User talk:Dominic

Old talk at /Archive1, /Archive2, /Archive3, /Archive4, /Archive5, /Archive6, /Archive7, /Archive8, /Archive9, /Archive10, /Archive11, /Archive12

Block of Molobo

Thank you! Full support! -- Chris 73 | Talk 06:29, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Also supporting other blocks in this edit war. Many thanks -- Chris 73 | Talk 06:37, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. And after distracting myself for a while, I finished warning all the other involved warriors. I'm prepared to use the block button again to maintain a safe editing environment. I was certainly pleased to see this though: [1], and I look forward to a change in collective attitude. :) Dmcdevit·t 07:24, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Full Support here as well! /me bows to Dmcdevit :) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Another full support of all the blocks. Kusma (討論) 13:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Full support from me too. technically, admins should block for 1 month at most, but unless people object, this is a full-fledged "community ban". dab (ᛏ) 14:16, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

He had it coming, although I'd prefer to get a formal ArbCom rulling for that, for the reasons dbachmann notse. I am afraid some admins may evolve to use the long block periods more and more often, and you know what they say about power... One minor issue: you wrote in the block summary that his "incivily continues". I have not seen Molobo being incivil - could you point me to the relevant examples? I am also greatful that you didn't single out Molobo and blocked and warned his other edit partners. I would like to ask you to pay a special attention to the behaviour of user Ghirlandajo. The extreme incivility and disruptive pattern of his behaviour is visible not only in his RfC and the warning from ArbCom, but also if you look at his contributions you will see how many of them are reverts and how many contain incivil edit summaries. As I am involved in content disputes with him I cannot block him, and he ignores and deletes my warnings and most of those he receives from other people ([2], [3], [4] - those are just three examples from the last few days, and they by no means represent the 'height' of his customs). As attempts to talk to him have apparently failed, I believe that nothing short of a warning block may force him to pay attention to WP:CIVIL, no personal attacks and related policies. So while you are putting your foot down I'd appreciate if you'd consider putting it down on him, too. PS. His reply to you regarding me classifies as clear slander without any evidence - just what one can expect from his (rare) participation in discussions... PS.2 Regarding "adding fuel to the fire": please note that I am willing to talk the matter out at article's talk and I am still waiting for the other side to reply, and the recent edits by the other side are limited to 1) removing a referenced quote 2) speculating in the article about why the quote is irrelevant (ignoring my arguments at talk). If somebody's addign fuel to the fire then again it is Ghirla who doesn't even bother with edit summaries, marking his revert as minor.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 16:22, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I feel we have some sort of misunderstanding. I didn't thought that those two edits consitute a revert at all (I am assuming they are the two you call 'reverts withing 2h': [5], [6]). Are they reverts? Or what is your definition of revert warring? As for RfC and such, I prefer content creation and building encyclopedia to Wikipedia politics anytime. The evidence of misconduct I cited above is pretty evident and I hope some people who enjoy politics and rule enforcing more then I do will act on that, sooner or later. As for slander, a native speaker (Elonka) advised me to recently to use the term defamation, and I will do so from now on, hopefully this will probe better (and even more hopefully I will not have to use neither, soon).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 05:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I have fully explained my reverts in my edit summary. Sciurinæ has failed to use the talk at all, and Irpen's side was not supported by anybody (while mine was). Now that I know which edits you have pointed out, I certainly agree they were reverts, however I believe I was justified in them, especially as I have explained myself both on talk and in edit summary. A single revert is not a bad thing in my view, if explained properly. Now, if anybody - myself included - would engage in series of reverts without engaging in talk, that's certainly would be a bad behaviour. But sometimes when you write an article you find an error (or what one considers an error) so obvious that it good faith it has to be removed (reverting someone's edit, or parts of, sometimes). Having close to 20 FAs and many other contributions 'under my belt', and having collaborated with many editors, and resolved many content dispute satisfactionary to both sides (thus FAing articles on controversial subjects) I feel confident that I know what I am doing (although of course I, as everyone, make occasional mistakes, and I do appreciate it when you or sb else points out a possible mistsake of mine). That said, I think we are discussing two issues here: one is the reverts I did on SPiP page, which I explained, the other is the extremly uncivil and disruptive behaviour by user Ghirlandajo, and I'd appreciate you comments on that. I don't understand your comment about "You can't simply throw out dispute resolution like that" - I don't recall I refused to participate in any DR process? As for description of edits, some edits are slander, defamation or such, as clear as the definiton of those terms in Wikipedia. I see no reason to ignore such uncivil or unjust behaviour, or to dress it up in some pretty words; at the request of a concerned editor I stopped using the term 'slander' in favour of 'defamation'. I don't see that there are many other choices to describe action when some people spread false or inaccurate information painting me as some 'cabal leader bent on taking over Wikipedia'. FYI, I have started a mediation related to that issue, and I hope that once the relevant parties apologize to me this topic will not be revisted again.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 01:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I am afraid some admins may evolve to use the long block periods more and more often — this will no doubt happen, necessarily. Wikipedia is among the top 20 sites of the internet now, and we simply cannot afford to prat around with every problem user as we used to (five warnings, and then increasing blocks from five minutes up to three hours). This is not about power (peer review between admins works very well), simply about efficiency: as soon as it is clear a user is here for other reasons than collaborating in writing an encyclopedia, they should be blocked to protect good faith users. dab (ᛏ) 08:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, and making that block again, I found myself thinking how much better it would have been if my first indefinite block in April had simply stood. Certainly it was well-founded enough, and we had no reason to hope for reform. Dmcdevit·t 19:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Latin America

Hello. I have talked to you on irc. Unfortunately, much of content on historia de Venezuela has copyright violation. If you are interrested in Latin America and have a lot of time, you can translate part of [:es:Historia_de_Chile] which is longer than the English article. Moreover, the article is a "featured article" on es:. --Youssef 18:10, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll remember that. There's no shortage of article to translate. :-) Dmcdevit·t 06:53, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Question about Highways RfA

According to the history, you were the arbitrator who proposed Probation for all major move warriors on the proposed decision page. PHenry recently pointed out to me that as it stands, Freakofnurture is not being put under probation. Was this intentional, or was it merely an oversight?

If it was intentional, what is your reasoning? (Freakofnurture is included in the related finding of fact.)

If it was an oversight, can it please be corrected? -- Northenglish (talk) -- 20:46, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Concerns

• Talk thread

I'm very wary of the "making/accepting" arbitrary decisions proposed decision. Much trouble ahead based upon people citing this, I forsee. Can you comment further? I don't see the talk thread getting much love. - brenneman ^{L} 02:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

DYK

On June 26, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Chilean National Plebiscite, 1980, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Locke_Cole

You asked me if I'd missed closing this, last night, and I was quite surprised to see how long it had been left and I promised to do it today. However looking at it again today I see that it's still stalemated. You have four votes to close but one opposing close, making only three net votes to close. If another arbitrator votes to close, or else James F withdraws his objection, I will close the case. --Tony Sidaway 12:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

You're right, I wasn't thinking. I'll have to nag some more then... Dmcdevit·t 06:57, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

UCRGRad RfA clarification request

Per the Arbitration policy, I request that you provide a rationale for your vote of "Reject" in the UCRGrad RfA request. Thanks! --ElKevbo 13:26, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Irishpunktom arbitration

If it's not too much trouble I would appreciate a reply to the email I sent this morning. I would also like you to forward a brief note from me to the ArbCom mailing list. David | Talk 21:04, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Request for opinion

Hiya, in regards recent events with Piotrus, have you been following the discussion at "Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-06-07 Polish Cabal and myself as its leader" ? If not, I would be interested in your opinion, thanks. --Elonka 06:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Quote

Hey man, I see you have an Einstein quote on your page, "As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.", I've not heard this one before, but I heard a similar one by John Archibald Wheeler, "We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance." — and they were contemporaries too I think. There isn't any real purpose to this message, just found it interesting. - FrancisTyers · 09:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Please reply to my comments

I'd very much appreciate a reply to my comments above. Please note, that my prososed additions will probably never make it into Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy if you ban me from this article. Raphael1 14:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Russian architecture

If you take a look at the talk page of Russian architecture and its archives, you may understand that every expedient at discussion has been tried, but talking with AndriyK, though tried by dozens various users, invariably proved futile. He will listen to you more or less politely and will not concede a point. Therefore this silly tag disfigures the article for half a year now. Yet I do not care about it as long as sock puppets like this one do not remove my own counter-tag. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 19:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

How is this implimented

Hi! Got involved with the heirarchial reorganization of maps on the commons a few weeks back, and as we worked into categories where names matched here, images here (mainly historical maps) that should be moved to the commons crossed my path. Subsequently, I've traded some emails with BOT wizard User:AllyUnion, to see if it was feasible to have things moved automatically. Now I find You begining this Category:Move_to_Wikimedia_Commons category. So the question occurs: How is this being implimented? There is no talk page and only a brief note on purpose, all of which are rather buried by the long See Also section. There is no reference of a self-tagging template that automatically adds the category.

I'm given to understand that image moves have been mainly manual, as in time consumptive and inefficient of man-hours expenditures. (Offensive to a computer engineer like me, who can see the images 'mirrored-to-here' from the commons! <g>) So is this just a way to tag those which need someone to manually move, or is there something automatic involved (Like the BOT that runs when a category is tagged with {{category redirect}}? Please clue me in! Thanks // FrankB 21:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Xposted answers

Unfortunately, this category is resolved by manually moving the images, reuploading them to commons and and then listing the replaced ones on Wikipedia for deletion. The category is populated by tagging pages with {{Move to Wikimedia Commons}}. It would be great if you could assist in clearing out the category (or can devise a bot), as it currently has a large backlog. Particularly, all the image galleries that are tagged there mean that there are really a lot more there than it looks like. Dmcdevit·t 04:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. As I feared. ;{

Silly considering (based on behavior) the dbases have at least cross loaded images in thumbnails form from the commons to the local servers. Silly to put us slow human's in the middle too. I don't write scripts, but I'll see if I can prod someone who does. We may need an 'vetted' category to indicate an image is fully ready for transfer, s.a. 'Vetted for move to Wikimedia Commons' indicating it's fully prepepared and recategorized per commons categorization. The same cat when it lists on the commons can be used as a 'checkover' list there to verify the editors judgements from here, at least with respect to proper categorization and copyright needs. // FrankB 11:17, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Important RfC

Hi. Why don't you take part in this RfC - as an admin ocassionally involved to Eastern Europe affairs? The user in question is one of the most important and controversial editors in the region. Thanks, Ukrained 22:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Article ban

Would you please add an article ban on Islamophobia for User:Karl_Meier to Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Irishpunktom/Proposed_decision. An editor who put this link on his user page and never apologized for it and is still "editing" on Islamophobia does not help the project at all. Indeed he just started again to strip down the article. [7][8] Obviously he does not even consider an attack on a mosque islamophobic.Raphael1 20:58, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Raphael1, could you please end your mud-throwing against me on the talkpages of users that is not involved in the discussions regarding that article? All I have done on the Islamophobia article is to attribute the claims and opinions to their source, and insisted that you should include a notable source for the views and opinions that you want to include. I know that you find your personal opinions regarding what is an example of Islamophobia, to be the "obvious" truth, but that is not enough on Wikipedia. Another thing is that your constant mentioning of the external link on my userpage is getting a bit old... -- Karl Meier 21:19, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, that you are editing destructively on this article. Instead of looking for references or adding a {{fact}} templates, you are simply removing valuable text. i.e. [9] Raphael1 21:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I did search for it, but I couldn't find the article on BBC or on archive.org. If you can find the source for it (maybe you should spend some time on that instead of trolling against me on other users talkpages...), then please restore that. I know you don't care about references, but it's really required for something like that. -- Karl Meier 21:39, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, I don't really have any more time for your endless "debates" tonight Raphael1. If Dmcdevit is interested, then here is a link to all of my recent edits to Islamophobia article: [10] -- Karl Meier 21:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

If Karl Meier would be only concerned about proper references, he probably wouldn't remove them as he did here and again here. Raphael1 21:58, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I removed it because it's useless in that context. It doesn't say anything about "Islamophobia". But I already explained that to you.. Why do you find it so hard to understand? -- Karl Meier 06:02, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Just because the page doesn't mention the word "Islamophobia" doesn't mean, that the quotes aren't perfect examples of Coulters islamophobic slurs. Raphael1 14:24, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: Edit warring

Thanks for your message on my talk page. I do my best to resolve the dispute on Russian architecture. I propsed mediation, but the opposite party refused. Now they try to remove or change the dispute tag pretending that there is no dispute. Please have a look at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Irpen.

Thanks.--AndriyK 21:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I've got a email from AndriyK. You blocked him.

Please have a look at the subsection "Improper use of dispute tags " in the section Types_of_vandalism). Blanking the tag if the dispute has not been settled is qualified as vandalism. Terefore, what Andriy was doing is just restoring the page after vandal attack. Well, tag removal is not a simple vandalism and not exempt from the three-revert rule. But AndriyK did not brake 3RR.

It would be more effective if you warn the users who were removing or vandalizing the tag against doing so as per Types_of_vandalism.

Thanks.--Mbuk 06:59, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

RfA thanks

Thank you very much for your support on my recent RfA, which I'm quite happy to announce has passed with a consensus of 67 supporting, 0 opposed and 0 neutral. I'm glad you took the time to consider my candidacy, and I'll be working hard to justify the vote of confidence you've placed in me, especially with those transwiki tasks. Let me know at my talk page if you have any comments on my performance as an admin. Thanks! TheProject 23:12, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Images on Commons

I noticed that you really chowed down on that category yesterday ;). I just finished script that I put in [[User:Voice of All/Specialadmin/monobook.js] that makes it easy to compare the licenses and delete images form the cat page. Though you have to enable "signed.applets.codebase_principal_support" in about:config if you have firefox/NS, and do somthing else for IE :).Voice-of-All 00:10, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Checkuser request related to ArbCom case you may wish to look at

I'd like to ask you to examine this request for checkuser, which is currently pending. Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Iloveminun You examined and completed a prior request against the same user somewhat recently, so I'm contacting you. Currently it may have signifigance, if the request is valid enough to warrent the user of checkuser, for Iloveminun's arbcom case, which is in evidence. Note that I'm not asking you neccessarily to use the checkuser tool, if it is not warrented, mearly that you examine the request. Kevin_b_er 09:18, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Removing the tag

Please note that User:Ghirlandajo provokes a new edit war by removing the OR and POV tags. Please suggest how this situation can be resolved.--AndriyK 09:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

And please note that User:AndriyK is currently waging an edit war on an RFC, violating RFC policy and WP:POINT (see WP:ANI entry here.) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 11:37, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Neither Irpen nor other users are permitted to edit my summary. (What they persistantly do.)--AndriyK 16:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

You're not allowed to comment view on the RFC itself, only on the talk page. See here. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 16:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussion at Village pump

Please have a look at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Resolving_content_disputes. Please help me to find the answer to my questions. Thanks.--AndriyK 14:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Uncivil me

In relation to the 7th point in my arbcom case (remove this if I'm acting out of hand), you use this to maintain that I am uncivil, frequently make assumptions of bad faith such as refer to other editors as racists and bigots for opposition to my edits. I just think that edit is unfair, as it comes right after Zeno of Elea refered to me as a "Ramadan-crazed narcasistic fundamentalist" a "Muslim fundamentalist", referred to islam as a "horrid religion", Muhammad as a "deranged rapist psychopath". My reply, referring to Zeno as a Bigot was not about his editing of articles in "opposition to [my] edits", rather because those statements I have listed appeared like Bigotry to me. --Irishpunktom\^talk 17:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Scope of arbitration on Sathya Sai Baba and user:Andries versus user:SSS108

You chose to accept the case of abritration, but what is the scope of this arbitration, only the article Sathya Sai Baba, or category:Sathya Sai Baba or category:Sathya Sai Baba plus user:Andries? I would like to know because I want to know what I should comment on. I prefer that the arbitration deals with Sathya Sai Baba and closely related articles contained in category:Sathya Sai Baba Thanks. Andries 11:11, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Answer to your message at User_talk:AndriyK#Blocked_again

Deletion of properly inserted dispute tags does damage the integrity of the encyclopedia because it hinder resolving POV disputes. Having deleted the tag, the supporter of POV-version of the article do not care about dispute resolution, they ignore WP:DR, refuse mediation etc. The reader remains uninformed that article is biased. It is not a surprise, that deletion of properly inserted dispute tags is forbidden by the policy.

Any edit war always has two sides (one cannot be edit warring with oneself ;) ). This does not mean that both sides are always equelly guilty. Therefore, unbiased and good faithed admin always checks the role of each users in the edit war. Reverting unexplained edits or edits with offensive edit summaries is, in most cases, usefull activity. While offensive edit summaries, removing properly inserted tags, etc. is a violation of the Policies and has to be prevented or punished.

It is difficult to assume a good faith towards the admin, who blocked one of the users and ignored incivility and violation of the Policies by the other ones. It could happen once by mistake. But if it happens second time with an experienced admin and ArbCom member, after the situation was explained by e-mail and on the talk page, it makes me think that the admin abuses his power to support his friends or the users with similar POVs. I would be glad if you convince me that I am mistaking. Thanks.--AndriyK 17:34, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't share AndriyK's suspicion about "friends" or "users with similar POVs".

But I would like to second AndriyK's concerns about removing the dispute tags. Dispute tags are an important way for people to show that there are problems with the article. The problem has to be resolved according to WP:DR. Removing the dispute tag is not the right way.--Mbuk 09:13, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

AndriyK, this is a well-known tactic frequently used in football: trying to shame the referee who in all fairness is harsh towards the violator to be harsh too (even if unfairly) towards an opponent. It sometimes works and causes even unjustified penalty kicks ordered by a referee in fear of being called unfair in order to show even-handedness.

Your entire activity in Wikipedia is a huge disruption and you are getting the exact treatment you are asking for. Your disputed tags were placed improperly in contravention to sources cited earlier at the article's talk pages or in the articles themselves. Your unwarranted tag-trolling and revert warring is but the only activity taken at Wikipedia since your month ban by ArbCom for other dirty tricks. You loaded the talk pages of a whole lot of people with baseless accusations and uninterrupted pestering for already answered questions. Your Wikilawyering and unwarranted appeals to the Policy pages where you also gain no support are yet as disruptive.

If you continue this tactic you will find yourself frequently blocked and experienced admins will be able to see who is acting in bad faith here. My hope is that you will simply change your ways and seize disruptive activities for now limited to tag-trolling, revert-warring, wikilawyering, content removal, attacking your opponents and unsuccessful attempts to recruit the supporters for your crusade. If you don't, you have no one but yourself to blame for not being able to edit. --Irpen 19:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems, one of your friends has shown up. ;)--AndriyK 19:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Ray Hnina

As a arbiter in Wikipedia I hope you will read the words of the Palestinian writer Hanina here: [11]especially the part about History which is where Wikipedia takes part. Best Zeq 10:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup Taskforce

I added Ulster Project to your desk because it involves politics and social issues (program involving 'the troubles' in Ireland). Please look at it and either accept or let me knwo and I'll reassign it. Thank you. RJFJR 03:21, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

User:152.163.100.138

Since I know your on-line will you deal with this user. He is trolling at User:Vitriouxc and removing his name from WP:AIV. Could you at least semi-protect User:Vitriouxc (a indefblocked editors userpage) so he cannot edit it. — The King of Kings 08:19 July 09 '06

And User:152.163.100.134 too. — The King of Kings 08:21 July 09 '06

User:Vitriouxc is protected. User:152.163.100.138 is blocked for 15 minutes, but it's AOL, so not likely to help much. User:152.163.100.134 also appears to have been a problem, but that's AOL and there's not a high volume of edits from it, so I don't think a block is necessary. That userpage does not seem to hae a problem. Hope that solves the issue. If not, I'm, off to bed now, so you'll be better off finding someone else unless it can wait until tomorrow. Dmcdevit·t 08:28, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Hallelujah

Thank you Dmcdevit. This user's relentless libel had practically driven me from Wikipedia. If ArbCom hears the case, his sympathizer Bishonen will likely use it as an excuse to unblock him to respond to the case, allowing his attacks to continue. Please don't forget about his other username, User:Amibidhrohi.Timothy Usher 09:06, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Email?

Is your email system not working or have you not checked your mail today? Irishpunktom and myself have agreed a full resolution of any dispute which may previously have existed between us, so the arbitration is now moot, superseded, obsoleted, etc. etc. Please confirm you understand this. David | Talk 23:32, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Mega delete?

I see you've been deleting A LOT of images, soo many that it's filling up the recent changes page!--Andeh 08:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Um. Thanks. :-) Dmcdevit·t 19:51, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Human Feces image

On 2006-07-01 you deleted Image:Human_Feces.jpg because someone previously moved it to the commons. Unfortunately I had added a lot of descriptive information on the english wikipedia page that wasn't there when it was moved and thus subsequently lost. Is there any way you know of to get that descriptive text back, or do I have to write it all over again? I would appreciate it if you could drop me a line and let me know. Thanks, Cacetudo 14:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Why did you delete these edits?

Why did you revert the changes made for Image:Nuclear weapon programs worldwide.png and deleted them? Please let me know. CG 18:08, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Question on the Moby Dick arbitation case...

Isn't Remedy 2.1 more of an enforcement clause? It should be worded more as a remedy, and 2.1 as written could be moved to the enforcement section. Ral315 (talk) 21:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Image deletion

Greetings:

The log shows that you deleted Image:Railway swing bridge.jpg. There is no justification stated on the page. As this is a useful and important image I am requesting more information. Thanks, Leonard G. 15:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

It's still a blue link, as you can see. The reason I deleted it is simply because it's already at Commons, which is why it is still visible when linked (except now it can be used by all Wikmedia projects). Deleting duplicate images at Commons is simple housekeeping, and there's no cause for concern unless it was improperly tagged and the image deleted was a different version or had more sumary information (in which case it can be restored), but that doesn't appear to be the case here. Dmcdevit·t 03:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Well it did not work as an active link - the deletion broke two articles, the small gallery image in bridge and the infobox image in swing bridge, both of which were shown on my browser with appropriate spacing in white and a small blue icon with a question mark centered within. My temp fix for this was to make a copy of the commons image and upload it as Image:Railway_swing_bridge_from_commons.jpg. I have noticed that sometimes the servers do not properly specify use of an image in articles - I would assume that one would have to change the links in the relavant articles to point to the commons servers, (unless one can do the image equivalent of a redirect). I am not familiar with either technique. Perhaps you could re-delete my copy after updating the two articles appropriately (to point to the commons image), and I can study that as a model for any future fix that I need to do. Thanks for your patient assistance, Leonard G. 04:07, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem was probably that the server I was using had not updated yet. One problem with commons (perhaps now fixed) is that it did not show the articles referencing it, while it (usually) does of both source and reference are within wikipedia. - Leonard G. 15:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Verified as working correctly, and also showing the references. Thanks, Leonard G. 15:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Tag-removal edit war

I know how much you dislike edit wars. Could you please warn User:Irpen, User:Telex and User:Grafikm_fr? They remove the dispute tag while there is OR and NPOV dispute about Ukrainization and provoke edit war there. Thank you in advance.--Mbuk 21:32, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Dmc, if you're to examine the subject, I think you should read the whole talk page beforehand instead of believing on the spot this quite glib summary. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 21:34, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Dmc, you have blocked User:Irpen, whom we both know as a very productive contributor. He is also one of the main authors of the Ukrainization article. I have looked into the recent history of the article and have found that only two users were adding material to the article last week, they are User:Lysy and User:Irpen. Of the six reverts you mention as the reason of the block (during a week!), the very first is not a revert but an addition of a new paragraph. That leaves only five reverts, three of which are related to two different tags. For an intensively edited article it looks like a normal WP:BRD process rather than the revert warring, especially taken into account that Irpen was intensively engaged into the discussions on the talk page of the article. Is it possible to reconsider the block? abakharev 04:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I have also looked into the User:Grafikm_fr's block and among four blocks you mention, the last one is a self-revert. This leaves three reverts in a seven-day period. Are you sure it qualifies as a revert warring? abakharev 05:03, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

May I also draw your attention to the fact that before Mbuk complained to you here, he also opened an RfC against Telex (Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Telex), and that his appeal to you seems to have been a second choice when the RfC was swinging against him. Since then, over the last one or two days, no revert warring seems to have taken place on the article, but quite a bit of constructive editing and discussion on the talk page. My impression is that the reasons for your blocks were mostly stale. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:13, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I am second that the last few days, User:Irpen and User:Lysy were adding material to the article and were actively looking for a compromise as all good wikipedians should. I completely agree that excessive edit warring is a bad thing, but would measure the excessive warring in double-digit numbers of reverts, not in three-five reverts in a week. You may also want to look into the assesmsnts of the matter by Irpen on User_talk:Irpen#Edit_warring_2. Do you object if I will bring the matter to WP:AN to seek a third opinion? abakharev 05:46, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Stale? Look at this: that's Irpen reverting AndriyK in May (notice an OR tag?), and that's AndriyK putting in the OR tag again, in May. That's AndriyK's first edit to the article in October, 2005, and that's Irpen reverting it 10 minutes later. There is no way I can believe this is stale, after a few hours without edit warring (maybe they have to sleep). This typo fix happens to be the only edit Telex made to the article that wasn't a revert I cited. Dmcdevit·t 05:29, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I've been surprised by Irpen's recent lack of response in our dispute at Ukrainization's talk, only to realize that he's been blocked for edit-warring at the very article. While I respect your administrator's discretion, as Irpen's opponent in the dispute, I'd like to voice my opinion that the block was inappropriate, unnecessary or even harmful. A warning to all the involved parties would probably be more useful and less disruptive. I know that Irpen is sometimes quick to revert (I am too) but he is also open for discussion. This said, I have to admit that I've not appreciated the edit war on the tags on the article going on in the background of the dispute. However, I doubt if blocking editors will help to solve this problem. What the article badly needs is a good mediation, and that is what Elonka in my understanding attempted to do there. I was going to request the help of an experienced mediator if the edit-war on tags persisted after our disputes with Irpen had been settled (or failed). All that's achieved now with the block, is that the dispute has to wait until it expires. I understand that Irpen has not been blocked because of our collaborative edits, but because of the past revert-warring on the tags, still I believe the timing of the block was inappropriate. If he deserved to be blocked, it should have happened earlier, not in the middle of a potentially productive dispute. I do not doubt your good intentions but still I suggest that you consider unblocking. --Lysy^talk 07:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for stopping the edit war.

I would like to add, that what Irpen has written at his talk is not true. :As a matter of fact, I explained the tag [12]. AndriyK did it as well [13], [14].--Mbuk 19:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Your policy on edit-warring

Dmcdevit, I am still a bit puzzled about your recent blocks over Ukrainization, and I have a question regarding myself. I understand you are taking a strict stance on edit-warring, which is okay (and I've seen you inspiring shock and awe on edit-warriors at Arbcom.) But with the standards you seem to be applying, I have the feeling even I could find myself on the wrong end of them some day. So, here's a genuine question: what would you recommend me to do?

I tend to follow this rule: In an emerging dispute, I revert once with a reason in the edit summary. If that doesn't stick, I revert a second time with a detailed reasoning on talkpage. If that doesn't stick, I usually don't revert again but ask for other people's opinions or help. That may result in a third opinion on talk, leading to further consensus-building in the best case. Or it may result in those people choosing to join in reverting. I don't ask them to do that, though. But conversely, I am willing to do the same kind of "helping-out" reverts in other articles, if I'm confident that the other side is acting obstinately and disruptively and has not been responding adequately to rational talk-page discussion. There are such cases.

In practice, look at what happened at, for instance Souliotes between 20 June and 4 July. I ended up doing some 10 or 11 reverts within two weeks, scratching 3RR once. I was dealing with a guy who insisted on including an OR paragraph even while admitting it was OR. I think I removed it some five or six times. Another guy was adding and removing "fact" tags arbitrarily on the whim of which statements suited his POV and which didn't. Both were making personal attacks. I discussed extensively both on article talk and personal talk pages. I offered to go for an article RfC. But in the end, only reverting helped.

So, am I a revert-warrior in your book? Honestly, what would you suggest I do in such a situation? Don't tell me "follow dispute resolution" - I know what dispute resolution is. Article RfCs hardly ever get response these days; mediation has big backlogs and moreover requires much higher levels of mutual cooperation and rationality on both sides of a debate. Both can be great in some cases, but if all disputes of the above type and size went to either of these two avenues, the place would be utterly swamped. Informal "ask a trusted friend to join the discussion" is often much more efficient. And don't tell me "edit warring never improves a conflict, but always makes it worse". It's simply not true, in my experience. Sad as it is: some people are prepared to edit obstinately against policy and/or consensus, and cannot be reached by rational discussion. It's sometimes simply necessary to tag-team revert them in a demonstration of consensus, until they themselves reach 3RR. They understand no other language. Ugly, but in the case above that's what actually got the article pacified in the end. -- Your inveterate, unrepentant revert-warrior, Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I am second this. For a case there I should probably be blocked for see Lazar Kaganovich, and yes, I sometimes "help" people in their revert wars, if I see that one side is right. I see the revert warring in combination with the 3RR as a sort of crude voting on the validity of different versions. Another inveterate, unrepentant revert-warrior, abakharev 00:00, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

My two cents. The blocked users have been removing the {{OR}} and{{POV}} tags from the article Ukrainization, although the article has been disputed. this is quite different from your example.--Mbuk 19:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

No, it's not different, it is utterly similar. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 08:58, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

A comment to the note by the Future Perfect and Alex. I also thoroughly support admins reigning in and throwing blocks per their judgement to alleviate the overload of the ArbCom with obvious cases but under one condition: admins should take it upon themselves to thoroughly investigate the issue every time they dare to administer justice by their unilateral decisions. In cases, like the ones suggested by Alex or Future it would be easy for an admin to take the legitimate editor for an edit warrior unless the admin takes enough time to diligently study the matter. If an admin does not have time for that, he should leave it to the admins who are less busy at the moment. The emotional aggravation of the legitimate editor to be hit by an unfair block is too huge to risk it. In the note I posted at WP:AN shortly before this accident (what an amazing coincidence!) I offered one clue on how to see whether one needs to be even more thorough than normally. If the suspect is an established editor, with a reputation he likely cherishes and the empty or short block log, then what looks like edit warring may actually turn out to be something else, like WP:BRD or simply fending the troll off. As such, if the examples presented by Future and Alex the issue is looked at properly, there would not be any action against the editor who is developing the article.

This is all fine and dandy to cite WP:DR but it sounds patronizing and also offensive to the users who know it well and routinely follow it. When I remove someone's nonsense addition to the article and in response receive a {{blank}} at my talk, I would see it as a bad faith aggravating gesture. So looks the reminder of WP:DR to the editors who resolved hundreds of disagreements with their opponents in the past.

When dealing with a sock, abusive vandal or a bad-faith troll the demand to follow WP:DR just makes no sense. As such, it is useful to look and compare the involved editor's overall backgrounds to get some initial clues. Demanding to file RfCs and ArbCom every time a new troll or an extremist appears just makes no sense. We would be all writing RfCs and ArbCom submissions if we followed it. AndriyK's case is a more grievous than most, and here, I was wrong not to have addressed to the ArbCom yet.

The bottom-line is the same. If the editor is at fault, it is ok to punish him, irrespective of his past contributions. However, the due effort to determine the actual fault is required. If this is impossible, ArbCom is lesser of an evil than the editors offended by the unjustified block.

Look at it this way: this is the same discretion thing as for admins to block per their own judgement when there is no technical 3RR. The editors also can make a good-faith judgement on how to deal with particular situation and, when acting reasonably, should not be penalized for that, similar to an Admin throwing a non-3RR judgement block, should not automatically be grilled at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct#Use of administrator privileges. --Irpen 00:30, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

My RfA

Hi, I would like to express my gratitude for your participation at my recent RfA. The final vote was 68/21/3 and resulted in me becoming an admin!

For those of you who supported my RfA, I highly appreciate your kind words and your trust in me. For those who opposed - many of you expressed valid concerns regarding my activity here; I will make an effort in addressing them as time goes on while at the same time using my admin tools appropriately. So, salamat, gracias, merci, ありがとう, спасибо, धन्यवाद, 多謝, agyamanak unay, شكرًا, cảm ơn, 감사합니다, mahalo, ขอบคุณครับ, go raibh maith agat, dziękuję, ευχαριστώ, Danke, תודה, mulţumesc, გმადლობთ, etc.! If you need any help, feel free to contact me.

PS: I took the company car (pictured left) out for a spin, and well... it's not quite how I pictured it. --Chris S. 23:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)