Content deleted Content added

Inline

Revision as of 23:14, 13 March 2006

Welcome – post issues of interest to administrators.

Shortcuts

For urgent incidents and chronic, intractable behavioral problems, use Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.
If you are new, try the Wikipedia:Teahouse instead.
Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead use Wikipedia:Requests for oversight.
For administrative backlogs add {{Admin backlog}} to the backlogged page; post here only if urgent.
Do not post requests for page protection, deletion requests, or block requests here.
Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly.

When you start a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page. Pinging is not enough.

You may use {{subst:AN-notice}} ~~~~ to do so.

Sections inactive for over three days are archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.(archives, search)

Start a new discussion

Tasks

The following backlogs require the attention of one or more editors.
NPOV disputes, Images on Commons, Overpopulated categories and Copyright Problems.

General

God of War trolling

Whilst some POV declaring on your userpage might be good for the project, WP:NOT a webhost for politial essays. User:God of War has been hosting User:God of War/Tyranny and Fascism - Past and Present (previously User:God of War/Was REVENGE worth it President Bush?. This is an abuse of userspace. I would have sent it to MfD per process, but the page in question has the bold header Warning! The following contains a Point Of View that will tempt some to censor it by listing it at WP:MFD. clearly trolling for someone to do that and make him a 'free-speech martyr'. This I attempted to reason with him [1] and [2] but was met only with [3]. I am sorely tempted to speedy this as patent trolling and block him for disruption - but I've had enough calls of 'admin abuse' for this week. Perhaps someone else could take this up and try either reason or deletion. --Doc ^ask? 09:48, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're not going to believe this, but I will actually try to talk to him. Better if it's a user (especially a pro-free speech one like me) than an admin, which will just upset him and others (quite understandably as I see it). I agree that that essay has no place on wikipedia and crosses the line of allowing political and social info on a user on their userpage. The Ungovernable Force 09:55, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Userspace exists as a scratchspace, a personal office if you will, to help with building the encyclopaedia. It's not a free patch of land that anyone who registers a free account can regard as their entitlement, and it's not somewhere where one can put inappropriate content and hide behind a kind of "userspace privilege" to protect it. I've spoken to God of War (talk · contribs) — or someone claiming to be him — many times on IRC, and, as near as I can determine, he's intelligent, and fairly cluey on what Wikipedia is and what it's for. He knows better than to write inflammatory personal essays and then bung them in userspace and say "NPOV doesn't apply! I can do what I want!". God of War has the potential to be a good contributor to our encyclopaedia, but at the moment he appears too busy being childish and abusing his userspace privileges. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 13:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have listed it at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:God of War/Tyranny and Fascism - Past and Present. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's a mistake, if you read my initial post and the offending article's header, you will see that this is exactly what the ~~troll~~ user was hoping for. --Doc ^ask? 14:53, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Relax with the personal attacks there doc. If I was trolling I would be posting this everywhere. As it is, I was keeping it quartered off in a sub-page until I finish working on it.--God of War 19:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it needs to go, somehow. Which would be worse, trolling at MfD or trolling on ANI when someone speedies it? android 79 15:11, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey guys, Has anyone here actually tried reading it? It's not a rant and it's not an essay.

It's only a copy/paste of the declaration of independence with a few factual statements with news stories referenced under each line of the declaration. I was going to get to it eventually but until then I moved it out of my main page and into a sub-page.--God of War 18:43, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So what does it have to do with Wikipedia's goals? Move that kind of thing to your own homepage/myspace whatever. Heck, I don't care, link to it from your WP user page, just keep junk that doesn't have any useful contribution to WP off WP. Please focus on what we're here for and not spend so much time on what we're not. You're wasting significant resources. - Taxman ^Talk 10:26, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard all day. The MFD discussion and this section of the noticeboard are taking up just as much minimal hard-drive space as my little sub-page.--God of War 20:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And if you followed what I wrote above we wouldn't have had any of it. To prevent more disruption and waste of resources we have to deal with it when we see it. If you don't want to focus on what Wikipedia is here for then spend time instead at places that are set up for what you're trying to do. - Taxman ^Talk 14:16, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This takes up a fraction of a cent's worth of hard drive space. I'll donate an extra 25 cents to Wikimedia if you let God of War have his subpages. —Guan aco 02:02, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doc, Doc, Doc... a couple points:

It's a copy of the Declaration of Independence reached by a vague link at the bottom of a userpage.
We'd all be more sympathetic if your statement "I am sorely tempted to speedy this as patent trolling and block him for disruption - but I've had enough calls of 'admin abuse' for this week." instead read more along the lines of "I am sorely tempted to speedy this as patent trolling and block him for disruption - but I all the calls of 'admin abuse' this last week have caused me to reflect and realize that perhaps there is yet room for growth in my understanding."
How about this as a compromise: you let the dude keep his little essay, I'll donate the two following userboxes, and the user agrees to display one of them on his userpage. That way balance is achieved. Mmmmkay?Herostratus

This user recognizes that userboxes are the #3 cause of death, right behind cancer and heart disease.

This user believes that Wikipedia administrators are incapable of error when speaking ex cathedra.

Adding a whole chapter of a book

User:Magdalenadaly recently left an interesting proposal on my talk page. She would like to add to Wikipedia a whole chapter from a book, for which she says she has the blessing of the author. The chapter is about the Irish psych-folk band Mellow Candle. I haven't the time to take care of it, so if someone wants to get in touch with her and answer her questions, please feel free. Her request if located here. Cnwb 22:32, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That should go in wikisource.--God of War 22:54, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This shouldn't be on the admin noticeboard...but it's not necessarily a bad idea for Wikipedia. If someone is willing to wikify it and the author specifically releases the chapter under the GFDL, it could be useful (however, I haven't looked at it). Superm401 - Talk 01:12, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- My apologies. Cnwb 01:40, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not that I think this is necessarily a bad idea, but would this fall under WP:NOT an indiscriminate collection of information? After all, would you expect to find an entire chapter of a book in an encyclopedia? Also, after looking at Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources, I imagine Wikisource is probably the best place for this as well. E WS23 | (Leave me a message!) 01:36, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is understood that the text will be freely edited, isn't it? I don't see a problem with incorporating portions (depending on its length) of the chapter into the article about the band, but it certainly should not be added to the article "as is" or made into a stand-alone article. The portions of the text used will need to be written in a neutral point of view, if it is not already, and formatted. -- Kjkolb 02:47, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it sets a bad precedent. Whilst the offer is a nice one, there's a better place for an entire chapter rather than within an encyclopedia. Quotes from sections of the chapter would be fine. Others above have suggested contributing the information to Wikisource, which I think is a good idea. -- Longhair 02:53, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources doesn't apply here since the chapter doesn't sound like a primary source. If the chapter is released under a free license, I see no reason not to include it. It would need to be wikified and edited for NPOV -- and possibly edited for length, depending on how much information the chapter includes. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Such material belongs only in Wikisource. If it were included in an article, I, for one, would delete it at once. User:Zoe|^(talk) 22:48, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- How about doing that at Matthew 1 then? --Victim of signature fascism | There is no cabal 19:51, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we should look at the material before deciding what should be done about it. I can think of many book chapters that would be good encyclopedia articles and many book chapters that would be terrible ones. I don't think there can be any overarching policy beyond those of being an encyclopedia. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 23:21, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not an admin but I'd oppose putting this into Wikipedia for reasons mention. I'd also oppose putting it into Wikisource because IMO, Wikisource was not intended to be a marketing platform for nonfree books and should not host "sample chapters". If the author is willing to have the entire book (not just one chapter) on Wikisource then that would be great. But it's all or nothing. Phr 05:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Protection of user talk pages

The protection policy says: "User talk pages should only be protected in cases of persistent vandalism". But I see that some admins protect the talk pages of banned users to prevent them from editing them, even when they are not writing anything which is objectionable in itself. Good idea? Bad idea? Haukur 18:12, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He's complaining about me protecting User talk:Dschor. In this case, the banned user is continuing to edit his talk page (with Huakurth's encouragement) in direct violation of his ban. This has resulted in the ban being reset for, now, the 3rd time. Dschor is banned, and as Dmcdevit has clarified, this includes a ban from his talk page. Non-objectionably in this case appears to include complaining about the ban, a favourite topic of bannees, and one which often gets their ban extended. My protection here follows protection by arbitrator Dmcdevit who protected because the banned user was using it, which was peculiarly reversed by Haukurth. I have reprotected it for Dschor's own good: he cannot now extend his ban by editing it. For reference see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pedophilia userbox wheel war#Log of blocks and bans, and in particular [4], [5]. -Splash^talk 18:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm interested in the general issue, not just this particular case. If people generally want to have a policy that says the talk pages of banned users are protected then I'll certainly abide by that. Then it should be codified and applied consistently, which is not the situation now. I notice, for example, that SPUI commented extensively on his talk page during his ban and yet the page was not protected and the ban was not extended (both of which I'm fine with). Haukur 18:24, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My take would be that normally, such pages should not be protected, as protection prevents other people adding notes to them. If the ban is short, those notes and questions may be important. Protection is always a last resort, and should never happen as a matter of course. However, if a banned user is using his page to troll, carry on the dispute, or continue to fight the case, then protection may be better than extending the ban. --Doc ^ask? 18:32, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(indent) A ban need not mean the protection of banned users' talk pages. It can, for instance, just mean a blanket revert of any and all edits that banned users make to their own talk pages, regardless of value or content. --D e ath phoenix 16:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why revert all edits, regardless of value or content? Isn't the point of banning a user to prevent contributions that lack value and content? Protecting a banned user's talk page does not help build an encyclopedia, does it? --67.168.241.139 03:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dschor is not only blocked, he's banned--forbidden to edit Wikipedia. This is why he is not permitted to edit Wikipedia for the duration of the ban, which was instituted by the arbitration commiteee. Not any part of it. --Tony Sidaway 04:29, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use being misapplied

I am getting increasingly concerned about the overuse and abuse of fair use on Wikipedia. The latest thing that I noticed was the use of a {{TIME}} template license that was using weasely words and allowing us to upload almost all the TIME covers (copyrighted material no less!) under the banner of fair use.

I have started off the Wikipedia page Wikipedia:Fair use review to discuss this issue further. My goal is to remove all invalid fair use images from Wikipedia, and those that should be on the site should be fully reviewed and a rationale given.

There are two reasons for this review:

On Wikipedia:About we have written:

All of the information in Wikipedia is free for anyone to copy, modify for their own purposes, and redistribute or use as they see fit, as long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a credit or backlink to the original article is sufficient for this). For full information see the copyright page or the text of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Fair use does not necessarily allow us to redistribute the content we have tagged as fair use, especially to commericial enterprises such as about.com. As such, fair use should only be used when absolutely necessary - see also Wikipedia:Fair use criteria.

The second reason is that we are increasingly opening ourselves up legal liability. You can't just upload an image and slap a fair use tag on it! This, however, is what some editors have been doing, pissing off many in the process.

Even should my Wikipedia page not take flight, something must be done about fair use on Wikipedia! Please join me in fixing this issue.

Ta bu shi da yu 03:44, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Ta bu about the importance of this issue. The quality, timeliness, insightfulness, and striking nature of the illustrations in TIME, like any other popular media, are a primary factor in the commercial value of their work. It is due, in part, to such illustrations that the public chooses to purchase TIME's product (both new issues, and access to archival copies) when they desire information about events both in the world today and in the past. We must accept that, to a non-trivial extent, Wikipedia is in direct competition with TIME (as well as any other form of popular media), and that our careless use of their copyrighted works to improve the value of articles unrelated to TIME's product is an unacceptable violation of copyright law. Fair use is intended to protect public discourse, so the use of time covers to discuss TIME is usually acceptable. Fair use is not intended to give us an easy way to obtain fantastic illustrations for our articles at no cost. This is a subject matter not likely to be understood by our general userbase without education and support. Ta Bu needs your help. --Gmaxwell 04:33, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's an issue of principle beyond the legal issue. This is "the free encyclopedia." 100% free content is neither realistic nor desirable. But the closer we can get the better. Chick Bowen 05:06, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I question this. What non-free images do we actually need? I'd argue that we need none of them. If Debian can produce a 100% free operating system, Wikipedia can produce a 100% free encyclopedia. Our tolerance of non-free images only creates problems. We would be better off deleting the whole lot of them. --Tony Sidaway 15:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use has been trying to deal with this problem for some time. You might want to join rather than duplicating effort.Geni 05:27, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To an extent WikiProject Fair use has created some of the problems, including the one that Ta Bu is complaining about here. The most notable and pertinent flaw in the approach favored by the active members of Wikiproject fairuse is the over reliance on vague boilerplate justifications, and a lack of any concern over the replacablity of the works in question. As far as I can tell, the state of Wikiproject fair use is much like the effort which was made in late 2004/early 2005 to run around and tag unlicensed works as gfdl-presumed: well intentioned but misguided. They've made an effort to improve things, but it seems that most of their actions have as an unstated starting requirement that they don't disrupt the longstanding abuse of fair use on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, a stronger approach will now result in the deletion of tens of thousands of images and *few* users are willing to commit to that sort of effort or the angry response it will draw from uninformed users angered by the loss of pretty pictures.--Gmaxwell 05:55, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am willing to take on angry editors, if they have been uploading images as fair use when the images are patently not being used correctly. - Ta bu shi da yu 09:27, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Fair use claims too. --Duk 05:41, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the current tolerance of such images is due in large part to the fact that some editors, including admins, have uploaded a large number of them and that they, and their allies, have thwarted any attempt to delete them. -- Kjkolb 09:57, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I believe you've made an important point here. It can also be said that we too often allow these people to continue speaking as though they were authortative on the subject... thus spreading the misunderstanding. --Gmaxwell 17:45, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is a huge amount of effort required just to get our fair use images to a state where we can monitor the fair use claims. Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use isn't there yet, there's so much to do. If you have a problem with that, please come over there and help us, don't criticise us. And whatever you do, stop deleting things out of process; whether it's correct or not, it just causes ill will. Orphan the images and tag them as orphans, list them on WP:CP or WP:IFD, whatever, but don't do things out of process. Thanks, JYolkowski // talk 16:22, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, WikiProject Fair use isn't there because it rejects the assistance of users whos idea of correcting fair use problems on Wikipedia involves removing large numbers of images rather than creating lengthy chains of process and pretzel logic in an attempt to justify a fair use claim for almost every image we're already using. Although that is only my personal opinion based on my own limited interaction with Wikiproject Fair use, I believe it is quite clearly supported by fact that the only mention of any form of removing content on the project page is in the context of adding more justifications to prevent the removal.

Since there is no mention of removing violations in Wikiproject Fair use's goals, I'd say that this entire discussion is outside of the scope of your project. Please stop trying to obstruct the work of others. --Gmaxwell 17:45, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More the case that we asssumed that once people understood what was allowed under fair use they would stop uploading stuff which was not.Geni 23:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if deleting all these covers will do any good, because different people will just upload them again. If you have a template for Time covers, people will assume Time covers are okay to use, and then to delete them later just causes hard feelings in the people who took the time to upload them thinking they were doing something kosher. We should figure out a way to easily prevent people from violating fair use in the first place, otherwise this will be a permanent cycle of upload and delete. Gamaliel 23:44, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, I encourage admins to start speedy deleting any new images that have existed on the site for more than a day without fair use rationales. The one day limit will give people a chance to upload the image and then add the fair use rationale: I know that it sometimes takes this long to add it when I upload a fair use image. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:48, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am personally going through my past image uploads, by using the image upload log, and based on the new copyright criteria and other things that were instituted, I got rid of about 30-40 of my uploads. Some of them were FU orphans, some were formerly tagged with licenses such as CanadaCopyright. I encourage all admins to repeat this, with their own files, and see not only how many image/copyvios we could solve, but also reflect on what we did in the past. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire) Fair use policy} 07:53, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

TabWiki Links

Myself and other member of tabwiki.com (a mediawiki based tableture site) were wodering if it would be against Wikipedia policy for us to add links to tabwiki tabs on the songs and album templates of wikipedia. I realize your rules are much more complex then tabwiki's and as such I felt it would be polite to ask before taking any action on the subject. Please let us know here or on tabwiki's main page's talk page.

PS. we are in the process of linking to wikipedia on tabwiki artist pages (see Pink Floyd's page on Tabwiki for an example)

--Diploid 21:29, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My only concern here is the fact that the RIAA is targeting lyric and music tag sites citing copyright violations. Mike _{(T C)}

23:06, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes we're going to have to deal with that when it comes around, we think we'll stand a better chance of survival the other tab sites because we are Gnu copyrighted. Anyways, a law suit against TabWiki would only cause the links to stop working, and as they'd be part of your templates this would be easy to fix. I'm not a legal expert, but I don't think theres any way they could draw Wikipedia into any legal battles. maybe someone knows more on this subject? --Diploid 15:38, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a lawyer and not at all certain about this, but it could be contributory infringement, however unreasonable this seems. I believe that's why the DMCA offers safe harbor to information locating services, like Google. Having your site under the GFDL will not help you defend against lawsuits. It's still a violations and it's going to make the copyright holders even more frusturated because GFDL sites tend to be reproduced widely (see Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks). Superm401 - Talk 00:34, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So, according to my understanding of the Contributory Infringement page (thanks for the link btw) wikipedia would be performing a indirect patent infringement if online tablature was proven to be in patent violation. And in that if we have our problem, there has yet to be a tablature site that will risk taking the RIAA to court (to my knowledge). Powertabs and Mxtabs, two of the largest tab sites, were the first of many to be shut down by intimidation by the RIAA. On another note I've done some homework and I think tablature could be considered legit in the USA (where both wikipedia and tabwiki are based) since it's definition of a equivalent device includes the statement:

"A doctrine of equivalents analysis must be applied to individual claim limitations, not to the invention as a whole."

which would also suggest onine tabbing's legality because although the overall sound of many online tabs is similar to the song, the bars and individual frets ("elements") that make up the song are generally different from the origonal tab (in that they are transcribed from one string to another, or flat out wrong). Basicaly I think the online tabbing community's inaccuracies and newbisms could be our savng grace. Just a disclamer that once again i am not a legal expert, if anyone is please help us out on this one! --Diploid 03:04, 1 March 2006 (UTC) (excuse my spelling, it comes from engineering)[reply]

I apologize. I should have noticed that page only dealt with patent infringement. Copyright and patenting are very different things. A patent protects a method, invention, or device while copyright protects a work of artistic expression (book, painting, computer program, music). Unfortunately, that means most of your comment is not applicable. See Chilling Effects for a useful discussion of contributory copyright infringement. Superm401 - Talk 06:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so according to Chilling Effects:

"Storage of material on a system at a user's request. (e.g. pirated software, serial numbers or cracker utilities posted on message boards or in chat rooms)"

is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s “Safe Harbor”. Since the site owner has never posted a tab it may be arguable that TabWiki is legal and that therefore a link to Tabwiki would also be legal. --Diploid 16:21, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since there has been no further comments on this I will take it apon myself to be bold with editig and create a link to the Tabwiki artist pages within the next 24 hours unless there is further discussion here. I want to create a link from your artist template to tabwiki's artist pages, in such a style that is is hidden on all pages except those that have the variable tabwiki set to true. Also, it would make sence that if the TabWiki community ever learned of a copyright ifringemet warning that it would be our duty to inform wikipedia so that links may be removed as the wikipedia community deams necessary. --Diploid 21:57, 6 March 2006 (UTC) (TabWiki Admin)[reply]

Political userbox undeletion vote statistics

I compiled the number of article edits and date of first edit for those who are voting on the undeletion of political userboxes at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Userbox debates. There are probably mistakes in my tally, feel free to correct.

Undelete

Piotrus - 13147 - 2004/04/10
Halibutt - 10669 - 2003/11/27
The Tom - 7067 - 2003/06/01
Enochlau - 4610 - 2004/01/04
CesarB - 3948 - 2003/02/13
Revolución - 3456 - 2005/05/21
Radagast - 3244 - 2001/12/13
Thryduulf - 3211 - 2004/12/26
Mike Rosoft - 3127 - 2004/06/11
Ombudsman - 2743 - 2005/02/26
Ynhockey - 2619 - 2004/11/08
Siva1979 - 2081 - 2006/01/06
Karmafist - 2058 - 2004/08/09
D-Day - 2001 - 2005/07/21
JDoorjam - 1734 - 2005/07/04
Locke Cole - 1608 - 2005/09/25
E._Brown - 1281 - 2005/01/10
Palm_dogg - 1130 - 2005/10/11
RadioKirk - 1026 - 2005/06/14
Cuivienen - 1021 - 2005/11/15
StuffOfInterest - 991 - 2005/05/24
Cynical - 690 - 2004/05/22
SushiGeek - 651 - 2005/09/04
Blu Aardvark - 655 - 2005/07/08
Ian13 - 576 - 2005/10/30
Ian3055 - 533 - 2005/10/27
Mike McGregor (Can) - 485 - 2005/10/11
Rogue 9 - 433 - 2005/09/01
Weatherman90 - 371 - 2005/10/01
Hossen27 - 355 - 2005/11/09
Pjetër Bogdani - 349 - 2005/12/24
MiraLuka - 346 - 2005/09/18
Dtasripin - 343 - 2005/04/15
Keithgreer - 340 - 2005/06/16
JSIN - 336 - 2005/04/02
Guðsþegn - 260 - 2005/06/15
Sjeraj - 151 - 2005/12/28
Colle - 181 - 2006/01/21
God of War - 156 - 2005/12/03
Mostlyharmless - 83 - 2005/12/26
The Ungovernable Force - 65 - 2006/01/01
AlbertW - 25 - 2006/02/10
Fkmd - 7 - 2006/01/26

Keep deleted

Bkonrad - 19790 - 2004/02/13
Tony Sidaway - 7449 - 2004/11/26
MONGO - 5784 - 2005/01/18
MarkSweep - 4893 - 2004/04/09
Doc_glasgow - 4399 - 2005/04/11
JWSchmidt - 2214 - 2003/02/27
Dalbury - 1870 - 2005/08/09
Cyde - 1645 - 2002/12/22
Improv - 1046 - 2004/10/28
Trödel - 944 - 2005/01/17

Those who want to have political userboxes have been cast as a crowd of n00bs with almost no article edits. This is not supported by the facts. I don't personally feel that political userboxes are useful, I just want to remind everyone that there are many experienced productive Wikipedians who think they are and we should be careful to respect them. Hopefully we are about to reach a compromise. Haukur 12:19, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mostly what you've done here is give an excellent example of why voting is evil and stupid. NPOV and root aren't up for votes either. Just because a polling mechanism exists doesn't oblige anyone to use it or take notice of it when its results are irrelevant - David Gerard 12:29, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like me some root! Can I vote me some root? :) Haukur 12:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Saying that to an Australian may be inadvisable, shurely? Shimgray | talk | 21:50, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure that they haven't just made hundreds upon hundreds of edits adding and modifying their userboxes? ;-) Kjkolb 13:16, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

:-) This is why I counted only article edits. By the way - anyone who votes to give me root will also get root once I've got root. ;) Haukur 13:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I vote to give you a carrot and a yam. Potatoes, the other hand are stem tubers, not root tubers. Guettarda 16:21, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*grr* This happened to me the other day too. I was going to buy crisps at the shop but noticed that they were selling variants made from other root vegetables and I decided to get adventurous. It tasted horrible. su potato for me, please. Haukur 19:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What this really shows is that most people reallize there's an encyclopedia to write and didn't bother to show up for the poll. Per David, you can't vote out NPOV. - Taxman ^Talk 00:05, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This was exactly the kind of rhetoric I was trying to counter; i.e. dismissing the views of people who have hundreds or thousands of article edits with a facile soundbite argument ("you can't vote out NPOV") while implying that they're a bunch of wankers who don't "reallize there's an encyclopedia to write". Haukur 23:18, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What you've done is wallop hell out of a straw man. See Greg Maxwell's meta-analysis for a more complete picture of the demographic breakdown of those supporting regulation of userboxes and those opposing it. --Tony Sidaway 14:58, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Link for said analysis? (Forgive me if it's staring me right in the face; morning coffee has yet to kick in.) android 79 15:01, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Userbox policy poll#Results, so far has a link to it. --cesarb 15:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Greg's analysis is indeed more complete and quite interesting. Haukur 09:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Page swapped to hide vandalism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Critique_of_Finno-Ugric_and_Uralic_language_groups&diff=prev&oldid=41311270 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Critique_of_Finno-Ugric_and_Uralic_language_groups&diff=prev&oldid=40315740

show, that User:Dbachmann twice vandalized the page in short time intervals. Today suddenly his vandalisation disappeared from the history, and my impression is, that the page was manipulated, swapped with a page, that was deleted about a year ago. Could please someone check this? Thanks, Adam88 20:48, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see no vandalism, and both diffs are visible on the page history. --cesarb 00:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Critique_of_Finno-Ugric_and_Uralic_language_Groups&action=history This is the history page, the both diffs are not visible. Can you please tell me exactly, where are listed the deletions on that page? Also the discussion page belongs to the deleted page and not to the current one. Adam88 19:46, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for pointing out that duplicate. Both pages should be redirected. And don't go around calling a disagreement over content "vandalism". Lupo 20:21, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

none of the pages may be redirected. Redirection = vandalismus.

There are two different pages; one has "groups" in the name (lowercase g) and the other one has "Groups" in the name (uppercase G). This is why you are not seeing the changes; you are looking at the history for one page and expecting to see the changes on the other. --cesarb 20:25, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

this is just User:Antifinnugor back from his ban with a year-old axe to grind. I protected the redirect now. I'm a bit tired of being called vandal by various trolls, consensus was and is clear as day on the issue. dab (ᛏ) 20:50, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

if you do not vandalize "redirect", you won't be called vandalizer, and won't be tired because of that. Does anybody force you to vandalize? It is that simple.

cesarb, thanks for the clarification. Now I found both pages. Adam88 08:20, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ted Wilkes has again violated his probation

User:Ted Wilkes has again violated his probation, although he had been blocked for doing so yesterday. He is still calling me a liar. This is certainly a personal attack. He has deleted some passages concerning Nick Adams's supposed homosexuality and an external link from the Nick Adams page, although he is banned from making any edit related to a person's alleged homosexuality or bisexuality. See [6] and [7]. See also his aggressive behavior on the Talk:Nick Adams page. This is unacceptable. Onefortyone 19:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have two things to say.

While I agree User:Ted Wilkes has violated his ban, Onefortyone is also violating his probation with all these dubious edits to the sexuality section of the article. I humbly suggest that both be given clear warnings to cease and desist from any sort of editing in the article for now and that neither be blocked unless it becomes necessary as a preventative step to enforce the existing ruling (which I strongly disagree with but respect in terms of process).

I think the RfAr should be re-opened, there is much to discuss and resolve. The last RfAr has not worked. Wyss 19:46, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The main problem is Ted Wilkes, who is aggressively continuing edit warring with me. Onefortyone 19:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wilkes has repeatedly violated the arbcom ruling. I banned him for 24 hours some days ago because of a number of violations, but treated them collectively as one breach. He has now committed two more unambiguous breaches. I have imposed a 1 week ban for the two breaches and am treating them as two clear and deliberate breaches. He is now up to three. If (and given his behaviour it seems a case of when) he hits five as per the arb ruling he will be banned for one year. He seems to treat arbcom rulings as a joke. They aren't. If he doesn't get the message then he will soon have a year to cop himself on. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 20:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wyss (talk · contribs) emailed me to say you had blocked her by mistake. Tom Harrison ^Talk 04:27, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No mistake. She deleted lines of another article dealing claims about someone's homosexuality. That breached the arbcom ruling which says that she and Wilkes are banned from making any edit related to a person's alleged homosexuality or bisexuality. The clauses "any edit" and "related to homosexuality or bisexuality" shall be interpreted broadly. This is not the first time she has broken the ruling. The first time I judged given past behaviour to be unintentional. In this case however she unambiguously disobeyed the arbcom ruling at least 3 times. breach 1 breach 2 breach 3 As a result there was no choice but to block her. I have to say that while Wilkes seems a complete nutcase (who is strongly suspected of being a notorious multiple hardbanned user from some years back) Wyss normally acts more responsibly. But in this case the enfringments were clearcut and necessitated a block. Indeed she is very lucky that she only got a 24 hour block having made three clear breaches. She could have been blocked for longer. Some users would have imposed longer for three clear unambiguous breaches like those. To breach the ruling once is wrong. To do it three times in the one article smacks of giving the two fingers to the ruling.

Here is just one of the bits of text she deleted. According to a theory by Professor Machtan, which he explained in his book The Hidden Hitler, August Kubizek had a homosexual relationship with Adolf Hitler. Both Brigitte Hamann and Professor Machtan wrote that after meeting Hitler during the latter part of 1905, the two quickly became close friends and lived together, sharing a small room they rented on the Stumpergasse in Vienna. In Young Hitler, the Story of Our Friendship, Kubizek wrote that during their time together Hitler "always rejected the coquettish advances of girls or women. Women and girls took an interest in him in Linz as well as Vienna, but he always evaded their endeavors." Kubizek also wrote that Hitler had a great love for a girl named "Stefanie" and wrote her countless love poems but never sent them. Instead, Kubizek says Hitler read his poem "Hymn to the Beloved" to him. Professor Machtan stated that while the Stefanie girl definitely existed, some of Kubizek's 1953 writing was a deliberate "heterosexualizing" of Hitler in retrospect (p. 43).

She replaced the above text with William L. Shirer, in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich cites a letter dated August 4, 1933, six months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, in which he wrote his boyhood friend, "I should be very glad . . . to revive once more with you those memories of the best years of my life."

Deleting that was a clear and unambiguous breach of the prohibition "from making any edit related to a person's alleged homosexuality or bisexuality". FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 05:18, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks; I can't see any basis for disputing the block. Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:24, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cutting and pasting

User:Tnikkel has raised on my talk page an ongoing issue he's been dealing with, regarding frequent cut-and-paste moves done by the following users:

It's not entirely clear whether this is deliberate vandalism or simply a lack of awareness of Wikipedia's rules regarding page moves. Tnikkel has raised the issue with them, but the editors never acknowledge his talk page posts, and mostly seem to stop editing after his post (at which time a new one starts doing the same thing). Based on this editing pattern and the fact that all of their edits pertain to cartoons (every single one of them has made edits to some combination of Curious George, The Fairly OddParents, SpongeBob Squarepants and/or The Pink Panther), Tnikkel suspects that it's the same person editing under multiple usernames. But other than the ongoing cut-and-paste problem, their edits tend to be valid and legitimate. And even the moves are legitimate disambiguation (i.e. this isn't a Willy on Wheels scenario); they just use the wrong procedure and then fail to acknowledge any discussion about it.

Any assistance in figuring out what can be done about this would be helpful. Bearcat 18:50, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This user appears to be currently in another editing session, this time as User:Railroad Runners. I again left them a message, they have edited since the message, but no response yet. Tnikkel 23:30, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried blocking one of the accounts for a short period (e.g. 15 mins) and then making the warning? - this would fire off autoblocks for any additional accounts. That way you may be able to get them to talk somewhere, and they probably wouldn't realise that the block was released so quickly unless they actually read what you wrote. --Victim of signature fascism | Do people who don't think Jesus existed exist? 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't because I'm not an admin. Tnikkel 00:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Railroad Runners is still making edits, so if someone wants to try that now they could, but so far that user account hasn't made any cut-and-paste moves, so that account hasn't done anything wrong, but if I'm right, they are the same person. Tnikkel 05:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe this person is back and editing right now and now using the account User:Floodwall. Tnikkel 00:12, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And again I believe the same person is now using User:Kingdom Wealthy. Tnikkel 03:58, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If there is an admin who wants to try a short block to try to get this user's attention then right now I believe this person is editing with the account User:USA 5000. Tnikkel 23:45, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And now I think this person has moved on to the account User:The 100% Grand Guy. Tnikkel 21:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And now its User:Claws 'n' Jaws. Could an admin do a temp block to try to get this users attention? It's getting tiring looking through the hundreds and hundreds of edits this user makes looking for the few bad ones to undo. Tnikkel 23:51, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Email confirmation - IMPORTANT

(copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Mail server blacklisted by SpamCop --cesarb 04:12, 2 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

For some lovely reason our new mail server has been blacklisted by SpamCop, allegedly for sending mail to spamtrap addresses. (They provide no details by policy, of course, so there's no way to verify it.)

Since there's a tiny possibility that the user-to-user email feature actually could be abused, I've gone ahead and enabled the e-mail confirmation requirement for using email features. This is a bit annoying for the moment since you have to do it separately on each wiki.

I've disputed the listing, so hopefully we'll get it removed soonish and those who aren't getting email will, uh, start getting it again. --Brion 22:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What this means for most users: You must go to Special:Confirmemail and tell it to email you a confirmation code. If you don't, you will not receive Wikipedia email. You have to do it with all your accounts, if you have more than one. --cesarb 04:11, 2 March 2006 (UTC) (link changed. Superm401 - Talk 06:22, 2 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Confirmation has worked for me on every wiki except Meta and Wikisource, even though I tried twice and waited a day for the emails. I tried again today with the same results. Is there a problem with those sites? I could not find anything about it on Meta or Wikisource, but I am not very familiar with them. -- Kjkolb 11:38, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Warning:

I got warned and I want links, please, I think there is a slight misunderstanding DS. Crowbaaa 14:03, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How about this for a link [8]? --Syrthiss 14:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry but I cannot see what is wrong with that. Federal and the other words do have articles, so why not have links? What do some innocent links do. Rid Wikipedia of members? Noooo. Make people smarter? Yeeees. So what's wrong?Crowbaaa 12:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Copperchair violating ArbCom ban

User:Copperchair has edited Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi today despite being banned by ArbCom (see his talk page) from editing any articles related to Star Wars. This user has already been blocked four times since the ban was enacted. While the edit does not necessarily appear to be in bad faith, it is still a violation of his ban. --BinaryTed 18:37, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And he still is. The second edit appears to be a valid statistical correction, however, so it need not be reverted. Septentrionalis 20:02, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that after long dragged out experiences with other problem editors (in which they should have been banned much sooner than they did; I think you guys know what I'm talking about) that it was settled that Arbcom sanctions on editing a class of articles were irregardless of the merits of any particular edit. I'm tempted to read it rigidly since Copperchair keeps reverting his user talk (which is very annoying, but not covered under the Arbcom decision)- but I will hold off on the year block until I get some feedback here. --maru (talk) contribs 22:04, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The ArbCom decision says he's banned from editing Star Wars articles; there is no distinction made as to whether "meritorious" edits are allowed, so I'd have to say they're not. He was actually blocked just two days ago for making basically the same edit he made today. --BinaryTed 21:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I recall, I was the one who did that ban, so it's probably not a good precedent. --maru (talk) contribs 22:04, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Understandable. Is there another admin who would like to take a look at this, or do we actually have to wait for a "bad faith" edit? --BinaryTed 18:21, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We could ask Nufy8 or A Man In Black to take a look. --maru (talk) contribs 18:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That was fairly obviously just violating the ban on purpose, so I blocked for a week. The enforcement says for up to a year, but that's not required. I'd suggest a month or more for the next one though. - Taxman ^Talk 05:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I'd like an explanation for why this user's talk page was being reverted and why it is protected. User's have the right to edit their talk pages and blank them if they like. They can't remove vandalism warnings, etc, but everything else is fair game. I'm unprotecting unless some really good policy points are brought up that I'm missing. - Taxman ^Talk 21:08, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fully-banned users are not entitled to edit anything at all, talk pages included. If he's only banned from Star Wars articles, then he can of course edit his own talk page. -Splash^talk 21:11, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think his motive, in reverting to the "welcome to wikipedia" version, is to make his condition less evident to any johnny-come-lately users that with whom he might find himself in conflict. The fewer people aware of his restrictions, the more likely a couple violations thereof will slip through the cracks, especially if four out of ten mistake him for a clueless newbie. — Mar. 7, '06 [21:28] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

Of course that's his intent, but don't kid yourself that many people are fooled by it. The first links on what links here is the arbcom decision. You could interpret the arbcom decision as a warning that needs to stay, but the rest he can change as he wants. Really there's so many people watching his edits that he's not going to get any vandalism in just because his talk page looks clean. Please stop reverting the talk page unless to replace the arbcom warning. - Taxman ^Talk 16:52, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eastern Front (World War II)

We are haveing problems resolveing our differences in opinion.

(Deng 22:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

This isn't where this goes. The Administrator's noticeboard is typically used for admin to admin communication. You just need to go to the request for mediation or mediation cabal pages and make a request. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 10:55, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are ofcurse wrong when you say that

To be able to post on the meditation page one must first pass the requirments of the Template:RFMR

Read the Template:RFMR and you will see that you are wrong.

(Deng 23:07, 3 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

No I am not. It is not required to post here before you put up a RfM. What is on that template are suggestions for how to list the request. And besides Deng, even if you were required to follow it, you posted in the wrong place anyway. The template says WP:AN/I. This is WP:AN. The steps you want to follow are on the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution page. First step is to talk and there's been alot of that. Next is one of 5 choices: Informal mediation, discuss with third parties, conduct a survey, mediation and requesting an advocate. The dispute resolution page clearly states that any of them can be picked. There is no required order. I suggestion informal or formal mediation because I'm not sure that the other choices would help here. Both sides are very entrenched. Do me a favor and don't tell me I'm wrong with policy. I've been doing this for 15 months. I've been an admin for 9. I have 20,000 edits. I know the steps. "Of course you are wrong". Of course? Please be civil. Please. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 12:32, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But you are wrong one MUST follow the template. If I hade done as you would have said and directly posted on the meditation page it would have goten denied. Why I chose to post here I simpley because other on the meditation page have posted here. You are wrong in saying that one can just post on the meditation page. The template is something one MUST follow. And it is good that I chose to make an extra post because this one has ofcurse goten dissrupted and has lost its purporse. Now if I would have only posted on the suggested pages and then you would have posted and dissrupted on of them also then perhpas the meditation people could have said; well you didnt really make an attempt to post on the other pages.

Also AND THIS IS THE KEY didnt you just say that the things on the template are suggestions? Well if they are suggestions then ofcurse there is no problem in posting here?

And how long you been doing this is irrelevant. I just proved you wrong, now didnt I? So learn to live with it.

(Deng 21:35, 4 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

If you will notice in the HTML comments in that template, it says that "If the issue was raised on the Administrators Noticeboard or other similar page, provide a stable link" (emphasis mine). It also states in the actual text that you should bring it up on Administrators' noticeboard /Incidents, not here. And be civil. Telling people "I'm right, you're wrong, any questions?", which is basically what you have done above, is not likely to get you anything. H e rmione1980 22:44, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No no this was a good test run and when I post on the 2 pages that are suggested in the template then ofcurse I hope that I can avoid all the problems that we have experienced here. Fact is Fact and the Fact is my post here hasent accomplished what is was sent out to do but has gotten bogged down and has floated away from what its purpose was. So the actions of others has proven that I was correct in posting here because in doing so I possibly avoided the same incident on the intended pages.(Deng 23:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

The ends do not justify the means. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 07:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

210.11.188.13 and 210.11.188.16

Multiple warnings, I issued a last warning after reverting an article twice, he vandalized again. Last vandalism on Bayeux Tapestry. The IP is registered to a school so they can be only temporarily blocked. This is also why it seems to be multiple IPs. Thanks. Raintaster 03:08, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I blocked the first IP for 48 hours. But if there are multiple Ip's involved a range block may be needed. --Ragib 03:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now with semi-protection available, I generally prefer to semi-protect articles rather than to impose a range block. Obviously, range blocks may still be necessary if more than one or a few articles are being targeted. --Nlu (talk) 07:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Drawer full of socks (talk · contribs)

A while back, this user was blocked probably for an inappropriate user name. Drawer full of socks put the unblock template on his talk page but I removed it later and explained about his user name to him. Every day now, a new anon IP addresses keep adding the unblock template back to his talk page giving the edit summary "request for unblock upheld". Can someone look into this? Moe ε 04:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

sprotected, and added a notice about the reason for the block. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 07:40, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SQUIDWARD!! bot testing

I'm currently testing a bot to revert SQUIDWARD attacks. Please note this. Thanks. joshbuddy^talk 07:36, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is this bot approved? WP:BOT states: Sysops should block bots, without hesitation, if they are unapproved

It's MY bot and its approved running with a bot flag Tawker 07:52, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

yes and i belive your flag is for {{subst:}}ing templates, and thats all your bot shoud be used for tawker until you have permison from wp:bots Benon 09:46, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV suggestion

Lots of time is wasted on NPOV disputes. I suggest a new category of protection. If a minimum of five admins decide to protect a section of an article (particularly the intro) then it remains protected until a minimum of five admins object. We might then move to greater stability though I acknowledge the downside of preventing editing. Kevin Mccready 15:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No. Admins aren't supposed to use their administrative position to endorse specific positions in a NPOV dispute; the protection policy, in fact, forbids that in no unclear terms, and admins have ended up before the ArbCom before for violating it. A successful vote for adminship represents community support for an editor's restraint, stability, and committment to the project; it does not represent, in any way, community support for their views. Therefore it does not confer any special right to impose their view on articles, not even if they can find four like-minded admins to agree with them. An article where five admins are in dispute with five good-faith regular users should be considered a normal content dispute between users, and it should be settled like any other dispute. --Aquillion 21:22, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You've perhaps misunderstood me here. I had no intention of 5 supporting one view over another. My point was that five admins should be able to agree on a NPOV statement that encapsulates a controversy, particularly in an introduction. i doubt that 5 vs 5 would waste anywhere near the huge amount of time and effort WPians can devote to revert wars. The point of my post was to suggest something new that could cut down on wasted effort. The "something new" is the suggestion that individual sections of an article (introductions for example) may be protected in special cases for perhaps a limited period of time. Mccready 13:40, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Earl of Stirling, anon editor and legal threats

68.179.175.185 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) is claiming to be (the) Earl of Stirling which is being disputed on both his talk page and the article talk page. In the course of those discussions 68.179.175.185 has made clear legal threats against Hansnesse. I've given a him couple short blocks but he has continued to make them. He has a block ending now and depending on his attitude I'm going to block him for a longer period of time. thanks Rx StrangeLove 16:43, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Will repeated blocks shall deter him from initiating legal action, if he chooses to do so? As legal threats are not tolerated here a permanent block may be in order. Apart from this, contents may require suitable modifications, about which I do not have any idea. --Bhadani 16:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We don't block in order to convince someone not to go to court. We block for legal threats because once a legal threat has been made, it removes any possibility of reasonable discussion towards consensus. The block should be indefinite; at least until the issue is settled. Jkelly 17:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt it, the best we can do is to keep him from making them here. I was thinking about a month. As he is editing from an IP I won't block indef. A month should cool him off, and if he keeps it up on his talk page I'll protect/semi it. Rx StrangeLove 17:16, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Let me make certain I understand this correctly: He's the Earl because he claims to be, not because of any other reason; he lost his only court case about it against the UK according to him (although no-one else has been able to find the case)[9]; and now he's threatening to sue WP? The mind boggles. KillerChihuahua^?!? 19:51, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We get these noble impersonators now and then. It's their bad luck that the British peerage is remarkably well-documented, and that a fairly high level of knowledge (to say nothing of pedantry) is required to fool those who know the subject. Earl of Stirling indeed. Next he'll claim he's the Duke of Cleveland! Mackensen (talk) 21:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I blocked him for a month (before I read the above discussion) as noted on AN/I. I regret only failing to block him after the first (very clear and unambiguous) threat; decent wikipedians shouldn't have to suffer under the veil of threats. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Holy Chickens (from outer space 2, the movie remember?)

Soooooooooo, I think that the Notability test is chicken fried in water. It says that it is not a guideline, why should my article be deleted because of someone else's religion, i think it was a good article that I poured a lot of work into! Crowbaaa 17:22, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion about deletions is conducted at deletion review. Thanks. Chick Bowen 19:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If only I had the faintest idea what Crowbaaa was talking about I'm sure I would be really interested :-) Just zis Guy you know? 19:55, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First Council of Nicaea and Council of Jerusalem

There's some disagreements underway about the status of Ecumenical Councils or some such nonsense. There may also be some 3RR violations, but I'm not sure. As I've just nominated FCoN for Featured Article status, I'm loath to step in and start knocking skulls... can anyone poke around and see if there's anything that can be done from a procedural standpoint to quell the chaos? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 19:46, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Removed U2 criteria from CSD

I removed a criteria from CSD: U2: Recycling IP pages. User talk pages of non-logged in users where the message is no longer relevant. This is to avoid confusing new users who happen to edit with that same IP address. since there was no need for deleting the whole page to achieve such effect. The suggested procedure is just blanking the page (as agreed on csd talk page) and not deleting it, so the old versions get archived on the history. The complete deletion was uncalled for. -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 20:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't blanking a talk page cause the system to treat it as a new edit to the talk page, and so bring up the "You have a new message" dialogue? Shimgray | talk | 00:49, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If so, perhaps a template could be made explaining that the page is just being blanked should be made to avoid confusion. After blanking the page, the template would be placed on it before saving. -- Kjkolb 10:47, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Naja Haje (talk · contribs) and Jobe6 (talk · contribs) confirmed to be compromised

Recently, those two accounts were blocked for page-move vandalism. I originally guessed that those accounts were compromised, and I turned out to be right. The owner of the accounts also played the online game RuneScape, and he just contacted me in-game to discuss this issue. He says that the hacker changed too much information in his account that he cannot recover it. Is there any other ways that hacked users could recover compromised accounts? --Ixfd64 20:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Off-hand, I'd say no. They'll have to start new accounts. Ral315 (talk) 18:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Confirm the new accounts, promote them if they were admins and block the old account. The new accounts can have an edit contrib list. Alt: A developer could hack the password, change it, and email it to the true owners.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 18:55, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The edits won't be re-attributed, though, and the devs won't hack the pass, since there are legal/licensing implications involved. Neither were admins, for what it's worth. Ral315 (talk) 11:02, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mac and Rachel Cory

I'm hoping another admin can give me some fresh insight. I've reverted the page twice and redirected to the show the characters were on, Another World, on the grounds that all the information in the article is already at the AW page, and that having a daughter article solves nothing as it's not telling anything new or in-depth, just stating the exact same things that can be found at the article on the series. The user, MrKing84, is not great at discussion from what I've gathered. I think it should be one way, and he thinks it should be his. Rather pigheaded, both of us, so hopefully someone else can mediate on the Mac and Rachel talk page. Thanks! Mike H. That's hot 21:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why not take the info out of the parent article and let him keep it in the daughter article? User:Zoe|^(talk) 21:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Libel

Reporting myself for an out-of-process speedy deletion of a template here. Here's a copy of my explanation (on Wikipedia:Libel):

I've removed the {{libel}} template. It is a serious problem if we find libellous material and don't deal with it. The correct thing to do, is to remove the text until it can be verified, sourced, put into neutral language and replaced (or forgotten never to be seen again if that's more appropriate). Just tagging it is a Bad Thing. I speak as one of those that deals with the angry emails from people reading that they are actually monstrous, murdering child molesters and not an average headmaster. -- sannse (talk) 21:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I fully support this decision, although perhaps a note could be added to the template explaining why it shouldn't be used? Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 00:55, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SVG Request

Could another administrator (who can upload and save SVG files) upload Image:Flag of South Africa.svg, tag it as {{c-uploaded}}, and protect it? I've gone ahead and changed the In the news image to Image:Flag of South Africa.svg.png, a more appropriate image, after a request on the talk page. Once the SVG is uploaded and protected, then the template's image can be changed and the .svg.png can be deleted. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 00:44, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind; the news item has been removed and the previous image replaced. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 02:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Woer$ and templates

Relatively new Woer$ (talk · contribs) is creating some kind of main-page-like templates. His talk page history shows some prior warnings for vandalism (categories and possibly templates). I'm not sure what the purpose of those templates is, he's not really answering questions in any detail. Possibly just paranoid, but maybe someone else can take a look. -- Curps 02:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most of them appear copied from Wikinews. I'm not sure what purpose those templates would serve here; I would say if he doesn't respond, go ahead and delete them unless they prove to be serving a useful purpose. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 03:14, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The templates actually seem to be verbatim copies of the Wikinews main page templates, with some minor changes and after having lost their various CSS styles on account of having been moved. They aren't linked to anything. My only guess is that he wants to perform some kind of bizarre mix-up in vandalising articles to look like the Wikinews main page, although that seems tenuous and I can't possibly see why he'd be creating them as templates. Note he's used identical nomenclature to the Wikinews main page templates. I can only fathom that he may well actually just not understand that the main page isn't editable, or thinks he can somehow get around it. I'll leave a talk page message and if he doesn't respond within 24hrs satisfactorily I'll delete them. --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 03:15, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Advocate Cabal

Hello all: I've recently started a new initiative, Wikipedia:Advocate Cabal, which aims to provide informal advocate services to assist Wikipedians in solving problems. I would be most grateful for comments, flames, &c., and indeed if people would be so good as to help out that would be brilliant. Anybody who wants an advocate might also like to make the monumental first request. :) Best regards, --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 03:08, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you can make it more responsive and helpful than AMA, I'm all for it. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 03:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Impersonation

I'm not sure where to report this, so I post it here. I think that user:Kayabusa_futura is impersonator of user:Hayabusa_future and user:*brew is impersonator of user:*drew. borgx ^(talk) 07:32, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kayabusa futura has a good number of legitimate edits and therefore is less likely to be an impersonator, I think. *brew only has two edits so far, both seemingly legitimate, but due to the few edits is more problematic, but I'd suggest only keeping watch at the moment. --Nlu (talk) 08:46, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Inf3rn0

Could someone help me get rid of this? It's supposedly by a minor (or someone trying to troll a pedophile) and I'll have to come "out of the closet" and say I don't have the procedure down for speed deleting and would like some assistance/education. --DanielCD 16:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, User:Mushroom got it. --DanielCD 16:20, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It just looks like run-of-the-mill vanity article. User:Zoe|^(talk) 23:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merkey RFC?

Without solicitiing comment on the actual content of the debate, can I ask someone who knows what he's doing to take a quick look at this quasi-RFC?

Jeffrey_Vernon_Merkey/Request_for_comments

There are two problems:

it's not listed anywhere under WP:RFC that I can see, so it's not clear to me that it's really an RFC
the namespace is confused: the page is in the article name space, but its discussion page Wikipedia talk:Jeffrey Vernon Merkey/Request for comments (as linked to from the "All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page" note at the end) is in the Wikipedia talk namespace (meaning that on both pages, the "project page" and "discussion" tabs don't work as expected). —Steve Summit (talk) 20:06, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've taken a quick look, but you should be aware that I am one of the editors that the raiser is taking issue with. Looking in the page history the page was originally created as Wikipedia:Jeffrey Vernon Merkey and moved to it's current place, there is no indication it has ever been listed on RFC. Secondly it's inescapable to mention the content in relation as to if it's a valid RFC, the positions listed are in fact written by the same person, rather than as per the RFC that editors should only edit one opinion. Secondly the use of a list of authors with a vague assertion of some wrong doing is of course inappropriate for an RFC. --pgk^(talk) 21:01, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jeffrey Vernon Merkey and Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Jeffrey Vernon Merkey. --cesarb 17:02, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

vandalism on my user page!

Mikkalai vandalized my user page. Stefan cel Mare 20:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That seems to be a real problem these days [10] [11]. Respected admins vandalising userpages, just awful. --Sean Black ^(talk) 21:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is not vandalism, it is part of the procedure to tag sock puppets or suspected sock puppets. We will wait and see what CheckUser says. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire) Fair use policy} 00:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Usnewslink

I've blocked this user indefinitely for legal threats made on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Judith Haney and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/USNewsLink. --InShaneee 21:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jobe6 is WoW?

This might be a done and finished topic as of February 21 but I hardly think that Jobe6 is WoW. I don't disagree with his block because what he did was wrong but that doesn't necessarily mean he was telling the truth when he said "I am Willy on Wheels". Maybe it's just be but does anyone remember User:Purplefeltangel? She moved the article Internet Relay Chat to Internet Relay Chat on WHEELS and I'm almost 100% sure she wasn't Willy on Wheels. My point is, she just wanted to leave Wikipedia and so could Jobe6. Although I do agree with his block, maybe in the near future Jobe6 should be unblocked and see if he wants to contribute constructively again. Moe ε 01:34, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Willy on Wheels has spawned many imitators; in fact, the vast majority of people who move articles to pages "on wheels" are probably not the original Willy on Wheels. Regardless, anyone who vandalises or claims to be WoW will not be tolerated, and the account was rightly blocked by Curp's bot for page moves. However, given Jobe6's history of decent contributions, we can only hope that there is some other explanation; we all should assume good faith here. Until there is some indication, though, that Jobe6 requests to be able to edit again, wishes to be unblocked, or provides some other explanation, I think the block should stay. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 02:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The best information we have right now is that the account is controlled by a vandal, and so should remain blocked. -- Curps 03:43, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See the above section, where it's said that Jobe6 was hacked, and all info changed. Ral315 (talk) 11:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cat:CSD is overflowing again

We've got 55 pages and 20-something images in CAT:CSD. I'd clear it out myself, but I'm exhausted and have got to go to bed. Somebody? Anybody? H e rmione1980 01:34, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm on it, btw. NSL E _(T+C) at 01:57 UTC (2006-03-05)

Mostly cleared out, wih a little help. Some unclear ones I've left. NSL E _(T+C) at 02:05 UTC (2006-03-05)

I'm sort of monitoring it, but there aren't more than 10 articles in there. — Ilyan e p (Talk) 02:49, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Know a good way of keeping CSD low? New Page Patrol. (Just sayin'....) --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 06:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And again, just cleared out most of the 30-or-so articles in there. NSL E _(T+C) at 06:33 UTC (2006-03-05)

55 pages isn't really that much. I've seen it with 200+ at one point (though that was back when anons could make new pages). Coffee 17:12, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not really the best place for this (but I'll put it here anyway, since I want some feedback)

I was recently looking the for this disambig page, and mistakenly typed centurian, which rather than yielding no results, gave me this instead, the question being, now that I've discovered that there are 13 entire articles with rather obvious typos in them, do I have some sort of responsibility to hunt through those articles and fix the spelling, or is there place I can take this where other people, or maybe some sort of bot, could do it for me?--172.155.253.112 03:28, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, not the best place at all, I'm afraid--we only deal with admin issues here--but why don't you list it at Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings? Chick Bowen 03:33, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strange, I decided to fix them all myself, but they're still showing up on a search for centurian, even with the misspelling removed--172.155.253.112 03:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Updating the search index is a very slow process, so it's only done once every few months. --Carnildo 08:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

upcoming revert war on Jeffrey Vernon Merkey, beware

User Waya sahoni conducted an ill-formed RFC (Jeffrey_Vernon_Merkey/Request_for_comments) which he now says justifies removing several sections from the article; see Talk. Others have repeatedly promised to revert. Expect a battle. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jeffrey Vernon Merkey. --cesarb 17:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CAT:CSD and Wikipedia:Hangman

This game is still obviously on-going, I can't find any reason why Hangman is in the CSD category. Anyone else? NSL E _(T+C) at 04:30 UTC (2006-03-05)

There is no reason for speedy deletion when the game is still on-going. Can't Wikipedia games just stay on the project? --Ter e nc e Ong 04:43, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why it is in the category either. There certainly isn't a deletion tag on the page, and I can't find anything that would be causing it to appear in this category. Not that I'm a wiki code expert or anything, but from the look of it the page shouldn't be appearing in the category. Raven4x4x 06:24, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. When I took out an extra period, it took it out of CSD for me. Odd. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire) Fair use policy} 06:40, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strange case. It seems to have manifested itself sometime around February 14, based on these diffs ([12], [13]) with a comment between the two ([14]). No clue what happened, but figured I'd point that out in case someone wanted to try to track down the glitch. E WS23 | (Leave me a message!) 06:47, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is that a template got tagged with the deletion template, and due to caching issues, and not using noinclude tags on it, the page appeared to be in the category (just a guess...) Ral315 (talk) 23:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template:CURRENTDAY

Deleted {{CURRENTDAY}} for some unknown reason, and won't divulge that reason with anyone, even went as far as blocking an aol ip block just to make the point that he can delete whatever he wants, without giving any sort of reason--64.12.116.200 06:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are no such templates. See the deleted history of Template:CURRENTDAY (edit | [[Talk:Template:CURRENTDAY|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (and the others) to see why Improverist (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and SaviorOfGrace (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) were blocked. -- Curps 06:59, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

O'RLY, then what are {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}, and {{CURRENTMONTH}}?? are they all figments of my imagination? Or maybe just real templates? That actually exist--64.12.116.200 07:01, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Deleted page histories that include images entitled penisflaccid. This valuable content must be undeleted immediately. · Katefan0^(scribble)/poll 07:05, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You realized non-admins can't see deletedpage histories right?--64.12.116.200 07:06, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is an administrators' noticeboard and that information is useful to other admins. Since you yourself are the vandal the reply wasn't intended for you. -- Curps 07:07, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See m:Variable. These are built-in variables, not templates, as no page exists to define them. Creating templates at these titles, will only be seen as a trollish attempt to indirectly vandalize the main page and any templates that depend on these variables. Anything created there should be deleted on sight, no exceptions. — Mar. 5, '06 [07:08] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

If there is no Template:CURRENTDAY, then why does {{CURRENTDAY}} have a value? Doesn't putting something inbetween {{these}} automatically reference [[template:these]]?--64.12.116.200 07:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's handled differently by the software, as it is a variable. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 07:13, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You do realize that this "concerned" anon (using AOL IPs) is the vandal himself. If the vandalism actually worked for its intended purpose (I haven't checked if that's the case) the software would need to be changed. -- Curps 07:10, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You realize I created the later of the two accounts, because unregistered users can't create pages either so i had no way to undelete what looked like the deletion of {{CURRENTDAY}} without registering an account??--64.12.116.200 07:13, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree completely. If the vandalism does work, you should auto-delete by bot until the software can be changed. Creating a list of "bad titles" in MediaWiki: namespace would also be useful for other purposes, such as making {{deletedpage}} obsolete. — Mar. 5, '06 [07:14] <freakofnur_xture|talk>
It doesn't work. Such templates can be called, but only using unusual syntax like -----. As for {{deletedpage}}, the best way to obsolete that would be to allow nonexisting pages to be protected. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 09:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Charlemagne the Hammer

User:Charlemagne the Hammer recently began removing significant content from Federalist No. 1 and Fiduciary. Apparently, he has become disenchanted with Wikipedia and wishes to remove the content that he has added. I blocked him for 24 hours after he failed to heed several warnings and continued to blank the aforementioned articles. I also pointed him to WP:OWN. I would appreciate it if another admin or two would take a look at the situation, particularly, User talk:Charlemagne the Hammer. Thanks. —Wayward ^Talk 08:14, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sigh. IMO, looking at it, it'd be a waste of time. I think only Jimbo or the ArbCom will make him understand, he won't listen to anyone else I don't think. NSL E _(T+C) at 08:18 UTC (2006-03-05)

Sigh2, I tried to ask him why he was unhappy but he wouldn't even start to talk about his issues, I checked on #wikipedia and he's not blocked, so I really don't know what to say about that one -- Tawker 08:30, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like being banned from Wikipedia's IRC channel was the trigger. It is not clear precisely what he was banned for, but he says that he was just discussing his views about the wiki nature of the encyclopedia. He also claims that he was ridiculed. Here is an excerpt from his talk page.

"So, you can imagine how upset it makes me to see groups of Wikipedians with plans to make Wikipedia a moderated site. I even saw one group proposing a parliamentary Wikipedia. In my mind, this takes away from the concept of Wikipedia being not just an encyclopedia, but a wiki as well. I voiced these concerns on the Freenode #Wikipedia channel and was promptly banned." "...I do not want my material being used by a foundation that ridiculed and banned me from its IRC channel merely because I was expressing ideas that are supposedly fundamental to its ethos. Banned for supporting the wiki ethos, banned for supporting the "you can edit this article now" ethos. It's a shame, but that's what happened, and that's why I want to leave."

Is there a record of IRC discussions? -- Kjkolb 13:12, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Two points:

The #wikipedia IRC channel is not an official channel
Publishing of logs from said IRC channel is not permitted

Rob Church (talk) 01:11, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is unfortunate. Thanks, Kjkolb 08:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Freakofnurture is abusing his admin tools!

I read on the Wiki mailing list about Freakofnurture abusing his tools. The complainer said the following:

Almost immediately after creating account for what would be my first time editing wikipedia an admin blocked me indefinitely.

username : Let's Get High And Edit Wikipedia
IP : 69.60.118.148
Reason given "stoner..." by

This admin describes himself as pissed off and also proudly displays a widget that says he does not do any drugs. I had the impression, perhaps wrongly so, that wikipedia was supposed to be more of an open atmosphere where there isn't such a heavy hand with admin powers. In other words, a place where someone's first visit isn't met with an insult (stoner) by someone claiming to be angry, pissed off and a judeofacist (whatever that is, but it doesn't sound too nice). I really do not see what the problem with my username is. It is silly, perhaps, but not offensive. Thank you

I asked the admin for his reasoning and he replied on my talkpage with the following statement:

It's a username that promotes illegal activities and can be seen as an invitation to vandalize the site. Also closely resembles the disruptive "let's vandalize wikipedia" and "let's fuck and rape admins" accounts which are typically blocked automatically within seconds of creation. Basically I'd block anything that started with "Let's" on general principal, because it's probably another sockpuppet of the same select few individuals.

I believe this admin abused his tools, because:

1. He is not a police officer, thus, he should not enforce the law on Wikipedia, unless it explicity states so in the Wiki policy; 2. I don't believe that this illegal activity relates to Wikipedia, because, this activity might not be illegal elsewhere; and also, because this falls under free speech. One is allowed to say that he likes drugs; and, 3. Because the admin said he would ban anything that starts with the word "Let's" based on assumption that it is a sockpuppet (I have some problems understanding that argument).

I believe the user in question should be unblocked and offered an apology, while the admin should be dealt with accordingly. --Candide, or Optimism 08:25, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you implying that this username is somehow appropriate? — Mar. 5, '06 [08:29] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

Yes, I am. --Candide, or Optimism 10:47, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see nothing Freakofnurture did wrong. I agree it is an inappropriate username, and was rightly blocked. NSL E _(T+C) at 08:30 UTC (2006-03-05)
I see no error in judgement in freakofnurture's actions, the username does follow a common pattern of vandalizing usernames all of which are blocked on sight -- Tawker 08:32, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- That is, of course, not to say that the user would have vandalised, but it is a precaution many admins take, usually leaving a note to the user about their username. This username, while not offensive, is inappropraite. There is no abuse of admin tools. On the other hand, you have a very nice history of blocks. Perhpas you should heed your January block and lay off harassing others. NSLE _(T+C) at 08:34 UTC (2006-03-05)
  - Perhaps you should mind your own business, if you can't stay on topic and be constructive. --Candide, or Optimism 10:47, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    - I think the point NSLE is making is that, yes, I have POVs, yes, I'm not afraid to express them on my userpage. However, unlike the complainant, my POVs have no bearing on my edits to article namespace, and I do not participate in disruptive edit wars. If that doesn't make me a model Wikipedian, what would? — Mar. 5, '06 [10:54] <freakofnur_xture|talk>
This username was also blocked by Curps, perhaps you wish to crucify him as well? — Mar. 5, '06 [08:47] <freakofnur_xture|talk>
I think that while he could have explained it better as to avoid biting the newbie, his block was entirely appropriate since that username is blatantly innapropriate. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 10:04, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to whom? To you? Why is it inappropriate? Is he not allowed to say that he likes drugs? --Candide, or Optimism 10:47, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To wit, also try searching Special:Ipblocklist for "Let's" or, more commonly, "Lets" and tell me these names do not follow a pattern. I refuse to believe this is a "newbie". — Mar. 5, '06 [10:15] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

I don't know, but if you blocked him for another reason than his nickname, then that should have been the reason for the block — not the other reason that you used. All I'm saying is that I disagree with the block based on your justification of it; i.e., that he "promotes illegal activities", etc. --Candide, or Optimism 11:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, we do block for usernames that promote of illegal activities [15], and even for statements to that effect [16], though I disagree with the appropriateness of the latter. — Mar. 5, '06 [12:01] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

I was going to do something about this terribly unjustified block by a ROUGE ADNMIN of a user who would obviously be a wonderful Wikipedian but only under this username and no other possible username whatsoever, but I got high, but I got high, but I got high - David Gerard 12:31, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The block was fully justified.--MONGO 12:36, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If I had noticed this username before freakofnurture, I would have blocked it. If you don't want to be blocked for picking a stupid username that violates our policies, then don't pick a stupid username that violates our policies. Nandesuka 12:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've checked the inappropriate user names policy. let's get high etc doesn't violate. drug use is perfectly legal in some parts of the world - a point made early in this discussion but not addressed. why don't re just relax and get on editing? Mccready 14:05, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Check it again, because you didn't check closely enough: No usernames that closely resemble notorious Wikipedians' usernames. (emphasis in original). Nandesuka 14:12, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I did read the policy closely before I posted. I considered that of the word "Let's" was not sufficiently close. Apology in order? Mccready 12:45, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The appropriate action is to put an Rfc against Freak of Nurture for abusing his admin powers to promote his POV, and then see what the arbcom makes of the case. Nandesuka is right that consuming cannabis is not illegal in many parts of the world, merely because it is (if it is) illegal in the States is totally irrelevant unless we are starting to promote US laws as standard in the world, not appropriate activity for an international encyclopedia. There may be other stuff behind this particular case but to block someone solely for encouraging what is in parts of the world a fully legal activity, and concerning a law whopse validity is questioned almost everywhere but at least a substantial minority has no justification, SqueakBox 14:21, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I realize that Freakofnurture cited the illegality of recreational drug use, but an account created under the name "Let's Get Drunk And Edit Wikipedia" would be blocked too (rightfully so). —David Levy 14:33, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and "Let's Edit Wikipedia Using A Stolen iBook G4" would similarly be blocked on sight. Actually, I can't think of anything combining "Let's" and "Wikipedia" that would be acceptable. Such names are obviously intended to insult and/or mock the project. — Mar. 5, '06 [16:24] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

In all fairness, Freakofnurture should have provided an explanation along the lines of "inappropriate username" (instead of "stoner...") and should have left a note on the user's talk page. The block itself, however, was entirely justified. —David Levy 14:33, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I suppose "user..." would have been more tacit. — Mar. 5, '06 [16:24] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

Yes while it would be entirely wrong to block an entirely new user (which freakofnurture doesn't believe this user is) for saying "lets get stoned" there clearly is more than that to this case. The block looks ok but the reasoning (stoner) is clearly not, people with a pro cannabis POV must be made as welcome here as anyone else. Cannabis use is neither universally illegal nor universally condemned and using doesn't hurt others so to class someone who says I love pot as we (rightly) would condemn someone promoting paedophilia or thuggery (though I can think of one user who hasn't been blocked yet claiming he is a gangster while threatening another user). I can confirm that neither freakofnurture or this lets get high user are involved in the cannabis (drug) articles and in that sense his anti-pot beliefs have not intruded on the main space, SqueakBox 14:49, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The username was not nearly so objectionable that a block was warranted. We should block "offensive" usernames only in extreme cases, not as a matter of course. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:01, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, for Pete's sake. Someone created a deliberately trolling username. Freakofnurture used a bit of humour in his block message. Should he have stuck with the by-the-book boring-as-dry-toast log entry "Username block"? Oh, probably. Is it not unreasonable to expect someone who creates a trolling username like that to have a sense of humour, and accept that we caught them? I think so.

Freakofnurture isn't trying to enforce some crazy anti-cannabis policy. There are any number of Wikipedians with pro-marijuana slogans and boxes on their user pages; FoN hasn't blocked any of them. I'm a Canadian editor, and FoN hasn't blocked me. :D We've now wasted an absurd amount of time and effort discussing what just about everyone agrees was a good block, just because Freakofnurture had a bit of harmless fun in the block log. I will smack with a rubber chicken anyone else humourless enough to post in this thread, myself included. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. I don't block users whose overall presence is a positive one, regardless of what they believe in. I blocked an inappropriately-named account within seconds of its creation, then released the IP autoblock, so he could create a new one and forget the whole thing ever happened. In the event that this user intended to make positive contributions to Wikipedia (which I seriously doubt) he's probably registered another name, and we may never know who he is (which would be a Good Thing, considering the quantity of bullshit being generated over this issue). Furthermore, I will note that SqueakBox's argument is akin to claiming that IsWayneBradygonnahavetosmackabitch (talk · contribs) is kosher on the basis that Saudi Arabia has no laws against bitch-slapping. — Mar. 5, '06 [16:41] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

TenOfAllTrades smacks Freakofnurture with a rubber chicken for continuing to post in this thread.

TenOfAllTrades then smacks himself with a rubber chicken for posting in this thread. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Might I add that since the WMF is based in Florida, it is governed by the laws of the States. — Ilyan e p (Talk) 17:30, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

US law clearly says one has the right to say that he likes drugs. Plus this incident shows admins' clear contempt for WP:AGF Robust Physique 19:42, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And yet the act is illegal. Either way, it's not like we're telling the person he can't edit at all. He can come back under any other username. Experience shows that such usernames are used for trolling and vandalism. — Ilyan e p (Talk) 19:46, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clear something up - getting high is not illegal. All that matters is what you get high with. --Golbez 20:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm so high on life right now, I can barely type. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:30, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm high on this stupid, stupid discussion! - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 01:47, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Zeq

This arbitration case has closed. Zeq is banned from articles he has disrupted and placed on Probation. Zeq and Heptor are cautioned regarding sources. Zeq is cautioned regarding removal of well sourced information. Others are cautioned to use the procedures in Wikipedia:Resolving disputes. Where applicable, these remedies are to be enforced by block. On behalf of the arbitration committee, Johnleemk | Talk 09:48, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now Hold Up

Okay I'm wondering when the maker of wikipedia made wikipedia did he make any articles? Did he make the administrator's rules? At first I thought he left the whole wikipedia empty but then I noticed that only admins can edit the main page so admins are a real official position. Crowbaaa 16:37, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The main page was not protected initially. It was only protected after a long time, and even then there was a backdoor way to edit it without being an administrator if you knew the trick. The full protection of the main page is very recent. --cesarb 16:50, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, what's the trick? Assuming it doesn't work anymore, there's no harm in sharing it. I'm curious :) --Golbez 20:08, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The majority of the content on the main page is not on the page itself, but via transclusion and templates (Like {{DYK}}, {{ITN}}, etc.), which were left unprotected for quite a while. See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-02-07/Main_page_protection.--Sean Black ^(talk) 21:01, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Jimbo left Wikipedia empty and intended it to remain so, but we administrators intervened--our puissance is our own.
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us, self-begot, self-rais'd,
By our own quick'ning power. Chick Bowen 17:05, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Argghhhh!!! 2

Also I noticed that on the Notability page a text box was covering a few words and i tried to edit it so that it wasn't. I failed but then I got in trouble for vandalising. I am mad at the person who did this and will ask for an apology, does anyone think this is fair? Come on, people are too grumpy on wikipedia nowadays. Crowbaaa 16:37, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If this is the edit to which you are referring [17], I would never have known that you were trying to repair a text vs. box collision; in fact I can't tell what you were attempting to do. I suggest using edit summaries. Had you done that it is unlikely you would have been accused of vandalism. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 16:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Linkspam by new user

A new user, User:Polzer, in addition to some good edits, has added vanity literature references to several dozen film-related pages: Special:Contributions/Polzer. Not being an admin, I have no way of easily editing them out, so perhaps an admin can check it out. (I gave a welcome and a warning on Polzer's talk page, so that is taken care of.) --Janke | Talk 18:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cleaned up now.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 18:12, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Album

Looks like an apparently accidental edit to this template causes the most recent outage. I've preemptively protected it as a high-risk template. --cesarb 22:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More detail: if I understood the conversations on #wikipedia-tech correctly, the cause was that changing the template to remove the image caused the problem while updating the file links for the image. --cesarb 23:14, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

~~If it is protected, how is someone going to modify the "to-do" list that is also on the template?~~ Zzyzx11 (Talk) 06:03, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, seems that it was removed already. [18] Zzyzx11 (Talk) 06:04, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If it's usually anonymous and new users who mess with templates, which seems to be the case in my experience, though it may not be representative, why not semi-protect it and other high-risk templates instead? -- Kjkolb 11:58, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The high-risk templates are protected against vandalism, which can also come from logged-in users. This template in particular could bring the whole house down, so I went for full protection until the developers say the bug has been fixed and it won't happen again (however, if some other admin wants to unprotect it, I won't complain or revert; I'll just later point and say "I told you so."). --cesarb 14:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is why I used the qualifier usually. :-) For a template that can bring the whole website down, I would not argue against letting only admins edit it, or creating an even greater level of protection. Still, for templates that are not as critical, I don't think semi-protection is unreasonable, especially when what is high-risk is ill-defined, which leads to non-admins being excluded randomly. -- Kjkolb 12:04, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Bambenek (2nd nomination)

I think there is a lot of ballot stuffing, both for and against, this AfD. Hoardes of anons, with 1 or 2 or zero prior edits, are flocking together to vote, with a lot of personal attacks. The subject has complained on of being accused of sockpuppetry (which he denies), (and also linked the afd in his blog). With this type of acrimonious comments flowing back and forth, I suggest others to take a look at it. Thanks. --Ragib 01:06, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't worry about it, plus it's not something we should be posting to AN. The closing admin will take into account any sockpuppetry and the weight of the votes. Mike _{(T C)}

01:17, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Appropriateness of posting it here, I don't mind a pointer to anything that might become disruptive.
brenneman ^{T}^{L} 01:42, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a pretty extreme case; I've just done a count, and the figures for genuine versus fake or dubious contributions to the discussion (omitting those marked "comment") are:

Keep
- Definitely genuine: 0
- Fake or dubious: 5
Delete
- Definitely genuine: 5
- Fake or dubious: 8

Most of the "fake or dubious" are in fact pretty clearly fake, being editor's second, third, or only edit. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:38, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Closed as a "delete" now. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:09, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RfC/All needs editing

Can I ask an admin to edit Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/All? It has three problems, one of which is significant.

1. The "Policies, guidelines and proposals" section is missing. At the very least, these lines need adding:

==Policies, guidelines and proposals==

2. The "Mathematics, natural science and technology" section is in a different order.

3. The cross-reference to Wikipedia:Current surveys is slightly garbled and hiding at the bottom.

I've got a modified version, incorporating all three fixes, tempoarily sitting at User:Ummit/Sandbox, if you want to cut-and-paste (and if you trust me not to have sneakily made any other changes :-) ). —Steve Summit (talk) 02:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I did this. Please make sure it's right. For one thing, at the moment the toc seems to be in a very weird place. I'll have to fiddle. Chick Bowen 02:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! That was fast. Thanks. The TOC looks fine to me. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:16, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I changed it again--sorry. I didn't like having the Current surveys link at the top, so I moved it back to the bottom but gave it its own section so it will appear in the table of contents. Thoughts? Chick Bowen 02:17, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wait--now that I've changed it, I'm confused. Wasn't the math section in alphabetical order before, and not now? Why did you want it moved (sorry, should have asked that before)? Chick Bowen 02:20, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I hadn't noticed the alphabetical order. My intent was to make the order match the order at WP:RfC#List, simply because that makes it easier to verify that the two lists are in sync. If the former order on the /All page makes more sense, obviously WP:RfC could be changed instead. (Sorry; I meant to mention that.)

As for the survey link, my feeling (as a dumb user) was that it "ought" to be transcluded onto the page and appear in the ToC like all the others. Obviously it's different and wants to stay that way, so my thinking was that by putting the "See also" link at the top, right under the ToC, it was almost as if it was in the ToC, as a 14th item. It seemed a waste to actually put it in a ToC'ed section, since it's essentially a stub, and it seemed ever-so-slightly obnoxious to make the user click through a second time. (Make sense?) —Steve Summit (talk) 02:34, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I understand what you mean, but when I had "Current surveys" up there, my eye went right past it. I'll leave it as it is for now, I guess, and see if anyone else comments or changes it. Maybe there's more that should appear in the "See also" section, like WP:RFAR perhaps. I've now made both /All and WP:RFC#List alphabetical--thanks for pointing that out, and thanks for all of the suggestions. Chick Bowen 03:05, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good example of why protected pages are considered harmful. Shall we unprotect it? Protecting against confusion as the log implies doens't seem like a great way forwards to me. -Splash^talk 03:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're probably quite right. I raised the issue at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment. If no one there objects, I'll unprotect it, but I figure people who watch that page are likely to be more familiar than I am with the day-to-day operations of RFC. Chick Bowen 04:00, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at thr protection log, it was protected in the first place to stop people from accidently adding new issues to that page instead of the more specific sub pages.[19] Therefore, do not be surprised if the page is protected again if the problem re-occurs again. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 05:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a good idea to leave it protected, since it's not a "real" page, and inadvertent edits to it seem very, very likely. Actual edits to it are rare, so are reasonably confined to admins. Asking an admin to make the change I had in mind was absolutely not a problem (at least in this instance). —Steve Summit (talk) 23:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Username Block Needed

User:Nazi Vandal — Preceding unsigned comment added by God of War (talk • contribs)

Done. Antandrus (talk) 03:37, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised that wasn't blocked by Curps automatically. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 04:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sockpuppets on Macedonia (region)

Recently there have been some POV pushing sockpuppets on the above article.

Macedonian876 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Andropolus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Andropolus recently admitted to being Macedonian876. Macedonian876 has been blocked but only for 24 hours and that was on February 3. Could someone review thier edits and see if these 2 need to be blocked for being abusive sockpuppets of each other? Moe ε 03:36, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Andropolus account, leaving aside some weirdness about the choice of the account name, seems to mostly be devoted to agreeing with the Macedonian876 account on Talk pages. It does not seem to have been used to evade WP:3RR. WP:SOCK does prohibit the use of multiple accounts "to create the illusion of broader support for a position", which is what seems to be happening here. I am going to leave a note at User talk:Macedonian876. Jkelly 23:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Amanojyaku

The user is creating a series of new pages with good intent. But they're stubs, and they link to private forums and userpages. He needs advice more than the Welcome message, and I'm not any more experienced than the user at making articles. Anyone want to lend a hand? TKE 05:04, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've left a message on that user's talk page encouraging him/her to check out Wikipedia:How to write a great article with the conclusion that I'm available for any questions the editor might have. --Zsinj^Talk 05:20, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Range block

I've just tried my first range block, woth the help of user:Gnetwerker, who seems to know about these things. I read through m:Range blocks, and I think that I'm OK — but following the advice there, I'm posting waht I've done here so that it can be checked. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

11:55, 6 March 2006 Mel Etitis blocked "80.138.128.0/18 (contribs)" with an expiry time of
1 week (persistent vandalism from rotating IPs within this range; decalration on 
Talk:Asian fetish of determination to continue.)

It's a pretty large block. And a week is a long time for a rangeblock. You may get some collateral damage. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 15:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That resolves to *.dip0.t-ipconnect.de. In other words, this is the dialup pool of Deutsche Telekom, the largest internet provider in Germany. 82.26.165.46 16:04, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We generally like IP bans to be 24 hours because of the risk of collateral damage. A block of a week on a single dynamic IP address is too much - a block of them much more so. Secretlondon 16:15, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Too many innocent bystanders are going to be hit by this block. It needs to be lifted within 24 hours at the most. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:19, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If bystanders are hit I'm sure they'll let Mel know in no uncertain terms! I wonder how many Deutsche Telekom customers actually edit the english wikipedia. I wonder if a semiprotect of the article may be a better option. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 16:24, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ir didn't seem that any of the addresses had been used for anything except vandalism of this article. The week was because the editor (or editors) in question have been doing this for some considederable time, ignoring blocks. The article was protected and then sem-protected for a while, but they just came back. I hoped that the week-long block might be enough to make them lose interest... --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:34, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Move this to 24 hour block if not less, you have just blocked 16,382 IP addresses. Mike _{(T C)}

17:30, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

18!!!!!! Good God, use 24 only if you must, preferably 26+ if you can. A rule of thumb: If you 24 does not do it, then don't range block (and I have even recieved a SourceForge email to undo a 24-range block for unplugging 1/3 of a city). Another rule: if you are not sure how to get the range block right, then don't do it. Range blocks get out of hand very easily, so just be careful.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 22:18, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well how is he ever to be sure how to do one if he never tries? Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 06:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do not wish to meddle in the affairs of wizards, but I have detailed all of this vandal's activities on this page: User:Gnetwerker/My Notes/Asian fetish vandal, including going through all of the edit summaries to determine whether anyone else was using that IP range. There were not. The IP range that defines the vandal is 80.138.128.0/18 (i.e. a netmask of 255.255.192.0). I don't know how these things work, but I also don't want Mel to get in trouble for something I researched. -- Gnetwerker 23:22, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I will risk one question -- what is wrong with a /18 block on a German ISP's dial-in lines, with no record of non-offending use and no complaints? -- Gnetwerker 23:24, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that there may be registered users editing from that /18. If you believe that not to be the case, at the very least ask someone with CheckUser privileges to confirm it before blocking such a huge range for any significant time. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:20, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is wrong is you take out 16,000 IP addresses who many belong to registered users. You could wipe out whole ISP's, heck even whole cities with that range!!! A /24 takes out 254 IP addresses. Look at http://www.intermapper.com/docs/imhelp/07-troubleshooting/ipaddressing.html#subnets Mike _{(T C)}

05:16, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There may. No doubt they will email the mailing list if that's the case. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 06:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of users don't know how to access the mailing list. Blocking a /24 is a lot, but blocking a whole /18 is ridiclious. Mike _{(T C)}

19:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would certainly agree if it were a ISP of an english speaking country. I do wonder however if a german isp would have that many editors if this wiki. I dunno. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 20:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of people from non-english-speaking countries edit this wiki. Some even are administrators. --cesarb 21:10, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are allowed to speak english if you live in a non-english-speaking country. Plus the largest american hospital outside of the states is in germany, plus a lot of north americans work/teach/study in europe, plus english is the language of business these days meaning a lot more people learning english. Range blocks should not be treated lightly, especially when its anything above a /24. Just be careful is all, when in doubt as for advice on the AN or from one of your admin friends. Mike _{(T C)}

03:04, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I defer to the wisdom of the more experienced editors and admins: how does one deal with a persistent vandal originating from a /18 set of dial-in IP addresses? It would appear that the answer is you can't. -- Gnetwerker 07:16, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Put the page on your watch list. Consider semi protecting if necessary. Secretlondon 11:25, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is probably the best/only way, blocking it is just ridiclious IMO. Mike _{(T C)}

17:39, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Dyslexic Agnostic final decision

This case has closed. Full details are in the final decision at the link above.

In brief:

~~T-man, the Wise Scarecrow banned for six months~~ Held off during the mentorship
T-man, the Wise Scarecrow placed on personal attack parole
Dyslexic Agnostic placed on personal attack parole
T-man, the Wise Scarecrow placed on Probation
Dyslexic Agnostic placed on Probation
T-man, the Wise Scarecrow placed under Mentorship

Two to three mentors, administrators knowledgeable in the case, to be chosen at a later date.

For the arbitration committee. --Tony Sidaway 15:03, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

im sorry but didnt t-mans 6 month block, pass only with second choice votes included therefore making it a second choice resolution to the mentorship, an admin should verify the decison before enforcing the 6 month blockBenon 00:10, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have to add my voice here, I'm concerned that it was considered passed 8-0-0 (if anything, it should be only 6 (2)-0-0). If mentorship works, I have to question why a ban is needed? NSL E _(T+C) at 00:42 UTC (2006-03-07)

As I noted earlier, the ban passed as well, but is superceded by the mentorship, until such time as the mentorship breaks down or the mentors decide the ban is appropriate. To be clear: T-man should not be blocked at this time. Dmcdevit·t 00:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The two conditional comments under the 6 month ban are phrased in a confusing manner. This is the 3rd draft of this comment, and I'm still working out what Dmcdevit and Mindspillage meant! I think they mean that if the probation passes then their votes to ban become second choices. If there is no probation, then they are simple supports which are further conditional among the 3 options presented for bans. The probation passed, so the ban is 1 vote short of majority. I think. -Splash^talk 00:53, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, here goes (and I think I speak for Mindspillage as well): There were multiple banning proposals on the table. Midway through, the mentorship proposal was made, so we each made the 6-month ban our last choice in the case that the mentorship passed, (which it did), while still supporting both it and the lesser ban proposal. So, even giving our votes precedence, the lesser bans failed due to lack of support, but the supports on the longer ban still hold (even as second choice), so it passes. We did not oppose it. 6 month ban and mentorship pass (and the other remedies). Regardless, the ban is put on hold for the mentorship. Dmcdevit·t 01:05, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think Dmcdevit's clarification is fine. We go with the mentorship and the ban is waiting in the wings. I think that what is missing from the proposed decision page is an implementation section, a summary by a clerk of what he understands the final decision to be. From now on I'll make such a summary in any case that has entered the vote to close, and I'll also recommend this to my fellow clerks. This summary will be a subsection of the Vote to close section, and can be edited by any other clerk or arbitrator during the voting to close period. When the case is closed, that summary will be copied verbatim to the talk pages of all participants and commentators, to this page (WP:AN) and to WP:AER. Any arbitrator who signs off on the decision will also, therefore, sign off on the implementation. --Tony Sidaway 01:11, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine for future cases, but what about this case? The wording of the final decision still isn't clear, and Dmcdevit's clarification isn't represented anywhere on the final case page. Indeed, since the final case page says "All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated", it seems to indicate that T-man's mentorship doesn't begin until after the 6-month ban. I understand that that's not the committee's intention here, but the page should reflect that. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 01:22, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well the thing about Wikipedia is that it's a wiki. I've modified the implementation of the decision on WP:AER and (in this edit) here. I'll add as implementation section to the final decision in this case, and such sections will be rolled in to current cases as they approach a motion to close. --Tony Sidaway 02:05, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I would have made the edits myself, but I wasn't sure whether it was appropriate for someone not affiliated with the ArbCom to edit a decision. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:10, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chinamanjoe

Opinion requested: should Chinamanjoe (talk · contribs) be blocked as an inappropriate user name? (The edits appear to be legitimate so far.) --Nlu (talk) 01:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say no. Chinaman was a name for several 19th century ships, at least one of which I belive survives, and is also a cricket term. Chick Bowen 02:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We even have an article on the cricket thing: Left-arm unorthodox spin. Chick Bowen 02:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unless there's evidence to suggest that he's not a Chinese guy called Joe, racist or questionable edits, or somebody stating they are offended by it, I don't see why we should. --kingboyk 04:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anon edit war on Taking Sides

Can someone protect and split this to prevent the revert war over which band the article is about? Alphax ^τεχ 01:59, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Split. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:13, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone else appreciating the irony here? KillerChihuahua^?!? 02:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

LOL --KimvdLinde 02:20, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shared IPs

My brother complained to me today that he was blocked from editing Wikipedia. It turns out he was editing from one of 7 indefinitely blocked OzEmail proxies. This prompted me to take a closer look at blocked shared IPs on Wikipedia. I compiled a list of long-term blocked IPs with the {{SharedIP}} template on their user talk page. I then searched for attempted saves in the last approximately 24 hours of logs. Three sets of IPs stood out:

The aforementioned OzEmail IPs (203.166.96.234 - 203.166.96.240)
Two proxies from Saudi Arabia's national NetNanny (212.138.47.15 and 212.138.47.24) -- we were probably blocking everyone in that country
A proxy from TPG Internet (220.245.178.132)

I've added all three sets to the trusted XFF list now, so they shouldn't be a problem in the future. The point I want to make is: please don't block ISPs or entire countries indefinitely without researching the alternatives. I'm all for blocking non-compliant ISPs like AOL, but we shouldn't block well-behaved internet citizens for no good reason. If you're having trouble with an ISP proxy, come and talk to me about it on #wikimedia-tech and I'll see if it's eligible for a trusted XFF listing. Blocking whole countries is especially poor form, imagine what the media would do with it if they found someone willing to allege that our Saudi Arabia article was biased. -- Tim Starling 03:42, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the KSA situation was more to do with the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. NSL E _(T+C) at 04:00 UTC (2006-03-07)

I see. Well, you're free to range-block the entire Islamic world if you feel that would solve the problem more completely. I'll compile a list of IPs for you. -- Tim Starling 04:11, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How about we just range-block 0.0.0.0/0 and be done with it? --Carnildo 04:18, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some of those proxies mentioned above (including one of the Saudi ones) were involved in "SQUIDWARD" vandalism. Lately, we've been getting several dozen SQUIDWARD vandalizing IPs every day, and we block them. When we block these, we block indefinitely, because when we tried blocking for 24 hours the same IP usually comes back the next day for more. "Researching alternatives" is not a particularly helpful suggestion. If you can work some "XFF" magic, it would be better to do so proactively and systematically, before a particular ISP proxy becomes a problem. -- Curps 04:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. Has anyone done any work on identifying these squidward IPs? I'm running a few portscans myself, I'll see if I can turn anything up. -- Tim Starling 04:47, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Long term abuse/Squidward, some of the IPs in question are listed there. Offhand, I recall some are definitely well-known open proxies widely listed on various proxy lists, some appear to be ISP proxies, some may be botnet zombies. The range 203.186.238.128/25 (now unblocked) is a Hong Kong ISP, see User_talk:Rayleung2709#helpme, they may use AOL-like IP address jumping. -- Curps 05:00, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In general though, we need a better solution to the problem of IP blocks and autoblocks causing collective punishment, a practice more closely associated with <godwin>Nazis</godwin> than free encyclopedias. There's no other message board or forum site in the world where established users and even moderators or administrators get blocked because of the actions of some hit-and-run third party. Many school IPs are very frequently blocked by necessity, which is bound to permanently discourage many of our most promising young would-be contributors (and in many cases is likely the result of school bullies harassing nerds by effectively creating a denial-of-service situation).

One suggestion would be to create a database flag that gives a user immunity from all IP-based blocks and autoblocks: such users could only be blockable explicitly by username. Maybe this flag could be settable by anyone who places blocks, ie administrators. When you get an e-mail from some legitimate user complaining about being autoblocked, it would be nice to be able to check their contribution history, verify that it's not some throwaway account or vandal, and then turn on the flag and give them the good news that the problem won't recur. -- Curps 05:19, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Blocking everyone who hasn't been verified by an administrator seems unnecessarily restrictive to me. After all, how does one get verified, if one has never edited wikipedia before and is never likely to in the future because their entire country is blocked? Would you have joined Wikipedia if the only way to do so was to plead with someone by email? I'd prefer it if blocking code were developed in a direction which as much as possible does not favour established users over newbies. The complaints of regular users give us insight into the effect our blocking patterns are having on new users, and that will be lost if implement a whitelist.

None of the IPs I listed above appear to be open proxies. There was some squidward vandalism from them, but as far as I can tell, it came from ordinary residential computers using those ISPs -- probably a zombie network. -- Tim Starling 05:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You make it sound like "Blocking everyone" is something I'm advocating, when in fact it's merely an accurate description of the existing status quo. Surely it would be better to have an escape hatch where we can avoid blocking everyone who is forced to use the same IP.

Blocking will always affect users unevenly: some users must share a proxy with a million other users, while some vandals have /16 ranges to play with. Given this reality, blocking by IP address can never be democratic. The only democratic and fair thing to do is to judge users by their own merits, make them accountable only for their own actions and not those of any third party, avoid collective punishment... the only way to do that is to let good users bypass all IP-based blocks and autoblocks.

Many users already have de facto immunity from all IP-based blocks and autoblocks! (ie, with trivial effort they can evade the ones they themselves caused, and in practice they never encounter the ones caused by any other user). Only this is not based on any kind of merit, but mere random accidents of geography and ISP. And good users who are second-class citizens (many students, AOL users, residents of certain countries, etc) currently have no opportunity to earn the same status that is the birthright of even some vandals. The current blocking code has consequences which are perverse and simply insane.

Yes, what I'm suggesting would treat anons and very new accounts differently than more established users, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Treating all users exactly the same sounds good in theory, but in fact it's repeatedly been shown to be a source of failure in social software: see Clay Shirky: A group is its own worst enemy. Established users are a little more equal than newbies, but that's OK if becoming established is readily attainable.

Wikipedia is still an experiment in progress: it is still possible that history's ultimate verdict will be that it was a failure. Consider what Usenet was in the late 1980s... arguably it was the Wikipedia of its era... today it's largely a spam-ridden sideshow.

-- Curps 07:11, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PS,

If someone has never edited Wikipedia before, there are still various ways we could get them verified... all we really need is some demonstration of non-bot human effort, to prove that it's not a throwaway account. Ask them to go perform a quest... tell them to go look up the names of the spouses of the Finance Ministers of half a dozen European Union countries, for instance, or ask them to wikify three pages from the {{wikify}} category and post the result to their talk page. Maybe something that combines useful work with a demonstration of their ability (literacy, etc) to usefully contribute to Wikipedia (research and editing skills).

This would only really be needed in extreme cases (eg, a campus where we truly need to keep the proxy IP permanently blocked 24/7, to pick one real-life example). In most cases, users can still edit some of the time, so they'd be able to build up a portfolio of contributions in the intervals between blocks and autoblocks. -- Curps 07:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I really like the idea of the immunity flag if it is workable. That would at least create a tool to undo additional collateral damage. It's related to the infamous bug 550, speaking of which, can anyone explain why that one is taking so long? I thought I heard patches have been submitted. - Taxman ^Talk 22:22, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's taking so long because there's no consensus as to which of the many proposed solutions should be used. --cesarb 23:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please add 203.166.99.233 - 203.166.99.252 to the XFF list. These are also Australian high school proxies. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#NSW/Ozemail proxies. Rhobite 23:20, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Logging

I may not be the first to figure this out, but I've figured out a way to ad an article without it getting on New Page patrol. (That is not to say the action is not logged in another place...) I don't want to spill the WP:BEANS, so see the history at Paleofecalphiliology. I'd like to suggest a change in software (I think?) that would log such an action at Newpages, but really haven't an idea how to file a bug (let alone know if my suggestion is viable). Suggestions? --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 05:45, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/enter_bug.cgi to submit bugs my friend, and yes it's probably a good idea to submit this, I can't look into it since im not an admin, but I am taking your word for it. Mike _{(T C)}

06:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have the technical acumen of a caveman, but I've managed to file a bug at bugzilla. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If it's what I think it is, it'll show up quite nicely on Recent Changes. --Carnildo 07:47, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And in one other (far less watched) log, yes, but its very sneaky and easy to miss if you aren't really looking for it. I don't use a bot on RC patrol, so I do not know if this would stand out or not. But there is also the logic that if a new article appears in the article namespace, it oughtta be in the New Page log. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Leyasu case closed

A final decision has been reached in this case and it has been closed.

The full details are in the case at the link above.

The remedies are:

On Danteferno (talk · contribs)
- Revert parole
- Warned not to engage in incivility or personal attacks
On Leyasu (talk · contribs)
- Revert parole
- Probation
- Personal attack parole

Enforcement of paroles and probations is by blocking.

For the Arbitration Committee. --Tony Sidaway 19:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Semi-protected user and user talk pages

...is very full of 110 semi-protected user talk pages. Many of these have been protected in a vandal flurry and forgotten about. Since we have at least a couple of anon vandal fighters and it's entirely reasonable that an anon may have legitimate cause to edit the page, including if it is 'theirs', I would ask that admin please i)remember to reverse their own protections and ii)take a look through their own protection log and see what needs doing. Thanks. -Splash^talk 21:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A what if..

I found myself pondering this one day, what would happen if it was confirmed that someone who has a long valued history of positive contributions, under one user name, were in fact one of the more despised, and long hated running vandals?? And this could be confirmed to beyond a shadow of a doubt?? Would they be blocked on sight, or would their +s be allowed to be balanced against their -s?

A second but related what-if, suppose that one day Jimmy Whales woke up only to find that he had a nervous breakdown, and was in fact out of his mind, and decided to use his own account to move pages to completly random titles with the words "cheese" or "on wheels" in them? Is there anything that could be done, or would wikipedia as we know it simply collapse under the mad emperor, page-moving as wikipedia burns...

These two questions seem like two potentially interesting loopholes in established disciplinary practices--Whistle blower 22:56, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the first situation, I would welcome them with open arms, but some people might not be so forgiving. In the few cases this has happened (Wik), the person was discovered because he started exhibiting the same behavior that got him banned in the first place, even though he'd clocked up thousands of legitimate edits in the meantime. If they've completely avoided the old fights and have shown themselves to be good editors, I see no reason why they should not be welcomed.

For the second one, we'd be SOL until a developer could maybe lock down the system. However, that's as likely as Tampa being destroyed by a hurricane, so.. .. .. ok, maybe less likely. --Golbez 23:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo's actions can be overridden by the Board, so he's not a SPOF. A developer going insane would be far more damaging (since they have root), but that's even more unlikely IMO. --cesarb 23:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You could ask the same question in any situation. I'm a teacher--what would my university do if I went nuts and suddenly started failing all of my students and destroying their exams so no one could go back and grade them? The answer is, of course, that I wouldn't. What's the point of speculating? Chick Bowen 00:08, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And if you did, something would be worked out. Let's "cross that bridge when we come to it". --kingboyk 00:13, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the data is more or less backed up from time to time, and anyone can save a copy (and modify it per the GFDL), so, just like wiki-vandalism, it doesn't really matter how hard any single person tries, they can't really impact the existing information. --Interiot 00:28, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, more subtle degradation over time is still problematic, as you'd then have tradeoffs between accepting a more comprehensive up to date work, or a crappier work, with the alternative of a merge being impossibly time-intensive. --maru (talk) contribs 00:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion violates WP:BEANS, please close it. — Mar. 8, '06 [10:09] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

Nonsense Secretlondon 11:21, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:TheBobT

This user vandalized twice, and was blocked indefinately by Curps. I wonder why? He sent me an apologetic email so i reblocked him but only for 3 hours. If he vandalizes again then reblock him, but what's with this indefinite blocking business? — Ilyan e p (Talk) 02:22, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(PS: Prevent blocking wars. I won't unblock again if he is reblocked but please be careful — Ilyan e p (Talk) 02:22, 8 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

According to Kate's Tool he has one deleted edit, so he probably created a page which, no doubt, had something bad enough on it for Curps to block him. Too bad we can't browse deleted edits anymore. Chick Bowen 02:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

[This] was his deleted edit. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 13:26, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's hard to recall nearly two weeks later what the circumstances were. It's also worth pointing out that no genuine newbie starts out his Wikipedia career by vandalizing another user's userpage, so this could be a sockpuppet of some returning troublemaker, perhaps circumventing an earlier block. It's likely there were some deleted articles, so perhaps the userpage vandalism could have been misguided retaliation for speedy deletion of his article(s). Who knows, perhaps I mistook a genuine misguided newbie for a throwaway sockpuppet account created for the sole purpose of vandalism. Anyways, go ahead and unblock. -- Curps 03:03, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, cool. Let's keep an eye on him and hope he turns into a good contributor :) — Ilyan e p (Talk) 04:07, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If anything, TheBobT should thank Vegaswikian for deleting his article: it had his full name, those of his immediate family, his birthday, his address, and nothing else. —Cryptic (talk) 04:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't seem like anything too horrendous though. How did you find the deleted article? — Ilyan e p (Talk) 23:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just for the record, I normally indicate on the User's Talk page what deleted article I am talking about when I request they not vandalize or add nonsense. That way, when somebody comes back and says, "What are you talking about?" I can look at the article title I put on the user's page and go look at the deleted article to see what my concern was. Sometimes I forget to do this, but I do try to remember. User:Zoe|^(talk) 17:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another edit war, complete with possible sockpuppets

Someone emailed OTRS saying that the article Juice Games was biased; on investigation, there appears to have been an edit war between SNAFCUK (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and Bobbins (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) ([20], [21], [22], [23], [24]). Now, despite the fact that this all happened back in September, there also appears to have been personal information posted on the user and talk pages of Bobbins; to top it off, an IRC log posted on the talk page of SNAFCUK appear to indicate that this is a sockpuppet of banned user Irate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Can someone investigate further and let me know what's going on here? Thanks, Alphax ^τεχ 04:39, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whether sock puppet or not, shouldn't SNAFCUK be blocked as an inappropriate user name? --Nlu (talk) 07:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Lohan lindsay 350x.jpg

This image was uploaded as a {{promophoto}}. I believe this tag is incorrect as the image is of a paid advertisement by, according to answers.com, "a joint project of The Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP) in Washington, D.C., and of Dairy Management Inc., Chicago." Am I correct in calling this a copyvio? Radio Kirk talk to me 06:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It could qualify as both but either way we can conceivably claim fair use on it. 155.43.145.84 14:32, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First off, it's orphaned, so fair use doesn't apply as currently, there is no use, and thus the whole question of whether is might be "fair" is moot. Secondly, it just might be fair use in an article on that advertising campaign, if that article discussed the campaign in some detail. It would not be fair use in Lindsay Lohan; and is not needed there. Now off to check the license claims of the images that are used there. Lupo 14:54, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Lupo! It's orphaned because I reverted its inclusion in Lindsay Lohan immediately prior to this notification. As for the other images in the article, they should be up to snuff per the article's successful WP:FAC. :) Radio Kirk talk to me 15:17, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they are. Indeed exemplary application of "fair use". I only wonder whether the last image is really necessary. Lupo 08:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:TruthCrusader

This user has violated WP:HAR in several cases by claiming that my real name is "Chad Bryant" in his edit summaries (see his contributions) and in his actual edits. As stated in WP:HAR:

Posting another person's personal information (legal name, home or workplace address, telephone number, email address, or other contact information, regardless of whether the information is actually correct) is almost always harassment. This is because it places the other person at unjustified and uninvited risk of harm in "the real world" or other media.

I request that this user be dealt with accordingly for repeatedly violating this rule, in spite of several warnings. Master Of RSPW 08:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He has been stating he believes you might be a sockpuppet of User:ChadBryant, and if your complaint here is that he is "outing" personal information, this is awfully strong evidence that you are a sockpuppet of ChadBryant. If you are not a sockpuppet, you have no complaint to make regarding personal information. I fail to see what you hope to accomplish by this complaint. KillerChihuahua^?!? 02:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was dealing with this dispute for a while, and I'm exhausted. Every user involved in it, including Chadbryant, deserves a long timeout. There are personal attacks on both sides. They do nothing but put sockpuppet tags on each other's userpages, and attempt to get each other blocked by gaming the 3RR. These are grown men involved in a years-long dispute about a pro wrestling newsgroup. Rhobite 02:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen an almost identical comment from another admin, so it looks like they are going through admins. I arrived in this by blocking ChadBryant and TruthCrusader for 3RR a couple of days ago. The puppy is baring her teeth; I'm going to try riding herd on this and see where it goes. I have placed a notice on Talk:Rec.sport.pro-wrestling which is a lot more absolute than I usually like to be, basically giving a no-tolerance heads-up. I plan to lecture, and block for infractions without further warning, until they learn to play nice, or the article goes to dispute resolution (which I heartily reccomend against, the amount of accusations in edit summaries alone is excessive, I don't want to think about what they'd do in an Rfc or mediation.) I welcome advice and if you want to keep an eye on me please do; I would prefer other admins were aware of the progress of this attempt. Please let me know if you have suggestions or input - thanks! KillerChihuahua^?!? 16:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Advise needed

I would like to have some advise in how to deal with a user at Natural selection who does not really participates in the discussion, and after consensus is reached about changes, goes his one way and makes changes to that version resulting in bad english and factuall errors (an anom came along and edited his text with the edit summary: Read a biology book!). The old page was not good, and several attempts have been made to improve the page, generally ending in the withdrawl of most editors. At the moment, it is not edit warring, but he does change about twice a day now, the content back to his preferred version. I have invited him again to come to the talk page and discuss proposed changes there, but until now, most discussion takes place in the edit summaries, and I do expect it will be different this time. --KimvdLinde 10:07, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is marcosantezana (talk · contribs). He reverted 4 times in just over 24 hours, I blocked him for 24 hours for this infraction [25] [26] [27] [28]. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 05:57, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I previously warned him about exactly this edit war and he responded basically by claiming the rule didn't apply to him because he was "right". --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 06:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have posted a question on the Natrula selection talk page whether there are other editors who want to make this a good page. If not, I am going to leave it, and in that case, he has the effective ownership of the page. --KimvdLinde 06:42, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Today two evasions of the block: 69.222.248.161 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) revert [29] and 128.135.104.220 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) revert [30] both at Natural selection page. IP of this afternoon was blocked as a result of the violation, and block was reset. IP of this evening has resulted in semiprotection of the Natural selection as it was a dynamic IP. --KimvdLinde 04:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Bugger off

I have blocked this as an inappropriate User name Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Whisper...) 12:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use images in sigs

I have been notified by Mushroom (talk · contribs) that fair use images are not supposed to used in sigs. The citation provided by the user appears to bear this out. However, the user appears to be in the early stages of removing the image from all my previous posts. Is this proper? Radio Kirk talk to me 17:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. You don't own your sig, and it's perfectly appropriate for others to edit instances of it if it contains a fair use image. Chick Bowen 17:54, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If a copyrighted image is being used in a manner not consistent with fair use, then that particular use of the image ought to be removed ASAP. I don't see why your signature should be immune to that. android 79 17:56, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thank you for your time. :) Radio Kirk talk to me 18:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Monobook.js page

I recieved an email from Haza-w, who has damaged his monobook.js page, and needs it reverting to the last version titled "unbeta". Unfortunately, not being an admin, I can't edit another user's .js page, so could an admin please carry out the revert. smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 18:14, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hehe...I remember when I skrewed up my monobook with a redirect trigger on every page, even the page it was redirecting to because I forgot to put in a valid "if". Anyway, I reverted it.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 18:17, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks VoA. Much appreciated. haz _(user talk)^e 19:09, 8 March 2006

Trick for next time: append ?useskin=standard (or some other skin internal name) to any page. This is what the option of previewing a skin on your preferences does, and, unless you have broken user javascript for every single skin, is a way of avoiding the issue long enough to either change to a working skin or revert the broken change. --cesarb 23:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers! haz _(user talk)^e 10:55, 10 March 2006

64.141.95.17 (talk · contribs) tried to hack my account

I just got like 25 automated e-mails saying that this IP has requested my password. Anything I can do about this? --Ixfd64 20:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That user is currently blocked, so they can't edit here anyway, but you might want to change your password just in case, and also possibly e-mail abuse@bigpipeinc.com (the company to which that IP belongs) and let them know the details. Chick Bowen 20:47, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hum, that's not really hacking--64.12.116.200 21:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The only actual effect is that you get a lot of annoying emails. :-S FreplySpang (talk) 21:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Except information is sent in cleartext by e-mail, where it could be sniffed (of course, all logins are non-SSL, so that particular horse has long since left the barn). And apparently that information remains valid indefinitely (it never expires). And there's no preferences setting to turn off this nonsense, short of disabling e-mail altogether. -- Curps 21:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You mean turning off all email on the internet?--64.12.116.200 00:00, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, disabling it on Wikipedia. ~MDD 46 96 23:03, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hah! — Ilyan e p (Talk) 23:13, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I liked 64.12.116.200's idea better :( — User:Adrian/zap2.js 08:38, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FourthAve (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I've made this edit on the talk page of User:FourthAve. The tone is strong. I am very concerned that such edits are being misguidedly accepted as genuine attempts to write an encyclopedia article. I believe that the editor knows what he's doing when he enters the word "corruptly" into a sentence describing a political officer-holder, or makes frequent references to adultery, and what he does has the effect of bringing Wikipedia into disrepute.

I propose to watch this editor, having sternly warned him, and give him short blocks in the hope of deterring him, One to three hours, perhaps. Many of his other edits are of relatively poor quality, but useful. Comments welcome. --Tony Sidaway 06:46, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For this edit to University_of_Dubuque, I have blocked him for one hour. --Tony Sidaway 08:28, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have lengthened this block to 24 hours. One hour is far too lenient, but good work from Tony for not over-reacting. On the other hand, I will not tolerate (nor would any other admin) these sorts of edits: [31] [32]. Harr o5 08:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh he was just trolling a bit. I still think the shorter block was better. If he doesn't cooperate, a longer block is always possible. --Tony Sidaway 09:19, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

24 hours would be appropriate given the guy's history. Stifle 13:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In any event,the second block didn't take (when my initial block expired he was free to edit again). He has continued with the personal attacks, but his article edits since then are not vandalistic in nature. I think that in this case it's better to encourage the improvement in article editing. I really don't mind being called silly names, for now, as long as the articles are improving. Of course his personal attacks will have to be addressed, but first things first. --Tony Sidaway 20:43, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He's back at it. My announcement of a three hour block for more vandalism on Jim Nussle and abuse of the talk page. --Tony Sidaway 13:42, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bad usernames? User:Assmuncher

What is the policy/procedure for a user with a potentially offensive username? I'm looking at User:Assmuncher here. Is there a template or other automated mechanism to flag such a user for an admin to review? The account also seems to have so far been vandalism-only, but it remains to be seen if that will continue to be the case. Ryanjunk 15:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We do have a policy against inappropriate usernames, and since this one is potentially offensive and the account has been used only to vandalize articles, I have indefinitely blocked the user. _└^UkPaolo/_talk^┐ 15:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PS, you mentioned templates: {{indef-user}} is the only one I know of, which is to be placed on the User page after blocking. _└^UkPaolo/_talk^┐ 15:51, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can report other instances to WP:AIV, where an administrator will see it and block. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 15:49, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The main template to be used in something like this is {{Usernameblock}}. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire) Fair use policy} 21:19, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can I create a template that will add a userpage into a bad usernames for blocking category. A while ago I reported a User:Nazi Vandal here. A template could make reporting these names a little easier.--God Ω War 23:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you do so, please let me know what the template is; the CVU channel has a bot that watches for additions of certain templates ({{unblock}}, for example), and this would be a good one to add to the list. (The bot is the same framework that the Bootcamp channel uses to track {{helpme}}). Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 02:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I have made a template {{PUB}}
--God Ω War 19:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "Administrators' noticeboard", may not meet Wikipedia's username policy. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you may ask for a change of username by completing the form at Special:GlobalRenameRequest, or you may simply create a new account for editing. Thank you.

The notifier has not provided a reason why this username violates the username policy. If you do not understand why your username could be inappropriate for Wikipedia, please remove this message and leave a message on the notifier's talk page requesting clarification.

Unblock Bonaparte

Regarding the unblock of Bonaparte his blocking was a mistake. It was user:Uapatriot, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ARequests_for_adminship%2FAlex_Bakharev_2&diff=40083793&oldid=40080624, that made vandalism as impersonator of Bonaparte. Also, Bonaparte was the victim of User:Mikkalai who has Anti-Romanian feelings. Yes, User:Mikkalai was blocked for Anti-Romanian discrimination. Please see [33]. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 125.248.136.26 (talk • contribs) .

Bonaparte was indefinitely blocked by Jtkiefer, not Mikkalai. See log. Chick Bowen 17:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mikkalai was blocked for 24 hours for violating 3RR apparently. Are the Romanian nationalists happy now they've got rid of the Moldovan Wikipedia? I can't see your main man being unblocked any time soon. Secretlondon 17:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mikkalai made a lot of Anti-Romanian edits. A sick man that makes sick vandalism on other countries's pages. Sick Anti-Romanian vandal. His father had died in Romania in WW II. This explains his Anti-Romanian feelings. Sick person.

Bonny, go away. Your recent trolling here or here was one of the worst nightmares Wikipedia experienced this year. You'd better find some helpful activity outside Wiki. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 17:50, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Civil as all get-out. w00t! Is there no honour amongst administrators? fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 01:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't parse this at all, sorry. Secretlondon 12:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anti-Romanian discrimination edits by User:Mikkalai

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Moldova&diff=42998819&oldid=42987259

Template:Vandal Mikkalai

Why is that so? Why did User:Mikkalai made harassments on Bonaparte? Why was not blocked Mikkalai?

Personal attack made by user:Goethean against user:Andries

user:Goethean is making a personal attack against me on his user page by linking to a webpage "Andries bias" www.saisathyasai.com/baba/Ex-Baba.com/sathya-sai-baba-wikipedia-bias.html that contains defamatory comments about me.
--Andries 19:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have requested user:Goethean to remove the link to the defamatory webpage.
--Andries 19:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? Even if there is a legitimate beef here (which i doubt), what about it calls for Admin attn? Shouldn't Andries be seeking intervention with Goethean, by someone interested in the matter he feels defamed about, and pursuing an RfC if that fails? Should this section just be archived without further consideration?
--Jerzy•t 13:31, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very few people who know about this area will want to get involved.Geni 13:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think Geni is right. Who else is interested in a personal attack against me apart from me? Nobody, I guess. What is the normal procedure in such a case? Andries

Temporary ban from Shiloh Shepherd Dog

This temporary injunction has been passed in the Shiloh arbitration:

1) Until the resolution of this case, Tina M. Barber (talk · contribs) and ShenandoahShilohs (talk · contribs) are banned from Shiloh Shepherd Dog.

This injunction has received the requisite four net support votes. If breached, it can be enforced by a short block. The ban does not apply to edits on Talk:Shiloh Shepherd Dog.

Enacted on 20:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee. --Tony Sidaway 21:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fix Redirect Please

Hi a user decided to be bold and redirected Liza Powell to Liza Powel. This would be fine any other day, except Liza Powell was nominated for deletion. Per the guide for deletion, I would ask that an admin reverse the move to allow the discussion to finsih. Mike _{(T C)} 05:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't need an admin - [34]. --kingboyk 05:56, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry thought he used the move button to move it, not adding a redirect, my bad! Mike _{(T C)}

06:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Even if he'd used the move button, it would not have prevented the discussion from finishing. Changing an article, even so drastically as to redirect it, in the middle of an AfD discussion is entirely appropriate. Think about the purpose of the notice, not just the boilerplate "please do not remove this notice" text. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 11:00, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

April Fools Day

April 1 is coming up. This year, are we going to be screwing around with the Main Page again, or are we going to be showing a modicum of academic restraint? --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 07:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Screw around! Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Whisper...) 08:20, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Showing academic restraint. We're here to build an encyclopedia. Boring but true. --kingboyk 08:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this (restraint). K1Bond007 08:28, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Screw around academically! --Carnildo 08:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, screw around. It's April Fools Day we're talking about, plenty of businessess do stuff, can't see why we can't have fun too! _└^UkPaolo/_talk^┐ 08:45, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind a bit of fun, but admins should remember this:

1. Don't mess with the Featured Article. Tons of users worked hard on that article to bring it to featured status, and it's a slap in the face to keep it off the Main Page.

I agree with this completely. In part because its true, and in part because an FA I wrote looks like it'll be main page'd that day. Ahem --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 01:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

2. Do something original. "Wikipaedia" logos have already been done; come up with something that no one else has.

3. Don't do something that will embarrass Wikipedia should it be reported in the news media.

4. Whatever you do, don't wheel war. If your hoax is reverted, leave it be.

Ral315 (talk) 10:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps all the rogue admins should get together and work something out. (Sorry, I'm not an admin... but I do like April Fool's Day...) Perhaps changing all the news, DYK and anniversaries to made-up stuff? I'd love to turn on my computer and read that a street worker in Angola succeeded in building the world's first nuclear fusion reactor! haz _(user talk)^e 10:52, 10 March 2006

You b*****d! you just wasted all the work i have done off-line on Luanda tokamak.
--Jerzy•t 12:25, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[wink][reply]

Wikipedia:April Fool's Main Page, although we have people who don't think we should do anything, and there are those who believe if we do something for April Fool's, we should do something for every single holiday out there. For those who think this proposal goes against everything Wikipedia stands for, I also propose that we just make Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch a featured article and discuss the other parts of the proposal for next year (it would probably take that long to come to any sort of consensus). --D e athphoenix ʕ 12:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that, (not your second suggestion in my opinion) is the only way it should be done. Putting factual innacuracies that will be mirrored across the entire internet in the name of humor is just dumb. We're an encyclopedia, and we should respect that. Vandalizing the main page in the name of a joke is still vandalism, and is subject to blocking. Keep your April fools jokes outside of Wikipedia. There's this whole other world out there to saran wrap toilets and play other jokes on. - Taxman ^Talk 13:47, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not everybody likes / gets April Fool's Day jokes. Please include a link on the April Fool's Main Page for people who don't appreciate the jokes to click and get back the regular (boring) Main Page. -- PFHLai 17:37, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, April 1st is a Saturday this year. Forget DYK. It is supposed to be replaced by POTD on weekends. See Wikipedia:Picture of the day/April 1, 2006. -- PFHLai 17:37, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It would be keen if it was, you know, actually a featured picture. —Cryptic (talk) 20:17, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My two cents regarding April Fools jokes on the main page and elsewhere:

1. Nobody actually thinks they're funny except you.

2. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and under no circumstances should false information be featured anywhere, especially on the main page.

3. Wikipedia has reached the point of notability that depending on what is done it could quite possibly receive press attention. We run the risk of coming off as a childish joke project pretending to be "a real encyclopedia", or as a propagator of lies and misinformation. This could considerably compound other PR issues.

4. April Fools jokes are viewed in a negative light by many other Wikipedians, so you're really just asking for trouble.

Considering how Wikipedia is still struggling to be viewed as a serious academic source, I don't think excessive April Fools jokes are a path that we want to go down right now. That being said Wikipedia isn't run by robots, and I don't think it would go amiss to feature Exploding whale that day or do something of the sort. Whatever's done though, don't wheel war. Canderson7 ^(talk) 20:53, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody actually thinks they're funny except you. This statement makes no sense. If the "you" is addressed to an individual, then it's plainly false; if it's addressed to you-plural ("y'all", as they say in the American South), then it's meaningless.

And considering that major and respected news media, to give a major example, have no problem with the concept (witness the BBC's "Swiss Spaghetti Harvest" of 1957, Sports Illustrated's "Sidd Finch" story, and NPR reporting the sale of Arizona to Canada -- complete with actual interviews with Arizona's governor and Canada's foreign minister. This whole hypersensitive concern with Wikipedia's image is misplace, in my opinion. --Calton | Talk 00:35, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The "you" refers to the person making that particular April Fools joke. It is true of jokes in general that what one person and perhaps more than one finds very funny will appeal little to a wider audience. "Major and respected news media." Wikipedia is certainly major, but in the vast majority of academic circles it is not yet respected. At the time of their April Fools jokes, those organizations you mention were not struggling with the image crisis that Wikipedia is at the moment. Far from hypersensitive, my concern with Wikipedia's image is a result of current perception (that it's a joke reference source that no one should really take seriously). As I said though, this does not mean that April Fools day should not be devoid of humor, merely that a thought be given to the wider scheme of things and Wikipedia's role as an encyclopedia. Canderson7 ^(talk) 03:47, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do hope that, regardless of whatever shenanigans they may be carrying on themselves, admins will also be manning new page patrol on that day to deal with the enormous number of nihilartikels we're likely to get. Some of the April 1 hoaxes from last time were still showing up at AfD in the fall. I'd also remind everyone that April 1st in wiki time lasts nearly 48 hours, from midnight on the 1st in New Zealand to midnight on the 2nd in Hawaii. Chick Bowen 04:15, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question about a possible mistake I just made.

I was looking at the article "Brian mccann" expanding it, and I realized that the last name was not capitalized, which irritates me. So I created a new page, telling myself I'd just redirect the old page, and then went to redirect and realized I could've moved it and saved the hassle and that I did exactly what is asked not to do. So if anybody could fix this without me having the smackdown laid upon me, I'd really appreciate it. I'm not good with the technicalities and stuff of Wikipedia yet, I'm working on it though. AdmiralTreyDavid 08:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article already exists, at Brian McCann. --Golbez 08:58, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it does, and putting a rdr on top of it as you did is not exactly a cut&paste move but more like a c&p merge, which looks enuf like such a move that IMO it should be avoided just to keep from setting a bad example, and from inducing repetitive checks against something having gotten lost under the rdr. I'm remedying that.
--Jerzy•t 11:17, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There was in fact material under the Rdr that appears (to this non-expert) not to have been treated in Brian McCann. See talk:Brian McCann
--Jerzy•t 12:17, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since no information was merged, I'm really failing to see why the hassle of a history merge was necessary here.
--Golbez 16:27, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No info was merged, but there is info there re trading strategy that doesn't appear to be in the older article (the one at the proper name). I did not merge it (bcz i know too little abt the game to know whether or how to add it), but i left a substantial note abt it on the talk page.
If there had been no content worth merging there, the history would need eventual merging anyway (by someone), lest editors who are more concerned than you about this double-check for it in an endless stream. Nothing but rdrs should in the long run be left anywhere in the main namespace with an rdr at the top of the history.
I don't really think it's my business as an editor, to set priorities for other editors, and IMO my use of "you" in my first cmt in this section might suggest i was criticizing you for doing half (or 10% of) the job i would have done. I regret that suggestion (and to the extent that that notion was influencing my mind at the time, i'm embarrassed by my slip). I should have more clearly confined myself to pointing out that in such situations, there is another job left to be done, by someone moved to do so. Especially so since admins doing both jobs when they do the rdr part is far from sufficient; those of us aware and concerned abt the problem need to specifically turn over the rdr "rocks" (to see what content "crawls out") -- more often than i do. But perhaps there could be a bot-built list of rdrs with non-rdr versions below them, for us to hack away at, instead of our searching "what links here" pages for rdr's & displaying their histories.

--Jerzy•t 17:21, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unblocking glitch for User:Aiden

Would an admin please check out Aiden's comments at User Talk:Aiden and see if they can help him? He was blocked for 3RR, served his time, became unblocked, but when logging in from home he apparently is still blocked. I'm thinking it might be the autoblocker bug that extends the time if a blocked user even *looks* at a Wikipedia page. --MPerel ^{( talk | contrib)} 10:33, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see that there's some discussion about the block on his user talk page, but just to clarify: the autoblocker does not block if you only read Wikipedia; it blocks if you attempt to edit, including clicking on red links (which is interpreted as an attempt to edit and create a new article). Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 16:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I Just Can't Believe it, Someone hacked onto wikipedia

From other posts I learned quite a bit. ADMINISTATOR'S HACKED ON WIKIPEDIA TO GIVE THEMSELVES ADVANTAGES!!! Some person said that the founder of wikipedia left wikipedia empty, so then somebody must have hacked on wikipedia to change the main page so that only admins can edit it, and make an administrator an official position. I am not accusing anybody but I want to know if this hypothesis is wrong. I am not saying the hacking was bad, but I mean, is there anyone out there who could actually hack on to this site. I am not mad, but impressed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Crowbaaa (talk • contribs) .

Uh... yeah. Admins are all l33t h4x0rzzz. android 79 14:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Umm... What? --lightdarkness^(talk) 14:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Leet, and also Sarcasm. ;-) android 79 14:34, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I know :D I was refering my comments to Crowbaaa --lightdarkness^(talk) 15:17, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some person was wrong. User:Zoe|^(talk) 17:31, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Friend, the Front Page has been protected as long as I've been here. As for your statement that "the founder of wikipedia left wikipedia empty", again there's been content here as long as I've been here. But I am often impressed, too, at the fact anyone can ~~hack~~ edit the content of Wikipedia, which has been the case as long as I've been here. HTH HAND. -- llywrch 21:47, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Memorial for deceased Wikipedians

I wonder if there is any interest in having a memorial page for deceased Wikipedians. I thought of this after reading that User:Caroline Thompson had passed away. If this has already been done, please point me to the correct page. If it hasn't been done, perhaps we could create such a page. The main reason I bring this up is that Wikipedia is a long-term project which will see, over the coming years, more of us hitting this great inevitable fact of life.

If there is interest in doing this, any thoughts on where it should be?--Alabamaboy 14:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a good idea, as a subpage of Wikipedia:Wikipedians. User:Zoe|^(talk) 17:34, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree - subpage of Wikipedia:Wikipedians seems appropriate. Johntex\^talk 20:28, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Revert war between Bobblewik and Ambi

There seems to be a revert war between User:Bobblewik (contributions) and User:Ambi (contributions) that is spinning out of control; Bobblewik changed about 1000 articles today, and Ambi used vandal rollback (inappropriately, in my view) on all or nearly all of those changes. My impression is that their tiff centers around the removal of wikilinks for dates (which, of course, is the most important thing possible that these editors could be working on), but it also seems to center around other stylistic issues (eg micrometre vs. micron). "In theory" I am on a wikibreak starting this morning, so I don't really have time to look into this properly. Can someone take a look at the issue and have a chat with these users? I'd appreciate it. Nandesuka 14:45, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bobblewik is using a bot (or editing at bot-speed) to make changes remove "over-linked" dates and other items. A poll at Wikipedia talk:Bots indicates that Bobblewik does not have sufficient support for doing this with a semi-automated process, yet s/he continues. android 79 14:53, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He is using javascript, see User:Bobblewik/monobook.js/dates.js. Martin 15:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not really a revert war if Bobblewik is just doing the changes and the only one reverting is Ambi. It takes two to war. What Bobblewik is doing is well within policy, specifically, WP:DATE. --Cyde Weys 16:13, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WP:DATE is a guideline. android 79 16:58, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's interesting that the most recent entry in Bobblewik's block log is an unblock based on a promise from Bobblewik to stop doing precisely what he's started doing again. Mass changes that are at all controversial should be undertaken with extreme caution, and more than the usual measure of communication and courtesy, one would think. I guess it's the fact that whether or not dates are linked is the most important thing in the world that makes it necessary to flout the opinions of other editors. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly don't have a problem with editing articles to bring them in line with the MoS, but there's been strong objection to a) Bobblewik's interpretation of the MoS and b) Bobblewik using a semi-automated process to make these changes at high speeds. android 79 17:27, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. Following the MoS is great. Once you know that there's a controversial interpretation, basic civility requires stepping lightly. Just because the MoS says something, doesn't mean "do it like a hurricane". It's probably best if nobody on the Wiki does anything like a hurricane. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ambi seems to be making a point of some sort; I certainly can't see any other reason to mass-rollback edits, as Bobblewik isn't banned. —Kirill Lok s hin 16:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bobblewik has been told multiple times that he has no consensus support for his actions, but he continues to do them. User:Zoe|^(talk) 17:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's no reason to mass-revert everything. The objections have been centered on the fact that some linking of years is appropriate; I don't see how Ambi, doing 20+ reverts per minute, could possibly determine that all of Bobblewik's edits were faulty in this regard. —Kirill Lok s hin 18:13, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's no reason to mass-revert everything. That's precisely a reason to mass-revert everything, analogous to New York City's zero-tolerance program for subway grafitti, where cars were immediately pulled out of service and scrubbed when ANY grafitti was discovered: it makes the action pointless. And it's not Ambi's job to verify that Bobblewik isn't screwing up, it's Bobblewik's to provide some minimal assurance that Bobblewik is paying some sort of attention. And, as I understand it, there's evidence that Bobblewik isn't, despite Bobblewik's assertions to the contrary. --Calton | Talk 00:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is unacceptable. Wikipedia's bot policy is not optional. Withdrawing a request then running the bot anyway is not on. I have blocked him until he explains himself. Talrias (t | e | c) 17:51, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*Sigh* he's not running a bot. --Cyde Weys 17:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He's using a semi-automated process to make edits at bot speed. That still requires approval. android 79 18:05, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Err, there's no requirement that everybody making high-speed edits get approval. —Kirill Lok s hin 18:13, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I'm misreading or misunderstanding some nuance in WP:BOT, but I'd say that covers anyone making high-speed edits with an automated or semi-automated process. That's all really beside the point; the fact is, there's significant opposition to Bobblewik making these changes in this way. android 79 18:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've always interpreted that as meaning actual bots, not merely manually-invoked user javascript (otherwise things like popups and auto-whatever buttons and whatnot would need approval). In any case, you're correct that there's opposition to (at least some) of Bobblewik's edits; but we don't usually hand out indefinite blocks just because of that, do we? —Kirill Lok s hin 18:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bobblewik appears to be a little reluctant to get the hint from his previous blocks that, at present, policy, guideline, or other thing aside, his edits are not going to stick. They lack the kind of support that is needed for such massive scale changes, whether you do them semi-automatically, automatically or manually. If you encounter resistance, you do not go and do another 1000 after promising to stop. He shouldn't be surprised that he's gotten blocked again. He clearly hasn't learnt the lessons of earlier blocks and so a temporarily-indefinite block until he indicates that he's going to stop it is probably reasonable. THe intention is not a community ban, or a premanent prevention from editing, but a block that he has, absolutely, to take notice of and respond to. -Splash^talk 19:29, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(ec with Splash) Obviously there's some inconsistency in policy that concerns script-assisted editing and bots, and it needs to be clarified. I think that someone who repeatedly goes against consensus in this manner (this is not the first time this has happened) ought to be blocked; an indefinite block pending an explanation sounds fine to me. android 79 19:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Making a thousand edits in rapid succession is disruptive. I'm willing to forgive Ambi for using rollback here, as these edits are questionable and whether "semi-automated" or "automated", should not be done. Bobblewik has promised not to make these edits, and has done so. This should not be taken lightly. Ral315 (talk) 20:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"The most important thing possible"

Both Nandesuka and GTBacchus used this phrase up above. I like it. Do we have a page on it yet, along the lines of Meta:The Wrong Version?

Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Wikipedia depends on volunteer editors to improve it. Wikipedia depends on you to improve it. Therefore, whatever you are working on right now is the most important thing possible.

Sometimes, other editors who are not as quick-thinking as you may not immediately realize the value and importance of what you are working on. They may try to drag in irrelevant concepts such as "consensus" or "verifiability" or "NPOV". They may even, misguidedly, revert some of your edits. This is an unavoidable occurrence, and nothing to be concerned about. Simply rerevert the changes, and proceed -- after all, you are working on the most important thing possible.

Because of the importance of your work, Wikipedia gives you a number of powerful tools which will help you perform your work speedily. You are encouraged to be bold. You are free to ignore all rules. It is much more important to improve the encyclopedia than to slavishly follow policy, and what improvement could be more important than yours, which is the most important thing possible?

Don't let anyone tell you that your work is not important. Some editors place an undue emphasis on actual, verified facts, but factual content is worthless unless it is properly presented. Readers will be badly confused if some articles use British spelling and some use American, or if some section headings use All Capitalized Words while others capitalize Only the initial word. Ensuring consistency of these vital details is not only important, it is the most important thing possible.

Proper article titles are also extremely important. Articles are referred to, and can only be found or linked to, by their titles. A wrongly-titled article might never be found, or worse: the false implications of its wrong title might give a reader dangerously wrong impressions. For example, if the topic of an article is occasionally referred to by a more popular name, it is permissible to have a redirect stub under the popular name pointing at the correct name, but the real article must, obviously, always have the strictly correct name. Remember, correctness is not a popularity contest. The content of an article may be important, but ensuring that the article has the correct title is the most important thing possible.

Sometimes, you may become disheartened at the progress of your important work. It may seem as if every other idiotic editor on the project is ganging up on you, all simultaneously unable to appreciate the importance of your work. Do not lose heart, however: you are carrying on a sacred tradition; you are not alone. In fact, there is a special gallery erected to commemorate and celebrate the valiant efforts of unsung heroes like you who were willing to work, despite the costs, on the most important thing possible.

—Steve Summit (talk) 20:33, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The corollary to this then should be: If you feel something is wrong, you are likely not the only person to see that it is wrong. If you cannot fix it, you can take comfort that you are not the single point of failure. Either some other editor will eventually correct it, or some other editor may eventually convince you that it was not wrong. --Syrthiss 20:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to work out whether this is serious or satire. Or, more precisely, I'm wondering how many people would think what's written above is actually quite sensible advice. Talrias (t | e | c) 02:36, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New Username

Hello all. My username has been changed over to User:Phil Sandifer. Thus when you see User:Phil Sandifer running around, please recognize that he is not an evil Snowspinner imposter, but is, in fact, Snowspinner. Thanks. :) Phil Sandifer 16:11, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure that you're not an imposter of yourself, or that yourself is not an imposter of you? :-) Flcelloguy (A note?) 16:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it's a devious imposter trying to convince us that he's not one! ;-) —Kirill Lok s hin 16:25, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I never understood what "snowspinner" meant anyway... :D -- Netoholic @ 16:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Easy! That's obviously someone who plays cricket with snowballs. If you want a name that's difficult to understand try something like, say, "Phil Sandifer". Now what the heck does that mean ? -- Derek Ross | Talk 17:44, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I thought it was somebody in a light-bodied vehicle that lacks studded tires. — Mar. 11, '06 [07:17] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

wasn't there an upper limit on the number of edits you could get reasighned? On the pluss side the traditional RFC won't require a number next time.Geni 18:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The short form is "yes but I asked nicely and sat around for six months and then woke up with a new username" Phil Sandifer 18:58, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Last time I looked at WP:CHU it allowed only users with 6800 edits or fewer to be renamed. That limit appears to have been lifted [35] all the way to 20,000 edits which the slacker-formerly-known-as-Snowspinner didn't get around to making yet. -Splash^talk 19:21, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Really?!?! Oh crap, this means we now need to take care of the old requests. What is the point of an upper limit anyways? Reduce db stress? — Ilyan e p (Talk) 23:00, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbos personal address

Someone posted Jimbos home address on Talk:Jimmy Wales this seems a bit dodgy to me, not the sort of info we should have lieing about. I removed the address, but it might be wise to delete from the page history. --Salix alba (talk) 16:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If it's the address from the Wikimedia foundation's bylaws, the trolls already know it. It's public information, no need to erase it from page histories. Rhobite 23:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Policy pages

Since key templates and legal pages are protected, it follows that perhaps policy pages should be protected as well. People should not be able to vandalize policy pages as it can create confusion to new users, just like a comprimised template (like "flux"), possible worse. I also see no need for policy pages to be openly editable, as there is almost nothing to update (unlike an article); there is almost never a serious reason to edit them. I wonder if this could be considered policy, since permanent protection policy does not yet mention policy pages. Perhaps we could avoid things like this [36] from happening. Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 12:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're forgetting that this is a Wiki. Big changes to policy pages should usually be reverted and then discussed, and vandalism obviously should be prevented, but there's nothing wrong with clarifying and fixing typos and other errors on policy pages, whether it be by anonymous users or established registered editors. android 79 17:24, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What typos? Beyond the fact that anyone can request that they be fixed, and there are none unless someone adds them, edit should be discussed first anyway (which would iron spelling errors). And I definetely do not think that this is not a wiki. In that case, why not just make all legal pages, license templates, and major hight traffic templates open to edit, even if there is nothing to gain, and things to lose (confusion, complaints, WP:Office...)?Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 17:43, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you trying to tell me that there are no typos or errors in Wikipedia policy pages anywhere? No reason for someone to clarify a confusing sentence? No reason to do a little bit of reformatting? There are legal reasons to protect licensing templates and legal pages. There are technical reasons to protect high-traffic templates. What reason is there to protect policy pages? We do lose benefits if we protect them. android 79 18:11, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, even if there are some now, one can point them out, I am sure that an "ti" instead of an "is" not as bad as "GMDOS{FMS COMMUNISM" as the whole article. People should discuss changes, even breifly, and then have them implemented. "Clarifications" are often not seen as just that by others, so it better to just discuss in the first place. I never said that there was "no reason to change anything", but that people can discuss it first, just to repeat for the third time, I do not think that the pages are perfect and can not be improved. I think that 1) discussion is better (and often needed anyway), 2)there is far less need to update than articles (like changing events) and 3)vandalism is not worth it. I would hate to se an S-Pro'ed page and go to the policy pages only to find a large penis, and for a policy page too. I would no want to tell a new user to read NPOV when it say "WIKI IS COMMUNISM...-WoW". It is just not worth it, and edits can be made easily through actual discussion antway.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 18:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You could use that same argument to propose protection of every single page. Are policy pages undergoing a spate of vandalism I haven't noticed? android 79 18:33, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would protect legal/HTF templates and policy. Other articles need IPs, as there is a lot to say about and add to an actual article. Many need modifications, so some vandals are worth the cost. I can not stress this enough...articles need to be updates...many are not NPOV or wikified right and these are simple things that anyone can do without consensus. Policy pages have no such need for all of these edits, there are fairly stable and require consensus support. There are no "current event policy pages" or anything of the sort. So no, my argument only works on the trio, not every type of page, such as articles. If we semied every articles, we would loss a lot of good potential edits. If we semied(or full-pro's) a policy page, we would stop some vandalism, maybe 1 minor edit a month that was not specifically uncontructive.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 18:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This editor spoke my mind between reading the question and hiting edit.
--Jerzy•t 17:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why start using protection specifically pre-emptively to specifically exclude anons from editing some particular pages? What benefit does this yield? It sends the wrong message: "you can edit anything apart from These Important Things because We don't trust you to do that yet". Semi-protection is bad enough when it is applied indefinitely to a certain high-profile article, but applying it to documents we often refer newbies to, either in templates or messages would not benefit the Wiki at large whilst giving an unfortunate first impression. -Splash^talk 19:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What he said. android 79 19:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I supposed a vandalized "policy" page gives a great impression...better yet, why don't I just unrprotect the main page right now, since we don't want to look untrustworthy?Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 20:04, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

because the main page gets millions of hits per day. Can you say the same for any policy page? —Charles P._(Mirv) 20:11, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Having non-editable policy pages gives new users a worse impression than an occasionally vandalized policy page would. It's an extreme solution to what's basically a nonexistent problem. I can appreciate that you're trying to help by suggesting this, but there's no immediate need for this course of action, and it goes against the concept of page protection being an exceptional measure.

— User:Adrian/zap2.js 20:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:RFCA proposal

See WP:VPR#Requests_for_continuing_adminship_.28WP:RFCA.29 - SoM 19:28, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Edit conflict - with myself ?!

What is going on ? Another malfunction ? Martial Law 21:38, 10 March 2006 (UTC) :([reply]

Normaly happens to me when I click save page twice.Geni 23:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It can also happen if you do a Save, then click on the Back arrow, make another change and try to Save it. User:Zoe|^(talk) 02:13, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It happens to me when I click save, press the "stop" button, make a change, and then click save again. --M @th wiz 20 20 02:18, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What's happend is that your save actually commited, although your browser had not reloaded it, hitting stop made your browser think you were on the same version number, so when you hit save again, the wiki noticed there was a more recent (yours) version number already committed, and let you know. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 03:42, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wonderfool unblocked

Wonderfool has provided a list of the Nihilartikles he created and apologized for it. This means he has fufilled the terms set forth in the arbitration committee's emergency injunction, and thus he is allowed to edit again. I have unblocked him. Raul654 23:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Où est la liste? -Splash^talk 00:09, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Je ne sais pas...Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 00:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He expression contrition for his actions at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Raul654#My_block_2

The list was provided in a private email. In his own words:

Main link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archive18#Wonderfool - Where it all happened

Section 1

These are some pages I created, but I think the other users misunderstood. Maybe I misunderstood what a nihilartikel was, because these subjects are real, but just not very notable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Javanais, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Spyguard, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Hot_Puppies,

Others

The final nihilartikel was "Broken Manika" , as noted on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Nightsleeper. Strangely, the band broke up about 1 week after their page on Wikipedia was deleted. Very strange. But probably not related.

There was one "nihilartikel" of mine that I still reckon was unfairly deleted, it was Gwenn ha Du (newspaper), which exists on the French Wikipedia at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwenn_ha_du%2C_journal_nationaliste_breton.

I spoke to HappyCamper about this at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:HappyCamper.

And, well, I got no more time to fish thru my other sockpuppets' edits. Hope all is well, Wonderfool

Raul654 00:39, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

KDRGibby: Soft ban on editing Cuba

Because KDRGibby has been removing well sourced statements from Cuba on the stated grounds that they are "original research" [37] [38], I'm banning him from editing that article under Remedy 2 (probation) of his arbitration case.

This is a soft ban, I add the proviso that it can be overturned by any administrator at any time. I'm adding it to the list of bans at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/KDRGibby#Log_of_blocks_and_bans, and I'm submitting it for review on this forum. Administrators, please comment, modify or rescind. --Tony Sidaway 23:41, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tony that material was clearly original research the way it was used in the [[Cuba[[ page. IT was implying something that was NOT cited. It was claiming that the statement above was wrong based on cited information. The statement above these sources claimed that Cuba runs a two tiered segregated healthcare system. The statement that was deleted was als pov and said something to the effect "Clearly this ignores data which suggests the Cuban healthcare system is one of the best in the world" and cites ciafactbook as source. CIA factbook sources rank life expectancy and child mortality rates, 1. niether of which tell us that the healthcare system is great, 2. neither of which tell us that the segregated healthcare system doesnt exist.

The way the citations are used is Original Research!

This is ORIGINAL RESEARCH, i therefore have a right to do delete it, especially since I had explained it in the page. And while you are at it, especially if you don't unblock me there, please block Slizor from Classical Liberalism you can CLEARLY see he has done that dozens of times. Thanks (Gibby 23:54, 10 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Slizor does not have an ArbCom ruling against him and cannot as such be banned from an article. Stifle 02:52, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh so having no arb com ruling against someone means they have a right to delete anything they want, but if I have an arb com ruling I can't delete violations of wiki rules? Interesting (Gibby 05:05, 11 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Gibby's right on this one. It was indeed OR, and he was correct to remove it. I'd say rescind. --jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 05:03, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whether or not he had a point (which I chose not to argue and revert over following his explanation), his conduct on that article has been disruptive and markedly uncollegial. He seems unable to refrain from offtopic polemics and offering precise explanations, instead. El_C 05:11, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I refrained from replacing the tag to edit the pov and original research I found in the article...I'm going to eventually have a case against it based on your revert actions to keep such simple material in. Essentially, you will end up proving my point for me. If anything, right now you are off topic, the ban was based on my deletion of sourced material, nothing else. Please stay on topic. (Gibby 05:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Feel free to take whatever measures you see fit. The topic, as far as I'm concerned, is your disruptive conduct in that article. El_C 05:21, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, it was clearly deleting sourced information. Tony did not see the complaint only the immediate fact of deleting information, he like most administrators jumps to conclusions before properly examining the circumstances. You are still off track. (Gibby 06:37, 11 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

I move to give KDRGibby a 1RR limitation. I initially supported probation on KDRGibby, but now it seems that being lenient brings more risks than the benefit of the snowball's chance in hell that KDRGibby's behaviour will improve. Elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (Be eudaimonic!) 19:22, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is no explicit provision in the remedies to impose a 1RR limitation. The existing remedies ought to be enough. If one interprets multiple reverts as disruption, however, he may be blocked by any administrator. However I'd like to see KDRGibby given a chance to develop a way of working with other editors, and this does mean that we must sometimes be prepared to stand back and let him edit. --Tony Sidaway 21:29, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have an opinion on this case, but I thought that admins were not allowed to make this type of ban. See this discussion. -- Kjkolb 22:30, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/KDRGibby, which Tony linked to in his initial post.--Sean Black ^(talk) 22:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I absolutely and completely recognise User:Kjkolb's concerns. No, I would never, ever invoke an arbitration ruling as a justification for an inappropriate action. In this case (as others have pointed out), I took action under a very specific ruling. And even then I posited that I would permit myself to be overruled. And I was. The system works.. --Tony Sidaway 04:07, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wik sockpuppets, again

Wik is back yet again, with sockpuppets (some anagrammatic eg Riveraz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and its anagrams, some not). This was reported earlier as well, here.

He's resorting to personal attacks (everyone else is a moron or an idiot, see for instance Talk:Andorra#WW2) and rampant sockpuppetry. Just a reminder of the obvious: as a banned user, any of his edits can be reverted on sight (I believe that even includes talk page comments), and his sockpuppets can be blocked indefinitely. -- Curps 01:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just blocked a bunch of these. I'd be perfectly happy if someone removed the non-substantive parts of his talk page comments: frankly it's hard to see how it benefits the process to keep (for example) comments addressing another contributor as "scum". -- Jmabel | Talk 04:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Possible linkspam, looking for opinions

Possible linkspam, looking for opinions, especially from anyone who reads French fluently. All contributions from User:86.203.203.165 are links to a single site, and all contributions from User:Adrienne93 are either links to that same site or vague defenses of links to that site. My quick impression of the site in question: poorly laid out, and it reads like historical fiction, though my French is not good enough for me to quickly ascertain whether I am correct about the latter.

I've been trying to get a clearer explanation from User:Adrienne93 as to why she thinks we should preserve these links; again, an informed opinion of the links would be much more useful than a response from a possible spammer. - Jmabel | Talk 05:02, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Its an unencyclopedic link to fictional narratives / character studies of various figures in French history. I've removed any links to the site that I found. We'd be better off sending our readers to Peter Weiss and George Bernard Shaw. Jkelly 01:09, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Adrienne responded to me at Talk:Charlotte_Corday#Recently_linked. I reproduce her response here:

[begin copied text]

Thank you very much, Jmabel to allow me to present these articles to you. Excuse me by advance, I do not write English very well. Let to me very introduce to abort the author of these articles to you: it acts of Gilles Marchal who is a very talented French artist years 1970; It does not sing any more but on the other hand, it writes very good texts on various events of the French history. These texts are not fictionalized, insofar as all that he writes true, is checked thanks to very precise research with the public records.

However, Gilles Marchal introduced there a new element: humour. All that is told true, and is often ignored of the public, but simply treated with much humour. By the French wikipédia, there were many people who adhered to this style of writing, in particular a club of professor of history and librarian of the university of Grenoble, which take for pretexte the texts of Gilles Marchal to feed their debates. I add that there is no financial aspect with these presentations. The site is completely free access. I think sincerely that these bonds, not only do not withdraw anything with quality articles, but can give a new and different approach to the manner of approaching them.

With regard to the aspect of the page (that you find very ugly), I am quite sorry, I am not very gifted in design, however, the texts can be read on a file pdf created to more easily print the accounts suggested. I thank you by advance for again considering with benevolence the maintenance of these bonds in the English wikipédia. In a friendly way. Adrienne93 16:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

[end copied text]

Nothing here changes my view that these don't belong, but I personally won't delete these links myself, since I've said my piece. Instead, I've brought the issue here to let others work out what to do. If you want to follow up where these links have been placed, just look up the user contributions for User:86.203.203.165 and User:Adrienne93. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:50, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE

I've just blocked a known vandal who has returned on an anon IP. The whois lookup says "ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE". Can anyone tell me what this means? Does it mean it's a fixed (not shared) IP? 207.195.243.224 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) --kingboyk 05:31, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just google group'd it : "It means that the IP addresses stay with this assigned block; they do not get subdelegated ("SWIP") and transported with customers. I *think* that means that all addresses throughout that specific non-portable address range will all use the same autonomous system number, hence routing will be the same." Has nothing to do with the end user, ignore it for the purposes of Wikipedia. Mike _{(T C)}

05:55, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, cheers. --kingboyk 05:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They can be sub-delegated, but it means the delegate can't take the IP addresses and move them to another provider. Say BigTelco gives 256 IP addresses to SmithCorporation. They might read in WHOIS as being delegated to SmithCorporation, rather than BigTelco. But, if SmithCorporation decides to change internet providers, they have to get a new bunch of IP addresses. Whether SmithCorporation uses them statically or dynamically - you can't tell. Though if the vandal comes back on the same IP, just keep making the block for longer amounts of time. They will get bored. SchmuckyTheCat 07:23, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please unblock Rookiee

Please could someone unblock Rookiee? He has been blocked for "pedophile trolling". However, he wasn't trolling. He was just objecting to a previous block, which was groundless, and also objecting to the vandalism of an article he'd contributed which he'd spent some time researching. I think anyone would object to being treated like that. I think it is clear that the block was really just on the grounds of his sexual orientation. I hope that everyone here agrees that blocking a contributor for their sexual orientation is every bit as abhorrent as blocking them for their race, sex, age or any other aspect of their human nature. For the same reason, you might want to look into taking away the administrative powers of his blocker, Neutrality. Thank you. -- 205.188.116.200 06:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I, and many others, do not view pedophilia as a "sexual orientation." I fully support Neutrality's block. El_C 06:21, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ahem - "The Wikimedia Foundation prohibits discrimination against current or prospective users and employees on the basis of race, color, gender, religion, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristics." [39]. It's clear from this statement that the Foundation considers sexual orientation to be a legally protected characteristic; pedophilia is not a legally protected characteristic in any jurisdiction, and therefore it follows cannot be construed as a sexual orientation (as defined by the Foundation). Raul654 06:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's backwards logic in every sense! Paedophilia is defined in terms of the portion of the population to whom one is sexually attracted, and is thus a sexual orientation by definition. So thank you. You have just informed me that discriminating against paedophiles is prohibited by the Wikimedia Foundation. -- 205.188.116.200 06:52, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Technically Raul654 is right. Even if he wasn't, who the hell gives damn? As Tony Sideway said "I am going to write a fucking article". Lets not forget that this is an encyclopedia and not a pathetic drama soapbox.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 07:03, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As long as his desires are not acted upon (Wikipedia is not totally neutral, things like murder, theft and pedophilia are assumed to be wrong), all that counts are his contributions. In at least two instances, he has made large deletions of content with no explanation in the edit summary or talk page, see sex offender and child grooming. -- Kjkolb 07:27, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply. To be honest, I wasn't aware of his edits of sex offender or child grooming. However, looking at them now, they look like honest attempts to improve the article. Of the edits you link to, the first is indeed a reversion with no explanation in the edit summary or talk page, but it is by Willmcw, not Rookiee. Willmcw's reversion was later undone by another user, 24ip, with the explanation that the material that Willmcw tried to re-add was a duplication of that at child sexual abuse. The current article bears much more resemblance to Rookiee's version than to Willmcw's, suggesting that the Wikipedia community at large prefers Rookiee's version. The edit to the child grooming article that you link to is uncommented, true, but is not a "large deletion of content". Rookiee added much more than he removed, and what he added covers much the same ground as what he removed. So you are again mistaken. In any case, neither of the articles you mention has been edited by Rookiee since last November, so clearly they have nothing to do with the recent ban. If that's the evidence for the prosecution, there is no case to answer. -- 195.93.21.102 02:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I see it, he wasn't blocked for his desires, fetishes or whatever, but basically being a trollish revert warrior. Now, if he was a cooperative user who wasn't screaming "cabal", I think things would be much different. Elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (Be eudaimonic!) 19:54, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply. I agree that his manner could be improved, but I haven't seen these trollish reversions you mention. I've just checked through all of Rookiee's article edits for this year (there are very few), and can't see anything wrong with them. In fact, his user contributions show not a single edit to any article at all between the expiry of Jimbo's temporary block and the commencement of Neutrality's indefinite one. All he did was complain on Talk:Justin Berry, and edit his own user page. Were there any article reversions in the same period that have since been expunged from his user contribution page? If you could present some evidence that Rookiee has been acting as a "trollish revert warrior", that might be helpful. It still wouldn't convince me that trolling was the sole reason for the ban, though, because then the block reason would just be "trolling", not "pedophile trolling". After all, if you saw someone block a user for "gay trolling" or "Jewish trolling", would you not be suspicious of the blocker's motives? -- 195.93.21.102 02:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see some firmer justification for this block given (diffs etc). I've examined his edits briefly, but it's not obvious to me that he was trolling. Equally, neither was it obvious that he wasn't trolling, but when admins indefinitely ban a user, and delete (not just blank) his userpage, it should be very obvious as to why. (We don't want people to think he was banned just for being a pedophile, of course). — Matt Crypto 21:59, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. It looks to me like he was blocked because he protested his not being allowed to edit Justin Berry on the talk page. Jimbo did block him for a short period of time for this, but it certainly isn't worth an indefinite block. I'm trying hard to WP:AGF, but I can't help but think he was blocked because he's a pedophile. --Rory096 22:32, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My cursory examination of his contributions doesn't reveal anything obviously worth a permanent block but of course I may be missing something and I'm probably more lenient than most. Could the people who are more familiar with the situation provide a couple of annotated diffs with the most clear-cut examples of trolling - just to satisfy us skeptics? :) Haukur 22:48, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Sujith (edit | [[Talk:User:Sujith|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Reclaiming Original Username

I am the original owner of the username Sujith. On 7 Dec, 2005 user Sujithk acquired this username. I was never notified and would like my username back. I haven't signed most of my edits but can give evidence of activity (about 50 edits last year) on request. Tried to settle this between us, but no response has been forthcoming. Please advise. I apologise if this isn't the right forum. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.162.52.10 (talk • contribs) .

This was on RfPP, so I moved it here.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 09:02, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, all that happened is that Sujithk (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) moved his user page to User:Sujith. He didn't actually hijack the account. I moved it back and deleted the redirect. Sujith should be able to log on as himself and make his own edits, including editing his own user page. Chick Bowen 18:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RJII Banned from AN & AN/I

Per Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/RJII v. Firebug#RJII placed on probation as clarified on RfAr Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#RJII probation, I have banned RJII (talk · contribs) from posting to the Administrators Noticeboard or Administrators Noticeboard/Incidents, or the talk pages thereof, for a period of three months. Also, given Dmcdevit's suggestion, I am opening a dialogue (see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#RJII_Banned_from_AN_.26_AN.2FI) on a full ban under the general probation clause, for a period of not less than one month. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 09:48, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That doesnt sound appropriate. What are your reasons? The Administrator noticeboard is a way to inform admins of abuses, if he's not allowed to it most of you admins certainly won't know half the story (as most of you don't take the time to learn it anyway). This is an unfair ruling (Gibby 11:32, 11 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

It's part of his arbitration ruling, if he hadn't committed offences in the first place this wouldn't be needed. NSL E _(T+C) at 11:36 UTC (2006-03-11)

There are plenty of other avenues open if a genuine abuse occurs. He can email the involved admin or use the admin's talk page (or any admin's talk page, for that matter). He can still post to the Wikipedia mailing list (wikien-l). Request for comment and arbitration are still open to him.

What he cannot do is post to WP:AN and WP:AN/I because he has made a vexatious nuisance of himself there, and his editing of those pages has been restricted because of his past history of unproductive behaviour. If you shout fire in a crowded theatre too often, you shouldn't be surprised to find yourself banned from the theatre. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:37, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Like how my arb com apparently no longer allows me to delete original research...right again, abusive Admins. (Gibby 11:41, 11 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Your ban was imposed by me. I explicitly made it subject to review (I didn't have to) and invited other admins to comment and, if necessary, rescind. Which one admin did. So much for abusive admins. --Tony Sidaway 21:31, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a Vancouver-area admin

I'm looking for an admin from the Greater Vancouver area to help back me up on something. In the stub types for deletion page, several people are trying to get several of WikiProject Vancouver's stubs deleted. The problem is, this would veto the agreement made collectively by the WikiProject's participants. Here's the situation...

If you're from the area, you would know this already, but there is a distinction between Vancouver proper and Greater Vancouver (or the GVRD) made by those in the area. Both "Greater Vancouver" and "GVRD" are common names for the area. However, the guys who want the stubs deleted cannot seem to comprehend that and are proposing that the GVRD stubs be merged with the ones for Vancouver proper. However, the participants of the WikiProject had found this problematic, because of the distinction between the GVRD and Vancouver proper, and had beforehand reached an overwhelming consensus on creating a different GVRD stub category for non-Vancouver proper articles (all but 3 people agreed; it was pretty much a landslide).

Now they are arguing that "GVRD" cannot possibly be the common name for the area, despite the fact that those guys are not residents of Greater Vancouver (and, by the sounds of it, have little concept of how municipalities are laid out here). The reason why I want a Vancouver-area admin is because I'd like to have someone back me up on this, because the other WikiProject participants seem to be staying out of this, and because I'm now fighting alone, those guys are threatening to veto an overwhelming decision that was made by the participants for the sake of stub categorization and what they seem to be expendable. Even if you don't agree completely with my point, there's no disregarding this threat -- that a few people can effectively overrule a decision made by many, and by those who understand the region best because, well, we live here.

I'd appreciate if any admins from the Vancouver area are willing to support this. Even if you're not from the area but have a thorough understanding of the GVRD, I'd love to see you too. Thanks. --Buchanan-Hermit™..CONTRIBS..SPEAK! 02:37, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For one thing, {{gvrd-stub}} isn't even listed for deletion; at present it's some side discussion. Secondly, I can't find any mention of {{gvrd-stub}} on the WikiProject talk page (aside from mention 2 days ago of the present SFD discussions); is there something I'm missing? Should {{gvrd-stub}} come up for deletion (currently it sounds like there's more of an inclination to just rename it and the oddly-named category), if there really is that much support from the other WikiProject participants, then a few of them could voice their opinion on SFD. This doesn't seem like an admin issue at this point. Mairi 03:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, thanks. Things have shifted a bit in the past hour or so, so an admin isn't really need anymore. Thanks anyways. --Buchanan-Hermit™..CONTRIBS..SPEAK! 03:44, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

203.25.67.14

Dear psy-Guy (??) Thankyou for your email that Steven Fay has forwarded to me. Given examples you have provided I am quite happy for you to deny editing access for 203.25.67.14. If students really want to contribute to Wikpaedia they may do so from home For any further communication re this issue please comminicate with me at this email address or call me on +61 7 407634144 or +61 7 38345242 regards Jeremy Connell 60.240.190.233 04:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Context of this: User:Psy guy has already blocked 203.25.67.14 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) indefinitely, with an indication of pending confirmation, which I guess this is. Chick Bowen 04:34, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On a somewhat related note, Psy guy deserves major kudos as an admin on this subject; the other night, he phoned (at his own cost) a school in Australia to discuss persistent vandalism from thier IPs. (Hence the above.) I say major kudos because Psy guy lives in the US, and made an international phone call to help keep Wikipedia clean. Stop by his talk page, or find him on IRC, and tell him we appreciate him. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 14:26, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Radak

I have blocked Radak (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) for 1 week for reverting Justin Berry and putting nasty personal attacks on his user page. As I made clear in my note on his talk page, I will discuss it with him if he so chooses, but this seems like clear disruption. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 04:30, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Eclectick and "the security of our forces"

User:Eclectick, who seems to be reasonably new to Wikipedia, apparently believes some of the articles that I originated to be threats to national security. He removed large chunks of natural circulation and S8G reactor and claims to have sent "a formal request sent to the Wiki administration to remove the aspects of the information that is restricted from public release." (I'm not sure what he thinks the "Wiki administration" is; the ArbComm has heard nothing from him.) I have warned him twice now that his deletions will be considered vandalism and he will be blocked if he continues. I admit that the articles do not cite sources and doing so will remove any suspicion that the info is not "restricted"; I will correct that fault within 24 hours. Anyone with any questions about this developing situation should not hesitate to contact me. ➥the Epopt 05:39, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds similar to User:PeterZed, though different targets. --Golbez 05:50, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have added some quickly-located sources (one from a —gasp— Belorussian site); more will follow. ➥the Epopt 06:30, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"I will also file a formal report with the appropriate authorities as to the security leak." is terribly close to violating WP:LEGAL. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Finlay, but as I am the threatened one, I would prefer that someone else apply the cluebat. In addition, please permit me to call attention to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Natural circulation. I will assume good faith, but doing so requires me to also assume abject ignorance. ➥the Epopt 18:12, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:14, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

personalinfo to delete

An unwarry user added all sort of personal contact info at Talk:Indian White-rumped Vulture, which, IIRC, would need deletion from page istory, right? Circeus 19:05, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If he'd posted personal info about someone else, sure. But he's posted info about himself, and he's clearly an adult he knows what he's doing. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:09, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doug Stanhope

I'm not sure this really belongs on Wikipedia. You be the judge.

Image:Dougstanhopephoto.jpg —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.254.148.73 (talk • contribs) .

Given that it's actually discussed in the article, there's a much better fair use claim to be made for it than most of our fair use images. Or was that not what you meant? Chick Bowen 21:17, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether or not the image belongs in Wikipedia, but I don't agree with its addition to the article. It appears to be there mainly for the shock value. Joyous | Talk 21:39, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We can at least find a better pic of him as the lead-in pic and then move this further down in the article next to the relevant section. --Cyde Weys 22:17, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted by Zscout370. No great loss, clearly. Chick Bowen 22:36, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at the photo, and some of the various things surrounding it, I noticed the picture was added with some people objecting, and the uploader of the photo, from what I chcked, uploaded similar NSFW content, and it was slated for deletion once for it being not used at all. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire) Fair use policy} 23:48, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Block/unblock notices automatically on the user talk page?

Could we not put a notice on the user talk page telling users when they are blocked? Could we do it when the user is unblocked? Currently the only way to find out if you are unblocked is to keep trying to edit. It might be nice to know who did the unblocking. bobblewik 22:09, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not the only way, you can quite easily find all active blocks on any account or IP address by simply going to Special:Ipblocklist. --cesarb 22:25, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, thanks. Let me be more specific about my question. A user finds out about a new message just by opening an article page. They see:

a banner on any page that they open
a link in the banner to the new information

That has some advantages. For a start, reading pages is what people do when using Wikipedia for its primary purpose. What would be involved in giving these advantages to users that are blocked or unblocked? bobblewik 11:46, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Censorship

There seems to be a bit of an edit war going on at Wikipedia talk:Censorship. -- Kjkolb 01:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Appropriateness of the name "User:Halliburton Shill"

I was going to suggest User:Halliburton Shill change his username because, as his user page explicitly states, the name is meant to imply some sort of collusion between Halliburton and Dick Cheney. In fact, some other user had already nominated his user page for deletion. Howerver, having had (very minor) disagreements with this editor over some links he wanted put into the Dick Cheney and Halliburton articles, I decided that it would be best to avoid any appearance that I was simply making him change user names out of some sort of petty squabble. I was hoping some admin(s) with more experience than I have in deciding what is and is not appropriate to use as a user name could look into the matter. Thanks, JDoorj a m Talk 01:21, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Concentrate on defending NPOV in articles, not user names. alteripse 02:03, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, now that you mention it, he's adding links to Political Friendster, which is how I noticed him, for one. Mackensen (talk) 02:15, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please note, there is another discussion thread started on this topic - below. Johntex\^talk 20:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rattlerbrat

User:Rattlerbrat has behaved disruptively at Wikipedia talk:Censorship with abusive language and generic attacks on others. Gerard Foley has tried to contain the problem without success. I myself am uncertain whether its best to just let it go or not. WAS 4.250 02:30, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Linkspam.

Most of the edits by O.perrin (contribs) consist of adding links to the sites http://usabirds.free.fr and/or http://perrin.olivier.free.fr to articles on New York and San Francisco, and their landmarks/regions. I don't have the time to go through all their contributions and revert/remove the links as necessary. I've done a few.--Drat (Talk) 03:03, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've taken care of the rest. --jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 03:08, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There has to be a better way to deal with these persistant linkspammers Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 04:02, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can think of one. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 04:15, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia's got much better ways... --Carnildo 04:43, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Even ones that don't involve death... Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 13:28, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

anti-romanian edits of mikkalai (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This person has anti-romanian edits. Admins should watch him and ban him.

Articles:

Moldova
Anti-Romanian
Transnistria
all romania/moldova related articles.

Block this anti-romanian guy.

I found one anti-romanian edit made today here.

vandalism on my user page!

Mikkalai vandalized my user page. Stefan cel Mare 20:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That seems to be a real problem these days [40] [41]. Respected admins vandalising userpages, just awful. --Sean Black ^(talk) 21:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is not vandalism, it is part of the procedure to tag sock puppets or suspected sock puppets. We will wait and see what CheckUser says. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire) Fair use policy} 00:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please sign your posts. And if you have problems with another user, you can always take him/her to WP:RFC. User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Block him and ban him for good.

Yeah. Someone has to clean up after him like here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ACommunist_Romania&diff=29995545&oldid=29932893

There are so many acts of vandalism, anti-romanian acts. Block him.

Please sign your posts. Mikkalai will not get banned or blocked without first an RfC and then an RFAr. That's not how things work. User:Zoe|^(talk) 21:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tawkerbot2 bug fix

I'm pretty sure I know exactly what the problem was with Tawkerbot2.

When the database gets overloaded for some reason, existing pages can sometimes display incorrectly. When this happens (say for Jimmy Wales):

In the regular (non "edit page") view: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jimmy_Wales , the page appears not to exist even though it does: you get the Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name message. In other words, it appears to be either a deleted page or a never-created page.

In the "edit page" view: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jimmy_Wales&action=edit , the same page appears to be blank even though it isn't: you get an empty textarea. In other words, it appears to be an existing page that is blank (or has been blanked), which is not the same as a non-existent (deleted, or never-created) page.

I have actually observed the above behavior (often, it's lasted only a minute or two, however this time it lasted a good deal longer). The problem is, the second view above (the "edit page" view) is completely indistinguishable from a truly blank page (eg, a page that has been blanked by a vandal).

I'm pretty sure Tawkerbot2, like many other Wikipedia bots, examines the "edit page" view rather than the regular view, because then it can extract the Wiki markup directly from the textarea (the alternative would be to try to parse the raw HTML source). But in doing so, it becomes vulnerable to the database-overload glitch mentioned above: suddenly, edits can look like they've just blanked a page. Tawkerbot2 reverts what it believes are blankings, but actually aren't.

Note, this only applies to complete blankings... if the page is replaced by any text (no matter how small, even only a few characters like "POOP!!!"), there are no false positives.

To avoid false positives, when the edit-view textarea shows an apparent blanking, the bot must load the page again, but this time in the regular non-"edit page" view, and examine the raw HTML source to verify that it truly does represent a blank page.

This can be a bit tricky because it's not good enough merely to look for the tell-tale Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name which reveals that it is a false positive, because the database overload condition might have gone away in the interval between the first "edit page" view load and the second non-"edit page" view load. Also, one difficulty with parsing the raw HTML source of a page is that it can be randomly changed by developers at any time (including the exact wording of the Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name message), as opposed to Wiki markup which isn't subject to random change in this way.

Bottom line: to make Tawkerbot2 safe, you should:

Temporarily turn off reverting for total page blankings (100% size reduction) but keep it turned on for partial or merely near-total page blankings (any size reduction less than a full 100%). In this mode, you could restart Tawkerbot2 immediately.
Implement the workaround described earlier (a second verification of raw HTML source of the non "edit page" view, to check for false positives). Once this is in place, Tawkerbot2 could safely revert total page blankings as well.
As mentioned above, the glitches only occur when the database gets into an unusual state and Wikipedia pages display falsely.

Ultimately this is the fault of the Wikimedia code... it shouldn't falsely report a page's status, even under unusual conditions of database overload. There's a workaround as described above, but at the extra time-and-bandwidth cost of reloading the page a second time in the regular (non-edit-page) view.

-- Curps 15:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This thing is making errors besides the DB problems. Just prior to the DB problems the bot made this revert. The edit by 131.107.0.86 was valid. I have reverted the bot and the warning it left on the users talk page. If the bot is making this sort of error it should only run while being monitored. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 16:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, it is the DB problems. Please read what I wrote above: the DB problems cause the page to appear falsely: it causes the page to appear to be blanked, and that throws the bot off. The DB problems started some time before the DB was locked for maintenance. -- Curps 16:13, 13 March 2006 (UTC)][reply]

The bot log reports it to be a "content blanked" revert, which leads me to believe its the db at fault. This has happened a few times in the past (once every thousand reverts aprox) and we were scratching our heads as to why this was happening but this makes sense. The bot has had these errors in the past but as the db was only having problems for a short peorid of time, only one edit was involved which complicated debuging. As for monitoring, the bot does report to a (password protected for fairly obvious reasons) website which shows the reverts and reasons (as well as reports for all actions the bot checked with an user / quick contrib/block links) If anyone wants access send me an email and I'll give you the auth. -- Tawker 21:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From what I can see, the DB problems started as early as 14:02 UTC. For instance, my own monitoring showed this edit and this edit as page blankings, although they obviously aren't. However, at that time it was only a few isolated cases... some time later, every single article started appearing blank or non-existent, in the "edit page" and non-"edit page" modes, respectively. I think the DB wasn't locked until some time later (14:47 or so). -- Curps 16:17, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My comments here follow from Curps' first "to be safe" bullet above. Even before today I was already thinking that the bot maybe should do something with 100% blankings besides reverting them. Mostly because of the cases where someone improperly handles a copy-vio. These cases need a little more finesse than the bot has. Add to that the problems today and less frequently earlier with false positives of blankings, and it becomes more important. My idea is that, instead of reverting 100% blankings, the bot log them to a subpage in it's user space. Then anyone who wants to patrol blankings can Watch that subpage. Enough people Watch it, and we'll have blankings reverted fairly quickly. And because it'll be humans doing the reverting, you'll have human judgement of when to warn, when to direct people how to correctly handle copy-vios, and when we have false positives. - TexasAndroid 16:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why would you replace a copyvio with a 100% blanking though? It's very easy to take this to be vandalism. There should always be a copyvio tag on it... even non-admins who handle copyvios should be aware of this. And note obviously that there will sometimes be a valid pre-copyvio version, which should simply be reverted to, without any copyvio tagging. -- Curps 16:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is those that are not aware of this. These are good faith edits to handle copy-vios. Yes, they are handled incorrectly, but the fact that they are well intentioned, not vandalism, is why they need a bit more finesse than the "vandalism" message that Tawkerbot2 slaps on the page. The person who did the blanking needs to be directed to instructions for how to properly handle copy-vios, not bit by a vandalism warning. It's really an issue of the warning rather than the revert in this case, and more specifically the wording of the warning.

That all said, I had thought there were a couple of examples on the bot's page of people complaining of this. However, going looking for them now, the only thing close I can find is an example of the DB glitch bug having causes the bot to undo a well-done copy-vio edit. So this may all be moot if this has not actually happened. - TexasAndroid 17:13, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot's status

Ok, I've killed the bot for now pending the fixes, sorry about my delay, this happened during my 5 hours of sleep and seeing as the bot was running with basically no problems I left it on overnight. I'll disable blanking for now and put it back up, it should be able to catch the mass bot attacks and most of the "gibberish" pending a fix on the blanking problem. I'll look into having it check the main article page and if it reports a blank page first, maybe that will fix it.

As for the "mis-redirects" and copyvio's without the copyvio tag, I'm still at a loss for how to handle those, the bot can't account for every single human error. If anyone wants they can have a look at the code, it's on a password protected wiki and I can send you the password. I'll have a look and see what I can do and report it back here. Sorry for any inconvience this may have caused, this was something that was pretty hard to check during QA. -- Tawker 19:17, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot status update: I was just talking to the lead dev on the bot (who has done most of the modifications and is a far better python programer than I) and he applied a patch that should stop this error from occuring, as such the bot was unblocked by freakofnurture per my request so we can test this new patch (any edit / flag it makes shows up on a web browser output as all of the logging is mysql based) - if it acts up again please reblock and let me know, I'm monitoring it but things can happen that take me away from the computer. -- Tawker 20:37, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I grabbed the latest code from CVS for pywikipediabot. I believe it misreports the page occasionally by not properly trapping and raising an exception in response to a specific error from wikipedia. joshbuddy^talk 22:55, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The RJII Project

Recently-banned user RJII frequently refers to himself as the "RJII Project,"[42] and has implied that he is paid to edit Wikipedia. As of November 2004, he has made over 20,000 edits, or over 40 a day, averaging 22 per page. His contribution tree shows a clear focus to his edits. While such activity should be commended -- he has, after all, contributed greatly to the encyclopaedia -- I feel that his motivations are a cause for concern. He has implied that the goal of his "project" has been to shape a new "reality" with regard to certain things. I fear that much of this "shaping" probably involves a great deal of original research.[43] We are presented with a couple of evident possibilities: (1) that a partisan person/organization, with funding, has been shaping the encyclopaedia to fit a particular POV; or (2) that a partisan person/organization is using the encyclopaedia to present its own research. There are also other disconcerting possibilities that I'm sure I don't need to list. The question is, what can we do? Do we just hope that, if these edits are against Wikipedia policy in some way, they will be corrected by other editors over time? The implications are unsettling -- can any well-funded person/organization mount such a focused campaign, and how will that effect the encyclopaedia as a whole? --AaronS 18:00, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Halliburton Shill

Could I please get some feedback about Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Halliburton Shill? Am I somehow in the wrong here? User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:34, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the sense that the page is inappropriate, of course you are right. But of course whether or not a page is approproate is not what determines whether or not it is kept. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:54, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Err, why hasn't he gotten a {{usernameblock}} yet? Wikipedia:Username suggests quite clearly that "a username should not be used to defame other people, companies or groups, regardless of whether they edit Wikipedia". —Kirill Lok s hin 19:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Kirill is right - this deserves {{usernameblock}}. Johntex\^talk 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:EnforcerOfNeutrality

Per WP:U: "Names that include commonly used Wikipedia software or community terms, or imply an official position on Wikipedia . (eg, terms such as recent changes, Administrator or the now-blocked name NPOVenforcer)." Justin Eiler 21:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked as {{usernameblock}}. Stifle 21:58, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Batchimeg Tuvshintugs

Any idea what suddenly happened to this article? It definitely existed and was the subject of a minor edit war. It's suddenly disappeared and there's no deletion log entry for it. Its talk page Talk:Batchimeg_Tuvshintugs and edit history [44] are still there. Although, I have to say I'm fine with it being gone. The person is semi-notable at best (a Mongolian-born chess player who placed 27th out of 32 in one section of the US championship last week, though causing a stir by beating several grandmasters unexpectedly) but one of the usual annoying wiki editors insisted on making an article full of half-baked spin that had to be fixed. Hm, it looks like the most recent edit has simply vanished, but older ones are there. Software issue that the devs should check out? Phr 22:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia seems to be having a series of fits; I've just edited one section of an article (simply changing the heading), only to find on saving it that the whole article had gone except for that section. Similarly, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship recently disaappeared, though the History was there as normal; I had to go to the latest version in the History and make a minor edit in order to bring it back. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 23:03, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of talk pages have disappeared, too. I suspect some new users are going to show up very confused about what happened to them. Chick Bowen 23:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Redirects to Jonathan Bowers

Hello! I wonder if I can get a second opinion on this matter. User:DecadeZone has been adding a list of redirects to the article Jonathan Bowers. All of them seem to be vocabulary for large numbers which was coined by the group Bowers is associated with. Should these redirects be left alone, or should they be nominated for deletion? There are quite a few of these redirects, and they seem to be vocabulary that is not widely known in the mathematical community. I have not seen this before on Wikipedia, but something does not feel quite right at the moment. What are your thoughts? --HappyCamper 23:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 1,667: / Line 1,667: @@
 :Wikipedia seems to be having a series of fits; I've just edited one section of an article (simply changing the heading), only to find on saving it that the whole article had gone except for that section. Similarly, [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship]] recently disaappeared, though the History was there as normal; I had to go to the latest version in the History and make a minor edit in order to bring it back. --[[User:Mel Etitis|Mel Etitis]]  ([[User talk:Mel Etitis|<font color="green">Μελ Ετητης</font>]]) 23:03, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
 ::A lot of talk pages have disappeared, too.  I suspect some new users are going to show up very confused about what happened to them.  [[User:Chick Bowen|Chick Bowen]] 23:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
+== Redirects to Jonathan Bowers ==
+Hello! I wonder if I can get a second opinion on this matter. [[User:DecadeZone]] has been adding a list of redirects to the article [[Jonathan Bowers]]. All of them seem to be vocabulary for large numbers which was coined by the group Bowers is associated with. Should these redirects be left alone, or should they be nominated for deletion? There are quite a few of these redirects, and they seem to be vocabulary that is not widely known in the mathematical community. I have not seen this before on Wikipedia, but something does not feel quite right at the moment. What are your thoughts? --[[User:HappyCamper|HappyCamper]] 23:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

v t e Noticeboards
Wikipedia's centralized discussion, request, and help venues. For a listing of ongoing discussions and current requests, see the dashboard. For a related set of forums which do not function as noticeboards see formal review processes.
General	Administrators Main Incidents Bots Bureaucrats Centralized discussion Closure requests Education Interface admins Main Page errors Open proxies VRT Oversight User permissions
Articles and content	Biographies of living persons Copyrights Questions on media Problems Dispute resolution External links Fringe theories Neutral point of view Original research Pending changes Reliable sources Resource requests Scalable vector graphics Spam Blacklist Whitelist Style Titleblacklist Translation
Page handling	History merges Mergers Splits Moves Protection Importation XfD Articles Redirects Categories Templates Files Miscellany Undeletion
User conduct	Conflict of interest Contributor copyright Edit warring and 3RR Sanctions Personal restrictions General sanctions Contentious topics Sockpuppets Usernames (Requests for comment) Vandalism
Other	Arbitration Committee noticeboard Requests Enforcement Edit filters Requested False positives Questions Help desk Teahouse Reference desk New articles Requests for comment Village pump Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous WikiProject proposals Discussions for discussion
Category:Wikipedia noticeboards