two different companies. They generate the same physical location with different IPs - so in effect I can have one in IP in my kitchen and anther in my study. b) EyeSerene does not clear Edgeform of socking they just make the point that whereas there are huge similarities there are also subtle differences - "role" accounts try to do this all the time (create separate personas for the particular accounts), and as EyeSerene puts it "I doubt it makes very much difference (and I'm certainly not sure enough to want to firmly contradict HelloAnnyong)". And wrt point 4 yeah I'd personally see this as grounds form blocking the master account (not sure that that would have consensus though)--Cailil talk 20:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Serial copyvioler

Hello, here is an Admin from Commons; just wanted to warn you that this user, who appears to have uploaded copyvio on en.wiki too, has flooded Commons with a lot of Google Street's screenshots (see here). I put a warning on their talk page but I thought it was useful for you to know who you're dealing with. -- SERGIO aka the Black Cat 03:11, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Orphaned talk-page

Orphaned talk-page Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services--Musamies (talk) 06:38, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

  • This is not orphaned at all. AFC exists so non-registered users cam create articles. As, like mainspace, creation of pages in Wikipedia space is limited to registered users, ALL AFC pages are in Wikipedia talk space, where IP's may create new pages. Courcelles 06:49, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, it's a subpage of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation; subpages of extant pages are not considered orphaned, or we'd have to delete things such as Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 44. Nyttend (talk) 13:14, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Closer needed at CfD

Resolved: Anomie closed the discussion. Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 11:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Can someone look at this discussion? I believe at this point, all of the regular closers have either commented on the discussion or been mentioned. So if someone fresh to this can take a glance it would be appreciated. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:29, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Looking. Anomie⚔ 01:51, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] ImageRemovalBot

I've blocked ImageRemovalBot (talk · contribs) before it removes any more links to File:Project Trains no image.png. This was an obviously bad deletion in which a long-standing heavily-used image had its source information blanked, and was then speedy deletion. I'm astonished that neither the nominator (Sfan00 IMG (talk · contribs)) nor the deleting administrator (Fastily (talk · contribs)) looked at the page history during this process. Assistance in rolling back the bot's edits would be appreciated. Please let's not have this happen again. Cheers, Mackensen (talk) 23:59, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Looks like Carnildo restored all of the images. I note that Sfan00 tags with Twinkle; we can't expect the semiautomated tools to check for vandalism. However, deletion isn't supposed to be purely automatic; does the deleting admin have a good explanation for this? Nyttend (talk) 01:54, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Murder of Casey Kearney

Can an admin look at the revision history of this article, since creation it has contained a claim about the alleged perpetrator of the crime, which should in my view be removed from the page history. Mtking (edits) 01:48, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

The details may or not be necessary (likely not, given the article will probably be deleted), but it's not like that information came out of thin air; it is in some of the references already in the article. I don't see anything rising to the level of requiring RevDel, I think that would be somewhat overkill. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:36, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
As users on the AfD wont give the article a chance to proceed to see if further notability is likely by disregard the guidelines when seen fit. Then I have to agree with Northern Lights that this discussion seems like overkill.--BabbaQ (talk) 09:32, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] MediaWiki:Asksqltext — delete or to be updated?

This page not only looks archaic, it also has links that are now dead. Can we delete the beast, or does someone ahve the knowlege to update it? — billinghurst sDrewth 01:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Wow, congrats for finding and editing a page that hadn't been edited since 2004! Can't be that many pages of any sort that have gone so long with no changes. I'd say delete, except (1) not sure what happens if we delete it; is there some sort of default MediaWiki page that would appear in its place?, (2) is there any way to find if its deletion would impact page histories?, and (3) is there anywhere else that we could advertise this? MFD doesn't get MediaWiki pages very often, so we should probably attempt to let people know about the issue through other means. I'm going to drop a line at the technical VP; please leave notices anywhere else if you can think of it. Nyttend (talk) 03:20, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Meh, it looks like it has no technical use any more, but it's of some historical interest, like an old talkpage. Why delete? Put an archive box around the contents if you think it might confuse someone into thinking they can type raw SQL queries at the server through a wiki page. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 03:43, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Deleting it would be a bad idea since we don't actually want the default text. Probably the correct text would be something along the lines of "Admins can no longer run queries on the SQL database"©Geni 03:44, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
The Ask SQL feature was killed off ages ago. That page can be safely deleted, or kept. No one will ever see it either way. Reach Out to the Truth 03:59, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
"Ages ago" being seven years. That message has not been displayed to users for seven years. Reach Out to the Truth 04:16, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm curious: what's an SQL in the first place? I doubt that {{archive}}, {{historical}}, or anything else of the sort would be appropriate for any MediaWiki pages, due to technical issues that are inherent for the namespace. Nyttend (talk) 06:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
SQL, the language used to query a database. That page apparently allowed admins to issue an SQL query directly against the database, which can certainly wreak all sorts of havoc. T. Canens (talk) 07:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
I didn't know about the feature or how it worked, but if it was available to all admins as recently as 2004-2005, it can't(?) have been that dangerous per "adminship is no big deal". My guess is that it was for purposes now being handled by the MW:API and by read-only SQL clients now running on toolserver. 67.117.145.9 (talk) 21:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I have made it a pair then MediaWiki:Sqlislogged. Does that make it a jig or a double facepalm? — billinghurst sDrewth 11:06, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

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