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Proposed ban of User:Ariobarza

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Archived again, this is moot. Guy (Help!) 20:47, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It seems there is consensus that Ariobarza has violated WP:NOR pretty comprehensively, that mentorship has failed, and that even Ariobarza is content to be restricted, for now at least, to her talk page. Given such equanimity, I have blocked Ariobarza and encouraged her to contribute on that basis, with the usual rights of appeal should she feel it necessary. Guy (Help!) 20:06, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, if I am about to be deleted; I just want to say, it has been a good run, I want to thank everyone for giving their time to help me on Wikipedia, and I loved contributing free information, and hopefully I will appeal this, thank you and goodbye. With love, Ariobarza.--Ariobarza (talk) 03:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Proposed ban of User:Ariobarza

I am proposing a community ban of Ariobarza (talk · contribs) from the entire project, due to her apparent inhability to understand or unwillingness to comply with our editorial policies on verifiability and original research, and the detrimental effect that her general attitude, approach, perceptions and choice of vocabulary have in the editing environment.

The first thing that you notice in Ariobarza is her enthusiasm, and everything indicates that she means well, but (even putting all conduct issues aside) by demanding that some knowledgeable editors spend time double-checking her every edit for personal interpretations she clearly is a net detriment to the project. - In my opinion, using the process of writing Wikipedia articles for teaching basic concepts of research to persons who lack such education/habilities would be too much of a drain on our already very limited resources (particularly in areas like Persian history, where making articles comply with our policies is already time-consuming). Our aim is creating an encyclopedia, not running a school.

A topic ban covering Near Eastern and classical history was proposed by ChrisO in October 2008, and was gathering a general consensus in favour, but ended in an indefinite block for block evasion & disruption (subsequently lifted after a search for a mentor & e-mail exchange -link- that finally resulted in AniMate volunteering as an unofficial mentor -link-). However, a mere 9 days later AniMate himself mentioned that "[his] offer [was] accepted and then completely ignored."

As basically nothing has changed since then, I invite everyone to read the previous ban proposal (with details & diffs.) & subsequent comments by users who have interacted with Ariobarza. It's not short, but it gives a good idea of the general situation.

Examples since the October 2008 topic ban proposal:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of the Tigris (November 2008):
A clear example of original research based on Ancient primary sources, previously discussed at Talk:Battle of Opis, and now gestating at User:Ariobarza/Battle of the Tigris (permanent link).
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Siege of Gordium (November 2008):
Instead of looking for sources, Ariobarza took the mention that "the Macedonian commander Parmenion captured the city [of Gordium]" from our Wikipedia article on Gordium (copied verbatim from livius.org, but without inline citation) and the unsourced mention of a "Siege of Gordium" from a Wikipedia template, and combined both fragments into a novel, entirely imaginary "Parmenion captured the city in a little known siege", which even includes his own opinion that lack of sources equals "little known".
Later during the discussion Ariobarza interpreted the book snippet "Alexander conquered... Phrygia (there he took a strong Persian fortress Gordion)" as confirmation of the siege taking place: "And according to the most recent comments, I think someone has found this siege to be true, am I right?"
Talk:Battle of Thermopylae (February - November 2008): Personal interpretations of Ancient primary sources.
Talk:Siege of Sardis (547 BC) (February - December 2008): More of the same.

Deleted entries in Ariobarza's userspace:

User:Ariobarza/Battle of Pasargadae — (AfD: redirect to Pasargadae)
User:Ariobarza/Battle of the Marsyas — (AfD: delete)
User:Ariobarza/Battle of the Median Fort
User:Ariobarza/Battle of the Tigris — (AfD: delete)
User:Ariobarza/Siege of Doriskos — (AfD: delete)
User:Ariobarza/Siege of Kapisa — (AfD: delete)
User:Ariobarza/Siege of Pasargadae Hill — (AfD: delete)
And the possibility of much more of the same.

Although directly related to me & this ban proposal, these comments illustrate Ariobarza's general approach, perceptions of other editors & choice of vocabulary: diff. & link

Based on all this, I fear that a topic ban covering Near Eastern and classical history would not be enough, for the inhability or unwillingness to comply with our core policies would be detrimental to any article on any topic.

I also fear that a ban from articles (main namespace) & templates only (allowing Ariobarza to participate in discussions) would still result in a drain on the time and patience of our volunteers, who would still have to cope with Ariobarza's general attitude and original research-based proposals.

Thus, I propose a community ban from the entire project. - Ev (talk) 13:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I reluctantly support this proposal, based on my interaction with the user at my talk page and at Talk:Battle of Thermopylae. User is clearly very intelligent, but combative beyond belief, cannot work within the bounds of intrinsic policies and guidelines such as NOR, OWN and CONSENSUS, (let alone WP:PLEASEDON'TSHOUT, we must get round to writing that one). Article ended in being protected because, in line with WP:POLE, another combative user came along with different POV. A huge shame, because someone with such strong grasp of primary sources is a rarity here, and very useful, but not if the sources will be used selectively, in line with POV and, worst, as a battering ram. --Dweller (talk) 13:56, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- NB This user and this thread have inspired me to create WP:PLEASEDON'TSHOUT. Constructive comment and edits welcome. --Dweller (talk) 14:13, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Concur. I have observed Ariobarza on now deleted Siege of Doriskos (see above for a copy), Cyrus, Mitradates and the Battle of Thermopylae. In all cases she misinterpreted well-trodden passages from the historia of Herodotus, explained in numerous secondary sources. In the article on Doriscus, where Herodotus appears to be the only primary source, she made a claim about a particular siege and the escape of the governor, citing "The Athenians and their empire", a paperback by Malcolm McGregor which I subsequently acquired: the claim was not in any way supported by the book, which only mentions Doriscus in passing. Similarly it took a lot of effort to get the legend of the early life of Cyrus into a reasonable form. The discussion about numbers at the battle of Thermopylae seems to have been a similar attempt to wear down another editor's energies. Underlying her edits of articles on ancient history, there seems to be a pro-Persian, anti-Greek agenda, based on the misuse of secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 07:37, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

'Response; Ariobarza's topic ban'

Please read the entire message with an open mind, so Ariobarza does not have to repeat it.

Hi Ev, talk about deconstructive comments. This is uncalled for, I thought we had put this issue behind us. Since November 2008, I have quietly gathered sources, and minded my own business. And now you want to propose a topic ban on me? This is dissapointing. First of all, for the Siege of Gordium I have giving up, and no longer care if it happpened, because overall consensus of the users here determined probably nothing happened, and I have even agreed with them, so Siege of Gordium is over (I was not the originater of the idea, like I said a thousand times, I copy pasted the info, added 1 sentence from the Gordium article itself). And at the end of the deletion debate, I agreed to delete Siege of Gordium.

You forgot to include the full meaning of my last message which I said at the deletion debate;
And here it is, others edited this article too, (while) your accusing me of the wrong things here, [1]. Why don't you contact this fellow, the actual creator of this red link, which I made blue, User:Brandmeister, he named it "Siege of Gordium", I read history, and I have never heard of a siege there, except Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot. And according to the most recent comments, I think someone has found this siege to be true, am I right? Don't worry I am improving, this is a old forgotten article.--Ariobarza (talk) 23:39, 17 November 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk

And this too, the last official sentence;
Feel free to delete, it would have been interesting if there was a siege, but guess not, nothing happened at Gordium. Bye.--Ariobarza (talk) 07:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk'

For Battle of the Tigris, this issue was between me and ChrisO (which I now Do Not have anything against or any problems with that user [and respect him for pointing out my problems here]), it is not your business, I suggest not to involve yourself in this highly sensitive article which I am sure you know nothing about. I NOW have damning evidence of what I said before as the mostly the truth, yet now that I am so close to presenting the evidence, you come up with a topic ban for me, nice job.

I consider your proposal to be highly rude and disheartening at this time. You are attempting to waste my time and others for the next month over a topic ban debate on me. I am tired of waisting my time on quite frankly stupid (I don't care anymore, I said the word stupid, big deal, I am guilty as charged) and endless debates with revisionists with no lives, other than to waist others time.

Misrepresenting the issue, and presenting false information is not helpful here. I {suggest} if you have a personal grudge against me to say it to my face on my talk page. And not spread "Off with Ariobarza's head" pamphlets around the town. You stalking my movements on Wikipedia to see if I am breaking the rules has itself inspired me to leave Wikipedia. Coordinated group personal attacks on me shows how much Wikipedia is in danger of developing close nit gangs within its topics.

Of course its not Wikipedia's fault, its the fault of users that don't know squat on a subject, then when they see something they ThinK is OR SYN, they jump on that user without looking or researching the evidence for it. So when Ev assumes its OR SYN, and later gets proven wrong (this time by another user who presents the evidence), Ev develops a grudge, and revenge sets in when out of nowhere a topic ban on Ariobarza pops up! A coincedence?

If you do not stop (what I consider a personal attack from you), I will never stop until your true intentions are exposed, possibly an RFC for your other menions too. You spending months on this issue to get me banned from the topic shows how determined you are to get rid of me, actions speak louder than words.

Me being not in contact with my Unofficial mentor or continueing making deleted articles in my userspace is not a violation of any law here. So with the little good faith I still have in me, I ask you to abandon this inapropriate proposal, you must either present the ancient crimes I commited here (which everybody got over) or present new evidence, which does not exist.

I am not saying you have a grudge against me, though it is a possibility. Anyways, I urge you to please stop this, and if you have any concerns with me, to come to my talk page so we can work something out, can we agree? Thank you.

Further comments on conclusion, by Ariobarza; It is not my fault that certian users think I am doing original research, they lack knowledge in the area, and think every claim is unbelievable, history is history, sometimes the sources are old, but if it is not contested by new sources and its reliable then its okay to include them, this was part of another point that I want to make about history articles, citing old sources, we cite Herodotus, his source is 2,500 years old, but a 100 year book of modern history then should be of no problem, and that if (refer to what I said above). I have not done OR for almost 3 months now. I put information there so I could later back it up with references. I know [this] mistake has caused others trouble (not the trouble you saw in Battle of Opis, but deletion articles), and I already said I was sorry and have made some improvements. But now, I HAVE the missing evidence that will shouw WhateveR I said about Battle of the Tigris was true. The end (for Battle of Thermoplyae, Dougweller locked it in mistake, there was no dispute, maybe over Helots, but I came to an agreement with the other user before the lock ended. So the end. I cannot allow you to take this chance from me, no matter how nice you try to act, and say your intentions are good, I can see through your real intentions. I have just a tiny winy bit of good faith left in me for your actions, so I ask you stop. Your only going to waist more of all the users time here. You need to get a life, you have too much free time. YouR NoT HelpinG WikipediA. Bye! And no thanks.

(Ariobarza considers himself the real Operation Enduring Freedom, he has endured annialation attempts by users for months now, and is still standing strong, hopefully a coalition of the willing (whoever reading this) can give an helping hand, so he can survive for the sake of Wikipedia. I will not go quietly into the night, I'm going to survive, I going to prosper... Last stand here I come.)

"Go tell the Wikipedians, passerby; That here, by Persian law, User:Ariobarza; actually Ariobarzan RIP."

--Ariobarza (talk) 14:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Note: Most of these comments (except the third & two last paragraphs) where originally made at my talk page from 05:16 to 14:19, 17 Dec. (UTC), and then copied here. I replied there at the time. - Ev (talk) 19:47, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed ban of User:Ariobarza: further discussion

I strongly object to this ban as Ariobarza has been working on articles in her own userspace as she was instructed to do. She has honored her ban by working quietly and not initiating arguments or being disruptive in the mainspace. Her edits have been good faith edits . Since when do we check peoples' userspace for working edits? This sort of ban would set a very bad precedent. Tundrabuggy (talk) 16:59, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't buy Ariobarza's claims that "people are out to get him".

It is Ariobarza's fault that he is doing original research.

It is Ariobarza's fault that he is refusing to learn from advice given to him what Wikipedia's policies on use of sources is.

I have heard the "I will provide sources soon" canard so many times that I've stopped looking at anything except what's presently provided, and his request to me to review his sources for the Battle of the Median Fort did not show much improvement in either politeness or quality of research.

Sure, less time would be wasted on him (I don't believe his self-professed claims of being female any more) if he were banned from Wikipedia. But he's an irritant, not a pest. --Alvestrand (talk) 19:45, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Has Ariobarza been inserting significant amounts of problematic material into articles? Jayjg ^(talk) 03:34, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, she has. See comments on Ariobarza's contributions and examples of articles she created and were subsequently deleted (some also userfied) in the previous ban proposal (e.g. Nickhh's comment) and in this one. See also ChrisO's comments in his userspace. - Ev (talk) 13:16, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The most obvious example is the edit-warring on Battle of Thermopylae at the end of November, which resulted in the article being fully protected until 10 December. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:23, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question: I am not sure I understand what we exactly propose to ban an enthusiastic editor for. For working on articles in her user space? For an editorial conflict of a few months ago? Can somebody mention recent problems in the article space with the user? Alex Bakharev (talk) 04:14, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For being consistently unable to work within the bounds of our core editorial policies on verifiability and original research (and defending enthusiastically her personal interpretations), resulting in inappropriate content and a drain on our limited resources (i.e., our knowledgable editors working on these topics having to dedicate time & effort to clean-up after her, and argue with her). – See Nickhh's comments during the deletion discussion of "Siege of Gordium".

Someone unable to grasp the meaning or unwilling to follow our core content policies cannot positively contribute content to Wikipedia. In my opinion, we can't ask our knowledgable editors to contribute extra time & patience so that we can accomodate everyone. - Ev (talk) 13:18, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nickhh, I don't think you understand that Siege of Gordium was one minor mistake on my behalf, and the end I agreed to delete. I think your addicted to that article, You did not answer this guy's question rightly, Can somebody mention recent problems in the article space with the user? Alex Bakharev (talk) 04:14, 18 December 2008 (UTC) and you mislead people when you say YES, [I have not made any disruptive edits or caused RECent problems in the article space. When your continueing to pull that dead article out of the ground, it stinks up the place. I suggest you stop saying Siege of Gordium... Siege of Gordium... Until your tongue falls out. You also forgot this comment, Final Comment: I too have looked for sources, and can not find them, it seems this time you guys are right and that I am right too, because I said I do not have a opinion of FOR or AGAINST the deletion of this article. Whoever added those sentences of the siege, in this (Gordium) article, should walk the plank. Because ChrisO has blindy accused me of using my imagination, (guess this is another thing I will add to list of ChrisO misconducts, which will be published in a book and will be a worldwide best seller, and will bring a revolution of freedom to Wikipedia by studying if the rules can be improved for future generations) of that person [I added what they wrote] to this article, and therefore it turned into blue and came to life. Feel free to delete, it would have been interesting if there was a siege, but guess not, nothing happened at Gordium. Bye.--Ariobarza (talk) 07:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk, I barely cared then, and I do not care now if it got deleted. That issue is over, so I am going to be banned for Siege of Gordium, right? I am wrong, I waisted time, your right, is that what you want to hear? My problems are over, I am restarting anew, let go of your hate, and come into the light. These whole issues ended with after my block, and from now I kindly ask you to make your new messages at the bottom of page, so users do not have to look for new messages in the middle of this page. Thanks.--Ariobarza (talk) 13:34, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Ariobarza, Nickhh's comments, as well as mine, were not about that entry in particular, but about your (and certainly others') ~~conduct~~ contributions & involvement in Wikipedia in general. - Ev (talk) 13:41, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Clarified meaning: conduct → contributions & involvement.-Ev (talk) 14:02, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Earth to Ev, do you copy. Conduct in general. I know how polite Nickhh can be, trust me. And for Alvestrand the Negative, he has a tendency to say sh.. u. a lot. But I want to be clear, that is his rights, and I wont interfere with that. I already confessed my sins of waisting a couple hours on Gordium, but I AM afraid this is not enough to get me banned. If you want silence me, you have to find something that I did recently, and put it here. Until then no thanks, I'll skip the guillotine. Thanks buddy.--Ariobarza (talk) 13:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Oppose ban. The "gestating" article on Battle of Tigris looks sourced to me. This looks like a content dispute. Those who have a content dispute with this user should employ the well-developed and finely-tuned procedures that Wikipedia has for resolving difficult content disputes. Oops. Well, they need to find a way to deal with it, anyway. But a ban of this user is not the right way. If it makes anyone feel any better, there are people I'd like to see banned, desysopped, etc., too, but it isn't so easy. 6SJ7 (talk) 05:05, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Let me be clear, though I do care what happens too me, If I had the choice of sacrificing my articles for myself, I would not do it. I will rather let my contributions to my articles survive, than myself. I am just afraid that if I get banned, all my hard work will lost. If one thinks about it, Ev is looking for a shortcut to delete my userspace articles, if I get banned, than all the articles will be gone with me (as soon as I am gone, he and others will propose speedy deletions on my userspace articles), dust to dust.
The problem is I served out my block, I have not made any major edits since my block, I only edit in my userspace. And you have to wait until the end of the week to see if Battle of the Tigris is good. I will not be forced to produce a good article in my userspace ASAP. No one can force me to do that. And I read the earlier comments on Ev's page with ChrisO (a user who I do not have any problems with now). I said if you continue to do this, I will not accept. I did not say I was going to do something drastic or mean. There is absolutely no reason for me to be banned now. So many people are getting driven away from {revisionist} users who are narrow minded, and fail to see the bigger pictue, the people cannot stand anymore of the hate, so they just leave Wikipedia, driving potentialy good faith users away from editing is unwise. People get banned for the worst of reasons, I have done nothing!
I may be busy in the next 3 days plus I am on the verge of present good evidence for my articles, I cannot waist more time here, I feel like I could be improving my articles now, but I have to come here. This is highly dissapointing to me, that a user is putting so much time and effort in waisting his and ours time, in order to get me banned for issues that are already resolved and or are in the process of being improved, what a shame. Best regards to all.--Ariobarza (talk) 06:19, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Okay... so let me ask a question. Ariobarza, the problem that people seem to have with your edits is that they contain a lot of original research. Can you tell us what 'original research' means when it comes to Wikipedia, and why we don't allow it? // roux 06:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It means this... Original reseach includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. This means that Wikipedia is not the place to publish your own opinions, experiences, or arguments. Citing sources and avoiding original research are inextricably linked: to demonstrate that you are not presenting original research, you must cite reliable sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented.

And in the Original research article, it says in the SEction: [Unclear Boundaries] that Some narrowminded users might mistake new classification with OR. Which means it is sometimes good if a discovery is made, it is okay to include it on Wikipedia. That is all. I am trying to advance a position that the historians on the battle have [already] advanced for a 100 years already, they say it, I put it. Thanks.--Ariobarza (talk) 12:42, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza[reply]

Well, I tried. // roux 17:33, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(using odd indentation because I'm commenting late) I checked the page Original research, and Ariobarza is misquoting it; the word "narrowminded" does not appear there, and I believe the text as written does not support Ariobarza's position; it's calling out the fact that the periodic table is original research, despite being, at first glance, a compilation. If the person is misrepresenting sources we can all check when discussing Wikipedia policy, why should I believe his representations about ancient Persian history, where my ability to check is far more limited? --Alvestrand (talk) 20:01, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Let me highlight a sentence: Which means it is sometimes good if a discovery is made, it is okay to include it on Wikipedia. That would be no, it's not.

Disinterested readers may wish to consult--or at least skim--this dogged example of original research, where Ariobarza energetically attempts to spin up an entire battle up out of a few fragments of translated text. The pose of martyrdom, further above, should also be sufficient to give the disinterested pause. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 14:09, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"The pose of martyrdom, further above, should also be sufficient to give the disinterested pause" For the record, I am not a muslim(if thats what you mean), and I do not appreciate you making a simple epithet, into a martyrdom scandal, Ariobarza is not that crazy. You failed to grasp what I ment.

I will not go quietly into the night, I'm going to survive, I going to prosper... Last stand here I come.)

And I said RIP Ariobarzan, it is another person.

I can't wait to see the look on your face when you are proven wrong. You are wrong CalenderWatcher, just read my biggy message on my talk page, and evolution will set in. No original research, did you ever question "How did Ariobarza come up with such an idea?" It is because most of whom that translated the inscription (with materials they have and we don't) have come to the conclusion that at least the first military engagement between Babylon and Persia occured. It is not up to you or me to decide, based on what we think we know, that the battle did not happen, its up to the Scholars with experience in their fields to decide for us. This line is interesting, "The army of the Persians made an attack," is this a fragment? Thee end.--Ariobarza (talk) 14:26, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Yes, it is a fragment. --Alvestrand (talk) 17:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong, it is a complete statement, is this a fragment to, actaully an ilegable text to say it better, "The army of the U.S made an attack" This is not a fragment. You need to look into books about the last part of the inscription, there is no destroyed sentence after it, therefore it is a complete statment.--Ariobarza (talk) 21:39, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Ariobarza asked my meddling in my talk page,but I'm not familiar with topic ban. What does it means ? what will be outline of that topic? Are you asking to ban Ariobarza from editing in any historical article?or does it means a ban on creating such topics? or only the battles of Cyrus the great ? Anyway , I do think he still needs some help in being familiar with Wikipedia's roles --Alborz Fallah (talk) 18:03, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The scope of a ban is defined during the discussion. My initial proposal calls for a ban from the entire project, from all of Wikipedia (read the very first & very last sentences of the proposal). Below AniMate proposes a ban from editing articles (main namespace) only (I assume that including templates also), thus allowing Ariobarza to participate in talk page discussions & work in her user space. - Ev (talk) 18:47, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose ban. Rather put on restriction for creation of articles related to the classics for a a duration of 6 months. Or a general 6 month ban on creation of new article. The user can create the articles in his userpage and then ask for it to be evaluated. The article on the user's page: "the Battle of Tigris" seems to be partially sourced:[1], but user is urged to strongly provide excerpts from the sources he is quoting. Overall, the amount of articles the user is creating in his userpage is a good sign. He should ask other users for feedback to these articles and then ask them to post it. Also other positive contribution of the user should be highlighted which is providing sources to various article. The issue discussed seems to be from two/three months ago and the user has done a better job since then. At the same time, he is urged to review WP:OR and WP:Synthesis and follow those principles. Succintly summarized with regards to Ariobarza: 1) Do not intrepret primary sources (Herodotus) unless backed up by secondary sources. 2) Check to see if the article the user wants to initiate exists in other Encyclopedias(Britannica, Iranica, etc.) and books (if an academic author ahs written a specific article on the subject matter). If it doesn't, do not start it. --Nepaheshgar (talk) 20:40, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support ban. Without a major change in attitude, this editor is never going to make a positive contribution toward building an encyclopedia. Looie496 (talk) 20:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For anyone who is unsure of the situation and or wants to Ariobarza's information read the smoking gun at the end of the page, and from now on comment always at the ends of the page, so we can easily find new comments here, thank you.--Ariobarza (talk) 21:09, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Link: The Smoking Gun Evidence For All: The Best Of The Best, Sir!. - Ev (talk) 11:29, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support ban. The problems with Ariobarza's contributions are numerous, and not just limited to article space - hence the proposal immediately below to restrict Ariobarza to talk pages will not work. To recap:

Ariobarza does not follow the basic premise of no original research. Her research method consists of finding fragments from Google Books and combining them into a new synthesis. There's no better example of this than User:Ariobarza/Battle of the Tigris, a userspace copy of a now-deleted article. No book on ancient Persian or Babylonian history discusses such a battle. The page is pure OR. The fact that it still exists, in any form, shows that Ariobarza simply does not accept the premise of no original research. This isn't any longer a question of a lack of awareness or understanding - it's wilful and congenital. Her edits are fundamentally untrustworthy.

Ariobarza's talk page participation is no better. She wastes everyone's time with long, rambling, aggressive and tendentious screeds. We've seen that in this discussion.

In short, she may be enthusiastic but she's simply not capable of being an effective contributor - she appears to have neither the intellectual nor the social skills required, and wastes a great deal of other peoples' time in the process. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:08, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support ban First let me say that I believe the rule on Original Research is often interpreted as being too restrictive, much in the "because we can't find a source that states the nose is located on the face between the eyes & the mouth, so writing that is OR" sort of way. Having said that, I am convinced by the following comment made above that Ariobarza is unable to understand the intent of therule against original research: "I will rather let my contributions to my articles survive, than myself. I am just afraid that if I get banned, all my hard work will lost." If a person adds content to Wikipedia which is not present either in verifiable sources or confirmed by common sense, it will be deleted. If anyone is afraid of their hard work being lost due to other editors, start a blog. You'll be far happier publishing your research there than on Wikipedia. -- llywrch (talk) 00:58, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem, User:ChrisO and User:Llywrch is in utter denial of the evidence that was presented here. ChrisO all I can say is that your a disgusting person, you should be ashamed of yourself. For once, I have the damning evidence for the battle, and you forcefully remove it. Nice why to hide under the rug. I advise you that when you have at least 20 minutes, to go on my talk page and read it there. There you can reflect on it. So when you come back here, YoU can apologize to me and all of those that you have spilled your ignorant lies too. I already apologized for my inexperienced edits almost 3 months ago, and only 2 users, including yourself is pushing this request to get me banned. Everyone got over it, apparently you are still hostile towards me and others. Now that I am finally gathering the sources you jump on this opportunity to get me banned, your delusional and clearly a threat to all progress on Wikipedia, your true colors show here, {As a medical doctor , my profession does not permits me to edit in the best manner in the historical articles . I can advise you not to confront with the users like Chris ,since they may have some prejudices about certain ethnicities and nationalities [2] and confrontation with them and their provocation may result in wasting our time and efforts. Let the time wash away their sensitivities.--Alborz Fallah (talk) 08:52, 18 December 2008 (UTC).} I am telling everyone to read the full full, The Smoking Gun Evidence For All: The Best Of The Best, Sir! which answers every question you have! As for ChrisO, I hope he can evolve one day.--Ariobarza (talk) 01:36, 19 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Please remember WP:NPA. Also, to allay your concerns re: the collapsible text, its use is not a sign of hostility, merely of manageability and they are used often enough on Wikipedia (see the end of George W. Bush for example) that the users here know to use the "show" button and read the text. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:55, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Philosopher, please say if you support ChrisO's false accusations, or that you oppose the ban. This page is getting to large, and I appreciate your willingness to come to compromise, its just I no what kind of person he is, and lets say it stops progress on Wikipedia. Thanks.--Ariobarza (talk) 07:19, 19 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

I'm afraid Ariobarza has *still* not understood that it's his conduct that creates the problems around him, not his viewpoints. The way the "smoking gun" "evidence" is presented is a good example of his conduct, which I find unacceptable. --Alvestrand (talk) 07:54, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support ban Per the arguments above. Does nothing for the credibility of this encyclopaedia.--Folantin (talk) 11:07, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose ban. This user seems to have a somewhat flawed methodology (although, based on other comments, that may have actually improved), but also presents sources and tries to work within the rules. I don't believe a ban is warranted. Everyking (talk) 12:21, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Everyking, simply trying to work within our content policies is not enough: editors contributing content to Wikipedia have to be able to actually do so; and in this case Ariobarza has been consistently incapable of doing so (plus the attitude issues). – The price Wikipedia pays for allowing such editors to continue trying is a constant drain on the time, energy & patience of the knowledgeable editors who have to do the clean-up & the arguing, when they could be doing more productive & gratifying work. See Dougweller's comments in this discussion. - Ev (talk) 12:47, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not simply Ariobarza's methodology - and contra other comments from editors who haven't interacted with Ariobarza recently or at all, it certainly hasn't improved. The rants we've seen on this page and talk pages are just as much part of the problem. Ariobarza simply doesn't understand, or doesn't want to understand, NOR. I and others have spent months trying to explain it to her, without success. Advice is consistently ignored. There's a constant "I'm right, you're wrong" attitude. Challenges and (constuctive) criticism produce long tendentious rants and accusations. It's impossible to collaborate effectively with an editor who behaves like that. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:18, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If ChrisO wrongly assumed such an event never happened, and derailed users for it, does he have good conduct? Why isn't he here to pay for his supposed sins? Secondly, I find it highly contradictory to NoW say I am doing OR by saying that the Tigris battle happened, when I now have evdence for it which makes it not OR. It is OR on ChrisO's part to assume with no evidence that such an event did not take place. Until ChrisO can find 1 book that denies the existence of such a battle, it is his POV to say it never happened. He is either stubborn, or denying evidence. This user has driven away many potential good users from ever editing Wikipedia with ignorance and lack of knowledge on the subject matter.
His other great acts are removing sourced materials, from the Opis battle, and half of my deleted articles that he wanted to delete had sourced material in them when they were deleted. The tendency to corner users has become somewhat abusive over time, and he apparently likes to do that. Though I admited to my wrong doings and even thanked ChrisO for his advice, it seems he is now jumping on the opportunity to get me banned. Restarting wars is not good for human progress. I have been editing quietly in my userspace and making minor edits to articles, plus engaging in some good faith debates since my block. There no one great reason for me to get banned, only old accusations, which at least half may be true. I hope users reading this will not take my word or ChrisO/ Ev's word on it, I hope they take what smoking gun evidences word for it, which has evidence. I could not be more sincerely clearer than that, my baby cousin could even understand this, many thanks.--Ariobarza (talk) 13:01, 19 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]
Support ban rather reluctantly. I had hoped a restriction to talk pages would be a viable solution, but her posts here and on talk pages have convinced me that this isn't possible. The threat of being banned from the project has to be hard to handle, but Ariobarza has consistently handled conflict with other editors poorly. The rants on this page and other talk pages recently come to mind, as do her contributions to AfDs. Sorry, as I really would have liked to have helped you, but keeping you around at this point is a net loss for the project.A ni Mate 17:26, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support; shows all signs of being a problem editor. Ncmvocalist (talk) 05:10, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative proposal

Ariobarza is well-intentioned, but consistently fails to understand why we must not form articles from synthesized material. To quote policy:If the sources cited do not explicitly reach the same conclusion, or if the sources cited are not directly related to the article subject, then the editor is engaged in original research and we must make each claim attributable to a source that explicitly makes that claim. Ariobarza finds sources that passingly and vaguely mention "Battle X", cobbles them together, and makes an article asserting that "Battle X" definitively happened. What he doesn't seem to understand is that none of the sources he uses "explicitly makes [the] claims" that his articles make. I previously offered to help him work on articles in his user space to avoid him being banned, as I think sourcing is probably my greatest strength on Wiki. The offer was accepted but never acted on.

As the user hasn't acted on offers to help him approve and still doesn't appear to understand that his articles are simply synthesized original research, I think a restriction from editing or creating articles is appropriate. Having Ariobarza limited to article talk and user talk would take out much of the harm this user is causing. By having Ariobarza post potential sourced changes on talk, experienced editors would be able to check the claims at their leisure without having to scramble to fix any of Ariobarza's original research. If an experienced editor agrees that his proposed addition of material is sound, it would be added to the article. Additionally, when he feels that the articles he is editing in his user space are ready, another editor would have to look over them to see if they're actually ready to migrate in to article space. I think with restrictions like this in place, Ariobarza would be forced, for lack of a better word, to understand and follow Wikipedia policies without any risk to disruption to the actual articles. A ni Mate 18:01, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For clarity's sake, I suppose stating that this proposal is a restriction to talk pages might be a little more clear. I see no reason that he (or she) should have to leave the project, but her problematic edits must be curtailed. A ni Mate 20:24, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support I think something must be done. A number of editors, including myself, have made considerable efforts to help her to no avail. It has gotten to the point where I avoid looking at her edits because I don't have the energy to engage in a long tangled discussion with her about them. I'm not at all sure we will ever be able to get her to understand our OR policy. Her article-space editing does not help Wikipedia and indeed harms the articles she works on. Sorry Ariobarza, but that is how I see it. Limiting her to talk space would help a lot. She is energetic, which is good, and seems to have a number of sources, and if we can find a way that she can still be a contributor but not an article editor or creator I hope the project will benefit. dougweller (talk) 19:21, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strong somewhat Oppose
I have the sources cited that explicitly reach the same conclusion, and or the sources cited are directly related to the article subject, then I am not engaged in original research and I have made sure that each claim is attributable to the sources that explicitly make that claim.
I accepted since October 2008 that I will follow the WP guidelines in WP:Original Research. From now on. So if I have not done anything paticulary wrong since then, why should I now get banned. Either say your for it or against it, please do not be vague! An hour ago I had my 4 wisdom teeth taken out, and have Non-Woven Sponges lodged into my mouth to stop the bleeding, so I eat baby food, and need some sleep. But, I guess I am going to lose some sleep over this page, {NOJOKE}. Thanks you all!--Ariobarza (talk) 20:35, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

I have the smoking gun on my talk page, which is the last message there. Tommorow, after an final revision to it, I will post it here. And God said, "let there be light!" And the light was good.--Ariobarza (talk) 20:47, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

The Smoking Gun Evidence For All: The Best Of The Best, Sir!

Hi, these are examples of why Ariobarza should not get banned (this is the whole kit and kaboodle), and how User:Ev is currently waisting time, but accuses me of waisting time, very interesting. This is since the October 2008 topic ban proposal, I kindly ask of anyone who is reading this to; by following the directions below, to please look at these neat links which I have provided, and come to your own conclusion. You will know whether it is OR or not. And it is also not synthesis to comparely mention these sources for the Tigris battle, BEcause if the historians (which if you check the links they do) mention other historians (who by the way are in the article already) in relation to the Tigris battle, then the historians have already done synthesis for me! Therefore, there is no reason for me to do synthesis, which currently I have not done, and the synthesis allegation was an old one. So by comparing their collegges{friends} findings, they are trying to indirectly prove that such an event happened. I ask everyone reading this to please be patient with this message, because it is a interactive thrill ride. Prepare to be amazed!

Collapsed in the name of sanity - don't clog up this page with massive copy and paste dumps, please. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:18, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For User:Ariobarza/Battle of the Tigris, I said months ago, that for the invasion of Babylon, {two} battles happened by the Tigris River, the Battle of the Tigris, and Battle of Opis (which is also by the Tigris), then all of Babylon submitted to Cyrus; Virtually all of the translators and historians agree, that Babylon and Persia had some sort of military fight with each other (you will realize this later in the message). However, they are divided on whether it involved the Babylonian king or another king by the Tigris, because of the year the tablet dates from, that year is known to historians as the year Cyrus invaded Babylon. At the time, there was (other than the Babylonian king) no other king (there was Gobryas{satrap} and Gadates{nobleman} and they defected to Cyrus, and Cyrus fought a battle on the Tigris to free Gadates, this is according to Xeno, funny coincedence huh?) by the Tigris, so that fringe theory contradicts the known history of Babylon. The historians who translated the event are as follows (similar words boldened);

Date	Translator/ Historian	Text	Source
1925	Sidney Smith	"... fought. The river Tigris ... In Adar Ishtar of Erech{or Uruk} ... of the sea-land(?) ..."	Babylonian Historical Texts
1950	A. Leo Oppenheim	"... Tigris. In the month of Addaru the image of Ištar of Uruk [lacuna] The army of the Persians made an attack..."	Ancient Near Eastern Texts
1975	Albert K. Grayson	"... Tigris. [In the month of] Addaru the (image of the) Ishtar of Uruk ... the ... [the ...]s of the Sea Country ... [arm]y [made an] at[tack] ..."	Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles
2004	Jean Jacques Glassner	"[...] was killed. The Tig[ris ... (?). In the month of] Adar (?) Ištar of Uruk [...] the [troops] of Per[sia{ns}... the troop]s [...]."	Mesopotamian Chronicles
2007	Amelie Kuhrt	"[...] killed(?)/defeated(?). The river ... [...] Ishtar of Uruk [...] of Per[sia{ns} (?) ...]"	The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources of the Achaemenid Period

Read the last sentence of page 144, book is from 1998, and bases it's finding's on the inscriptions, not Xenophon. I will keep bringing up the question of Xenophon's reliability, to show that I do not even need his approval, User:Alvestrand keeps mentioning that he is not reliable {which I agree}, I am even willing to omit Xenophon account on the Tigris battle. But I want to stress the point that Xenophon appears in only 1 of my references, and all he does is further confirms the battle, so I consider Xenophon's account as unreliable, but still worth mentioning. I wanted to get that out of the way, and so here is the link that has nothing to do with Xenophon. [3].

Now I only use Xenophon(note:his other works like "The Persian Expedition" are mostly history, and some of his battles, such as Battle of Thymbra has also been confirmed by Herodotus and others, the Cyropaedia however is as Ev says, [partly] true) his accounts appear on Wikipedia's battles already, so why not include for the Tigris battle? His account only ConfirmS what is already said on the inscription. This book compares fact and fiction and uses SeCONDARY sources, plus say's Herodotus' and Xenophons' versions of events both describe the same event, not seperate invasions (Gobryas and Gadates were together by the way), and is from 1993. Read pages, 255-6, 257, 259, 263. [4].

This book is from 1988. The next books down this list of sources for the Tigris battle are AlL scholarly books (they include thee best and award winning scholars in the fields of Near Eastern history, no jokes folks, go to main page of the Tigris battle and click on their names). read the first paragraph of page 121. Then, look for Note65 in the last sentence of the first paragraph, which the explanation appears near the end of that page. This is new and damning evidence that now shows, that out of the 5 translations, only 1, which is the most outdated and oldest translation, mistakes Persia for Sea Country (by the way if it was Sea Country, the tablet say's "on the Tigris", the Sea Country people were on the Euphrates more than a 100 miles south of the Tigris in northern Arabia, not in northern Iraq(Babylon)! The old translation even calls Uruk, Erech, so the oldest translator has problems. Therefore, virtually all of the new translators and historians (plus other authors who STUDIED the tablet) agree it was the Persians, if you go to the Tigris article, and look at the translations, you will see this. I said months ago that maybe the translation refers to a Persian advance party, therefore meaning Cyrus invaded into Babylon near the end of 540 BC(February 539}, not September 539 as User:ChrisO believes (he went to the {city} of Babylon in September, but entered the {country} in February 539. [5].

Though this link is not the strongest evidence, this book makes the mistake of saying the sixteenth year of Nabonidus was in 539 BC, but the fact that it say's sixteenth year (FacT:meaning the end of 540 BC), would then mean he is refering to the inscription (it is the only inscription too that has end of 540 BC on it) that describes the Tigris battle. He is saying Cyrus BegaN his invasion in the end of 540 BC, not 539 BC, so by February?, the battle or some border scrimage happened. The book is virtualy from 1900, but even then historians were pretty sure when the invasion happened. [6].

Amélie Kuhrt's 2007 book, is by far the best evidence. User:ChrisO, who I remember I had a minor (as compared to other users) dispute over whether Cyrus killed the people or army of Akkad in the Battle of Opis, he even thinks she is the best for translating these texts, and because most historians believe Cyrus killed the people which she agreed with, he said Lambert's translation(note:it is also interesting that users say for the Tigris battle, that there is no consensus on which translation is right, so the Tigris article should not exist, Yet for the Opis battle, there is AlsO no consensus for the best translation, so why is there a article for it?!) for the Battle of Opis is a fringe theory (which I now agree with). Now for the directions, on page 53 read NoteS 4, 6, 7-8. You could say, "but note.4 is refering to something else." BuT, note.4 say's Von Voigtlander (1963: 194), and in note.6 it say's Von Voigtlander (1963: 194-5) again, note.4 and note.6 are describing the same event. Here it is, I know it sounds complicated, but be sure that you know the directions before you do this, or you will get more confused. I am sorry I can not make this simpler. [7].

Some have even said Herodotus' invasion story is purely false. Yet, in this 2006 book, we now have evidence that he mistaked the Median Wall, with the wall of Babylon. And that he does not mistake Darius' invasion of Babylon for Cyrus,' he mentions them as two seperate events. Therefore some positive changes could be made the Battle of Opis. Basically meaning it is better if a tale is confirmed by Herodotus than not confirmed at all. Although I agree that Herodotus is not that reliable either way, page 356, 358. [8].

For this book, it is from 1989, and spends one full page on the supposed battle. It states that there is some truth to Herodotus' via Xenophons' account, and that the Persian army was doing something on the Tigris in February 539 BC. The only thing he does not mention is the fact that on the inscription it says the "army of the Persians made an attack." He notes that then the Persians had to have already begun the invasion near the end of 540 BC to already be stationed on the Tigris by February 540 BC. And their march on the {city} of Babylon was September to October (therefore this sentence does not conflict with the known history of Bablyon). Do not forget to look for note.3 on page 44, the explanation for the note that is at [the bottom of the page] and say's Grayson, which is one of the translators, prefers reading it as Persia not Sea Country. So now 1 translater (the outdated and oldest, plus possibly dead guy) does not agree with; me, the four other translatiorns, plus at least five other historians that believe the event happened (this does not mean that only ten people know about this, more undiscovered people and books are still out there. This looks like a 90% consensus that such a event did happen. That is why all they think is that probably the border patrols of Babylon had a minor encounter with the invading Persians, and were driven away. And also, in the bottom of that page too, it say's the translation for Persia in its thesis was written in a unpublished paper on the inscription. [9].

There is a snippet link for this one (but do not worry, you will see everything that is here, there too). The late, yet renowned historian, Olmstead, is pretty sure of what he is talking about. I have this book from 1960. It say's this, and you are welcomed to find this book yourself to confirm what I say here as the truth. Furthermore, a passage (in page 40) from Olmsteads book (History of the Persian Empire) reveals that upon Oppenheim's translation, he agrees with him in coming to the following conclusion... Heading of the page reads; "FOUNDER CYRUS[it is actually in capitals in the book]: "Conquest of Babylonia" "The way thus paved by the dissaffected elements of the population, Cyrus made ready to invade the alluvium as soon as he had returned from his eastern campaigns. Before the snows of the winter of 540-539 could fill the passes, he (Cyrus) was on the border. Nabu-naid brought the gods of Eshnunak, Zamban, Me Turnu, and Der to the capital before their capture. He (Nabonidus) suffered a defeat {on the Tigris}, but the only defense he could think of was to bring to his aid Ishtar of Uruk in March.[91] Nabu-naid might try to explain the deportation as protection of the capital against the foreigner; the citizens complained loudly of temples abandoned by their divinities and lying in ruins." Here is the semi-full link, [10]. On the next page (in page 50), Olmstead say's, "Cyrus fought ANOTHER battle (this time) at Opis." I also checked the note.91, and it say's, "Chron,. col. III, 11. 1-2." And found out it is refering to the inscription that records the Battle of the Tigris!!! Here is the jaw dropping link, [11]. Overall, Olmstead argues that when the inscription say's, Ishtar of Uruk, and as we all know Ishtar was the goddess (statue) of Uruk, Nabonidus wanted divine help from her. As we go more into the future, the inscription gets more worn off. So when it was legible in the 50's, it was mostly complete. And to this day, no historian has come forth saying what Olmstead say's is wrong (so it is a reliable and unrefutted source). The historians however, now because the inscription is not legible, neglect mentioniing the battle in new books. That is why {only} the best scholars on the subject know about it, and other less experienced authors do not mention this battle. So we know now that Olmstead and most others believe and explicitly say that two battles happened, and the first one was a real but minor battle with no specific details. The book is referenced like this, Olmstead, A.T., History of the Persian Empire, University of Chicago Press, [1948]Paperback edition(1959) p. 49-50. ISBN 0226627772.

Conclusion on Battle of the Tigris: Well, what can I say, I could say that the Tigris battle, with this much material has the potential to be a long, debatefull, good sourced, and interesting article. I might even change the title to be more appropriate. And totally revamp it, to make the content in the article more neutral. By presenting ExcatlY what every historian/ translator has said about the inscription. {The fact that such an event is support by MosT 90% of the top notch scholars who are the best on the subject and the most reliable sources out there, plus ancient accounts, archaeological evidence, and even recorded on a tablet from Babylon, makes it hard to deny.} If anyone denies it, they are baised at best, and that is the inconvenient truth. I do not know what is going on out there, but know someone or something is indirectly suppressing this information. Whether it is part of a broader agenda, or a grouped of user(s) with grudges, it is a real mystery to me. Keep in mind, that the scholars have better materials with them, than is available to us, so a smoking gun was discovered, and they agree the some vague but true battle had occured. Finally, I hope this information I provided was enlightening, and wish the best for all.

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Siege of Gordium (November 2008):
Almost a year ago, instead of looking for sources, I accidently (I thought the "siege" word had been sourced) took the mention that "the Macedonian commander Parmenion captured the city [of Gordium]" from the Wikipedia article on Gordium (copied verbatim from livius.org, but without inline citation) and the unsourced mention of a "Siege of Gordium" from a Wikipedia [12] Later during the discussion I interpreted the book snippet "Alexander conquered... Phrygia (there he took a strong Persian fortress Gordion)" as a POSsible confirmation of the siege taking place: "And according to the most recent comments, I think someone has found this siege to be true, am I right?" I never thought it had happened for sure, and I already explained in my first big message here, that Ev chose what part to take out of my message, thus misrepresenting what I had said (he did not include what I said after and at the end of the issue). Again, this is explained in my first big message here. You are welcomed to look at it.

Talk:Battle of Thermopylae (February - November 2008): Actaully the edit block on the article was a mistake by User:Dougweller, I had one small dispute with User:MinisterForBadTimes (a user that I always respect for expanding the article) on the number of Helots in that battle, I gave him links to books that have different numbers for them, it was never my own personal interpretations of ancient primary sources. He disagreed that it would change the format, and I disagreed. But BeforE the block had ended, he proposed a deal, I accepted and proposed an extension to that deal. After the block expired, I let him edit freely, and he let me make minor changes to the article, issue solved.

Talk:Siege of Sardis (547 BC) (February - December 2008): I think Ev didn't bother to actually read my message on that page, which I clearly gave evidence on that siege taking place in 547 BC. I was never argueing with anyone, I put it there for everyone to see.

Deleted entries in Ariobarza's userspace, which it is arrogant on Ev's part to say that these articles are much more of the same, when I have only started. And he is suggesting we put a due date on them, I guess he likes to rush people.

User:Ariobarza/Battle of Pasargadae — (AfD: redirect to Pasargadae)
User:Ariobarza/Battle of the Marsyas — (AfD: delete)
User:Ariobarza/Battle of the Median Fort
User:Ariobarza/Battle of the Tigris — (AfD: delete)
User:Ariobarza/Siege of Doriskos — (AfD: delete)
User:Ariobarza/Siege of Kapisa — (AfD: delete)
User:Ariobarza/Siege of Pasargadae Hill — (AfD: delete)
And there is a possibility of making these articles to, [only when I am finished making the ones above, and I wont request to make the articles, until they have been approved by multiple users.

This is one of the final messages of User:Ariobarza on this page, he is currently tired of spending 3 hours to make this message. And hopes that users will finally realize what is finally going on. The readers are now welcomed to take deep breaths. Thank you and good bye.--Ariobarza (talk) 21:29, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

All that time that I supposed waisted the time of other users is already compiscated, because I patrol my watchlist, and prevent vandalizing and look out for other articles, while I edit in my userspace. For once I want to thank you Ariobarza, because no one here ever mentions how much you contribute to Wikipedia. Bye.--Ariobarza (talk) 21:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Oppose ban - the User is not not entirely detrimental, and errors can be fixed. See WP:GRIEF. Bearian (talk) 17:30, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment Experience has shown that 'fixing' takes an inordinate amount of time. Are you volunteering? dougweller (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Comment Indeed. Experts shouldn't have to waste their time on crankery, especially if encyclopaedic content suffers. Wikipedia is not therapy has some cogent things to say about this whole affair. --Folantin (talk) 09:24, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Improper canvassing by Ariobarza

I note that Ariobarza has responded to this discussion by canvassing a number of other (presumably fellow Iranian) editors to intervene. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]. That's clearly improper canvassing, and it's not a sign of good faith. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:40, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is a WP:CANVASS violation. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Links to the full comments Ariobarza made between 12:57 and 13:01, 18 Dec. (UTC) at the talk pages of Alborz Fallah, Kamranmirza, Wayiran & Xashaiar: "The time has come, you can go here, administrators' noticeboard to oppose my ban, I need as many votes as I can get to survive". - Ev (talk) 14:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Shamefull misleading of information with lies by ChrisO

Improper canvassing and threats to more than one user, [19], I'm sorry, is this the best evidence to get me banned? If your going to accuse me of something, make sure you have not done it yourself. I was notifying the users in Iranology to come on this page freely, and decide if they are for or against my ban. Only on one or two of the messages, I thought the user was against my ban, and I found out he ultimately was. So in this case, you have nothing better to do, but exaggrate my actions again. Your not sticking to the points I am making on this, changing the subject is unwise.

I would be ashamed of myself to list old errors as a ban page for ChrisO or anyone else, because I know that renewing old hostilites will hurt progress on Wikipedia, but apparently Ev and ChrisO LIKE doing this. I presented evidence here that the Tigris battle happened, and he has yet to acknowledge that he's wrong. This is a content dispute, not a user dispute. Below is a list of what ChrisO has done that he acccuses me of doing, plus more, I have removed the signed comments of other users for the protection of their privacy. I do not want to change the subject of my ban, but I have to get this off my chest. I have collected the information recently because I was appauled at what I saw. I am sorry I am putting this information here, but I am tired of ChrisO's hypocrisy. After reading the below message, you will hopefully be more aware of this issue, and hopefully wont waste your vote, thanks.

Collapsed to not clog up page.

Sorry, this message is long, but I saw that a user complained about an admin on the ANI page, about he getting blocked for not even violating any rules while messaging, well, it happend to me too.

Hi, I saw that some admin was imperiously using their powers, were you commented in the noticeboards incidents, well the same thing happened to me. I had recently, well a lot of people too, have complained about the admin ChrisO, please do not contact him. I had been blocked for being a little mean to him. I was not experienced and I started making unsourced articles, which half got deleted. Now I make them in my user space. He has formed some sort of gang of 4-5 admin that will do anything he says. Ever since last month he came here, saying he is neutral, then trying to point his own point of view here, he was blocked once for excessive redirects. He has made various pages with a list of users to be punished, especialy calling me an iranian nationalist, for editng persian related articles. He is a major source of disruption, I and someone else got blocked for two weeks. Then now he has gone through so much length to prove us wrong, I know he has an agenda. Then I got blocked for saying he is too strict and wants to add PATRIOT ACT type laws to Wikipedia, FOR THIS SENTENCE, I was blocked by one of his minians. He is very strict, he told me to shut up. And other users like him say occasionally bullshit, crap, and other mean words, then saying I am uncivil and attacking them, I am losing it. They just come and delete articles not contribute. If you can help form a study group if you have the time or agree to make with me an investigation of these users, I would appreciate it. Specialy ChrisO here is some rules he has broken, note: he has ties to the top of Wikipedia, making a ANI page for him will be hard, because he has a lot of supporters, some good, some bad. HE HAS a POV OWN revisionist policy that is making editing on Wikipedia a hell, he mostly and only accuses me of OR, which later I get the sources and prove him wrong. So going back to the story I was blocked for the patriot act sentence, can you believe that for a day I was blocked. I do not really have the time to make an ANI page, people let him get away with a lot of things as an admin. He ignores me when I come to solutions. Here 75% of the wrong things he has done, plus canvass, spy, and threaten...

A) ChrisO deleting comments from valid sources (including Briant) from the archives: [20] and then files claims in ANI about my so called original research! I have hardly edited this article. I am discussing three valid sources and why they are not included in the aftermath. I am not discussing Lambert, I consider that part to have been partially resolved (we can of course add his linguistic arguments to the reference). I am wondering if the three sources I mentioned from published textbooks are WP:OR that ChrisO deletes them from the archives before they have been put in the article?

B) Note the three sources which were deleted from the archives by user ChrisO: 1) "In the month of Tesri(October), says the chronicle, 'Cyrus did battle at Opis on the Tigris against the troops of Akkad' One battle broke the Babylonian king's paid army; and there was no popular resistance anywhere. Indeed one reading of the text, Akkad broke out into open revolt, and Nabonidus' last military achievement was slaughter of rebels" (Andrew Robert Burn, D. M. Lewis, "Persia and the Greeks", Published by Stanford University Press, 1984. 2) Pierre Briant: "Besides the chronicle (III. 12-13) refers directly to an initial battle won by Cyrus at Opis on the Tigris, dated 10 October 539. This victory was followed by an immense haul of booty and the massacre of those who attempted to resist" (Pierre Brian, From Cyrus to Alexander: History of Persian empire, Published by EISENBRAUNS, 2002) (note those who attempted to resist were soldiers obviously and the important part is "those who attempted to resist" which is not covered in Grayson's translation but it is scholarly intrepretation by Briant). 3) "Opis revolted against Babylon when Cyrus attacked. Allegedly Nabonidus massacred the confused inhabitants for revolting" (Paul John, The Genesis of Misconception: Book 1, Published by Trafford Publishing, 2007).

C) ChrisO quotes Kuhrt in half(deleting the crucial part of a sentence) and cuts off half of her sentence: [21] and then deletes it from the archives when this is pointed out: [22]

D) ChrisO violates 3rr as an admin and gets two hours and simple warnings. Sometimes he is just let go.

E) Finally ChrisO has been driving away different users from contributing in this and various other articles. In the last two months, he has had problems with at least 5 different users. I believe he adopted a policy of WP:OWN with regards to different articles and uses his administrator power to enforce WP:OWN through threats of permanent bans on non-admin users. In the last month or so, he has had problems with several users (Iranian, Jewish and etc.) of variety of backgrounds and constantly labels them. Obviously as an admin he can be rude to these users.

F) I made a mistake for not reporting him another time for 3rr violation. Partly due to what I thought was a veiled threat by another admin [23] but partly I was just trying to resolve the issues nicely in this article. Unfortunately that was a big mistake by me and I should have reported him.

G) I will take a break from this article, since with the effective bureaucracy, it is obvious what happens to those who point out ethical mistakes by the user who is also typically rude (behind the monitor). Amazing someone can delete three valid sources from the archives, cover his track (when caught deleting half a curical sentence) and delete other parts of the archives, break 3rr when he feels like and violate WP:OWN. Sure he can cross out his own comments or delete them, but he should not delete comments by other users from the archives. Specially considering the treatement of other users( Tundrabuggy and etc.).

The ChrisO (talk · contribs), an administrator who is heavily involved in some content disputes at Middle East-related articles, is maintaining a subpage in his userspace which seems to be violating the Wikipedia attack page policy, User:ChrisO/Ancient Persian problems. I attempted to remove the infringing sections,[24][25] but he has simply kept putting them back, and has now used his admin tools to protect the page to prevent further "vandalism".[26][27] He has now passed 3RR,[28][29][30][31] is maintaining a policy-violating page in his userspace, is misusing his admin tools,[32][33] and is accusing an admin trying to enforce policy, of performing vandalism. He also just threatened to block User:Elonka.[34] So if he's misusing his admin tools in this way, more admin eyes are definitely needed.

The list of articles is not the problem. The issue involves personal attacks at other editors, such as referring to them as Iranian nationalists. Those were the sections I was trying to remove,[35] and still feel should be removed, per WP:ATP and WP:NPA. This is part of his larger effort to paint a legitimate editing dispute as a policy issue. Chris has also canvassed dozens of editors to watchlist the page, essentially turning it into a vehicle for vote-stacking ([36]), stalking, and defaming other users. Many of the people involved in this discussion were canvassed earlier as well ([37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42], [43], [44], and a dozen more).

As for attack pages, again, how about the section misconduct issues on Talk:Battle of Opis and the one 'pure lie and misrepresentation of the problem" at the discussion page[45]. This shows exactly how some people are working behind the scenes to back each other up even it means twisting statement. I did not call ChrisO a liar. I said: "pure lie and misrepresentation of the problem" which is stating an opinion on his opinion about me (his opinion is in violation of WP:ATP, specially when he started that page, he had targed 6-7 editors[46]. Please note ChrisO even accused me of edit warring, which is a lie. I hardly edited those pages. If anyone was edit warring, it was ChrisO who is an admin and yet broke 3rr on that page. Possibly, I broke 1rr but not even 2rr. Stating an opinion on an opinion is fine in Wikipedia. Please read WP:NPA where it explicitly states: Comment on content, not on the contributor.. Personal Attacks are not fine, but that was comment on content. Of course ChrisO has constantly called anyone who disagrees with him as an "Iranian nationalist". For example I have listed some Iranian nationalists here starting from Plato, Herodotus, Xenophon and etc to modern Western scholars:[47]. Trying to change the topic now will not work and change focus. How about this comment by ChrisO with regards to me: [48]. Please note his threats and intidimation. The whole comment violates many rules of Wikipedia. " Carrot first before stick?" shows complete arrogance (due to administrator power) and WP:OWN mentality and I even believe that is how ChrisO feels about who disagree with him and are not fromt he same area. Or how about this: "could provide a final opportunity for the editor in question to take account of feedback". This is a threat for permanent banning and it is intidimation. All this, due to a content dispute (and I hardly edit any of these articles before discussing them and I have never reverted in any of these articles or broken 3rr like ChrisO). As per the issue of the Kurdish literature template, I have no doubt it is related. Incidentally if I was an “Iranian nationalists”, I would not create a Kurdish literature template. I have already mentioned templates which include: [49] [50][51] and have existed for some years now. Why were those not put to deletion after two-three years? So what I have done is create a parallel Kurdish Literature template when I saw Urdu, Turkish, Persian and etc. templates that have existed for some years. If there is a Turkish literature template, Urdu literature template,..etc., why not Kurdish literature template. If I was an "Iranian nationalist", I would have just let there be a Persian literature template and then redirected Iranian Literature to Persian literature instead of making that page a dab page. As per ChrisO being knowledegable in the classics, when it comes to ancient Persia, I also have a knowledge of Old Persian language as well as have read many history books and articles. So that does not give an execuse to misue administrator power. ChrisO has abused his administrator power to intimidate other editors and has violated WP:ATP WP:NPA WP:3RR numerous times. When he disagrees with them, he labels them instead of concentrating on content and this leads to an atmosphere of intidimation(of course since he is an admin and he knows the other side knows he is an admin, this makes the threat credible).

You are trying to change the subject. I commented on content and not the person which is common to Wikipedia rule. ChrisO had made the comment here. Neither unlike ChrisO, I have intidimated users and threatened to ban them or treat them as inferior animals(carrots or sticks comment) or have canvessed 40 users to my talkpage and then defamed 6-7 users:[52] and then used my administrator power to lock the article which defames individuals. I hope that clears things up. As per the Kurdish Literature template, it was the tone of nominator which was the problem. Note the nominator said: This navbox appears to have been created by a tendentious editor in order to pursue his agenda. The template relies on a nationalistic definition. Most of the entries are not linked. . ChrisO then puts "per nom". The reason for deletion should be given without labeling the editor. And the template had no agenda. The template follows regular patterns in other Wikipedia templates that have existed for many years (Urdu, Turkish, Persian literature templates..) and there was no agenda by a tendentious editor following a nationalistic definition! Now if those other templates that have existed many years are inappropriate, then reason should be given rather than labeling editors as the nominator did. As per bias, I'll leave it to other editor. Lets not get into semantics. If statement is wrong, then it is a lie. It could be an intentional or non-intentional lie, but it is a lie. One definition of lie in my dictionary is:an inaccurate or false statement. Now, if somethings falls under a label "editors of concern", the word "lie" is appropriate since it is an inaccurate satement! Per Wikipedia rules, you can make comments on content but not label editors. You brought this matter up, but as you noticed, it does not go against any Wikipedia rule since I am commenting on content. As per 3rr and ChrisO, it occured twice, not once. Breaking 3rr twice is edit warring, specially in the same topic. But one revert is not edit warring. So ChrisO has called my editing pattern for that article as "edit warring"(which is a lie: false/inaccurate satement) where-as he broke 3rr twice on the same article. He was blocked once, but then he did it again, I was about to file a report, but I withdrew (out of good faith)[53][54]. So I did not continue it. And it was right after he broke a 3rr before. As per me edit warring on battle of Opis, no I did not edit war. Predicting banning and then putting my name constantly next to a banned user, is intrepreted as a ban threat. Grouping different users and putting my name next to a banned user is an intidimation tactic. Also "Carrot and Stick" is intidimating comment as well as arrogant. I am sure you would not like such comments applied to you. There is no need for me to repeat myself and I think I was clear. If you disagree fine.

I think that such pages as ChrisO's are highly inappropriate for Wikipedia, definitely not appropriate for an administrator to have (who is supposed to appear neutral as an administrator), reflects POV and possible SOAP problems, and violates many editorial ethical concerns. I think, at the very minimum, such pages should be immediately deleted and the user warned against creating such thing in the future. They are not compatible with consensus, civility, or any of Wikipedia's policies. Wikipedia is about working together, finding unity in which all people can be agreed upon, and not the place for one person who has "truth" to pass blank judgment on all others without actually getting into discussions, focusing on specific events, wording, phrasing, etc.

Because that list focuses on content and not the contributor. It's also worth pointing out that that particular contributor was the subject of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance and was completely banned from the topic area for a year. The problem with ChrisO's subpage is not the list of articles. Having a list of articles that need cleanup is absolutely okay. The problem with ChrisO's subpage, is that it is also being used to snipe at other contributors. If he removes the personal attacks, the page is fine.

I am not sure if you have read everything here, since this is about behaviour. I did not concentrate on content but on actual mislabeling of editors and their defamation. Yes we need to dispute content, use RfC, follow WP:OR and WP:Synthesis and etc. But ChrisO has been having problems with 6 or so editors within one month and has used many labels for these editors and violate 3rr and etc. Again I think it is simply best to forget this whole episode and concentrate on content in articles. But it is very important not too label editors whom we disagree with and not use comments such as "carrots or stick" and etc. for them. Then the whole atmosphere is ruined. So let us follow civility rules and not label editors, but work on content and use RfC and etc. Threats and intidimation and etc. should be stopped. The main goal of editors in Wikipedia is to create an Encyclopedia that is reliable, so lets work on that goal rather than labeling editors or choosing sides/making groups. I have always tried to be civil and polite and I do not appreciate comments like "Carrots before sticks" or "has edit warred"(when I hardly edited that specific topic) and etc. Thank you.

The main problem is that ChrisO mislabels people instead of concentraing on content and various labels in order to render input from other editors with diffing viewpoints as null. His "Carrots over stick" comments I believe shows arrogance and WP:OWN. Also by defaming people originally and then canvessing editors to look at the defamation, he has created a poor atmosphere. Also as an admin who broke 3rr twice on the same page, he accusses me of edit warring (I hardly edited the topic). Overall though, we can use his help for these articles, but I he should not abuse his admin privilidges to induce an atmosphere of intidimation. I think RfC and mediation when there is content dispute is the best way to go. Also scholars can differ in viewpoints and the main goal is to represent a variety of differing viewpoints based on weight. I myself have emphasized quoting specialists. So when I pointed out Wieshofer/Kuhrt are not specialists in Akkadian (and we found out that Wiesehofer did not make a translation even unlike what originally ChrisO said), I was ignored. So to cut it short, if ChrisO stops mislabeling/defaming editors, then these articles can be fixed keeping in mind pertaining wikipedia guidelines. The matter should not go beyond a content dispute. It's a personal review.

In fact the user had some very good ideas which you did not address. I agree with his view of this completely. How does labeling other editors as "bad editors" help you "fix" the problem? Simply because you disagree with the perspective of others does not make them "bad editors." Making such statements about good faith editors shows a lack of AGF as well as of Civil, a core Wiki value. The page should be refactored without name-calling and disparaging remarks or else completely deleted.

Well said. The mislabeling and disparaging remarks about editors should stop. Lets not forget this originally started when the page he created had disparaging remarks about editors and then he canvessed 40 or so people to view the disparaging remarks. So if the intention is to improve the quality of articles, lets discuss the problems of these articles in an appropriate wiki-project rather than a userspace which can be locked.

Doug - "This page disparages the contributions of other users. Are we going to delete every page that discusses problems with other editors?" This page does not list others, cite where they have problems editing, and keep that list up for everyone to see. Any list that collects editors and criticizes their editing ability instead of working to form a consensus is highly inappropriate. If ChrisO had a problem with those editors, he could either work with them or come to ANI. Furthermore, an admin compiling such a list can be very problematic, as it would remove all ability to view their actions as neutral or looking at the situation neutrally, and it can have a chilling affect as a pseudo administrative warning to those editors without going through proper channels.

--Ariobarza (talk) 03:14, 20 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

off the rails

I support a full ban of Ariobarza. The problems with his misunderstanding of the no original research policy have been amply demonstrated here, as is another problem: any "discussion" w/Ariobarza quickly gets spammed with vaguely relevant wall-o'-text posts, which render the thread completely useless. This is a form of disruptive editing, not to mention a gigantic waste of time, both for Ariobarza and whoever actually bothers to read through the thread. Let's put an end to it, shall we? --Akhilleus (talk) 03:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah wow. I was willing to give some latitude, but my patience is well and truly exhausted. User would rather obfuscate the issue than learn. Time to say goodbye. // roux 03:27, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um, me presenting evidence of why I should not get banned means I am off the rails, wow, your funny. So a bunch of users are going to decide to delete me because of my wrong impression, I would like a bigger audience to decide if I am about to be deleted or not. bye.

Yes, Akhilleus lets put an end to Ariobarza (in the same way T-1000 puts an end to other people), if I'm about to be terminated, I will spread the hope of salvation for future generations, thank you all.--Ariobarza (talk) 03:33, 20 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Other than producing your own rants, why Dont You look at the sections smoking gun and misleading, and all your questions will be answered, is that too much to ask? Why do you people like to fill up this page with uneccessary comments that fuel lies. If you done this in the begining, you would not say I do OR, SYN, CIVIL, like I said, you will be amazed. Use common sense for once. Why make things so complicated, so I can get mad? And give you an excuse to ban me? How mean, how very mean of the supporters that want to ban me, my feelings and wisdom teeth are hurt. I am still not sure why I am going to be banned, I not did break any rule, edit only in my userspace since my block, resolved issues with old conflicts of other users. This is an ELITIST and Opinionated page dominated with uncommon sense users(I am only refering to the users who are for my ban). When I type, I say things straight forwardly, so I am not afraid to hide my true feelings, and act in a taboo matter to just follow the herd, I am not sheep. My all be enlightened. Warmest regards.--Ariobarza (talk) 04:49, 20 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Okay, new suggestion

Block Ariobarza with the caveat that he may use his talkpage to develop articles. Anything good that is developed may be added to extant (or new) articles, properly attributed of course. Anything not good may simply be ignored. Ariobarza gets to keep contributing, edits get vetted without any concerns about OR or SYN being introduced into mainspace, everyone is happy. Endorse/oppose? // roux 04:57, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse I totally agree with your independent input on my ban, and glady accept your proposal if that is what it takes for me to contribute free knowledge to Wikipedia. I want to give you my greatest thanks for giving me one final chance to redeem myself. I have already evacuated my userspace articles on my own Ark, so just in case I was to be banned I could email them to proffessional historians to be peer viewed. Like I kinda said before, I will request my userspace articles to be created, only when they have been reviewed and accepted by multiple users. I am willing to take other users advice to heart, and I will do my best to learn from them. Thanks again.--Ariobarza (talk) 05:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

Who is going to spend their time reviewing Ariobarza's contributions and arguing with her about why they're unusable in articles? Ariobarza has already spurned Animate's mentorship and ignored all the advice she's been given about following NOR. Are you willing to spend weeks or months on it? -- ChrisO (talk) 08:58, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Who said Ariobarza is going submit all the information at once so it will take a long time for others to review it? If I am giving this chance, I will submit my contributions piece by piece, so it will be easier on others. The reason I have not really looked into me being mentored by Animate, is because he himself said he was not going to be a full time mentor, and at the time I did not need his help. I only need my mentor for reviewing what I submit, but before I could submit anything, Ev proposed a ban on me. So I have to constantly waist time coming here to see what becomes of my fate on Wikipedia. I know that Wikipedian's interested in Iranian related articles look optimistic in helping me, and I already favor a broader community to review my work, so it will not have any POV in it. So finally all the work I submit will be verifiable (no OR or SYN), plus it could be neutral and fairly balanced. Thank you all.--Ariobarza (talk) 09:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]

While drafting the ban proposal I did consider restrictions like this one (user space only) & AniMate's alternative (user space & discussions). I concluded that in all likelyhood it would not work, for two reasons:
1). It requires a volunteer willing to devote the time needed to review Ariobarza's contributions thoroughly (and do the arguing), because any original research moved to articles for a lack of proper vetting would still be a drain on the time & energy of other editors, thus probably reducing the magnitude of the problem but not solving it.
2). I really don't like the idea of declaring someone's user space an original research heaven especifically destined to promote novel ideas (Wikipedia not being a blog or webspace provider, or a memorial site for martyred editors for that matter). Keep in mind that Ariobarza has consistently engaged in personal interpretations, and appears unable to grasp or adhere to the concept of "no original research". - Ev (talk) 14:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support this new proposal. I can't see anything wrong with it. Other people use their wikispace to work on articles. Ariobarza clearly has something to offer wiki. She is not vandalising articles, or POV-pushing, like so many on wiki do on a regular basis. If Ariobarza can find other users who will review her contributions it should not concern those editors who are not involved. I, for one, would be willing to be one of the editors to at least take a cursory look at anything she is ready to submit and offer criticism. I am sure there are other editors here, more experienced than I, who would do the same. Tundrabuggy (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: There seems to be broad agreement that Ariobarza, over a period of many months, has engaged in persistent original research, and inserted huge amounts of material (sometimes entire articles) into Wikipedia based on their own speculation and guesswork about events in ancient history. This has made WP articles about ancient Greek/Persian history extremely suspect and unreliable, and has caused far better editors to waste hours of their time (both in terms of locating the errors, and then working through WP's cumbersome procedures for removing anything which is not blatant and outright vandalism). Several of those articles were - correctly - deleted. However we seem to have offered those articles a get-out-of-AfD-free card, since they still exist in Wikipedia and come up as the first result in Google searches, albeit they are now in Ariobarza's userspace. This proposed arrangement would formalise and validate that situation, and in fact encourage Ariobarza to continue adding nonsense articles and made-up information into the system here. Ev is 100% right of course about WP:NOTMYSPACE. Nor is it a question of giving Ariobarza time to find sources or build these articles into mainspace-worthy pages. When many of these articles were deleted, it was because there were no sources to be found - they were mostly about entirely fictitious events, as other editors had to show by doing their own research into the issue. Most of these articles are never going to "come good", yet they remain here with Wikipedia's imprimatur. And even if this were to be possible in some cases, who is going to vet and approve every single sentence of every one of these articles? I note Tundrabuggy has offered but given this comment in one of the AfD debates (the diff is actually to my response to that comment), I doubt that would help much. I don't feel comfortable about demanding bans of any sort, but I don't see this userspace proposal as being a workable or happy compromise in any way. --Nickhh (talk) 17:54, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Implementation of Roux's new suggestion by Guy

My apologies for the lenght of this post.

Guy, you have implemented Roux's new suggestion (diff. & diff.). Although I don't want to extend this discussion more than necessary, I'm unsure whether such action corresponds to whatever degree of consensus has developed so far in this discusion, and I'm pretty confident that it isn't the right solution here. – At least not in its current form.

Akhilleus, AniMate, ChrisO, Dweller, Folantin, llywrch, Looie496, Mathsci, Ncmvocalist & myself support a full community ban.

6SJ7, Bearian, Everyking & Nepaheshgar oppose any ban. But only Nepaheshgar appears to have given some thought to his opinion. –– The fact that 6SJ7, Bearian and Everyking don't see any significant problem here (and basically view the situation as a regular content dispute) leads me to believe that they simply didn't look enough into the issue (I refer again to Nickhh's comments during the previous ban proposal). And please allow me a short rant: I simply cannot understand how someone would consider acceptable continuing to subject our knowledgeable unpaid volunteers to the monumental waste of time & energy that dealing with Ariobarza through our normal dispute resolution mechanisms entails.

Only Dougweller, Roux, Tundrabuggy and Ariobarza herself support the implemented restriction to user space only (or something along those lines). It is specifically opposed by Nickhh.

Moreover, significant questions about Roux's new suggestion (raised by ChrisO, Nickhh & myself) remain unanswered:

1). Who will review Ariobarza's work (and do so in a competent and thorough manner, to actually free other editors from this task) ? – Tundrabuggy volunteered to "at least take a cursory look" into Ariobarza's contributions; but his previous experience at this very task doesn't look promising.

2). How will we manage Ariobarza's user space content ? To which extent are we giving Ariobarza permission to use her user space to freely engage in original research (something that, in my opinion, implies using Wikipedia as a blog) ? Because that is what she has done consistently until now, and will continue to do for the forseable future.

a). Should we impose time limitations for how long each proposed article can exist in her user space ? Should we use standard deletion mechanisms (MfD), with all the time it would consume ? Or should they be allowed to remain in her user space "forever" (as Ariobarza's personal compendium of novel ideas) ?

b). What can we do to eliminate -or drastically reduce- the dissemination of that misinformation (through Google, Wikipedia mirrors & such) ? Please, excuse my total lack of technical skills. – Do I need to remind anyone that providing the resources to disseminate misinformation to the world blatantly contradicts the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation ?

And on a more general note, probably not to be answered now, just pondered:

c). Are we establishing a precedent that further denigrates the importance of our core content policies of Verfiability & No Original Research ? Is the understanding of & compliance with those policies not relevant for "articles" kept in user space ?

So... wouldn't it be better to re-open this discussion for a few more days ? - Thank you for your patience. Best regards, Ev (talk) 23:22, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's pretty presumptuous for you to say that I (and a few others) did not look closely enough into the situation. Perhaps you are not being objective because you are one of those involved in the dispute. There is one other person involved here (not you) whose involvement leads me to believe that Ariobarza is being railroaded here because he/she does not agree with this other person. That is this other person's standard operating procedure. I'm not naming any names to avoid further drama. 6SJ7 (talk) 00:20, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did look again at one of the copied over articles (Siege of Doriskos). It does not have the edit history for the previous version of the article; so my edits - the links, sources and "Account of Herodotus" - look as if they were made by Ariobarza. The lede - all that Ariobarza wrote - is completely incorrect and, as I mentioned above, the claimed source does not support the material there. I don't see why any editor should have to devote their time to ironing out the problematic WP:OR contained in the lede.I assume this applies to other articles. There are other untagged articles still out there like Battle of the Persian Border which are probably also WP:OR and improperly sourced. Mathsci (talk) 00:44, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's very much the case. I suggest asking Ariobarza to work on those pages off-wiki and getting them deleted via WP:MFD. Draft articles on completely made-up subjects, such as battles that aren't described in any published history, are never going to be suitable for inclusion in article space. There's simply no point having them around, since there's nothing useful that can be done with them. -- ChrisO (talk) 02:00, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

6SJ7, I note that you wrote above: "The "gestating" article on Battle of Tigris looks sourced to me." That tells me straight away that you indeed didn't look closely enough into the situation. If you had, you would have seen that the article had been cobbled together from fragments in various sources, with Ariobarza's personal interpretation providing the glue. Furthermore, there's no reliable source of any kind that anyone has been able to find that describes such a battle between Persians and Babylonians (it helps if you know something about the subject matter). The problem here is that Ariobarza simply doesn't accept NOR. As soon as "Battle of the Tigris" was deleted from article space - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of the Tigris - it was copied into Ariobarza's user space. She continued with exactly the same OR-based work that resulted in the article's deletion in the first place, and showed no sign of paying any attention to any of the advice and instructions she was given about not engaging in OR. The same pattern has been repeated with several other articles deleted via AfD that are now in her user space. As I've said above, they're unusable. -- ChrisO (talk) 02:10, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would add that comments that Ariobarza's material appears "sourced" and that this is simply a series of individual content disputes prove exactly why this situation is so problematic. That is indeed how they often appear at first, yet proper inspection would reveal that this is totally wide of the mark. A common trick is for Ariobarza to note (accurately) that a particular town or city is recorded as having been under the control of the Persian Empire at some point, then to create an article called "Siege/Battle of XXX" which speculates about how and when that control might have been acquired. Cites are provided to tangentially relevant sources, which however - when you actually go to read them - do not mention the event in question. Nor do those sources appear to be out there in the real world. Obvious hoaxes and vandalism are quickly spotted and reverted here - subtly misrepresented or totally made up material with "ooh look, 27 footnotes!" has a veneer of authenticity. That makes it a) harder to spot and deal with; & b) more likely to mislead even the more sceptical passing reader, and hence make a laughing stock of this place. --Nickhh (talk) 11:08, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Blocks are preventive, and we have a significant number of experienced editors here stating that they are having to spend a lot of time cross-checking edits to mainspace for original research and other issues; the user in question seems comfortable with the idea of a block to prevent them getting into more trouble, so I really don't see the problem. There are people working with Ariobarza, and I am confident that if and when they have fixed the problem at source they will come back here and inform us that the block is no longer necessary. But right now I would say it is needed, because what we are protecting here is content and one of the most important policies we have. Similarly, if Ariobarza's user space edits step over the line into blog or MySpace territory then we can review that as well. The solution as proposed seemed to me to represent progress and some kind of a middle way, with the open invitation to redemption. What exactly would you change about that situation? Guy (Help!) 10:10, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I'm too unseasonably pessimistic when preferring to cut our losses now instead of hoping for improvement through a system that could continue to generate problems (be it Ariobarza's original research being introduced into articles by middlemen, be it more AfDs, MfDs or unblock discussions with editors seeing "27 footnotes", be it about the management of Ariobarza's user space in general). – Granted, resources management is not my field (and know even less when it comes to a charity's unpaid volunteers), but I can't see her involvement in Wikipedia as anything other than a net negative to the goal of building a reliable encyclopedia. As others know better (I mean it; no irony intended), I won't press this point any further.

Ariobarza is already using her user space as a free webspace provider. With few exceptions, our deletion discussions evaluate the viability of a topic, and not an article's state of development at the time. The "articles" in Ariobarza's user space were deleted because no sources were found. For Wikipedia, their continued presence in user space serves no purpose. – Yet, they are not innocent text, but misinformation available online under the wikipedia.org umbrella.

What exactly would I change about that situation? Either to:

enact a full ban,
actually find someone willing and able to do the reviews (& discard non viable topics), to free our knowledgeable editors from ultimately having to do this task anyway,
if no one volunteers, at the very least (and this already enters MySpace territory) to place further requirements to her user space activities to prevent the dissemination of its contents, namely:
- A requirement to always blank the content when not working on it (possibly replacing it with a permanent link to the last version to help the reviewer/s), and/or
- some other technical mean to "hide" the content from Google, Wikipedia mirrors & such (along the lines of "NOINDEX", which I don't know how effective or encompassing is; simple wiki-syntax being the limit of my computer skills).

What I don't want is a collection of original research sitting in her user space & being disseminated throughout the web (ultimately forcing our knowledgeable editors to argue at MfDs anyway).

However, as I said above, I don't want to prolongue this discussion more than necessary. This is probably my last request to review the issue. - Regards, Ev (talk) 17:05, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just to note that I have changed my mind now that I have recalled that stuff in her userspace would be on Google and would in effect be using Wikipedia as a personal website. With no solution to that problem in site I have to support a full ban. dougweller (talk) 18:48, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ariobarza can and should be banned. He's persistently disruptive and pushes a consistent nationalist POV. I've watched him in action for a good while and have concluded that this user simply has nothing of value to contribute to the encyclopaedia, and it is not worth our while keeping him around. Ultimately our needs and his suffer from a fatal disconnect, at which point we need just to cut our losses. Moreschi (talk) 19:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If Ariobarza's userspace weren't indexed on Google, I wouldn't have any problem with Guy's solution, but I don't want to risk Ariobarza's misinformation being spread under Wikipedia's auspices at all. Nor should we be forced to argue yet again for the deletion of Ariobarza's OR-fantasy battles at MfD. A ban is the best option. --Akhilleus (talk) 01:32, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the magic word __NOFOLLOW__ will install a meta robots nofollow meta tag in the page, preventing it from being indexed by any major search engine, if that's the concern. Jehochman ^Talk 01:36, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's one of the concerns. How does one put a magic word on a Wikipedia page? --Akhilleus (talk) 01:41, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm puzzled by this. I've been involved in MfD's for user's pages where the main issue was that the page was being used to get publicity through search engines, and I can't recall anyone suggesting this as a solution. And if it's easy, why isn't all of userspace protected from indexing? dougweller (talk) 13:50, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A bit of digging suggests that Jehochman may mean the {{NOINDEX}} template. This discussion [55] seems to be saying userspace is not indexed. Not true. If you search for 'Siege of Doriskos' the first hit is Ariobarza's userpage article on it: [56] - a good illustration of the problem we face in allowing her to edit in her userspace. dougweller (talk) 14:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Dougweller, before starting this sub-section I did some quick searches for all entries involved. Some don't figure within the first 50 results, but others are among the first 10. "NOINDEX" is all I had found too, and according to Wikipedia:Searching "Google indexes all namespaces except article talk". But even those are picked up by Wikipedia mirrors, which in turn are indexed by Google. – Not indexing certain namespaces is a rather perennial proposal; the usual argument I saw against it being that, in the absence of a good quality internal search, Google is the best manner of searching the entire site (to find old discussions, content in user space, you name it). For examples see this village pump discussion & Wikipedia:Talk pages not indexed by Google. Of course, it would be better to discuss the issue at another place to keep this thread focused. - Best, Ev (talk) 15:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ariobarza says she's leaving Wikipedia

Hi, been monitoring Ariobarza for a while. Almost deleted his user page (thought he was going to be banned). I advise all users here to go to User:Ariobarza's talk page ASAP. He has a request. Issue resolved, discussion closed.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.254.47.253 (talk) 16:01, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above refers to Ariobarza posting a message in her talk page saying that she's leaving Wikipedia. I don't know whether we should close the issue now, as I wouldn't want to have to repeat this long discussion in the near future. - Ev (talk) 16:39, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Tony Danza

Resolved

– Blacklisted the fake news domains. Guy (Help!) 20:49, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A few more eyes on this might be useful. According to one and only one report he's died which may lead to more of this. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 22:21, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I wonder if it's fake news or something. Tony Fox (arf!) 22:41, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, talk about embarrassed. I even managed to miss the "tony.danza.swellserver.com" I am now off to yell and swear at my boss, that always makes me feel better. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 22:52, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not your fault! There was one of these a while ago that caused quite a bit of a scrap - seems the trend today is to fake death reports and try to use them as reliable sources. Tony Fox (arf!) 01:31, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tabloid-on-demand. See [57], [58], [59], etc. Might be a good reason to blacklist these domains, at least in article space. — CharlotteWebb 21:27, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree completely, that'd be an excellent idea. Tony Fox (arf!) 21:59, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Requested here. Matt (Talk) 05:21, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And done Matt (Talk) 02:45, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RFAr in re. Moreschi

The request for arbitration named above has been declined as superseded by motion: Based upon the events of December 16, 2008, Moreschi (talk · contribs) is admonished:

(A) Not to reverse blocks imposed by another administrator without the consent of the blocking administrator or on-wiki consensus;

(B) Not to reverse actions taken by or on behalf of the Arbitration Committee acting as a committee, and to consult with an arbitrator if he finds the status of an action unclear; and

(C) Not to make disparaging comments about other administrators in log entries of his administrator actions.

— Coren ^(talk), for the Arbitration Committee, 15:44, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is clearly an organised group of impostors at work - once again ArbCom has delivered the right result with no significant drama. This cannot be permitted to continue. Guy (Help!) 16:13, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- WP:RFCU is thataway... :) ++Lar: t/c 16:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see Captain Obvious' been busy lately. A truly ground-breaking and enlightening motion. Миша 13 17:18, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Does this mean it's ok for the rest of us to make disparaging comments about other administrators in our logs of our administrator actions? I mean, it would be pointless passing a motion saying he mustn't do something no one else should do anyway. Or should we take this as an admonishment to all administrators? dougweller (talk) 17:36, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It means that Moreschi must only make disparaging remarks about non-admins in his logs. DuncanHill (talk) 17:44, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On the .0001% chance that the above weren't sarcasm/humor/satire/irony (as I should point out that my comment WAS)... No, it means none of us should make disparaging remarks in block logs... about ANYONE, admin or no. Stick to the facts, and keep NPOV in mind. Even when writing block log summaries. People HAVE been desysopped over disparaging remarks in block logs before... the irony here of this coming full circle, as it were, is not lost on me. ++Lar: t/c 17:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One could argue that a block log of "vandal", "POV-pushing nationalist", or "clearly not here to improve the encyclopedia" are disparaging, but they're used as a matter of course. Are they OK because they're generally true? If so... Black Kite 17:55, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's a matter of degree, to be sure. But I think avoiding disparaging remarks nevertheless is for the best. Some of those three are more so than others. If you think I've went over the line in the past, ([60]) please let me know. ++Lar: t/c 19:55, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's fair for us to challenge ourselves on this and see if we can't be more objective in block logs, but "vandalism", "block evasion" and so on are often as objective as one needs to be. Where there is a debate, it's good to leave a permalink in the block log. Guy (Help!) 20:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Juuuuust a couple of things; firstly, there was quite a volume of opinion given before the Arbs decided to decline the case and then issue what appears to be an ArbCom finding on it... and, er, is this going to happen often in the future, and are the Workshop and Proposed Decision pages likely to be MfD'ed as obselete any time soon? I know it is coming up for Christmas (and who wants to get indigestion after wading through one of my ponderous meanderings to some ignorable point?) but I am uneasy about decisions being reached by what appears to be fiat. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Meh. I think Moreschi violated m:DICK and was trout-slapped as a result, which is the right result. I do find Giano exasperating - he is a really good guy and has a sense of humour as well as tremendous dedication to this project, but he does on occasion seem to deliberately provoke people just for the hell of it. Someone as intelligent as Giano obviously is could very easily avoid these issues if he wanted to, and there is a pretty strong indication that the community does want him to be a bit less aggressive. That said, I don't think I have ever had a problem communicating productively with Giano even when we disagree, so I do rather wonder why this keeps recurring. Perhaps I am OK with him because I respect him, whereas many others here are entirely resistant to the idea of respecting anybody at all, and the more mature and authoritative someone appears the more people will poke at their soft underbelly - a natural reaction in a community which includes large numbers of teenagers. Guy (Help!) 09:42, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is interesting to note in Jimbo's very recent announcement of the ArbCom election that he not only expresses a desire that the ArbCom works with community participation but that he will overturn upon appeal to him any decision that has been reached after only internal discussion (um, that is how I read it) - which is what I was commenting upon above. LessHeard vanU (talk) 11:46, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The right result with no significant what...? Be serious, Guy. OK, there wasn't much drama except 58 comments (musings, questions, reminders, grumbles... ) from the community which nobody read, certainly not arbcom (as an arbiter very frankly told me), plus a full page by NYBrad? How is that shapeless sack of commentary an improvement on a regular RfAR, and how does it waste any less time, taken/stolen from other, eternally ignored and forgotten, cases? Bishonen | talk 23:00, 21 December 2008 (UTC). (P. S., what happened to the WP:AN section editing?? It's really hard to find the right edit link.)[reply]

"...which nobody read"? I read every word of it all, both before and after I wrote up my thoughts and proposed a motion. The "improvement on a regular RfAr" and the increment in drama reduction is that the process took two days, rather than a month. My view is that proceeding by motion rather than a full case is in order when the facts are sufficiently clear that an evidence phase is not reasonably likely to change the result. And I think we can all agree that we certainly didn't want to saddle the new group of arbitrators with this one. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:59, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'm not in the arbs' heads, I have to go by what they tell me. Anyway, that's great that you read it all, then you're perhaps all set to deal with this one, which I mention in a comment because I'm very concerned about the delay? Bishonen | talk 00:51, 22 December 2008 (UTC).[reply]

That motion, albeit overly delayed, was passed four days ago. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:21, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Very glad to hear it. Bishonen | talk 02:02, 22 December 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Exactly what Brad said. A short outburst of acrimony, followed by a transparently correct result, with minimum fuss and without the usual 78 blocks and unblocks and three new cases for wheel warring. A real step forward. Guy (Help!) 15:37, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Harrassment, Bullying and Unfair Treatment of editor Worldfacts

There is a thread in the archive about the recent 24 hour ban of Worldfacts. I edited that thread but my edit was reverted on the grounds of not editing an archive. OK I accept that.

My statement regarding the treatment of Worldfacts (regarding the USS Liberty article) is : "And with the bullying and harassment WF has been dealt why would WF want to participate ?" WF is obviously being harassed and bullied. --HENRY WINKLESTEIN (talk) 19:49, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Diffs and links would help, here... // roux 19:55, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I, uh, fail to see how issuing a block to shut down a blatant WP:3RR violation (see the history at USS Liberty incident and this report for background) is harassment and bullying. The admin who issued the block noted that the editor in question hadn't participated with discussion on the talk page for well over a month. Discuss, don't revert blindly, is a good policy that wasn't followed here. I don't see a problem with the block. Tony Fox [[User_talk:Tony Fox|(small> 20:04, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would urge admin to check Henry Winklestein's contribution history for the context in this. The user's only real contribution is running around wiki talk space supporting WorldFacts (With one contribution to article space on Six Day War to add in a diatribe about the USS Liberty incient which was soon reverted). Though my own behaviour in the debacle is hardly stellar, my good faith has failed and I have let myself get drawn into the silliness, I would still suggest that the whole thing does need to be looked at, as it most certainly is not a great atmosphere ATM. For my part I am only going to be involved in the debate around that article now via the efforts of BQZip to mediate. Edited to add: There was a ANI about the article that fizzled here --Narson ~ Talk • 20:12, 21 December 2008 (UTC) edited 20:56, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Narson is right: Henrywinkelstein seems to be behaving in a very odd manner for a genuinely new and separate editor. See [61], a very unusual distribution of edits. Guy (Help!) 21:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Go ahead --- do a checkuser, check my IP against theirs, I happened to come across this issue and its perked my interest. You wanna come see my computer and look at my eMails too ?? gee - I'm sorry I do not agree with the "in" crowd. So be it ... The plain and simple truth is that WF has been constantly and consistently bullied. WF has asked the same question several times and has yet to receive a legit answer. All anyone ever does is hide when it comes to this. What a whitewash. --HENRY WINKLESTEIN (talk) 01:34, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- Among those edits are barnstars awarded to WorldFacts and to PalestineRemembered. Need I say more? Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 21:42, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And whats wrong with awarding barnstars ? Or do you need to be in a particular "club" to award them ? Are they not worthy ? Just as worthy - and probably more worthy - than most of you. NEED I SAY MORE ? --HENRY WINKLESTEIN (talk) 01:34, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to civility? ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 04:32, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Henry Winklestein: please tone back the rhetoric. You are bordering on becoming disruptive with your comments here and on other talk pages. I highly recommend that you reread WP:CIVIL and comment on content, not the contributors, in future. Tony Fox (arf!) 05:35, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

UNINDENT

I hadn't seen this thread before I started one on WP:AN/I. The first thing WorldFacts did on his return was to edit war with another revert. Apologies, if this came across as forum shopping. Justin talk 00:54, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have blocked Henrywinklestein (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) as a disruptive mission poster who seems unable to assume good faith on the part of those with whom he disagrees, coincidentally a large proportion of those he has encountered in his short time on Wikipedia - this kind of thing: [62], [63]. No objection to an unblock if anyone is prepared to mentor him or can get him to grok the problem. Guy (Help!) 15:34, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

UNINDENT

WorldFacts launched a direct personal attack calling me a liar here [64], I'm surprised given that he launched this attack on AN/I that there hasn't been any admin action. There have been persistent personal attacks against any editor that disagreed with him on the USS Liberty Incident. Just how personal does it have to get before any action is taken? Justin talk 19:47, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Feh. Ignore it and move on. It's no big deal. Guy (Help!) 20:05, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Normally I would but this has been going on for a while and I'm sickening of it. Justin talk 20:20, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AfD needs reopening?

~~Resolved~~

Nothing to do - someone nominated, withdrew their nomination and it was process-closed. Orderinchaos 03:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC) [reply]

This AfD was non-admin closed, after running only 6 hours, by User:Ecoleetage as "nomination withdrawn"; but I believe that such a close is justified (by WP:SK) only when no "delete" opinions have been registered in the discussion. Here the opinions, discounting the nominator's, were evenly split 3–3. Shouldn't an admin reopen this one? Deor (talk) 01:42, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the bottom of the AfD -- the editor who put forth the AfD requested that it be withdrawn. I was not being bold -- I was simply following the nominator's request to withdraw his nomination. Ecoleetage (talk) 01:47, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't believe that matters as long as some users have advocated deletion. See the link to WP:SK in my message above. Deor (talk) 01:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - (2x ec) IMHO, there is no reason to reopen; the AfD would likely result in "no consensus" anyway, which defaults to "keep." Process for process' sake is to be discouraged. Hermione1980 01:50, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reopening an AfD that has already been abandoned by its nominator doesn't seem like a practical use of time and energy. The nominator has already made it clear that he considers the subject notable and has added to the article. If you feel the subject demands erasure, you are welcome to renominate it for AfD consideration. Ecoleetage (talk) 01:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Nominators don't own deletion discussions. Withdrawal by the nominator does not suddenly close a discussion. It certainly does not close a discussion where other editors have opined to delete. (The correct thing to do is to invite the other editors to review the discussion and their opinions in light of the additional developments.) Uncle G (talk) 18:30, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing to do - someone nominated, withdrew their nomination and it was process-closed. Orderinchaos 03:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- As above: Nominators don't own deletion discussions, and a discussion is there to form consensus. Consensus isn't formed by steamrollering the discussion closed after 6 hours. That doesn't even allow editors in other timezones the ability to comment, let alone to form a consensus. There are good reasons that AFD discussions run for a period of several days, and that is the process, not closure without letting all members of the editor community at large a chance to comment if they wish to. A closure after 6 hours is not in-process. Uncle G (talk) 18:30, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The point stands that "nomination withdrawn" is part of the SK criteria and we shouldn't be closing AfD's well before the "appointed" time unless they are snow closes, bold closes or speedy keep/delete. Arguably any action is 'bold' if taken without prior consult, so I can understand this. I think this closure was wrong. I do not, however, think that it should be reopened (even though an admin could just revert the close). Eco, I have your talk page watchlisted and I see admins come to your page every so often telling you they have reverted your NAC's. Usually you judge the eventual outcome correctly--if you said keep and close it XYZ hours early, it is often 'keep' when closed finally. I have also seen you make something of a production about 'being vindicated' by this outcome. I would suggest gently that you are probably better off just waiting and closing AfDs which would be less controversial to someone interested in preserving the process. There is a fine line between bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake and process for the sake of process, but the AfD procedure is written the way it is for a reason. Most of the time when people raise their eyebrows at a close like this it is because they are concerned about the integrity of the process. XfD & CSD need to be viewed as fair (meaning impartial, equitable and predictable) in order for them to retain community trust. In order to ensure that fairness, we have to push back against certain closes. This doesn't mean reopening them or seeing whether or not they match the eventual outcome. It means ensuring that the guide to deletion appropriately matches what we see on a daily basis. Just some thoughts. Protonk (talk) 03:16, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Protonk, you are referring to three isolated incidents regarding reversions of AfDs that, in turn, were re-closed very quickly (one within an hour's time, the other two in less than a day). I find it amusing that you are able to see how I am "making a production" over commenting on the closure of an AfD that should not have been reverted but you somehow miss the comments by the reverting admins who made a production by rudely calling my intelligence and competence to question (not exactly in keeping with WP:BITE and WP:NPA). Ecoleetage (talk) 10:30, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Probably because they aren't there. I for one certainly never said anything about your intelligence, although I spent almost a whole day continually patiently explaining AFD shorthands and why we don't close discussions early to you again and again, in the face of refusals to listen and outright straw men. However, as Protonk notes, you do make a production of being "vindicated" when in fact you aren't at all. You do not understand the process at AFD and, despite your claims that you do and that no-one has challenged your closures, you will continue to get into hot water like this until you follow the advice that I gave to you and stop refusing to listen and learn. Uncle G (talk) 18:30, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Uncle G., and a Merry Christmas to you. Ecoleetage (talk) 19:36, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the resolved on this. This is not resolved. The AfD should be re-opened. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 04:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, it shouldn't. The issue "a non-admin close was made outside SK and NAC" does not necessarily require the remedy "reopen the AfD and let it get closed as keep again" in order to provide relief. What possible good could reopening the AfD do? Is the article likely to be deleted? Does it fail to meet our inclusion guidelines? If the answer to those questions is no, then re-open it. If the answer is yes, then opening it would waste everyone's time. Let's just move on. Protonk (talk) 05:19, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This specific situation was discussed recently at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 48#Withdrawal of AFD. Flatscan (talk) 06:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- A speedy close is not appropriate when there are delete !votes. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 06:11, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - I understand that. I'm saying that recognizing a specific wrong does not require overturning that decision. Protonk (talk) 19:40, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Considering that the AfD received multiple varied votes that weren't in any way inclined towards a speedy close, a withdrawal of nomination shouldn't directly result into closure of AfD. It is obvious now that there are members who are against keeping the article. The nominator's withdrawal should be noted and the discussion should run its course. However, I'm not in support of reopening the present AfD. It is obvious that this was more or less procedural close that was done purely in good faith, albeit hastily. Those parties who feel that the article be deleted should simply renominate it and see what the outcome is. ^LeaveSleaves _talk 06:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Process for process sake alone is a waste of everyone's time. Article was originally nom'ed on the basis of notability, which has now been established by two references. As has been said before in this discussion, the AfD, if left to run, would have been a "no consensus", and now if re-nom'ed, on what basis would that be, since notability has been established? Seriously, let's move on, folks. AKRadecki^Speaketh 06:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Process is important. Deor (talk) 23:07, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Process is critical, especially in deletion debates. My point is that Eco has seen the feedback on this thread and that's what we can do. We can recognize that the close was inappropriate while refusing to relist the article at the same time. Protonk (talk) 01:43, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Protonk. This particular article seems unlikely to gain a consensus for deletion, and the "delete" votes were not terribly persuasive, so it wouldn't serve any good to immediately re-list it. The closing editor has seen some objection and will likely be more careful in the future about applying WP:IAR to one of Wikipedia's more rule-based procedures. Unless it becomes a persistent problem what more can we do? I would ask for another few sources to clearly establish notability. They're almost certainly out there, but if nobody can find them and you really think the subject is not notable, I see no harm in waiting week or two then re-nominating it, carefully explaining your reasons so as not to appear sour grapes. That creates a lot less drama than overturning a close. Wikidemon (talk) 01:01, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you people are still misunderstanding. I have no opinion on whether the article should be kept or deleted, and I certainly won't be renominating it for deletion. I simply think that this was a bad, out-of-process close and thought that an admin might want to deal with that. I was clearly wrong. Deor (talk) 02:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. You were clearly right. It was a poor out of process close. I'm not sure what an admin was going to do about it, but Eco did get some "forceful backup" about this. I just think that people agreed the right action was a warning, not a reversal of the decision. Protonk (talk) 04:38, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you give me the lottery numbers for the upcoming draw? This AfD was only open for 6 hours of its normal 7 day run time. How can you know which way public opinion may swing in the next 6.5 days? Just because we have a split in the beginning doesn't mean 20 people won't suddenly show up and decide its not needed. I've seen it before.--Crossmr (talk) 11:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clean-up needed on Aisle 8

Resolved

I have spent the past hour or so cleaning up a series of article subpages created evidently during an effort to clean up unneeded templates. Article subpages, of course, aren't permitted because they can show up on "random article" searches. (Wikipedia:Subpages) Some of these have already started to attract exactly the kind of confusion we try to avoid: I've seen several tagged with various clean-up tags. These are a G6 matter; all that needs to be done is to substitute or paste their contents into the articles of which they are subs. There's no GFDL issues; they are tables, and they were created to begin with by substituting the templates tagged for deletion. I'm out of time due to the holidays. I may be able to do some later this evening, but I can't finish them all.

They can be most easily tracked in the contrib history of their creator, here (and earlier). About 3/4th of the way down you'll run into the ones I haven't yet addressed. They are easily identified because they contain a / and date-election. Their edit summaries have so far all started with "Create page by substituting Template."

Example article: Mumbai South (Lok Sabha constituency)
Article subpage: Mumbai South (Lok Sabha constituency)/2004-election.

Help? Please? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:01, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is this what you're after (plus subpage deletion, of course)? Hermione1980 00:57, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's it exactly. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. I'm on it. Hermione1980 01:16, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(wipes brow) Phew. I think I'm done. I'll dream of subst'ed templates tonight... Hermione1980 02:11, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much! Amazingly tedious, I know. :D I really appreciate the assist. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 02:38, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all. Sorry to have created this small mess in trying to clean-up the earlier problem - which was incorrect usage of templates. Happy holidays to all. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 16:37, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mass deletion needed

Resolved

I have just become aware of a series of pages I accidentally created some time ago, so I'd like an admin to delete them. I've tagged them all with {{db-author}} and a list of still undeleted pages is available here. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 10:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done sir. --Efe (talk) 10:47, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, lieutenant. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 10:47, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome. And Merry Christmas. --Efe (talk) 10:49, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Unblock reviewed

It's hard to believe it's over two years since I created {{unblock reviewed}}. I'm glad it seems to be useful. I have a suggestion, and I'm not sure whether it would be best in that template or a new one.

There exists a class of blocks where the user requests unblock, and we then call the blocking admin (who is most familiar with the case). In such cases, and to keep the unblock category clear (and thus avoid wasting people's time) I would suggest we should perhaps have a template called "unblock pending" or some such, which will put these requests in a sub-category until the blocking admin has had a chance to review.

Such cases are generally the non-obvious ones: not blatant vandalism, but blocks for patterns of disruption that require knowledge of the history, which the blocking admin presumably has. Guy (Help!) 20:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Makes all sorts of sense. // roux 20:54, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a great idea, really. Would be very very useful. — Aitias // discussion 21:29, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, good (er... Is there an opt out situation re "assumed knowledge of blocking admin?") LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair point (slap me, slap me, bad man, not Dec 26 yet) . Do you mean where the admin has not left a note on the talk page saying the conditions under which they would support unblock? Incidentally, I think a statement of that nature is a great idea for long blocks, in case one is on Wikibreak or some such when the appeal comes. Nothing wrong with letting the user know the realities, and if the unblock condition is the heat death of the universe then we should say so right up front. Guy (Help!) 22:20, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um, no... not really. More like, "when blocking admin knew it was the right thing to do when reported, but after all this time - perhaps days, maybe hours - is a little foggy on the reasons why..." sort of thing. Y'know, past the hot white heat of the present situation. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:29, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. I think this should be triggered manually by a reviewing administrator, such as by adding a parameter like "needscomment=1" to the {{unblock}} template. That should leave the unblock request open, assign the talk page to a subcategory of Category:Requests for unblock and add text to the effect of "the blocking admin has been notified of this request at xx:xx UTC" to the {{unblock}} template. The actual notification could be done by bot, perhaps by DavidWSBot (talk · contribs), who already does block notification. Sandstein 08:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm touched....

How thoughtful of you to wish us a Merry Kitzmas, as it's an American holiday...you've warmed my heart, thank you. And Merry or Happy Christmas or Saturnalia or Yule or Belated Solstice to you as well. Where I am, it's Christmas all the way,no Jewish temple in a town of 120,000, the closest mosque is 300 miles away, and being a Wiccan et al. will just end up getting you shot at. :)

But as a Buddhist/stoic, I really don't care, I just go with the flow. Although if I could have a preference, I'd like one of those later holidays, like the 6th of January that the Catholics celebrate. Though I'd hate to have to convert just for that... :P Aunt Entropy (talk) 22:03, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, Scots say "Happy Xmas" like the Brits, right? I wonder where in the hell we get "merry" from... Aunt Entropy (talk) 22:03, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry...did you post this in the wrong place? either way (talk) 22:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Any right-thinking BRITON would choke on "xmas". It is "Merry Christmas", sometimes colloquially Chrimble or Chrimbo, and for those who are not too inclined to invoke the name of the Christ-child "cool yule" is acceptable. The error is an easy one to make, though - Christmas is the religious festival falling on December 25 (checks watch: nearly time for midnight mass here in GMT), whereas Xmas is the trading season stretching from September to the start of the January Sales, traditionally on December 26 (boxing day in the BRITONS' Britain). And with that I will wish all Wikipedians a Merry Christmas or Cool Yule according to personal taste. Slap me if I edit again before December 26, I am supposed to have a family and a life. Guy (Help!) 22:17, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've never actually heard anyone use the term 'Briton' IRL. How do you pronounce it? Is it like Bry-tawn, or like Brit-in? I don't think it sounds good though. Call yourself English or Scottish or Welsh or whatever, but don't call yourself a Briton.--J. F. Mam J. Jason Dee (talk) 16:44, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Have you not? So, when someone refers to themself as a "Brit" what do you suppose they are referring to? Also, I have just a little problem with referring to myself as English - since a quick review of my grandparents surnames brings up a mix of English, Scottish, Norman French and Huguenot French (and who knows how many other "ethnicities" have passed through those families). My major problem, though, is how on earth you refer to British citizens with (recent) ties to China, Asia, West Indies/Africa, Australasia, Europe, etc. Are these not now Britons, and if not what then do you call them? LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:51, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also not aware of anyone calling themself a "Briton"- all too reminiscent of the long-dead nation of Brittany. Better "English", "Scottish", "Welsh" or "British". J Milburn (talk) 00:25, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@ LHvU - coincidence. John André was one of my forebears, I also have Gaelic ancestors (from Ireland in my case). The capitalisation of BRITONS comes from that fine publication The Weekly, maintaining Britain's standards since the dawn of the Electric Internet. Guy (Help!) 10:56, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And a Happy New Year ... -- Derek Ross | Talk 22:40, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion needed

Resolved

– The category is no more!

Can someone please delete Category:Poschiavo. Reason: To make way for a move or author request. The Rolling Camel (talk) 22:09, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, after seeing this, I'm not so sure about this deletion. Could you explain more why you need this deleted? either way (talk) 22:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done — Aitias // discussion 22:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I deleted it one minute before either way posted his question here. — Aitias // discussion 22:15, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Make way for a move? I thought Category: pages couldn't be moved... --MZMcBride (talk) 21:42, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:Seth hilton

Strange case, this one. He's using his user and talk pages for self-promotion and band vanity. Frankly, I think his claims are somewhat inflated. Not only that, he's ignored all attempts at contact. Kind of like MascotGuy with a resume. :) Anyway, Merry Christmas, all. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 00:13, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion of old IP talk pages

About 45 minutes ago I left a message on the talk page of MZMcBride (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) regarding his mass deletion of IP talk pages (is that supported by policy?). Over the next half-hour, I left him two more messages ([65], [66]), however none have elicited any response. In the meantime, he has deleted approximately 300 more IP talk pages at a rate of 5 - 7 per minute. Since past experience with MZMcBride has shown him to be a very diligent and responsive admin, I am concerned that he may not be in full control over his account (either due to some run-away script or the account being hijacked). --Kralizec! (talk) 17:47, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is Christmas Day. One could safely assume that he's not watching his talkpage minute by minute. Give it some time... I don't see any reason for this to be here, given that you have contacted him on his talkpage. // roux 18:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That is actually part of my point. I am not aware of any admins that would ignore the orange "you have new talk page messages" bar for over an hour all the while continuing to delete pages by the hundreds. If these sorts of deletions are not supported by policy (and I do not pretend to know either way ... hence my query on his talk page), then we are going to have an awful mess to clean up since he has deleted over 4000 IP talk pages. --Kralizec! (talk) 18:15, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ehh.. I dunno. There are times when I (not an admin, obviously) ignore the New Messages thing because I'll deal with it later. I think it's fair to assume others do the same. Note I'm not commenting on the merits (or lack thereof) of the deletions. // roux 18:28, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) The point is correct though, I never heard of mass-deletion of IP talk pages being housekeeping. He responded at User talk:MZMcBride#Mass deletion of talk pages though, but I fail to see why this is done by him. It looks like a standard task for a bot to me... Regards So Why 18:18, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

MZMcBride continues to delete IP talk pages despite users (myself included) voicing their concern over those deletions. That's rather inappropriate. --Conti|✉ 18:32, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unless the IP is static (such as a school or corporate firewall) there is very little point in maintaining a history of warnings when the offender moved on to another IP ages ago. Although I generally only blank the page ("archive to history") I do not see anything broadly harmful in deletion. Thatcher 18:54, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I do think that with people voicing concerns over this, it is rather inappropriate for the bot to be continuing. Bots are not supposed to be run without permission. If people are unhappy with the idea of a bot deleting old talk pages, it should not be running. What do we do now? Majorly talk 19:03, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If he does not respond, maybe it will be needed to block him until he responds? So Why 19:07, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is little harm in deleting the IP pages, I agree, but then again, what do we gain from deleting them? It seems rather pointless to me. Blanking seems like the more sensible option, if one wants to empty a rather crowded talk page. Anyhow, this is besides the point. No admin should use a bot (unauthorized or not) without responding to user's concerns. This is definitely not the first time this has happened with MZMcBride, either. --Conti|✉ 19:16, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I have left this comment at MZMcBride's talk page. — Aitias // discussion 19:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ryan Postlethwaite has blocked MZMcBride for 12 hours. I find this appropriate, all things considered. Majorly talk 19:07, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect he left his bot running by accident - no big deal. As soon as he responds someone can unblock him, we just need to know he's in control of his actions. --Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 19:09, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I hate this noticeboard. Anyway, I've responded to several posts on my talk page over the past few days about these deletions. :-) (That's mostly in reply to Conti.) I think everything else is pretty clear. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:23, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone please point those of us who are unfamiliar with this practice toward the policy or guideline that prescribes these deletions as being standard housekeeping? Thanks, --Kralizec! (talk) 19:57, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure anyone's bothered to write it down yet. (Much like CAT:TEMP, I suppose....) Is there a particular issue you have? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:03, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While blanking of IP pages is fine, deleting seems problematic as non-admins will be blind to any past warnings an IP has received. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 20:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's very likely that the IP has been re-assigned or there is a different user behind it. Also, without any blocks, templates on the page, edits in the past year, or talk page activity in the past year, how much do you think there is to see? There's also the issue of the new messages bar and a quite confusing diff... --MZMcBride (talk) 20:08, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"without any blocks, templates on the page, edits in the past year, or talk page activity in the past year, how much do you think there is to see" - well, then what's the harm with just leaving the pages intact? --ZimZalaBim ^talk 20:11, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a nice experience to come to Wikipedia and be accused of something like: "Racism is not amusing. Kindly refrain from posting it, or you may be blocked." --MZMcBride (talk) 20:22, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's very likely that the IP has been re-assigned or there is a different user behind it Just curious as to how you are determining the length of the DHCP lease? Yngvarr (t) (c) 20:17, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Does that matter? And if so, how? (Short answer: I'm not looking at DHCP records at all.) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:20, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If an IP is a long-term abuser, deleting the talk page deletes the history. Some ISPs assign their IP addresses with long-term reservations, 6 months, longer or perhaps even permanently. It'll still be same person behind the address. Will we be able to determine a long-term abuser if we (non-admins) can't see the history? Yngvarr (t) (c) 20:24, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How many long-term abusers have 0 blocks and 0 edits within the past year? ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:26, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While I am not opposed to this practice as long as we only employ it for "old" talk pages and then do it consistently, this cannot exactly be called "standard housekeeping" if no one has ever bothered to write it down. Without some form of standardization here, I could see new but highly enthusiastic admins running with this idea and deleting month old talk pages, which I am sure we would all agree hinders instead of helps the project. --Kralizec! (talk) 20:27, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent points. With things like CAT:TEMP, we wrote down the instructions on the category description page. With IPs, is there a similar place? Perhaps a project-space page somewhere? Wikipedia:User page, perhaps (as that covers user talk pages as well)? That seems pretty reasonable. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:30, 25 December 2008 (UTC) Started a conversation there. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:40, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Bluntly, I for one consider this to be worrying enough. — Aitias // discussion 20:30, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Eh? Scripts are far, far more accurate than any human could ever be... (Addendum: I suppose it would also be prudent to mention RSI here too. As much as I enjoy this project, I'm not going to hurt myself for it. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:32, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I see the point of deletion over blanking. Deletion ensures that only admins can see what has happened in the past, and most of the people who work against vandalism aren't admins. It would be useful for them to be able to click on the history and see patterns of abuse, if any, which will inform whether they will warn or get an admin involved to investigate whether e.g. it is a school IP and needs a longterm block. // roux 20:41, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So, you're browsing Wikipedia, clicking around and suddenly you have a new messages bar. You click "last change" and this is what you see. How is that fair to our readers / potential editors? I know if I weren't familiar with Wikipedia, that would be incredibly confusing. Look at the right-hand column.... --MZMcBride (talk) 20:50, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you're getting at, but if you just had your bot blank the pages with either an edit summary or a note on the page saying something like "Everything older than X has been removed, as this is the talkpage of a dynamic IP" there should be no issues I think. And maintains transparency for non-admins. I just don't see why deletion is necessary. Or, even, the bot could make a double edit; one to blank, one substing {{null}} into the page. Then the IP would see nothing untoward in the diff. // roux 20:56, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That seems rather silly given the dynamic nature of editing anonymously (and wasteful with all of the extra revisions). The German Wikipedia deletes these pages; and without any edits in the past year, any talk page activity, no blocks, etc., I just don't see the need for them to stay around indefinitely. And then of course there's the issue of blue links leading to blank pages which drives me mad. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:00, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What? Dynamic whatsit? A fair bit of the planet would still have no idea what you are talking about, for sure. Even more confused, on top of seeing something about how they've been abusing the site, are racist, an edit warrior, "sockpuppet", strangle puppies, etc. I can see plenty of benefit to deleting these over blanking them, in 99% of cases. SQL ^{Query me!} 01:39, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well.. I dunno. I just don't see why we should be reducing transparency for non-admins. There's a general permanent backlog of things that need admin attention, and I'm not sure that adding "Can you please look at the deleted history of this talkpage for problems?" is something we need to be adding to that list. No great harm is caused, but no great benefit is gained, by deleting instead of blanking. Alternatively, couldn't ClueBot (or clone) be configured to visit IP talkpages and archive after X period of time? // roux 21:04, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you may be forgetting that any contributions by an IP are still completely visible to any user... --MZMcBride (talk) 21:11, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That just puts the onus on people looking to comb through the IP's contribs and figure out what they may or may not have been warned for in the past. Leaving the page undeleted lets non-admins skim through edit summaries looking for things like 'warning' and 'monthname year'. Again, what I'm saying is about transparency to non-admins; why make it more difficult to suss out patterns of abuse? // roux 21:17, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Besides that: I don't think MZMcBride's deletions can be justified here at all (cf. WP:User_page#How_do_I_delete_my_user_talk_pages.3F and Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#User_pages). There is no reason why this policy can't apply for IP talk pages as well. — Aitias // discussion 20:46, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anonymous users and registered users are treated (sometimes very) differently in the software and in our social customs. I don't see the point you're trying to make. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:50, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c)User talk pages are normally not deleted because they have content that might be relevant at some time in the future, such as a discussion or sockpuppet templates (though I question the usefulness of putting a sock template on an IP talk page). In this case, any content is going to be completely irrelevant. For example, my current IP address is 71.227.54.220, one address in a block of 16,000 dynamic-ish IPs used by Comcast in Michigan. It was used for vandalism in 2006, then again nearly a year later in 2007, then a few months later, it reverted some vandalism. In the time between the first instance of vandalism and now, its probably been reassigned at least 3 times. Any message on it or in the page history (how many vandal patrollers seriously check the page history for warning?) is going to be completely irrelevant after each reassignment. Mr.Z-man 21:03, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

MZM deleting IPs which have had no posts or blocks or contribs for a year seems innocuous and perhaps beneficial. Thre should be some consensus that 1 year is the correct time, so someone does not run around deleting IP warnings from 1 month or 1 week ago. Does deleting the talk page remove the block log? I look at the block history to decide how long of a block to give an IP. Edison (talk) 20:59, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't delete the page if the IP has ever been blocked. :-) But to answer your question specifically, the block log (and user contributions) remain visible and fully intact regardless of whether the IP has a talk page. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:02, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Considering [67] implies that the issue was not clear-cut last week, and is likely not clear-cut now. MfD seems quite capable of dealing with problem pages, and has not been overwhelmed with requests to delete the (thousands?) of pages unilaterally deleted. Collect (talk) 21:03, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Paperwork for the sake of paperwork? ;-) Seems a bit antithetical to our principles of (trying!) to avoid bureaucracy. And I think quite a few more people have commented here than that Village_pump thread (understandably, really). --MZMcBride (talk) 21:10, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer to keep talkpages around, especially for IPs, where vandalism might be spread out over a period of months or years. We routinely block school IPs for a year at a time, so it would cause a hardship on other admins if the entire page, including the {{SharedIPEDU}} template, were deleted for inactivity. --El on ka 21:21, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Err.. you seem to be missing a key point or two. :-) If the page has any templates, it is skipped. If the IP has ever been blocked, it is skipped. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:22, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From time to time I get a message from an irate anon giving me grief because I have left a vandalism warning when he has never edited WP before sample 1 sample 2. It usually turns out that the warning was left in another age for another person. So, I can see some utility in clearing IP talk pages, and I'm fairly sure there used to be a bot that did it. Mr Stephen (talk) 21:28, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think blanking the page can be equally confusing and irritating to an anonymous user, if not more so. Did you see my diff above about this? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:30, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd think an anon who is knowledgeable enough to look at a diff is knowledgeable enough to know that the earlier message was aimed at a prior user of the page. I agree that we ought to have a policy for clearing out old IP talk pages (I actually just finished blanking a batch of about 20,000). I'd say a one-year-old warning should be blanked, and anything over two years should be deleted - even if the IP has been blocked, or was identified as a school IP or the like. Any school-assigned IP address from which no edits have come in over two years is likely inaccessible to students anyway. bd2412 T 21:47, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Eh? A bright orange bar with two bright blue links to click isn't too difficult for most of our anons. ;-) But I think what you're saying makes sense, though I do see a glitch or two. (For example blanking the pages essentially resets any clock...) Discussion of this should probably continue at WT:UP, though. I've started a thread there. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:50, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Something seriously wrong with Alaska Airlines

The article on Alaska Airlines appears to have been replaced with an advertisement promoting Nazism, however the article's source code is perfectly normal. This only happens in the article. --Nat682 (talk) 22:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template vandalism? Looks OK from here so has probably been fixed. --Rodhull andemu 22:10, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:12, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Holy cow. That made my eyes hurt. Hermione1980 22:16, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:MILHIST seems to have been hit by a spammer, but I'm having a dickens of a time finding the template. // roux 22:20, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See here. Special:RecentChangesLinked is usually pretty good for finding template vandalism. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:25, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed that highly disgusting/insulting version. — Aitias // discussion 22:33, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I blocked an anon vandal who hit 4 or 5 templates around 21:32, and would appreciate advice as to whether the targeted templates should be semi-protected. I don't know if this was the same vandal, but it's probably the same payload. If anyone wants to delete the "highly disgusting/insulting" version of those templates, be my guest, although I don't necessarily consider it important. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:16, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sprotect should suffice. Keeping the despoiled version in the history may help to form a case if there are further examples of such vandalism, so deleting is likely not necessary. Full protection may be required if a few autoconfirmed accounts start vandalising again. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:26, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

6 articles protected or sprotected. Please review my choice of which ones I fully protected under WP:HRT, and which should only be sprotected, or which should only be sprotected for a period of time. 00:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The two IPs caught so far are the same user, by behavior. They are using open proxies. These should be blocked for a long, long time. Last time I asked, the standard was five years. Jehochman ^Talk 23:32, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yesterday I blocked a couple of IPs (also open proxies) that were doing the same thing. Unfortunately it appears that Santa did not give our friend anything better to play with today. --Kralizec! (talk) 03:21, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Economy of India article has a Nazi advertisement. Could someone more knowledgeable remove it?Lalit Jagannath (talk) 11:12, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Shirley field" should be "Shirley Field"

Resolved

– page moved

// roux 23:55, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I created an disambiguation page (Shirley field) and inadvertently named it with the second word uncapitalized. Would an administrator please fix this? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 23:52, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done didn't need an admin. // roux 23:55, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it didn't need an administrator, but it did need someone with a clue. Thank you for being that person. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 03:15, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Midway class aircraft carrier

Resolved

– Offending templates deleted and salted by J.delanoy and MBK004

Could someone please look at Template:Midway class aircraft carrier? There is a speedy tag embedded in it which I can't remove, and that is leading to several articles which transclude that template being listed for speedy deletion. -- Eastmain (talk) 02:07, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Refresh your cache, someone was messing with the {{USS}} template earlier today. We took care of it. (I don't see anything wrong with this particular one right now) -MBK₀₀₄ 02:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A concerning RfC

In Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Law Lord, Law Lord (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) appears to be asking the community to allow him to mandate a particular version of the content of his user page. I am concerned by this because it is a fundamental denial of WP:OWN and WP:SOAP, but a lot of people seem to have been drawn into the side-issue of whether a particular vague criticism is uncivil or legitimate or not. Regardless of the merits of the comment itself, I would say that what the user is specifically asking in the RfC, which is to be allowed to maintain a particular version of the content of a particular page on Wikipedia, is something which policy forbids the RfC from delivering. Am I wrong there? Guy (Help!) 11:48, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 716: / Line 716: @@
 Could someone please look at [[Template:Midway class aircraft carrier]]? There is a speedy tag embedded in it which I can't remove, and that is leading to several articles which transclude that template being listed for speedy deletion. -- [[User:Eastmain|Eastmain]] ([[User talk:Eastmain|talk]]) 02:07, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 :Refresh your cache, someone was messing with the {{tl|USS}} template earlier today. [[Wikipedia_talk:MHCOORD#are_we_being_spammed.2C_or_is_it_just_me.3F|We took care of it]]. (I don't see anything wrong with this particular one right now) -'''[[User:MBK004|MBK]]'''<sub>[[User talk:MBK004|004]]</sub> 02:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
+== A concerning RfC ==
+In [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Law Lord]], {{userlinks|Law Lord}} appears to be asking the community to allow him to mandate a particular version of the content of his user page.  I am concerned by this because it is a fundamental denial of [[WP:OWN]] and [[WP:SOAP]], but a lot of people seem to have been drawn into the side-issue of whether a particular vague criticism is uncivil or legitimate or not.  Regardless of the merits of the comment itself, I would say that what the user is specifically asking in the RfC, which is to be allowed to maintain a particular version of the content of a particular page on Wikipedia, is something which policy forbids the RfC from delivering.  Am I wrong there? <b>[[User Talk:JzG|Guy]]</b> <small>([[User:JzG/help|Help!]])</small> 11:48, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

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