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::::Uhh ok, I must have missed that meeting. Noted. What I meant to say was, the NPAs were ongoing despite warnings in the AFD and requests to stop and I've issued a block to prevent further disruptive personal attacks. Hopefully, when the block expires the user will no longer engage in personal attacks that disrupt the AFD. If they do not, another admin may want to extend until after the AFD is closed.--v/r - [[User:TParis|T]][[User_talk:TParis|P]] 19:40, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
::::Uhh ok, I must have missed that meeting. Noted. What I meant to say was, the NPAs were ongoing despite warnings in the AFD and requests to stop and I've issued a block to prevent further disruptive personal attacks. Hopefully, when the block expires the user will no longer engage in personal attacks that disrupt the AFD. If they do not, another admin may want to extend until after the AFD is closed.--v/r - [[User:TParis|T]][[User_talk:TParis|P]] 19:40, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
:::::Bit late here, but I see no reason not to deal a cool-down block if a user is being disruptive and isn't heeding warnings. Obviously, sysops shouldn't go blocking solely because they think a user may be upset - however, Tom's usage of the term to describe this block seems acceptable. [[User talk:Master of Puppets|<span style="color:#7d7d7d">m.o.p</span>]] 21:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
:::::Bit late here, but I see no reason not to deal a cool-down block if a user is being disruptive and isn't heeding warnings. Obviously, sysops shouldn't go blocking solely because they think a user may be upset - however, Tom's usage of the term to describe this block seems acceptable. [[User talk:Master of Puppets|<span style="color:#7d7d7d">m.o.p</span>]] 21:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
::::::TParis's block was perfectly fine: he blocked a user for personal attacks and/or disruption and said so on their talk page. Calling it a cooldown block (as above) generally raises eyebrows and/or hackles, though, given [[WP:COOLDOWN]]. [[User:28bytes|28bytes]] ([[User talk:28bytes|talk]]) 21:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)


== Niabot ==
== Niabot ==

Revision as of 21:54, 13 September 2011

    Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

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    User:Marshallsumter disrupting Wikipedia for "research" purposes.

    Marshallsumter, a previously productive editor, has recently created multiple articles which contain the words "Dominant group" and are essentially WP:SYNTH and WP:OR violations. Dominant Group was deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dominant group, while the others at Dominant group (disambiguation) are all at WP:AFD and heading for deletion. It is obvious from this page at Wikiversity that Marshallsumter is creating these pages for a somewhat arcane research purpose. I am not clear exactly what Marshallsumter is trying to do, but it certainly seems to be disrupting Wikipedia unduly. Marshallsumter is furthermore keeping copies of pages nominated for deletion/deleted in his userspace, as well as multiple drafts of similar "dominant group" articles, which is in violation of WP:WEBHOST and suggests that he intends to place them back in articlespace. The wikiversity page clearly states that the "research project" will last a year or more - "hopefully a conclusion can be reached in one year", and overall suggests that Marshallsumter is purposefully creating articles not to improve the 'pedia but to reach a conclusion about "dominant groups". Marshallsumter has produced other problematic pages recently, including Metadefinition and Repellor vehicle, but I cannot understand why. --S Larctia (talk) 21:25, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Yup. Conclusive proof that Marshallsumter is 'contributing' to Wikipedia for purposes other than improvement of the encyclopedia. He seems entirely unconcerned that his "target population" has given no consent for his research, nor that his actions have already caused considerable disruption. I can see no course myself but to block him on Wikipedia. And as for Wikiversity, I suggest that they should point out to him that such 'research' is unlikely to do their reputation any good. And incidentally, now that we know what he is doing, his results are going to be useless anyway (not that there looks to be much evidence that his 'research' was in any way useful in the first place). AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:41, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    An interesting discussion can be found at User talk:Tom Morris#Request for comment, where Marshallsumter tries to gain support for a Request for comment on his now deleted article Dominant group (art) - a clear case of him attempting to waste Wikipedians' time for the sake of his "research". --S Larctia (talk) 21:59, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Could it be seen as canvassing to post a link to this discussion in the ongoing AFD's? AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:22, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support block- I have looked at a handful of Marshallsumter's articles currently at AfD and his research proposal over at Wikiversity. I have to agree that he is only here to waste people's time with his "research", which is irrelevant, incoherent crap. Reyk YO! 22:25, 8 September 2011 (UTC) Changing opinion to oppose block- It seems MS is capable of writing credible articles on astronomical topics. As long as we get a commitment to leave his original research out of Wikipedia, there is no reason MS cannot be a productive editor. Reyk YO! 23:39, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually the articles were a response to a suggestion made here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dominant group to disambiguate and mentioned here User talk:Spartaz/Archive15#Dominant_group. I also asked User talk:Spartaz/Archive15, "I just read the next entry regarding another article where you are asking if the article creator is asking to have you review the close. If this is possible, and you can, please do so for 'Dominant group'." To which there was the response "I will come back with a response to your comments later today as I'm about6 to take my kids out to play in the woods for a couple of hours.", which I guess was done but not in writing. The close allowed a later article to be created if the new one was different, which I believed (still do) it was sufficiently. But the admin decided it was not and deleted it. So now we are here. And, I am still a productive contributor: Cometary globule. No further 'dominant group' or related articles will originate from me and be put in article space, nor will I contribute further unless asked. Further research will be filed elsewhere. Marshallsumter (talk) 22:43, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you propose to continue adding incoherent garbage on other topics, as with your Repellor vehicle article? AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Andy, you know I don't always approve of your grumpy words, but the gist of your question is valid (see my comment at the AfD). Drmies (talk) 22:58, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I see that the editor has shown no interest in contributing to the AfD discussions. That is troubling already. Their response here is a bit heartening, though. Anyway, it is clear to me that these articles are synthesis, and this is no place for it. That these articles were asked for sounds specious to me. Moreover, the AfDs clearly indicate that community consensus is against them. I was going to call for a block, even a ban, edit-conflicted with Reyk and Marshallsumter, and the latter's response takes the wind out of my sails. Anyway, what I would propose is a ban on creating new articles unless User:Marshallsumter agrees to study WP:OR and WP:SYNTH and agrees to not create any more articles that fall foul of those guidelines. I would construe that broadly, very broadly--and I don't know if that would be acceptable or not, but that is a way to prevent further disruption. Leaving the current articles alone while the AfDs run their course (they're on a fast train to deletion, on a snow-covered and therefore fast track) is a good start. If Marshallsumter can keep their word, "No further 'dominant group' or related articles will originate from me and be put in article space", to which I'd like to see them add "or user space", then I'm satisfied. Marshallsumter, you know that you interpreted this 'request' all too broadly; please don't do so again. Contributions are appreciated, but here we are, with an ANI thread and a dozen AfDs to plow through and close, and that is disruptive. Drmies (talk) 22:56, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for your comment. As it seems my understanding of 'original research', even after reading all of wikipedia's text on the subject differs from this group, may I suggest the following: I like to have people read my contributions, especially before put into article space, but my efforts in the past to get them read has been frustrating. If you would like, the next one I create I would be happy to request whomever's input where ever that might be convenient. My only restriction is this: you need to be a registered user and have written at least 20 articles that have been here for more than a year. Hopefully, this is fair. What do you think? Marshallsumter (talk) 23:09, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • In a nutshell: putting together Darwin's uses of "dominant" with "group," that's a kind of synthesis. That's the work of scientists, not of Wikipedia editor. If a person is both, that's legal (at least where I live), but scientific writing (which really by definition is synthesis and/or original research) is not for Wikipedia. As far as editors are concerned, you're talking about a kind of mentorship. The list of interest editors at Wikpedia:WikiProject Science is not regularly updates, and I don't know anyone active in your field (whatever field that is...). I'm tempted to nominate User:Materialscientist, but I nominate him for everything. Anyway, you will want someone with both a knowledge of Wikipedia and some working knowledge of science, I imagine. We have such editors here; maybe some of them frequent this page and are able and willing. I have no desire to block you; I'd rather have good contributions. But I also like a place that requires less mopping, so to speak. Drmies (talk) 23:51, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support indef block. This editor cannot understand Wikipedia's WP:NOR policy. His creations are too often incoherent. His articles frequently get nominated for deletion. If he were unable to edit it would waste less time for productive editors. Binksternet (talk) 23:04, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Just wanted to insert a comment here: other articles in the social sciences that are doing okay: Sex-neutral skill, Sex integration, Religion and sex segregation, Origin of sex segregation, and Occupational gender segregation. Marshallsumter (talk) 01:09, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • As far as I can tell from my skim of his edit history (below), the problem is that he has not demonstrated any ability to tell what is and isn't WP:N, WP:SYN, and WP:NOR. If "Sun as an X-ray source" and the resulting WT:AST thread is any guide, I'd wait for "Io as an X-ray source" to be vetted by WT:AST//WT:ASTRO before endorsing it as an example of a good article (as opposed to a content fork of the relevant section of Astronomical X-ray sources). I am not convinced, based on the history skim, that the autopatrolled flag or the DYK selection is a reliable quality indicator. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:58, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support non-indefinite block. This came up at WT:AST over Sun as an X-ray source (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I've just taken a look at M's last 2500 edits or so (and that's just this year), and the vast majority seem to be synthesis-related (albeit with a substantial minority being things like minor linking). He's extremely prolific, and while I'm willing to assume he's acting in good faith, it's going to take person-months of effort to vet what he's done and clean up all of the messes that have inadvertently been created. Per above, he also has a large collection of both drafts he's moved to user-space and personal forks of articles, which means all of this is likely to happen again in the future. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:48, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • True dat, on the user subpages. They need to be removed. There are articles also which I'm not qualified to judge (a quick look at Star fission reveals that the writing is certainly not wholly encyclopedic). But block or ban or not, those need to be perused anyway. The critical point, IMO, is article creation, also per Lady below. Drmies (talk) 23:58, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • At the very least, the "autopatrolled" status needs to be removed immediately. That so many articles so clearly in violation of NOR were created by one user indicates that other people need to be reviewing his or her work. With that addition, I could agree to Drmies's proposal. LadyofShalott 23:52, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree, no one who gets more than 10 articles deleted in such a short amount of time should be autopatrol...--Cerejota (talk) 23:59, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    autopatrol is removed. Drmies (talk) 00:02, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • oppose indef, support remove autopatrol and remove article creation rights (ie force WP:AFC) - I am the nominator of a large number of the Dominantgroupcruft, but indef here seems excessive and punitve. Marshallsumter is communicative and has not been uncivil or performed vandalism, but clearly cannot be allowed to create articles for now. I suggest an indefinite ban to be revised upon request either every three months or after successful creation via AfC of ten articles (ie if denied then create ten more). Some people here are out for blood, but lets focus on the real problem: lack of judgement in creating articles.--Cerejota (talk) 23:55, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Quick comment. Understanding the essence of the whole WP:NOR guideline can be difficult; I've had problems in the past properly grasping exactly what it means, although I grasp it now. It sometimes takes time to get the hang of it, particularly if a person is predisposed to thinking and researching.Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:14, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree WP:OR can be hard to grasp and contentious when talking about article content, and in particular WP:SYNTH is an issue, but I disagree that is the case with article creation, WP:NOR is fairly straight forward: if a topic only exists in your mind, then it is not worthy of inclusion. And the deletion discussion of Dominant group made that clear to this user. This becomes an issue of willful ignorance and we must take action to protect the wiki. THis user can take the elimination of the privilege to create articles directly as an opportunity to learn the letter and spirit of WP:NOR/WP:SYNTH.--Cerejota (talk) 00:27, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Seems rather fierce and somewhat punitive. Some of us Wikipedians (myself included) have learnt by making mistakes. That's all I'm saying. I am not familiar with the specifics of this user or those articles. --Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:54, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Punitive is the indef block proposal, which I suggest be reversed by those who support it and proposed it. Removing the privilege of article creation from someone who in this very thread is telling us he disregards our article creation policies, is not punitive, it is the every definition of protecting the wiki. When the community is satisfied the rules are understood, then the ban is removed - no harm done.--Cerejota (talk) 01:07, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd see a block here as preventative, not punitive: the point is to not have even more volunteer-months of vetting and likely cleanup to do. I'm open to other options, but at minimum, whatever option is chosen should result in the articles-to-vet queue shrinking rather than growing. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 01:25, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support removal of article creation rights - having spent the better part of a morning last week looking through this editor's history, I think they clearly need more practice editing articles and learning wikipedia protocols. I'm not convinced at all that this editor is willing to do so, but at the very least, they should not be allowed to create new articles.AstroCog (talk) 01:15, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. I think that we should perhaps look further into the content of the article posted by Marshallsumter at Wikiversity. In particular, I refer to the section entitled "Hoax hypothesis": "Specifically, the principal investigator (PI) is perpetrating an elaborate (or maybe not so elaborate) hoax on the Wikiversity community by passing off nonsense as real research and fact". I would like to see an explanation as to what 'research' he considered that he was conducting on Wikipedia, and an indication as to whether he intends to continue with this supposed 'research'. Given what he has written in Wikiversity, I think there may be strong grounds for assuming that his disruption was intentional. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:19, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The idea is to disprove all hypotheses except the 'Term hypothesis' and to determine what type of term it is. I have found one source that's helping with that: "One dictionary has been found which does contain a definition of dominant group: "a social group that controls the value system and rewards in a particular society." Moseby's Medical Dictionary.[1] Marshallsumter (talk) 01:31, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Well that definition is bollocks too. Nobody with any real understanding of the social sciences will assert that a society has a single 'value system'. Ridiculous. Still, if you use medical dictionaries for definitions of social science topics, what do you expect? AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:10, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    You know, when I read though his articles last week, my first thought was "This reads like the Sokal Hoax."AstroCog (talk) 01:25, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I second that, when I first saw the Dominantgroupcruft farm, mfw: WIKISOKAL. Then I thought this was the guy from San Diego with autism that has created one of the largest sock farms ever (I forget the name) but then I saw the coherent communication at Dominat group so then I decided this was willful. Hoax or not hoax, no article creation and lets see what the edits are to see if further blocking is warranted. I think this should go to ArbCom if its more serious because of the interwiki component...--Cerejota (talk) 01:33, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Having now had time to read the Wikiversity page, I am also concerned about this "research project". It is one thing to research how a particular topic is treated on Wikipedia. It is quite another to deliberately provoke reactions from people and then collect those reactions... If that is not what has occurred here, I would like an explantation of how I'm misinterpreting it. None of us gave consent to participate in someone's research experiment. LadyofShalott 01:47, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    You haven't been but you've made comments that I consider valuable and I noted them there. Unless I'm mistaken these are in the public domain. Marshallsumter (talk) 02:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The above comment was added by marshall while i was writing my comment below. If what he just wrote is what it sounds like, that he is using our current comments as part of his research, he needs to be banned indefinitely. if i am mistaken, heres my thoughts before he wrote the above statement:
    I havent read the Wikiversity page from start to finish, and i havent reviewed all of their edits, but im struck by the notion that they may be contributing material to the target "population" (hopefully this refers to articles not people) they are studying. If they are in fact editing material (WP) that they are using as the basis for their research, thats really, really, really bad research practice, like "lose your funding, your tenure, your job" bad practice. So we have either have an editor who is clueless as to original research, an editor who is deliberately writing bad articles to gauge responses, an editor who is using us editors as unwilling research subjects, or an editor who is engaged in flat out unethical research in their field (or some other as yet undetermined activity). I would support a total ban on article creation, a topic ban on any specialized fields where the technical level of discourse make it hard to judge content, and before that a time limited ban, say 6 months, along with hopefully someone who can mentor them. I also need an explanation from the editor that makes sense of all this arcane language at the wikiversity page, and explains in laymans terms what they were doing, and full Mea Culpas if they were doing any of their editing here as a research project with WP or the editors of WP as the subjects. I also would need to see all their subpages deleted that in any way mirror deleted articles or appear to be new articles blooming. I just dont feel comfortable with this material and this editor, and dont trust they are being upfront with us. I do, however, greatly appreciate that they are willing to talk with us and at least make some effort to stop some of the contentious editing. If they are actually a respected scientist in their field of expertise, i would love if they could tell someone who they are, who can confirm that without "outing" them. I would hate to lose an actual scientist or academic to our project.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:39, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Whether Marshallsumter is an 'actual scientist' or not I don't know - though what he is doing is self-evidently not 'actual science'. So, I'll put something else into the 'public domain' too - he is either a troll, exceptionally stupid, or just plain nuts (or any combination thereof). His last response suggests that he either doesn't understand the problem, or doesn't care - either way, he needs to be given the boot. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:55, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I've skimmed the linked wikiversity article about three times so far. As far as I can tell, it'd be best described as an "armchair research" hobby project: something he's doing for his own purposes that would be better described as "inspired by academic research" than called "academic research" itself ("goal is to disprove hypotheses A, B, and C and prove hypothesis D" was an especially clear indicator of this). Wikiversity isn't a university; it's a repository for people to create content that they feel might be useful to universities (much as WikiBooks lets you create textbook-like content). Long story short, the "research" appears to be a harmless personal project rather than any form of actual institutional meddling in Wikipedia.
    That said, I don't know exactly what he's trying to do or how Wikipedia comes into this. I've found that I usually have an easier time of things if I focus on peoples' actions on Wikipedia, rather than trying to delve too deeply into their motivations (ObCaveat that you guys may be better at understanding people than i am). For practical purposes, the Wikiversity page doesn't matter much (beyond potentially giving reason to ask M, "are you deliberately writing articles that violate WP:V/WP:OR?"). What mostly matters is the article creation spree on this wiki, with mixed quality and a lot of review hours needed. How to deal with that is (justifiably) under debate. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 03:07, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support ban on article creation, but disagree that it is sufficient: in the first round of mass AfDs of sex integration-related articles, I seem to recall that the user responded to the impending deletion by adding the material in question to other articles (without indicating that it was a "merge" from an article about to be deleted). From what I've seen of his contributions, I think a topic ban on social sciences, broadly defined would be appropriate. –Roscelese (talkcontribs) 03:11, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support indefinite block. I also read the Wikiversity article, and it seems to show a clear intention to use Wikipedia for something in direct contradiction to its fundamental purposes. If I understand it correctly (and no promises that I have--that thing is a mess), the logic is that xe uses Wikipedia itself as a test to so whether or not a definition exists for "dominant group", basically by throwing up every single possible definition in each field xe can think of, and then see if any of them survive our editing/deletion process. That is using Wikipedia to create new knowledge; we simply aren't here to do that. Would we allow a user to upload hundreds of images under various fair use rationale to test what a common understanding of "fair use" is among Wikipedia users? Would we allow someone to deliberately vandalize with the intent of testing human or AI ability to spot vandalism of various types? It is absolutely disruptive for dozens of other editors to now have to sort through xyr contributions to see if there is any actual, non-original research, verified information in the articles that is worth saving. Since Roscelese pointed out that this information extends to adding information to existing articles, an article creation topic ban is not sufficient. Since some of the articles, like Repellor vehicle fall outside of the social sciences, a ban there would be insufficient. More importantly, since Marshallsumter's fundamental purpose in using Wikipedia could easily be re-adapted to any topic, while retaining the same type of disruption, I cannot see any way to safely allow the user to keep editing. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:43, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Give him a cookie for good faith effort. He/she created ~270 new articles, and at least some of them (like Perinuclear space) are very much valid. Unfortunately, I do not have time to look at all pages created by him. Perhaps some of them should be deleted, but this must be decided by consensus at AfD. Biophys (talk) 04:31, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Site ban and nuke all pages created. The user clearly does not intend to abide by our core policy WP:NOR. After a look at their page creations, it is transparent that most or all of them are original research and that Marshallsumter does not intend to stop engaging in such. For instance, their most recent creation, User:Marshallsumter/Radiative dynamo, appears to be entirely original research by synthesis: while I have very little knowledge of physics, the term "radiative dynamo" is found almost nowhere on the Web except on Wikipedia and its mirrors, according to Google. It appears a reasonable assumption that all their contributions are at risk of being likewise deficient, and so require deletion as a precautionary measure. A ban on article creation is not sufficient, as that would not prevent the addition of original research to other pages.  Sandstein  05:48, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Actually, it turns out to be a WP:SYNTH-ish spin on a real concept. That triplet of articles (Radiative dynamo, Shell dynamo, and Distributive dynamo) describe various components of the interior flow within stars that generates their magnetic fields. The problem is we'd need a dedicated astrophysicist (with a university subscription to appropriate journal databases) to figure out what's synthesis, what's not, and what the final merged-and-trimmed article should look like (probably merged into stellar magnetic field and solar dynamo, though it'd be a shame to lose the more detailed content if it turns out to be verifiable). I made WP:AST aware of this triplet; what's needed is a long time spent with a mop while about three different wikiprojects work through the full article list and do merge/cleanup work. Preferably without any more such articles being generated in the meantime. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 06:00, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support three week block + indefinite ban on article creation - seeing the extent of Marshallsumter's creation of synthesis pages, including the sex integration ones. As s/he has been a productive contributor in molecular biology and astronomy before, some form of mentorship might be appropriate. I don't think Marshallsumter should be allowed to edit until we've sorted out the mess s/he's caused. S Larctia (talk) 06:09, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I came across this user's articles a few months ago, and they certainly had a distinctive style which made them easy to spot without checking the history. I notified MS of this here (diff) and he then sent a very reasonable reply indicating he had accepted some of my criticisms. This 'research' seems misguided but I don't think a block is called for, certainly not indef. The user appears to be willing to self-impose a ban on article creation by having them vetted first (AfC?) Jebus989 07:14, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • I've seen AfC proposed a few times here, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that that's probably a bad idea. I've seen a fair amount of dubious material pass through it despite the best efforts of the people manning the queue. It mostly functions to stop pages containing blatant vandalism, prank pages, or completely meritless content from being created. For articles like M's which take a specialist to make heads or tails of, I'd fear that AfC would function as a rubber-stamp and we'd be back to the status quo. Mentorship might work, but you're going to need experts in at least three unrelated disciplines to vet all of the topics M has been writing about over the last year or two, and he's prolific enough that it would be a full-time job to evaluate everything he wants to write. I'll be the first to cheer if you find volunteers for this, but I'm not sure it'll end up being practical. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:54, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • I agree with this actually, AfC would likely not pick up the issues we expect to see in this editor's articles. And the volume of articles produced thus far has created a significant workload; I tidied a couple myself before leaving him the above message and would not fancy repeating that on a hundred more. The fact that the user responds reasonably to criticism, though, makes me hope that this thread will be a wakeup call and serious action can be avoided Jebus989 08:32, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support block with a caveat - Obviously this user has some issues that need worked out, though I see no reason to take it any further than the minimum required to achieve the desired results. I see way too many people above that are quick to jump on the bandwagon of an indef block based on information they don't really understand. I'm an educated man, I took college-level astronomy, and I will be the first to say I'm nowhere near qualified to pass judgment on the legitimacy of most of this user's articles, I don't think there are more than a handful of people on the project that truly are. Typically absurd Sandstein-style hyperbole like "nuke all pages created" just show a disturbing level of cluelessness that makes me remember why too much Wikipedia gives me migraines. Action obviously needs to be taken, but I don't think that it involves more than the minimum block needed to protect the encyclopedia (blocks are not punitive. period. full stop.) and to recruit the correct people to verify this user's other created content. For the time being, I think we need to start with removal of article creation rights, and see where we stand after that. Trusilver 07:45, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ban and nuke. MS seems to be continuing his behaviour despite this AN/I thread (see User:Marshallsumter/By definition, especially the section on Impredicativity: the individual sentences make sense and are true, the article as a whole is utter nonsense) Sampling a few of the articles, they seem to be created by copying and pasting sentences from various journal papers into an incoherent whole. Unless someone is willing to vouch for the accuracy of particular articles, I strongly suggest indiscriminately nuking all articles he created. —Ruud 11:13, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Having previously extended good-faith to this user, I checked one of his articles for evidence of the above claim. The entire article was copy and paste. Several setences were copied from their respective 'main' articles on wikipedia (e.g. hypotrohpy section, RUNX2 section) while other sentences were copied word for word from their cited sources; examples:
    article: The HY box is the core promoter element responsive to RUNX2 in the human gene COL10A1 promoter
    source: the HY box is the core element responsive to RUNX-2 in human COL10A1 promoter
    article: The Runx2 site on the type X collagen promoter is required for canonical Wnt induction of col10a1.
    source: the Runx2 site on type X collagen promoter is required for canonical Wnt induction of col10a1
    Both of these were copied word-for-word from the abstracts of the respective sources, both under copyright. I retract my earlier good-faith assumptions, a large number of this user's articles may be copyvios Jebus989 11:57, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The same is true for other articles, e.g. Phosphate transistasis has:
    "positive feedback loop in which Ras signaling promotes CD44v6 splicing, and CD44v6 then sustains late Ras signaling, which is important for cell cycle progression" (without quotes) verbatim from this; and
    "the dominant feedback mechanism [in this cell type] appears to be Ca2+ stimulation of phospholipase C once this enzyme has been activated by hormone receptors" (without quotes) verbatim except for 4 bracketed words from this.
    -- 202.124.75.185 (talk) 15:03, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ban. Like Jebus, I also retract my earlier good-faith suggestion. Given the (admittedly barely comprehensible) mess at Wikiversity, the odd answers and suggestions given here and the general cryptic nature of their communications, the extent of dubious article creation tainted by charges of plagiarism and doubt about the facts, the broad reach of their original research and synthesis and their apparent unwillingness to understand those basic concepts (I thought it was incapability, but I know suspect bad faith in the existentialist sense), I think we have little option but to block/ban and hope that we can clean up this mess. I don't know if nuking is the way to go; I'll leave that to the experts. Drmies (talk) 15:12, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • In light of the copyvios, and mostly because of the research, I've blocked Marshallsumter indefinitely. I've encouraged him to read over WP:COPYVIO to help with that problem, but I don't see that he can remain a contributor while he is conducting this research; it can have a chilling effect much like a legal threat. Users will need to go over his contributions to check for more copyvios, which the below should help with. Cheers, everyone. lifebaka++ 15:18, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support nuking the articles, a topic ban and an article creation ban might be sufficient here instead of a full Site Ban. This user since 2008 has 8,821 live edits still, which suggests that they were contributing before this recent mess which is really bad. If this user decides to give up this disruptive "research" project he/she might want to come back as just a normal editor. Hobartimus (talk) 15:44, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm not sure "8800 edits" is a good thing. The 2500 that I skimmed looked a whole lot like more of the "recent mess", and I have a nasty suspicion that all of them might end up being the same mixture (some wikignoming, quite a bit of synthesis, and quite a lot of linking to his synthesis articles). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 01:51, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support ban. We have a prolific and credentialled editor who is generating lots of content. Unfortunately, that content cannot be trusted even though it may have lots of citations. High productivity and questionable content creates a lot of work for other editors. On the whole, there's a lot of damage to WP. It reminds me of an editor adding a lot of cited material about ancient mathematicians: half the material was right, but half of it was wrong. The problem is bigger than just creating articles. Stop the damage. Glrx (talk) 20:14, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Site ban and nuke all articles - per Sandstein. I took the time to examine a number of the articles, and too many of those I could understand were totally OR. The ones I couldn't understand need to be examined by an expert, but I feel that given the quality of the other articles, the assumption should be that an article created by this editor is suspect unless someone with expertise clears it. In any case, we are not a specialist encyclopedia, and an article on any topic with is not comprehensible to a reasonably intelligent adult shouldn't be here. The safest choice here is deletion of all the editor's articles, and a permanent site ban. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:37, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Let me add that it would be great if the articles could be cored sooner rather than later: I have a feelinng we may be in Sokal territory here (deliberately or not), and the longer these suspect articles are in the project, the more our reputation for accuracy takes a hit. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:43, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I analyzed a few articles where I had sufficient knowledge to do so Basically they consist of a random sampling of material from sources somewhat related to the topic. So, while each sentence had some legitimacy somewhere, as articles they were random gibberish. We have a big problem here. North8000 (talk) 16:02, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ban and delete It's clear we have a massive problem here, and if North8000's findings ring true for the whole list, we basically have a series of worthless articles. Combined with the copyvios and the copy-paste moves into userspace, we are left with a huge amount of cleanup to do. N419BH 18:46, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment I'm up to 4 articles, and the situation was the same on all 4. I have a new theory. This is a second experiment about Wikipedia... generate random collections of material as hundreds of articles, intelligent-sounding, where each sentence is legit somewhere but where the article is gibberish. And see how long before it gets discovered.  :-) North8000 (talk)

    Category

    I created Category:Articles created by User:Marshallsumter based on the list from Soxred93's tool. Currently has top 100, but will add full list soon. This is to aid on cleanup. A cursory look revels most of the material is not deletable, but alot is mergable, some of it redundant (as such WP:COATRACK/WP:POVFORK) and otherwise problematic. I am tagging with "expert" attention tags as I get time. Please help by tagging the articles with the category and deleting from the list.--Cerejota (talk) 02:14, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks; I've pinged the astronomy project about it. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 02:24, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I update the cat with the list, and added a few to the cats and commented them out of the list, please help with that part too ;)--Cerejota (talk) 02:25, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Before too many AfDs get under way/too much cleanup work is done I suggest waiting until the copyright status of these articles becomes clear (see above). All the ones I have seen have sections copied from other WP articles without attribution (WP:CWW) and at least one contains copy-and-pasted copyrighted material (I would bet many more do) Jebus989 12:43, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Please keep in mind that most PubMed abstracts (such as that one quoted at above) are available under NIH free access policy, and therefore their use is not a copyright violation per se. And even if there is a copyright violation, one should only remove a part of the text, not the article. Looking at Structural phosphate, some parts of the text are written by someone who was well-intended, but did not clearly understand the subject and terminology ("The structural phosphate becomes the hydrolyzed nucleotide" or "EC 4.1.3.8 contains one structural phosphate"). This is all fixable. Biophys (talk) 18:08, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Free access does not mean public domain material, it just means they are granting you access without charging you. See the PMC copyright notice at NIH. —SpacemanSpiff 18:22, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    also when dealing with non-attributed copy-paste, make sure the material is restored in the original source, some of these were forked with material removed.--Cerejota (talk) 18:24, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    • Cerejota is in my understanding correct: the abstract is publicly available, but in most cases it otherwise remains under the same copyright restrictions as the article, and may be viewed, but not republished. NIH copyright policy--the abstracts are not written by pubmed staff, but transcribed from the article. Open access is much less than "free" in the sense WP uses it. DGG ( talk ) 22:45, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree, and I was not the one who commented on pub med, I simply spoke about internal attribution, a topic I am very familiar with (see below soon).--Cerejota (talk) 23:43, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • More generally, under our own copyright policy, anyone may use Wikipedia content as they see fit as long as they preserve attribution. This does not mean they may contribute to Wikipedia content as they see fit. Wikipedia:Research isa guideline, not policy, but I think it has wide consensus, and says "Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point, even if that point is in the name of research." If these articles are true research, it appears to me that the point is to examine what a community of people judge to be a fixed phrase as distinct for am ad hoc combination. Introducing a large number of very questionable articles under this guise is indeed disrupting Wikipedia. It might have been reasonable to test a few articles, choosing ones where acceptance by the community would be a real possibility, and be guided by the results. I doubt it would ever be acceptable to introduce articles that any reasonable person would know to be unacceptable, just to see how we get them out--certainly not in such numbers. There are quite enough genuine AfD discussions to observe. DGG ( talk ) 22:45, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I draw your attention to {{Notice-history-incomplete}} and {{Notice-history-incomplete-multi}} templates I created in 2007 for the purpose of drawing attention to attribution issues. So I am very familiar with these questions, and for some time :) I know we are now CC etc, I am just giving you an idea of the time frames we are talking here...--Cerejota (talk) 23:55, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Updated {{CWW}} and {{CWW-multi}}--Cerejota (talk) 09:13, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • DELETE IT ALL. I strongly suspect that there is a lot of copyvio buried here along with all the synthesis. I think the only clean way to root it out is just to delete it. Example: I tried some searches for phrases in calibrated camera (a topic that I believe can be encyclopedic) and found many long phrases copied from this 1987 paper. Together with the other known problems in this work I believe the cost of trying to salvage anything from them is too high, and the benefit too small, to do anything but delete them all. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:31, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That was one of the ones I reviewed in depth and found to be a random gibberish collection of material. So we have a random gibberish collection of copy vio's. North8000 (talk) 17:19, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Delete as much as possible. I'm an astrophysicist, and I tried to edit some of Marshallsumter's bad articles (Proton-proton annihilation and Stellar surface fusion among others. They're incredibly disruptive articles---they seem to consist of vague keyword searches, assembled into boilerplate pseudo-articles citing every Google Scholar hit on a few related terms; furthermore, they link densely to one another, creating a tiny distorted walled-garden-pedia which I presume is the point of the disruption. Please scour it away before any more editors make my mistake---and waste time trying to "improve" this hall of mirrors. Bm gub2 (formerly User:Bm_gub) 02:01, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Delete as much as possible I analyzed some where I had the knowledge to do so and found them to be a random gibberish collection of material from elsewhere. I'm starting to suspect that this is some kind of a giant HOAX. North8000 (talk) 16:34, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Some texts indeed remind computer-generated combinations of paragraphs taken from wikipedia and other sources like texts in WikiGenes [1]. But such texts can be used as initial version for human editing, and some articles created by him have been corrected by other editors (like here. So, please respect their contributions. No blank deletion without review, please. Biophys (talk) 20:52, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I took a look at the linked example. First, it appears to have the same problem, though I am not an expert in that field. Other than the first sentence, it appears to be a random collection of related material from elsewhere. Again, each sentence is legitimate/correct somewhere and has some relationship to the topic, but there is no real article writing writing here, and, as an article it is total gibberish. It has had only a tiny amount of work (like adding a ref) by others, no rewriting. Plus, regarding building a real article, the current state is "less than zero". Trying to edit such a random mess into a article would probably start with, after dozens of hours of careful deliberation, removing 100% of the content and then starting over. North8000 (talk) 10:13, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure, the Perinuclear space is not a good coherent article. But it is not a "total gibberish". No, this is more "than zero", because it defines the subject and provides some sourced information about the subject. I have seen many articles much worse than that. Neither of them was (or could be) deleted after AfD discussions. This is wikipedia, not Encyclopedia of Life Sciences. Biophys (talk) 15:09, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Copyvio issues

    A number of instances of copyvio were noted above. Perinuclear space is also a problem, since that article talk page includes an admission of WP:CWW. -- 202.124.74.191 (talk) 00:51, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Should I open a WP:CCI? MER-C 02:26, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That seems like a wise move at this point. LadyofShalott 02:31, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I still favor the nuclear option. No offense to the diligent folks who work there, but cleaning up through CCI can take a long time, and there are serious issues here beyond COPYVIO, particularly NOR and possibly HOAX. I don't believe this editor is any longer worthy of AGF: nuke now and ask questions later. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:49, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The easiest option might be to PROD every article this editor has created, on the basis of probable WP:OR and copyvio, and then handle the ones that survive. -- 202.124.73.9 (talk) 03:23, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Prod isn't even necessary. Just delete them. A CCI will identify his contributions to existing articles. MER-C 03:38, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support indef block and delete all Please do not open a copyright investigation. As others have stated, whether intended or not, the text introduced by the editor is indistinguishable from a hoax (albeit clever enough to waste vaste amounts of time from WP:AGF). Accordingly, the editor should be indefinitely blocked and all content should be removed. Johnuniq (talk) 03:40, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Does it mean that Wikigenes is a copyright violation? The entire resource consists from computer-generated combinations of phrases taken from PubMed abstracts [2]. No one complained about copyright violation in wikigenes. Biophys (talk) 04:08, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Can't comment on WikiGenes, but it's copyvio for Wikipedia to copy from copyrighted abstracts. -- 202.124.73.227 (talk) 05:25, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    WikiGenes can probably claim "fair use" in a way that Wikipedia's licensing terms do not permit. -- 202.124.73.227 (talk) 05:54, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • No CCI, just G12 A CCI seems an incredible waste of time and space for this given all the other problems. In this case if two editors identify copyright issues in parts of the article they just ought to be deleted. A modified version of G12. {{db-G12|url=See Marshallsumter discussion at ANI; text in this article has been copied from xxx}} —SpacemanSpiff 06:09, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I second that and get all the open AfDs closed as delete per SNOW or G12.--Cerejota (talk) 06:34, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I suggest that, per normal practise, we G12 cases which are obvious copyright violations, and send others (such as Io as an X-ray source) where the copyright violation is much less clear, to the copyright noticeboard. S Larctia (talk) 09:29, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Site ban, and delete most articles. All of the articles by this editor I have looked at have WP:CWW problems, many of them have direct copyvios from the references, and most of them seem in fact to be barely coherent juxtapositions of quotations from the cited sources. It may be possible that there is some small amount of worthwhile content out there, but I suggest that articles be deleted with prejudice unless a very good reason can be found to keep them. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:06, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment the user also seems to be copying articles they created from main space to a subpage of their user page User:Marshallsumter/Repellor vehicle is from Repellor vehicle. In doing so they seem to be copying the most recent version ([3] is in their subpages), regardless of changes by other users in the interim and without noting the source which is a likely to be deleted article. I.E. They are violating contributors copyrights. It seems they don't understand they need to request an article be moved, along with the history, to their user space if it contains contributions not their own. Given this problem (although it sounds like this should be obvious due to the possible copyvios with their content in general), I suggest all their user page sub pages be deleted. Nil Einne (talk) 16:27, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Marshallsumter's continued Wikiversity activity

    Over at Wikiversity, Marshallsumter is recreating many of his synth/copyright pages - i.e. [4]. You can find a catalogue of them at his userpage [5], although there are several more. --S Larctia (talk) 21:56, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Are any WikiVersity admins watching this discussion? I have no idea what the policies are over there, but I would assume that copyvios are verboten there too. LadyofShalott 03:26, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmmmmm. Count Iblis (talk) 04:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Judging by his talk page on 'versity, I'd assume that at least someone is aware. I couldn't locate anything akin to WP:AN to leave a general notice at, however, so I didn't try to get more eyes on it. Cheers. lifebaka++ 04:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The closest there is to WP:AN over there is [6]. However, don't expect to get a positive response. Abd, a banned sockpuppeteer on en.wikipedia is a custodian there, and has essentially told Marshallsumter on his talk page that 1) his en.wiki block was uncalled for 2) his research is suitable for Wikiversity 3) he should copy all the pages that were deleted from Wikipedia for copyright reasons to Wikiversity. Apparently original research, hoaxes and minor copyright violations are alright there as long as they are "educational". Good grief. --S Larctia (talk) 07:46, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikiversity got exactly what it deserved, if they chose him as a custodian after all the bullshit in wikiversity:Wikiversity:Candidates_for_Custodianship/Abd_2. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:02, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    So the Foundation doesn't care about copyright there? I don't understand that, but then Wikiversity seems to be a place where almost anything goes - if you write a rubbish article here and it's deleted because it ignores all our policies and guidelines, you seem to be able to add it there. It's almost a reason not to donate to the Foundation. Dougweller (talk) 15:21, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Is there a general Wikimedia noticeboard to comment about the way that banned Wikipedia users are now running Wikiversity ? :S --S Larctia (talk) 16:02, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Guys, this isn't exactly on topic. I'd suggest starting a thread at one of the village pumps or the mailing list if there's more to discuss. We ain't gonna' be able to solve any such problems here. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:41, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Just popping a few words here from the perspective of someone who has had some positive experiences with the English Wikiversity:

    1. Wikiversity is actually a pretty good place for university-level instructors to organize collaborative projects. That's mostly what goes on these days if you look at the RC feed.
    2. Wikiversity's mission and scope is poorly defined. This has been good in some ways, but very problematic in others.
    3. Like most WMF wikis that aren't the English Wikipedia, there's a certain resistance to following the lead of the English Wikipedia. This sometimes reaches the point where anything the en.wp community says is just assumed to be wrong-headed.
    4. There's been a disproportionate amount of "drama" over the past 3 years or so, which has led most of the admins to give up and just ignore anything that might involve yet another drama, so the only people willing to "take on the mantle" these days tend to be people like Ottava Rima and Abd. Speaking for myself, I've pretty much given up now that Abd has yet again become an admin.

    If you want to fix en.wv, just become an admin there and fix it. Seriously: I'm a 'crat there, and will happily give tools to any sane admin from WP who's willing to spend a minimal amount of time watching over a very slow project. --SB_Johnny | talk 23:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Just one more thing to put out there: Abd is pretty much the guy in charge of RC patrolling and doing admin chores these days. He's also done his share of doing experimental research on the WP community. --SB_Johnny | talk 00:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The only good thing about Wikiversity is that no-one outside the project has heard of it. If anyone does re-open a "Close it all down" movement, please flag it clearly here too. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:00, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    There seems to be consensus here for a ban...

    Resolved
     – There is clear and overwhelming consensus for a ban. Deletion issues are being discussed in the sections below. --SB_Johnny | talk 17:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

    ...and for deleting all the articles. I know that we try to give ban discussions a good amount of time to come to fruition, but in the meantime, I would think a mass deletion of all the articles would be a good thing. The ban discussion can continue, but deleting the articles protects the project from potential harm -- and DRV can undo any mistakes. I'd like to say again that our rep is at issue here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:08, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Seconded. I withdraw my previous statement that the articles should be refactored. With this much copyvio, it becomes easier to write new articles from scratch instead. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 05:18, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree, having participated in discussion with this editor (for example, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dominant group (Moon), it is obvious that nothing short of a ban and a wholesale delete will adequately protect the project, as the user in question seems to want to intentionally cause a problem as part of his "research" and so many issues exist with current creations. Moogwrench (talk) 05:31, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Ban - Marshallsumter's extensive copyright violations and deceptive responses are a major issue. Deleting all the articles per CSD G12 is probably the way forward if the copyright violations are ambiguous. --S Larctia (talk) 06:59, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Delete all of the articles, and block the individual Offer them due process before a ban. I'm up to checking about 6 articles, and the story was the same on all of them. As an article, random gibberish. A random collection of related material from elsewhere, each piece of material correct and legit elsewhere, but the collection is uninformative random gibberish as an article. And for those topics where an article is in order, the current state is less-than-zero. It would be much easier to start from zero than trying to modify those random messes. Also, all of the 6 IMHO either shouldn't have been a topic or didn't need to be a topic. So even keeping these as one-sentence stubs (which I contemplated suggesting) may be a less-than-zero value situation. Again, this was based on reviewing about 6 articles. My theory is that this is a big hoax which successfully showed a Wikipedian weakness...that (except for copy vios) our policies/guidelines look much more favorably on random messes such as these than they do on the editor activities like summarization and material selectivity that create informative articles. North8000 (talk) 10:41, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oppose to deletion of all his articles without review because some of them appear to be valid (see my comments above). There is an ongoing review process using prods and AfDs, and this is way to go. Biophys (talk) 15:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oppose deleting all articles without review. Some are okay. Binksternet (talk) 15:46, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oppose deleting articles. How about some people do something totally amazing and actually do a little research before giving a dismissive shrug and saying "delete everything"? I've spent a day and a half now picking through these articles one by one and checking the references for them. A majority of them are so filled with OR and SYNTH issues that they are totally beyond redemption, but there's still a sizable chunk of legitimate articles here. Trusilver 15:58, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Any examples of legitimate articles which make sense, aren't made up of copyvios and non-attributed CWW and are devoid of OR? Jebus989 17:28, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, even ONE example of an article which informs, makes sense, and was actually written about the topic vs. a random collage generation would certainly sway me to say slow down. North8000 (talk) 17:42, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I went through fourteen articles yesterday that this individual created, about half of them I am in agreement to delete, a few I'm unsure of, but I'm supporting keeping Propulsion system, List of human hair color genes needs work by someone that knows what they are talking about, but is still legitimate. List of solar X-ray astronomy satellites is good. Sounding rocket X-ray astronomy looks like it has some potential or at least some worthwhile information to merge into Sounding rocket but I've spent 10 hours in the last two days reading this guy's writing, and I'm too burned out at this point to even consider doing any more today. Trusilver 17:56, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I have yet to see an articlre for this editor that held up under close scrutiny. Propulsion system, for example, has massive WP:CWW. -- 202.124.73.164 (talk) 23:22, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Not only that, but IMHO that "better" article Propulsion system isn't even a legit article topic and as an article is worthless. That's like writing an article on "wheels for movement" and then putting in material on various things in the world that move with wheels. A section describing automobiles, a section describing trains, roller skates etc.
    I spent time fixing articles months ago (e.g. HY box and degenerate nucleotide) but I've seen enough in the thread above and in this user's contribution history to honestly think deleting everything is going to save a number of users a lot of time and effort, at little or no loss to the encyclopedia. When you add to this the legal implications of the copyvios (which appear to be widespread in these articles) and to a lesser extent the CC violations of copying from other articles without attribution, I think a quick mass delete becomes the only viable option Jebus989 18:09, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I hate the idea of deleting content that is good, but at the same time I DO have a very easy time seeing your point. I have wasted two days worth of free time reading and researching just a small fraction of this user's articles. So I'm not about to say I don't see the benefits of your suggestion. Trusilver 18:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That's fair. And I'm not trying to 'drive the point home' but taking a look at List of human hair color genes, which you give as an example of a legitimate article, 'White hair' section is copied from Achromotrichia#Grey and white hair, the dermal matrix melanocyte section is copied from melanosome and possibly others, each other section is copied from its respective "main" article (all unattributed, falling foul of WP:CWW). The table at the end appears to be synthesis, as it bears no reference and links together several gene functions Jebus989 18:29, 11 September 2011 (UTC) edit: I just picked this one out of your examples as biology is my subject of interest, a quick look at the others suggests the same issues.[reply]
    • Nuke articles created by MS, reluctantly. I don't think salvage is worth the effort. I'd like an alternative such as propose-delete each, but then we're trusting that someone who removes the tag has also vetted the article against copyright and other problems. I don't think we can choose that alternative. We are aware of many copyright problems, so it is our duty to find them rather than just wait for a copyright holder to complain. I don't think there is a viable half step. Glrx (talk) 20:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Plan B. Propose delete all articles on the list for copyvio, or, and synthesis. After that cycle has run, look at the surviving articles on the list and decide their fate. If too many remain, nuke could still be on the table. Esoteric subjects will still be a problem to judge, but many may not survive propd. Glrx (talk) 01:32, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. I support a community ban. It seems clear that most of this editor's contributions have been deliberately designed to disrupt the project a la the Sokal affair. There's always the Wikipedia:Standard offer. The condition of which that I would like to see enforced is that this editor must make a full public disclosure of his attempts to inject nonsense into the project. It is clear to that this was willful disruption: the admission of a research project is particularly damning in this regard, but the pattern of nonsensical articles also speaks for itself I think. As for whether his articles should be deleted, I also prefer to deal with them on a per case basis. However, I am inclined to err on the side of accidentally deleting possibly good, copyright clean content, rather than to allow bad, misleading, nonsensical, or potentially infringing material to remain in article space. If there is a question about copyrights, plagiarism, copying from other Wikipedia articles without attribution, or OR/SYNTH/nonsense, I am prod'ing or AfD'ing them. About 80% of the articles I have reviewed have had multiple such issues (the other 20% were inconclusive). I don't wish to be overzealous in issuing prods. I would welcome the opportunity to work with any editor on improving any article that I prodded, if someone sees that the content can be rescued. Please stop by my talk page if you wish to discuss this with me. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment  I spent a few more minutes on Greenland ice cores, and verified a source, [7].  It wasn't a source that would reveal a copyvio.  There was an error in the citation, in that the page listed, 23, was the page that the Acrobat PDF reader reports as the page number, not the page number, 21, that would be found in hard copy.  Here is the comparison from another source with the article:
    • We report here measurements of [SO4 2−] and [NO3 −] in firn samples spanning the period 1895–1978. Samples, each covering 1 yr, were taken from a 70-m core drilled at Dye 3, South Greenland; [NO3 −] and [SO4 2−] both increased by a factor of ˜2 during the period.
    • Dye 3 1978 to 90 m, measurements of [SO42-] and [NO3-] in firn samples spanning the period 1895-1978 are from the Dye 3 1978 core down to 70 m,
    In conclusion for this source, no copyvio.  I'm new to the issue of WP:CWW, but at Greenland ice cores it seems that the articles from which the text is copied are clearly identified.  My initial impressions continue to be "keep".  Unscintillating (talk) 22:36, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    But this article has image copyvio problems. -- 202.124.73.164 (talk) 23:42, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • (e/c) I've found copyvios in that article that I won't repeat. See the AfD discussion if you're interested. Let me reiterate an observation that I made there, though: with this editor, if you don't find a copyright violation, then you simply haven't looked hard enough. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:45, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    "Too little value" -- the overwhelming majority of articles have WP:OR and WP:SYNTH issues, and even articles that looked OK to me (e.g. on astronomy) have turned out to be problematic when experts looked at them. "Too much copyvio" -- most articles I've seen from this user have copyvio of some kind: copying from sources, WP:CWW, or image copyright problems. The presumption has to be that copyvio exists in them all, unless someone does a very careful check to exclude it. -- 202.124.73.164 (talk) 23:42, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    We still have to look at these on an individual basis. I cited Vertikal, below, as an article that in my opinion (now) is unproblematic. Drmies (talk) 00:38, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    202 is overstating the case about image copyright problems and it is not helpful.  One of the "image copyright" issues mentioned at WP:Articles for deletion/Greenland ice cores is a public domain NASA image of Greenland used in 50 articles.  There are two new issues posted within the last hour on two other images from the Neils Bohr Institute, issues that I don't understand, but appear likely to be resolved with return email.  Certainly none of these "image copyright" issues rises to the level that they should be given any weight whatsoever at the current time toward a consideration of banning.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:05, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't believe that anyone ever suggested there was a problem with the NASA image at Greenland ice cores, just the others. And it turns out that Greenland ice cores also has text copyvio problems. -- 202.124.72.232 (talk) 02:06, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    @Drmies - Even in as simple an article as this, there are copyvios. Consider:
    Vertikal#Vertikal 10: Electrostatic analyzers aboard Vertikal 10 detected fluxes at night of cold ions moving from the mid-latitude plasmasphere to the ionosphere after launch on December 25, 1981, at 22:35 MLT.[11] The flux velocity is approximately 1000 m/s with a flux density of 0.8-4.0 x 108 cm-2 s-1.

    Original source: Electrostatic analyzers aboard the Vertikal'-10 rocket (launched on December 25, 1981 at 22.35 MLT) detected fluxes of cold ions moving from the midlatitude plasmasphere to the ionosphere at night at L = 2. The flux velocity was observed to be approximately 1000 m/s, and the flux density was (0.8-4.0) x 10 to the 8th/sq cm s.
    The passage is reffed to the abstract, but the degree of difference between the original and the resulting text is not enough to take it out of the realm of copyright violation. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. Marshallsumter is currently working on his page on Wikiversity, by integrating the discussions we have here about him. His page on Wikiversity even link to delete discussions on Wikipedia. Example: His article "Dominant Group (moon)" was deleted because it was not a valid subject. The discussion about it is now used as a reference in his own research: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Dominant_group#Astronomy. He is using us as a jury to decide the existence of some concepts he put as titles for new articles.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Martin7x (talkcontribs) 00:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Manually crawling his contributions and adding the cat is likely to be the best we can do, unless someone wants to write a bot to find everything (and it'd need viewdeleted rights to see many of them). As for the earliest, it appears to be Inhibitory peptide (admin-only link), which was deleted via Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Inhibitory peptide. The second, Riboside, looks fairly kosher at first blush (though I haven't checked for copyvios myself). And the third article he created, List of human ATPase genes, is currently at AfD for the same reasons many of his other articles have problems, so I don't know what can be concluded other than what we already knew. Cheers. lifebaka++ 03:07, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment I just took a close look at the first article Riboside that they put up as they initially put it up in 2008 and the gibberish-regarding-being-an-article pattern is already there. It started with a 6 word sentence "defining" it: "A riboside is any glycoside of ribose" and linking to the entire articles on those two words. End of explanation about Riboside. Then it immediately changes the subject to all kinds of sophisticated material which is not about the topic. The only thing in the rest of the article that was about the topic is a brief statement stating that a particular item is an example of a Riboside (taken from a source). I see no attempt there to really write anything about Ribosides nor inform the reader about them. North8000 (talk) 03:43, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Delete all and ban the creator - I've just been looking at astronomical X-ray source and that is another mish-mash job that seems to have involved pasting together bits from different articles. This is all absolutely horrendous, and I'm still puzzled that no-one spotted these before now. I can only think that they were a walled garden unto themselves and people searching for articles vaguely on these topics were ending up at the real articles with different names (which would rank higher in Google searches, I hope) and that these fraudulent articles were only linked to themselves. Carcharoth (talk) 04:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm guessing on two common scenarios on how they "got by" this long. #1 Someone reads it, looks impressive, but they get nothing out of the article. They just think: "I guess I'm not smart enough to understand this article" #2 For folks who know better, but don't have the big-picture context of the overall suspicions, it just looks like one badly written article. There are also sincerely written technical articles with issues that look similar. A lot of piecemeal material which sort of "talks around the edges" of a topic without really explaining / defining it. It takes someone with the rare combination of empathy for the non-expert reader, strong expertise on the subject, ability to write/summarize (violating wp:nor if taken literally) & willingness to spend the time to fix the article. North8000 (talk) 11:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ban I was initially inclined toward just letting the indef stick. But no fewer than seven articles have been found that are laden with copyvios. Additionally, his behavior at Wikiversity could put the WMF in great legal danger. Seal the vault. Blueboy96 12:09, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ban to protect the project, for the reasons given above by Carcharoth and Blueboy96 above. Moreover, even after the mass-deletion of articles created by this user, there is still an immense amount of material to wade through checking for copyvios: the effort involved will soak up many editors' efforts for some time to come. The Wikversity hints about this being a "research activity" are the last straw. -- The Anome (talk) 13:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Exile to WikiVersity. Count Iblis (talk) 17:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    Needed: Bold appplication of WP:IAR

    I think this situation is precisely the kind of circumstance that IAR was designed for. Sure, we could limp along dealing with this with our usual processes, but as we do, our exposure is greater and greater, and the probability that people will try to use these articles becomes higher. I think it would be much better to speedy delete them under IAR, then if people have concerns that perhaps a good article or two was deleted in the process, specific ones can be userfied for expert examination (or looked at on Wikiversity). Doing it the other way will be much too slow, and too dangerous. Let's start undoing this mess instead of worrying away at it.

    If a bold admin (or two or three) isn't willing to step up and do the right thing, then the only other option to cut short our slow-motion car crash would seem to be opening an arbitration case, and who the hell wants that? Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:45, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

     Doing..., using the list from X!'s tool. T. Canens (talk) 06:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The category might be better, because it list those that already survived AfD or otherwise not kosher (ie in AfD). Also gave you barnstar.--Cerejota (talk) 06:15, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you, T. Canens!! I hope you don't get a lot of blowback from this. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
     Done. Orphaned talk pages and broken redirects can be handled in the usual course. No objections to any admin undeleting at their own discretion without consulting me. T. Canens (talk) 06:43, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    This is one of the most awesome things I have seen any admin do in a big while... this should go into WikiHistory--Cerejota (talk) 06:52, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, excellent work! I think we are supposed to have spent at least another week debating whether obvious junk should be deleted, but sometimes common sense does win. Johnuniq (talk) 07:23, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Wow, I'm impressed. Did we get the ones he userfied too? Also, does someone want to judge consensus for a ban? N419BH 07:47, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    All the self-userfied pages and drafts are also gone. -- The Anome (talk) 11:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    An editor who is indef blocked and just had every article he ever created deleted from the encyclopedia is unlikely to be unblocked any time soon, so there's a de facto ban in place -- but it might still be a good idea to formalize a community ban, just in case somone comes along who doesn't understand the enormity of what this editor did. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:13, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Now formalized. --SB_Johnny | talk 17:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    11:28, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

    ATTENTION

    If you think any of these articles was worth it, or the topic notable, simply userfy a deletion and work from that (if you are a regular user ask any admin to userfy it for you). Otherwise, simply start the article from scratch - but be careful with WP:CWW issues if you userfy. In my case I already got me one userfied, but I am planning on skipping any WP:CWW by only using infobox and the bare sources/links. I want to minimize giving credit, but do it in a legal way.--Cerejota (talk) 07:42, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Existing article contributions

    While the creations have all been deleted, there are still other articles that have to be checked. e.g. X-ray astronomy. Between this revision and this revision he has added more than 160KB of content to the article, there were a few minor edits by others, but I don't doubt that at least 95% of the added content is from Marshallsumter. In fact, the amount of content added to this article is more than the size of many of the creations. I'm sure there are other articles like this, but these need someone from the relevant wikiprojects to look at them for OR/SYNTH issues and possibly a CCI to address copyvios. —SpacemanSpiff 09:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    On further looking at the history, I see that content was split off from the above example to X-ray astronomy detectors, X-ray astronomy history, and X-ray astrophysical sources and also partially merged to X-ray astronomy satellites etc. So, it's not just direct contributions that need checking. —SpacemanSpiff 10:42, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Geez, that is a nightmare. What we need is some magic way to lift his contributions out, leaving behind everything else, and then fix the article from there. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:09, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm working on a list of the articles he edited that weren't article creations. I've gotten through 2008 & 2009. I'll post again when I'm done.Cloveapple (talk) 10:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The contribution survey does that automatically. (It's intermittently broken, just hammer reload a few times. I have a copy saved to my hard disk.) MER-C 10:44, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmmm, Sounds like I should quit working on my list. Can we put a copy of the contribution survey somewhere central so people could see what articles have been checked and what remains to be done? Maybe something like the list on page Category:Articles created by User:Marshallsumter? Cloveapple (talk) 11:01, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I've dumped it at User:MER-C/Marshallsumter for now. It may be moved under WP:CCI. MER-C 11:46, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Wow. I'd gotten farther on the list then I realized. The list on page Category:Articles edited but not created by User:Marshallsumter has 198 out of 221 contributions. Should I put it up for deletion or would adding the articles to a category be helpful? (I'd only categorized one so far.)Cloveapple (talk) 12:12, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I think in this case a diff listing is more helpful. I have no opinion on the categorization. MER-C 13:23, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    A big chunk of that diff are blatant pastes from various NASA articles, including [8] [9]. Although it's public domain, it doesn't look good. The duplication detector fails on the most used source. I should note that all a CCI is is a listing of major contributions by one editor. While the intention is to look for copyvios, a contribution survey can also be used to eliminate (say) systematic additions of OR or poorly sourced BLP material throughout Wikipedia. MER-C 10:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I would agree with MER-C that a diff listing is more helpful. Also, the other articles he has touched have also been edited by multiple other editors and most of them are likely to be regular topics (for lack of a better term), so adding the category, even if it's hidden isn't really a necessity IMO. The article list is available, based on the categories within the articles they could be divvied up to wikiprojects and at least announced on their talk pages as those needing some special attention. —SpacemanSpiff 15:15, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    [10] contains a copyvio from [11]. MER-C 10:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I took a look at Pulsar, Astronomy, Earthworm, Mosquito, Lightning, Gliese 412, Brown dwarfs, Comparative anatomy, SN 185, Phosphate, and Nuclear Fusion. None had the problem where the article was significantly gibberish. I just gave those articles a quick overall look for that problem, nothing else. North8000 (talk) 14:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Just because an article was created by this editor doesn't mean it needs an out of process deletion, which is what has happened here (anytime somebody invokes IAR you know they've broken rules). I can't get uncited BLPs deleted as fast as you've deleted all of Sumter's articles!! So how do you justify THAT?

    Because of this "bold" move (why don't you bold people go work on the 1000 BLPs with no source?), I now can't go over gamma-ray production or list of astronomical gamma-ray sources to see what it salvagable. I did contribute some to the first article (as I recall) and that's gone, too. If the second article involved copying a lot of lists from NASA, so what? Many list articles are straight copies, and if the original is a government document meant to be disseminated and copied, so much the better. As a result of this purge (what else to call it??) Wikipedia no longer contains a list of astronomical gamma ray sources. I can invoke WP:IAR to point out that you've harmed the encyclopedia thereby. SBHarris 17:33, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Read the "ATTENTION" section above. If you'd like one of the articles userfied in order to fix it, please ask any admin. N419BH 17:48, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    There was a pretty strong consensus for the move, a strong rationale for it, and consensus that it was important for doing so. North8000 (talk) 17:51, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    As far as I can tell, neither of the two pages you cited has ever existed on Wikipedia. T. Canens (talk) 19:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, the exact names are Gamma-ray generation and Astronomical gamma-ray source. Consider this an asking of an admin. SBHarris 19:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I've restored them. If they contain copyvios, it'll be up to you to identify and remove them. Elen of the Roads (talk) 20:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Gracias. I will attempt to do so. SBHarris 20:53, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    You may also want to spend a bit of time searching for similar content elsewhere in Wikipedia. M had a history of copy/pasting and forking content, so I'd strongly suspect that the contents of the two articles you link are already represented in some form. If so, consider merging any useful content back into them (after googling phrases and checking the in-article references to check for external cut/paste work). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 22:50, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Copyvio is not the only problem here. Given that Marshallsumter has exhausted any benefit of the doubt, these should be deleted again unless Sbharris can positively vouch for the contents being of a coherent and encyclopedic nature (unlike the vast majority of Marshallsumter's work). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 20:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with Chris. I think this situation is exactly analogous to what happens when a banned editor makes a productive edit, one editor comes along and deletes it by right (as the contrib of a banned user), and another restores it because it's good material. The editor who restores it takes responsibility for the veracity and quality of the edit, as if they were the originator of it. The same thing needs to happen here: articles should probably be userfied rather than directly restored, so that the requesting editor can go over the article and vouch for its contents. Then it can be moved back into articlespace, under the auspices of the vouching editor. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:08, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    No problems with deleting all the contributions - there is a provision within WP:CCI that this can be done. In this case, I'll give Sbharris a day or so then follow up with him as to what he's done. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I've read the article Gamma-ray generation, it seems to be ok. except for one paragraph. I don't know anything about the copyright violation issue that is suspected to be at play here, but that can be dealt with by rewriting and expanding some sections. Count Iblis (talk) 21:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Are you serious? The article was constructed as a pasting together of stuff copied from other articles with the editor demonstrating no understanding of the topic. The articles I looked at that were like this appear to have been machine-generated following a fairly simple and formulaic algorithm. This becomes clear when you compare the content listings for articles such as astronomical X-ray sources and astronomical gamma-ray source:
    • 1 X-radiation/Gamma ray
    • 2 X-ray source/none
    • 3 Astronomical source/Astronomical source
    • 4 Celestial X-ray source/Celestial gamma-ray source
    • 5 Astronomical X-ray object/Astronomical gamma-ray object
    • 6 Extrasolar X-ray source astrometry/Extrasolar gamma-ray source
    • 7 X-ray astronomy/Gamma-ray astronomy
    • 8 Spectral energy distribution/Spectral energy distribution
    • 9 Temporal distribution/Temporal distribution
    • 10 Spatial distribution/Spatial distribution
    • 11 Diffuse X-ray background/Celestial gamma-ray background
    • 12 Visibly dark X-ray source/Visibly dark gamma-ray source
    • 13 X-1 X-ray source/First gamma-ray source
    • 14 Astronomical X-ray source catalog/Gamma-ray source catalog
    • 15 Astrophysical X-ray source/Astrophysical gamma-ray source
    And the wording of some of those sections is identical, and nonsensical to boot: "An astronomical source is the start, beginning, or origin of something that suggests or indicates the presence of an astronomical object or astronomical body, where a source is the start, beginning, or origin of something." That is meaningless and self-referential. The same applies to : "The terms astronomical objects and astronomical bodies differ from "celestial objects" and "celestial bodies" only in that the latter terms do not include the Earth." That is not a meaningful thing to copy and paste into articles and seems to be there only for padding due to the lack of having anything really meaningful to say. Ditto for: "Astronomical objects are naturally occurring physical entities, associations or structures that current science has demonstrated to exist in outer space. Such an astronomical object may be only an astronomical gamma-ray object. The term astronomical object is sometimes used interchangeably with astronomical body. Typically an astronomical body refers to a single, cohesive structure that is bound together by gravity (and sometimes by electromagnetism). Examples from visual astronomy include the asteroids, moons, planets and stars. Astronomical objects are gravitationally bound structures that are associated with a position in space, but may consist of multiple independent astronomical bodies or objects." This is just pasting together poorly worded definitions to pad the articles. And the extensive and similarly identical 'see also' sections just confirm that these are walled gardens of formulaic cookie-cutter articles pasted together using extracts from other articles. If you look at a version of gamma ray generation edited by this editor, such as here, you will likely find the text in question copied over from the articles linked to as the 'main article' for each section. The equivalent 'article' for X-rays is X-ray generation, which was turned into a redirect but should probably be deleted. In fact, the articles created by this editor that were turned into redirects should go as well. Carcharoth (talk) 23:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, that version of "gamma ray generation" clearly reads like written by someone who doesn't understands what he writes about. But this particular article has undergone some editing by knowlegable editors (like Sbharris), and it seems to me that one can keep this article, rewrite and expand some sections, add some other sections etc. etc. I think that Sbharris who was aleady involved with that article is going to do that. Count Iblis (talk) 23:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It would be better if any remedial work and initial seeding of any potential article was done by someone who has studied astrophysics to some verifiable level, or is prepared to rigorously use sources (i.e. not making unsourced corrections and additions of proofs like you did to 'Helmholtz free energy'). This can't be left solely to those with an interest in this area of science, or to physicists or doctors who studied different areas of science. There will be those at the Astronomy WikiProject able to do a proper assessment of what is needed here. Please don't risk compounding the mistakes made here by building on something that may mislead those trying to correct it. There are those on Wikipedia who study astrophysics who are able to correct what has happened here. It is those people that need to step up to the plate here. Carcharoth (talk) 00:07, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    The thing that amazes me is how he was able to keep this up for over a year--an eternity in Wiki-terms--before getting caught. Especially since he was editing in an area that gets a lot of traffic. Blueboy96 22:14, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    These aren't the most prominent astronomy related articles, so they don't get the scrutiny other articles get. But I have seen much worse cases. Some core thermodynamics articles were fundamentally flawed for many years. I rewrote quite a few of them in 2008, e.g this article. The problem here was a lack of expertise among the regular editors at the time. At the time, I argued on some policy talk pages that one has to re-think the approach to editing articles on technical subjects, but most editors didn't want to go there. A year later, after a bad experience with an editor on the entropy page, I thought that it is high time to propose a new policy, so I wrote up WP:ESCA, but that went nowhere. It's Wiki-politically incorrect to make such suggestions :( . Count Iblis (talk) 22:51, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That edit you made to Helmholtz free energy may have corrected things, but it still reads like a high-level textbook page rather than an encyclopedia article. Not many readers will actually learn anything from that article in the state it is in at the moment. Most will just walk away more than a bit befuddled and wondering why there was a need to include a proof and lots of mathematical symbols and formulae. Carcharoth (talk) 23:41, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    In contrast to many other thermodynamics subject, Helmholtz free energy is mostly a theoretical physics subject and things like the "Bogoliubov inequality" are notable and they are also used a lot in computations. I would guess that many people do read this page, people who read the technical stuff are mostly physics students and professionals who want to quickly look up things.
    The Gibbs free energy is similar to the Helmholtz free energy, but this quantity is used a lot more in chemistry, and then there is more to write about those applications. But there is still some fair amount of math in that article. I have never edited that article though, because the math wasn't flawed when I checked all thermodynamics and statistical physcis articles back in 2008.
    And then there are other statistical mechanics articles that are even more heavy in math, some have only been edited by math editors, like Yang–Baxter equation. This article should be rewritten more in the spirit of my edits to Helmholtz free energy, i.e. expanded with more context so that studens can read how it is used. Count Iblis (talk) 15:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    At least it is coherent and has explanatory statements, a step better than many highly technical articles in Wikipedia. But doesn't achieve the ultimate which would be to explain it to the average person of those who would be trying to learn from the article. North8000 (talk) 15:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I was looking for the proton antiproton annihilation article, for which the links exist but not the page. In following up to see what the problem was, I stumbled on this page. Gosh. I just cannot believe you all spend so much time on such discussions, and I am unsure whether to be grateful for your vigilence, or disappointed at your subjectivity. I don't know all the details about the infringements, but in a quick perusal I didn't see any actual factual evidence of copyright infringement -which seemed to be the main complaint - and the whole decision-making process seemed simply a lynching. So you just go and 'nuke' (your words) every article that this person has ever written, regardless of merit? You feel that is a rational response? I'm glad I came and sat in the court spectator gallery - but I don't think I saw a fair trial. John Pons (talk) 08:11, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    It frequently takes something more than a "quick perusal" to uncover copyright violations, and since all the editor's original articles have been deleted (properly so), you have no basis for evaluating the original research and synthesis they contained, so perhaps your judgment might be a little hasty. It may seem like a "lynching" to you, but it took four or five days of evaluation, consideration and debate from a large number of editors before someone acted for the good of the project on the consensus which had formed. If you are familiar with any of the deleted articles, and want to have a go at fixing it up to be a useful and informative contribution to the encyclopedia, you can ask an admin to userfy it to your usespace, where you can work on it until it fulfills our requirements.

    On the other hand, with 53 edits in 4 years, 10 of them deleted, and a deleted article which apparently was WP:FRINGE, you may not be in the best position to pass judgement on the proceedings here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    There's plenty of evidence above, some provided by myself. I urge editors entering this discussion to assume good faith and read the above investigation in its entirety before commenting down here and jumping to conclusions Jebus989 09:12, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, this most recent thread seems to be missing the main stuff from the main discussion. North8000 (talk) 10:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I know nothing about this user, but I checked a few biology-related articles created by him. Although relatively poor quality (just as many other wikipedia articles), none of them deserved deletion. This is my conclusion, and I work in this area. Biophys (talk) 12:58, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    There might be a mixup. Which articles did you check? The recent thread went off the section topic and into articles that are already deleted. The more recent listings (and this section) are about articles where they we just a contributon and deletion looks unlikely on those. North8000 (talk) 14:11, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think there's a mixup. This user has commented several times demonstrating a misunderstanding of copyright policy, saying it's perfectly acceptable to copy verbatim from pubmed abstracts (which it's not). Article quality had nothing to do with the deletions, they were entirely copypastes from other wikipedia articles or from sources under copyright. Any original text was unreferenced and synthesis or original research. None of the users involved above were able to produce a single reliably-sourced article composed of original text... Jebus989 14:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes. With the added note that the result was things that were random gibberish rather than articles. North8000 (talk) 15:15, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I am talking about articles like Perinuclear space, which was placed for AfD discussion, where no one provided a single example of copyright violation, and no one provided valid arguments for deletion during the AfD discussion.Biophys (talk) 15:25, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    By all means ask to have a copy of the article userfied, before doing so I thoroughly recommend reading the above conversations and all the evidence presented; you may especially be interested in the above section where another user asked for articles to be restored (Gamma-ray generation and Astronomical gamma-ray source, for reference). They were (unsurprisingly) exactly what we expected—unattributed CWW, synthesis, incoherent jumbled together sentences etc. Jebus989 16:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, but I have no intention to userfy and restore any of these articles (there are more interesting/important subjects to edit). They had to be simply kept to allow contributions of multiple editors, as time allows. Biophys (talk) 17:40, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Okay, how about:

    Are they properly stubs? WERE they previously stubs and are now deleted? You see, if you just delete long lists, nobody else can TELL what was in the deleted articles. Given the extreme specificity likely from looking at just the titles, it seems to me that there isn't much room here for anything but useful information. Considering the totally squalid state that most WP articles historically start in (do you all really get the historical idea of Wikipedia??), I think the level of picky-ness being shown here decends very far toward DICKishness. Vandalism, I cannot abide. But deleting every article created by a poor writer (I mean a writer who writes poorly), not having even looked at some of them first, is really going too far. Especially on Wikipedia. SBHarris 16:26, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Really, from the articles I've had a closer look at, anyone willing to "restore" these article is much better off starting from nothing than from what was there previously. If you're unable to create a stub on these topic from nothing then you're not the right person clean up what was there previously either. —Ruud 18:15, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That's quite a bold inductive statement from somebody who hasn't seen any of the aricles in question. But let's do a bet: take Index table for X-ray and gamma-ray sources. I haven't seen it, and neither have you. You go ahead and start it from scratch, and I'll watch. Keep track of your time. By and by, I'll obtain the old copy and cut it, or add to it. Then we'll see who made the foolish prediction, you or me. How about it? If the possiblity of black swans doesn't bother you, then you should have no problem. SBHarris 18:46, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    "from somebody who hasn't seen any of the aricles in question" Wrong. "go ahead and start it from scratch" I know next to nothing about astrophysics, so I'm not going to do that. "I'll obtain the old copy and cut it, or add to it" Unless you do happen to have a degree in astrophysics, you won't be able to differentiate between what's right and what's nonsense and just end up copying and pasting more factual inaccuracies and gibberish. —Ruud 19:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It is better to have no article at all than a deliberately disruptive article which consists largely of garbage which looks sensible enough for well-meaning editors of an overly inclusionist bent to consider salvageable. There's already strong consensus for that above. Unless you are quite literally promising to remove the garbage from these articles then there is little rationale for keeping them, as potential is not a guarantee. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 19:31, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Eh? I have no evidence that an article like Index table for X-ray and gamma-ray sources is a "deliberately disruptive article." Here you are claiming knowledge of another editor's malicious intent-- do you have prima facie evidence of this? Let alone that this article "consists largely of garbage which looks sensible enough for well-meaning editors of an overly inclusionist bent to consider salvageable." That's a complete straw man, if you mean to apply it to every one of the articles we're discussing, or even the ones I've named above.

    Right now we don't actually have a case where we can say this or that article clearly does not belong on Wikipedia, and how in the world did it ever get there? In the one I've just looked at, on the contrary I see an editor who seems very pleased with himself that he's finally been able to get rid of gamma ray generation and redirect it to segments of gamma ray, which essentially merges the two at the cost of absorbing one. Alas for this approach, it's not really very respectful of the way Wikipedia naturally grows. The astronomical parts of gamma ray that gamma ray generation is now redirected to, had been expanded by myself, starting last May. Before that time, this article was almost entirely about radioactive decay, and had only a few thumbs about anything else. I expanded the astronomical sections largely using information from gamma ray generation, gamma-ray astronomy, their sources, and some web content. In other words, in no small part from articles you just deleted (gamma-ray astronomy is left, but it doesn't have all this info). The gamma ray article needed a summary of the astronomical content and the astronomical mechanisms of gamma production, per WP:SS. Apparently this worked so well, that somebody has now decided that the main articles on astronomical gamma sources are no longer needed, or can be subsummed under gamma ray astronomy. Guess my writing was better than I thought, hey? But none of it really makes the case that Marshallsumter is there writing "deliberately disruptive articles full of garbage." In fact, the worst I can find from him (I did not know him) is bad writing. And if we removed all the bad writing from Wikipedia, there wouldn't be much left. And if we are committed to that, could we please start with the soccer trivia, the comic book trivia, and the local sports stars BLPs? Including the thousand BLPs still with not a single source? Not the astronomy articles where I hate to re-create data on astronomical objects and instruments just as much as any of you do? SBHarris 21:10, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Sbharris, there is a policy that when someone gets over a certain level of copyvio, all of their contribs can be deleted, which is what happened here. You want any of these articles, just ask - only proviso, could you check for copyvio promptly, and if you don't think they are worth anything, just let me know and I'll delete them again. How did you find the two I restored yesterday? Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:31, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I picked an article at random that Marshallsumter had contributed to (SN 185) and ended up having to delete essentially everything that he added. Only about 25% of the article is left, and the only one of his additions that I didn't remove was adding an image. Seems like there's going to be an awful lot of hatchet jobs required. Modest Genius talk 21:32, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Unblock request/block review of indef-blocked editor

    Hi all, some time last week, Ezekiel53746 was indefinitely blocked by Courcelles for disruptive editing after canvassing inappropriately on an MFD against a few of his user subpages. CheckUser data shows that while blocked, Ezekiel logged out to vandalise and make personal attacks, something which he admits. Courcelles and Tnxman307 both declined an unblock request on the basis of the checkuser results, but I have offered to step in to mentor Ezekiel under strict conditions laid out at User:Ezekiel53746/Mentorship 2011. I am asking the community give him one last chance on my debt, and to give me the chance to at least attempt mentorship before writing this young editor off as a lost cause. I have made it abundantly clear to Ezekiel that if he messes up even once, any admin is free to step in and renew his indefinite block without discussion. I ask the community/admin corps to please consider an unblock. Strange Passerby (talkcont) 03:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I would like to get assurances from Ezekiel that (s)he not only wants to be unblocked, but that (s)he wants to be mentored. I think that the understanding of the MfD should be a prerequisite before any discussion of an unblock. But, I'm not an admin, so it's really not up to me. VanIsaacWS 03:26, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I notice that Ezekiel has not actually "signed" the agreement on that mentoring page. At the very least, I would expect him to do that. In addition, his behavior in engaging with Strange Passerby about setting up the mentoring does not really make him look great. I see a lot of "ok, if you say so" and "well, I guess" and not so much "yeah, I'm totally on-board with this and want to improve." I just don't have the impression that he wants to work on this stuff so much as he just wants to be given his head.

    That all said, however, I could live with him being unblocked if the community agrees to it - as long as there's an understanding that one strike, and he's out, and any admin who sees him misbehaving or disrupting will remove his editing privileges accordingly. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 03:31, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    He can't sign it as he's still blocked. I have made it very clear to him I will personally request an indefinite block if he messes up. Strange Passerby (talkcont) 03:33, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Then he needs to get back his talk page editing privileges so that he can actually join the conversation and speak for himself. VanIsaacWS 03:41, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    As a point or order, he still has talk page privileges, but the page linked to is not his talk page. Courcelles 03:50, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Then the conversation needs to be taken there. You can still link/transclude to the preexisting pages, but the one person we need to hear from cannot currently contribute. VanIsaacWS 03:52, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The conversation is there too. The conditions laid out on that page are also on his talk page. Strange Passerby (talkcont) 03:54, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The link is at User talk:Ezekiel53746, and hoy! I'm not impressed. It doesn't seem like he even understands what he did in the past to get himself banned. This is not looking good. VanIsaacWS 05:18, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Overall I'm not impressed. I'd like to see more evidence of a user who wants to improve. Seems more like he's just trying to get off the hook. Nevertheless, I'm willing to support giving the guy a chance; rollback is quick and blocks are easy to reinstate if he messes up. N419BH 07:06, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    No comment on block/unblock right now, but someone should point this user in the general direction of Wikipedia:Guidance for younger editors. This sort of thing is what it's there for. Newyorkbrad (talk) 07:09, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    'Twas the first thing I mentioned when I proposed the mentorship restrictions. Strange Passerby (talkcont) 16:30, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Just to point out...he was not blocked solely for canvassing on the MFD. He was blocked for his overall pattern of disruptive behaviors. Like, for example, this edit. I'm actually becoming convinced that Ezekiel is just here to troll us. He knows what he's doing and is asking this way for his own satisfaction, attention, and entertainment. either way (talk) 20:45, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    A younger editor under the immense stress of having one of his user subpages put up for deletion ≠ a troll. Strange Passerby (talkcont) 02:00, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The user, at 13 years old, just seems to be keen to me, under tutelage I think he could contribute something here. If he's unblocked he'd have to seriously understand that he can't vandalize and needs to read up on the guidelines, but I'm all for supporting his unblock. Aranea Mortem (talk to me) 02:46, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    As I said on Courcelles's talk page when Strange Passerby asked for an unblock there, I really can't believe anyone is entertaining a thought of unblocking him after the edits he made (post-block) with his IP, 70.57.205.20 (talk · contribs). And here we are 10 days later saying "no, it's cool, he's just immature and needs a mentor"? Why did he use that IP? Well he saw another IP do it and wanted to do it himself. Let's let him explain:

    The IP got mad for reverting his edits, so he put the message "Fück Off Paul you zealot cünt" twice on his userpage; One of a userbox, and another on a sectioned (Titled "My brag sheet"). It was so funny, I had to do this myself, vandalizing my own talk page. However, this make me go into a state of craze, and led me to anonymous trouble.

    Do we really want to unblock someone who acts like this and is prone to "states of craze"? either way (talk) 11:09, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Your point has been sufficiently made. It's abundantly clear you're against unblocking, there's no need to continue to ram that down the throats of people who want to give him a chance with someone guiding him. I will ask that you stop trying to negatively influence the issue further. Strange Passerby (talkcont) 11:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    And your point's been made. Several users you asked rejected you asking for an unblock for him. Later you went on to say "well, don't unblock him for his sake...unblock him for my sake so I can mentor him." It seems like you're more in this for proving yourself than for his benefit. Can you please explain what benefit you think we'd gain if we allow him to be unblocked? How will his unblocking lead to positive contributions to Wikipedia? I'm not attempting to "ram that down the throats" of supporters any more than you're attempting "ram down the throats" your view. I'm sorry that presenting the other side of the case is an attempt to "negatively influence" the outcome. In my opinion, your asking for his unblock will lead to a "negative influence" upon Wikipedia and I am well within my rights to present that. either way (talk) 12:08, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Get your facts right. I only asked Courcelles, not "several users"; when he declined I informed him I would be seeking a wider community consensus. I don't appreciate your attempts to skew the facts. Strange Passerby (talkcont) 12:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    My apologies. I thought that you had asked Tnxman307, too, but I remembered it incorrectly. either way (talk) 12:25, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I might have spotty Internet the next few days. If this editor is unblocked while I am away, I have arranged for Demiurge1000 to temporarily step in for me. Again, I urge the community to give Ezekiel a chance with a mentor. Strange Passerby (talkcont) 14:19, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    • In glancing at the user's own talk page, it seems that he can't even be patient with the people who are trying to help him get unblocked. If this is the case now, what are the chances of him being patient enough to work with a mentor at all in the future? I vote oppose to the unblock. NJZombie (talk) 21:49, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Oppose to unblock as well. I went through his talk page, the AFD and many of his contributions and it's clear that this editor has issues with selfcontrol, respect, and understanding WP procedure. While the latter can be worked with, a lack of self control is an issue deeper than a mentorship is equipped to handle. Noformation Talk 08:27, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Oppose for now, in order for the mentorship to 'take' Ezekiel needs to stop talking and start listening. He was non-committal to Strange Passerby's offer at first, made an unblock request after being asked to leave it to SP, and even now seems unaware of how imporant it is that he should be taking in what his mentor is saying. He needs to soak up some of the nuances of WP, and learn to work with other editor's viewpoints instead of darting past them to the 'goal'. There is every possibility he can do this, but that would involve stopping rushing around and being more receptive, and this unblock request itself feels like it's being rushed. If Ezekiel can slow down a second and work with Strange Passerby then he should be able to draw a line under this and move on, without that the mentorship is WP:ROPE, which is the polar opposite of Strange Passerby's good intentions, I'm sure. Someoneanother 16:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Preemptive protection of World Trade Center.

    Resolved

    This is an unusual request, but it's not without any justification. Seeing as the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is just a day away, should we have a preemptive protection of the World Trade Center, knowing there WILL be a lot of trolling on that article on 9/11/11? Rainbow Dash !xmcuvg2MH 12:52, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Since there's been some vandalism over the last few days, there might be reason to protect the page even if the preemptive reason given above is rejected. OpenInfoForAll (talk) 14:18, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    There's a spectrum of a couple of dozen articles that are starting to see vandalism, such as United Airlines Flight 93, , but not yet to excess: I'd just protect per usual policy if it starts to get out of hand. World Trade Center and its companions will become de facto featured articles for a couple of days, and should be watched accordingly. Acroterion (talk) 14:50, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Just lots of eyes for now. There will be a lot of trolling/Obama is teh gay lol/general rubbish on the articles. I would encourage people to watchlist them and report excessive vandalism in the usual manner. But preemptive semiprotection is something we just don't normally do. N419BH 17:17, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]


    30 minutes to Zulu Hour. Huggle at the ready... --Cerejota (talk) 03:31, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I'd suggest watchlisting links from the current TFA, American Airlines Flight 11, including the other flights in particular. I note that Daniel M. Lewin has received some unwelcome attention, for instance. I wouldn't expect any significant changes at 2400 hours EDT, though. Acroterion (talk) 03:40, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I've signed up several pages for Cluebot NG's ANGRY MODECC-BY-SA. Cluebot will now ignore its 1RR restriction on all these articles. Today's featured article, American Airlines Flight 11 is automatically patrolled in Angry Mode. N419BH 04:04, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Appreciate the enthusiasm, but be careful, please, we'll have a lot of folks who are new to WP visiting. Acroterion (talk) 04:45, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Heh - I was just in Manhattan today. Parts of it are like an armed camp, and they're taking it mighty seriously there. I agree that discretion is wise on this subject. Doc talk 04:51, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Ground Zero is flooded. I should know because my office is next to the location. Rainbow Dash !xmcuvg2MH 13:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I've removed the pages from ClueBot NG's ANGRY MODECC-BY-SA, as 9/11/11 has passed in the mainland US (or whatever you call it). --Σ talkcontribs 07:30, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Was going to do that in the morning but it's probably okay to do it now. N419BH 07:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Pmanderson / Septentrionalis and MOS

    User:Pmanderson was recently "Topic banned from WP:MOS and discussions anywhere on the project concerning the Manual of Style or technical aspects of the use of the English language anywhere on the project, including his own talkpage, for a period of one year." per Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Pmanderson. Recently he has begun commenting at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names) and making changes to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names). Would this not constitute a violation of his ban? Jayjg (talk) 02:18, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Titles and naming were specifically left out of the topic ban, so he's only violating it if he commented on "technical aspects of the use of the English language." I'm pretty sure that was intended to cover "usage" comments such as he has made there in "...English-speakers overwhelmingly call the islands the Falklands, except when discussing the dispute." I suppose he'll argue that this is not a "technical aspect"? Dicklyon (talk) 02:34, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I disagree. Naming conventions are part of the Manual of Style. Wikipedia:Article titles is the summary page for all naming convention pages, and it itself is a spinout of Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles. That is not 100% clear at first glance, but he should now consider himself informed. I'll block him if he continues to edit those pages. NW (Talk) 03:55, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The page linked specifically bans him from article titles as well. It isn't like it is hard to interpret. The Option N+1b stated "Indefinite topic ban from Wikipedia:Article titles and any related discussion, construed broadly" and passed unanimously. I would say that discussions of article titles meets the definition of a broadly construed discussion of article titles. I would even venture that this is a rather narrowly construed violation of the topic ban. --Jayron32 04:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I edit WP:AT and discuss in there frequently, and I agree that a narrowly construed view of what you posted. "Naming conventions" guidelines are basically there to hyper-explain policy, a recognition that WP:AT is too broad in focus and that instead of having thousands of simultaneous discussion on how AT applies to names of things such as geographic names, we have naming conventions. But naming conventions are completely subordinate to WP:AT. If I am not misremembering, this was made clear on the RfC that established that WikiProjects couldn't make MoS calls without engagement of all of the community: the buck stops at WP:AT, and no MoS can go against it.--Cerejota (talk) 04:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Given all that, what's the explanation for Edelweiss? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots04:28, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Easy: WP:IAR :P --Cerejota (talk) 04:53, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    One key factor in IAR is "to improve wikipedia". Such as by using common names. Just today I was watching The Sound of Music, and it's always a poignant moment when they sing, "Leontopodium alpinum, Leontopodium alpinum, ev'ry morning you greet me..." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots04:59, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That's because you're not singing it like a botanist would. All together, from bar 32, "L. alpinum, L. alpinum, bless my homeland forever." --Shirt58 (talk) 07:06, 11 September 2011 (UTC) [reply]
    (edit conflict) @Cerejota: It's pretty clear that PMA isn't supposed to be in discussions related to the titles of articles at all. It has nothing to do with the venue or the name of the specific pages; the community decided (unanimously among those that participated, I might add) that he wasn't supposed to be concerning himself with the naming of articles in any way. --Jayron32 04:29, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It's true that the community agreed (unanimously, or nearly so, I forget which) to ban him from title discussions. But the closer declined to represent that explicitly in the statement of the topic ban, so it remains a bit ambiguous just where the line is. I expect that's why he's testing it with otherwise innocuous comments and edits. I agree that we should warn him that he's over the line. Dicklyon (talk) 04:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Note that the ban proposal agreed on and the implemented ban are different things. The ban proposal was

    Pmanderson shall be subject to an indefinite topic ban from Manual of Style (e.g. WP:MOS & WP:MOSNUM) and any related discussion, construed broadly. This includes naming policies and guidelines (e.g. WP:TITLE), move (title re-naming) policies and guidelines (WP:MOVE) and any related discussion, construed broadly.

    While the actual ban was different. It was not indefinite and did not explicitly include titles.

    You are Topic banned from WP:MOS and discussions anywhere on the project concerning the Manual of Style or technical aspects of the use of the English language, including this talkpage, for a period of one year.

    I find it highly unfortunate that Elen of the roads in this way decided to forgo the community opinion and implement her own ban and that way nullify a long discussion and it's final consensus, but this is what happened. It is as of such unclear if Pmanderson is banned from discussion title changes or not. Since this has been a constant flash point for Pmanderson it makes sense that he is, but only Elen can clarify if this was intended. In any case these edits on title issues can not be seen as violations of the ban, as the ban isn't clear on the issue, unless the discussions he is having relates to technical aspects of the use of the English Language. --OpenFuture (talk) 07:46, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I don't want to delve too deeply into the constitutional law of wikipedia here, but aren't such bans are usually founded on some kind of consensus? If the text that subsequently summarised the consensus wasn't entirely accurate, that's unfortunate, but it doesn't change the consensus (hopefully).
    If you owe your broadband provider €30 per month but due to some billing error they only send you an €8 bill this month, don't be surprised that they come asking for an extra €22 in the very near future - the debt hasn't been erased. We may, of course, forgive somebody for their nonpayment in the interim since they've been sent the wrong bill... bobrayner (talk) 18:38, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    An administrator can only implement a community ban; he/she can't implement a proposal that differs from the community consensus. The community banned Pmanderson from the topic areas, including article titles; I have no doubt that the lack of explicitness in Elen of the Roads statement is a mere oversight, and will assume good faith that this is the case. We are certainly not bound by technicalities here; Wikipedia is not a court of law, and definitely not a bureaucracy. Jayjg (talk) 20:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    From what I understand, the phrasing of Elen's version of the topic ban was a deliberate personal choice. The omission of page moves and discussions of article titles was not an oversight. Mathsci (talk) 20:44, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not going to judge Elen's actions, but Elen does not have the scope to implement a decision that differs from that of the community. The only conclusion compatible with WP:AGF is that Elen accidentally mis-worded the closure. In any event, the community consensus is pretty clear. Jayjg (talk) 20:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I asked Elen by email about this exact point a while back (26 August) and I am just paraphrasing her response. She wrote that the only way to change the scope of the topic ban was for her version of the topic ban to be overturned by another administrator and the process restarted again to put in place a wider topic ban. You can ask her yourself directly. Mathsci (talk) 21:04, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    What a mess. I told you all a 3-month block would have been better. --OpenFuture (talk) 21:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Where is the mess? Here, yes, but that is normal for ANI discussions where there is a lack of clarity. What I can't see here is any mess resulting directly from Pmanderson's edits. Seriously. Go look at them (I gave a link below) and ask yourself which of them have resulted in a mess like the one at Crepe that led to the ban discussion. None that I can tell. He's avoiding areas involving diacritics and spelling, and that has to be a good thing. Carcharoth (talk) 22:55, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems less messy than I thought, since it is now clear that Elen had the right to give whatever ban she pleased. So the only mess now is what you mentioned below. So not that messy, just a bit confusing on what the ban actually was and what it covered. This seems to be cleared out now. --OpenFuture (talk) 12:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm not sure what action is required here. The topic ban does not mention AT and community consensus is encapsulated in whatever explicit statement of the ban is provided to the editor. The only actionable course of action I can see here is to seek a new consensus that includes AT in the topic ban. While we're not bureaucratic around here, it doesn't seem right to add elements to a ban after one has been enacted (without new consensus, that is). --rgpk (comment) 21:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Someone could ask Elen to reconsider her closure of the ban discussion. I think she consciously intended to make PMA's topic ban only for one year, but I'm not sure if she wanted to exclude article titles from the scope of the ban. She stated 'He has already agreed to leave this area alone, so I do not anticipate an enforcement issue.." which may suggest she thought (at the time) that it was unnecessary to sweat the details of the ban. If Elen agrees to review her close, she could be asked to re-examine this part of the ban discussion to assess whether there is consensus to exclude PMA from discussions of article titles. The proposal to ban PMA from WP:TITLE and WP:MOVE discussions had 13 supports but some conditional opposes. EdJohnston (talk) 21:43, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The reason pages about how to treat article titles are not (and never have been) part of the manual of style is because article titles are a matter of both content (what name to use) and style (how to write or spell that name). No style guide will ever help decide things like the Ireland naming disputes or the Macedonia naming disputes or the Falkland Islands naming dispute (those are actually content/NPOV issues, not style issues). Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles is (or should be) a summary of the style aspects of Wikipedia:Article titles, which is the main, parent page.

      If this is not dealt with properly, my prophecy there will come true: "If things are not made clear now, you can be sure that Pmanderson will arrive at a discussion citing WP:COMMONNAME and claim it is a content/NPOV issue, not a style issue, and you can be just as sure that someone will haul Pmanderson off to a noticeboard and demand an immediate indef block. So please can we be crystal clear as to what the topic ban means." Part of the problem here is precisely that the Manual of Style reaches into nearly all areas of Wikipedia, so if you end up being critical of the overall approach taken by the Manual of Style (including its tendency towards instruction creep), then it becomes very hard to do anything on Wikipedia.

      Also, please note the discussion here where Cynwolfe (an editor I respect for their content contributions) says this:

      "I have to say one thing out of loyalty and fairness: I consider this a serious loss to the Greece & Rome project, where PMA's experience and knowledge are one of our greatest assets. I assume, however, he can still answer questions about content? And if I wanted his opinion on what to name a new article, would this be considered within the topic ban? And you seem to emphasize "English related," meaning he could address, say, questions about Latin? I'm really not trying to make a point; I would want to support behavior that allowed him to remain on WP, but I'm … I'm … well, OK, I'm plenty pissed that his opinion can't be asked even where it's welcome. (Not pissed at you; you're doing a needed job.) I suppose it's no secret that I would rather deal with a hundred PMAs than one politely passive-aggressive POV-pushing ignoramus."

      In that discussion, Elen of the Road's says explicitly that the ban is on style only and that "Discussion of content is fine" (the title of the article on the Falklands Islands is clearly a content issue). Another discussion on Elen of the Road's talk page that is worth looking at is here. Though in fact that discussion didn't really bring much clarity at all. The real crux of the issue here is whether article naming issues to do with content and/or NPOV are style issues. I don't think they are. To me, style issues are things like spellings and diacritics. But it seems some think that the Manual of Style is now the ultimate arbiter on what the title of Falkland Islands should be. I really hope that is not the case.

      Another point I want to make is that Jayjg doesn't seem to have interacted with Pmanderson at all in recent edits. I presume Jayjg just happened to be reading that page and decided to come here and object to the edits in question? A better approach would be to look at Pmanderson's edits since the ban was implemented. What I see in his edits is discussion on naming issues, but careful avoidance of style issues. I also don't see any objections from other editors at those discussions to the edits and comments he made. Rather than editors who participated at the ban discussion jumping into this discussion and dividing along the same lines again (I participated at that ban discussion, as did Jayjg and several others commenting here), what is needed is someone new to all this to look at Pmanderson's editing and to clarify the ban on that basis. Is anyone willing to do that? Carcharoth (talk) 22:36, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Thank you; I would prefer not to have been brought back to discussing this subject. Whether article titles are included was brought up to Elen, who imposed the ban; I notice that none of the people who support this section bothered to ask her (or me) before commenting. She replied that she didn't intend to ban (me) from discussing whether it should be called Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing. She also discussed the same issue with one of the participants in this section here; please note that she was thanked, by a participant in the original discussion, for her wording. Is this whole thread asking the other parent? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:34, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The discrepancies was pointed out already when she closed the discussion, so she was asked already. So claiming she wasn't asked is incorrect. --OpenFuture (talk) 07:38, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Carcharoth, you "presume" incorrectly. I don't know what Pmanderson's edits were, and have no opinion on them. Please don't "presume" about me again, or attempt to re-direct the focus of this discussion. The issue at hand is not whether or not anyone approves of disapproves of Pmanderson's edits, but whether or not he is topic-banned. Jayjg (talk) 03:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Something must have attracted your attention. One approach would have been to first ask Pmanderson and/or Elen what was going on, rather than come here immediately. It just seems strange that weeks after the discussion was closed you return to this issue, and return here rather than to Elen's talk page (as I suggested below and as others did immediately after the discussion closed). You commented at the previous discussion on 22 and 25 August. Elen closed it on 26 August. There was discussion at Elen's talk page which seemed to either conclude reasonably or peter out after a few days. You opened this ANI thread on 11 September, which is 16 days (more than 2 weeks) later. You've been active on many of the days in that 16-day period. Clearly there was no urgency (as you left it for more than two weeks before doing anything), so why didn't you ask Elen or Pmanderson about this first?

    Anyway, putting that to one side, the central point here is whether Pmanderson should be following the topic ban Elen communicated to him on his talk page, or whether he should be following the interpretation you and others have of what he is banned from doing (remembering that you and other commenting here took part in the discussion, so are not best placed to interpret it). It is clear that Pmanderson needs to follow what Elen told him, and if that should be changed it needs to be done properly (notifying him of any new formal discussion so he can say something if he wishes), and then the new conclusions restated to him. And then hopefully this can be put to rest.

    The first question to ask is whether a new discussion is needed or not. But consider this: if you are able to object to Elen's close and ask for it to be re-evaluated, what is to stop Pmanderson then asking for any new close to be re-evaluated in turn? And then you object, and so on. Where does it stop? Who gets to ask for a re-evaluation? Only those !voting and not the person being topic-banned? Carcharoth (talk) 04:58, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I would challenge anyone to identify a consensus out of the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Pmanderson. "The community" voted on every sanction from hitting him with cushions to hanging, drawing and quartering. The claim that there was a clear consensus on any one of the two dozen proposed versions is a bit thin in my opinion. I do think there is a difference between arguing over whether its called Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, and arguing whether it should be crepe or crêpe, and I could not see that anyone had come up with a reason to ban him from content based discussion. That said, if the argument gets down to "it says in WP:MOS", then at that point he has to back out, because that IS covered by the ban. If that doesn't suit, and you guys prefer to start the whole thing over again and see if you get a different outcome, be my guest. On the other hand, if his editing is problematic for other reasons than you think it should have been topic banned, then let's discuss that.Elen of the Roads (talk) 23:10, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I've got a crisp Finn that says that PMA will be back up here again for problems regarding article title discussions and the like; I give the over/under of 4 more ANI discussions of his behavior in the next 6 months. It is unfortunate that, despite explicit language and high participation which indicated that the community didn't want him involved in this issue that Elen specifically chose to leave that out of the ban. In the case its like convicting a man who shot the convenience store clerk of shoplifting. The greatest source of his disruption has always been article title issues, and to specifically avoid placing that in the ban only emboldens him while doing nothing about the core issue. --Jayron32 02:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I can count you know, and would challenge anyone to read the discussion and conclude that the most supported option was the ban that included article titles and moves. At least 45 people offered an opinion of one kind or another - only 13 supported the titles and moves ban, while 27 supported the MOS ban. And not everyone agreed that the content side of article titles was a contentious area, while pretty much everyone agreed that MOS and nitpicking over use of English was the flashpoint. Mum has spoken. Stop asking Dad. Elen of the Roads (talk) 03:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, so now you are immune from having to answer for your actions as an administrator? That's an interesting tack to take on this. I appreciate that you have provided a rationale here, but providing a rationale does not mean that other people cannot disagree with your rationale. Merely having a rationale doesn't make you above criticism. --Jayron32 03:09, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) You (Jayron32) don't think it is a bit demeaning to lower yourself to laying bets on matters like this? What if I said I had a book running on you about something? How would that make you feel? It would be better, as Elen said, to actually assemble diffs of problematic contributions to article title discussions. You might also want to look at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Pmanderson where the focus was on civility, not on any specific topic area. Though now I look more closely at that, I see that you (Jayron32) closed that RfC. May I ask if your strong views on Pmanderson developed from that RfC, or whether you held those strong views before you closed the RfC? I also notice that Elen participated at that RfC. But looking at the closure of that RfC, you seem to have largely ignored the second-most endorsed view (the one by Cynwolfe). Might I suggest you re-read that RfC and try and see how it looks to others when they compare what you said there to what you are saying here? It would help if you disclosed in future discussions of this sort that you closed that RfC and have since developed a view of your own to the extent that you would (presumably) be unable to close any future discussion of that nature. You will also see there the history that OpenFuture has with Pmanderson - something I had almost forgotten about.

    This all goes to reinforce my view that people develop views of other editors based on where they encounter that editor (i.e an incomplete view), rather than a view based on an editor's contributions as a whole. In other words, the only way to get a genuine global picture of an editor is to go through their contributions as a whole, not to rely on what others say about them (which will inevitably be focused on specific interactions). And editors who disagree about another editor's contributions will almost certainly have different mental pictures in their mind of that editor, a mental picture coloured and shaped by where they encountered that editor. This 'different sides of an editor' aspect of Wikipedia is exacerbated in editors who have been around for a long time. The single best way (when a dispute doesn't arise from article content) to really see what an editor is made of is to edit an article with them, but sadly not enough people who get involved in meta-article disputes (e.g. MOS and naming disputes) seem prepared to work together on articles, preferring to throw brickbats at each other and then wait until next time to resume arguing again. Carcharoth (talk) 03:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I've not really, to my rememberence, interacted with PMA directly on any editorial matter (if I had, it was so fleeting and unmemorable as to escape my notice). I was aware of him as an editor, and closed the RFC in question because I had never had any significant contact with him. If I had, I would not have closed the RFC. My annoyance in the matter is largely because of the large volume of ANI space that PMA has taken up over the past, an occurance I would like to see stopped, especially since he seems to cause disruption on matters whose consequence is out of proportion to the effort spent on them. I'm not any longer going to contest Elen's choice in closing this. She is within her rights to close the matter as she sees fit, and she made a reasonable interpretation (one I disagree with, but not because it was unreasonable) of the consensus, and I concede (but do not support) the results of her closure. I do not wish PMA ill, and hope that he will learn to avoid the sort of problems that lead to the most recent unpleasentness. In closing, Carcharoth, you are correct. I definately overstepped the bounds of civility in my criticism of Elen of Roads, an admin I respect, and I owed her more courtesy then I gave her above with my flippant comments. This is my apology to Elen: I am sorry that I said what I did, while I disagree with you, you did not deserve to be put down like I did above. You have no reason to accept my apology, but I offer it unconditionally nonetheless. --Jayron32 03:46, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Accepted, and apology from me - I did not see this edit earlier, and would have reacted differently if I had. Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:12, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Elen, challenge accepted, finding consensus in that discussion is trivial.
    There was a long discussion with loads of opinions and voting and out of that came a final move to close with explicit terms set out, which got a clear consensus. Identifying the consensus is hence trivial, even for someone like me who does not really think the terms are any good. The proposal including titles (N+1b) was made as a *clarification* of the slightly badly worded N+1, and added after most people supporting N+1b had already supported N+1. It is hence not really a different outcome, but a clarification with a clear support from the 27 N+1 supporters. Saying that only 13 people supported the title and moves ban is completely incorrect. Firstly we have 15 supports of N+1b in the original discussion. In the move to close everyone (18) except three supported N1+b, and none of those three that opposed it supported N+1. Of those 18 in support of the N+1b close an additional 11 supported N+1b (6 of which earlier had supported N1, but N1+b, and 5 not supporting either), giving a grand total of 26 support votes for N1+b, with three against, this out of 45 people having any sort of opinion at all. As such the consensus was clearly for N1+b, but you decided to go for something closer to N+1, despite the criticism that is was fuzzy and would lead exactly to situations like this.
    I think you are doing a great job as an admin. But this time you made a mistake. --OpenFuture (talk) 07:38, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I can count, and read, thank you. And it's not fuzzy at all - is he arguing that more sources call it Shiloh, or is he arguing that WP:MOS isn't applicable. The problem is that you and Jayron and Mathsci don't like it. Elen of the Roads (talk) 10:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Please don't put words into my mouth, Elen. I have just relayed what you told me as the result of an email enquiry I made shortly after you finalised the topic ban. I would tend to agree with what Carcharoth has written here, if you really wanted to know what I thought at present. If there is not a problem at the moment, there is no need to fix it. Mathsci (talk) 10:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I apologise, and have struck your name. I did think we had ended our conversation agreeing to see if Pmanderson got into any more trouble, and take prompt action at that point. Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    No problem, Elen, and thanks for striking my name. Although I never sent a final "fair enough" reply, that was my understanding then also :) Mathsci (talk) 16:25, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    BS, Elen. I don't care what the terms are, as I've made abundantly clear I think all sorts of topic bans for Pmanderson are pointless. With or without titles, one year, indefinite, whatever. I don't care. Assuming good faith you made a mistake. When this is pointed out you come with accusations towards the messengers. That's not the right behavior.
    You applied the ban you wanted instead the ban the community wanted, and that is the direct reason for this section here since some thought the consensus had been implemented, but it hadn't. It would have been better if the community consensus would have ruled or if you had made clear in your ruling that titles was NOT included , as this confusion would then not have arised. And then we wouldn't have had to waste this time on Pmanderson, again. --OpenFuture (talk) 12:01, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Point of order: Jayron32 disagrees with your conclusions and your method of "vote counting" to determine consensus. I don't have an opinion of the closure on the "like-dislike" scale. My level of likedness is completely neutral on the matter. I don't hold a negative opinion of you, Elen, because of the way you closed the discussion and the conclusions you drew, I just disgreed with those conclusions. One may disagree with something without haveing a dislike of it. --Jayron32 13:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Jayron, I believe that's mincing words, but I have no problem with phrasing it as "disagree". What I have a problem with is being bombarded with demands from a small number of editors asking me to change the decision. I'm not going to do that, so you need to find another mechanism. If you have evidence of Pmanderson displaying problematic behaviour while editing outside of the advertised ban, then please list it below, and the community can decide whether its patience is exhausted.

    I'm not even going to grace OpenFuture with a response to that shocking display of bad faith. Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:38, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

      • Just to be clear, also, Elen, I have not called for you to change the outcome. You will see above that I specifically said that I am not, would not, and am continuing to not do so. That doesn't mean that my disagreement is moot or invalid. I think it is appropriate to express disagreement in this case not because I expect you to change what you have done (which I do not expect you to do), but rather because I would hope it would change what you will do. I think you made an error in your assessment of the ban discussion, and I would hope that you not make that error the next time you make a similar assessment. It doesn't mean I wish to undo the past result, just that I think that your expressed method of judging consensus (raw votecounting, as you have explained several times you have done), is what I wish you would not do in the future. Does that mean that I wish PMA would act disruptive in the face of his ban: No, I hope he has learned his lesson and will not be as contentious as he has been. It would be ludicrous of me to wish that he would screw up. I hope he is able to participate in article title discussions from now going forward without being tendentious to the point of disruption. My frustration is that I have had the same wish for years, and having that wish has not had an effect. Maybe today that wish will come true. I have no evidence to suggest that it will, but as you said, the matter has been closed, and PMA should be free from harassment in this venue until someone can produce evidence that he isn't behaving himself. Let me state that again, just to be clear. You, Elen of the Roads, are correct when you demand that people need to present evidence that PMA is being disruptive before any further sanctions should be considered. That is correct. However, that isn't necessarily to say that I agree you assessed consensus correctly on the ban discussion. That is a different matter entirely. --Jayron32 17:45, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. Elen, the RfC made clear that Pmanderson was topic-banned from MoS issues, including article titles. Ohconfucius left titles out of the discussion in error, assuming it was obvious that it was included (see here). When this omission was pointed out to him (see here), he went back and fixed it, and people repeated their support for the inclusion of article titles in the ban (see here). The closure on those terms was confirmed here. Best thing now would be to make that clear to Pmanderson for the future, but without sanctioning him for any lack of clarity between then and now. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 16:53, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Now you see, I'm not reading events that way at all - which is why I keep telling people to find another mechanism to get the discussion re-evaluated, because I'm not going to change my close. As far as I can see, the decision was made to put up options - initially a civility block and a ban from MOS. The ban from MOS was very widely supported, but when the discussion got on to banning from article titles, there was disagreement in the discussion precisely because some editors did not support banning Pmanderson from content based article title discussion, and did not want to construct ban wording that would prevent him from doing that. So while there was a fairly clear consensus for the MOS ban, there was not the same consensus for the ban on all article title discussion, and indeed some concern about it was expressed.
    I do invite all uninvolved editors to read the entire discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Pmanderson and perhaps there can be further discussion and more sets of !votes, until we all die of old age, or hell freezes over, or something. Elen of the Roads (talk) 17:20, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Could you link to the section of the RfC where people seemed to oppose a topic ban regarding article titles? If you read this section, it says:
    Pmanderson shall be subject to an indefinite topic ban from Manual of Style (e.g. WP:MOS & WP:MOSNUM) and any related discussion, construed broadly. This includes naming policies and guidelines (e.g. WP:TITLE), move (title re-naming) policies and guidelines (WP:MOVE) and any related discussion, construed broadly.
    Fifteen people supported, and one asked a question. That's over and above the earlier question (in this section), which said:
    The proposal before us here is that Pmanderson be subject to an indefinite topic ban from Manual of Style and any related discussion, construed broadly.
    Twenty seven supported this, with three opposes and one question (note: construed broadly), so consensus seems clear. Can you link to the specific section where you feel people wanted the ban not to apply to article titles? SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 17:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    SlimVirgin's observations are compelling. GFHandel   10:17, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I spent some time looking over the discussion (and am sorry I missed it) and SV is right that about the numbers relating to the AT topic ban. However, and there is always an however :), there are a couple of extenuating points that point to Elen having called the consensus correctly. First, the number of supporters for the AT topic ban is lower than the number of supporters for the MOS topic ban leading me to believe that there was a lot more support for the MOS ban than there was for the topic ban. Second, the number of !voters in the latter part of the discussion is considerably lower than the number of !voters and commenters in the earlier discussion. Since the discussion was moved out of ANI, it is not unreasonable to assume that it is possible that the final set of !voters is a self-selected one (note that I'm not saying that that was the case). Given these two factors, I'd say she made the right call. Finally, and this is a hated bureaucratic point, her actual ban was up there for everyone to see and any discussion about the ban should have been done at that time. It's just too late now. We need to look for a new consensus if we're going to ban Pmanderson from everything related to AT. --rgpk (comment) 13:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I agree it's too late now. In everything else you are incorrect, see my summary above that already clarifies it. --OpenFuture (talk) 14:06, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Look guys

    I called it how I saw it, and I am not going to change my mind. So please find another mechanism that is acceptable to the community (who I notice are contributing in droves to say I'm wrong.....) to come up with an outcome that is more acceptable to yourselves. Elen of the Roads (talk) 18:28, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Several admins here are saying you misjudged consensus, which is easily done when lots of people are responding to an RfC. Asking people to come up with another mechanism isn't fair and isn't needed, because that was the mechanism, and it delivered a clear answer. (If you're saying otherwise, please link to the discussion where you saw dissent, because I've looked and can't find it.) What's important is that there's clarity for Pma's sake. NW said above that he considered Pma topic-banned from article titles, so maybe that's something that should be communicated to Pma so he knows where he stands. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 18:41, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you not have this section [12] on the page you are reading? Or Bkonrad saying "Oppose. I could support if this were limited to discussions of policy pages, with some additional caveats with regards to participation in other forums, such as move discussions. I.e., if PMA can contribute responsibly and civilly in such discussions (and I've seen that it is possible for him to do so), that should be encouraged. There could perhaps be some sort of escalation clause, if such discussions get out of hand based on interpretations of WP:AT, but such a blanket prohibition is tantamount to giving PMA's antagonists another stick to poke into his cage."

    And what part of I AM NOT GOING TO CHANGE MY MIND. Get an uninvolved admin to reclose the discussion are you not understanding. Elen of the Roads (talk) 19:20, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    You know, Elen, comments like that, and "Mum has spoken. Stop asking Dad"—it's just not an appropriate way to speak to people.
    The section you linked to above was superseded by the section following it, where consensus was clear. That's all I'm going to say because I'm just repeating myself now. The only issue here is that it's unfair to Pma to have this lack of clarity, because he's in danger of being banned completely if the topic ban doesn't work out. He has a good mind, so I wouldn't want to see that. That's why I commented here. Over and out. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 19:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Two things. Firstly, fewer people took part in the last knockings of the discussion, so no, consensus was not clear. This isn't a Japanese game show where the last man standing wins - I read the entire thing, not the last 25 lines. Second, I'm completely clear that the ban currently enforced is the ban logged at the discussion, on his talkpage, and at the log of bans. And that does not include content based article title discussions. If he's not arguing that WP:COMMONNAME is a load of bollocks, but is arguing over which option is the more commonly used name (as for example in the lengthy discussions about what to call the practice recently known as Tree shaping) then he is not in breach of the topic ban. If he strays into any territory either to disagree with WP:MOS - or even how to interpret WP:MOS - or any new daft arguments about the English language, then he is violating the topic ban. Elen of the Roads (talk) 19:48, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, and if he continues to edit making civil and useful contributions, I would hope no-one would make the kind of bad faith allegations one sometimes sees in this venue. At the same time, if he edits disruptively and incivilly, I don't think it's going to make much difference whether or not the topic ban is involved. Elen of the Roads (talk) 19:52, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That's all well and good in areas outside his topic ban area. However, where he is topic-banned, he can, of course, make no edits, good, bad, or indifferent. That's what a topic ban is about. It was a topic ban that was enacted by the community, not a civility parole. Jayjg (talk) 01:32, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Look, this doesn't matter. The point of the topic ban was to try to see if a topic ban works. Exactly what topics are banned are not relevant, except that the change between the consensus and the ban caused confusion, but confusion that has now been cleared up. That was a waste of time and regrettable, but don't waste even *more* time on it, and on Pmanderson. The problems have never been the topics, Pmandersons behavior has been the same on all topics he is involved with. The question is if a topic ban will make the penny will drop and make him change his behavior or not. If titles are included in the ban or not is hardly going to make a difference. --OpenFuture (talk) 20:55, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I'd say we agree 100% on that. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The scope of the topic ban very much does matter. If the community didn't want to be topic-ban him, then it wouldn't have done so. One cannot, after a topic-ban has been enacted, say "well, he can still edit whatever he likes, but we'll watch his edits very closely now". Jayjg (talk) 01:32, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    He is not editing whatever he likes. He is (as far as I can tell) sticking to the topic ban communicated to him by Elen and avoiding style issues. You could at least acknowledge that. Carcharoth (talk) 02:44, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I was not implying that Pmanderson is "editing whatever he likes", I was responding to OpenFuture's implication that Pmanderson could still do, as long as he behaved himself, regardless of the topic ban. Jayjg (talk) 03:21, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think I implied that. I did say that it didn't matter what the topic ban covered. Obviously he should follow it, regardless of what it covers. --OpenFuture (talk) 03:36, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, I think it's pretty obvious that "what the topic band covered" is quite relevant - that is, in fact, the very topic of this AN/I section. If an editor were, for example, to be banned from discussing issues of pseudo-science, and another editor stated "his edits on the topic of Guam have no issues, so therefore the topic-ban is working", that second editor's statement would be viewed as ludicrous, and rightfully so. Jayjg (talk) 03:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure, but that's because it is pretty weird from the start to give a generally problematic editor a topic ban in the hope that he will stop to be problematic across the board. But that was the community decision, and that means that as long as he is behaving the topic ban can be said to be "working". --OpenFuture (talk) 03:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    If you think that was the community decision, you must not have been there. The community decision was to explicitly include article titling discussions in the ban, since that's where most of the trouble was; Elen didn't get that, so here we are. He's "behaving" while testing the limits of his topic ban, naturally. Dicklyon (talk) 04:02, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Which leads us back to my original statement that exactly *what* the ban covers doesn't matter, so I think we are stuck now. :-) --OpenFuture (talk) 04:22, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Pmanderson - actual problematic editing since topic ban

    Please list edits that are actually problematic (not ones that you think should have been banned under the topic ban that isn't the one that is in force). If he's still being incivil, we can start that discussion about a site wide ban - I am serious about that. If all that is wrong is that he is disagreeing with you in a content based discussion, then I'm afraid you will have to live with it. If what is happening is that certain members of the community are following him round trying to start trouble (as I have seen alleged), then that can be dealt with also Elen of the Roads (talk) 10:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Elen, I'm sorry, but you don't get to unilaterally re-define the scope of the issue here. The issue is whether or not Pmanderson is banned from this topic, and secondarily, whether or not you're allowed to enact a different sanction than the community consensus. And, by the way, I don't know about others, but he's certainly not "disagreeing with [me] in a content based discussion". Jayjg (talk) 01:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The point, really, is that things have calmed down considerably. The whole issue was quiescent until you brought it up again and there didn't seem to be any objections from the others that participated at the previous discussion. If there is not an immediate problem here, what is the problem you are trying to solve? Did you not follow the discussion or did you enter a !vote and then drift away and only come back days later with an incorrect presumption about what the result was? I can understand that the result puzzles you, but if that is the case you should have gone to Elen's talk page first and then come here, and left a polite note on Pmanderson's talk page stating that you intended to question the precise nature of the topic ban as enacted by Elen, rather than immediately opening it up to community discussion again here. The fact that you came straight here first indicates that you wanted immediate admin action, rather than attempting to talk with the relevant people first.

    One other thing I should say here, is that the whole concept of those !voting in a discussion like that producing a motion to close is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. AfDs don't get closed by motion by those !voting in them, and neither do (topic) ban discussions. The whole concept of proposing a motion to close is an indication of a need to exercise bureaucratic control over a process, rather than letting it close the normal way. It is also a way to discourage new participation - would you participate in a process where those who had already participated were voting on a motion to close? There were deep flaws in the way that (topic) ban discussion was conducted. Carcharoth (talk) 02:31, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm not at all puzzled by the outcome - it was clearly that Pmanderson was banned from all MOS-related pages, including pages about article titles. And the only "deep flaws" I can see the ban discussion was that the closer decided to unilaterally impose a different sanction than the community consensus. Jayjg (talk) 03:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Jayjg, your interpretation of the issue seems unduly harsh on Elen. Your userpage says you've been an admin for 6 years, I'm sure in that time you've had to exercise your judgement in interpreting the content of a discussion so that you can assess an appropriate consensus statement, and I'm sure you understand that real consensus can be at times very difficult to determine, and that it has far more to do with the content of conversation than the number of bolded support/oppose bullet points. Elen has made it repeatedly clear that, acting in good faith, she reached a particular conclusion of consensus, based on her reading of the discussion. You clearly disagree with that conclusion. However, Elen was the closing admin, not you. It was her job to use her judgement to assess consensus, not yours. Undoubtedly there are avenues available to you if you disagree, but leveling somewhat unpleasant accusations of unilateral changes and violating community consensus (as you personally interpret it, I might add) is hardly appropriate and certainly unexpected from someone in your position. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 02:47, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure how your point relates to the one to which you are responding. This discussion is not about Pmanderson's current behavior, but about the extent of his topic ban. Jayjg (talk) 03:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    My reply was to your statement, that the issue is whether or not Pmanderson is topic banned from article title topics. My understanding of your reading of consensus in the discussion was that he should be, and that Elen made a fundamental error in assessing consensus. My understanding of Elen's reply is that she did not make an error, but simply differs from you in her interpretation of the consensus. So to answer your question, no, it would appear Pmanderson is not banned from article title topics. Elen's assessment was not an error to be retroactively corrected, but a difference of opinion that has grounds to remain in effect. I don't see any justification here for implying she has tried to act unilaterally or in contradiction of consensus, as you directly stated in your response above. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 04:11, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I cannot see any confusion. The ban is the one that is logged on the ANI page, on PMa's talkpage, and at the log of bans, and anyone can go and read it. Elen of the Roads (talk) 09:36, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    User removing CSD notification from non-free images used solely in userspace.

    Hello, I have been attempting to tag four files (File:DCFC0003.JPG, File:DCFC0004.JPG, File:DCFC0004.jpg, and File:DCFC0001.JPG) for CSD as copyright violations (derivative works of copyrighted material). The uploader, User:JamesAlan1986, has consistently reverted this. Examples: 1, 2, and 3 and responded to with aggression. I have already reverted his reversion twice per file and given him warning twice, including mentioning ANI. Could an admin intervene? Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:59, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I have warned the user, and reverted the CSD removals. However, I'll point out that JamesAlen1986's user page now states that he is "Offline Forever" and has "Washed his hands of the whole Wikipedia mess" (paraphrase). Qwyrxian (talk) 11:12, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    And I am, I'm done. I'm tired of the drama on here. I'm tired of getting attacked for following Wikipedia standards (check the entire history page of "Sparks Fly") and now this. I got enough on my plate without this crap and feeling like I don't have any rights. My mother has done it my whole life. I'm worried about losing my best friend. I don't get on here for drama and people to start stuff I get on here to help contribute. But I'm done with now I can't deal with this anymore and I shouldn't have to so just delete the d*** pictures so I can get off here. JamesAlan1986 *talk 11:22, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Let's not mis-state those uses as copy vios. The are violations of the Wikipedia policy intended to try to get free images by discouraging fair use and use-with-specific-permission of non-free images North8000 (talk) 11:42, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Sigh. I wish I could say this is an isolated incident. Those are non-free images, and should be deleted, however because trans-photographic copyright (the issue here) can be difficult to explain, because there really wasn't a terrible amount of explaining going on, and the person on the receiving the explanation wasn't making a great effort to listen, we get these situations. What is needed is a bright and colorful one page PDF that explains trans-photographic copyright in language that a third grader can understand (not to say anyone here is a third grader, just to say that any legalspeak in the document is too much legalspeak). Sven Manguard Wha? 12:04, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, using a term "trans-photographic copyright" that doesn't come up with hits in Wikipedia or Google is not a good start.  :-) North8000 (talk) 12:15, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I made that term up a while back because I've yet to find a better term for it. Sven Manguard Wha? 13:15, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    The creator of the files chose to nominate them for speedy deletion per WP:CSD G7, and they are gone. Favonian (talk) 12:12, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Here's a suggested nutshell: "If you make a copyrighted work of something to which someone else holds a copyright, then nobody can use it unless they both give a license." — Coren (talk) 16:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    It's called a derivative work, if anyone's interested. -FASTILY (TALK) 22:38, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Typically, when making a derivative work, the original copyright holder's licensing must be compatible with the derivative work copyright holder's licensing (usually, that'll work the other way around, too, but it's not a requirement). — Kudu ~I/O~ 22:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Actually, if you want to really tell it like it is, while one may know that something is WP policy violation, other than making an educated guess, nobody in Wikipedia ever really knows that anything is a copy vio. A copy vio is use without permission for that use. This is because Wikipedia is unwilling and unable to record all of the normal type permissions for use, such as permissions for specific uses, permissions restricted to not-for-profit uses etc. The only thing that it is willing or able to record is essentially unlimited permissions for unlimited use (including for-profit) by others. So, in Wikipedia, completely lacking that information, other than taking a guess, nobody has any frigin' clue as to what other permissions have been granted and thus no basis for saying that something is a copy vio. North8000 (talk) 10:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    You seem to be confused about exactly what a "copyright violation" means. The only licenses under which we can make use of content are the Creative Commons license under which all of our original content is released and those strictly more permissive than that (such as public domain). Any other "specific permissions" mean that we would therefore be violating the copyright of the holder by including it here under a more permissive license than that under which it has been released. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 11:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Not really. For example, if an image owner gave permission for an image to only be used in Wikipedia, placement in Wikipedia is not a copyvio. Such placement (including meaningless "assenting" to other uses by the editor placing it) may lead to a copy vio, but it itself is not a copy vio. And since Wikipedia has no way to record or recognize such conditional permissions, there is no way to know that a copy vio exists. What IS known is that such is a violation of WP policy. North8000 (talk) 13:59, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Nope. The act of uploading a file here is the same as the act of publishing it under our copyright license. The minute a file is uploaded we are explicitly distributing it under our terms, and the minute anyone looks at it that person has had the file distributed to them under our terms. Where our terms are more liberal than those under which the file was offered to us, we're breaking the license terms (implicit or explicit) under which the offer was made, and as such we're engaging in copyright violation by distributing copyrighted works without permission. This is why "permission is given to Wikipedia only to distribute this file" licenses are broken by design, as we distribute only on our only license terms and (optionally) under more liberal terms than CC-BY-SA for certain files (where distributing as CC-BY-SA is permitted by the more permissive license by definition). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 14:25, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (ec / "thinko") I'm afraid I disagree with North8000. Although I am not a lawyer, but by uploading an image to Wikipedia, the uploader grants certain redistribution rights (the CC-by-SA 3.0 license). If he doesn't have those rights, he's granting a license he doesn't have the right to. It may not be technically be a "copyright violation", it is illegal. I would call it "induced copyright violation", rather than "contributory copyright violation", in that the uploader should know that the material would be automatically distributed in violation of copyright.
    But I'm not a lawyer, and I don't think it's ever been established whether quoting on and archiving of Usenet is legal, and that's been around a lot longer than Wikipedia.
    (end ec) But I agree with Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) that it's wrong. I would say it's illegal on the part of the uploader, but it doesn't really matter. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree that it's a bad idea and violates policy. Not about copyvio. And keep in mind that accusing someone of copy vio is accusing them of a civil or criminal offense. North8000 (talk) 16:26, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    For better or worse, NLT has developed particular exceptions whereby we are permitted to warn editors regarding particular areas of legality: specifically, libel as it refers to negative and unattributed commentary about a living person, and copyright violation. There's next to no chance that this will change. As for whether the problem in question is directly copyright violation or merely "inducement to copyright violation" as Arthur put it, in practice the distinction is academic and a far cry from your original point (which was, so far as I can see, that Wikipedia should collect data under whatever license it can, and pass the buck onto readers to wade through licenses individually should they wish to redistribute our content). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 21:06, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    User:Meow's edits

    Resolved
     – Meow has apologized. Content disputes can be handled on the article's talk page. 28bytes (talk) 21:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Meow vandalizes the article 2011 Pacific typhoon season by removing well-sourced and verifiable content (ie. Blanking) and use foul language in the edit summary (Edit summary vandalism) in the edit at 05:10, 12 September 2011. Administrators should take appropriate action to prevent further damage to the article.2011typhoon (talk) 07:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    You are a liar. What people can see is only your vandalism. I only recover that article from your mess. You keep:
    • Adding unreliable and incomplete information.
    • Reverting new things to old things.
    • Editing with vandalism and cheating.
    --Meow 09:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Are you talking about yourself? You keep removing reliable information. Also, as I have mentioned many times, incompleteness is not a valid excuse to remove any content. Any article in Wikipedia is incomplete!!! That's why information need to be added.2011typhoon (talk) 10:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    2011typhoon, nobody is vandalising, here; this is just a content dispute. You should follow WP:DR, to try and solve it by discussion. At the moment, you're edit warring with Meow; if you keep this up, I'll protect ther article. Now, Meow, this edit summary is a blatant violation of WP:NPA; pleaseconsider this your only warning: if you do something like that again, you'll be blocked. Salvio Let's talk about it! 10:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    "You are a liar" is also pretty inappropriate. Oh, and Meow, while you're here you should be aware that using images in your signature is a no-no. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:45, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Both of you, show some respect to WP:CIVIL. No offese Meow, but calling people a liar is a personal attack IMO. Please stop. Thank you.YE Pacific Hurricane 14:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The original poster really needs to provide proof of their claims that Meow is using foul language in the edit summaries, because I sure don't see it. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 21:16, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Ahem. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 21:26, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, I missed that, thanks, Chris. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 21:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    page ownership

    user Mattinbgn seems to have set himself up as the de facto arbiter of what may or may not be posted on articlr Bowls' talk page [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Bowls&diff=450017154&oldid=450016526] is this legitimate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.153.195.250 (talk) 14:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    It was a clear case of WP:NOTFORUM, and Mattinbgn acted correctly. Article talk pages are for discussing how to improve the article, not discussing the subject of the article ("It's ludicrous to call this a sport! We will soon have conkers. marbles, hopscotch and hoopla clamouring for 'sport' status.") -- Scjessey (talk) 14:07, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Now hang on! The IP went about this the wrong way but did have a point to make. Yes, "article talk pages are for discussing how to improve the article". The IP asked whether bowls was a "sport or game?" which was fair enough, but then he got a bit shirty with the comment that it is ludicrous to call bowls a sport. I disagree with him, but (hypothetically) had enough people agreed it was a game and not a sport, then the article might have been changed -- improved. So yes, his point was justified there, especially as Wiki's sport/games delineation leaves a lot to be desired. For instance, the intro of our Tug of war article defines tug of war as a sport, but has an image with a caption calling it a game. The main illustration of our Game article has an image of a tug of war event. Hmmm. Moriori (talk) 22:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I've notified Mattinbgn of this thread, since the original poster failed to do so. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:53, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Concur that the removal was proper, in accordance with WP:TPO. I also note the reporting IP is from the same range as the IP which posted the removed material. I've added the {{notforum}} flag to the Talk page header in an attempt to forestall development of the issue beyond this point. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (User:N5iln) (talk) 14:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you guys. There has been a bit of a low level vandalsim campaign in the article to replace the word "sport" with "game" for some months now. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 20:28, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    In June 2009, Ernestobelmonte (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was blocked for repeated copyright violations, mostly with regard to articles concerning horse racing and horse race broadcasting. In April 2010, the editor behind that account appears to have resumed editing as Wantobereporter (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), creating and editing articles in the same field; the substantial edits resume the pattern of overt copyright violations. (See, for example, List of HRTV commentators, which seems to be little more than a cut-and-paste of the copyrighted promotional biographies found here [13]. Wantobereporter, like Ernestobelmonte, ignored warnings on their talk page and reinstated copyvio articles after deletions. The Wantobereporter account stopped editing in June 2011, but there are IPs which seem to pick up the editing pattern (User:75.5.0.129, User:75.4.236.228, for example).

    There are probably other accounts/IPs that I haven't spotted. It also looks there are a lot of copyvios to be cleaned up, possibly dating back to the Ernestobelmonte account. For example, spotchecked List_of_TVG_commentators#Nancy_Ury includes text cut-and pasted from here [14] and here [15]. It's not clear to me (yet) how many of the articles/entries involved call for outright deletion and how many should be let stand following a thorough copyvio scrubbing. I certainly think we need to look for other accounts/IPs which may be associated with the Wantobereporter account (the already-blocked account data is presumably stale). Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 17:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I suggest you take this to sock-puppetry investigations. --S Larctia (talk) 17:05, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I would suggest WP:CCI. CCI is very backlogged, but WP:SPI will not organize copyright cleanup. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:07, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Or maybe to WP:Pass the buck. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots17:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Are you offering to file it, Bugs? Marvelous. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:14, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    SPI's are a waste of time and effort. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots19:10, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Why is that?
    ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 19:12, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Two reasons: (1) They are difficult to set up and then the checkuser closes it because he doesn't feel like looking outside the box; and (2) The occasional passing checkuser here, if he's in the right mood, will go ahead and take action without a formal SPI being made. As with the original discussion in this section: If an admin feels like taking action, they will; if not, they tell the OP to go someplace else. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots19:57, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    This train looks like it's going to have to run on multiple tracks; I am hoping for guidance on how best to organize things and what sequence /timing to start them up in. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 17:25, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    WP:CCI is the place to go to note the copyright issues. We (by which I mean most probably the wonderful User:MER-C) will create a page listing all of his contributions so that they can be checked for copyright concerns. WP:SPI is the place to go if you want admins to look into the connection of the accounts. However, I think now that I've had time to look into it that the quacking is strong here. For instance, I see that Ernestobelmonte created the article Caton Bredar, which was G12ed. The new account recreated it as a copyvio of the same source. I think there's enough behavioral evidence at this point for me to take action on the named accounts. I haven't looked closely at the IPs, but at least one of them seems to have been dormant for a year or so? I'll look more into that as soon as I figure out why the copyvio template isn't working. :P --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:09, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, fixed the template for now and blocked the named account. I'm going to go ahead and set up the CCI on both accounts as well. The IPs do seem to be a bit stale. If you become aware of any that are active, please take it to WP:SPI. I'll make sure all probable socks are tagged, which will help establish location. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:42, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Request to Block User:92.236.180.51

    Please block IP address 92.236.180.51 from editing pages on wikipedia indefinately. He , tom constantly break all pages wwil eventually lead phioloshy rule. by creating an architecture loop. it is Vandalism Particulary tthe page tools — Preceding unsigned comment added by Srappan (talkcontribs) 19:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    1: IP addresses are almost never blocked indefinitely.
    2: Other editors (including at least one admin) have already taken note of this IP's activities.
    3: In future, please follow WP:VANDAL, and report at WP:AIV. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (User:N5iln) (talk) 19:38, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Trust me, my markup is so bad I can screw up anything. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 20:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Pray tell the admins don't go on strike anytime soon. –MuZemike 14:48, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Example:

    No markup needed. No problem. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots09:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Disruptive editing of User:DIREKTOR

    Hi. I have problem with User:DIREKTOR who pushing his POV in article Serbia under German occupation. Seems that this user is trying to push his POV by all possible means and to ignore any sources that I presented to him. I tried to discuss with him on both, article's talk page and his personal page, but there is no use since this user decided to solve issue by revert warring. Please see this edit: [16] - user DIREKTOR included false info that Serbia during World War II was part of the nation of Germany, while it was a foreign country occupied by German forces. There is no source that support claim that Serbia was part of Germany. He also included files with misleading descriptions. User DIREKTOR uploaded files GNS_Flag.svg and GNS_CoA.svg, which he created from files Flag_of_serbia_1941_1944.JPG and Coat_of_arms_of_serbia_1941_1944.JPG - I uploaded and scaned these two files from a book that explicitly claiming that these were symbols of Serbia, while DIREKTOR uploaded modified versions of these files using false description that these symbols representing only government of Serbia but not Serbia itself (He did not provided a single source that claiming that these symbols represented only government). Generally, he simply trying to annihilate name "Serbia" as a name for WW2 territory wherever he can, as can be seen from this edit: [17] (he simply replaced name "Serbia" with "Government of National Salvation"). In this talk page comment DIREKTOR explicitly said "There was no country or political entity called Serbia", which clearly reflecting the POV that he wants to push. In this edit he also annihilated infobox that representing subject of the article (i.e. Serbia) and replaced it with two infoboxes that are representing only administrative bodies that governed Serbia. This is completely against Wikipedia practices because similar articles about countries and territories usually containing infoboxes that representing countries and territories, not governments of these countries and territories. Note that he did not presented a single source that support claim that there was no Serbia, while he ignored all sources that I collected that are claiming opposite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PANONIAN/Sources02 Can somebody please stop this user to edit articles based simply on his unsourced POV and against sources? Also note that this user was recently banned from editing of Balkan-related topics by an administrator (User:Fainites) (See reasons for ban elaborated here, but seems that this ban was lifted due to DIREKTOR's appeal and opinion that user:Fainites was involved in dispute with him. However, the fact that an admin was involved does not mean that behavior of user DIREKTOR was not disruptive - his behavior should be further examined by uninvolved admins. PANONIAN 20:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    This is a content dispute issue. I won't go into the details but this report seems to be the preferred alternative to responding to a request that the user indicates a source properly and in accordance with WP:V (the name of the publication + a page number). The user simply posts a link to this page of his full of dozens of links to various texts and images and says: "here's the source". It would also be futile to list the numerous, numerous incidents reported here which offer an insight into PANONIAN's own behaviour and the nature of his involvement. --DIREKTOR (TALK) 21:30, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Cross-accusations and policy-shopping solves nothing. Have either of you looked for a third opinion or otherwise sought dispute resolution? --Alan the Roving Ambassador (User:N5iln) (talk) 21:44, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That will definitely be the next step it seems. Though after having been engaged in a mediation for almost two years :P, I've admittedly lost faith in WP:DR's ability to resolve complex and obscure Balkans issues. I will be going on vacation (again) in a few days, when I return I think a good idea would be to request more eyes on this matter. Its really a boring, irrelevant, fringe issue - but its been going on for ages now (imo because of PANONIAN's insistence on referring to a Nazi German occupation zone as "Serbia", implying the existence of a historical country). --DIREKTOR (TALK) 21:51, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Why not try WP:DRN? There is no admin action need here...--Cerejota (talk) 22:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    As you can see, I asked for third opinion long time ago and this is response to it: [18]. Problem is that DIREKTOR simply does not accept that third opinion. What Wikipedia policies requiring in the case when someone does not accept third opinion? PANONIAN 04:22, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think that anything short of WP:RFAR will solve the problem. And that problem is not Panonian, at least not in this case. No such user (talk) 10:07, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Vandalism and slanderous commentary added to Ektoise page

    Resolved
     – whilst discussion takes place on notabiity at article talk page. User is - correctly - blocked for NLT. Article AfDed

    New user Buddhifer is persistently editing the page for Ektoise, adding derogatory and personal comments about the group. The information has not been backed up with any references and has been implemented in a scattershot manner without any use of standard formatting.

    The content is clearly intended as an act of vandalism as no attempt has been made to support any of the claims and several of the edits made at 4:18, 13 September are of aesthetic value only and seem to have been executed for the sole purpose of making the page appear to be improperly formatted. Several attempts to correct the vandalism have been re-edited by the user, with the degree of vandalism increasing each time the page is re-edited.Tetsuo the cat (talk) 04:38, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Can you please provide some DIFFS of some of the vandalistic edits? I can't tell from your most recent edit to that page where the "vandalism" is. Dayewalker (talk) 04:46, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    [19], [20], [21], [22] and [23] will prolly suffice, although thats only about half of them. Seems like a disgruntled former fan or member. Heiro 04:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I gave them a warning and directed them to the article talk page. Also, Tetsuo the cat, you are required to inform editors when posting about them on ANI. I have done this for you. Also, it would have been nice if you had tried to contact them before coming here. Heiro 05:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    My apologies, this is the first time I've had this sort of thing happen, I'll read through the procedure more thoroughly so I can do it properly if anything like this arises again Tetsuo the cat (talk) 05:06, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    HR, it looks like you were right [24] about the editor's motivation. Good call. Dayewalker (talk) 05:13, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I took to 3rr noticeboard after their last revert of me, since they are way past 3. So, if anyone wants to deal with this guy.....Be my guest. Heiro 05:17, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (e/c)In the future he can be reported to WP:AIV for a quick block. Noformation Talk 05:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (Somehow your last EC removed my last post, restoring) Wow, hadn't had a chance to look at that yet, upping it to LEGAL threats I guess. Shouldnt be long now. Heiro 05:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    And the crazy just keeps on coming haha. Reported to AIV. Noformation Talk 05:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment Whilst the user clearly needs to be blocked, they are absolutely correct in that the history of the band has been airbrushed from our article, presumably by sources close to the current incarnation of the band. The article is, as a result, now very misleading. I'm going to work now, but I'll fix that shortly. I'm also not sure that the band is actually notable at all, given that all of their releases appear to be CD-Rs on their own label, but that's a separate issue. Black Kite (t) (c) 06:21, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Shouldn't this addition to ANI by User:Buddhifer be considered a legal threat and the user be indeffed immediately? VanIsaacWS 07:08, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Guess he was.VanIsaacWS
    (edit conflict)The user has been indeffed per NLT. Having just looked at the article in question, I'm not sure that it meets WP:BAND, so I've PRODded it. Mjroots (talk) 07:15, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I felt that notability was established through the group's involvement with the international electronic scene, including working with several established artists. Also there are numerous references that are independant of the group themselves. I can understand that notability would be questioned as the group is not signed to a major label but the music industry is at a point now where many acts are following the lead of Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead and releasing their own music independantly of a major and this will likely become more evident on Wikipedia as time goes on. Tetsuo the cat (talk) 13:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it's actually the exact opposite of the scenario in WP:DOLT. The editor in question is using WP as a means of promoting what could be considered defamatory and slanderous claims - claims that are distinctly and unambiguously unsourced. Prior to this editor's additions, this was a very neutrally written article that was well sourced, and presented a narration that seems consistent with those sources. There was nothing even about this particular person in the article. Now there seems to be a considerable history between this editor and the subject of the article, but without documentation, we have no evidence of the nature of that relationship, nor any means of writing about it in WP:NPOV. Let me repeat: there was absolutely nothing, negative or otherwise, written about the editor in this article, so the legal threats defense in WP:DOLT that he was somehow harmed by the contents of this article do not hold any water. VanIsaacWS 09:08, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    No, you're wrong there. It wasn't neutral at all, because the blocked editor is clearly mentioned in the sources that are currently in the article (i.e. discogs.org). He's even mentioned on the band's own website! I agree that there's nothing negative about the article, but the blocked editor has simply been written out of the article completely, along with practically all mention of the previous incarnation of the band (presumably because he was in it). Do you realise that the "first album" of this band is actually just a re-release of their album under that previous name, with the track that the blocked editor sang on removed? This is wrong, and needs to be fixed; if the article is not PRODded out of existence, I will do so. Black Kite (t) (c) 10:12, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Then the course is very simple here. You simply add mention of him, based on the contents of those sources, and you cite that content. That's it. Just because the content is not currently comprehensive does not mean that WP:DOLT is any more applicable. He was not slandered, nor was anything unflattering written about him. I repeat, WP:DOLT applies when a person is removing unflattering information, not when they add it. VanIsaacWS 11:02, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    No mention was made of the blocked editor in the article as there are no sources that I can find that discuss his part in the group. He was listed in the former members section which he himself deleted though. It seems as though the blocked editor's contribution was limited to the one removed song, as the band shows continuity of sound across releases regardless of whether he was in the group. A browse on the cited reference Discogs.org shows the blocked editor has not been involved with any other musical project and has not released any music of his own. Tetsuo the cat (talk) 13:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    "They started in 2007 and changed their name to Ektoise partway through 2010 due to the departure of founding member Steven Cameron." ([25]), thus, technically, he was right to remove his name from the "former members" section because he was technically never a member of this band - however it is the lack of mention of what was effectively the same band under a different name that appears to be the issue. Having said that, the more important discussion seems to be whether this band is notable. I note that the PROD has been removed, so it looks like AfD may be the next stop. Black Kite (t) (c) 15:48, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I agree that DOLT doesn't apply - my "you're wrong" was referring to the neutrality of the article. Black Kite (t) (c) 15:59, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    And I vehemently disagree with that interpretation. Simply not having mention of former members of a band is not a violation of neutrality. Having a section on former band members that fails to mention inconvenient former members would be a violation of neutrality, but that was never the case. If what Tetsuo says above is true, then the user himself is the instigator of that supposed NPOV problem, though like I said, I do not believe it is the case. VanIsaacWS 18:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    PROD was removed, so I nominated for deletion, even though I am on the fence. Hopefully, we'll get some good feedback and resolve this. VanIsaacWS 19:49, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    User:Snettie: POV warring, possible copyvio concerns, WP:CIVIL as well

    Snettie (talk · contribs) is POV warring on Political positions of Ron Paul, adding long POV quotes directly from Ron Paul [26] [27] [28] are just a few of the many diffs that demonstrate this. S/he is also namecalling in his/her edit summaries, including accusing editors of vandalism [29], book burning [30], and other statements. I am stepping out of this so I don't violate 3RR, but until something is done, s/he is going to continue to push long Ron Paul monologues into the article. Kansan (talk) 06:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    At the least Snettie should get a block for continuing to edit war after being warned. aprock (talk) 06:26, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    He's done it again; reverting. Quotes are automatically copyrighted aren't they? N419BH 06:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    He's also running amok on Rick Perry. Same MO. Reverted to version prior to edit war. N419BH 06:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Blocked 24 hours. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 08:16, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Would a couple admins please sort through requests for page protection? It hasn't seen any admin attention in 8 hours. N419BH 08:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    To their great credit, GedUK has cleared the backlog. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 12:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Unmerger by IP after a merge was agreed

    On June 13th a discussion was initiated at Talk:Complementarianism about merging Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Danvers Statement to Complementarianism. It was closed (by the nominator) on August 1st after two other editors had agreed and a third (who has not edited since) disagreed. Last night an IP (an apparent SPA) came along and unmerged it, then posted on the talk page they didn't see a consensus. This was followed a minute later by an editor with an account agreeing they didn't see a consensus, then another editor agreeing with the merge. I reversed all of this as not according to process, but a related IP came along and unmerged again. Before I do anything else I'd like some advice. I strong feel that since the merge discussion did run for quite some time it shouldn't be this easy for an IP and another editor to unmerge two articles, but I'd like some advice at the very least. I don't care one way or another but this isn't the way to do things, and the IP is obviously an experienced editor. I'll post to the talk page about this as it isn't clear if the IP is just hopping or dynamic. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 09:45, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm disturbed that the IP took to reverting the merger without discussion. The merger discussion enumerated how these articles could merit a content fork, and any reversion that does not attempt to meet the basic criteria for a content fork seems in really bad faith to me. Combined with some apparent WP:Canvassing (by a previous editor), and this looks bad. I would like to see these articles reverted to merged and protected until the new discussion is complete. Can an admin do that? VanIsaacWS 10:16, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems that there are (at least) three editors that oppose the merge, so that if there was a consensus, it has changed. However, the original discussion close by the merge proposer seems to me a little doubtful, at the least. -- 202.124.74.150 (talk) 10:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Then that's something that needs to be discussed, not unilaterally undone. VanIsaacWS 10:37, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    You need to re-read WP:CCC. It is not an invitation to anarchically overturning previous consensus, it is a guideline that says that previous consensus alone is not a valid reason to oppose a proposal. VanIsaacWS 10:40, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Except that we generally don't have unmerger discussions on Wikipedia. What happens if one thinks a merged article warrants an article by itself? One re-creates the article. For my part, I was just about to revert this edit when I thought I'd look up the Danvers Statement on Google Books. I was pleasantly surprised what I found there - it is easily notable enough for an article - and so I added a couple of references to the article. It seems that the IP editor is genuinely wanting to improve Wikipedia. StAnselm (talk) 10:55, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure we do, it's just a lot more informal than merge/delete discussions. What happens is, 1) a person adds a bunch of content to a section within an article, and then another editor comes by and says to himself "You know what? That section is really too bulky for this article. It could probably stand on its own.", then he searches for the term, find it redirects back to the page he's looking at, and he decides to remove the redirect and puts the content in that page. or 2) the original editor (or another) goes to the talk page and says "Hey, I know we had a merge before, but this section is starting to pull the rest of article into it gravity well. What do we think about a content fork?", and everybody says "Yeah, it's probably time now." It's simple, before you overturn the previously decision, you either meet the terms of the merge discussion and get confirmation (by discussion or confirming actions) that you've met it, or you start a new discussion to review the previous decision. VanIsaacWS 11:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict)
    There's a big difference between:
    1. Looking for an article, seeing it was merged, and then unmerging it to improve it; and
    2. Looking for an article, seeing it was merged, undoing that and walking away
    The latter is unproductive, and rare is the day that an unqualified call of "no consensus" has had any value on this project.
    Anyway, moving forward: typically, this is resolved in the long run (if editors continue to filibuster) by AfDing the articles up for merging and then, assuming that the AfD closes with consensus to merge, protecting the redirects. This is a horde of red tape to go through, but it's the closest thing we have to a formal process for dealing with it.
    Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 11:17, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I would point out that Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is de-stubbed (triple the length it had when the merge was originally proposed), reliably sourced, and would almost certainly pass AfD as keep. -- 202.124.74.150 (talk) 11:26, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    True. It's been suggested to me that the IP is in fact the banned editor User:Alastair Haines who has edited both of these articles and created Danvers Statement. Dougweller (talk) 12:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I am not, in fact, Alastair Haines, although obviously that would be difficult to prove. -- 202.124.74.150 (talk) 12:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    And I would like to strongly protest the deletion of the sourced, notable material I've added to Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. -- 202.124.74.150 (talk) 14:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It was me who reverted the changes to the CBMW article, and as I said on the other talk page, I would like for you to make those edits in the merged location at complementarianism where they can be peer reviewed. I was uncomfortable making the move myself as part of the merge because I thought it would result in an implied endorsement of the edits not present in the original discussion to merge. We wouldn't have had this problem if you had not unilaterally reverted the merge. I will maintain your content within a comment tag for you to merge the content to its proper home if you choose, or so it returns if/when the consensus says to undo the merge. Bakkster Man (talk) 15:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I would like to note that you both made the edits and removed the stub tag, there was no 3rd-party review that said 'yes, these are good additions and I feel the article is no longer a stub'. That might very well be the case, but the fact that you yourself removed the stub tag is not evidence in-and-of-itself that the article is no longer a stub. Bakkster Man (talk) 15:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Edit warring and conflict of interest of Community Security Trust

    Community Security Trust (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

    While doing new page patrol, I came across Support Trustee Limited, which seemed to me to be a fork from Community Security Trust, so I changed it to a redirect. I then reviewed the history of Community Security Trust, and discovered an edit war that had been going on unnoticed for a few days. It also appears that one of the edit warriors, User:Commsectrust has an obvious conflict of interest, given the username.

    I really only accidentially discovered the history of this article, and I don't have time to mediate an edit war, etc. Can an admin look in on this page, deal with the SPA, and maybe throw a semi-protection in place? Singularity42 (talk) 14:10, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Some of this stuff has spread to Geoffrey Alderman - that article needs some eyes and some love. --Cameron Scott (talk) 17:27, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    User blocked without being blocked?

    Can an Administrator have a chat with User_talk:Jobin_RV - it seems that he is blocked from editing pages but I can't see any block message on his page or in his page history - he was able to edit talkpages but now says that is locked to him as well. As I don't have the broom, I can't really him very much with this issue if it is either a) some technical issue or b) a block that has gone wrong somehow. --Cameron Scott (talk) 14:41, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Maybe he is editing through a hardblocked, talk-page disabled IP or IP range? A checkuser would be necessary to rule that out, I think. NW (Talk) 14:44, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    ALL-CAPS text in Towel

    Text slipped past recent-changes patrollers and bots: What are the appropriate notice-board(s) for the following incident. The patrollers failed to correct the addition of the bolded, 2-word phrase "HORRIBLE WEBSITE" near the top of article "Towel" as added by an IP in Australia at 09:00, 9 September 2011 (diff-5578), but reverted 3 days later. The phrase remained during most of 3 days, with about 900 pageviews. I think this incident reveals an anti-vandalism loophole. Perhaps expanding the team coverage, for recent-changes review, would help to correct such problems in the future. I thought that anti-vandalism bots would detect insertions of "ALL-CAPITAL-LETTERS" text, or have been shutdown(?). Otherwise, perhaps it is time to semi-protect all articles with pageviews > 200-per-day, after a single IP-numbered hack edit. Remind IP users that a username-login can remain remembered for a 30-day period in the current WP system. It is no longer necessary to use IP edits to avoid a login every day: one login can last for 30 days. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Sounds like you're proposing something ... so WP:VPP might just be the place. Can't fix it here, and one would have expected that at least one of the article's watchers might have caught it. Vandalism happens, every single editor is supposed to fix it. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 14:59, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I hate to say it, but we can't catch 100% of the vandalism on Wikipedia. Catching it a few days later and reverting it is what matters in the long run. Wildthing61476 (talk) 15:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Being spammed

    Help please. User:My password is qwerty is spamming my wiki email with hundreds of this message:

    Subject: dirty rag head

    Go back to Arabia. Tiamuttalk 15:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    May I suggest first that you change your password? --Alan the Roving Ambassador (User:N5iln) (talk) 15:26, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    My password is qwerty (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
    I think he means that a user called "My password is qwerty" is spamming him. The most obvious things for the OP to do are (1) disable receipt of wikipedia e-mails and/or (2) add the sender to his e-mail spam filter. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots15:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah. I misread the issue. *pours another cup of coffee* --Alan the Roving Ambassador (User:N5iln) (talk) 15:37, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (ec)Why would Tiamut need to change their password? User:My password is qwerty has been reblocked without email access--Jac16888 Talk 15:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict × 2) You can ignore those emails, and I reblocked User:My password is qwerty without email access. Your password isn't compromised; it's a troll abusing Special:EmailUser. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:31, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems the spamming user's username is misleading .... Nil Einne (talk) 15:34, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    This is Jarlaxleartemis (aka "Grawp"), who has been using a vandalbot to mass-send emails for the sole purpose of harassment. –MuZemike 15:43, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Yeah, I didn't really want to give him any attention, so I left him out of my reply, but that's why I also semiprotected Tiamut's talkpage. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:48, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (ec)I have previously reported similar email abuse and death threats from accounts My password is foo and My password is acalamari. This is clearly the same person. I suggest that someone finds a way to filter out similar account names in the future. Also, Tiamut will also have the email address from which this racist abuse was sent; perhaps she could forward this to an appropriate admin, who could take steps to block future account creation from this address. RolandR (talk) 15:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Don't know about anyone else, but I already report "My password is ..." usernames to UAA on sight. I can't think of a good reason to have a username like that, and I haven't seen a single one that didn't turn out to be a troll. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:39, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    But the problem is that these accounts are not being used for visible vandalism, but for email spamming. I don't know whether there is any way to check what accounts have received such spam; we may only know of those who report this. So we really need a way to stop this from the start, ie block the creation of such accounts, rather than just reacting after pages are vandalised. RolandR (talk) 16:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I blocked every account beginning with "My password is ..." without talkpage or email access. Most were already blocked. Reaper Eternal (talk) 17:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Someone familiar with MediaWiki:Titleblacklist, i.e. not me, might inert a regex there to prevent the creation of accounts whose username is "my password is..." or something along those lines, though usernames such as these make it very easy for us to catch these trolls and quickly block them... Salvio Let's talk about it! 17:39, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    The email he used is from mailinator.com and it contains an abbreviation of death to Arabs in the user name. I can send the exact email to whoever wants it. Its obviously not a personal account. Thanks to everyone for their prompt attention and help. Tiamuttalk 17:17, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    "This is Jarlaxleartemis (aka "Grawp")"........ really?? STILL???? - Burpelson AFB 17:45, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, he's the reason for things like this. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    After this many years of gross harassment why won't the Foundation step in and file criminal/civil complains against this miscreant? - Burpelson AFB 18:25, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Usernames that begin with "My password is" ought to be on a bot list to be immediately reported at UAA. - Burpelson AFB 17:46, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Isn't there some sort of e-mail throttle built into the software? Or can somebody just sign up for an account and immediately send out 10,000 messages? 28bytes (talk) 17:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    No, there isn't. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:13, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, that sounds like something that ought to be fixed. 28bytes (talk) 19:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Until then, as the folks at WikiAlpha wanted you to do (a while back), disable your email. –MuZemike 21:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I assume the idea behind these "My password is..." accounts is to trick people into logging in as that account to see if that really is the password, thus triggering autoblocks for themselves? 28bytes (talk) 17:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Blocked editor returning as IP

    In a discussion at Talk:George Carlin, an IP editor has admitted to previously being a blocked editor who made (and refused to retract) legal threats. He did so here [31]. While he seems to be editing in good faith and discussion at this time, I still thought I should at least bring it here for admin attention. Thanks in advance for your help. Dayewalker (talk) 18:43, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I agree. Without taking this opportunity to retract the legal threats, this user should not be here at all. VanIsaacWS 19:28, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Accusations of racism, bigotry etc by User:JesseRafe

    Can I have a second pair of eyes please as I'm really not happy with the accusations being tossed against me by this user? The situation has occurred during this deletion debate. JesseRafe is the page creator and has stuffed the page with several dodgy refs which in my opinion don't merit notability. One of them is simply a newspaper endorsement by El Diario La Prensa a newspaper described as having "an emphasis on Latin America" of a candidate of Puerto Rican origin, with them saying: "His election could pave the way for fresh representation of our communities. We back Gonzalez’s bid. More than half of the more than 127,000 residents of District 54 are Latinos. September 13 is an opportunity to usher in a new leader. Grab it!" I asked: "Does such sycophancy (basically a Hispanic newspaper endorsing one of their own) establish notability? I'd say no."

    The user in question has taken umbrage at this: "How can this vote be taken seriously with such an ignorant blatant racist such as yourself?" with an edit summary of "Valenciano's opinion on article deletion should have no merit as an unabashedly anti-Latino racist agenda." This is way out of order.

    I responded: "if a newspaper called the "Voice of Canadians in New York" endorsed a Canadian candidate for a seat, I definitely would be sceptical of the notability that that confers on the candidate, being mindful of WP:POLITICIAN."

    Despite my reminders of WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA JesseRafe responded with a further diatribe against me: "I called you out on being racist (which is a generic term to include being prejudiced to ethnicities as well, as the term "ethnicist" has no usage that I'm aware of, and also is often extended to those who are prejudiced against others based on national origin). And I said it was hard to be civil to you, because you're clearly guilty of bigotry saying it's no surprise "a Hispanic newspaper endorsing one of their own"" I referred to you as being a racist with regards to Latinos, something that I know first-hand exists in Spain (I've lived in Barca for a while and have seen how dark-skinned Mexicans are treated and looked-down upon there."

    I never mentioned anything about it being "no surprise", nor said anything at all about Mexicans, nor expressed any hatred of particular races or ethnicities, either there or in the 11,000 plus contributions I've made over six years here, not surprising considering I don't hold such views. I would like this user to stop these unfounded accusations immediately. Valenciano (talk) 18:53, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I've issued a 48 hour cooldown block.--v/r - TP 19:21, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Um, we don't do cooldown blocks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Fortunately it wasn't phrased that way on JesseRafe's talk page. 28bytes (talk) 19:32, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Uhh ok, I must have missed that meeting. Noted. What I meant to say was, the NPAs were ongoing despite warnings in the AFD and requests to stop and I've issued a block to prevent further disruptive personal attacks. Hopefully, when the block expires the user will no longer engage in personal attacks that disrupt the AFD. If they do not, another admin may want to extend until after the AFD is closed.--v/r - TP 19:40, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Bit late here, but I see no reason not to deal a cool-down block if a user is being disruptive and isn't heeding warnings. Obviously, sysops shouldn't go blocking solely because they think a user may be upset - however, Tom's usage of the term to describe this block seems acceptable. m.o.p 21:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    TParis's block was perfectly fine: he blocked a user for personal attacks and/or disruption and said so on their talk page. Calling it a cooldown block (as above) generally raises eyebrows and/or hackles, though, given WP:COOLDOWN. 28bytes (talk) 21:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Niabot

    Niabot recently updated his/her userpage in protest, and it was nominated for deletion in what is apparently good faith by PCock (talk · contribs). Niabot has proceeded to edit war to remove the notice or place it at the bottom of the page under the header "Invalid claim and vandalism by PCock" ([32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38]). Other users have explained that this is inappropriate (via templates, via polite messages, via less polite messages), and been met with the usual wikilawyering and reversions. Throughout this, Niabot has been incredibly abusive, with threats, and accusations of vandalism, general aggression and so on. I'd block Niabot for general disruption myself, but I'm probably "involved" now, so I'll leave it in your hands... J Milburn (talk) 19:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Just to be clear: Yes, my nomination was a good-faith action. Had I been aware of some German editors' threats of disruption surrounding a certain WMF proposal, I might have anticipated the WP:BATTLEGROUND response and proceeded differently. Peacock (talk) 21:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Carefully trying not to inflame the situation further ... but, unless the account is a bot, aren't usernames that end in "bot" not permitted anyway? Deli nk (talk) 19:48, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It isn't. See: [39] --Niabot (talk) 19:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    the bruhaha surounding the issue aside - the page and mfd are worth a visit. Agathoclea (talk) 19:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    If someone does not notice a caricature as a caricature, then i can't help him. But i have to leave a comment about ganging up against a single user (well known supporters of the image filter) and it's own user page. It contains a single caricature and link to the German poll, that the WMF tries to ignore, in face of the image filter "referendum". Since i found the banner disrupting i moved it to the bottom, and declared that this deletion request is an attack against my opinion and therefore vandalism of my user page, repeatedly changed by this group of users. --Niabot (talk) 19:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Regardless of what you think, Niabot, the XfD templates go on the top of every single page they're used on. Don't move it again.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:58, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) Niabot, the MfD isn't the issue here, in fact it has already been closed as "snow keep." Dynamic|cimanyD contact me ⁞ my edits 20:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm not too worried about the "threat", since it's merely a threat to open an AN/I thread, and I'm not too concerned about whether {{mfd}} is above or below the image being debated... but Niabot definitely needs some education as to what vandalism isn't. 28bytes (talk) 19:58, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I have dropped a note on their talk page to that effect. It looks the {{mfd}} location is a moot point now, as Salvio has closed the MFD. 28bytes (talk) 20:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    As for the other issue this should clear it up. Agathoclea (talk) 19:59, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    So, what, we ignore the edit warring, wikilawyering, abuse and general cluelessness, and just wait until it happens again next week? This is hardly the first time Niabot has shown that (s)he has severe difficulty comprehending that others may have different opinions without being vandals... J Milburn (talk) 20:08, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I've seen Wikipedia:Mentorship work well for some users that have trouble comprehending Wikipedia policies on their own. Deli nk (talk) 20:11, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Must I provide the cross and fire wood myself, or is this just an attempt to silence the opposition (just in case, of course). --Niabot (talk) 20:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    You have not been silenced. But you will be blocked if you continue to edit-war or make spurious accusations of vandalism. Hopefully you won't do either of those things anymore and we can close this thread. 28bytes (talk) 20:16, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I did not speak about the discussions after the deletion request was inserted. --Niabot (talk) 20:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    What does that even mean? J Milburn (talk) 20:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikilawyering over precisely where the objectionable comments were made. Anyway, we're done here. The MfD is closed, and Niabot's behaviour will be monitored more closely in future. Any future blatantly inappropriate accusations of vandalism will almost certainly result in swift blocks. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 20:40, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Or maybe we all need education that vandalism is defined as "any edit in which another user disagrees with". –MuZemike 21:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    1. ^ Farlex (2009). "The Free Dictionary by Farlex: Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition". Elsevier. Retrieved 2011-09-07. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)