Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
This page is for urgent incidents or chronic, intractable behavioral problems. Before posting: Read these tips for dealing with incivility If the issue concerns a specific user, try discussing it with them on their talk page Try dispute resolution Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. Be brief and include diffs demonstrating the problem Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead go to Requests for oversight. When starting a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page; pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:ANI-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Closed discussions are usually not archived for at least 24 hours. Routine matters might be archived more quickly; complex or controversial matters should remain longer. Sections inactive for 72 hours are archived automatically by Lowercase sigmabot III. Editors unable to edit here are sent to the /Non-autoconfirmed posts subpage. (archives, search)
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Micronations being added to Category:North American countries

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

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See Category:North American countries where Alan J. Villarruel (talk · contribs) is adding micronations to this category, and groups such as the Washitaw Nation. I'm off to bed so no time to deal properly but will notify this new user. Dougweller (talk) 20:56, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Fake articles in userspace

They've been reverted by other editors. His userpage says he is 13, but he seems to have experience enough here to construct fake articles in his userspace. See for instance User:Alan J. Villarruel/Interstate 60 where the paragraph starting "One section of I-60 running from Netcong" is copied from Interstate 80. User:Alan J. Villarruel/Eureka Metropolitan Area seems to be just nonsenses, eg " It is the third largest metropolitan area in the Silicon Valley, the first being Los Angeles and San Francisco, ...The metropolitan area's Silicon Valley location, which is one of the world's most productive agricultural regions," (fictional geography etc). Compare with Eureka, California. His own user page mentions Chuckee cheese which rings a faint bell. Dougweller (talk) 10:24, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Chuck E. Cheese's. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 20:34, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I just went ahead and blocked. An editor whose monthlong Wikipedia career already includes hoaxes, nonsense, youtube spam, school-kid silliness, and copyright violation? It's like a terrible disruptive editing variety pack! No thanks. Somebody may want to do an SPI to check if it's a sock of someone, but it's not terribly important to find out who. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:06, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

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

BLP edit warring on British Jews

British Jews has been the subject of much contention this week, due to a dispute over the BLP-worthiness of categorizing Ed Miliband as a British Jew. I considered reporting this to WP:ANEW, but given the potential BLP concerns and the behavior of the parties involved, I think the complexity of the issue merits a report here, instead. Here's the (rather long) timeline:

Tl;dr version: There are four or five parties, all established editors, edit warring repeatedly over the inclusion of a BLP mention in British Jews.

11 August: Youreallycan (talk · contribs) removes Miliband from the list with the edit summary "Removing Ed Milliband from the infobox - he is not even in the catagory British Jew". Nomoskedasticity (talk · contribs) reverts YRC ("rv edits not rooted in Wikipedia policies/guidelines.") 12 August: YRC re-removes Miliband ("Ed Milliband is a living person that is not even in the catagory British Jew - is clearly not notable as a british Jew - open a RFC") Nomoskedasticity re-reverts ("I thought you weren't editing articles") YRC and Nomoskedasticity go for ("As per my commentsd - living person that is not even in the BLP cat British Jew") another ("is this really the right time for you to get into an edit-war??") round ("POv pushing BLP violator") Viriditas (talk · contribs) joins in the reverting ("Take it to the talk page"). He is reverted by YRC ("BLP - you open a discuasiohn - the subject is not even in the wiki cat British Jew so does not belong in the infobox here") Dominus Vobisdu (talk · contribs) reverts ("No basis in policy for this deletion."). YRC reverts his revert ("BLP - the subject is living and we have not even catagorised him as a British Jew - so there clearly needs discussion in regars to this disputed addion"). Viriditas files an ANEW report against YRC. A few minutes later, I full-protect the article for two days. On the ANEW report Newyorkbrad (talk · contribs) enjoins YRC from editing "British Jews, List of British Jews, Ed Milliband, or any related page" until the (mostly unrelated) Arbcom request against YRC has been resolved. Since the page has been protected and YRC told to not edit related articles, Black Kite (talk · contribs) closes the report with no further action. About ten minutes after the ANEW report is closed, Viriditas opens a discussion of the issue at Talk:British_Jews#Removal_of_Miliband. 12 August - 15 August: With the article full-protected, extensive discussion about the issue goes on at [[Talk:British_Jews; however, neither side apparently convinces the other. 15 August: After the full-protection wears off, Nomoskedasticity returns Ed Miliband to the list ("per talk page discussion") Reverted by Snowded (talk · contribs) ("No consensus for change") Revert reverted by Viriditas ("Actually, there is a clear consensus for restoring the image and not a single argument explaining why we shouldn't") In the course of three consecutive edits, YRC reverts ("not - no consensus - that it is clearly still disputed and about a living Marxist athiest brought up in a secular family being tagged and promoted as a notable British Jew") I notice the revert-warring, but then see that the argument seems to have moved on to the talk page. I decide that perhaps the combatants have realized they were doing it again, and decided to go the disucssion route rather than the edit-warring route. 16 August: Turns out I was wrong. Gabriel Stijena (talk · contribs) reverts YRC ("you need a consensus on talk page for removing these pics") Snowded reverts Gabriel ("There has never been consensus on the talk page to add them, please wait until its resolved") Viriditas reverts Snowded ("On the contrary, I see an overwhelming consensus. Objecting for the sake of objecting while ignoring consensus is disruptive") Snowded reverts Viriditas ("Four editors four and three against is neither overwealming nor is it a concensus. stop edit warring,") Nomoskedasticity reverts Snowded ("rv per WP:OR, the obvious basis for Snowded's editing here") Discussion continues on the talk page, but no one is getting anywhere.

Given the possible BLP concerns here, as well as the length and breadth of the edit warring over time and number of users, I think this whole situation needs more scrutiny. Full-protection didn't get the message across, and blocking any of these users would presumably be contentious enough that one admin shouldn't do it without consulting others, so I'm now opening up what should be done to community discussion. (Please also note that YRC is currently undergoing an RfC which will most likely end in him agreeing to restrictions including a time-limited editing break, followed by (among other things) a time-limited topic ban on BLPs. This fact may or may not affect community opinion of how to deal with the British Jews situation) A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:43, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Messy but not a record. The YRC RFc/U should not enter into this discussion -- it has not been closed at this point, and it is unreasonable to use bills of attainder in any case <g>. What we have is a categorisation dispute - and there is no really perfect noticeboard to resolve such an issue. My own position is that categorisation of living persons is fraught with peril, and that if there is any dispute, that such categorisation should be deprecated from the start. I suppose this might lead to the "wrong result" in some cases, but I suggest that there is no harm in not categorising a living person, while there is conceivable harm in categorising a living person. Advantage: not categorising. Collect (talk) 15:58, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Maybe it's time the consensus at the RFC was weighed up etc, not many more comments look forthcoming. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:08, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• At the core it's still a content dispute; why not push suggest the involved parties towards dispute resolution? IRWolfie- (talk) 16:07, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• Regardless of where one stands on the issue, I think most would agree that categorizing subjects as Jewish is an ongoing, contentious issue. The British Jews article is just a macrocosm of that problem. Frankly, I don't think there's any good way to deal with it generally, or at least not any way that would be approved by consensus. For the current issue, just get rid of the gallery in the infobox. If that's unacceptable to the community, then require that any person listed in the infobox be categorized as Jewish on their page. If whether they should be so categorized is in dispute, until that dispute is resolved, they can't be placed in the British Jews article.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:17, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Second that - common sense. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:22, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Part of the problem here is that YRC does not accept that anybody should be described as a British Jew: "to claim to be a British Jew is racist in itself". As someone who identifies as a British Jew, I obviously do not agree with this assessment, which I find personally offensive. But, regardless of my own views, this position does suggest that YRC should not be involved in such edits, since he appears to regard his own (minority) view as more important than Wikipedia guidelines and talkpage consensus. RolandR (talk) 16:37, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Is this a discussion on how we deal with the article, or just another excuse to have a go at YRC? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:43, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Is ANI a place to discuss how to deal with an article? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:48, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Is this a discussion on how we deal with the article, or just another excuse to have a go at YRC? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:43, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

(ec)Of course it's a discussion on the article. If YRC believes that the description, or self-description, of a person as a British Jew is "racist in itself", then it is very hard to see how he can be editing objectively and in good faith on the article British Jews. RolandR (talk) 16:52, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I can see little evidence of 'objectivity' or 'good faith' in many others involved in the discussion either. Yes, it is possible to cherry-pick a rather silly comment by YRC to 'demonstrate' his lack of neutrality - would you like me to see what I can find from the 'other side'? Or would it instead be better to move ahead, and act on Bbb23s proposal? I've seen no arguments against so far. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:00, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Andy, as far as I'm concerned the reason for this thread is that there's some serious disruption - by multiple people - going on on that article. It's based on a content dispute, yes, but the content isn't the problem I want to see addressed. What I want to see addressed is that no matter what the cause of it is, we need the disruption to stop. And I'm fresh out of good ideas for how to make that happen smoothly, so I'm hoping other people will weigh in here with ideas. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:03, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Quite frankly, any other user would have been blocked on hitting 5RR in the space of just over an hour. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:18, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Bbb23's proposal would make a good topic for an RfC. I don't agree that ANI is the place to adopt it. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 17:05, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

@Roland - "Part of the problem here is that YRC does not accept that anybody should be described as a British Jew" - I said, (and that comment was part of a talkpage discussion and should not be presented as a single comment like that) "to claim to be a British Jew is racist in itself" - I don't agree with that at all - I meant, to focus on race is racist in itself - you are taking the wrong interpretation of my comment, I didn't mean in a negative way at all - There are many other people that have stronger ties and connections that I do accept we can describe them as British Jews , British Sikhs etc - but Miliband is a Marxist atheist born in England and brought up in a secular family - I think its undue to add his picture to the infobox of the British Jew article under such a situation - he is not even in the British Jew category after discussion and sensitive consideration/discussion he was placed in the British people of Jewish descent. Its clearly a disputed and contentious issue/portrayal - users should find someone less contentious to add and stop stuffing him back in. - Youreallycan 17:13, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Jewishness is not a race. I have suggested several times that if you are not inclined to learn properly about Jewishness and Judaism it would be constructive to leave related topics to people who do understand them. Part of the disruption we are now experiencing is that you have declined to learn and yet continue to edit. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 17:28, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

So - if its not a race and hes a Marxist Atheist brought up in a secular family then he clearly does not belong in the infobox of a Wiki British Jew article does he - Is it contentious/disputable, is he a living person - Yes, yes, yes - so stop stuffing him back in. - Youreallycan

The concept you are clearly unfamiliar with is ethnicity. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 17:36, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Guys, can we try to not re-litigate the content dispute here? What would it take to get you all to stop reverting? Would you be willing to go to the WP:DRN or mediation? Would you be willing to open an RfC on the issue? My main concern here is the the revert-churn on that article has to stop, so what resolution methods could we send you to that would enable you all to stop reverting? A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:39, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Category - British Jew (Ethnic group) - perhaps clarification is required. - They have stuffed him in anyways - contentious or not and I certainly won't be editing the article again anyways - if they like a Secular Marxist Atheist that much let them keep him - this is exactly the problem and the BLP violation through adding him to the infobox - its not clear that he is being added to an article about an ethnic group only - have a read - there are clear issues and its vague - in this article British Jews, Ethnic/Ethnicity is not mentioned at all in the lede. Youreallycan 17:42, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• Ed* Milliband a Marxist? Eh? Secretlondon (talk) 20:23, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Ralph, his father, was reliably noted as such AFAICT in a large number of places. [1] may or may not be sufficient to label Ed an "atheist." It is a better source for calling David an atheist. It is certainly not usable to assert Jewshness to Ed per BLP standards. Collect (talk) 20:47, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

It isn't enough, for he has not said, "I am an atheist". He has said "I don't believe in God". There are reliable survey statistics showing that the majority of people who do not believe in God do not self-identify as atheists, but prefer another label like "agnostic" or "uninterested in religion". Per BLPCAT, we have to go by self-identification, and until and unless Miliband says "I am an atheist" we do not have any grounds for attributing that self-identification to him. --JN466 22:22, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• Note: YRC has decided to begin his one-month editing break, BLP topic ban, etc as of now(ish), so he won't be contributing to this thread or the article in question for the foreseeable future. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:54, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure why this should be an issue because all the sources on the Talk:British Jews page seem to support that Ed Miliband is Jewish. In fact no source indicating otherwise has been presented. Bus stop (talk) 21:43, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I've presented a bunch of sources illustrating the difficulty. They are reproduced below. I note that British Muslims redirects to Islam in the United Kingdom ... if we redirected British Jews to Judaism in the United Kingdom, then Miliband would be gone straight away. Alternatively, if we were to move the article to Britons of Jewish descent, I'd have no problem including Miliband. JN466 22:17, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Your sources don't illustrate any difficulty at all. Here's the diff of my response on the article talk page (which is surely where this discussion belongs). Anyway, why on earth would we redirect British Jews to Judaism in the UK?? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 22:25, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Because British Muslims redirects to Islam in the United Kingdom? You do realise that putting Miliband in the infobox of British Jews is in some ways just as absurd as putting Salman Rushdie in the infobox for British Muslims? --JN466 22:38, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

If you're not aware of the significant differences between Islam and Jewishness, perhaps you could make an effort to learn? The equivalence you're trying to make is just not there. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 22:48, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

The difference is irrelevant: the only thing that matters is Miliband's self-identification. And from the sources I've seen, including those below, he doesn't self-identify as a Jew, even as he acknowledges that his Jewish background is an important part of who he is. You may say that according to the Jewish perspective, he is and always remains a Jew, whether he practices Judaism or not. It matters diddlysquat. From the Catholic perspective, everyone baptised a Catholic is a Catholic forever – semel catholicus, semper catholicus – even if they loudly proclaim they are not, and instead aver they are Buddhist. The Catholic perspective on such a person is equally irrelevant to Wikipedia, and we wouldn't display such a person in the infobox of a British Catholics article on the strength of what Catholicism says. Wikipedia is a secular encyclopedia, and it does not privilege culturally or religiously conditioned views that attribute identities to people against their will. Get over it. --JN466 23:12, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

If differences or otherwise are irrelevant, then perhaps you could cease drawing equivalences. Once again, if self-identification is the only thing that matters, then we can go with what Miliband has said about himself, which leads quite directly to the conclusion that he is Jewish in the only way that matters. We might disagree on that matter, but I'm not the one who continues to make points and then say that they are irrelevant when challenged on them. I'm quite happy to stick to discussion on the basis of self-identification as policy requires. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 23:58, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Jayen—you say "…from the sources I've seen […] he doesn't self-identify as a Jew…"[2] I disagree, and I believe the following constitutes self-identification:

"There was no religion at home and Mr Miliband confirmed for the first time that he is an atheist. "Obviously I'm Jewish, it is part of my identity, but not in a religious sense. I don't wish I had had a more religious upbringing but I have Jewish friends who were part of the Jewish community growing up, going to Jewish youth clubs and other things. I think I felt slightly jealous."[3]

The above is an intact, whole paragraph from a reliable source containing a quite clear quote from Miliband. I think that it is obvious that Miliband is saying that he is a nonobservant Jew. As editors I think we should be careful not to misconstrue the phrase "I'm Jewish". It means "I'm Jewish". Bus stop (talk) 01:36, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Bus stop, I have long given up the idea that there is any point talking to you about this issue. As far as I am concerned, you should be topic-banned from categorisation disputes, and anything similar, and I'll be making a proposal to that effect below. JN466 15:38, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad someone brought the matter here it is a behavioural issue, I don't know whey the content is being discussed again. I attempted to summarise the position here. There are two questions, one is the ethnicity one and the other is if Millibrand should be listed. If the ethnicity question can be sourced (ie Judaism is about birth etc. etc) then the question still stands as to if someone who has declared (and whose parents declared) that they were no longer practicing counts as representative of British Jews to the point of being one of six people selected. I only got involved in this issue very recently (having come from another ANI thread) but it is impossible to get any discussion going. At no stage has there being any consensus for the inclusion of Millibrand. As of last night four editors were for, three against and as of this morning there are more against. Despite that, three editors Nomoskedasticity, Veriditas and Bus Stop have persistently inserted him variously claiming an "Overwhelming consensus", or original research, or bias by other editors etc. If you look through the talk page you will see that the three editors mentioned will only engage on the ethnicity issue, they have persistently refused to discuss the consensus issue. Yesterday I suggested that if they were unhappy they should raise an RfC and that if they felt they could justify the accusations they were making against other editors they should bring it to ANI. Instead we just got another direct change to the article. On the content issue I think Jayen466 summarises it well above. ----Snowded ^TALK 23:00, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Snowded—can you show me any source suggesting that a person who is "no longer practicing"[4] is no longer considered a Jew? Bus stop (talk) 23:32, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

ANI is not for content issues Bus stop, or for repeating discussions that have already taken place ----Snowded ^TALK 23:36, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• An incident this morning (well on Singapore time which is where I am at the moment) illustrates my point that this is a behavioural issue. In response to my suggestion that four editors for inclusion and four against did not constitute a consensus for change, Viriditas stated "Wrong. No consensus on Wikipedia is determined by numbers, only by arguments, of which you and three others seem to have none". This is the same editor who also claimed an "overwhelming consensus" when the editor count was 4-3. I came to this article without any background in the issue following a link from the RfC case. I looked at the debate and added my opinion but it has been impossible to get any discussion of the issue other than a "He is Jewish the sources say it end of argument" type statements. Then every day or so one of the protagonists adds the picture claiming that they have won the argument. I think the issue of Jewishness as somehow different from all other religions in claiming ethnicity not belief needs examination and proper sourcing. That might be set up separately from the specific article. The issue of behaviour linked to consensus however is a stand alone issue ----Snowded ^TALK 02:30, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the policy on consensus. It is not determined by a majority vote but by the quality of arguments. We rely on sources, not on personal opinions. Viriditas (talk) 04:36, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
    • And your position (to clarify) is that your and three others have advanced arguments of quality, while the four who oppose you have advanced none? Further that you can determine this and edit the article accordingly without an RfC, mediation or any of the other processes for dispute resolution?----Snowded ^TALK 04:53, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
      • My position is that your actions and the actions of others here in this regard, is no different than let's say, a group of trolls trying to create a local consensus contrary to our site-wide policies. You're not making arguments based on reliable sources, you're not following our policy on original research, and you aren't following our policy regarding living people, the two criteria of which (self-identifies as a Jew, relevant to the topic) are met. Now, I'm not saying you are trolling, but your behavior is virtually indistinguishable from a troll. Viriditas (talk) 05:11, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
        • Thank you for clarifying that. As I said, irrespective of how the two issues are resolved (ethnicity + inclusion in the montage), any resolution is prevented when editors take the position you have above and use it to justify edit warring. But that is for the community to resolve. ----Snowded ^TALK 05:18, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Some sources to take into account

Extended Content
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/story/9880/ Quote: The Jewish Telegraph in Manchester has reported that reaction to Ed Miliband's election as Labour leader was greeted by "stunned faces", noting concern over whether he may become the "first prime minister in recent history who could not be described as a friend of Israel". http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2010/10/01/miliband-not-a-friend-of-israel Quote: The Jewish community have reportedly offered a mixed reaction to the election of Ed Miliband to the Labour leadership. The Jewish Telegraph, based in the North of England, expressed a lukewarm image of Mr Miliband, who is from a Jewish background. Its leading article argued that he had "nailed his colours to the Palestinian mast" during a fringe event at the Labour party conference. It also claimed that he "has rarely publicly associated himself with... the Jewish community". 'http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/30/ed-miliband-north-jewish-reaction Quote: There is also recognition that for all the fame of his family's name he has "never identified with the British Jewish community". [...] "It's an aspect of the Miliband brothers which hasn't really come up in all the many discussions we've had with friends during the election. There have been plenty of opinions one way or the other, and I think quite a few people wonder if Labour has made the right choice. But their Jewishness hasn't really figured." One reason, suggests Neil Roland, an artist and photographer related to the Laski family, one of Manchester's great Jewish dynasties, could be that "Ed has very pointedly dismissed the Jewish side of things. He and David would not be where they are today without their Jewish background, but it is often the case that the ones from the community who make good in England, which really means making good in the secular world, are those who have given up the religious aspect." http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband-reveals-agenda-for-power-with-labour-and-a-personal-insight-6508358.html Quote: "Obviously I'm Jewish, it is part of my identity, but not in a religious sense. I don't wish I had had a more religious upbringing but I have Jewish friends who were part of the Jewish community growing up, going to Jewish youth clubs and other things. I think I felt slightly jealous. My parents' community was the Left community." He does not think Britons mind whether politicians are religious or not, in contrast with America: "I think that's rather a good thing and it speaks well for us as a country." He does not regret having no faith to draw strength from. "No, because my belief comes from a set of values about the kind of society I believe in. It's a very strong part of who I am. Different people come to their politics from different vantage points. I think you can have equally strong politics." JN466 22:17, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I think there is a lot of confusion here between Judaism as a religious belief, and Jewish as an ethnic/cultural category. As I noted above, I call myself as British Jew. I am also a Marxist and an atheist, and I see no contradiction there. It's not up to anyone else to tell me how to define myself. Similarly, if Ed Miliband, or anyone else, calls themselves a Jew, it's simply not our role to tell them "No, you are not". On the other hand, if someone does not call themselves a Jew, or specifically rejects such a description, it's not our role to insist that they are. We go by what reliable sources report, not by our own interpretation.

On another issue, YRC is unequivocally wrong. Ed Miliband is not a Marxist, and I very much doubt that anyone could find a reliable source stating that he is. In fact, if anyone produced a source making such a claim, I would straight away take it to the Reliable Sources noticeboard. In my opinion, making such a patently incorrect claim would automatically render the source unreliable. RolandR (talk) 01:33, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Very good analysis Roland, I agree entirely. Mark Arsten (talk) 05:10, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I have frequently argued in these pages that labeling someone simply as "jew" is meaningless. Any such label must be accompanied by a description of in which sense they are consider themselves to be so.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 13:19, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with that point -- but it's not quite the argument that others are making. The argument of some is that we can identify people as Jews only if they are Jewish in a religious sense (hence all the blather about not identifying Miliband as Jewish given that he is a Marxist atheist, non-practicing, etc). Our article on Miliband does in fact make clear in what sense he is Jewish -- but the issue now is that some object to including him in British Jews because he isn't religious, and that view requires a misunderstanding of what being Jewish means/can mean. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 14:29, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the use of categories for potentially complex issues like ethnicity, sexuality and gender identity basically misguided and should be abandoned. Somethings can be easily categorized (e.g. perhaps citizenship, and place of birth and other either/or type categories ). As it is used now those categories are is frequently more misleading than informative. And they tend to just become battlegrounds for different kinds of boosterism. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:06, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I have no devotion to categories; they are meant to be navigational aids, but I'm doubtful about their value in those terms, and I wouldn't oppose eliminating them. But again that's not what's at issue here, and doing away with categories wouldn't resolve the present dispute (re British Jews). If we insist on including in that article only people who are religious/practicing Jews, we would end up with an article that seriously misrepresents the topic of "British Jews". Nomoskedasticity (talk) 15:12, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

That's not true, Nomo, at least not in my case. If I had seen a strong statement from Miliband somewhere that he identifies as a Jew – at least culturally as well as ethnically, even though he does not believe in God – I would have no problem having him there. It's just that there are so many statements about, from himself and others, Jewish and not, that he does not identify as a Jew, nor with the Jewish community, that he has "very pointedly dismissed the Jewish side of things", etc., that I feel it is us imposing the label on him when he has to some considerable extent rejected it. In addition, the article, British Jews, is at present heavily slanted towards the religious (rather than cultural or ethnic) meaning of the term, which compounds the problem. --JN466 15:22, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

It's certainly true of some. As for self-identification: once again, I agree that we should focus on that. If we do, then once again you're leading us astray: "very pointedly dismissed the Jewish side of things" is a quote from some photographer, not from Miliband himself. Others have provided above a number of statements from Miliband himself on this matter, so I won't burden the section by reproducing them again here. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 15:26, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

A statement from a biographer is exactly the best kind of source for summarising selfidentification. People often make conflicting statements during their lifetimes that can lead to different interpretations, if Milliband's biographers generally conclude that he has rejected a jewish identity then we cannot classify him as having such and identity - that would be OR.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:31, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Wait, which is it -- self-identification or biographers? Anyway, the person JN is quoting is hardly a Miliband biographer. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 15:34, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Here are some more things he said in the Jewish Chronicle, a little after he became Labour leader, and after criticisms of his stance from British Jews, incl. that he might be the first prime minister who was "not a friend of Israel":

He is keen to address this issue: “I consider myself as a friend of Israel... I have lots of relatives living in Israel. I admire many of the aims of the founders of Israel. I have absolutely no truck with people who question the legitimacy of Israel.

"But the reason I said what I said is that sometimes you have to be honest with your friends. As a friend of Israel you worry that some of the things the government has done haven’t necessarily promoted Israel’s long term interests. I mentioned the blockade and what happened with the flotilla, but just for the record, I absolutely condemn Hamas rocket attacks on civilians in Israel.”

I ask him why he didn’t you move more quickly to reassure the Jewish community? He concedes there is some bridge building to be done: “There is a task for me to get to know the Jewish community better as the leader of the Labour Party and it’s something that I take very seriously.

"And there’s a task for the community to get to know me.. I admire lots of things the Jewish community do: the philanthropy of the community, the generosity of the community, many of the great things that British Jews do for our country. I think it’s very important for me, whether I was Jewish or not, to put that on the record. And my door is very much open.”

Notwithstanding what he says in the JC about his own personal background and upbringing, the way he talks about "British Jews" there, and says "his door is open", it is not my impression that he felt like he was talking about his own community. He is, rather, talking about a community which he feels he, as a political leader, needs "to get to know better". People do not talk like this about their own community. Of course, it may be that as time goes by, he will indeed become closer to the Jewish community, and his self-identification will change. So I am always prepared to look at new sources, but as of now, I don't feel we have what it takes to support a "British Jew" categorisation, as opposed to a "Briton of Jewish descent" categorisation. JN466 16:02, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: User:Bus stop topic-banned from Jewish categorisation, broadly construed

It is my impression that User:Bus stop has been at the heart of innumerable conflicts around Jewish categorisation. He is listed as the most prolific contributor to Talk:Ed Miliband, and as far as I can tell practically all his or her contributions there are about whether Ed Miliband is Jewish (Off2riorob has a similar number of contributions to the talk page, even thirty more if you count contributions by the Youreallycan account, but then Rob actually took Ed Miliband to GA status). I remember even Jayjg telling Bus stop that they're being too reckless around these issues. It's my belief that the encyclopedia is better off if Bus stop is taken out of these disputes, and that there are other, more reasonable editors around who can champion views in his part of the POV spectrum. JN466 15:48, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

• Support. JN466 15:48, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose -- being a prolific contributor to a talk page is not a reason for a topic-ban. Personally, I find Bus-stop to be a pain in the ass (excessively verbose, repetitive, etc.) and it often pains me to find myself arguing for an outcome that he also favors (though typically on different grounds), but there is no reasonable case for a topic-ban here. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:03, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
  • I think you just made it. --JN466 16:18, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
    • If we banned everyone I thought was a pain in the ass, this would be a very small place. Bus-stop is not being disruptive. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:23, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• Support. I have suggested this repeatedly in the past, as the result of multiple incidents. He is incapable of engaging in rational debate on the subject. He cherry-picks quotes out of context. He engages in endless WP:OR. He invents bogus terminology to try to get round policy. He drags topics off-topic at the merest provocation. For a typical example of this I recommend reading Talk:Adam Levine/Archive 1#Is it Wikipedia's job to assert that someone has a Jewish 'Identity'?, Talk:Adam Levine#Another source, and Talk:Adam Levine#Jewish, another source. Bus stop seems to be under the misapprehension that Wikipedia is a court of law, and we are here to make definitive statements regarding an individual's ethnicity. We aren't. That isn't our job. His endless disruption needs to stop. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:34, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose He has strong views, he's paid his dues, and this is not warranted in this case...Modernist (talk) 16:40, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose - Nothing here warrants topic banning. Rlendog (talk) 18:26, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• Comment - Simply pointing out that Bus stop had been previously subjected to an indefinite site ban, and since he has been returned to editing, I think partially due to efforts lobbying for him to be allowed to do so by some parties like myself, he has still shown the same tendencies toward less than well-considered, or possibly even rational, discussion which led to the initial ban, particularly regarding one of his few fields of interest, Judaism, and particularly a denial of the temporary conversion of Bob Dylan to a form of Christianity. I tend to think that there may be sufficient cause for perhaps an ArbCom request regarding him now or in the future, but would think that at least the evidence presented here isn't sufficient for any sort of sanction. By saying that, however, I am in no way implying that there might not exist sufficient evidence for such, just that it hasn't been presented. John Carter (talk) 20:06, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

If you want evidence of recent behaviour by bus stop that might justify a topic ban, I'd recommend reading Talk:British Jews#Removal of Miliband, where Bus stop was seemingly intent on turning a debate on article content into a court of law, seeking an authoritative 'ruling' on a question to which there can be no definitive answer, and even if there could be, it isn't Wikipedia's purpose to do such things. Consider this statement:

Snowded—should reliable sources define Jews by a definition applicable to another identity? We assume that reliable sources have done their homework in this regard. It is axiomatic that each identity has its own definition. We assume that a multitude of sources have not overlooked some aspect of the definition of a Jew and we assume they are applying the criteria pertinent to Jews. All information at Wikipedia is filtered through reliable sources. Why aren't there any sources saying that perhaps Ed Miliband may not be Jewish? Don't any reliable news outlets or biographers want to get the scoop on that piece of information? If there were any reason to think that Ed Miliband were not Jewish would not some source have conveyed that piece of information by now? Yet neither you nor any other editor is showing us any source suggesting that the individual might not be Jewish. I suggest that we adhere to the findings of those reliable sources that are available to us. Bus stop (talk) 11:40, 13 August 2012 (UTC) [5]

Classic Bus stop language, as he argues that "each identity has its own definition". In the case of Jews, this is self-evidently not the case - , there are multiple and conflicting definitions - not that 'an identity' can have a definition. People define things, and frequently redefine them depending on context. That this isn't an 'axiom from sociology for example is probably because it is so blindingly obvious that it doesn't need to be. (And what the hell does he mean by an 'identity'? Something that goes on an identity card? It is entirely possible to 'identify with' many things at once. Nobody has a single abstract 'identity' anyway.) We have an article on the subject (to which Bus stop is a frequent talk-page contributor) that makes this entirely clear: Who is a Jew?. Bus stop knows that 'Jewishness' isn't clear-cut, yet continues relentlessly to argue that Wikipedia must make definitive pronouncements in its own voice as to whether an individual is Jewish or not. This isn't merely disruptive, it is entirely contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia. He should be topic banned. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:02, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose because it takes two, or often many more than two, to tango and in this case at least five editors are jumping around a hot potato topic about a Jewish-born prominent British politician, i.e. Ed Miliband. User Bus stop (talk · contribs) is a very knowledgeable and skilled editor. He does feel passionately about some subjects and he is tenacious and determined in justifiably asking for clarity about definitions especially as they relate to the complex intersection between a secular POV and one, say, coming from the classical POV of Judaism. What happens is that some editors feel that he is over-stepping WP "behavioral" rules when all he is in effect doing is repeating requests that are always logical, accurate and to the point. A better solution would be to impose a WP:FULLLOCK on the Ed Miliband article and let the warring editors cool off. Or treat all the arguing editors equally. It is a pity that editors cannot have frank and honest ongoing debates without resorting to this kind of request for draconian intervention that would be counter-productive in this instance and WP would be the loser. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 20:47, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

It isn't Wikipedia's job to define who is or isn't a Jew. You seem to be making the same mistake as Bus stop. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:04, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I have to agree with Andy. I do note that there are several editors who try to psss off clear violations of conduct guidelines as "frank and open discussion" or something similar, when others would often describe it as off-topic tendentious and disruptive editing. It may well be the case that in at least some cases they are themselves not competent to perceive the difference between them, and I think that refusal to act according to conduct guidelines, or seemingly even acknowledge them, is a very serious problem that more than one editor involved here probably has, and that may well be ultimately only addressible in all instances by request for ArbCom involvement. John Carter (talk) 21:42, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

While John Carter has a bee in his bonnet that I cannot help, I fully agree with Andy's observation that it is definitely NOT WP's job to define anyone's religion or lack thereof, and in fact I have long opposed the practice of WP's growing lists and categories of Jews, see User:IZAK/Deleting lists and categories of Jews, somewhat to no avail, so we are in agreement that it's overdone. But editors (and hence probably readers of WP) seem to want that kind of ethnic and religious information inserted into articles even about Jews who are far-removed from their own religion. And that's where the problem arises, since Judaism regards a Jew as both a member of an ethnicity as well as of a religion/spiritual beliefs and practices (see the key Who is a Jew? article especially Who is a Jew?#Jewish by birth), unlike any other religion that does NOT consider ethnicity part of being Christian or Muslim or Hindu for example, because while on the one hand WP does not care and does not and should not decide anyone's religious status, HOWEVER when the religion itself historically defines a Jew as one born to a Jewish mother (as is the case with the Milibands) then according to both the broad and narrow definitions of that religion that person is Jewish regardless of what WP may think. WP cannot redefine what Judaism holds, that would itself be a violation of WP:NOTMADEUP by WP itself! WP can only work with the working and accepted definitions extant in the real world. IZAK (talk) 22:08, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not bound by the Halakha. If you really can't understand the difference between Wikipedia making a statement that "this person is Jewish by the criteria of a particular religion (which very often the individual concerned doesn't adhere to)" and "this person is Jewish", I suggest you avoid such topics in future. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:25, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Andy, it would be a very sad day if WP was in any way an expression of Halacha! So don't worry about that. I agree with you on that score. No Halachic scholar would consult WP about those matters so you needn't worry, we are safe here in a state of blissful confusion obviously needing our own version of The Guide for the Perplexed. I do NOT say (and never have) that WP is bound by Halacha! And I am not involved in such topics defining who is Jewish and who is not (because it's a waste of time, and most folks will just never get it!), but evidently some editors want to, and there is no need to crucify them at ANI for having the courage of their convictions! In fact I support REMOVAL of all mention in articles, or via lists and categories that make any mention of any subject's Jewishness when that subject does NOT self-identify as Jewish , see my long-standing position at User:IZAK/Deleting lists and categories of Jews. But regardless of what either you or I think, the fact and reality remains that as far as the the TOPIC of Jews and Judaism is concerned it IS a factor as explained in the Who is a Jew? article because of complications arsing from historical Judaism's definition of a Jew as being both a member of an ethnicity (regardless of how that person views themselves) as well as of a religion. This is a complication unique to Jews and Judaism and that is why some editors, and readers of WP, take it seriously because they know it's an important subject. You cannot wish things away and tell people to ignore the unique realities and true facts about any particular religion. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 23:06, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Ethnicity is by definition self-defined. That is what ethnicity means. If it isn't self-defined, it isn't ethnicity. As for the realities being 'unique', as a former anthropology student, I know enough to suspect that the premise is dubious at best - and you are still suggesting that a religion that people don't adhere to is somehow relevant to 'true facts' in this matter. To put it bluntly (and rudely), as far as Wikipedia is concerned, it isn't - if the person in question isn't a follower of Judaism, we are no more bound to consider the relevance of the perspectives of that faith than we are to consider the relevance of road traffic regulations in Ulan Bator, unless the person concerned also does. Ed Miliband isn't a follower of the Judaic faith. Any discussion of how he is seen by that faith is off-topic. As for only supporting the mention of a person's ethnic Jewishness if they self-identify as such, that is a start - but sadly, when contributors endlessly trawl through sources in order to find a comment made in passing in order to provide 'evidence', and then slap a label on individuals not because their ethnicity is relevant to anything, but instead to add one more to the list of Jewish 'X's or whatever, this 'self-identification' becomes a joke. It is totally unencyclopaedic. This isn't an ethnoreligious database. We shouldn't be going around trying to 'prove' that people are of one ethnicity or another - if for no other reason than that ethnicity is not only self-defined, it is contextual. As came up in another of these tedious debates, Harrison Ford once stated that "I feel Irish as a person and jewish as an actor". He may well have been joking, it is hard to tell. What is blindingly obvious though is that a statement like that shouldn't be used to support assertions that "Harrison Ford affirms his Jewish identity for our purposes", as Bus stop claimed in a gargantuan heap of WP:OR [6]. This is the problem with Bus stop. He thinks that it is Wikipedia's 'purpose' to categorise individuals by ethnicity. It isn't, as I hope that you would agree. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:01, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Support - this sort of wrangling about religious affiliation should be tamped down.→StaniStani  21:10, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Stan: It can't be helped when it involves topics related to Jews and Judaism because of problems stemming from the Jewish religion itself (and not from WP or from editors) as fully explained in the Who is a Jew? article. Personally, I have avoided those kind of situations and do not get involved, and I am not involved with talks about Ed Miliband's status and honestly I don't care because Ed is free to do with his life as he wishes, but that is not the point here, but I can understand why it is important to some editors, because it is a key theological and ethnic issue as far as the broad subjects Jews and Judaism are concerned that makes it into this frustrating issue, that any person with serious Jewish studies behind them would know. So it's always going to be around no matter who or what is blocked or banned or censored. It is a perennial issue in Israeli and Jewish communal politics, and this is just a small example of how it can bubble over. So better to keep all parties talking and hearing them out rather than taking a quick fix and blocking the un-blockable where only WP loses in the end when gifted and informed editors are penalized for their zeal that can and should be harnessed. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 22:08, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• Support he is wasting a lot of people's valuable time with his tagging contests.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:23, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is a transparent attempt to change the subject of this thread and to deflect responsibility from the editors failing to subscribe to our policies and guidelines and to place the blame on a single editor regarding a subject that is not under discussion. In other words, this is a "hey look over there" proposal, distracting us from looking directly at the problem. The real problem is that multiple editors have failed to use reliable sources as they were intended and have failed to edit in accordance with BLP. In this case, the problem is not Bus stop, but his past problems are being used to color this dispute unfavorably. To summarize: an image of a British Jew was added to an article about British Jews because the subject identified as a British Jew in reliable sources and because it was relevant. However, we are being told by the disputants above that 1) there is no such thing as a British Jew, and 2) even though the subject self-identifies, a Jew isn't really a Jew unless that Jew meets an arbitrary set of criteria established by a Wikipedia editor, a set of criteria that is not found in any reliable source. Far from proposing a topic ban on Bus stop, it appears that his accusers have been promoting original research, ignoring sources, and promoting their own, unpublished criteria of who can be considered Jewish. With this in mind, this proposal should be seen for what it is—a distraction from the real problem. Viriditas (talk) 22:44, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

  Viriditas, looking at the three definitions of Jewishness – religious, ethnic, cultural – could we not agree that (1) Miliband has explicitly rejected self-identification as a Jew in the religious sense (2) Miliband has emphatically confirmed that he is of Jewish descent, and that this has strongly affected who he is (3) Miliband has said that he did not grow up in the Jewish community, and has also stated that it is his job as Labour leader to get to know the Jewish community? Could we not then further agree that the glass is more than half empty, and that this state of affairs is admirably described by saying he is of Jewish descent? JN466 10:17, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

  I don't recall any sources where Miliband has "emphatically confirmed" that he is "of Jewish descent", and the fact that you are so emphatically stating the point without sources goes directly to Viriditas's assertion that you are misusing/ignoring the sources we have, doing/promoting original research, and thus failing to adhere to BLP policy. But this discussion really belongs on article talk pages, not ANI, and we could make better progress there if you would withdraw your proposal re Bus-stop so that this thread can be closed. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 12:15, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

  He has said he is Jewish, but not in a religious sense, and has spoken at length about his parents' escape from Nazi German; and he has said that he did not grow up in the Jewish community and should make an effort as Labour leader to get to know it. So there is no question that he is of Jewish descent: he is. The question mark was never about that, but about weighing the absence of religious and cultural identification. But I will tell you something – I will flip-flop on this. The reason is that I see he wrote a lengthy piece about his Jewishness quite recently in The New Statesman. And that to me shifts the balance in the dispute about including him in the British Jews article. However, I will not retract this proposal. Bus stop's comments in the Harrison Ford article e.g. were ridiculous, and Bus stop simply does not help us resolve these disputes. JN466 16:16, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

  Okay. It might help get us to a resolution on the article(s) if you could post about this new source on the talk page of British Jews. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:48, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

  I will also add my support, given this new source, for Miliband's inclusion in the article. If we are going to have such articles at all, this is the sort of sourcing that is required - an in-depth discussion by the person involved of his relationship with the said ethnicity, where he makes it clear that he indeed considers himself a member. Like Jayen466 though, I still support a topic ban on this subject for Bus stop, for multiple the reasons already given. His presence in such discussions disrupts them to the degree that article content suffers, as contributors actually interested in finding material of clear relevance to articles, rather than in shoe-horning in individuals on the basis of WP:OR, Google-mining, Wikilawyering, and other dubious practices are deterred from taking part. Indeed, it is notable that such behaviour (not confined to Bus stop alone, nor solely to one side of the debate) led to the New Statesman source apparently being missed, in spite of its obvious relevance. Bus stop cited a Huffington Post article which itself cites the NS article - but in amongst the hoo-ha and kerfuffle, nobody seems to have looked for the original. This is desperately poor reasearch - and looking for articles of direct relevance to the subject we are discussing is precisely the sort of research we are supposed to be engaged in. (As an aside, I think that this debate might also have been resolved more easily if the 'British Jews' article was clearer about its topic - British persons who consider themselves to be Jewish by ethnicity - and possibly converts to Judaism who don't consider themselves ethnically Jewish, though I'm not entirely sure about the latter.) AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:41, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Support I had no idea what a hornets nest I was entering on this one, but its impossible to have any sort of discussion on the subject. All you get is a constant repetition of a single narrow interpretation of selected sources. ----Snowded ^TALK 00:13, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
• Support I recall a long sequence at Talk:Judaism [7] where the editor seems to think "Jew" and "Judaism" should be the subject of one article - and argued that at length. In fact, I quite suggest everyone here read those discussions, and see where the problem appears to lie - which is not just in categorisation, alas. (nodding to Slrubenstein) Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:24, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
• Support Sometimes, with the best will in the world, it is better for certain editors to stay away from certain topics. This is a case in point. --John (talk) 13:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
• There have been an absurd number of recent ANI cases where editors have been subject to requests to be sanctioned over incidents in which the editor in question is actually right. That isn't what ANI is for. The lightweight topic ban procedure at ANI (which I generally think has been a huge improvement) should not be abused in this manner. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:31, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

  Could you clarify what it is that you are suggesting Bus stop is 'right' over? We appear to have been discussing what a substantial number of contributors see as a long-term pattern of disruptive behaviour, rather than a single incident. And as I've already pointed out above, the latest issue might well have been resolved more quickly, with the same ('right') result, had Bus stop not engaged in his usual OR, synthesis, and general obstructionism in the debate. Rather for looking for new sources, he argues endlessly about the exact meanings of existing ones, even when they clearly don't support his POV-driven efforts. And let's not pretend that his contributions to these topics are motivated by a wish to improve Wikipedia's encyclopaedic content. This is self-evidently untrue. He has one objective, and one objective alone. To classify people as 'Jews' or 'non-Jews', preferably in the most direct in-your-face manner possible. If this seems implausible to those unacquainted with his behaviour, I recommend reading the tedious discussions in Talk:Adam Levine/Archive 1, where Bus stop repeatedly objected to proposed article content on the basis that it didn't contain the exact sentence "Levine is Jewish", but instead told readers that Levine considered himself to be so, explained where he got his Jewish ethnicity from, and what his perspective on Judaism is. This obsessive insistence on turning the project into Jimbo's Jumbo Jew-Spotter's Guide is what this discussion is about - and if it is 'right', I must have fallen through a wormhole into another universe entirely. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:13, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

  The only problem with your statement is that in this instance, Bus stop has not engaged in "his usual OR, synthesis, and general obstructionism". Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Viriditas (talk) 02:08, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

• Strong support per AndyTheGrump. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 00:01, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Back on Topic

If the parties can't agree and won't go to DRN or Mediation, than perhaps they will do an RfC? It looks like they need more uninvolved editor's opinions. And just settle it. Either the leader of the Labor Party is in some sense a British Jew or he is not, according to the considered Judgment of the community. That's all we can do for that. Edit warring and six editors arguing about it for over a week, is not getting the job done. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:12, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

"Either the leader of the [Labour] Party is in some sense a British Jew or he is not". - or in some senses he is, and some senses he isn't. This is the root of the problem. You are apparently asking the community to make a 'Judgement' (nice capitalisation) regarding someone's ethnicity. This is not what Wikipedia is for. If something is unclear, we have no business 'deciding' it for ourselves. Ethnicity is fluid, contextual, and often just plain contradictory. If Wikipedia is actually going to 'get the job done', it will do it a lot quicker if it stops representing opinion as fact, and obsessing about which box we can shove people into. The relentless POV-pushing that goes on in regard to this topic is utterly out of proportion to its significance to article content. It is worth noting that when the question as to whether Miliband's ethnicity was significant, the ethnotaggers resorted to citing an article about the subject from a Guardian blog. Except the article wasn't about his ethnicity as such, it was about how little it had been commented on, and about how this was part of a wider trend - with ethnicity, religion (or lack of) and the like becoming increasingly insignificant in British politics. [8] If Miliband is a 'British Jew' (if...) it certainly isn't what he is notable for. The British public appears (with the exception of POV-pushers and taggers of various kinds) not to care. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:41, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Obviously you have strong opinions on the content question. But for content there is no substitute around here for assessing consensus. If considered judgment on the content question turns your way, so be it. If it does not, so be it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:59, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

You need to look at the behaviour - the three editors who have edit warred to say he is Jewish have done so on the basis that it is the consensus position. THey have done this even though they have been four against three, and now four against four. Their response to challenge is that they are right and those opposed are wrong. Suggestions that we call an RfC or mediation have been ignored. Instead they wait a day then change the article. Wikipedia is governed by behavioural control and the community needs to deal with this. You can't make progress with editors who claim consensus because they think they are right, change the article to conform with that and refuse to engage in normal process. ----Snowded ^TALK 12:25, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Fine blocks/bans/page locks for tendentious editing, but obviously it takes more than one "side" to insert or delete content repeatedly over time. Just stop that and settle the content issue (full stop), using WP:Dispute resolution. If you don't open a DRN, or mediation, or RfC, you cannot blame anyone else for not doing so, so just do it. Those who then refuse to participate in content DR put themselves on thin ice. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:57, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I understand that you have good intentions here but I think you are being naive. DR requires both parties to engage and there is no indication that this would be possible, the opposite in fact. Suggestions of an RfC resulted in the article to being edited with a false claim of consensus. I came into this one as a neutral and the atmosphere is poisonous (and I've seen a lot of contentious issues over the last seven years). Attempts to structure the problem, get a discussion going meet with blank rejection. In those circumstances it needs neutral parties to look at the behaviour issues. The "it takes both sides" is an easy response, sometimes you have to put the effort it to look at behaviour. That after all is what ANI is for.----Snowded ^TALK 13:26, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Disagree. The root of it, and the solution to it, is enunciated in this Arbcom principal earlier this year:

Sober eyes

2) If a dispute becomes protracted or the subject of extensive or heated discussion, the views and comments of uninvolved contributors should be sought. Insulating a content dispute for long periods can lead to the disputants become entrenched, and so unresolvable questions of content should be referred at the first opportunity to the community at large—whether in a Request for Comment, Third Opinion, or other suitable mechanism for inviting comment from a new perspective.

Passed 11 to 0, 05:50, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:00, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I think any experienced editor knows that, the issue is to get the participants to a state where it is possible to define the problem for third party review. I think you are really missing the point here but we probably have to agree to disagree, maybe you should engage and see what response you get. Its all too easy to throw out a 'plague on both your houses judgement", sometimes its valid sometimes it isn't. As I say engage with the editors concerned and If your experience is different from mine all to the good. ----Snowded ^TALK 14:37, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

In the beginning of the end, (where talk page discussion is at impasse) it doesn't take any agreement to open the DRN, mediation proposal, or RfC. All it takes is one good faith effort by one editor to do it (and name the proposed parties and/or provide notice). Thereafter, any effort to obstruct consensus making, is more easily identified, recorded, and handled. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:51, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

(ec)I don't think I have edited this article. I tend to think that Miliband should be included, but am certainly open to discussion and persuasion. If there is to be such a discussion, however, it needs to go further than this one article, since the problem arises on very many pages. There appear to be two entrenched positions, with many other editors in between. On the one hand, we have editors who wish to sprinkle the label "Jewish" over every possible article. Some of these editors, I fear, have POV motives -- whether these result from antisemitic or from Jewish chauvinist prejudices. (See the discussion at Hunt the Jew for a recent example.) On the other hand, some editors wish to remove nearly all examples of such labels, possibly even in cases where they are justified. In some cases, as this discussion well illustrates, there is a lamentable confusion between the religion of Judaism and the ethnic/cultural identification as a Jew. An RfC, or mediation, or whatever other form of dispute resolution, needs to look at these issues as a whole, and help develop a consistent position for all articles. Otherwise, even if we resolve the specific problem with British Jews, we will find the same dispute cropping up elsewhere every other week. RolandR (talk) 14:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Well thought out but sometimes it is easier (and more subtle) to focus on one example and work from there, in doing so, perhaps principals of universal application will suggest themselves and also the pitfalls (of un-tailored solution) will be more easily explored. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:23, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

If this is primarily about one person (Milliband) how about an IAR solution: get someone from WM UK to call Milliband's office, explain the issue we're having (we have an internal disagreement on how to interpret a particular source), and just plain ask whether Milliband wants to be included in the category. Then go ahead and do whatever he says. This should probably be done by an OTRS volunteer so the response can be ticketed. 66.127.54.117 (talk) 16:58, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I am missing the reference to who exactly said that Jew is the only name of a people that can be used both in a derogatory and praising manner, depending on how you pronounce it. For some reason British Jew sounds quite offensive to me. Or is that just my imagination playing tricks again? ... No, definitely offensive. Maybe it is the fact that the guy did not win the Nobel Prize yet, and has too many enemies who would want to use Wikipedia in improper ways. Or maybe it is the font I am using. At any rate, offensive. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 00:33, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Jewish Brit, sounds a bit better to me, but its British, so I guess it's an WP:ENGVAR thing. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:13, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd have to agree here. For some reason Jewish Brit sounds like you like the guy. But what would I know, being not really a Brit nor a Jew. Anyone care to call me a Jew to my face? We are already in AN/I, we really won't have to walk far. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 01:52, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Atheist Jew. Count Iblis (talk) 02:36, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me? :) Seriously now, unless someone declares himself or herself to be of a particular faith or race, Wikipedia has no business reporting on such matters. And that my friends, is as clear as the fact that there is order in the universe, regardless of what name we give it.

Ambitious Stance by Kurdo777

Kurdo777 seems to be the advocate of several other editors, or might be a sockpuppet of someone as well. He always accuses some editors with nationalistic or any other reasons. I've just observed his recent edits and realized that he's here to have a specific purpose to help several editors in their reverts and give support on talk pages etc. I invite the administrators to check his recent edits, which all display that he's got a specific purpose. Or you might warn him to stop his improper or edit-warring actions. Thanks.

Please check his recent edits: (I added a few rvs by Kurdo777 below)

1. Revert (Removing referenced information)

2. Revert (Removing referenced information)

3. Revert (Removing a file and accusing an editor for being nationalist)

4. Revert (Removing a referenced source)

5. Revert (Removing a referenced source)

6. Revert (Removing a referenced information)

Kurdo777, requesting support from several editors and admins:

1. Request (Requesting support from other editors by accusing a few editors.)

2. Request (Requesting support from other editors by accusing a few editors.)

3. Request (Requesting support from other editors by accusing a few editors.)

4. Request (Requesting support from an editor)

5. Request (Accusing an editor called Greczia for being a nationalist.)

6. Request (We see that this boy has a bit turkophobia by accusing the editors.)

I think he should stop reverting the editors and add information with references. OK, wait for your comments. Thanks. Barayev (talk) 22:20, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. This is a complicated topic and doesn't involve only Barayev and Kurdo. It involves many editors and many (probably related) articles. Many of these editors, including Barayev, are accusing each other of vandalism and sock puppetry. Many of them are edit-warring in the articles. I recently blocked User:Greczia for edit-warring. I have posted messages on various Talk pages telling editors to stop bandying about the labels vandalism and troll and other similar epithets. Barayev just a while ago made five reversions in five different articles of Kurdo's contributions, labeling each of them vandalism. The disruption across multiple articles is significant. I'm most familiar with Turkey (not the content, mind you) and have come close to locking it because of the battles.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:30, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick response, I think most of the articles should be locked and the edits should be published after the confirmation of the admins. Also, I'd be glad that you can warn all those editors who are accusing each others and whelmed in edit-warring. Also, I see that several editors support each others with reverts. I hope you send a warning to all of them. In the meantime, I reverted Kurdo777 as he removed the referenced information (deleted reliable sources) by getting involved with accusations to the others, maybe due to the fact that he's a bit angry with several editors owing to his turcophobia. I get pissed off those people having overwhelmingly anti-semitism, turcophobia or islamophobia. In the meantime, I see that you blocked Graczia without a notification. I hope you can be a bit careful. Thanks. Barayev (talk) 22:50, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any support for your accusations of bigotry against Kurdo. I don't understand what you mean when you say "the edits should be published ..." Normally, when an article is locked, it is locked in whatever state it is in at the time, barring any policy violations. As for your baseless accusation that Greczia was not notified, I personally warned him of edit-warring; he removed the notice.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:58, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

If he removed the notification, I apologize to you. I misunderstood. Sorry.

Please check this (User_talk:Kurdo777#Question) for bigotry of Kurdo777. An editor also asks him. Why does he remove a reliable source? He thinks all edits of some editors are all based on nationalistic perspective. So Sumerian can't be an Uralic-Altaic language as it's a Turkic related matter. So Samuel Noah Kramer's ideas were based on imagination? If you check his contributions, you'll realize what he's doing since the matter of Rumi. He suddenly appeared in Rumi (when Khodabandeh14 was blocked), reverted it as a support to his blocked friend, and since then he's just been attacking Turkic-related articles by reverting them. So what's that? I hope he can explain the matter, but I know he will again calumniate the editors (being nationalist or any other thing). Thanks. Barayev (talk) 23:16, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I have worked with/against Kurdo777 many times and I agree it often appears that he coordinates a group of like-minded editors to beat down the opposition. I was thus very surprised on 24 June when he accused me of asking IRWolfie to back me up on a disputed article; the accusation was absolutely baseless. To me it seemed like Kurdo777 was projecting on me a tactic he had employed himself. I asked him on his talk page to retract the accusation but he never responded.
At any rate, this noticeboard is not the place for this concern. I think an entry at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct is appropriate. Binksternet (talk) 23:14, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• Note. I just fully locked Turkey for 3 days because the battle continued.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:24, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• In the talkpage of Turkey there is clear consensus supported by source analysis that Turkey cannot be called a regional power without the qualifier "Middle-Eastern". Perhaps users like Barayev can be warned not to edit war without participating on the talkpage of the article. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 23:32, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your lock on Turkey, but I think three days isn't enough. My advice is to extend it to two weeks.

In the meantime, sorry for my last revert on Turkey as I misunderstood the matter vice versa. Thanks. Barayev (talk) 23:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

If it was a misunderstanding my criticism of your actions has no place here. I struck it. Thank you for your clarification. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 23:41, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your understanding. Barayev (talk) 23:42, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

No problem at all. Thank you. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 23:56, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Careful, or you'll violate the 3TY rule. :-) --Bbb23 (talk) 00:05, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the reminder Bbb23. Damn! :) Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 00:16, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Partly in response to Binksternet's comments, the problems here involve editor conduct and content. I know next to nothing about the content. Sometimes, the two overlap, although sometimes one can surgically remove a conduct issue from the underlying mess, e.g., violating 3RR. The more difficult conduct issues of possible bias (disruptive editing) and possible abuse of multiple accounts require a solid understanding of the content (for the bias) and a deeper technical analysis and historical perspective (for the sock puppetry). That's a lot of balls in the air, and ANI seems as good a place as any to manage these issues, assuming enough knowledgeable editors contribute to the discussion.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

adding false attributed information that does not exist by a nationalist socks

Let me defend Kurdo777 here as his conduct is perfectly alright as he is undoing false information. This is not a content dispute as I demonstrate below.

1)

First of all , on Sumerian_language article. There is a misquote (false citation) added for the book that states something else completely. The actual quote from Samuel Kramer is here: Kramer, Samuel, Noah 1963. The Sumerians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [9] pg 306:“In vocabulary, grammer, and syntax, however, Sumerian still stands alone and seems to be unrelated to any other language, living or dead”.. It clearly says that Sumerian is a language isolate yet some users have added the opinion that Samuel Kramer has mentioned it as Turkic!

I deleted the citation by the nationalist users who claim that the language is classified as Turkish by Samueal Kramer. So this is a misquote of Samuel Noah Kramer. It is very wrong thing to attribute wrong information to an author who has stated the opposite opinion that Sumerian is an isolate language. So falsely claiming Samuel Noah Kramer has stated that Sumerian is a Turkic language is beyond "content dispute". It is simply lying. So where is the quote that Kramer claims Sumerian is a Turkish language!?! He only mentions that Sumerian in terms of structure is language like those of the Caucasus, Uralic and Turkic languages (also these are not they ones,..all Dravidian, and majority of African languages, native American languages are also agglunitative). This is typology but not linguistic classification ( agglutinative language). Kramer mentions Sumerian is a language isolate yet they have the audacity to misquote his book and say Kramer has mentioned it as a Turkic language!

I hope the admins do not see this as "difference of opinion". This is actually blatantly inserting and supporting false information! Yet these nationalists type have the audacity of calling this "referenced information"! Until when should Wikipedia put up with this oflying?

Please note the conduct of Tirgil34 (who is now Greczia).. on Scythians with similar behaviour.. [10] and in the mainspace page..

2) On bogus map in the article "ethnic minorities of Iran", the source is a nationalist fringe map that they keep adding: [11] (made by a turkish nationalist unscholarly activist based on non-academic source/manual). This it their map: [12]. Non-academic, non-RS source (which is not verifiable made by ethnic activists).

Here are actual academic maps from reputable sources and universities: [13] [14] [15][16] [17] (University of Texas and Columbia)

For example majority of Tehran, Hamadan do not speak Turkish nor is the second laguage of Gilan, Mazandaran and most of the places highlighted Turkish. Infact Half of my family is from Mazandaran area and Persian is the first language, then Mazandarani. Large part of Kurdish areas in Iran are made Turkish in these maps too (see the comparison of Norther Khorasan between the academic maps and the fake map). So what is Kurdo777 to do when some false map made by an ethnic nationalist from an ethnic nationalist unscholarly author (with no academic credentials) is inserted? That source they mentioned is a nationalist based source with no academic citations and contradicts the unbiased Western made maps above. The map has no scholarly backing and has no place in wikipedia.

3)

ON Azerbaijani people, Kurdo777 removed the source: (authors=Roger Howard|year=2004|title=Iran in Crisis?) because it is quoting an ethnic activist who claims 35 million people in Iran. Here is the source that was used: "Roger Howard (2004). Iran in Crisis?: The Future of the Revolutionary Regime and the US Response. Zed Books. p. 181. ISBN 978-1-1842-7747-55. "[...] reckons to be closer to 35 million than the oficial estimate of 14 million.""

But first question is what is the academic credential of the author? Second the author (Roger Howard) is quoting an ethnic nationalist-activist. Can such information be labeled as reliable? But quoting an ethnic-nationalist (it is like quoting Louis Farrakhan or David Duke) activist is not WP:RS for general information. So when totally bogus information was removed from Sumerians (Kramer stating flat out that Sumerian is a language isolate not related to any language family), they kept reinserting the misinformation as well. Also here is another false source inserted by these users: "Stokes, Jamie; Gorman, Anthony (2008). Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East, Volume 1. Infobase. p. 79. ISBN 978-1-4381-2676-0. "... 32 million people in Iran..."" [18] The book claims that "During the first milenium, B.C.E, the Azeri Kuti tribe defeated the Akkadian ruler..". where as the formation of an Azeri ethnic group occurs after Islam due to synthetic of Turkic migrants with Iranian populations (around 500-700 years ago). This is an example of fringe source. So the Gutian people has been claimed to be an "Azeri" tribe by such a fringe source.

4) On [19]

There is a reference to a Farrokh website which has none of the claims made by these users. The actual website is www.gandchi.com which is not reliable on such matter. Actually, websites like these are not reliable. If someone is familiar with the article, they know that the Muslim Tats even have somewhat different language/dialect than Jewish Tats. It might be possible that the [[20]] (Juhuri language) speakers were at one time "Khazars", but they could also be immigrants during the Sassanid era as they are not Ashkenazi but Shepardic. Anyhow..those websites are not related to the Tat_language_(Caucasus) but might be related to Judeo-Tat. And furthermore, those websites do not meet WP:RS.

Again this is not a content dispute.. it is trying to make everything from Sumerians, to Scythians to Tats of the Caucasus as Turks. It is simply disruptive behaviour by Turkish nationalist editors. Such information does not exist in those websites (and secondaly the websites do not meet WP:RS necessarily). Where does it say in those websites that the "tats of Caucasus are definitely Turks"? So are admin going to note the insertion of false information by these users? Or do they think this is a "content dispute"?

It is either making up information (like Sumerian) or using fringe websites/nationalist activist sources (not academic reliable sources that meet WP:RS).

e) The problem is not edit warring but adding false information that does not exist or adding extremly unreliable fringe sources by a user that has all these socks:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Aryan212
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Kurdale
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Mertface
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Barayev
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/E4024
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Gabriel_Stijena
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Greczia (who admits in the bottom of his page that he is the previous user tigril who was vandalizing Scythians and making them Turks)

You have a bunch of Turkish nationalist (or likely one) claiming Sumerians, Tats, Scythians as Turks and adding bogus maps. And also attacking Greece/Iran related articles. They ought to be ashamed of their conduct which is falsifying information and attributing to authors who have never made such statements (or adding extremly fringe websites/sources with no academic responsibility). So Kurdo777 is simply undoing this massive sock attack and the admins need to ban all the mentioned names here as they are socks of the same user.

First of all, you always accuse the people who do not think like you. You need to be patient if you are trying to contribute to Wikipedia. I do not accept your calumniation about me or others. I believe that they are all different editors.

In the mentime, let me give some information about Sumerian language though you cannot stand calling it Ural-Altaic-like language, which displays that your only resource is Google Books; so you look for everything in Google Books, and when you can't find something in there, you think it's wrong or pseudoscience. That's wrong; in fact, you need to have a large library to make researches. You're not a linguist though I'm a bit from the college. You don't have enough knowledge about the researches about Sumerian language, so most of the time, you just remove all the references, by claiming them unreliable. I can bring you hundreds of articles on the relation between Sumerian and Turkic, but I'm sure you'll remove all those sources because you'll not be able to find them in your tiny Google books. So it's really fun of you! You just accuse people, which displays that you have Turcophobia.

Anyway, let me mention some about Sumerian language, which is similar to Turkic languages in both vocabulary and grammar. If you check the document prepared by Prof. Tuna and Hubey, you'll realize the relation between Sumerian and Turkic languages.

There are hundreds of cognates between Sumerian and Turkic languages, but I'm adding only twelve samples as an example of similarity in vocabulary.

Sumerian > Turkish > English

di >> de >> speak

eş >> es >> blow

dug >> dök >> pour out

kur >> koru >> guard

sum >> sun >> give

tuku >> doku >> weave, knit

tar >> yar >> cut off

kiri >> kır >> field, garden

kur >> kara >> land

sag >> sağ >> good

zag >> sağ >> right side

ud >> öd >> time

There are also similarities between Finnish and Sumeriand; and also between Hungarian and Sumerian. All these similarities are mentioned in hundreds of articles. So all of them are nationalistic? Don't think each attempt to be nationalistic. You need to research not only in Google books, but also in jorunals, archives, and actual libraries etc. Barayev (talk) 21:30, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, in the following article "Sumerian, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Finno-Ugrian and Hungarian" (2009), Prof. Dr. Alfréd Tóth presents 731 similarities between Hungarian, proto-languages (Proto-Altaic, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Finno-Ugric, Proto-Ugric), and Sumerian.

He explains the method in his article: In this study I will prove that the so-called Sumerian Hypotheses of Hungarian is true. This does neither mean that Hungarian is the same as Sumerian (an obvious nonsense that had been asserted by some non-linguists), nor does it mean that Hungarian alone has Sumerian as its ancestor language. What I will prove with the present study is that at least 731 Hungarian lemmata which are shared by at least 1 more lemma in at least one other member of the Finno-Ugric language family can be traced back to Sumerian. I will show this by comparing the reconstructed Proto-Finno-Ugrian and/or Proto-Uralic forms to actual Sumerian words. It is also explained that Sumerian shows traces of vowel harmony (cf. Edzard 2003, pp. 99 ss.). And also between Sumerian and Hungarian there are strict consonant sound-laws which have been indicated to every lemma.

So will you still continue calumniating people? These people are fabricating everything for their nationalistic aims? I think that not those calumniated people, but you are really a bit nationalist or have prejudice against several subjects. You just pick up everything according to your own ideology. I'd bring you hundreds of articles, but most of them are unpublished on the Internet. So, you'll not believe me, but just calumniate me. Yeah, I push on a rope. Barayev (talk) 22:02, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

The claim was Kramer was falsified and you guys were re-inserting him. As per your latest source, these are baloney sources which no one in academica takes seriously. For example: the word Saghir is a loanword from Arabic to Persian to Turkish. Or the word "tin" (body..) is actually Persian loanword to Turkish. Sorry but Sumerians are not Turks and no one takes this seriously. As you said: "I'd bring you hundreds of articles, but most of them are unpublished on the Internet".. So they do not belong to wikipedia but to your ethnic nationalistic forums. It is always some Turkish or Hungarian author trying to make the false claim. And this is exactly why the above user with his multiple socks below should be watched. By the way here is a fun one (Latvian and Sumerian) [21] (looks 10x longer than your list and Latvin is Indo-European!). Much longer than your list! How about Basque and Sumerian? [22]. How about Dravidian and Sumerian? [23]? How about Sumerian and Tamil [24]? That looks much longer too? Oh wait unlike Turkish, Sumerian is a split ergative language (like Kurmanji Kurdish). So maybe it is Kurdish? Unlike Turkish, Sumerian has all three affix, prefix and infix (Turkish has only pre-fix)..wait English/Persian have all three.. So maybe it is English? Oh wait I can make a funny comparison too.. Sumerian Pap..Latin Pope mean father.. Or Sumerian Abzu and Persian "Ab" mean water. Unfortunately, you are not aware of how modern linguistic works. Or Sumerian has the 6 vowels that Arabic has (unlike Turkish with 9 vowels or 18 vowels in Turkmen)..so is it Arabic. Please spare wikipedia with this sort of nationalistic editing. Also the Kramer book precisely said the opposite of what you guys were inserting. It is a fringe viewpoint and so stop pushing fringe viewpoint. No serious scholar thinks Sumerian were Turks. But unfortunately, Wikipedia does not have a policy in dealing with this sort of nationalistic editing. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 22:33, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Anyhow, falsification of the Kramer was demonstrated. And I stand by my claim that all the above users are the same. Anyhow, Kurdo777 had to deal with users that are pushing Sumerians as Turks. This is not a content dispute really, it is nationalistic editing.--96.255.251.165 (talk) 22:46, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Can someone explain what does this man doing by removing two references and Ural-Altaic languages from the article? If any admin will not intervene with this unkwnown vandal, I'll resign. It's really an irritating behaviour! Please check the revert of 96.255.251.165.

In the meantime, this man doesn't have enough linguistic background. Latvian is related to the nearly extinct Livonian language of Baltic-Finnic sub-branch of Uralic language family. It might have borrowed many words from the neighbouring Uralic languages. Also, Louis Lucien Bonaparte and Michel Morvan claim Basque language might be Uralic languages. Moreover, there are some grammatical and linguistic similarities between Finnish and South Indian languages (Dravidian). You'll see if you research some linguistic papers, but you're prejudiced. Also, whose sockpuppet are you? Kurdo777 or any others? I invite admins to check all your edits,96.255.251.165. To end up my speech, you're really simple-minded with your edits. Barayev (talk) 01:21, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Psuedo-linguistics again. Uralic and Altaic are now considered separate branches (families). Also Dravidian has nothing to do with these. Neither is Latvian an uralic language. Please stop the psued-linguistic nonsense. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 02:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, this is just pseudo-linguistics. Another rehash of the Sun Language Theory. --Folantin (talk) 09:58, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Hey guys, I will hepl you to get better sources. I think I've got some, but I am for two days away, so keep it COOL untill then. --Greczia (talk) 10:01, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

My response

First of all, Binksternet's dispute with me, is totally unrelated to this scenario. He is simply fishing in muddy waters. It should also be noted that Binksternet has been stalking me for years, which explains his presence here in the first place, and that he has been warned and blocked for stalking of me on several occasions. [25][26] Now as for the topic at hand here, my edits were all in line with WP:RS and WP:Fringe, and meant to protect Wikipedia's integrity against nationalist POV-pushing by a group of W:SPAs that have raised a lot of red flags in many corners of Wikipedia, and appear to be sock-puppets/revert-only accounts, including the user who filled this report. I also discussed all my edits with, and notified several admins and experienced users in these topical areas who are familiar with the content. Please read the following discussions for more context.[27][28][29] Just to give a few short obvious examples, in once case, one of these users falsified a source [30], in another case, another one used a non-WP:RS source for which he was warned by an admin who is familiar with these topics.[31] This pretty much sums what we're dealing with here, and as I said, all my edits were in good-faith and in line with WP:RS, WP:Fringe and WP:NPOV. What should be addressed here though, is the widespread sock-puppetry that's going on these pages by revert-only SPA accounts with less than 100 edits, namely User:Gabriel_Stijena, User:Barayev, User:Greczia and User:Kurdaleall every single of whom is engaged in Turkish nationalist POV pushing on various pages and topical areas from Greece to China, and all of whom appear to be connected to one another, and have been inserting sourceless or poorly-sourced fringe nationalist theories into these pages, and therefore compromising the integrity of Wikipedia. Kurdo777 (talk) 01:10, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Kurdo777, I have better things to do than follow you around and accuse you on ANI—this noticeboard is public space and it is on my watchlist. I post here often; there's no stalking involved. I came forward on this particular thread to support the initial poster because I wanted the board to know that his premise, that you might be coordinating others to push your views, is something I had also noticed. By the way, you still have not apologized for falsely accusing me of trying to make IRWolfie my meatpuppet. Binksternet (talk) 04:30, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

In the last month alone, you have shown up on three or four different pages I've edited, and you've had no prior interest in whatsoever. Just as when you were blocked for stalking me, you always have some excuse like "I saw it on my watch-list" or "I saw it on X or Y's contribution list". Bottom line is, you've been stalking non-stop me for almost four years now. Amazingly, you're now supporting some nationalist sock/SPA/revert-only account with less than 100 edits, 80% of which are reverts, in a topical area, that as usual, you have no expertise in, just because I'm involved. This issue is not about me, it's a much bigger problem, and I'm actually the one enforcing Wikipedia's policies on WP:RS and WP:Fringe. User:Dougweller, an admin who actually knows something about these topics, summarized the main problem that editors like me, are dealing with, in the section below. Kurdo777 (talk) 16:04, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Dealing with nationalistic editing

One of the areas where we are weakest is in dealing with pov nationalism and editwarring. Almost every day I run into editors changing sourced text, adding unsourced material, using random webpages as sources for their pov, using other unreliable sources, attacking and reverting other editors, writing leads, etc so that Wikipedia articles state as fact matters that are disputed by academics, etc. We are very bad at coping with this sort of thing for various reasons. Lack of expertise in many of these areas is a big problem We used to have DBachmann but he isn't around much any more. No easy mechanism for dealing with pov edit warriors is another, as is the fact that few of us have the energy to do it (or the balls at times, blocks can be contentious. Plus it takes place on a multitude of little articles. I just ran across Lurs (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) today - have a gander at the contribution history. It's a mess. It is being fought over to make nationalistic points but who has the time or energy to find all of these? And sources that have been discussed in the past and dismissed as unreliable keep popping up, in part because of editors not understanding our RS policy and certainly unaware of past discussions, so we keep having the same arguments over and over. I realise that I'm not dealing with the specific complaints about editors but I am going out the door in 5 minutes and haven't had a chance to look at them in depth, but there is a serious problem here of which this is just an example. Oh - Kurdo, Binksternet, let's not let disagreements between you derail this please. Dougweller (talk) 09:55, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia needs to comeup with a good policy.. perhaps 10 neutral admins who know the area can fix up articles one by one and everyone should agree to their edits. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 23:10, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

We have plenty of policies, what we lack are admins that are familiar enough with the subject matters to separate the wheat from the chaff. As I've said elsewhere, this has been why I've stayed out, as I don't know the material well enough to referee. I guess in my spare time, I need to bone up on one or more areas, but this isn't trivial to get to speed on. What we need are more admins familiar with the controversial areas, that haven't gotten caught up in the drama. That is a tall order. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 00:50, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Dennis hit one of the nails on the head regarding a lack of expertise in particular subjects leading to these systemic problems. I'm just thinking out loud here, but perhaps we need some sort of an admin system where experts in a particular topic can get the tools for use only within those topics. I can think of at least a couple objections to my idea right off the top of my head, but it may be a decent starting point. Sædon^talk 01:09, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Won't have any effect - you can't use tools to solve content disputes. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 12:41, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

There are technical reasons why you can't limit use of tools to specific areas, but I will say that what we really depend on is editors. There are some areas where I know certain editors are more neutral than others, and when they make a complaint, it is a neutral tone, and this helps tremendously. I still have to research, but they keep it short, point out the diffs, briefly explain the problem, and don't tell me what I should do but instead focus on why it is a problem (ie: it isn't about an ax to grind). Remember folks, we admins are no different than non-admins, except we have the tools. The admin bit doesn't make us smarter or experts, it just means we are pretty familiar with general policies and the community said they trust us, that is all. We need help from people who we can trust, that are familiar with the subject matter, but we need it from people who can and will act rational and in a fair manner, as if they were the admin themselves. In the short run (and maybe the long run) this has to be at least part of the solution. We don't want to interfere with content, we only want to keep it neutral so the editors of these articles can do their job, fairly. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 01:51, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm just going to chime in with my two cents here. As a subject matter expert in the real world I can completely sympathize with the need to do something about concerted nationalistic attacks on articles based on nationalistic crap. Because of the "rules of consensus", it's not always possible to establish a clear scientific baseline in some instances. Over time, science usually prevails over nationalism, but the frustration level often reaches the red zone long before then. The Randy in Boise problem is a real one when dealing with nationalism over science. I've just skimmed over this ANI, but the reference to Kramer in the context of Ural-Altaic is completely bogus. Kramer maintained that Sumerian was a linguistic isolate and virtually ALL reputable linguists follow him. --Taivo (talk) 05:02, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I was wondering yesterday if the WMF might have a role to play in this by reaching out to find experts in these fields. What do others think? Dougweller (talk) 05:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I have no experience with how well that works, but anything that brings in neutral experts who can work within Wikipedia policy would be welcome. As Dennis said, we need editors we can trust.--Bbb23 (talk) 07:23, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

(outdent) The problem is there is little reward for neutral editors trying to deal with these areas; it just leads to frustration and burn-out. On the other hand, there are massive rewards for ultra-nationalists trying to get their POV across on the most consulted information website. They are often organised on off-Wikipedia noticeboards. Also, it's quite hard on Wikipedia to get banned for WP:SOAPBOX. Ideally, we should start blocking editors who contribute nothing but petty edit-warring over issues like the ethnicity of this or that famous person. But I don't hold high hopes for a resolution to this any time soon. I just don't think the Wikipedia model works in this area. --Folantin (talk) 09:56, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Outreach to attract and Editor Retention to back them up, we definitely need to try something. I'm sure it has already cost us many good editors as it is. WMF might be worth the effort. A young lady that works at the teahouse and WP:WER, and just got her admin bit, works temporarily for WMF, maybe she would be a good starting point to seeing what resources, if any, are available. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 11:31, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

There was some kind of attempt to do something back in 2008: Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars. Unfortunately it was a bit rubbish and nothing substantial ever came of it. --Folantin (talk) 12:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

K. Michelle - Legal Threat

Resolved

 – Tassiduous blocked per WP:NLT and email access has been disabled. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 04:55, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I recieved two emails (dated 12th of August - I just checked my mail now) from User:Tassiduous, who has threatened myself via Wikipedia mail, in regards to article, K. Michelle -

12th of August Message #1:

HI, This is K.michelle's PR rep. Thank u for trying to correct this page, but this page has been going through a lot of vandalism, and most of the information completely wrong. The page is now being tracked and any person that is traced back to changing the page will be prosecuted for defamation.

12th of August Message #2:

Miss Star,

We have asked and warned you to STOP in the editing of this page. Several pages and private information have been hacked recently for my client. Legal information has already been submitted to not only trace all vandalism and defamation but to prosecute. We are very concerned about the safety and image of our client at this time. We will have your page traced by the end of the week. The page is completely false, and is enough to stand in the court of law,especially after we have asked you to stop. I do know that your page has already been linked to youtube where you continue to harass and stalk miss Kimberly Pate, and this is a crime.

Thank,

Kacieimages PR

Tassiduous had been continuously adding in unsourced content to the article in question (while reverting sourced content), and many users, including myself, had reverted the content and told Tassiduous that they may not add content that has no reliable sources. The article, in my opinion lacks notability anyway - perhaps, should it be deleted? Could I please have some assistance here? -- MST☆R ^{(Chat Me!)} 04:36, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Blocked indefinitely. Of course we can't verify that those emails are real, but per this edit summary, it's clear that legal action was taken. Ticket:2012081110007211 is also relevant for those with OTRS access. Through all of this, Tassiduous has still never pointed out any specific content that is libelous or defamatory, but rather declares that the whole article is such, and demands we agree with her. While I always respect WP:DOLT, we can't help people who refuse to communicate. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:46, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Any objections to changing that to email access blocked? --Rschen7754 04:56, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Done, under the fact that the abuse was email-driven. Feel free to revert. --Rschen7754 05:42, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Good call. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 07:07, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Refusing to replace the article with marketing copy provided by someone's PR department is not defamation. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:28, 18 August 2012 (UTC).

User:Nemambrata - SPA and edit warring

On 4 August 2012, User:Nemambrata was reported as a WP:SPA here [32], however, unfortunately no admin attention was given at the time, and the matter was archived without action. Nemambrata has continued to editwar on the same articles, and has not edited outside those articles, so is looking more and more like an 'advocate' SPA. The editing behaviour is spasmodic, only reappearing when a change is made to the articles they are interested in is made. They make one edit (usually to remove material they do not like) then a short time later return to remove all trace of the removed material (such as references from the Reference section), claiming that the references are no longer relevant to the article in question. Their motivation for these edits was unclear until today, although it was clear that the editor had considerable experience with WP and was engaged in advocacy on behalf of the 'honour of Serbia' or some similar 'pro-Serbian' agenda. However, this [33] edit shows this editor's motivation clearly, 'this is insult for Serbian people'.

This edit warring is occurring in the context of two successive move requests at Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia here [34](closed, no move), and here [35](still open). Even though the name of the article has not changed (and was the official name of the territory involved) and remains under discussion, Nemambrata has taken it upon himself to eliminate all mention of the title of the article from related pages (such as Template:History of Serbia, Serbia, Serbs, Axis occupation of Vojvodina, Hungarian occupation of Bačka and Baranja, 1941–1944, Serbs in Vojvodina, Banat (1941–1944), and even Serbia (disambiguation), either removing it completely or creating a piped link with his preferred term in the text of each article.

here are some additional diffs with examples of the problematic editing-

• On Hungarian occupation of Bačka and Baranja, 1941–1944 I added the title to the page on 1 July, replacing a colloquial version (Nedic's Serbia), Nemambrata began edit warring in relation to this here [36] on 2 August with an edit summary of 'better', I restored it on 7 August with a request that it be left until the issue with the title of Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia was resolved. Nemambrata immediately made an accusation of revert warring on the talk page here, Talk:Hungarian occupation of Bačka and Baranja, 1941–1944 then removed the title, replacing it with his preferred one here [37] with the edit summary 'no answer on talk page for several days'. I must point out at this point that this is a pattern for Nemambrata, he makes such talkpage comments on nearly every talkpage he edits, but where he is engaged in discussion, his rhetoric escalates rapidly, suggesting that I am promoting an 'illegal name' etc. The following example shows this.

• On Axis occupation of Vojvodina, after disruption by a quickly blocked WP:SPA User:HuHu22 I added the title to the page on 11 July, [38] with explanatory note. On 2 August, Nemambrata changed this to his preferred version here [39]. I reverted here [40] and Nemambrata immediately reverted here [41], and immediately started accusing me of edit warring on the talkpage here [42]. User:DIREKTOR reverted Nemambrata two days later here [43], was reverted by Nemambrata here [44], who was reverted by User:MrX here [45], reverted by Nemambrata here [46], who was reverted by User:Drmies here [47] who indicated that User:Nemambrata's edits were premature and that the 'battle' was being fought elsewhere (ie at Talk:Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia) and stated this on the talkpage, but Nemambrata reverted again here [48] with an edit summary of 'Neutral description is back. There was few days and nobody chalenged my reasons for this edit on talk page. Illegal German names of illegal entity should not be promoted all over Wikipedia and there is no consensus that this name is used anywhere'. Nemambrata then deleted the references for Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia here [49].

• On Banat (1941–1944), I added the title to the page on 11 July, [50] providing clarification of what territory the Government of National Salvation operated in. On 3 August, Nemambrata removed the reference to the Territory in the inbox, replacing it with his preferred version. User:DIREKTOR reverted the edit on 4 August here [51], and within 8 minutes Nemambrata reverted DIREKTOR without discussion on the talkpage.

Despite his recent arrival on en WP, I consider that Nemambrata is an obvious WP:SPA with wiki experience who has some very strange ideas about what WP:BRD entails, and appears to be motivated to right what he perceives as 'insults' to the Serbian people. This editing behaviour is not constructive, and I believe it warrants admin attention. Thanks, Peacemaker67 (talk) 06:19, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I couldn't help to notice that his name is a Serbian phrase: it means, "I have a brother".[52] I can't say whether this is intended to be a reference to another account, but that's what comes to my mind, anyhow. Hope this helps. Still-24-45-42-125 (talk) 06:32, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

• I have seen no evidence that indicates that this user is not here to push an agenda or that they are a net asset. Drmies (talk) 06:46, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
  • As I've said before, the user appears as a textbook edit-warring, POV-pushing SPA. (@Correction: "Nemam brata" means "I have no brother" in Serbo-Croatian.) -- Director (talk) 08:38, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• This editor does seem to be disruptive and not editing in good faith in some cases. I'm especially concerned about removal of content and then circling back later to to remove citations. I have reservations though. Is is possible that his edits are actually improving the articles by making them more neutral? Also, it seems that other active editors of these articles may be POV pushing every bit as much as Nemambrata. I think that Nemambrata needs to do better at working with other editors to build consensus, but I see no reasons for a block or a topic ban, especially since he has only received two warnings on his talk page. — MrX 13:26, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• This user is part of big content dispute, where reporting users are on the "other side" of conflict. I am afraid that this may only be a way to eliminate opposing opinions, with questionable presentation of data. By simple history check, you may see several very bad faith moves on all sides of dispute. I also dont find this worthy of any admin reaction. Content dispute should be dealt with on a relevant pages, and not on AN/I. --WhiteWriter^speaks 13:31, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

WW neglected to mention that he is on the same side as Nemambrata in the RM at Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. Peacemaker67 (talk) 22:37, 17 August 2012 (UTC) I would also like to make the point in response to WW that I am not interested in eliminating 'opposition', I am interested in ensuring that editors are here for the purposes WP accepts, not personal POV crusades on a single issue ignoring all WP policies that don't allow him to push his POV. That is what Nemambrata is doing, and in my view it does warrant admin action. Peacemaker67 (talk) 07:13, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• as far as the SPA is concerned, Nemambrata has made 140 or so edits since his first edit on 1 August [53], of which only a dozen don't involve the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia (and they were almost all category tagging on closely-related articles). Nemambrata has clearly shown that this account is for one purpose only, to put right 'insults to the Serbian people', which is an inappropriate single purpose, and not consistent with the purposes of Wikipedia. Peacemaker67 (talk) 00:29, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Indeed. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:48, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Again this? Administrators, please read this page where I already gave answer to accusations of DIREKTOR and Peacemaker67. Both of them were blocked for revert warring in the past. I gave explanation for all my changes on talk pages of articles and in my edit summaries and these two editors simply reverted me in several articles with no their comments on talk pages and with no edit sumaries. Examples are here: [54],[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hungarian_occupation_of_Bačka_and_Baranja,_1941–1944], [55]. Both users started to attack me and revert me since I registered my username in Wikipedia and this thread is just another attack. About my agenda: yes, I have agenda to make some pages about Serbia accurate and I do not support promotion of Nazi names in these pages. For some reason, Peacemaker67 want to promote in several pages about Serbia official Nazi name of occupied territory. This name was illegal, Nazi occupation of Serbia was illegal and all names used by Nazis for their occupied territories were illegal. Yes, official Nazi name should be described somewhere in Wikipedia and it is described on this page and on main page about history of Serbia and that is enough. There is no reason that illegal official Nazi name is promoted all over Wikipedia in various pages about Serbia and it is just what Peacemaker67 do. He promote Nazi name all over Wikipedia. Is Wikipedia place where this should be promoted? Peacemaker67, please say to administrators why you promote this name all over Wikipedia? What is your agenda behind this? About my username: it mean "I do not have a brother". Yes, it is stupid, but after some of usernames that I had wish to choose were already taken, I just choose one that is not taken for sure. No conspiracy here. I already gave explanation that I had edits in Wikipedia (both English and Serbian) with IP number in the past and my experience come from that. See that DIREKTOR also accuse user:Alexmilt to be “WhiteWriter's acquaintance”. This just show behavior where DIREKTOR and Peacemaker67 are try to accuse everybody who do not agree with them to be socks, SPA accounts or parts of some conspiracy against them. About my edits: my interest is World War II and I had many changes about one thing only because my changes were reverted by Peacemaker67 and DIREKTOR and I was forced to waste much of my time to this. I will work on other things related to World War II in future. Nemambrata (talk) 07:41, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• ". This name was illegal, Nazi occupation of Serbia was illegal and all names used by Nazis for their occupied territories were illegal. " - Wikipedia is not censored, and we do not WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Heroin is illegal lots of places too but we still have an article on it - and under that title. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:15, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

A new wrinkle on personal attacks?

Doncram is abusing the agreement reached at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive761#Evil as an excuse to excise my input from on-wiki discussions that he is involved. The referenced ANI discussion started with an expression of concern about Doncram's persistent pattern of personal attacks targeted at me and another user. It led to an agreement that, in order to help Doncram avoid "reacting with venom" against us, Cbl62 would monitor Doncram's edits for 30 days, during which time SarekOfVulcan and I would refrain from criticizing or questioning Doncram's work -- instead alerting Cbl62 to any concerns we might have. In most respects, this arrangement has worked out well. Cbl62 has taken it upon himself not only to communicate with Doncram about issues with his new-article creations (which have been the primary source of friction), but also to clean up, expand, and improve upon some of Doncram's new contributions. Other users, such as Acroterion, have done likewise.

My concern is that Doncram is interpreting this agreement as giving him permission to delete my input from on-wiki discussion pages he is involved with -- in effect, treating me as if I were a banned user. First, he deleted my comments from an AfD discussion that another user had started and inserted a personal attack on me (corrected link here) on the AfD page after I added a note to the effect that my comments were in the history and on the Talk page for the AfD. The second incident involves the article Harmony, Florida, a page that has been subject to significant disharmony between users with strongly divergent opinions. I received an email from one of those users, requesting advice on dealing with Doncram, and not identifying the reason for asking. I looked at the user's contribution history and determined that the user's concern was focused on Harmony, Florida, where Doncram had recently become engaged in article-editing and talk page discussion related to long-standing controversy between editors. After seeing the disharmony in Harmony and the substance of the ongoing discussion there, and having no desire to get involved with another user's interaction with Doncram, I advised the user who emailed me that: "I don't think this is a personal issue, so much as an issue of Wikipedia policy and article-writing." Additionally, I commented on the talk page in general support of the tack that Doncram was taking there, and I notified Doncram by email that I had commented there because of the email I had received. Ten minutes after I commented on the talk page, and apparently before he opened my email, Doncram removed my talk page comment with an edit summary that said: "remove a message, posted in violation of an agreement. Discuss elsewhere, at ANI if you wish. Don't interfere here, pls, don't introduce unnecessary drama here, thanks." He followed that with a talk page announcement about the comment removal that gives the impression that my talk page comment had been some sort of criminal act so unspeakable that it cannot be mentioned in polite company. A little while after that, he sent a reply to my email, in which he specifically forbid me from quoting the contents of his message.

After several years of enduring various forms of character assassination from this user, I was grateful for Cbl62's recent intervention, but I am disgusted to find that Doncram is using this as a new excuse to attack me in a new and different way. I am not a banned user! --Orlady (talk) 17:50, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

It's one thing to avoid interaction, another to impose a self-selected Cone of Silence, and entirely unacceptable to remove comments at AfD. As Orlady notes, I've occasionally tried to save Doncram from overenthusiastic CSD taggers and to some extent from himself, but I lack Cbl62's patience. Agreements not to interact are not a license to expunge other peoples' communications anywhere but in Doncram's userspace. Orlady's participation in the Sons of Norway Building AfD was not a good idea, seeing as Doncram created the article, and it's probably best that she avoid such discussions in the future, but Doncram may not police comments. At Harmony, Florida, both Orlady and Doncram were separately acting in good faith to deal with a problem: there was no reason to remove Orlady's comments. Acroterion (talk) 18:03, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

• Can't respond in detail now. Quick points. There should be no suggestion that there is a "ban" on Orlady's activities. There is not. There is a voluntary agreement to keep some distance from each other. I would like to see that voluntary agreement remain in place. I do think that Doncram has shown signs of improving the quality of his work in the last 3 weeks and has also been interacting appropriately and collaboratively with other users. The problem is that, when it comes to Orlady, Doncram believes (whether rightly or wrongly) that any criticism from her (as in her recent vote to delete one of his articles) is part of a campaign to get him banned from Wikipedia. For that reason, he reacts vociferously to Orlady's criticisms. I am hoping that with a bit more separation time, this may still work itself out. But I agree that Doncram should not be deleting (or moving) Orlady's comments from AfD discussions or article talk pages or anyhwere else (excpet his talk page). Cbl62 (talk) 18:13, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

• I also had a problem with Doncram removing Orlady's comment in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sons of Norway Building (Minneapolis, Minnesota), but I didn't want to mention it at ANI or make a big issue out of it at the time, mainly because I knew it would grow into another food fight. Unilaterally removing talk page comments or discussion comments seems, at best, a heavy-handed way of trying to enforce an agreement. At worst, it's a provocative maneuver that could completely derail the attempt at compromise that the original agreement was hoping to solve. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 18:18, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh dear, what an unfortunate turn of events. It sounds like the agreement reached was resulting in some progress. I wish that Orlady had concluded that the AfD process will not collapse if one person declined to contribute, and had chosen not to weigh in with a delete !vote for a Doncram created article. Without getting into whether that constitutes a violation of the agreement, it is quite unacceptable that Doncram interpreted the agreement as permitting a removal of comments from a board. I'll go so far as to say that if the agreement did permit this, we would revisit the agreement. Doncram would have been better off to notify Cbl62, who could decide whether Doncram or Orlady or neither ought to be chided. Removal was NOT acceptable.

As for the Harmony incident, had Orlady shown up on her own, it might have been a violation, but when an editor receives an email from a participant, that (IMO) trumps the agreement. But it doesn't matter whether I'm right that it should be permitted, or wrong—it isn't Doncram's remit to remove comments form anywhere other than his own talk page.

I do want to thank Doncram for his involvement at Harmony, Florida. His input was thoughtful and helpful.

Before I propose, I must note that my thanks for Doncram's involvement in Harmony, Florida may constitute a COI, so take the following with a grain of salt:

While I think Doncram was decidedly wrong in removing the comments of Orlady, a liberal dose of AGF would permit me to believe that one might have read the agreement that way, so my suggestion is: TO Doncram - No, absolutely not, and never again. To Orlady: Did you REALLY have to contribute to the AfD of an article created by Doncram? I propose that Doncram agree to the clarified agreement, and we move on.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:39, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, my commenting on that Sons of Norway AfD was a mistake. My excuse is that when I first looked at the AfD, I mistakenly thought that Elkman had created the article, when in fact he had started the AfD. I probably would never have brought up that AfD again if it hadn't been for the venom that was directed at me there ("a long-hateful editor seemingly ever intent on following and poisoning and wreaking mayhem") and the subsequent Harmony incident. --Orlady (talk) 18:57, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

• The simple solution is that Doncram shouldn't delete any more comments from Orlady, and if he thinks a comment violates the voluntary agreement, notify Cbl62 instead, who can determine and take any action needed. And as for here, just move on without action against him, giving the best of faith that it was a misunderstanding. Since Orlady has already indicated that the comment at the AFD was a mistake, I can assume Orlady understands that avoiding AFD's of articles that Doncram started is best, and that this was a simple mistake. Mistakes were made, nothing got broke, the earth keeps spinning and we just move along and build an encyclopedia. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 21:47, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure that even with the "best of good faith" this should be dismissed as a "both parties goofed" moment. Doncram's response was egregriously inappropriate even if he did think he was being deliberately poked. Editor rehabilitation should absolutely not be allowed to interfere with the betterment of the project, and if Doncram is literally unable to interpret close proximity to Orlady as anything other than calculated malice against his person then there's only really one resolution available. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:03, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
    • I think Thumperward has a point here, but I still think it might, remotely, assuming good faith, be possible to think maybe Doncram thought he was acting appropriately. Maybe. I myself have difficulty seeing how that could be the case, but I suppose it might be remotely possible. Having said that, I do think that there may very likely be some intent problems here, and do not necessarily oppose any action against Doncram, although I would might favor a perhaps slightly more lenient option of those which might be considered. John Carter (talk) 22:40, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
      • My suggestion to move on should not be interpreted as implying that both sides goofed equally. I just don't think either qualifies for explicit admin sanction, beyond the "don't do that again." --SPhilbrick(Talk) 00:02, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
        • My thoughts exactly. I wasn't meaning to equate the mistakes, only noting that both parties made them and it was better to give a little extra good faith and simply say "don't do it again, you will get sanctions next time". No one is perfect, but this doesn't require blocking, just a warning, imho. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 00:22, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi everyone. Let me summarize: in a previous ANI incident discussion, Orlady and another editor committed to cease with following and contention and attacks and ANI incidents for a period. To the few editors reading here who are not aware, there is a long history of hatred and contention and following.

I don't know why they agreed to cease for a while exactly, but it did succeed in ending the previous ANI which maybe otherwise would prolong some negative attention for them right then. It puzzled me because I thought they enjoyed ANI reporting and contestation....maybe they were messing with my world-view....but no, here we are at ANI with another ANI report opened by one of them. A few days remain until Orlady and the other editor are released from their commitment and can resume around-the-clock ANI reporting if they wish, I suppose. Orlady violated that commitment several times since, just two of which are being discussed here. By opening this here, Orlady achieves another ANI report, and calls for sympathy for their right to contest and open ANI reports. I'd rather not. It's an interesting-to-some question, what should be done when an editor violates a commitment. I agree/concede that there can be differences of opinion, about what should be done to minimize the damage when they do. I made a judgment in both cases about what to do most expeditiously to reduce the damage and embarrassment in front of new wikipedia editors, etc. Others could judge differently. It's subjective.

What is the point for Orlady of having this ANI repor? Is it to bring attention to the injustice for Orlady of someone taking action when Orlady violates Orlady's commitment? I dunno. Some may want to turn to consequences to be imposed. We could debate what to do the next time that Orlady violates Orlady's commitment. If it helps people walk away, I promise to come back and consider whatever people's opinions expressed here are, before I make some response to Orlady's next violation. If Orlady chooses not to violate Orlady's commitment, we don't have to come back here again for second-guessing one another's responses to Orlady's violations. Whew!

I judge this all to be an embarrassment in front of the new editors watching, and this is unpleasant, and it defeats the purpose of having a ceasefire, to open a new ANI battleground. I suggest this ANI section be closed. Sorry, I don't want to play here, and would like not to reply further. --doncram 00:40, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Now, all I read above is WP:BATTLE. Personally, I WP:AGF'ed across the board. The above shows me that Doncram isn't ready for the community of Wikipedia dangerouspanda 01:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

And I concur with that assessment. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:46, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Doncram, regardless of whether or not you consider Orlady to be in breach of the committment, you do not have the option of removing her comments from anywhere but your talk page. Hopefully this is now fully cleared up for you. Elen of the Roads (talk) 01:43, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Just a note...

...I've noticed several times recently that users who have been blocked haven't been notified on their user talk pages about the block. Now in some cases (where it's socks) this might be understandable, but in other cases it just seems to have been forgotten. While I'm pretty sure it's not required, per se, it's courteous to say "you've been blocked" even if it's just with a Twinkle tag, I think, instead of letting the user find out when they try to edit. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:57, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

• If I do that, trout me. It actually bugs me a bit that the SPI scripts do not put a notice on the sock's talk page when we block them. We can go an manually add them, but often there are many socks in a single case and that is a pain. It does always put a notice on their user page, however, so I suppose that is supposed to suffice. It would be better if it has another checkbox to give a generic "you are blocked for $x, see ((WP:SPI/sockcase))" for the talk page. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 00:20, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Are you notifying the blocking admins? For my part, if I forget to notify a blocked editor, I would want to know. It's almost required. See WP:EXPLAINBLOCK - just underneath ("Administrators should notify users when blocking them by leaving a message on their user talk page.") Perhaps we should change that to "Generally, administrators must notify users when blocking them by leaving a message on their user talk page." The "generally" gives an admin some wiggle room but conveys the notification more strongly. I'm not sure how a user is expected to know how to appeal a block without a notice unless of course they're a recidivist and have lots of experience. :-) --Bbb23 (talk) 00:25, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Depends if you use some of the templated blocks themselves - they will see a block notice when they try to edit (I think) dangerouspanda 00:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I could block you and we could test that ;) Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 00:39, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I think I know of at least 1 editor who would love that dangerouspanda 01:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, I've just been adding the "congrats, you've been blocked" tags myself, but from now on I'll send a ping in the direction of the Forgetful Joneses. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:44, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

If adding notices to sock talk pages is a pain, perhaps the blocking should be done by a different admin.--Rockfang (talk) 09:29, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• An automated blocking notice, as an option, is a good idea; for one thing, it always struck me as less than helpful that the "reasons for block" aren't exactly in the same order and wording as the list of blocking templates. Or we could have different levels for blocking templates: "Hi, I'm Drmies and I blocked your account. Please leave a note on my talk page if I hurt your feelings." Drmies (talk) 19:52, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• "I apologize that I did not find your vandalism as amusing as your friends do - I'm sure that the fault is in me, and not you - but since life is unfair, I've blocked you anyway, which will give you and your friends a concrete reason to feel oppressed by The Man." Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:46, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I need to reach an administrator regarding unsupported edits by 76.121.120.70 on Wineville Chicken Coop Murders

I wish to make contact with an administrator regarding recent edits that have taken place on the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders wiki-page. I have posted a question on the users talk page a few weeks ago with no response. I notice on the article page, that an administrator has also posted a citation asking for specifics, with no response from the user.

I am considered an expert on this subject and have visited extensively with the Riverside Historical Society and the author James Jeffrey Paul, regarding the differences between the film Changeling and the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.

Unfortunately, the film convinces people who watch it that the film was a documentary on the facts of what happened at Wineville, but there are many legal differences that exist. People come and post on the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders page thinking that the film documented the real happenings at Wineville and this is not necessarily so. The current edits reflect the film version and not the historical version, which was decided by the California Courts in 1928. Over the past 2 years or so, I have edited repeatedly to reflect the true historical record as reflected by California courts, and not the film version.

I wish to visit with an administrator and have the incorrect edits removed. I could do so myself, but I have no interest in engaging in some edit war with a user whom has no interest in responding with factual support of their claims.

For the record, if the poster, 76.121.120.70 can produce evidence and supporting documentation regarding their claims posted, it would shed major additional light on the murders that took place in 1928, and would be a most welcome addition to people who seek to follow the Wineville Chicken Coop murders. Any of their supporting evidence, would be a major historical find regarding the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. Until such supporting and factual documentation would arise, it is important that the page reflect what the California courts and the Riverside (California) Historical Society reflect regarding the historical record in this matter.

So let's make contact and begin our own discussion regarding my concerns about removing certain edits that have taken place without factual information footnoted.

Beaconmike (talk) 02:10, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

A look at Talk:Wineville Chicken Coop Murders shows reams and reams of OR from Beaconmike, plus two newspaper articles inserted verbatim into the talk page, very likely in violation of copyright. Looie496 (talk) 03:43, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Wineville Chicken Coop Murders (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs).
• IP editor notified.
• What am I doing wrong with "{{IPuser|76.121.120.70}}"?

This appears to be what in Wikipedia jargon is called a "content dispute". This means it is about the content of an article, which is for editors to discuss, rather than something that needs the attention of administrators (yet).--Shirt58 (talk) 03:48, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I just checked Talk:Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. Holy WP:TLDR, Batman. I've removed the cut-and-pasted newspaper articles and revdel'd the blatant copyright violation they created. As for the rest: Beaconmike, it looks like you might want to read WP:OR, WP:OWN, WP:VNT, WP:THETRUTH and WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS... - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:57, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I have no objection to the removal of the copyrighted material. I am new to the rules and shame on me for not understanding. Yes, I do have a 'content dispute' with another editor. However, I have left a message for the editor to respond, and they do not respond at all. That is why I have requested an administrator to become involved. Without source documentation that is based on historical record, the edits must be removed. I do not want to begin an edit war with another individual, so that is why I am asking for an administrator to become involved. -Beaconmike (talk) 13:49, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

In that case you need to go to WP:DRN, as this is a content dispute (and, thus, not within AN/I's purview). - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Conscientious Objection

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To whom it concerns,

Is it possible that I want to be forbidden from Wikipedia, (even requesting deletion of all my account) forever, as a regard of my conscientious objection to be here anymore? (if it's a right here)

If possible, what should I do?

Thanks. Barayev (talk) 03:24, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• • You posted this on my talk page, and I've already answered there. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 03:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick respond. Checking now. Barayev (talk) 03:29, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

In the meantime, I used the term "Conscientious Objection" allegorically. So you're right, Wikipedia doesn't force anyone to be here. Thanks. Barayev (talk) 03:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• If you want to actually be blocked, see WP:BLOCKME. To just "vanish", see WP:RTV. Of course, it's simplest just to stop editing if you don't want to. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

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173.80.105.69 (talk)

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This particular IP, who has already vandalized Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson a few times, keeps on personal attacking User:Reaper Eternal ever since they got blocked, and I informed Reaper Eternal about it, and he relinquished the IP's talk privileges, but the IP still managed to vandalize its talk page with messages like: "Fuck Reaper Eternal Fuck wikipedia Fuck Cluebot NG the only way that you wikipedia fucks are going to stop me is to permantely block my IP address you fucking wikipedia cunts i'll keep posting this until i get what i fucking want and that is a permante block i'm the only user of this IP address hahahahahahahaha." Here are the links to the attacks: [56][57][58][59][60][61]. ZappaOMati 03:57, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Talk page semi-protected for the duration of the block. - TexasAndroid (talk) 04:01, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

The 'revoke talk page access' tickbox wasn't checked. It is now. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 04:03, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

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User:StillStanding-247 Repeated refactoring of other users comments

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1st refactor 2nd refactor

These are just two of the most recent refactor/hatting of other editors comments. S/he has been asked not to do this before. Could an admin please inform her/him this conduct is not appreciated and that s/he could be blocked if this refactoring continues?

User has been notifed.   little green rosetta(talk)
central scrutinizer  05:21, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Agree that this ain't cool, but I don't think this is on the level of ANI-worthy (yet), unless I'm missing something. I left a note on user's TP shortly before this ANI-section was opened. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 05:23, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Seb, it's my contention that the remark was uncivil and in no way conducive towards editing the article, but since you're a neutral party, I will leave it alone. LGR is, uhm, not neutral. StillStanding (24/7) (talk) 05:25, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

And as a side note, the second refactoring was using hat/hab as opposed to slashes. In other words, I was attempting to find a more acceptable way to block off the uncivil remark. StillStanding (24/7) (talk) 05:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Short of BLP issues, you should not be refactoring anyone's comments. Nor should you be hatting them unless it is on your talk page. If you find a comment uncivil, try to work it out with them. If that fails, take it to WQA, if that fails then take it here.  little green rosetta(talk)
central scrutinizer  05:36, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• He also did the same thing on Little green rosetta's own comment page [62] and I'm not sure why he felt inclined to do that either on Little green rosetta's own personal talk page. I've had my comments hatted by Still on his talk page but I never changed it back because it is his talk page as it is his right to do so. ViriiK (talk) 05:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
• It's becoming a habit with this guy. [63] Needs to be nipped in the bud. Belchfire-TALK 05:35, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Er, in that thread it looks like you made an inflammatory comment (that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a "radical left-wing civil rights group"). A bunch of people asked you (appropriately) to provide reliable sources for that assertion. You responded that you had no intention of providing sources, nor any intention of adding the material to the article, and closed with an attack on the motivations of other editors.

    That's a misuse of the talk page on numerous levels: first of all, the talkpage is to discuss specific improvements to the article. If you don't have any intention of adding something to an article, don't use the talkpage as a forum to discuss it, especially if it's divisively ideological. Respond politely to reasonable requests (like, for instance, that you provide reliable sources). You're correct that StillStanding shouldn't have hatted the comment, but he's not exactly the only one riding roughshod over the talkpage guidelines. MastCell ^Talk 05:53, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Comment I don't want this to be a pile on. I'd be happy with a "please don't do that again" and have this closed. G'nite.  little green rosetta(talk)
central scrutinizer  05:38, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok, but when you file an ANI report on me, it's normal for Belchfire and ViriiK to pile on. I'm their special friend. StillStanding (24/7) (talk) 05:46, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

This is a clear case of WP:NOTTHEM. You refactor people's comments when you're not supposed to do so. There's been other instances of this other than those reported links. ViriiK (talk) 05:52, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I know you're not blocked. But trying to deflect attention to myself or Belchfire does not change the issue here. ViriiK (talk) 05:53, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)You can remove comments from your own talk page, if they are removed in toto, but editing any other comments on any other page is not something you do. The only exception is if there's a serious violation of the BLP policy, but even then you're much better off bringing it to an admin's attention and letting them deal with it. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:56, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe we're talking about removing comments, just hatting them. I know I've seen comments and even whole sections hatted on article talk pages before. Could you please point me at the right policy page so I can read up about this? StillStanding (24/7) (talk) 05:58, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm reading WP:TPG#Others.27_comments but I don't see anything about this... StillStanding (24/7) (talk) 06:09, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• little green, I'd love to agree with you, but I cannot. This user simply has no respect for other people's comments. Just look at this - tampering with the diffs in an AN3 report. [64] Somebody should step through the diffs for that entire episode. It's abominable. Belchfire-TALK 05:54, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
• Then there's these: [65], [66], [67] As I said, this is a real problem. We could have a little more peace and harmony if it were solved. Belchfire-TALK 06:00, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm starting to think that the real problem here is that you guys pile on to anything I'm involved in and do your best to get me blocked. This is getting old, guys. Move on and go edit some articles or something. StillStanding (24/7) (talk) 06:03, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

No, that's not the issue here. You're being derisive now. The issue is that you think it's perfectly acceptable to refactor comments. ViriiK (talk) 06:05, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

We disagree on what the issue is. I think the issue is that you keep trying to get me blocked. You think the issue is that I'm not blocked. StillStanding (24/7) (talk) 06:06, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• It seems everybody but you agrees the issue is that you're abusing the hat template, Still. Here's another example: [68] "I object to Still's hatting of my remarks. And have asked him to stop. I have every right to revert him. However I desire that this thread stay focused on the 4 reverts in the blue box above clearly establishing edit warring.– Sir Lionel, EG(talk) 12:54, 15 August 2012 (UTC)" What's it going to take if you refuse to listen when people tell you to knock it off? Belchfire-TALK 06:12, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Everybody? No, that's Lionelt, who's just one of your guys. I listen to neutral people and to policy. StillStanding (24/7) (talk) 06:15, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• • This template should only be used by uninvolved editors or administrators in conjunction with the talk page guidelines and relevant advice at refactoring. It should not be used by involved parties to end a discussion over the objections of other editors. That's pretty simple. template:hat ViriiK (talk) 06:16, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

StillStanding, you're talking yourself into a hole. Simply do not selectively hat, strike, remove, or otherwise alter anybody else's comments. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 06:19, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok, next time I'll just report him for incivility, not that it'll have any effect. StillStanding (24/7) (talk) 06:22, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

thank you. We're done here. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 06:23, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

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Requesting reinstatement of 2 football articles?

I had recently created two football articles for players based in the United States and Liechtenstein, but both articles have been deleted. The users that were involved are 'Sir Sputnik' and 'The Bushranger'. I was not given legitimate reasons as to why these articles were targeted, had hasty requests to be deleted at the same time, and were then deleted without conversation?

The only reason that I had been given was a concern that I read, which was not a concern at all as far as I am concerned, and reads as follows: " concern was: Article about a footballer who fails WP:GNG and who has not played in fully pro league.)". I understand the second part of this 'statement' as there is truth to the fact that both of these players are not paid professionals currently, however, to just make a statement saying "Article about a footballer who fails" is poorly written and also flippant.

I happen to have a working relationship with the football club 'Orange County Blue Star' that the player 'David Ponce' plays for, and if you read the Orange County Blue Star article you'll see that he has been mentioned in the clubs history and is also on their current roster. The club plays in the United States soccer league system for the 'USL Premier Development League', where the Blue Star are a highly regarded club. The team has had many players, both past and present, that have started their careers at this club and have made names for themselves. I believe that since David Ponce has been mentioned in that particular article with such highly regarded players, that he also deserves to have his own article as well.

The other player, 'Diego Haas', of Liechtenstein, has also been deleted. When I created the article of Diego, it was around the time that he was still eligible to play for the 'Liechtenstein national under-21 football team', and he had several caps for this team at that particular time. At one time in his football career, he was regarded as one of the best youth players in the country and he had played for the club 'FC Vaduz' as well as 'FC Balzers' and he is now currently playing for 'FC Triesen'. All of these teams are Liechtensteiner football clubs and are part of the seven official teams in the nation. In his career so far, he has played for three of the seven clubs in the country and he has only recently turned 24 years of age. Furthermore, all of these clubs play in Swiss Football League and compete in the Liechtenstein Cup annually, which means that the clubs and the player himself have significance. He is also on the FC Triesen roster on the website that they have and the wikipedia article as well.

The player David Ponce is still currently at University, but in 2013 he will most likely be playing professional football. I know this privileged information because I am involved with the club, however, information regarding that matter will not be discussed further because it is privileged information as I said.

Can both of these articles please be allowed to be reinstated? I feel like both have been grossly misjudged. I put a lot of work into writing those articles and had put in my best efforts to make them look excellent for this website. I would like to add that there are far worse articles that I have read on wikipedia in the past, not only about football, but other matters in the world as well.

Thank youPatrick.shea9 (talk) 06:37, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Er, first of all, please give somebody time to reply once you've contacted them on their talk page (I've replied there). Secondly, you are required to notify people when you mention them on AN/I. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 06:57, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Your "privileged information" is worthless here without it being repeated by a reliable secondary source (you should also consider if you should be even discussing it in a public forum). Recreate the article if/when he plays professionally. As for the other guy, many editors who watch articles on soccer players often knee-jerk when they see articles where the notability could be questioned. Simply find plenty of secondary reliable sources (press coverage in languages other than English are acceptable) that discuss the subject in-depth. Have fun and good luck to those two. Cptnono (talk) 07:12, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

(note that the above is an opinion from someone who isn't an administrator. Also consider the any mention of Ponce can be considered a BLP concern regardless of if it is viewed positively or negatively)Cptnono (talk) 07:21, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Leo Frank Footnotes for height

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There is a dispute on the Leo Frank article between 3 editors concerning Leo Frank's height. Steve Oney (2003) and Lindemann (1991) - both secondary sources - wrote in their books Leo Frank (LF) was 5'6" tall, but do provide any references for this information. There are two reliable sources that put 5'8" as Leo Frank's height, his 1906 Cornell University senior class year book (p344, p345), and his 1907 official U.S. passport (Ancestry.com). I am requesting that a foot note be inserted in the ref, about his height concerning two reliable sources, but Tom Northshoreman seems to be against the footnoting. Is a Cornell University college senior yearbook and U.S. passport considered a reliable source of information about a person's height? What do we do in a situation where a secondary source author makes errors that can be verified as errors with primary sources? I'm requesting a footnote be put in place on the Leo Frank article and need help with this dispute. Carmelmount (talk) 07:19, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

This is a pure content dispute and doesn't belong at ANI. I see the lengthy discussion on the Talk page. I suggest you try other methods of WP:DR. I confess, though, to being a bit curious about one thing. It's a very long article, and I just barely skimmed it, but why is Frank's height noteworthy enough to be included in the infobox? I don't see anything about it in the body. Did I miss something?--Bbb23 (talk) 07:35, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

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User:Geo Swan and AfDs

Hi, AN/I. I'm concerned about the sheer number of deletion nominations that are taking place of material written by User:Geo Swan. Users unfamiliar with the history of this are invited to read Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Geo Swan, but the gist of it is that Geo Swan is one of our most productive content creators—but many of the things he's written do not comply with Wikipedian norms. I have no objection to Geo Swan's material being nominated for deletion. When one editor nominates more than 60 pieces written by Geo Swan in the same month for deletion, then that's a potential problem because the guy's entire corpus is being destroyed faster than he can defend it. Basically, it takes time to defend stuff at AfD, and Geo Swan isn't being given a chance. In my view this is not fair.

I expressed my concern to the user involved, DBigXray, here. Was that the most diplomatic phrasing ever? Probably not, and I'll take any lumps I've got coming to me for that. What I found was that DBigXray gives a very robust defence and may not have a very thick skin. So I left it there.

What happened then was that in a separate discussion, a deletion review, I saw that the multiple nominations were causing Geo Swan significant distress. See here. As a result of the Deletion Review, the article in question was relisted at AfD, and I expressed the same concerns more forcefully in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Muhammed Qasim. You'll see the same pattern, with the robust defence from DBigXray and an accusation from an IP editor that I'm "poisoning the well". Am I?

I hate posting on AN/I and I always try to avoid it. What I would like from this is for editors to agree some kind of cap on how many of Geo Swan's articles can be nominated for deletion all at the same time.—S Marshall T/C 08:58, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Clarification, The deletion review[69] has been wrongly portrayed above. The article was CSD G7ed by Author Geo Swan while an ongoing AfD was discussing it, Due to CSD G7 the article got quickly deleted, and the ongoing AfD (now moot) had to be closed. But another editor User:Joshuaism unaware that it was author Geo Swan had asked from CSD G7[70] started deletion review with WP:AOBF towards Bushranger for closing the discussion and deleting the article. After the discussion at Deletion review the AfD was reopened again and finally closed as delete--DBigXray 11:13, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

For further clarity: I did not delete the db-author'd article. I merely closed the AfD as "moot due to G7" as it had already been deleted. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:52, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that there should be a special "rule" just regarding articles created by Geo Swan. One option would be to suggest a change to the deletion policy that would limit the number articles created by a specific editor that could be listed simultaneously at AfD. I don't think this is the ideal option, but I think it is better than having a "rule" just regarding articles created by one editor.--Rockfang (talk) 09:23, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

That would probably need a RfC. What I'm looking for at the moment is a specific, immediate remedy.—S Marshall T/C 09:34, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• You need context to the poisioning the well comment I made. This was in relation to you insisting that loading the AFD with meta discussion on if someone should be allowed to nominate multiple articles must stay within the AFD discussion rather than being discussed on the talk page or somewhere like RFC or here. Your comments were nothing to do with the value of the article or otherwise. No admin should close the discussion based upon such opinions so the only impact could be to sideline the afd from the issue it is supposed to address. That isn't an issue of if the broader subject warrants discussion.
  I'd only see a cap on the number of deletions possible if we are also willing to impose a cap on the number of creations. If someone has created a large number of articles which don't have the sufficient sourcing etc. to stand up on their own but then take a significant time to defend each one, then I don't think we should be encouraging such large creation in the first place. Additionally if only one editor (the original author) is the only person who can or will defend an article at AFD, then there is quite a problem with those articles anyway.
  I#ll also note that you discuss DBigXray as apparently not having a thick skin being an issue, yet the very same thing about Geo Swan you seem to be something we should be sympathetic towards, you can't have it both ways. --62.254.139.60 (talk) 09:30, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Is it your position that user conduct is irrelevant to AfD closes?—S Marshall T/C 09:34, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Why should it be relevant? The decision should be made on the merits of the case - on our policies and guidelines. But the main issue for me here is that it appears that most of these articles have BLP issues, and given that, the faster they can be dealt with the better. Normally we might not care about how fast we deal with a large group of articles, but if there are BLP violations, and apparently there are, I'd definitely oppose a cap. Dougweller (talk) 10:02, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Is it your position that not using appropriate dispute resolution, instead just declaring in an AFD that there is a user conduct issue, is a constructive way of progressing things? Is it your position that content inappropriate to wikipedia should remain there, based on S Marshall (or any other editors) personal judgement that the person nominating it for deletion is not being "fair"? It is my position that user conduct issues are not the subject matter of AFDs, that's what we have dispute resolution for. Presupposing and judging that there is a user conduct issue is pretty much out of order. Your emotive summary of the matter on the afd "DBigXray is going through systematically destroying Geo Swan's entire corpus..." is not likely to be constructive in determining if the article is "useful" for wikipedia or not. It is unlikely to add any particular light to the discussion, just heat. Certainly if I had listed a set of articles for deletion beliving that I was doing the right thing clearing up BLPs etc, to have someone come to the discussions not comment on the substance of it the articles are valid or not. but instead declare my motivation as being to systematically destroy someone's entire corpus, then I'd certainly be annoyed (and I'd also question with who the user conduct issue lies) --62.254.139.60 (talk) 10:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

This all seems rather tangential. If you really must continue this discussion, kindly take it to user talk page. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 10:16, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Sixty nominations in a month is clearly going to overwhelm both the AfD process and the article's creator. It takes 30 seconds to AfD something with Twinkle and move onto the next, maybe five minutes if done manually—either of which is considerably less time than it takes to make a good case to keep the article. I think a formal cap would be instruction creep, but there really is no good reason for one editor (in good faith and employing common sense) to nominate more than one article by the same author every few days. Perhaps the discussions could be placed on hold somehow until GeoSwan has been allowed sufficient time to respond to the nominations and make the case for the articles? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 10:16, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• 30 seconds to AfD ? And what about the time that I spend trying to find sources and look about the notability of these BLPs and following WP:BEFORE prior to nominating these article for AFD, I feel in the above comment it has totally been ignored while it should have been taken into consideration. --DBigXray 10:59, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• comment First i have removed 10,000 from the title, this is an attempt to sensationalize this discussion.

1. For the record I have no history of editing or confrontation with Geo Swan anywhere on Wikipedia, and i have no malice against Geo Swan nor with his creations. I have no interest in Geo Swan's contributions whatsoever. I am active at military weapons, ships, History and terrorism related articles. I came across these articles via the categories on terrorism related articles . I have also created BIOs of few militants and militant organizations myself and I have also improved a number of articles on notable Guantanamo prisoners if they agree with the policies "irrespective of who created it" . I nominate articles only when I am fully convinced that they are clear cases of policy violation "irrespective of who created it" . AS the admins have access to deleted pages, they are free to check the deleted pages from my AFDs that I have also nominated several non-notable BIOs and articles created by editors other than Geo Swan if they do not satisfy the guidelines.
2. on Bundling I dont get any special joy in bundling these articles but I have started doing it as I was requested by AFD sorters and AFD contributors to WP:BUNDLE these AfD's for better discussion as single AFDs had to be relisted several times. I accepted that sane advice. Later on few editors protested against bundling and I accepted that and started nominating problematic articles individually.
3. Finally we should always "remember" that it is not me but the community who decides what article to keep and what to delete based on the consensus at AfDs. I am only highlighting that these articles that have problem. Also note that the notability of these articles could not be established even after 6 years and even after extensive search I could not find any sign of notability of the subject and thats when i decide to AfD it, Many other AfD contributors have also tried and came to conclusion that these were poorly sourced WP:BLP articles violating WP:BLPPRIMARY. And ALL of these Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons articles have either been deleted or redirected.
4. S Marshall above prefers to violate WP:Arguments_to_avoid_in_deletion_discussions#Arguments_to_the_person, making false misleading accusations of bad faith. He has never addressed the subjects of the article but only concentrated on making personal attacks on the AFD nominator on these AFDs. S Marshall falsely accused me of making "quite virulent accusations" here on this AFD. I have never made any accusation against MArshall ever, forget about "virulent" or "quite virulent". On the other hand we can see SMarshall had accused me of a Crusade on an AfD which itself is a severe Bad faith accusation on his part to which i left a civil and sane reply on Marshall's talk page[71] to stick to the content and stop doing WP:AOBF. And in reply to that I was threatened by Marshall to be dragged to ANI (Which he has done). From what i See , accusing me of making "quite virulent accusations" is clear case of Lying WP:ABF and WP:AOBF by SMarshall opposite to WP:AGF.

--DBigXray 10:19, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Your 60+ nominations of articles by the same editor in the same month, is the point you should be addressing here.—S Marshall T/C 10:25, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• I am more concerned about these poorly sourced Negative Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons articles violating WP:BLPPRIMARY and WP:BLP1E as far as I am aware , Biographies of living persons is something that Wikipedia takes very seriously. These articles should have been deleted while WP:NPP but may be it escaped the eyes of new page patrollers as geo swan has Autopatrolled/reviewer rights.
• Also from the comments of Geo Swan on AfD i feel that he is still unaware of policies of WP:BLP or choses to blatantly ignore them, but then it is not something that i should care about. My concern is the Content not the contributor, I have already made my comment. and explained my position as clearly as I can. I have always followed community consensus and here also I will follow what the community decides to do with these problematic WP:BLPs, I dont have anything else to say here, regards--DBigXray 10:38, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
• Was it just coincidence that you nominated all these articles by the same editor, then?—S Marshall T/C 10:30, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• As far as I know, through AfDs I am pointing out problematic WP:BLPs irrespective of who created it now if Geo Swan has created all the problematic policy violating non notable WP:BLP Articles, then you are Barking up the wrong tree. It is not me but Geo Swan who should make a clarification about it. For the record I have already stated above an i am repeating again, I have also nominated problematic BLPs of other editors and the admins having access to deleted page history can go ahead and check it.
• I will appreciate if you do not attack me on AfDs in future, AfD contributors should not comment if they are unable or unwilling to address the subject of the article but are more concerned in derailing the AfD debate by making ad hominem personal attacks against the fellow editors as you did on AFD here andhere
• Also the fact that S Marshall wrote 10,000 AFDs as the section title in an attempt to sensationalize the discussion clarifies that he is more interested in WP:DRAMA than participating positively on Articles or AFDs. --DBigXray 10:48, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Was it a coincidence? An accident? Or are you targetting one particular contributor whose edits have caused you concern?—S Marshall T/C 10:45, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Please read WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT--DBigXray 10:48, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Stop it, the pair of you. The issue here is not (or should not) be why we have all these AfD nominations, but what to do with them and how to give each article a fair hearing and ensure that the author can mount a defence of each one if he is so inclined. Bickering over motives doesn't bring us any closer to resolving that issue. If you don't have anything unambiguously constructive to say, then don't participate in this thread. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:04, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• No, that's only part of the issue. I'm trying to establish whether Geo Swan is being personally targeted—which does matter, HJ Mitchell, and isn't irrelevant at all—and if so why he's being targeted. Sometimes it's legitimate to target one particular editor. If they're a serial copyright violator, for example, then everything they've ever written needs to be investigated. But as a general rule individual editors should not be targeted because of hounding and griefing concerns. 60+ nominations in one month is, prima faciae, damn good evidence of targeting, isn't it. I'd like to start a discussion about whether targeting is justified in all the circumstances, in the light of the RFC/U.—S Marshall T/C 13:05, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

The RfC/U itself targets him. It isn't unreasonable for someone to look at it and come to the conclusion that he created a number of dubious BLPs, is it? And then to decide to do something about those BLPs? Dougweller (talk) 16:10, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Is that what's happened? I've asked DBigXray, repeatedly, to tell us whether he's targeting Geo Swan or whether this is a coincidence. He won't answer (and accuses me of IDHT among other things because I keep asking). If DBigXray would confirm that he's targeting Geo Swan because of dubious BLPs, then we'd be making some progress here. In any case, the RfC/U does talk about the issue of targeting Geo Swan. I think that what applies to Fram applies to DBigXray as well. Don't you?—S Marshall T/C 16:24, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Well If you read my above reply again you should be able to understand how I got to these articles but for that one needs to take out the earplugs out of his ears. Everyone else here knows what the real problem is but as we see above Marshall seems to be hellbent on Getting me banned from WP:Terrorism BLPs. Assuming good faith, for you and your understanding I am explaining this one last time. As said above I am active in BLP articles specially terrorism related I have created several BLPs Abdul Rehman Makki, Yasin Bhatkal, Fasih Mahmood, Zabiuddin Ansari, Naamen Meziche, Iqbal Bhatkal, Riyaz Bhatkal, 2010 Bangalore stadium bombing, August_2012_Mansehra_Shia_Massacre, February 2012 Kohistan Shia Massacre and many more. As we know these gentlemen work in organisations that are often interrelated or work in tandem. Obviously I am expected to come across these terrorism related articles, which led me to these BLP violation articles from the categories. I have tried and improved several of these BLPs and I have nominated the non notable WP:BLPPRIMARY violations Irrespective of who has created them . To be honest I am annoyed at these attempts of making imaginary relationships between me and Geo Swan, when there is none, If you dont believe me go and dig into my contributions and bring up a relationship if you are able to find one, until then STFU ! I hope this puts an end to the silly WP:IDHT statements that Marshall is repeatedly stating above, so that we can now concentrate on addressing the Real Problem of these BLP violations.--DBigXray 16:52, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• I take it that you deny that you are personally targeting Geo Swan?—S Marshall T/C 17:01, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
• (Later) Oh, and I'm not trying to get you banned from anything. I'm doing exactly what I said I was doing: I'm trying to get you to stop nominating very large numbers of Geo Swan's contributions for deletion at the same time. And that's all I'm trying to achieve.—S Marshall T/C 17:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I think Marshall has no confidence on our WP:AFD process and least confidence on the Afd contributors and Zero confidence on the AfD nominators. Could Marshall explain why he thinks only Geo Swan has to defend these articles ? do you feel all the AfD contributors are morons hell bent on deleting BLPs ? If the articles are notable anyone should be able to prove the notability and defend it at AfD if the consensus has a view that the article is non notable and/or a

BLP violation, then its ought to be deleted. --DBigXray 17:18, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• The articles you list are all related to Muslim terrorists in India, DBigXray. What have you done to improve the articles you nominate or that you considered nominating? What edits have you made to save Guantanamo and other American terrorism related detainees?--Joshuaism (talk) 17:23, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• These are the articles that i started, the list of articles in which i have contributed is pretty long and I am not interested in giving another list of articles so feel free Dig into my contributions on Guantanamo and other terrorism articles and help yourself, regards--DBigXray 17:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• It is an unfair burden to make me prove a negative. It is much easier for you to provide the evidence (if it exists) as you should have a better knowledge of your edits than I do. --Joshuaism (talk) 18:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• SMarshall and DBigXray -- given that this is supposed to be about GeoSwan, could ya'll stop the back and forth?
• I'd like to hear from GeoSwan themself.
• The linked RFC/U recommended a mentor -- did that happen? Nobody Ent 10:58, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I can't see any indication that it did. As I said, my main concern is the BLP articles, should we be asking for input from BLPN? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 11:25, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• The ease with which an editor can defend his contributions should not be an issue in determining AFD - especially not in cases where a single user mass produces content that is substandard, and which includes blps. The problem is with the article mass creation, not with article mass AFDing. If a user creates a large number of dubious articles then he should expect that he will be implicated in a large number of simultaneous afds. That is how the process works. The alternative is to say that as long as you create enough substandard articles you get a get out of AFD free card. That's not the wikipedia I want to be a part of.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:25, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

As the guy that submitted the Qasim article for deletion review I feel I should share my concerns.

• DBigXray is submitting these AfDs at a rate that is too fast for any single user to review the merits of the articles. DBigXray states that he is performing this due diligence, but I have my doubts as all of his submissions consist of copy/paste boilerplate text, and I have not seen any significant edits on his part to shore up questionably notable detainees.Joshuaism (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• The rate of nomination for deletion is a function of the rate of creation. If the Afd rate is too high, it's an issue of the creation rate. Nobody Ent 17:36, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Not necessarily true. DBigXray can nominate 17 articles in a week, while GeoSwan did not create all of these articles in the matter of one week. Salim Suliman Al Harbi was created over an entire year after Omar Rajab Amin and GeoSwan and other editors have worked for years at improving these articles. All of this research and time can be wiped out in a matter of days by one "industrious" editor so long as a small but dedicated set of voters support him. Meanwhile the creator is discouraged from canvassing for favorable editors and they likely cannot be found easily after many years anyways. Not everyone can be as vigilant as DBigXRay. --Joshuaism (talk) 18:30, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Consensus on these nominations seem to only be made by the same editors, Nick-D, RightCowLeftCoast, Anotherclown,The Bushranger, and Vibhijain. With such a small userbase showing an interest in these articles, can we be sure that this is the consensus of the entire wikicommunity, or is it just WP:LOCALCONSENSUS?Joshuaism (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• There's no such thing as the entire wikicommunity; there are overlapping subcommunities. If those are the only editors currently interested in discussing Afds, that's the subcommittee that decides. (Exceptions would be made if there was evidence of canvassing or the like.). Nobody Ent 17:36, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• I'm currently investigating whether Vibhijain is a sock-puppet of DBigXray. Both share an interest in keeping topics related to India and deleting all of these detainees. They also both have an odd habit of striking their votes (along with the entire attached comment) just before the close of an AfD and then voting to match consensus. (Vibhijain's AfD record)Joshuaism (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Well, you should keep you suspicions to yourself until your investigation is over. If you conclude there's a reasonable chance they're the same editors, take to WP:SPI, not here. Nobody Ent 17:36, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
• Done! Thank you for the recommendation! --Joshuaism (talk) 19:12, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Each of these nominations have a clear redirect target. but many of these editors vote to delete anyway. The Bushranger has recently started voting "Merge and Redirect", but the events surrounding the Qasim article made me worry he was actually acting contrary to his recorded vote. It appears that I was mistaken about that. Joshuaism (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)Joshuaism (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• With such a clear redirect/merge topic, I don't know why any of them get nominated for AfD and it causes me to worry about efforts at censorship and WP:BIAS. Many of these pages include useful references that without archiving may suffer from linkrot, making research of their individual cases difficult in the future if the page histories are not preserved. Joshuaism (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• DBigXray claims he worries about BLP/BLP1E issues, but if that is the case, is he concerned about the lists of detainees as well? Could these lists be targeted on the same grounds? Joshuaism (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)Joshuaism (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• You dont need to be concerned about my concerns and how I address my concerns, as an AfD contributor one should be more concerned about finding the notability of an article rather than making personal attacks and random Bad faith accusations on AfD contributors. As for the concerns on "What if..." There is a community at AfD that is competent enough to address anyone's genuine concerns on the articles.--DBigXray 18:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to see comments on each of these individual issues I've brought up. I understand that it may be necessary to break up my long comment to facilitate this. Please feel free to interupt me between each bulletpoint as it will probably make for better readability. Thanks! --Joshuaism (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Question Would Joshuaism also Like to be blocked (if he is proved wrong at SPI) per WP:BOOMERANG for the shocking display of Bad faith you have shown above ?
• Also you need to inform Vibhijain that you are implicating him and taking his name in this ANI case.--DBigXray 17:36, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for allowing me to at least contact Vibhijain. It looks like you've already contacted everyone else mentioned. Thanks! --Joshuaism (talk) 18:00, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Well if you are taking names of editors at ANI you are supposed to inform them yourself, Informing editors who are being discussed here is not Canvassing and your linking to WP:CANVAS above is yet another WP:AOBF towards fellow editors

What about my question above ? The Bad Faith shown above is extremely shocking, I think I have already said enough for any sane mind to get a clue, ill take a break --DBigXray 18:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I make my accusations against you in good faith. I seriously think there are issues with your AfD history and am not trying to discourage good faith edits by actual editors. But this appears to be a crusade on your part and even well meaning edits can be detrimental when editors do not examine the consequences of their actions and the biases at work in their behavior that work to the detriment of Wikipedia and it's community. --Joshuaism (talk) 19:12, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that's a contradiction in terms.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:46, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

you have already given a demonstration of your good faith at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/DBigXray All the best --DBigXray 19:15, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

And you have given a demonstration of your good faith at your talk page. --Joshuaism (talk) 22:44, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• If you dont want to see/identify the disruptive misdeeds of a sock, then there is nothing much we can do about it.--DBigXray 00:06, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Regardless of the outcome of any of the rest of this, you've successfully caused at least one editor to add the Guantanamo BLPs to the "list of Wikipeida things I won't touch with a 10-foot (3.0 m) pole." - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:03, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

(od, without reading the above) I've commented on quite a few of these AfDs, and I think that they're fine. Geo Swan shouldn't have created these articles in the first place and hasn't cleaned them up despite the serious concerns which were raised in the RfC over a year ago (despite being a very active editor in that period), so their deletion is long-overdue. I'd note that almost all of the nominations are being closed as 'delete', with most comments being posted as part of these discussions relating to BLP concerns. Nick-D (talk) 23:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• I second what Nick-D is saying above. I had come across the GeoSwan Guantanamo-related articles before and I think the sheer number of these articles still sitting in mainspace (usually for years) represents a significant problem. These articles typically rely on a combination of primary sources (Guantanamo trial transcripts) and occasional few brief mentions in the newsmedia - almost always a far cry from satisfying WP:GNG or any other relevant notability requirement. The primary responsibility to do the necessary clean up lies with GeoSwan here. But since that is not happening, anyone else who tries, even to a small degree, to do the needed clean-up, deserves considerable credit. Redirecting some of these articles may be a possibility but in many cases even that is not the right solution and a straight delete is more appropriate. Redirecting is meant as a navigation tool for likely search terms - but many of the article titles in question are too obscure to plausibly qualify as likely search terms. Given the length of time most of these articles have been sitting in mainspace, I do not think there is anything unfair about the situation where a large batch of them gets AfDed at the same time. Nsk92 (talk) 23:45, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. I have been notified that I have been mentioned in this ANI, and one editor who is accusing another editor of misconduct have brought me up due to my AfD comments on a group of War on Terror related BLPs. First let me say that I am an active (off and on since 2009) editor within the sphere of military history, as such I have the Military DELSORT on my watch list, as well as other DELSORTs that relate to my participation in other WikiProjects and interests. I do not always make a statement in each AfD, however when I do I do research whether the subject in question meet the applicable notability guidelines, and see if the subject meets anything set forth in WP:DEL-REASON. In this case of these group of articles, I found them through one of those DELSORTs on my watch list, and have rendered my opinion (which other editors may or may not share) after looking for reliable sources that meet the criteria set forth in the applicable notability guidelines. I don't see anything wrong with my actions in this regard.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 00:14, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Kamrupi dialect and abuse of quote boxes

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

---

Currently there are seven quote boxes in the Kamrupi dialect page, inserted by User:Bhaskarbhagawati. The boxes float untethered to any text, and look like billboard advertisements that make the content difficult to follow. I asked the user to use footnotes instead to give the quotes a context ([72]), but he reverted to the quote boxes. It has been my experience that this user is very hard to engage in a discussion and past attempts at non-binding mechanisms WP:3O and WP:RSN have been useless in resolving issues. ([73]), ([74]) In the current case, an attempt at a discussion on this issue has been rebuffed. ([75]) If such uses of quote boxes are within Wikipedia style, I would withdraw this request for action. Chaipau (talk) 16:26, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

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

IP blanking text

IP is persisting in blanking articles etc: Special:Contributions/85.166.132.191, despite messages not to. IRWolfie- (talk) 18:35, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Problem With Feedback on WOAY-TV

This post on the WOAY-TV feedback page is beyond unhelpful and borderline abuse, but I can't mark it as abuse, unhelpful or anything, can't hide the post either. When I try, it just moves me back to the top of the page with no action taken. Not sure if this is a problem with the Feedback application, code or what, or if it is just affecting this page, but it needs to be fixed, else the Feedback application is useless. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 18:44, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's hidden, but I can see it briefly before it hides, and the text is still visible in View Source. Nice if there were a cleaner way to deal with this... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:54, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, it would be nice that once something is marked as "Abuse", it would be removed altogether by an admin or a non-admin tasked with watching the Feedback pages. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 20:42, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

2007–2012 global financial crisis

Someone needs to come down to Talk:2007–2012 global financial crisis and User talk:RegentsPark before references to wp:admin and wp:own are going to fly around. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 19:07, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

A discussion regarding the form of the title was had at Talk:2007–2012 global financial crisis; User:RegentsPark closed it, more or less properly. However, advocates of a new title don't accept it and continue to agitate, both on Talk:2007–2012 global financial crisis and User talk:RegentsPark. They can cite a number of statements in the popular press which refer to the "financial crisis of 2008." User:Fred Bauder Talk 19:23, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I have kept my post here rather vague, exactly because this crisis, spanning some 11 sections up to now, over at least two talk pages and two admin noticeboards, has a simple solution that does not require any understanding in economic affairs, only Wikipedia policy. I could bring hard evidence to the table, but choose not to do so, for now, due to my respect to the good work that RegentsPark and Fred carry out on a day to day basis. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 19:47, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Yaniv256, I encourage you to bring hard evidence for any fault you see with my close and my good faith reopening of the move discussion here. I'm not a big fan of insinuations and much prefer to see any faults of mine aired rather than letting them remain hidden, particularly when I don't see them myself. --regentspark (comment) 19:52, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

RegentsPark, any evidence I had regarding you is already documented on your talk page. I have no further evidence to bring to your case. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 20:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I was mistaken. There is that detail that has brought my post here. In my view, due to wp:coi RegentsPark should not have asked us all to repeat our arguments for his benefit. This demand has been excessive and led to a waste of editor energy that would be otherwise directed at improving articles. But further, as we have already complied with that demand, a move seems in order, and it is not clear to me why he would want to delay. Fred had already posted in other sections, and had ample opportunity to bring evidence to that RM review. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 21:01, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, and I do hope I will have nothing to add after this, there is that issue with wp:retain. That policy was specifically written to deal with English variety title disputes. It favors the Status Que on the assumption that the name dispute has no real significance for Wikipedia. As I understand, RM closers in the past have chosen to stretch that policy to all name disputes. I had a pretty long discussion about this issue at talk:Requested moves, suggesting that it is rather in consensus that wp:retain can and should be used when the possible improvement in the name seems minor, but not when it may have non-trivial implications, either for Wikipedia or the outside world.

If we want to only count the amount of disruption this prolonged dispute has caused, I believe that one can easily see that wp:retain does not, and should not hold in such cases. Bottom line: even if RegentsPark is right and there was no consensus on that 10-2 RM, still there is no policy basis to conclude that the Status Que is the outcome favored by Wikipedia policy, and one would have to suggest why, the hell, would we want to favor the Status Que in such a case. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 21:59, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

To get to a the central point... RegentsPark closed a RM discussion with a "no consensus" when 10 out of 12 users favored a move and 10 out of 12 supported an alternative title. Obviously these discussions are not based on consensus not votes, but an admin needs a really strong reason to ignore such a one-sided breakdown in supports/oppositions. Several of us don't accept RegentPark's rationale on this and another admin should review this.--Bkwillwm (talk) 20:10, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Like Bkwillm, I was pretty stunned when, what looked to me like a straight-forward !vote of 10-2 was apparently ignored. But I'd like to say the even though User:Yaniv256 is clearly a very knowledgable editor with his heart in the right place, he is a bit of a newbie and somewhat excitable (but don't worry, he'll get over it). I've discussed this with RegentsPark, and what I think happened is that he just missed it. A fastball right down the middle of the plate, and somehow he called a ball, high and outside. I suppose everybody misses a few, but he kindly agreed to review the close of the RM and ask editors for clarification of their positions. I now sympathize greatly with RP. When asked for clarification, they (or we), though we almost all agree that the current title is way out-of-bound, quibble about trivia. Most of us seem to know the economic terminology, but can't expect every admin too. On the other hand ... (joke about economists). I'd let RP finish this up. We've put him in a difficult position, so maybe he could ask some other admins for help.

If I may digress, one of my favorite funny phrases in Russian is used where we might use "The umpire needs glasses" and very roughly translates to "turn the ref into soap." Hillarious, but almost certainly a bad idea. It really doesn't help anything to turn the ref into soap, and the next ref is likely to be worse.

All the best, 20:48, 18 August 2012 (UTC) back to sign my name, after a quick trip to the soap plant. Smallbones (talk) 22:15, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

While I agree with Smallbones, every minute of delay has a cost in terms of editor time and effort. If some of that can be saved, I can not see why we should not attempt to do so. The minute RegentsPark realizes that he was out of line, this would all be over. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 21:13, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Smallbones, you have out done me in bad taste, and that is no small compliment. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 22:36, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Enough. The case has been open for nearly four hours with no action on the part of RegentsPark or even a defense of his case. Not to mention Fred, who continues to discuss irrelevant issues on the wrong section while we all await his word in the RM review. If such disruption was caused by new editors they would have been blocked, not only reverted. There must be a limit to how much prejudgment the system applies. The time to act is now. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 23:01, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Five. Great time for that long needed wikibreak by RegentsPark. Speaking of Five, why don't we all pass the time by forming a circle around the Pillars while RegentsParks uses them for a nap? →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 00:11, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Six. Just like the number of Conduct policies on that infobox that hungs at wp:own. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 01:24, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

(ec) Sorry. I had to take my kids to the park (nice day here) and then drive upstate. Apologies if I have been remiss but I don't really get paid for all this. As far as I'm concerned, I reopened a move discussion to see whether I've misunderstood things and that doesn't really need a defending. Frankly, I consider your remarks here and those of bkwilmn above and on my talk page in bad taste and rather disruptive. Apologies again, but that's what I think. --regentspark (comment) 01:45, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Yaniv256, this is the second time you've pestered the noticeboards with the attitude: You must do what I want right now. The first time was here, after which you pointedly tried to get yourself blocked. I'm not sure what you're here for these days, but improving the encyclopedia no longer seems to be high on your list of priorities, since your name keeps appearing here and on AN in regard to trivialities. I suggest that someone of your intelligence ought to put it to better use, by returning to editing mathematics articles, or articles in other subjects that interest you. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:41, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

And you still count all of that as my disruption. Wow, I did not know how wrong accounting can be. And coming from a trained economist that is not a small feat. By the way, Seven, like the number of lights in the Menorah (this is a cross reference to that other AN/I debate I have been using to pass the time). →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 02:04, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Eight. Run out of smart-ass remarks. Need to do a better job at being a jerk for next time.→Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 03:09, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Yaniv256, your repeated comments here are disruptive. Stop. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:17, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

List of airlines of India

Dear Admin, I am sorry to bring up this user User:Abhishek191288 again but he seems to be having some issues with a particular section in an article and keeps on getting back to me time and again (please check my talkpage). Worst is that he is getting personal and I am not keen at that. I request your help in this regard as this has been a long standing matter now and he refuses to understand. Can you please help once and forever. Thanks. Cheers AKS 19:57, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I request you to check the history in end Dec 2011 to first week of Jan 2012 of the article in discussion. Thanks Cheers AKS 20:12, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

This editor fails to note that he keeps putting things in the article that an editor consensus last January said shouldn't be there[76] Check the section titled 'Market Share'. I also edit aviation articles, and weighed in today on the subject[77], and I agree with the January consensus. Please also note the comments on this editor's talk page[78]....William 20:25, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• WilliamJE, you are simply quoting the Talkpage of the article (where you have commented and so have I) and my own Talkpage without taking the trouble of going through the history of the page. Also, you need to explain to me why the financials do not belong there and which rule in Wikipedia says that? You have left this question out very conveniently. In good faith and unless the dispute is not resolved, I am not reverting the recent change that you carried out; despite the fact that the edits were under dispute and that being a senior editor, you should have waited for a real consensus to be reached before reverting anything. Cheers AKS 20:47, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• William, one last thing. If what you have stated is correct then none of these articles / sections should / would exist this, this, this and this. List can go on and on. Let's have one yardstick for Wikipedia and not have your opinion as a guideline (I appreciate your enthusiasm at the same time). Cheers AKS 20:56, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:11, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• Dear Admin, this is (yet again) a formal and direct complaint against User:Abhishek191288. Please see this. He has been engaging in edit wars in the past as well thinking he claims space on Wikipedia and has been blocked last year. In the case involving me (Jan 2012), he went to the extent of changing content using anonymous account. Moreover, he keeps on getting personal despite requests of discussing issues first before taking any actions. FYIP. Cheers AKS 21:13, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
  • WP:CONSENSUS is that the information you're attempting to keep in the article does not belong there. Consensus can change, but that comes from discussing the addition of the information, not "fight to keep it in and demand discussion before taking it out". - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:09, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• The editor who started this discussion I just reported[79] for possible 3RR violation....William 22:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Only three reverts that I see - that's not a violation. Four would be. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:09, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

User:J Irvington

Can someone help me keep an eye on User:J Irvington? I'm quite sure this is the same person as User:ChicagoHistory1 and his associated accounts, which have caused lots of problems with copyright violations, as well as cut/paste page moves. (Changing "It is" to "It's" is a dead giveaway, as I mentioned in a previous SPI post.)

Now, I've always believed that this editor has good intentions. Indeed, some of his recent contributions have been net positives, which is why I decided to let him edit. I don't even care that much about the multiple accounts. The thing that bugs me is that he continues to upload images with questionable licensing (eg, [80]). Plus, any significant prose additions from this user make me nervous, because he is not clear about sources, and some of the material I have looked at appears to be incorrect. I feel bad about antagonizing a user who wants to help, but he is causing a lot of extra work, and I'm not sure what to do. Zagalejo^^^ 20:16, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Um , i was only trying to help out, This is my first account. Just was tryning to contribute information to articles that i personally know about. I apologize if thats a problem. 20:25, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

What about User:X stamps? I see a lot of the exact kinds of edits, from just a few days ago, at the same kinds of articles (removing 299 from the district field, capitalizing "External Links", adding "4-year" to the lead, etc). Those edits aren't harmful themselves, but the fact that User:X stamps added blatant copyright violations makes me nervous about any images or text you add. Zagalejo^^^ 23:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Look, I really don't want to see you blocked, because you are working in subject areas that have been neglected, and I appreciate your enthusiasm. I just need to know that you can be trusted to tell the truth. Zagalejo^^^ 23:46, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

User:Principal adjoint moving pages and not getting a clue

Yesterday, Principal adjoint (talk · contribs) saw fit to move List of Pocket Monsters: Best Wishes! Season 2 episodes (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) to "List of Pocket Monsters: Best Wishes! 2 episodes" with no reason given. As I am aware that the translated version of the title includes the word "Season", I moved it back (and listed the redirect for deletion), and left him a message. Today, I discovered he moved it back, again, claiming "There was no season 1!", and I moved it back, again, and left him a sterner message. This was met with another move a short time ago (removing the phrase "Season 2" entirely from the page title), and this message on my talk page. I sent him another message explaining why he was wrong in this regard and to not move the page, again. I've put the page on RFPP to request move protection until October (when the season will be named for international broadcast), but I do not think that even after telling him 3 times now that he will get the point due to a language barrier (I've just attempted to leave a message to him in his native French). What else can be done at this point? Because the speedy deletions I put on two of the redirects he made will likely enable him to move the page for a fourth time.—Ryulong (琉竜) 20:28, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

He is now making a malformed move request (using {{moverequest}}) based on his prior assumption that the title omits the words "Season 2" when I have given him multiple pieces of evidence to suggest otherwise. Someone please help me communicate with this editor.—Ryulong (琉竜) 20:44, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

He has very likely know broken WP:3RR because he keeps reverting me and now Cyberpower678 (talk · contribs). Some assistance would be nice at this point.—Ryulong (琉竜) 20:59, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I have move protected the page for a week, and fully protected it for 24 hours. If you could try to get some constructive dialogue going with the user in that time, that'd be great. Perhaps a wider discussion to establish a fuller consensus would be helpful, and could help the editor be part of the process. ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 21:24, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Ryulong, page is now move protected, and a wider discussion has been suggested. Can this discussion be closed? Or would you prefer that Principal adjoint be blocked for doing something you disagree with?--Shirt58 (talk) 03:08, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

6 month edit war on Larry Klayman

• Larry Klayman (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Escp99 (talk · contribs) vs. BigDog2012 (talk · contribs)

Seems they have been edit warring consecutively since Febuary of this year over an indictment (which appears to be sourced). Also looks if BigDog2012 also used account Jroberts36s (talk · contribs). Can't believe its gone on this long... --Hu12 (talk) 22:51, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Based on a report at WP:BLPN about the same thing, I just locked the article for 3 days.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:02, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello, I'm one of the parties involved. The user BigDog2012 has been posting irrelevant, personal info about the person at issue, Larry Klayman, for quite some time, and has made the Wiki page more a magazine tabloid than a source of credible information. It's clear this user has a bone to pick. The user's edit history reveals he created the account specifically to target Klayman. There's also the fact the user removed negative facts about Tom Fitton, a former associate and (now) adversary of Klayman, and added some glowing language of his/her own - making it appear the user some connection with Fitton. Escp99 (talk) 23:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

And this explains your astounding edit war how? I see almost nothing on the article Talk page except one stray comment (in the wrong place) by BigDog. You haven't sought assistance or discussed the issues. The two of you just play ping-pong with the article.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:40, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I should add that my lock of the article coincided with BigDog's last reversion. That means the "Legal Troubles" section is in the article. I am a bit troubled from a BLP perspective about the section. Hu12 is correct that the section is sourced, but it is sourced only to primary sources, which is a violation of WP:BLPPRIMARY. Although I wouldn't normally pick which version to lock, I am considering removing the section based on policy.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:46, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I should correct myself slightly. The first reference, which I missed, is a press release from a prosecutor's office. However, every other source is a primary legal document, and the press release only pertains to one part of the section and involves charges that were ultimately dismissed.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:50, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I have removed the Legal Troubles section and posted on the article Talk page. If any admin disagrees with my decision, they are free to override it.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:00, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Could someone restore Samantha Brick please?

This I think will be fairly uncontroversial. I did ask Alison, who was the closing admin of a previous AfD (in different circumstances to the current) to undelete but since she has better things to do than be on Wikipedia 24/7 AND I'm very confident she's the kind of lady who will be fine with any admin restoring if it's the correct thing to do I figure I'll take it to ANI.

Samantha Brick was, at the time of the deltion of her article, famous for basically being an IRL troll through the mechanism of a couple of Daily Mail columns proclaiming her beauty and disdain for fellow vagina-holders. Due to her only fame coming from those pieces, her article was deleted a few months ago, after an AfD, by Allie under BLP1E. No probs there.

However, since then the situation has changed - she's had, and indeed is having, the honour of appearing on Celebrity Big Brother, which in the UK is somewhere beteween receiving a knighthood and a baronetcy (although I only watch it for the dialogue). There's a pretty good argument for recreating the article, in other words, and if this is to be then it'd be nice to start that with a history.

So as the subject says - could someone restore Samantha Brick please? Egg Centric 23:24, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I was not even aware that she was appearing on Celebrity Big Brother so maybe she isn't yet as notorious as you believe her to be. If you have significant new information since the deletion that would justify an article then I suggest you present it at Wikipedia:Deletion review as it says at #3 of WP:DRVPURPOSE. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 23:38, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I looked at the DRV procedure. I saw that one of the first things to do is notify the deleting admin, in this case Alison. Since she hasn't yet replied and I know that she will be totally fine with other admins looking at it, I figure let's try to do things this way rather than waste time at DRV or whatever. Egg Centric 23:49, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Except this is not what AN/I is for, this is what DRV is for. Closing as an inappropriate venue. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:56, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I've unarchived (once) and will make this clear. Please read it

Yes, DRV is an appropriate, and quite possibly usual forum for this. But ANI is also appropriate. For the simple reason that I am asking for one - just one - administrator to do something. To take the place of Alison, as she would wnat you to do, and to undelete this page. It is not remotely controversial. It will benefit the encyclopedia. Please, please, let's not faff around with dotting i's and crossing t's. That isn't what wikipedia is supposed to be about. Egg Centric 00:10, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

In that case you want WP:AN, not WP:ANI, as this is not an incident...and this still should go through DRV to establish a consensus for restoration of the article. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 00:31, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

UK nationalities and perages on List of Freemasons

User:Vtr1781249 has been making edits to List of Freemasons such that he is changing "English", "Scottish", and "Irish" nationalities to "British" if the individuals were born after the Articles of Union (see Talk:List_of_Freemasons#British_vs._English). The obvious issue is that the difference is one of the article subject's self-identification, not what an editor thinks. I would never consider Robbie Keane, for example, anything but Scottish, as he has made it very clear that that is his identification. Anyways, the result is that we are identifying list entry individuals differently than their own articles do. James Watt is described as Scottish in his article, and in this edit to the List of Freemasons, he is now British. As can also be seen from the above diff, Vtr also started creating article redirects for individuals which included "Sir" as part of the article title (see Talk:List_of_Freemasons#British_Honours and Sir Charles Lemon.

Normally, I'd say that this was a difference of opinion, except we're now running afoul of established policies, namely WP:UKNATIONALS and WP:NCPEER. I thought the matter had been put to bed on the list talk page with Vtr's agreement to desist in the first thread link, but today's edits clearly indicate otherwise. Therefore, as this is now a policy compliance item, I am requesting admin assistance. MSJapan (talk) 00:39, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

In answer to the above, I would state that there were already prefixes of "sirs" in the List of Freemasons,before I added mine and such prefixes are as much a part of a persons name, as the terms "Lord" or "Duke of" etc are part of a peers name. I accept most Americans do not understand the British forms of address, but a good 75% of the world (i.e. the old 'pink' bits of the map) do. A military person who was ranked as General X or Admiral Z, would always be cited as such, I'm merely preserving logic here.

With regards to the issue of Nationality, a person born in either England, Scotland or Wales is British,(England and Scotland are a United Kingdom, and Wales is a Principality, not and never has been a country). In each of the examples in the List of Freemasons cited above, a citation from The Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia was appended to each alteration, this academic publication lists all altered as British. It is clearly nonsense, (and factualy incorrect) to show otherwise. Vtr1781249 (talk) 03:09, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure many Scots would love to dispute their being British in very, very strident terms! - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:16, 19 August 2012 (UTC)