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User:David Gerard violating Wikipedia:Deprecated_sources#Acceptable_uses_of_deprecated_sources

David Gerard, upon reading a challenge to the removal of an academic expert writing in a deprecated source, has proceeded to go on what I can only describe as an editing rampage removing on sight any link to that source he can find. Wikipedia:Deprecated_sources#Acceptable_uses_of_deprecated_sources specifically says Citations to deprecated sources should not be removed indiscriminately, and each case should be reviewed separately. In the span of 20 minutes David Gerard has removed over thirty references to Counterpunch, including ones written by the subject of the article (explicitly allowed by WP:ABOUTSELF). He has said that only by reversing a deprecation decision can any Counterpunch article be cited. That is expressly opposed to be our deprecation guideline, and I ask that he be restricted from indiscriminately removing any source he has not examined. nableezy - 22:07, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

This is a continuation of a thread on Talk:Edward Said, two threads at WP:RSN [1][[2], and now a fourth thread here (edit: and now a fifth thread at WP:RSN), where the editor is attempting to edit-war in a deprecated source, with personal attacks on the multiple editors objecting.

I am indeed continuing to clear our backlogs of deprecated sources - that is, sources that should not be used in Wikipedia. As always - I've done this for a while - every edit was done and reviewed by hand, and for the most part they're obvious - David Gerard (talk) 22:12, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

You going to claim you reviewed this edit????? You removed an article written by the subject, and removed a Nation article, and replaced it with a cn tag. You reviewed that? Really????? Diff to any edit-warring or personal attacks, or strike the accusation too. nableezy - 22:15, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

So this is actually about a single use of the deprecated source as a reference, which is already under discussion at WP:RSN? This is WP:FORUMSHOPping - David Gerard (talk) 22:23, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

No, it is about you violating WP:DEPS which says Citations to deprecated sources should not be removed indiscriminately, and each case should be reviewed separately. You are removing sources indiscriminately at a rate that belies any claim that you are examining them by hand. And this one example shows you are doing so recklessly, violating several policies, and as such I am asking you be made to stop. We wouldnt be here if you didnt remove 30 sources you never looked at in fifteen minutes. We wouldnt be here if you followed our policies. nableezy - 22:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

David is also removing sources in green and replacing it with citation needed tags. I am unaware of any edit-warring, or personal attacks for that matter. David's editing here violates WP:DEPS which requires each usage to be examined, and I again ask that he be restricted from continuing his current spree of policy and logic violating removals of sources he has not examined in the slightest. nableezy - 22:14, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:DEPS is an "information page", and specifically not even a guidance page. WP:BURDEN, however, is policy: All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution. Counterpunch is not a reliable source, it is a deprecated source, and should be removed and not restored. You literally have a reliable source for the particular claim you wanted to make here - David Gerard (talk) 22:28, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Jesus christ, if WP:DEPS is not even a guidance page then you cannot rely on it to rule out sources. How is that circular logic working for you? You are attempting to make deprecated in to blacklisted, and you are further violating WP:ABOUTSELF when removing material written by the subject of the article. And you are doing it indiscriminately. And you are literally removing other reliable sources. nableezy - 22:33, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

You seem to be assuming DEPS does the deprecation. It does not - the RFCs deprecating each source did that. That's why it's an information page - it's a list of the sources that were deprecated - David Gerard (talk) 22:35, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

When people say to deprecate a source they are saying to have it follow what WP:DEPS says. And again, you are editing without looking, and making basic errors in doing so. You are very specifically damaging our articles. Unrepentantly at that. If an IP made that edit they would be reverted for vandalism. nableezy - 22:41, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• I tend to agree that this practice has been carried out by editors (not just David) a bit too haphazardly. While this is not the place to propose broad policy changes, I do think that there should be an orderly procedure of first tagging the references as is with a {{better source needed}}, and then waiting a few weeks before removing the source altogether to replace it with a {{citation needed}}. BD2412 T 22:27, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

No change is needed, WP:DEPS already prohibits the indiscriminate removal of sources purely based on their being deprecated. David's editing violates that. It also violates WP:ABOUTSELF, and it further is evidence of careless editing when he removes other sources and replaces it with a citation needed tag. That garbage edit still can be self-reverted for the record. nableezy - 22:30, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

DEPS is an information page, and not even a guidance page - it doesn't prevent anything - David Gerard (talk) 22:34, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

The trouble is that that proposal has been raised before - most recently in a broad general RFC at WP:VPP a few years ago - and rejected as a violation of policy - Aquillion has written on it previously (some applicable insights at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_164#Discussion_on_Proposal_3 - '"We want to deprecate this source" does not mean "we want to provide special protections for existing usages of this source"'), and can probably elaborate. This process would protect deprecated sources - the worst of the worst - in ways that merely bad sources are not protected. When a source has been found by broad general consensus to be broadly unusable in Wikipedia, it would be perverse to thus grant it special protections that less-bad sources don't get - David Gerard (talk) 22:36, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

more specifically, as Aquillion wrote there: "WP:RS is core policy and not subject to consensus; therefore, you can always remove an unreliable source on sight with the reason of "unreliable source", no matter what, without exception" - though actually WP:RS is a guideline included by reference in WP:V, which enforces that. An RFC can't actually find against that, and a discussion on ANI that isn't even at RFC stage can't find against it. Your proposal would require a policy change to enforce, or at the least an RFC to alter all previous deprecation RFCs ... - David Gerard (talk) 22:42, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

One more time, you are indiscriminately removing sources that are very specifically allowed. You are removing sources written by the subject of the article (here, here, here, here). WP:ABOUTSELF says all of those are reliable sources for what the subject says about themselves. But your indiscriminate rampage caught them all up. You are removing other reliable sources (here you removed The Nation and replaced it with a citation needed). nableezy - 23:08, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

You are failing to distinguish "can find an excuse" from "should". Your understanding of good self-sourcing is being questioned in detail, with policy cites, in the fifth thread you just started about this single citation, on RSN - David Gerard (talk) 23:17, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Um, you said an RFC needs to be opened to overturn the last one. And now you complain about me opening an RFC? Are you for real? nableezy - 23:20, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

The user continues to violate WP:ABOUTSELF, removing mundane details such as a person being married sourced to their own column on Counterpunch. This is absurd, and if an IP was doing this they would be blocked for vandalism. nableezy - 23:26, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Forum-shopping a talk page discussion in progress - David Gerard (talk) 23:26, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

No, your continued editing that violates our policies is a behavioral issue. You cant just say "forum shopping" when somebody raises your poor editing. nableezy - 23:39, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I knew I'd read all this before. This thread was about the same issue with the Sun and Dailymail, and this one was about RT. ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 23:27, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
  • David Gerard has definitely been here before, as they have a specific take on the word "deprecated" to mean "banned/blacklisted" (and thus taking onus on themselves to remove all references to said sources without doing cleanup after themselves), where WP:DEPS and most others that have talked about this take "deprecated" in the computer-science sense (that we should avoid and should strive to remove them but not in a manner that is disruptive). This seems to be yet another rout of disruption to remove deprecated sources as quickly as possible, which is not an outcome of any RFC on these sources marked deprecated. (If anything, the only RFC that had "take action immediately" would be Daily Mail wrt to BLPs). There's no problem if they want to go around and tag deprecated sources to let others fix them, or do the work of looking for alternate sources, or making sure that removing the source also removes material connected with the source that they can't find sourced elsewhere, but these past ANI trips have shown that they prefer outright removal than avoiding disrupting, which is not acceptable on WP. --Masem (t) 05:06, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

He is removing sources that our policy explicitly says are reliable, and he is edit-warring to do so [3], [4]. Again, any other user would be blocked for doing so. He still has not corrected his disruptive removal of other reliable sources here. Any other user would be blocked for doing so. He is introducing basic errors in to our articles, eg [5]. Dont want to repeat the obvious one more time. nableezy - 05:21, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

All previous discussions have endorsed David Gerard's actions

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1028#User:David Gerard and The Sun sources

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1045#Editor David Gerard and the Daily Mail

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1066#Indiscriminate removal of deprecated sources

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1081#User:David Gerard

nothing to see here 103.203.133.250 (talk) 05:49, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

No, they haven't. At least the one I initiated (the third one) ended without a closure with many editors agreeing with me that such indiscriminate removal is not okay.

I think that adding better-source-needed tag before removing (if it's not BLP) is a good practice and deserves to be a guideline. Alaexis_¿question? 06:24, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:DEPS exists for the purpose of explaining what it means for a source to be deprecated. Without WP:DEPS, the formal concept of deprecation disappears from Wikipedia. So it is bizarre indeed to claim that one can remove sources due to them being deprecated and at the same time claim that WP:DEPS can be ignored. David Gerard is not entitled to this logical fallacy, and not entitled to merely brush aside explanatory statements like "Citations to deprecated sources should not be removed indiscriminately, and each case should be reviewed separately." Zero^talk 11:26, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I think adding the better-source-needed tag is usually pointless because I doubt that in many cases anyone new will come along and replace them. And if a terrible source has been used multiple times, I wouldn't put the burden upon anyone of tagging them, making a list somewhere of what was tagged and when, and then later remove them. Doug Weller talk 11:54, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

We know from trying it that it's usually pointless. It stays there for months, untouched. It doesn't work. By this stage, the suggestion is an attempted end-run around deprecation, and nothing more - David Gerard (talk) 13:18, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Deprecating is not blacklisted, despite your repeated attempts to make it so. nableezy - 16:43, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Your lack of understanding of what an "information" page is is not a "logical fallacy", and Without WP:DEPS, the formal concept of deprecation disappears from Wikipedia is a bizarrely false statement - David Gerard (talk) 13:21, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Where exactly is deprecated defined as removed on sight? nableezy - 16:42, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I am less than enthusiastic about any kind of auto/semi auto removal of sources and don't think we should be doing that.Selfstudier (talk) 16:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
  • You'll be glad to know that there is neither automatic nor semi-automatic removal going on, every edit is by hand. If you can show auto/semi-auto removal, feel free to do so. However, note that for deprecated sources - sources that, by broad general consensus, should almost never be used in Wikipedia - the bar for removal is very low, and almost all should in fact be removed - David Gerard (talk) 20:36, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
• The indiscriminate removal of sources that policy explicitly says are reliable is ongoing. I understand David Gerard is a popular one around these parts, but in the span of 12 minutes David removed 24 CP articles (plus added a disambiguation link), among them a listing that the subject had published there (ABOUTSELF), an interview with the subject (again ABOUTSELF), multiple ABOUTSELF sources here. Each of those edits is against our policy, and it continues unabated. Why should he not be blocked here? nableezy - 18:48, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 1

• I don't see the problem with what David Gerard is doing here. Coretheapple (talk) 19:01, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

How about repeated removal of RS and WP:FAIT editing? nableezy - 20:46, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

And repeated edit-warring (eg [6], [7]. Claiming that WP:V is overruled by deprecation is likewise an issue. nableezy - 20:47, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

If nobody is willing to deal with an editor disruptively editing to remove reliable sources in an indiscriminate matter please close this down and I can proceed with going to ArbCom. Because this disruption, by an admin no less, continues, with this admin edit-warring to remove sources our policy says are reliable, and Id like that dealt with or at least paused while this discussion is ongoing. This is the very definition of WP:FAIT editing, and it is behavior unbecoming an administrator. nableezy - 20:58, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm always happy for action to be taken against users who are either administrators or otherwise "getting too big for their breeches," but in this instance I look at what is being complained about and I see a big, fat nothing. I do see a lot of boomerang potential. Coretheapple (talk) 18:26, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

You could certainly do that. I would suggest you would do better doing either or both of first (a) seeking further support for your position - the support that you admit here that you lack (b) understanding why you have failed to gain support for your position - David Gerard (talk) 21:26, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

For example - in that last example, you appear to have misread WP:ABOUTSELF - it is about literal self-publication, e.g. on a personal website, or about dubious sources talking about themselves (e.g., the Daily Mail talking about itself). It does not cover a published article in an edited magazine, as you are attempting to use it for. Your claim is not supported by your impassioned words - David Gerard (talk) 21:32, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I should also note that the WP:FAIT was when the source was deprecated. At that point, there was broad general consensus that CounterPunch was a source so unreliable it should not be present in Wikipedia, and thus should be removed. I realise you don't like this outcome, but that was in fact the strong consensus - David Gerard (talk) 21:48, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

People not wanting to deal with a problem administrator violating policy is not my lacking support. Again, you are edit-warring, removing reliable sources, and engaging in WP:FAIT editing. Youre also just making things up WP:ABOUTSELF is not about literal self-published sources. Otherwise it would not say Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves. And no, there was consensus it should be deprecated. And there are valid uses for deprecated sources, and your claim that WP:DEPS means something other than what it says it means is likewise in the realm of making things up. And you should be stopped. Since you refuse to stop yourself, you should be blocked. If there is no resolution, and given the recurrent issue with you and deprecated sources, then yes I will be doing that. I await to see if anybody wishes to deal with this first. nableezy - 22:03, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

If you think "I can find no administrator willing to act on my claim" is a case for arbitration, I expect I can't stop you. You probably won't take my advice, but (per the instructions at WP:RFAR) be sure to have worked through all of WP:DR first - David Gerard (talk) 22:13, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• While David's removal of depreciated sources can be criticized as haphazard (with BD2412's suggestion being the safer way to methodically remove these, keeping WP:DEPS in mind), it isn't necessarily incorrect, as depreciation exists for a reason. However, depreciation ≠ blacklist, so there is no harm in slowing down the process. On the other hand, it's fair to say that nableezy is definitely WP:BLUDGEONing this thread. This thread has become so inundated that it may be worth separating claims of edit warring into another part, perhaps to WP:EWN. Curbon7 (talk) 22:21, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
• Perusing David's contributions, it is clear he has been removing deprecated sources from hundreds of articles for years, whether it's the Daily Mail, Crunchbase, The Sun (United Kingdom), WorldNetDaily, Global Times, Republic TV, Unz Review, Zero Hedge, LifeSiteNews, NewsBlaze, The Epoch Times, FrontPage Magazine, Press TV, The Mail on Sunday, Telesur, Voltaire Network, and no doubt others. The list of deprecated sources on Wikipedia is quite small; it's an exclusive group of sources considered so unreliable by the Wikipedia community that not one word published in them can be considered reliable (regardless of the author or circumstances). As such, I can't understand why one would ever want to cite them on Wikipedia, or why one would object to their removal. Nor do I understand why there is such a fuss regarding this particular source, which has been deemed by Wikipedia to be as unreliable as all of the others David has removed. If anything, David should be commended for his diligent efforts to make Wikipedia more reliable (or at least less unreliable). Jayjg ^(talk) 23:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Nor do I understand why there is such a fuss regarding this particular source. It's because of WP:PIA. Mlb96 (talk) 03:59, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Ah, got it. I understand much better now; things are often not what they seem in that subject area. Jayjg ^(talk) 15:28, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
    • ... now I fully understand why the Counterpunch defenders are so incredibly combative, and in this style - David Gerard (talk) 18:07, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
  • ... not one word published in them can be considered reliable (regardless of the author or circumstances) – This is not a correct understanding of deprecated sources. For instance, the Daily Mail can be a usable source historically (I'm talking 1910s, not 2000s), and even modern articles can be usable in very rare (often primary or WP:SPS) circumstances, as David Gerard gives two examples of below (one if you don't count an EL). — Bilorv (talk) 00:22, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Bilorv, those are, no doubt the extremely minor and rare exceptions that prove the rule. The only exception stated in WP:DEPREC is "for uncontroversial self-descriptions". I doubt the underlying incident that prompted this whole kerfuffle was about that. Was it? Jayjg ^(talk) 17:31, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
      • They're not "exceptions" to any rule that exists, whether WP:DEPREC or anything else. They are examples that conform with the meaning of "deprecated". You've linked to a phrase that says "rule of thumb", expressly not relevant to any attempt at full classification; nor is WP:DEPREC, "The source is considered generally unreliable, and use of the source is generally prohibited" (emphasis mine). Rather than me try to explain to you what caused this ANI thread to start, you would be better to read the context for yourself. — Bilorv (talk) 17:44, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
        • Thanks Bilorv. I'm quite familiar with our content and sourcing policies, and think it's pretty clear that they are, in fact, exceptions to the general rule. Someone else has explained to me (above) the actual reason this has suddenly become a big deal. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:26, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
• Once again, someone is upset with David Gerard, and once again, mutually contradictory opinions will be aired about the right way to remove these garbage sources. Sheesh. What he's doing is fine, necessary, and overdue. XOR'easter (talk) 23:16, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Also, help is absolutely welcome! Here's the list - pick 10 and have a look. Usually removal is pretty obvious - remarkable claims with no other backing, gratuitous ELs, hagiographic WP:RESUMEs, etc - David Gerard (talk) 14:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    • If people were willing to put half the effort they're willing to spend on drama into cleaning up these "sources", then we wouldn't have the drama in the first place. XOR'easter (talk) 21:11, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
      • These deflection tactics are misguided at best. If those removing depreciated sources put any effort whatsoever into looking for alternative sources, or didn't regularly remove valid content along with the depreciated source, we wouldn't be here (again). DG needs to either seek consensus for wholesale removal of these sources or start exercising considered judgement, which takes time and effort. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 10:02, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

        Sorry but this is nonsense and contrary to policy, it's not other people's responsibility to find sources for material which fails verification. The responsibility lies on those who want the material included. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 23:08, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

        Doing the literal minimum required by the letter of policy is often not a good way to proceed, especially en masse and if the justification is "the letter of the policy requires no more than this". From a common sense point of view: the list of pages that cite e.g. the Daily Mail is easy to find and navigate, half filled with nonsense that needs removing but half filled with useful information that just needs a better source. Removing the information or using {{cn}} to make it the 16,875th entry in Category:Articles with unsourced statements from December 2021 removes it from this easily traversable list and means the content will never be improved.

        You could instead take 60 seconds to type into a search engine something that may produce a good source saying exactly the same facts as the Daily Mail, and cite that source—or if there isn't one then don't spend any longer, {{cn}} tag it or whatever. Bot-like actions are almost never the best way to proceed. Clearing one backlog (citations to the Daily Mail) by piling it into another backlog (unsourced statements) is not a solution. Nor is clearing a backlog with a flamethrower (removing useful information that could be easily sourced).

        This advice isn't about breaking policies, but about building an encyclopedia in the most productive way. — Bilorv (talk) 00:22, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

        This is going about it the other way around, it is not a minimum, it is the standard. The bare minimum is that one should not be insisting that the burden to find sources for material that is unsourced or poorly source lies on the those who want to remove such material. It directly contradicts policy and is in fact recognised as disruption.

        If we are going to appeal to common sense, a {{cn}} tag is much more visible and recognisable as a problem (to the point that it is so even for the average reader) than a citation containing an unreliable source. Going through 1000s of articles is tedious work while most editors edit articles on topics that they are interested in and address any issues specific to particular articles instead of looking for specific kinds of issues to address, and hence are much more likely to address visible issues. But if you really think that it has no impact on how fast a backlog is addressed and that there is no real distinction between either, then what's the fuss over again? Tayi Arajakate _Talk 05:31, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

This framing of a noble pursuit to rid the encyclopedia of citations to sources that not one word published in them can be considered reliable (regardless of the author or circumstances) is a bald faced run-around what deprecation actually is. If you mean to change deprecated in to blacklisted, in which not one single word of it may ever be cited, you need more than an RFC at RSN on a single source to do so. A user is inventing a policy here, and is violating existing policy to enforce it. Where exactly Jayjg does any single policy, guideline, information page or even local consensus support the idea that deprecated sources may not be used at all? Because WP:DEPS says exactly the opposite. It would be great if people could actually answer why that is being ignored. nableezy - 03:42, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Deprecation was "meant to" mean removal. From the first deprecation RFC on the Daily Mail: its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited ... There are multiple thousands of existing citations to the Daily Mail. Volunteers are encouraged to review them, and remove/replace them as appropriate. I'd have thought generally prohibited was pretty clear in its intent. Do you understand that the deprecation of a source, such as CounterPunch, is meant to mean that it is generally prohibited? That's a yes-or-no question - David Gerard (talk) 14:36, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

That is again not what I asked for. This is not the Daily Mail. What policy, guideline or anything else supports your attempt to force through a major policy change? And edit warring to do so, again. nableezy - 14:40, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Deprecation literally means general prohibition. That is what it was intended for, and what it is used for. You are claiming novel exceptions that don't exist, and trying to use text on an information page as a claim of policy. Read the actual deprecation RFCs - David Gerard (talk) 14:45, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Deprecation literally means general prohibition. We need to make the information page into a policy to prevent what is happening? It says at the top "except in special cases" and later it says "Deprecation is not a blanket retroactive "ban" on using the source in absolutely every situation, contrary to what has been reported in media headlines.". Selfstudier (talk) 15:00, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Nableezy, in answer to your question directed to me, WP:DEPS is an information page, not a policy or guideline, and even it says "Citing the source as a reference is generally prohibited".

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources lists four levels of source reliability

• Generally reliable in its areas of expertise: Editors show consensus that the source is reliable in most cases on subject matters in its areas of expertise. The source has a reputation for fact-checking, accuracy, and error-correction, often in the form of a strong editorial team.
• No consensus, unclear, or additional considerations apply: The source is marginally reliable (i.e. neither generally reliable nor generally unreliable), and may be usable depending on context.
• Generally unreliable: Editors show consensus that the source is questionable in most cases. The source may lack an editorial team, have a poor reputation for fact-checking, fail to correct errors, be self-published, or present user-generated content. Outside exceptional circumstances, the source should normally not be used, and it should never be used for information about a living person.
• Deprecated: There is community consensus from a request for comment to deprecate the source. The source is considered generally unreliable, and use of the source is generally prohibited.

It takes a lot for a source to be actually "Deprecated", and only a very small number of sources have actually reached that "elite" status. There are tens of thousands of highly reliable sources available for use on Wikpedia, I so can't see any reason why we should have any source that has actually been "Deprecated". And I haven't heard any good arguments for keeping a Deprecated source that doesn't sound like special pleading. Even if we kept one such source, it will be inevitably challenged as coming from a Deprecated source; why don't editors themselves simply move on, and find a better source? Jayjg ^(talk) 15:28, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you think there is no difference between generally prohibited and in which not one single word of it may ever be cited? As far as good reason, the obvious one is when pieces by established experts that are repeatedly cited in other reliable sources (like peer-reviewed journal articles and books published by university presses) so much so that they themselves are arguably notable, we should be able to cite them. In another instance David removed an attributed view of Benny Morris in another article, calling it extreme fringe non-RS. Are you of the opinion that calling Benny Morris "extreme fringe" or "non-RS" is a. not a BLP violation, b. not among the silliest things youve ever read on Wikipedia? Do you agree that there are not much better sources to find? nableezy - 15:38, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Nableezy, regarding your question about Benny Morris, I have on occasion disagreed with David Gerard's removal of sources, but never objected when it has come to Deprecated sources; if the information is reliable and DUE, then it can (and should) be found in a reliable source. Regarding your other question, I think the main difference between generally prohibited and not one single word etc. is exactly what Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources states about Deprecated sources: "a Deprecated source may be used for uncontroversial self-descriptions, although reliable secondary sources are still preferred." I haven't looked at the underlying incident that prompted this specific AN/I, but in my experience, when someone is trying to use a deprecated source, it's almost always because they want to use the specific sources in a specific article to make some controversial (or at least non-obvious) claim, not an "uncontroversial self-description". In your initial disagreement with David Gerard, was it about an "uncontroversial self-description"? Jayjg ^(talk) 17:22, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Jayjg, I think you know I think you're a very smart person and while we disagree on um some issues I generally have a high regard for your view on sources. So please, look at the specifics here. Yes, some of them are indeed non-controversial self-descriptions. Like a person being married (note that David removed that, was reverted due to ABOUTSELF, and removed it again). Others are scholars writing in the area of their academic experties, whose specific column is referenced repeatedly in other reliable sources (here). That was, along with a bunch of other careless mistakes, meant to remove this piece by this noted expert, a piece repeatedly cited in other reliable sources (eg [8], [9], [10]). Do you really think Id be raising this big a fuss about not being able to cite random crackpots for controversial facts? nableezy - 17:46, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Nableezy, thank you for your kind words! I'm not saying that every single removal David has ever made was correct, but I am saying that Wikipedia's default position should be to remove them all, and only allow them back in on an individual, exceptional, extremely limited basis, so I think David is doing the right thing. Also, I don't think we should quote a subject matter expert when they're writing in an unreliable (much less Deprecated) source, particularly where they are writing about anything controversial. The key here is not the individual themselves, but rather the editorial oversight - even experts require proper oversight. Instead of fighting to keep Deprecated sources, we should be expending that energy looking for different, reliable sources. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:27, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Jayjg, is he doing the right thing when he edit-wars against multiple users who are putting the sources he removes back in limited and exceptional circumstances? Like removing a convenience link, reverted by an admin no less, and then immediately re-reverts. Or removing an interview between Ari Shavit and Benny Morris, and then re-reverting. Is an administrator violating both WP:FAIT and WP:EW "doing the right thing"? nableezy - 15:45, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

First of all Nableezy, let us stipulate and agree that edit-warring is a bad thing, and (except in cases of WP:BLP violations), should be avoided wherever possible. That said, David's original removals of the links in Camp 1391 and Benny Morris were absolutely correct, as the references to original source (Ha'aretz) were already in those articles; WP:CONV is just an essay, and even then see WP:CONV#Arguments against convenience links point 1. As a point of comparison, I regularly find fpp.co.uk used for "convenience links" to published articles, including many from Ha'aretz, and I invariably remove those links. What would your view be on someone convenience linking to this article or this one? Note, I'm not saying that fpp.co.uk and counterpunch.org have anything in common: on the other hand, only counterpunch.org has been designated by Wikipedia as Deprecated. Jayjg ^(talk) 16:47, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Because we both agree that the two sites are not analogous in any way, and because CounterPunch articles are submitted by the creator and are not likely copyright violations, I dont find the situations comparable at all. And the fact that CP is deprecated and David Irving's website is not is the most interesting part of that argument, in that it informs one of just how silly the argument "but it's deprecated" is. But since we agree edit-warring is a bad thing, maybe tell him to stop doing that? nableezy - 16:55, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Jayjg would you call this sequence edit warring? Removal by DG, restored by editor 2, removed again by DG 20 minutes later, restored by editor 3, re-removed by DG 14 hours later. Would you call that a violation of the 1RR for ARBPIA articles (yes I know there is no edit notice). Even if it were not subject to the 1RR, is that edit-warring by DG? Is an administrator edit-warring acceptable? Do you want to do anything about it? nableezy - 18:23, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Jayjg, Im only pinging you because I think he would listen to you, but would you please review that sequence above and these as well. At Alan Dershowitz he removes entirely material in a University of California published source and Dershowitz's response in CP (ABOUTSELF and one would think that Dershowitz's response to charges of him plagiarizing would need to be included per BLP). That is reverted and then David removes it again. Do you find it acceptable under WP:BLP to remove the subject's response to charges of wrongdoing? What if there is already an established consensus for inclusion? Then at Sara Roy, he removes an ABOUTSELF reference and material it supports about Roy's father being one of the handful of survivors of Chelmno extermination camp. That is reverted, and removes it again. Do you find edit-warring to remove details about Roy's parents surviving Chelmno and Auschwitz to be appropriate conduct here? Would you please ask him to maybe re-examine whether or not in the rare instance somebody objects to the removals that maybe he should not so quickly re-revert and instead discuss the issue on the talk page? Otherwise, for the love of anything you hold dear, can you close this so that I may file an arbitration case so that I may ask somebody else to tell him that? nableezy - 21:52, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• I fully support David edits to rid our articles of depreciated sources they should be used only in very limited circumstances as per WP:DEPS --Shrike (talk) 05:30, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
• I know David but he's wrong one this, as are others. It's supposed to be more subtle than this - purging doesn't help as sometimes the sources are good for the point we need. I can think of a glowing puff piece in the Mail about a dodgy company - one of the human bots removed that and they absolutely shouldn't - showing the hype is good. I've had others remove a link to a Russian source which was confirming what western sources were saying - again useful. If it was intended to be remove all then it would be done by bot. There's no nuance here. Secretlondon (talk) 14:59, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
  • See, I don't get this rationale; if you have reliable Western (or any other) sources already, then there's absolutely no need for a Deprecated source, Russian or otherwise. Jayjg ^(talk) 15:28, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
• The process of mass-removing deprecated sources, and then discussing individually the specific cases where their (re-)inclusion may be warranted is a pretty good one, I think. It's also consistent with the "presumption" that deprecated sources should not be used. JBchrch talk 16:04, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
• I think we do have a problem here, in that it is abundantly clear that we do not have agreement as a community as to what deprecation means. We have informational supplements that unequivocally state that deprecation does not mean "remove on sight", that it doesn't even mean "uniquely bad source", and we also can clearly see from the above exchanges that David Gerard, among others, are treating deprecation as precisely that. My semi-involved view here is that we either need to enforce the current wording (which would mean, at a minimum, handing out warnings for repeated haphazard removal of sources, such as the ABOUTSELF and verifiable subject-matter experts), specify a more correct way of dealing with existing citations to deprecated sources (per BD2412) and then enforce that, or start an RfC to actually settle what deprecation means at a guideline level. For as long as we continue to have such open disagreement about what an active and far-ranging labeling of sources actually means, we're going to continue to have disruptive editing from well-intentioned editors. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:56, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  I agree about the confusion, but Rosguill, can you explain to me where the subject-matter-expert comes in? I just now re-read WP:DEPREC, WP:DEPS, WP:NOTRELIABLE, WP:V and Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Deprecated_sources multiple times, and it nowhere says that verifiable subject-matter experts are an exemption (only WP:ABOUTSELF uses are permitted).

  I just don't see a rule about subject matter experts anywhere outside of WP:SPS. I'm really not trying to wikilawyer here, I want to understand our guideline wrt deprecation and unreliable sources. As far as I can see, unreliable sources may only be used for ABOUTSELF, even if the subject is an expert. Mvbaron (talk) 17:26, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  Mvbaron, I land on that interpretation based on my understanding of WP:V's general requirement that sources be assessed based on context. I think that the result of a holistic approach to the sources would hold that a relevant SME would be reliable unless published in a source with a reputation for outright misrepresentation of its/its contributors' own work (which was not the basis for CP's deprecation), except perhaps in the case of BLPs (and even there, I think there's room for discussion of the relative relevance of the SME's claims and whether or not it courts actual problems in a BLP on a case by case basis). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:05, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  I see, thank you very much for your clear and detailed response :) That makes sense. Mvbaron (talk) 18:10, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  For what sort of material would it be justified to keep material published by CP? Selfstudier (talk) 18:12, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  Was that directed at me? If yes, I don't know. From what I understood, only ABOUTSELF - but Rosguill here makes a good point. And if that's correct, then I guess there is not much difference between deprecation and generally unreliable sources, as in that one has to always look at how the source was deprecated exactly. I have genuinely no idea at that point, I guess it always comes down to local consensus... Mvbaron (talk) 18:25, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, it was:) Sometimes the indenting...This still leaves the removals question, a bot can do auto remove, doesn't need an editor, is it beyond our wit to say, post up a notice in a section of the talk page of an article that uses a unrel/deprec source and asks the users there to form such a consensus. Easy to say, might be hard to script, idk.Selfstudier (talk) 18:39, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  There's a tangential problem which is that confusion over what deprecation means is rampant even in the actual discussions to deprecate sources. This certainly appeared to be the case in the discussion that resulted in Counterpunch's deprecation, where editors provided arguments as to why CP should be considered unreliable, but did not clearly establish why deprecation was necessary, with many editors !voting for deprecation purely on the basis that it is not reliable, without further elaboration. I briefly challenged a first attempt at closing but backed down after it received informal endorsements as I did not feel like I had the personal capacity to argue my case at the time. I do think, however, that the case could be made that closing that discussion as deprecation instead of simply GU was a case of vote-counting rather than an assessment of arguments presented. Reaching such a conclusion would provide a Gordian way out of the current dispute, although it would probably require just as much wikidrama and would leave unresolved underlying issues that would pop up next time someone tries to clear a deprecated source from the site, so right now hashing the ANI case out and reaching general clarity on deprecation seems like a more productive way forward. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:17, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  As the eventual closer there, I strongly disagree with your assessment and consider it a mischaracterisation. It was not merely unreliability, but fringe, conspiracist and fabricated content, and an editorial position favouring said content - a clear case for deprecation; which has, as I've documented above, always meant that the source doesn't belong in Wikipedia at all except in extremely exceptional cases - David Gerard (talk) 22:04, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  Eh, I don't think the distinction between "unreliable" and "fringe, conspiracist and fabricated content" is meaningful (in other words, I don't disagree with those elements of the characterization), but find said summary to ignore the counter-arguments which claimed that it frequently publishes articles by verifiable and relevant SMEs. There's also a problem when arguments to that effect get shut down in the deprecation RfC with the argument "well you can still cite it in those cases" only for editors to run into stonewalling in those self-same cases. Ultimately, neither side in that discussion went beyond cherrypicking and superficial analyses, and I don't think it was appropriate to jump to deprecation without a methodical analysis of the publication's output, ideally with reference to RS. Also, having forgotten that you were the one that closed that discussion, I am a bit troubled that you did so considering that you have an understanding of deprecation that is at odds with what has been documented as being its definition. To do so and then take dedicated action to remove all instances of citations, over and past disputes with individual edits made during this process, strikes me as taking a few too many bites from the apple. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:18, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Add voting in the next RFC to the number of bites. Who would have thought "uninvolved" had such an elastic meaning. nableezy - 22:24, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• It seems clear that David Gerard is pursuing a largely indiscriminate purge of all depreciated sources due to apparently interpreting things like "generally prohibited" to mean "totally prohibited" (it doesn't) and "deprecation literally means general prohibition" (it doesn't). DG is wrong here and his actions are contrary to WP:DEPS in its current form and should stop. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 18:56, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I reviewed hundreds of David Gerard's edits the last time this came up. "Indiscriminate" was the last thing I would call them. XOR'easter (talk) 21:14, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
  • "Indiscriminate" is a word that fans of a deprecated source use to attempt to poison the well in discussion of any removal of the source whatsoever, in my experience - David Gerard (talk) 22:04, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Let me help you out here. Indiscriminate – without careful judgement. This seems (to me) to accurately describe how you have approached removal of depreciated sources. Careful judgement requires more than the few seconds it takes to select text, hit delete, paste an edit summary and click save; for example, how could this removal, which could very quickly and easily have been referenced to any number of other sources, happen if careful judgement was being exercised? Surely careful judgement would involve establishing if the information could be alternatively referenced? Note: this is the only one of a dozen such edits in a randomly selected 10 minute period that I checked, but I have encountered exactly these kinds of indiscriminate removals by you previously. Incidentally, I do not think your response here reflects well on you (AGF, maybe?); it would be better to address the concerns rather than attack those raising them, or suggesting they want to keep unreliable sources – for my part at least, you can be assured that couldn't be farther from the truth. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 23:10, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
• I have no idea whether User:David Gerard's removal of deprecated sources is indiscriminate or not, but it should be possible for him to clear up the issue. David, can you point to any cases in which you have discriminated in favour of retaining such sources? These may not show up in any edit history because they could involve a decision not to edit. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:22, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Indeed, and of the Daily Mail even: [11][12] These were adding archive links in fact, to ensure the preservation of the content (because we know that dailymail.co.uk literally can't be trusted as to the contents of the Daily Mail) - though the second of these has since been removed by another editor.
    When an editor who likes a particular deprecated source complains of its removal, they always seem to claim the removal is "indiscriminate". This happens no matter what the action is, if it involves any removal whatsoever of their favoured source. Similar is claiming "bot-like" editing with no actual evidence of bot-editing or non-consideration in the editing process. Such claims should be ignored as attempts to poison the well.
    They also tend to personal attacks - see the editor who brought the present action claiming violation of, er, an information page that explicitly isn't either a policy or even a guideline, has posted about half the words in this entire section, and absolutely cannot restrain themselves from repeated personal attacks, here or in the multiple other threads they've started to defend CounterPunch - David Gerard (talk) 21:59, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Except evidence has been provided in your edits. You removed by blanket reverting an ABOUTSELF link, an article by a noted expert that is referenced in the other, non-CP, source you likewise removed. Between 15:34 and and 15:38 today you removed sources from 10 articles. You telling people you looked at all 10 sources in the four minutes you spent editing? Between 20:40 and 21:16 you removed CP from 54, including multiple ABOUTSELF links. You telling people you looked at all 54 articles in the 36 minutes it took to remove them? I am unaware of a single personal attack I have made, and your claim that I am attacking you is nonsense. nableezy - 22:12, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

That's much more process than is required, and is a spurious demand on your part. CounterPunch is deprecated so is presumed bad - because it's deprecated. The usage can then be assumed not to support the claim. So look at the claims the bad source was supporting. Does it look plausible? Is this unsupported by any other cites? Is it a remarkable claim with no other sourcing? Act accordingly.

You cannot demand that a deprecated source be inspected in the manner of a reliable source - because it's a deprecated source. It's presumed bad. That's what deprecation is for: to save precisely the sort of arguments you keep trying to draw others into, in your efforts to treat a deprecated source as if it is not deprecated - David Gerard (talk) 22:19, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I can, when you are removing obviously usable sources. Deprecated does not mean blacklisted. WP:DEPS says this very clearly. You are attempting to make a new policy here, and doing so through edit-warring. You cannot claim that it is not indiscriminate in one breath and then in the next say oh Im not spending the time to look at the source. And it also ignores you removing ABOUTSELF links to mundane details like a person being married. nableezy - 22:21, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• David, I still haven't looked into the ins and outs of this, but wouldn't it have been better to stick to the facts that you provided in the first paragraph of this post? I'm sure that someone could provide a counter-example to show you that "always" is wrong, so why say it? Phil Bridger (talk) 22:25, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 2

• Is there any recommended proposal on behavioral issues? Otherwise, this should be closed so that they can bicker in an appropriate forum where a resolution of policy can be reached and some of us can be saved from it clogging their watchlist. Slywriter (talk) 22:29, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that David Gerard stop removing sources indiscriminately, in violation of WP:FAIT when multiple users are saying his editing should at the least slow down, and if he refuses that he be blocked. nableezy - 22:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm well aware of positions staked out and re-affirm my statement that this is not the place for a dispute over interpretation of policy.Slywriter (talk) 22:38, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• (Somewhat) uninvolved editor here. I found this discussion while reading an article about TrueCar, clicking the history tab out of curiosity, noticing that Gerard removed a deprecated source from that article, and looking at his contributions out of blatant curiosity (I had encountered him in the past and wondered what he is up to these days...). I am also aware that he has been in some kind of trouble for unrelated matters that ended up being covered in the press, though I can't recall the exact circumstances. I can relate to being frustrated with nonsense sources repeatedly being introduced into articles as I personally have removed references from Rational-Wiki, Conservapedia, social media sites, and even other Wikipedia articles on a regular basis (frankly, Conservapedia ought to be deprecated due to being an open wiki, and Rational-Wiki, which Gerard is ironically heavily invested in, ought to be more than deprecated due to being an open wiki that has tolerated two people who have been the subject of WMF trust and safety office actions on Wikipedia using R-W to post further attacks on Wikipedians including doxxing and threats of off-wiki attacks, with one of those being a former board member there... I can go further on that in the proper forum at another time). To be blunt, bad sources are a direct threat to the encyclopedia's integrity and, with some common sense exceptions, they need to quickly removed along with any bad information obtained from them. However, without looking deep into this situation with the source to render an opinion as to whether it should be kept or removed, David Gerard knows better than to try to remove all traces of sources he does not like, and it is my opinion that a Wikipedian with the experience Gerard has should know better than to violate WP:NPA by calling someone an "idiot" in an edit summary. I would support a WP:TROUTing of Gerard and some topic bans if he can't stay out of trouble. If he violates those, blocks are on the table. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 03:15, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
  • The "idiot" remark was made in reverting Talk page vandalism by a now-blocked vandalism-only account, so I honestly can't find it in me to get too upset about it. XOR'easter (talk) 04:27, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
    • I'd place this comment in the same category as comments from some I know off-wiki who think that petty criminals deserve to get killed by police... I don't care about what the blocked user was doing, I care what an administrator on the English Wikipedia is doing. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 19:56, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
• And now, while an RSN RFC has concluded that Counterpunch is now deprecated, David continues to act by FIAT in mass removal of Counterpunch (see recent contributions as of today). [13]. The timing shows no likely attempt to find replacement sources or use alternate tags. For example, one pulled at random [14] that David removed a Counterpunch link and replaced it wiht a cn, but I found a source in 2 mins [15]. This is disruptive behavior, particularly in light of this ANI thread and discussion about reviewing what deprecated means. Yes, David is doing something within policy, but not in a manner that the continuity fully agrees is the right approach - the same problem with had with BetaCommand around NFC and which we blocked him for. Being in the right in regards to dealing with poor sources does not mean being right in practice, and this is basically enforcing David's view of deprecation by FIAT. --Masem (t) 18:03, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
  • "fully agrees" is doing all the work in your statement, in that there are editors such as yourself who have consistently disagreed with removal of deprecated sources, and consistently advocated for hindering such removals on spurious grounds. Thank you for finally conceding that it's fully within policy, however, even if you don't like it - David Gerard (talk) 18:07, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

    I think you need to stop what you are doing right now until there is community wide consensus for it. My 2 cents.Selfstudier (talk) 18:09, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

    There has been for a few years now, with repeated threads in ANI finding so. But if you can swing a change to the meaning of "deprecation", that might change the community wide consensus. I also urge you to review WP:V, which is policy, on the necessity of reliable sources, which means not leaving unreliable sources - David Gerard (talk) 18:12, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

    There is an RFC running, where if my counting is correct, the position that CP articles be treated as SPS is currently in the majority.Selfstudier (talk) 18:15, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

    From WP:V Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[2] the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references. Consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step.[4] WP:V doesn't say "must", the reading you are going on, and goes against the wording of DEPS. Now that you are aware that there is discussion to review DEPS and determine what deprecation means and how deprecated citations should be handled , continuing to act on your stance of the read of policy is a FIAT violation. --Masem (t) 02:03, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Would welcome closure of this so that a RFAR may be filed. nableezy - 18:16, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable sources can only be used as sources on themselves. The burden to produce reliable sources lies with the editor who wants to restore material that was supported by these sources. This is policy, i.e WP:V. Deprecated sources are unreliable sources where the practice is that the policy is actively enforced. The practice is already supported by policy and enforcing policy is not disruption, couldn't get any simpler. If anything, the addition of citation needed tags, instead of outright removal of the material that such a source is being used to support, is quite generous. Most of the opposition either comes from those who disagree that a specific source should be deprecated or from those who are opposed to the process of deprecation itself. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 22:46, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Looking at this from the outside for the last couple of days, it seems highly unusual that David Gerard should continue to make these removal edits. Shouldn't this be stopped, either by courtesy of David Gerard or by standard practice of disputes until this is resolved? Regardless of who prevails in this dispute it would seem best practice to stop editing. Especially in light of the simultaneous RSN discussion about CounterPunch. I am obviously not a heavy hitter here, but some of this seems crazy to me. Cheers and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. --SVTCobra 02:11, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

• I don't think there's anything wrong with what DG is doing. People have been complaining about the ambiguous nature of WP:DEPS and WP:DEPREC, but TBH I think they clearly support what DG is doing, and indications to the contrary are from overly polite language instead of any actual guideline. Or at least, I don't know how to read use of the source is generally prohibited in any other way but "remove this source almost everywhere". WP:DEPS is more diplomatic, gesturing towards the reliable sources guideline instead of speaking explicitly, but agrees on this point: deprecated sources are also unreliable in almost all situations, and per WP:RS unreliable sources shouldn't be used. It also says that uses of the source must fall within one of the established acceptable uses, implying that uses that do not should be removed.

WP:DEPS says Deprecation is not a blanket retroactive "ban" on using the source in absolutely every situation but only because of the specific and small exceptions listed. It also says Deprecated sources should not be considered to be either unique or uniquely unreliable but in context this is in reference to the universe of junk sources, not relative to the RSes usually cited on Wikipedia, as it also says Deprecation is a status indicating that a source almost always falls below Wikipedia's standards of reliability and its very first line is Deprecated sources are highly questionable sources. Deprecation is not "super unreliability" but it IS "consistent unreliability". Loki (talk) 20:23, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

So where is the evidence for consistent unreliability here? All I see are score of diffs, googled from over 70,000 articles, cited to claim that CP is a conspiracy-mongering, holocaust-denialism urging, anti-Semitic genocide-favouring website. Were the non-wiki world of scholarship and journalism aware of that several scores of ranking scholars and researchers, many Jewish, would never have allowed their articles to appear there. All I see so far is evidence a random group of anonymous editors know much more than what its staff and contributors know about its hidden agenda which is, according to whom you pick, to promote the far-right or the far-left.Nishidani (talk) 20:58, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

I think this comment helps to stress what the issue is. Ignoring any time factor, and looking at how sources are being remove from sources labeled deprecated, there doesn't seem anything wrong with these actions from DEPS and othe policy. However, what is not being considered is the time factor. That DG turned around immediately after Counterpunch was made deprecated is the problem. If tomorrow CNN was made deprecated, would it be reasonable to have editors rush to wipe all CNN sources from WP in a few days time in a bot like fashion? No, that would be disruptive to the work; we would expect editors to spend time find alternate sources give how prolific CNN had been used. Hence why we nearly always use grandfathering approach when content polices are changed to avoid disruption and give editors time to correct properly, before going for the slash and burn approach to bring articles to compliance. That is also consistent with DEPS. The speed and clear lack of human review in these removals is what is the problem in wake of extremely recent changes to source status. Either we should have grandfatering in place or ask those removing to use better human judgment on removal options, and not just go for removal.--Masem (t) 21:38, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Continues today, and if nobody is going to stop him and he will not stop himself from removing entirely easily sourceable material reprinted in a number of sources, then I again ask that this be closed to allow for an AC case to be requested. nableezy - 22:12, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

This is your second admission that no admin will act on your lengthy claims of malfeasance. There are a number of possible explanations: 1. I have a hold over the entire admin corps; or 2. your claims aren't evidence of malfeasance. If you think you have an arbitration case because no admin will act on your claims of malfeasance, I mean, nobody can stop you - David Gerard (talk) 22:17, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

(p.s.: I do not in fact have a hold over the entire admin corps, and many admins have told me I've been wrong and dumb in the past.) - David Gerard (talk) 22:18, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Multiple admins have said there is a problem here, you have just ignored them. That you appear to be one of the WP:UNBLOCKABLES doesnt change that. I get nobody is going to block you, I knew that from the start of this thread. But we are required to pursue lower DR methods prior to opening a case request, and so I did. Now that you continue to ignore the multiple admins who have told you to stop with your WP:FAIT violating editing, Id like to proceed with the final step of DR, that being requesting an ArbCom case. nableezy - 22:30, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

ah, you're literally claiming that I have a hold over the entire admin corps. I note you aren't even objecting to any particular edits, but to the mere fact of removing a deprecated source today - David Gerard (talk) 22:31, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

No, if I were literally claiming that I would have literally said that. Maybe dont put words in my mouth. And no, I very much object to individual edits, including this removal of a convenience link, this ABOUTSELF removal, and several other inexplicable removals. nableezy - 22:42, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

There are also other edits listed in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deprecated and unreliable sources.Selfstudier (talk) 22:46, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Almost a hundred removals today in the span of ~70 minutes. If you're removing likely uncontroversial things like a hypothetical ice-free Arctic Ocean being sometimes called a "Blue Ocean Event" (diff) which I restored (diff) using an academic reference I found from super quick search, you probably don't spend enough time looking what content you're removing. Same with this removal of a prose mention of CounterPunch and the name of an article (diff) which was not even cited to the magazine itself. RoseCherry64 (talk) 15:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, deprecated sources shouldn't be present in Wikipedia in general. Unless you are objecting to all of those claimed 100 edits, then citing the number merely means a backlog of known bad sourcing is being worked on - David Gerard (talk) 19:17, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

And also: CounterPunch is a magazine of radical political activism. Why on earth are you regarding it as in any way an appropriate source for scientific jargon? It should be obvious it isn't, even if it wasn't deprecated - David Gerard (talk) 19:40, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

The bad sources aren't being "worked on". They're being removed by editing at breakneck speed. I cannot say what percentage of the removal edits you've done today, or any day I object to. Why? The edit summaries give no indication about what was removed so I oppose all of them that remove more than content between ref tags with the standard edit summary you've used. If you used summaries like "removed mention of Blue Ocean Event as an alternative name due to deprecated source cited", or put a notice of the removed content to a new talk page section, I wouldn't have any trouble with what you're doing because then editors who want to improve the articles can find the talk page section, say 6 months from now, and decide if there's other sources that support reintroducing the content.

I don't consider it to be an optimal source for the term, but the term itself is notable and searching "Blue Ocean Event" in any search engine would lead you to believe the use of the term is widespread in popular science. RoseCherry64 (talk) 20:30, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Of course, and as usual, you are not addressing the substantive issue of why you are failing to follow WP:BURDEN and WP:PRESERVE by quickly seeking out an alternative reliable source (or at the very least inserting a cn tag rather than removing easily verifiable content), or assess whether the use/mention of a depreciated source is valid. Don't tell me – it isn't compulsory, right? Well that's great for you but when you're rattling through 2 or more articles per minute (which simply cannot be done with considered judgement), it's very much less so for everybody else. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 11:58, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Violation of the 1RR on both Benny Morris and Tel Rumeida by David Gerard doesn't matter? Huldra (talk) 23:53, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Pretty sure there isn't such. Can you show two reverts in 24 hours? If there is, I will certainly self-revert as the first step - David Gerard (talk) 01:01, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

No diffs for your claim? OK - David Gerard (talk) 09:21, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

This first removal counts as a revert, and then 1RR was breached with this removal; same at Tel Rumeida. Clearly inadvertent, but self-reverting on both would be a good idea - although the fact that people are disputing those removals, where the statements previously supported by CounterPunch are currently sourced to alternative non-deprecated sources, is questionable.

While I am here, Gerard's broad actions appear to be a proper. These are deprecated sources, and broad, bold action to remove them is appropriate, with re-adding them being discussed on a case-by-case basis. BilledMammal (talk) 04:46, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Removal of long standing material is not a revert by an edit and is never enforced Shrike (talk) 08:14, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

That's correct. Doug Weller talk 10:45, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. BilledMammal appears not to understand 1RR, and the edit was fully within 1RR - David Gerard (talk) 10:55, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, I was not aware of that. BilledMammal (talk) 11:28, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Why was The Nation source removed as well?

No one seems to have addressed that above when nableezy pointed it out. This edit has David Gerard removing not just the CounterPunch sources, but also a source from The Nation, which doesn't appear to be addressed in the edit summary given. Was that an accident? I don't see anything on the talk page saying anything against that source in question. Silverseren^C 08:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Uninvolved and want to remain so in this incident but just leaving a clarification about this. The Nation piece is mostly a shorter introduction to the David Price article by Alexander Cockburn, editor for CounterPunch. On the RSN, I wrote this which might explain the reasons for David Gerard removing it:

In this particular example, the suggestion that CounterPunch is unreliable, but it's fine to cite a piece by an editor of CounterPunch (Alexander Cockburn) that is basically a shorter introduction to Said's article that directly advertises the full article because it's in the Nation instead is kinda absurd. Anyone writing an academic work would cite the actual article instead of a summary. RoseCherry64 (talk) 10:21, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree. Doug Weller talk 11:55, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree too. Both sources should stay in this case. --Andreas JN466 13:40, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

More agreement from me. That David Gerard thinks The Nation source here is fine but Counterpunch is not is a sign that something is going wrong in his interpretation of "deprecated source" (no doubt a mainstream interpretation). — Bilorv (talk) 00:06, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it was an accident - the Nation source should stay - David Gerard (talk) 13:20, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

It was removed because, in violation of our policies, David Gerard is editing carelessly and is not examining his edits. He merely wholesale reverted a number of changes. Again, any other user would be blocked for editing in such a manner. Any other user would be blocked for repeatedly removing reliable sources (ABOUTSELF sources are explicitly reliable per WP:V), and edit-warring to do so. This user should be blocked and/or restricted from continuing to edit in such a manner. Something he is doing once again today, removing sources at such a rapid clip that it belies any claim that he is examining each edit. Oh, he still hasnt fixed his errors. Again, any other user would be blocked for such editing. This one should be. nableezy - 16:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:AGF is policy. What is the possible good-faith interpretation of the action? It is policy that you should interpret it that way - David Gerard (talk) 21:34, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Not a suicide pact. Ive noted several errors, basic errors that an IP making would lead to a vandalism block. You have yet to correct a single one. You instead continue with your editing rampage, removing obviously reliable sources and material that no reasonable editor would challenge. Like a person being married. You claimed to be examining each edit manually, but are proceeding at a rate that would be impossible for any human being to do without blindly and indiscriminately removing material. It took 14 hours for somebody else, note not you, to fix this basic error. So yes, AGF until proven otherwise. nableezy - 23:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I have too made the same WP:AGF mistake while removing counterpunch and removed a good source.Such things can happen--Shrike (talk) 05:26, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

This continues, with David Gerard removing sources that are not deprecated, and edit warring to do so. See here. Note that is not CounterPunch, it is Gush Shalom. This is disruptive and tendentious editing, and it continues despite the obvious lack of consensus for it. nableezy - 17:58, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

And here where he removes Bleacher Report on a boxing match, not even pretending to pay attention that it was not the Daily Mail reference he removed. And then says the blind behavior is on the other end. nableezy - 18:41, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Frankly, this looks like replacing a terrible "source" with whatever else came first to hand (the Bleacher Report story is the first Google hit after the Wikipedia article). That's indiscriminate editing. And it's not the way to find the best sources. XOR'easter (talk) 23:56, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

You can not like the Bleacher Report as much as you like (the same arguments could be presented against almost any source), it isn't depreciated, and so DG had no business removing it and the associated content (without discussion). By using rollback, it makes it even more obvious that he didn't bother to check before clicking, which is also a CIR problem. He also didn't even bother checking after being questioned, which is inexplicable, especially when this discussion is ongoing. As has been described by many here, DG is acting without due care and it needs to stop. I don't think anyone is contesting the justifiable removal of depreciated sources, it's the total lack of effort in doing so – contrary to the guidance of both editing policy (i.e. WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM) and verifiability policy (i.e. WP:BURDEN) – that is the problem, which results in indiscriminately removing good easily verifiable content, permitted depreciated source use, and worst of all, leaving potentially bad unverifiable content (with a cn tag). _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 11:23, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Good removal I don't know how can any add such source to WP:BLP Shrike (talk) 09:48, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

This is not a cheer/damning face off, Shrike. Give a rationale. That DG doesn't even care to examine the sources he is removing,- that he indeed claims he doesn't have to because one 'presumes' anything and everything with a CP origin is automatically invalid source, that he doesn't check the diff quality of contributors to deprecation he approves of, that he can't recognize the name of a superb reporter or scholar and doesn't care who they may be, has been shown in detail below. It's blind, blanket reverting, and, in that sense faith-based, not empirical or even, given the equivocations in policy readings here, grounded I n clear policy. The persistence while challenges to his rampage are being discussed, looks like provocative recalcitrance. Nishidani (talk) 20:50, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

If anything here is needlessly "provocative", language like "rampage" surely qualifies. XOR'easter (talk) 18:32, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

I said I did not want to be involved here, but I did notice this diff, where the name CounterPunch and the name of an article was removed with the same justification. I restored this because it feels incredibly weird to remove prose mentions of deprecated magazines, when the title of Reed's article and where it was published is mentioned in The New Yorker and other places, and is used as background information about Reed's own work. RoseCherry64 (talk) 11:33, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

It should also be noted that the title of another Reed article for CP is still included in his revision, as well as a reference to a "second critique for the magazine" which doesn't make sense when the name of the magazine is removed. RoseCherry64 (talk) 11:45, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

My understanding of use of "deprecated sources" is that they should be avoided, but "Citations to deprecated sources should not be removed indiscriminately, and each case should be reviewed separately." I would also be of the opinion that a deprecated source can be used in a BLP where it's an article written by the subject of the BLP. Yet here, both content and the source are being removed because "rm deprecated source Counterpunch (per WP:RSP)". Am I not correct in thinking there's nothing at all wrong with use of the source in that context? Am I not also correct in thinking that rather than removing the content, if the source is being removed it should normally be replaced with a 'citation needed' tag? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 15:06, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Bastun: in this case I don't think it should have been used anyway, we should use secondary sources, not simply pick quotes from the BLP's statements/writings. Doug Weller talk 15:13, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Ok, our reading of WP:PRIMARY differs, then - I would have assumed it could be used in a case like this, but fair enough. What about removing the content rather than just replacing the source with a 'cn' tag? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 16:59, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

On Tanya Reinhart, DG removed all reference to Noam Chomsky's obituary of the subject, because it was linked to a CounterPunch repost.[16] It was trivially easy to find the original obituary on Chomsky's own site, but a pain to restore the text with a suitable reference. This could have been avoided had DG bothered to check, and himself insert the correct reference. Failing this, a citation needed tag would have alerted other editors to the need for a reference. As it was, he reduced the entire section on Reinhart's professional work to just one sentence. RolandR (talk) 21:52, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Can we decide what the heck "deprecation" means, or alternately, use a different word?

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

---

I have noticed a bunch of people here seem to have completely different ideas of what it means for a source to be deprecated. The word itself, in a literal sense, means "to ward off by prayer" (deprecari). In colloquial usage, it can mean anything from "disliked" to "strongly and officially advised against". In programming, a "deprecated" feature or method generally means one that you're advised not to use when writing new code. Sometimes this is because a better or more secure feature has been introduced, sometimes this is because supporting the deprecated feature is an inconvenient timesink, and sometimes this is because a haphazard system is being streamlined into something simpler. In some of these cases, it makes sense to go through old code and rip out every instance of the function (say you're upgrading a system from Python 2.6 to 3.5 and a bunch of the old shit will literally stop working). In other cases, the situation is more lenient (legacy code will continue to run fine but it's a good idea to use the better thing if you are writing new stuff). At any rate, the fact that something's "deprecated" doesn't make any definitive case for what action you should take regarding it. People saying that it "literally" means one thing or the other are... well, it literally means to avert disaster by appealing to the gods, so I don't think we are talking about literal definitions here.

I think that this discussion (which we've had several iterations of by now) would go a lot better if we came up with some clarifying language for what it meant, or perhaps used a different word, like "blacklisted", "forbidden", "censored"... or, alternatively, "non-recommended", "superseded", "obsolete" or "not very good". jp×g 22:38, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Support The above is a policy disagreement and community should resolve policy by discussing policy, not the behavior of two editors with entrenched positions.Slywriter (talk) 22:45, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
• Relevant discussions: Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources § Deprecated sources section of WP:RS; Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 164 § On the use of deprecated sources JBchrch talk 22:47, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Note: I've undone @ScottishFinnishRadish:'s NAC on this section because it has only been a couple of days and there've been a variety of rumblings about different actions. I'm not confident that any consensus will emergy, but it seems too soon for a definitive close. jp×g 23:01, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
• Frankly, I don't think that swapping out the terminology will stop people from getting upset that their favorite sources are being removed, which is what most of these arguments typically arise from. We can bikeshed the jargon all we want, but the underlying psychology will remain the same. XOR'easter (talk) 23:04, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I am not sure that this is an accurate summary of what's going on. It seems to me like, in this discussion as well as the previous ones linked, there is a concrete disagreement about what "deprecation" actually means. That is to say, we are uncertain of what actions editors actually have consensus to carry out based on an RfC closing as "deprecate". If everyone who commented on the RfC supported "discourage its use and remove it if bettter sources exist", and people actually editing the encyclopedia are interpreting it as "remove at all costs wherever found", there is a problem, and the actions are not supported by consensus. Conversely, if RfC commenters agreed on "go through Wikipedia with a chainsaw and rip this website out of every page you find it on", and editors are interpreting this as "we ought to reduce the use of this source somewhat", this is also a problem.

As for "favorite" sources, I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't know how relevant it is. My personal opinion of Vice, for example, is that it has gone utterly to the dogs in the last few years, but I'd still object to someone removing it from hundreds of articles if I didn't think there was consensus for its removal. I think the psychology here is more that people disagree on an issue of fact, and some people think it is one way, whereas some people think it is another way. jp×g 23:36, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I can only call it as I see it, and that's my take-away from many, many arguments on Talk pages, at RSN, etc. XOR'easter (talk) 23:48, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I've explained elsewhere that given WP has computer-savvy user bent, that the choice of using "deprecation" for sources reviewed in an RFC (like Daily Mail) may have been a poor choice due to the fact that in comp sci, deprecation is more a warning that such material will no longer be supported and should be removed in time. Indeed, the reading of WP:DEPS supports this concept and the issue with these removals is that they violate that principle, treating the sources as blacklisted and thus can be removed without worrying about the mess left behind. That said, I am all for a discussion to be clear if we can support "deprecated" as a lower rating of a source below "generally unreliable" but not as low as "blacklisted" and if we need another level for sources like The Daily Mail, Breitbart, or RT that are to be avoided outside ABOUTSELF circumstances. Once that's clarified, the past RNS RFCS on specific sources should be reviewed just to know how to classify them. --Masem (t) 00:00, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• From reading the archived discussion on this topic linked by JBchrch, it seems like there's never been a clear consensus that deprecated sources should be a priori treated differently from other sources in an article. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:24, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Indeed. And as such, this ANI will end like all the others; inconclusively. I don't really think David Gerard's removals are in line with deprecation as defined by the DM1 RfC. They're indiscriminate. But DG has been quite clear that he won't stop, and there's enough policy ambiguity for the community not to step in on DG individually. I think the way forward is to construct an actual guideline for deprecated sources. I would do it either through drafting phases to construct the proposed guideline page, and then RfC, or as a two-part RfC; the first, to create a Wikipedia:Deprecated sources guideline on the relatively uncontentious parts and then a second part to deal with more contentious parts. I think the key issues that need to be addressed are: the guidance on removing sources after they've been deprecated, and what it takes for a source to be deprecated (as distinct to the spam blacklist or just being generally unreliable), specifically what kinds of evidence. Finally, some formal clarification on accepted usages of deprecated sources. I think this is urgently needed, because deprecation is inconsistent. While we're at it, a more accurate term like Wikipedia:Discouraged sources might be better than software lingo like 'deprecated'. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:31, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    • The fact, though, is that there is currently no protection for unreliable sources - for the most part, it is completely normal and acceptable to go through and remove unreliable sources just like depreciated ones. There's perhaps a somewhat higher expectation that you'll be cautious, search for reasonable replacement sources, avoid removing text for which it's reasonably likely an acceptable source could be found, etc., but part of the reason depreciation was created was because the Daily Mail, as an unreliable source, was supposed to be getting phased out after the numerous discussions agreed on that point; and that was happening far too slowly (in fact, its numbers kept increasing) because people kept adding new citations to it. Every proposal I've seen to slow the removal of depreciated sources has seemed ass-backwards to me because it would set the bar for removing depreciated sources higher than the (currently nonexistent) bar for removing unreliable sources. --Aquillion (talk) 08:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
      • Yes, this, exactly. Building up an extra barrier around deprecated sources, like by requiring an intermediate step with a {{better citation needed}} tag and a waiting period, just makes it harder to remove deliberate disinformation and state propaganda from our encyclopedia. XOR'easter (talk) 20:46, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

That isnt what is happening here. This is removing an exceptional source (see Sara Roy). This along with a whole bunch of other careless mistakes, is removing an exceptional source (see David Price (anthropologist)). Stop pretending that what is happening here is the removal of deliberate disinformation and state propaganda, it is a fabrication. nableezy - 20:52, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Deprecated sources do indeed include deliberate disinformation and state propaganda. Putting extra regulations on how deprecated sources should be removed is protecting exactly that kind of material. XOR'easter (talk) 04:04, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

The sources being removed as deprecated that are under discussion here do not include deliberate disinformation and state propaganda. They include actual scholars writing in the area of their academic expertise. It is entirely fabricated that anybody is arguing for protection of deliberate disinformation and state propaganda. If you are going to apply this label to a whole host of things you cant just justify your actions based on the most extreme part of a wide ranging set. nableezy - 04:50, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

No, people are talking about DG's entire project of removing deprecated sources. And, indeed, they are coming to judgments based on the most extreme part of a wide ranging set, i.e., a few examples out of thousands where he maybe, maybe, messed up. XOR'easter (talk) 05:11, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

• As I've said repeatedly, if you object to that you ought to be challenging the depreciation of the source directly (ie. start a new RFC.) Yes, there are occasional exceptions, but exceptions are exceptions because they're, well, exceptional, rather than being the sort of thing the source publishes regularly, and as far as I can tell you've argued repeatedly (and the crux of your objection here) that Counterpunch generally publishes stuff that is reliable because of who the author is. If there are generally applicable exceptions that allow a source to be used, then the source can't even be called generally unreliable and isn't suitable for depreciation, so that's an argument you ought to make in an RFC about the reliability of the source. But right now, if there were a consensus that the high quality of authors there kept it from being generally unreliable, then it would be yellow at RSP and not red. --Aquillion (talk) 08:19, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

• Support and establish a best-practices standard operating procedure for deprecation. Perhaps we need a separate label and category of sources that are actually prohibited and should be mass-removed. BD2412 T 23:38, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
• Support The term deprecation is a computing/IT term, for something that was in use and is no longer, meaning there was a period when it was functional, correct and useful but it is no longer, so it out of use. It is really the wrong term, and shouldn't be changed. We need something much much more accurate and instantly recognisable. They have always been junk sources. For example, they're has never a time when the Daily Mail wasn't junk, except perhaps during WW2. Infowars is slightly different, its almost disinformation and was never anything else. So the new term needs some flexibilty and be recognisable. All the disinformation that is on the go, since we are the truth. I hope that helps. Its late. scope_creep^Talk 02:03, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
  • That is not quite correct. In computing, a deprecated feature is one that should be avoided for new projects but which still works and is still supported although it probably will be removed in a year or two. It is not necessarily "out of use". Johnuniq (talk) 02:48, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
• Support This may be as simple as formally adopting Wikipedia:Deprecated sources, although the Acceptable Uses section may need a bit of a cleanup as it contains patently absurd statements such as "editors are also expected to use common sense and act to improve the encyclopedia." Deprecation is something that we just sort of started doing after the Daily Mail RfC; the definition varies depending on how each RfC was closed and which little caveats the closer decided to include. I think that in general the intent of each close is the same, for example WP:ABOUTSELF is applied fairly consistent across the board even though some closers mentioned it and others didn't. A set definition would help clear up any confusion and wikilawyering. –dlthewave ☎ 05:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
• Comment I don't much like the concept of deprecation at all. A lot of the problem comes from the deeper issue of what a "source" is. When a magazine publishes an article, is the magazine the source or is the article the source? Unfortunately, the official answer is "yes" and this enables people who don't want an article to be cited to attack a weaker point instead. Rather then arguing directly that an article is unreliable, they attack the publisher on the grounds that it published other articles which everyone agrees are unreliable and nobody would consider citing. "The magazine published crap article A, so we will deprecate the magazine and now you can't cite article B even though it is authored by a highly respected expert in the field." Since nobody would even dream of citing article A, the motivation must be to eliminate article B. So deprecation becomes a convenient tool. (I believe that is an accurate description of the current case.) The community is perfectly capable of deciding "article A is crap and we won't cite it, while article B was written by a subject expert and is citable". Zero^talk 07:20, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
  • The contrary argument would be that the fact that crap article A was published at all means that the source has such low standards for fact checking that we can't trust anything they publish. Even experts need to be peer-reviewed. Mlb96 (talk) 17:15, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

    That makes no sense, if the expert had published it on toilet paper we could use it but because he has published it in CP we can't? CP don't fact check anyway.Selfstudier (talk) 18:05, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose, at least without a more specific proposal. The original purpose of depreciation, as I recall it, was that the Daily Mail, despite repeated and clear consensuses that it was unreliable, continued to be used across much of the encyclopedia, in part because of new people adding citations to it. The current terminology and implementation of depreciation has largely resolved that problem; while there may be some individual sources whose categorization or usages are worth quibbling over, overall, depreciation is working. Wikipedia's sourcing since we depreciated the Daily Mail has generally improved sharply in quality, and in fact we've gotten significant coverage from outside sources as being one of the few places that managed to find a way to deal with the era of "fake news", despite being a user-generated encyclopedia. There might be room for a few refinements or clarifications around the edges, but I'm completely opposed to anything that would substantially change the terminology or the way we handle them, per WP:DONTFIXIT. --Aquillion (talk) 08:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
• Neutral - WP:DEPREC lists the differences pretty well: use of the source is generally prohibited. But I don't really understand what the point of deprecation is if we can go on and use a deprecated publisher for more than ABOUTSELF (contra DEPREC). If we allow deprecated to be used for more than ABOUTSELF, then there is no difference to generally unreliable sources. Per WP:NOTRELIABLE: Questionable sources should be used only as sources for material on themselves, i.e. generally unreliable sources already have the highest bar for acceptance (but here we may be more lenient with e.g. texts by experts). If - contra WP:DEPREC - deprecation is allowed for more than ABOUTSELF, then we might as well get rid of it altogether. The clarification RFC needs to be about what the difference between generally unreliabe and deprecated is - if we don't want to follow WP:DEPREC --Mvbaron (talk) 08:29, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose making any decision here; it would probably be better to use different language altogether that cannot be misinterpreted, either by good or bad-faith actors, however discussion on the way forward should be at an appropriate forum, not ANI. Accordingly, I suggest closing this sub-thread. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 10:12, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

  You know, that looks like what some of the "support people are saying. We need to make a decision, but not here. Doug Weller talk 10:36, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• How about creating an RfC subpage (Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deprecated sources)? Clearly some brainstorming is needed and there are various questions and concerns, so maybe that’s a good place to start ironing out details before a guideline proposal is put forward? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:06, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

  MvBaron has a valid point I think. The RFC product should spell out the difference between generally unreliable and deprecated (including how they are dealt with) so maybe title it Deprecated and unreliable sources.Selfstudier (talk) 12:25, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

  @Selfstudier: I created a draft RfC before I saw this, but the "Criteria for deprecation" section was intended to address this issue (as I agree it is an unresolved problem). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:44, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, to be clear, what I propose is that an RfC be opened somewhere else, perhaps a dedicated subpage (and advertised on WP:CENT) -- not that we try to draft a new guideline on the fly in the middle of an AN/I thread, which would be a grotesque shitshow. It's probably worth noting that in this very subsection about the ambiguity of "deprecation", there are eight instances where someone said "depreciation" instead... jp×g 13:36, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it is, I added the draft to cent just now. maybe some notifys on pump, V etc?Selfstudier (talk) 13:43, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I removed it for a bit. I want to get some thoughts first to make sure it's the right structure and we're asking the right questions before it goes live, since it's poorer form to modify a live RfC that's in-progress. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:49, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

You marked it DRAFT? I'll go remove it again :) Selfstudier (talk) 13:56, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, you did already, lol. I thought it was fine as was but OK, if you want a pre pre RFC, we can do that:)Selfstudier (talk) 13:59, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose per the WP:DONTFIXIT argument of Aquillion. What we're seeing are the inevitable edge cases of (a) a very small set of cases where reasonable people can disagree on the best course of action, and (b) wall-of-texting in favor of sources that some people really, really don't want removed. These are not sufficient reason to tamper with mechanisms that help keep Wikipedia a significantly less awful place than most of the Internet. XOR'easter (talk) 20:44, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

  Ultimately the issue is a mixture of policy, and whenever people attempt to clarify what the consensus on the policy is, certain editors derail the discussion with bludgeoning/battlegrounding/etc (see Wikipedia_talk:Deprecated_sources#Proposed_clarification_of_deprecated_sources_guidelines, for instance). Heck, the last time we were here (Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1066#Indiscriminate_removal_of_deprecated_sources) we had an admin closing the discussion after 4 hours (ultimately reversed). It's valid for the consensus to be "all is fine", although I doubt that's actually what the consensus is per the reasons we discussed last time this was at ANI, but we can never actually have that discussion. So no progress can be made either on the behavioural front, or the policy front. Tbh I agree with nableezy's idea of just taking it to ArbCom, since I'm at a loss for ideas at this point; the behavioural element prevents progress. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:42, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Strenuously disagree that there are behavioral issues here. The issue, to me, is this. Before the depreciation RFC, IIRC, we had something like 12,000 cites to the Daily Mail, and similar numbers for many other high-profile depreciated sources. Now we have something like 14. I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that there are enough places the Daily Mail could legitimately have been cited under WP:V to get us anywhere remotely close to those 12,000 citations. That means that anyone who wants to change how we handle or enforce depreciation needs to answer two questions - first, do they agree that we ultimately needed to drastically cut the number of citations to a source like the Daily Mail, and that 12,000 citations to it was almost certainly indicative that of many violations of WP:V / WP:RS? And second, if they intend to slow down or prevent mass removals, what's their alternate route to get us to those low double-digit numbers for sources like that? Because it feels to me like people are beating around the bush of those fundamental questions; if someone thinks it would still be acceptable for us to cite the Daily Mail 12,000 times, then in my view they're fundamentally challenging either the consensus that it's generally unreliable (not just the depreciation; we should not be citing a source like that so heavily), or they are fundamentally challenging WP:V. Either way, focusing on DG is a distraction because I don't think anyone can articulate a way to get from 12,000 citations to 14 without it looking, basically, like what he's been doing; to me, depreciation was an agreement that we needed to drastically cut those 12,000 citations, and DG's actions have mostly been a good-faith implementation of that consensus. --Aquillion (talk) 03:12, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

I doubt anyone is saying it was okay in the long-term for WP to be citing DM 12,000 times post-RFC. But, outside of BLP articles, there was never any deadline suggested by the RFCs nor in general WP:DEADLINE that those DM cites had to be removed post-haste. Because some had been in place for years, it would be reasonable to develop a consensus-based grandfathering practice (as done in most similar situations) to give editors the chance to remove and replace the DM cites with more reliable ones or remove material otherwise unsourcable over, say, a six month period, after which it would have been 100% fair game for David or others to strip out DM cites without impunity. (This again is commonly an approach taken with "deprecation" in computer science and other areas) That's a non-disruptive approach to deal with long-standing content, and standard practice whenever we have changed a content policy or guideline that would affect a fairly large number of articles. But the issue stems from David taking it on themselves to strip DM citations without trying to seek alternate sources or non-disruptive remedies, which is basically against WP:FAIT. Of course, I will assert too that we have a consensus-disagreement on what deprecation means and we need to resolve that first, but that David continues to remove sources in a disruptive manner is still a problem. They may be doing the right thing per WP:V and other policies, but the method of doing it is causing problems, and we have blocked editors for doing that in the past. --Masem (t) 03:25, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Long-standing content doesn't become good just because it's long-standing. Should we dally with removing a hoax if it was extant for ten years? I'm sorry, but this just sounds like imposing a rule that the worse a source is, the harder it should be to remove it. In my view, the disruption is the existence of deprecated sources in Wikipedia articles in the first place. That is what degrades the quality of the encyclopedia. The root cause of the issue isn't DG taking the mission on himself, it's that nobody had taken it up before. But whatever; this kind of bullshit is why I'm probably quitting soon. XOR'easter (talk) 04:11, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

It is not that the content was good that it was long-standing, but that many of these deprecated citations have been in place for years, and we should give editors some reasonable amount of time to do whatever corrections they can with the change in standing of the source. Remember that before the DM RFCs, it should have been taken that the use of DM as a citation was done in good faith on the idea it was a reliable source; the sudden change to make DM deprecated should not be invalidating the past good-faith assumptions that editors were adding appropriate content. If there was a community-set need to have these removed as quickly as possible, that would have been a result of the RFCs, but the only situation on that is DM on BLP being an absolute no-no. Every time in the past where a content policy or guideline has changed in a manner that affects many hundreds+ articles where the change cannot be done by a bot, we have always used some type of grandfathering approach to give time to transition and avoid outright disruption. Same here: given that most of the DM cites prior to the RFC were added in good faith, we should be giving time in good faith to fix them, and, as per DEPS, not wholesale removal or disruption. The ultimate goal is to remove the DM links outside the few ABOUTSELF allowances, but we should not be massively disrupting article content created in good faith to get there, and that's the behavioral problem here, particularly as David is well aware these actions are contentious with some editors and that there's motions to resolve PAG in a way to be clear what should be done. (To wit, any DM links added after the RFCs can be presumed to be done in bad faith and can be removed on sight, but that's not what is basically being talked here). --Masem (t) 04:20, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

...and we should give editors some reasonable amount of time to do whatever corrections they can with the change in standing of the source. On average, the rate at which such corrections actually happen is never. The bad content sits until an editor's hand is forced. If there's a better way to force those hands, well, good luck finding it, because this kind of time-and-energy-wasting drama that throws a shield over bad content and provides covering fire for trolls has just about succeeded in getting me to stop caring. XOR'easter (talk) 04:30, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this. Anything cited to unreliable sources, anywhere on Wikipedia, should eventually be fixed; this isn't some new controversial statement, this is core policy. There was broad agreement that the Daily Mail was unreliable for a long time before it was depreciated, and in all that time, progress at reducing our reliance on it was nonexistent. Arguing "well, it's generally unreliable, but you can't remove it too fast" amounts to either challenging WP:V or challenging the consensus of its general unreliability. I also disagree with the premise that the removals are disruptive - as I say below, I feel a {{cn}} tag is generally preferable to a citation to an unreliable source, since it warns the reader that the text is unverified and encourages anyone reading it to either verify it or, if they decide it can't be verified, rework or remove it. It is better to fix it completely, but a cn tag is generally an improvement - arguing otherwise, again, means challenging the consensus that depreciated the source. --Aquillion (talk) 04:36, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

That's why I've said that this is a limited period for grandfathering, something like six months. After six months, any links to DM or RT or whatever source would then be in the clear to be removed without having to supply an alternate source or the like (that would even mean not having to leave a cn). Such grandfathering is standard practice when a change of PAG affects long-standing content, and not considered to be disruptive nor forcing hands (as long as the grandfathering is announced at places like VPP and CENT) No one seems to be asking for never removing these citations, just that the means to remove them should be handled in a non-disruptive way. And it is important to stress that there is no deadline to fix sourcing, outside of BLP-related content. Grandfathering like this is a balance of that lack of deadline with the need to remove deprecated sources in a reasonable timely manner. --Masem (t) 16:53, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Excellent. Same principle can be applied to GU sources as well, which are essentially the same thing as deprec. Write a script that flags them all for x months auto deletion if still extant. All the expert opinions will be gone as well, though, and then perhaps people will be a little less inclined to class sources such as CP as GU in future.Selfstudier (talk) 17:03, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

The reason those are called "generally unreliable" is that there are still cases they can be, and thus should require human review before removal (particularly when several GUs are only for specific topics, like Fox for politics and climate change, or Rolling Stone for politics). "Deprecated" are where ultimate we want no links at all to those sites outside ABOUTSELF or where other factors come into play, and thus there's less need for human review of each instance. --Masem (t) 17:08, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

I understand that but I do not see any practical difference, that's essentially what we are asking now for deprec. Like I said, I don't object to mass removal if that's what the community really wants. Be careful what you wish for applies.Selfstudier (talk) 17:16, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

There's a massive difference between generally unreliable sources and those deprecated. In general, because "generally unreliable" may be reliable in some context, non-human removal is a problem. Deprecated sources are known to only be allowed in very limited cases, and thus, ultimately, should be placed on editing blacklists (as to warn editors) and should be removed wholesale by bots - but only after giving editors a chance to reticify their use. There's no such rush to remove those considerd generally unreliable. --Masem (t) 17:30, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there is a rush to remove either and neither do you, thus grandfathering suggestion. But that same grandfathering equally allows human review of unreliable sources and so I maintain my view that there is no practical difference. We can play with x, 3 months for deprec, 6 months for gu, or whatever.Selfstudier (talk) 17:51, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Somehow we always end up back at the Daily Mail, but just to discuss your example situation: He replaced 12,000 citations to Daily Mail with {{cn}} tags, while leaving the content in, and not checking if the content was true or false (presumably, otherwise he would've either removed/replaced it or added a better citation). So, content cited to an unreliable source known for disinformation went from a tracking link of Daily Mail citations and is now lost within the millions of articles within the general "unsourced content" tracking category. The behaviour is fundamentally incomprehensible. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 04:04, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually, he's cut out the content completely in, e.g., [17][18][19][20][21][22][23], etc. XOR'easter (talk) 04:17, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Its almost like those who remove deprecated sources do in fact apply editorial judgement and add {{cn}} tags for content that looks benign or more likely to be verifiable and cut out the content which appear promotional, extraordinary, etc and are less likely to be verifiable. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 05:47, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

This is not benign? A person is not a reliable source for who they are married to? nableezy - 06:16, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Depends on the family. :-P But, more seriously, if the only source that has paid attention to a fact is deprecated, then including it is almost always WP:UNDUE. XOR'easter (talk) 06:23, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

You really think it is UNDUE weight to include in a biography of a person that he is married? Do you not see the circular logic here? And do you not agree that WP:ABOUTSELF links are definitionally reliable for information on themselves? nableezy - 06:57, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Uh, yes, if reliable sources don't discuss a person's marriage, we don't need to talk about it. Many academic biographies exist because their subjects pass WP:PROF and we can write about their work, but information about their families is basically non-existent. XOR'easter (talk) 16:18, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

That's a dead link to a deprecated source on a BLP, effectively unsourced. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 06:24, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Um, look at the history of the article. See the link fixed. Dead links have never ever meant unsourced. See WP:DEADREF. nableezy - 06:57, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

The point was that there were too many red flags in that case. It wasn't removed after you fixed the link, so what's the issue?

Its use is also dicey even in this state, it complies with WP:ABOUTSELF only if you consider Counterpunch to be equivalent to a blog source and consider the article to be entirely authored by them. This is not clear at all, the last paragraph, "Debbie Dupre Quigley is an oncology nurse. She and her husband Bill Quigley, who is a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, spent four nights and five days in a hospital in New Orleans before they were evacuated. They can be reached at ...", reads like a statement from the website about the authors. This is also a BLP so it probably should be removed, at the least, till the new discussion at RSN on whether to treat it as an SPS is concluded. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 07:28, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

lol wow. Both people are co-authors of the piece. And no, a dead link is not a red flag, and no, that is not why it has not been re-removed. It was not re-removed because another editor restored it as clearly permitted by WP:ABOUTSELF. The issue is despite your contention that David is discerning and only removing content that is not mundane that he is indeed removing basic biographical facts about people entirely. nableezy - 07:33, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah they are the co-authors and the ending bit reads like a blurb about the authors from the website, not unlike those present in newspaper op-eds. It's not a red flag solely because of the dead link but because it is also from a deprecated source and is in a BLP, not to mention the ending part of the same sentence is literally unsourced which doesn't bolster confidence. When one is going through a list of articles and encounters something like this, they would most likely identify it as a poorly sourced BLP and will be inclined towards removal. In the end, even basic biographical facts in BLPs need to be properly sourced, treating them as not mundane and removing the entire sentence is still reasonable. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 08:53, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

• I feel that having a {{cn}} tag is, on the whole, generally better than having an unreliable source. It alerts the reader that the cited text is not verified, and it increases the chance that someone reading the article (who probably has at least some interest in the topic) will edit it to add a citation. A CN tag itself is, already, a warning to the reader that "this text may be false, since it lacks a citation"; without that, anyone skimming the article is unlikely to notice that the citation is to an unreliable source, and will therefore take it at face value. I don't think he just indiscriminately replaced every single citation, but the fact is that it required moving quickly and making a lot of changes, because with the sheer number of citations a source that requires the step of depreciation can accumulate, doing it slowly will (given the limited number of people actually interested in that cleanup) not get anywhere in an appreciable amount of time. I'm not seeing any of the vague alternatives people are suggesting as workable - the Daily Mail was widely-agreed to be generally unreliable for years, many people repeatedly pointed out that we were citing it too many times, and while there were token efforts to replace some of them nobody made a dent in it until it was depreciated and efforts were stepped up. Again, I feel that anyone who objects to DG's methods needs an actually practical proposal for how we can drastically trim the usage of an unreliable source in a reasonable timeframe - preferably a demonstrated one (since it's easy to say "oh, let's just go slowly and replace them bit by bit", which is the one method we know did not work for years on end.) --Aquillion (talk) 04:30, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

  Again, I feel that anyone who objects to DG's methods needs an actually practical proposal for how we can drastically trim the usage of an unreliable source in a reasonable timeframe Use a bot and replace all these citations with a variant of {{better source needed}}, or ^{[unreliable source]}? That way you don't lose the link, and you can still track that it's a DM cite so a volunteer who actually wants to review the cite can do so, and there's still a warning to readers (not that the purpose of cleanup tags is to be a warning, supposedly). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:55, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

  We don't need an editor to do what a bot can do. If all we need or want is strip all the sources David Gerard and the others are surplus to requirements.Selfstudier (talk) 15:03, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Then instead of Daily Mail and Russia Today links sitting around for years, we'd have {{better source needed}} or {{deprecated inline}} tags sitting around for years, and we'd still be pointing readers to the Daily Mail and Russia Today. That doesn't really give a reader a clue what's wrong, and it doesn't really offer editors any help, either, since the links to those sources could already be found via in-text searching. And requiring such a step is instruction creep that acts to protect the worst "sources". If someone wants to make a bot that runs around tagging footnotes with {{deprecated inline}}, that's fine, I guess, but it seems to me like wallpapering over the fundamental problem. XOR'easter (talk) 16:12, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

I think you misread what I said there. I have no objection to a bot tossing (indiscriminately) all the sources if that's what the community agreed to. Btw, what do you think is the difference between an unreliable source and a deprecated source? Selfstudier (talk) 16:19, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I was replying to the comment above yours. I'm not sure what your question is getting at; I mean, I could quote Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#Legend, which seems to summarize things fairly well? XOR'easter (talk) 16:27, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

generally unreliable, then follows a list basically repeating the same things y'all keep saying for deprecated. Then for deprecated it says "The source is considered "generally unreliable". I get it, a deprecated source is a generally unreliable source. The only difference in practice is that there are editors going around removing the source en masse. To repeat what I said just before, if the community agreed to that, then fine, script a bot and get on with it and do all the generally unreliable ones while you are at it because they are the same thing. Selfstudier (talk) 16:47, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

For deprecated, it says The source is considered generally unreliable, and use of the source is generally prohibited (emphasis added). The difference in practice is that deprecation is a harsher judgment. Any discussion at RSN that concludes in a deprecation indicates this. XOR'easter (talk) 05:35, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• Close this subthread, this is a distraction, that too with a largely superficial focus on name changing. ANI isn't the place to make policy suggestions. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 22:46, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
  • No, I think this is a useful discussion that should not be closed yet, and I largely agree with Aquillion. A "citation needed" tag is better than a link to a deprecated source for plausible assertions. Contentious assertions cited to deprecated sources should be removed entirely. Who gets to decide what is plausible and what is contentious? Individual editors acting in good faith. In the end, the core content policy of Verifiabilty reigns supreme, and we should never use deprecated sources in an attempt to verify contentious assertions. Wikipedia editors should not be expected or required to function as a "de facto" editorial board for deprecated sources, determining which of their output is reliable, and which isn't. That's a path (one of many) to madness. Cullen328 (talk) 07:46, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

    This is an unfocused subthread at this point, but yeah essentially agree with what you and Aquillion are saying and I have said the same in the main thread. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 09:07, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

• I don’t know David Gerard from a bar of soap. Checking, I see he is a highly productive, indeed valuable editor, with a good many here who recognize and respect his work, on solid grounds. They take it that his recent actions must be okay. He's generally a good editor in the round.

He barged into an area widely regarded as one of the most difficult thematic zones , and in a few days achieved more than what more than a hundred socks managed in decades, impoverishing numerous articles by erasing important sources by ranked authorities. His warrant for this was a finickly stringent one-sided reading (contested by many highly experienced editors here) of deprecation with regard to anything sourced to CounterPunch. Over 15 years, on a rough calculation, I’ve read 1 article a week in it and of these, perhaps I’ve cited a score or two for the I/P area. The criterion I use is status of authorship in the field, competence in the subject matter, etc. Most of the articles are of no encyclopedic value: but, as I listed, over 54 scholars and writers of recognized standing choose to write occasionally for it. So, in summing up, let me quote some remarks here.

WP:V's general requirement that sources be assessed based on context. Rosquill.

You cannot demand that a deprecated source be inspected in the manner of a reliable source -because it's a deprecated source. It's presumed bad. David Gerard.

Rational-Wiki, which Gerard is ironically heavily invested in, ought to be more than deprecated due to being an open wiki that has tolerated two people who have been the subject of WMF trust and safety office actions on Wikipedia using R-W to post further attacks on Wikipedians including doxxing and threats of off-wiki attacks, with one of those being a former board member there. PCHS-NJROTC.

"fully agrees" is doing all the work in your statement. David Gerard

David in this erase CP activism is being lazy. He doesn't care to work on contextual merits. Editing Wikipedia for encyclopedic ends means reading numerous sources for background perspective and content and, when we have borderline cases, closely evaluating the quality of the contribution in terms of its author’s scholarly or professional competence to see whether a general rule about deprecation or even non-mainstream sources has, case by case, grounds for exceptions to retain and use or not. That is laborious, requires deep familiarity with the topic, and careful judgement in context. Editors who, like David, just jump at deprecation listings to zoom through wikipedia erasing at sight the source used are examples of energetic laziness when they do this kind of mechanical weeding. They admit they don’t feel obliged to read the source they erase. For, by virtue of deprecation, they can ‘presume’ it's bad. I can understand it with the Daily Mail. But major scholars don't write for that rag: they do for CP.

How does this work, this carelessness? Well, to cite just one example,in the deprecation RfC, Lord Swag set forth a diff-rich j’accuse list of ‘proofs’ CounterPunch approved genocide, holocaust denial, antisemitism. Patently dopey. It was froth, and I ignored it, expecting editors to check the tirade’s 'evidence' as I had. No, actually many editors quoted with approvgal Swag’s swag of pseudo proofs. Then Gerard chimed in and cited the evidence mustered in the original RfC (where Swag’s material dominated) as proof that CounterPunch merited deprecation. So, I sat down and analysed Swag’s influential ‘case’. Result? Pure trumpery. David just ‘presumed’ at a glance Swag’s evidence was cogent, rather than a mugged up heap of misdirections.

Exactly what is he doing with his energetic removalist indifference to the quality of what he is erasing?

What you appear to get in short is a practice of (a) not needing to know the topic area and the history it deals with (b) indifference to checking what you elide: suffice that it is deprecated, ergo weed out on sight (c) ignoring all the ambiguities of deprecation (as many editors have noted) (d) taking blindly on trust, without scrutinizing the diffs, what colleagues write.

Everything is based on appearance, trust in those you trust, distrust of those you don’t know. The result is serious damage to the encyclopedia, since David can’t recognize a notable name, a scholar of major standing in the field and stop to reconsider and stay the itchy trigger figure. The impression is of hyperactivism whose main effect, regardless of his intentions, which I have no doubt are genuinely sincere, is to ratchet up an indeed impressive edit count, whatever the collateral damage might be to the ambitions of wikipedia to achieve encyclopedic ends, i.e. comprehensive scholarly coverage. Encyclopedias are not only a congeries of articles requiring bot-like checks, monitoring etc: the content is mostly written by people who take the trouble and effort to spend sometimes hours on each particular edit, checking any potential author’s competence and background, reading up several other sources to see if the claim or viewpoint is fringe or not, and examining all these things in context. David’s approach - insouciant to the efforts of content editors- thinks none of this is necessary. There is a law, it allows no exceptions, erase at sight, and snub talk pages where those who differ with his ultramontane legalism, and actually read the topic closely, give solid reasons, case by case, for retaining an reference within the framework of the broader wikipedia guidance principles.

The solution is simple. Ask him, in the light of serious concerns at the collateral damage his mechanical rampage of elisions is causing, to desist.Nishidani (talk) 14:33, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

The above screed is laboring under the various personal attacks ("puritanical", "lazy", "hyperactivism", etc.) used to describe David Gerard. I'd suggest withdrawing this, Nishidani. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 21:18, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

I like many other editors dislike sloppiness, disattentiveness, especially if melded to zeal. By writing screed you are saying that the evidence provided (justifying those adjectives) needn’t be examined or answered. This is precisely what happened with Swag’s evidence and DG’s acceptance of it. No evidence given was checked or examined. If you dislike the adjectives, then I’ll replace thjem with ‘stringent/fundamen talist’, ‘otiose’ and ‘over-energetic’, but the substance of my documen tation is there. Ignore it by all mean s. Much of the original RfC for deprecation consisted of editors ignoring any significant control on diffs, and opinionizing instead, and I get the feeling the same unempirical impressionism will win the day here as well. Rather than look into the substance, one challenges the tone all too often. The tone innocuously reflects exasperation at the amount of work controlling sources takes for serious content editors, all evaporated by rapid mechanical rollbacking sight unseen, which we see here. That's very I/P-ish. A content dispute is 'resolved' by ignoring the content dispute and complaining about manners, even at AE/ANI.Nishidani (talk) 21:35, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

• If you've created a situation where an interview with Edward Said is considered unreliable for use as attributed support for the views of Edward Said you've created a really stupid situation. This also illuminates how wooden and childish many of the rules are around "reliable sources." In the specific case of Counterpunch while in recent years it has published a fair amount of, in my opinion, batshittery, it is not a hoax generator. If they publish an article under the name of a scholar or researcher, or claim an interview with someone of note, the claim of authorship should be treated as ironclad reliable. Then, as with many journals of opinion, you really need to consider what era of the publication an article is from if there are concerns about reliability or slant. But that would require an immersion in both general epistemological questions and a particular field, the ebb and flow of its controversies over time, and recent scholarship. Aint nobody got time for that. This is Wikipedia, after all.Dan Murphy (talk) 17:35, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
• Support. Wholesale removal of citations published in mass-circulation mainstream publications, particularly citations dealing with the arts, such as reviews of films, stage performances, books, art gallery exhibits, museums, etc, especially when such reviews are otherwise unavailable or difficult to find, is unacceptable and harms Wikipedia and its users without any tangible benefit in improving Wikipedia's reliability. I would also support the establishment of a review board where complaints can be submitted regarding indiscriminate deletion of specific reliable citations, even if such citations come from publications that have been accused of recent unreliability, but have a vast archive of valuable historical reporting. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 10:00, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  We definitely do not need another notice board. Either this board or RSN should suffice. Doug Weller talk 10:06, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• Close thread and start a new discussion at a more appropriate noticeboard. This is the Administrators noticeboard/Incidents and this thread is not about taking Admin action. Doug Weller talk 10:08, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

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

Sustained WP:COATRACK behaviour

• Æthereal (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Members of the Council on Foreign Relations (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

I have grave concerns about Æthereal's editing at the list article Members of the Council on Foreign Relations as pertaining to WP:COATRACK, as first noticed by Lindenfall. This article lists the members of a public policy think tank. starship.paint (exalt) 09:08, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Before Æthereal got to the article in January 2021, sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was mentioned only twice in the article (because he was a member of this council). [24] After nearly a year of Æthereal's editing, the article had a total of 117 mentions of Epstein in November 2021. [25]. A deeper dive into the article history upon Æthereal's arrival reveals more problems beyond Epstein associations. I have divided the problems into four categories below.

Category 1 - specifically highlighting Epstein associations

• Mario Cuomo [26] (used to attack Andrew Cuomo for associating with Epstein)
• David Rubenstein [27] (used to attack Les Wexner for associating with Epstein)
• Vicky Ward [28] (used to impugn the Queen of England for supposedly associating with Epstein)
• Chelsea Clinton [29] (stressed that Epstein's girlfriend attended Chelsea's wedding)

More of Category 1 - Epsteins

Bill Clinton [30] Michael Bloomberg [31] Jes Staley (used to attack Staley, Bill Gates and Boris Nikolic for associating with Epstein) [32] / [33] Rafael Reif [34] Nicolas Berggruen [35] (because Epstein had his contact) All the following for having associations with Epstein: Leon Black, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Sandy Berger, Conrad Black, Katie Couric, Reid Hoffman, Walter Isaacson, John Kerry, Henry Kissinger, Eric S. Lander, George J. Mitchell, Thomas Pritzker, Bill Richardson, Charlie Rose, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, George Stephanopoulos, Larry Summers, Murray Gell-Mann. Excuse me for not finding the next diffs but I've made my point above. Æthereal is the major contributor to the article [36] and remember that there were only two mentions of Epstein before Æthereal came along.

• When questioned on the talk page regarding the Epstein references, Æthereal's defense [37] is that Epstein was described as an “enthusiastic member” of the CFR in the 19-year-old (i.e., legal) magazine piece that was one of my refs. His connections still figure prominently with many current members. Says Epstein references that other editors are welcome to pare it down, although I would request that you “nuke” strategically, not apocalyptically, please. Unfortunately, I do not think Æthereal realizes the magnitude of the problem here.
  

Category 2 - specifically including irrelevant quotes or references for criticism

• Judith Miller [38] (used to criticize Miller's reporting)
• Janet Napolitano [39] / [40] (used to criticize her management of DHS)
• George Soros [41] (George Sorоs’ right-hand man was accused of BDSM crimes in his sex dungeon)

More of Category 2 - quotes / references

Dick Cheney [42] (used to criticize Cheney as a war criminal) Antony Blinken [43] / [44] (used to criticize Blinken's decision to invite the UN to investigate racism in USA given UN's ties to China) Ronnie C. Chan [45] (used to criticize Harvard's acceptance of China's gift) Wendy Sherman [46] (used to criticize her China-funded trip) Max Boot [47] / [48] (used to criticize Hollywood grovelling to China and then Boot themselves) Jonathan Greenblatt [49] (used to comment on George Soros, can't tell if this is criticism or not)

Category 3 - highlighting family ties and other connections

• Eileen Donahoe [50] / [51] (used to criticize her husband's running of Nike with China, fails to even mention her ambassadorship)
• Edgar Bronfman, Jr. [52] / [53] / [54] (stresses family relations due to family's connection with sex cult NXIVM, plus Epstein)
• Edgar Bronfman Sr [55] (see edit summary, adds sister purely because she supposedly enabled a murderer)

More of Category 3 - relations

Susan Roosevelt Weld [56] (highlights past marriage, fails to mention her professorship) Frank G. Wisner [57] (highlights father, fails to mention his ambassadorship and other roles under federal employ) Christopher Elias [58] (for some reason, wants to highlight how the president of Bill Gates Foundation is connected to WHO) Susan Rice [59] / [60] (mentions her wealth, highlights both of her parents) Elaine Chao [61] (highlights how Harvard named a school after her mother..?) Mentions other family relations / marriages for Kati Marton [62], Diana Villiers Negroponte [63], Laura Trevelyan [64], and Judy Woodruff [65]

Category 4 - very questionable edit summaries

• considers [66] / [67] this list of think tank members the "Mean Girls Club" / "Naughty Boys Club"?!
• Larry Summers [68] Epstein sidekick Summers sampled sugardaddy’s sweet succor shamelessly.

More of Category 4 - edit summaries
Michael Bloomberg [69] Added Bloomberg’s knighthood in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire whose “Grand Master” is über-racist Prince Philip, Bill Weld [70] his family’s Weld Boathouse is a block from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Les Wexner building named for the sugar daddy of sugar daddy Jeffrey Epstein

In my view, these are serious, serious issues worthy of sanction, though I'm not sure what. Would an Epstein topic ban be enough? A BLP topic ban? Or more? That is up to the community to decide. starship.paint (exalt) 09:08, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• Well, let's start with something more basic; that the whole article needs some work. I just stripped out some redlinks from the long, long list of "notable" names, but the biggest flaw is this: we just don't need the CVs of everyone listed, especially when one can just click on the link if you want to know more about a person. Why do we need to know, in the text of this article, that Priscilla Presley is the former chairwoman of the board of Elvis Presley Enterprises? Why is it important to know here that Brent Scowcroft was the Aspen Strategy Group founding co-chair? Do we need to know, here, that Robert Kagan is husband of Victoria Nuland, brother of Frederick Kagan, son of Donald Kagan? And never mind that of all the things Herbert Hoover did in his life, the important thing this article cites beyond him being POTUS is that he appointed Eugene Meyer as Fed chair 1930–1933? I'll start tackling that now, but for pity's sake, what's the value in all this debris? Ravenswing 13:49, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

  That's great, Ravenswing, but this is WP:ANI, not the article talk page... I think we're probably here to discuss the editors' behavior and whether or not sanctions are required rather than to improve the article in this specific venue. AlexEng^(TALK) 20:42, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

  One might consider it context to know that the entire article is a mess, and that one editor putting in Epstein comments -- which, after it was mentioned on the talk page, have been both stripped out and not readded -- does not appear to have been a full-on edit war worthy of ANI's attention. But, of course, you do you. Ravenswing 04:39, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

  @Ravenswing: - does it need to be an edit war to warrant ANI attention? These additions are already beyond the pale. This editor used an list entry for Mario Cuomo to attack his son Andrew Cuomo for associating with Jeffrey Epstein. Are we going to excuse this without even a warning? starship.paint (exalt) 05:41, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

  An admonishment is appropriate, the more so in that he's pushed this anti-Epstein fluff into other articles [71]. But we're also not talking a drastic situation. Æthereal is not edit warring to add this edits back in. He is not being uncivil in the exchanges. He's not posting unsourced lies. Obviously he needs to stop treating list articles as biographies -- something he does do a lot -- but I'd recommend slowing your roll. Why does this bother you so intensely? Ravenswing 13:40, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

  He's done far more than treating list articles as biographies. He's weaponized our list article into attacks on living people, even if these people are not members of the list themselves. Eileen Donahoe's entry, which failed to describe her actual profession, was turned into an attack on her husband John Donahoe [72] / [73]. How is this acceptable? starship.paint (exalt) 14:30, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

  ... that's what you call an "attack?" The worst example you could throw up was a public statement quoted in a BBC article? It's certainly unnecessary, and it's certainly superfluous, but Æthereal Delenda Est!! and rhetoric like "weaponizing" a list is over the top. This is the hill you want to die on? Ravenswing 14:50, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

  The superflous information came about from either incompetence (WP:CIR) or malice/some misguided sense of justice (WP:NOTHERE) or both. That disturbs me, but it clearly doesn’t disturb you, or it hasn’t occurred to you. The encyclopaedia needs to be protected from both. starship.paint (exalt) 15:09, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

  I will rephrase this as simply as I can, and please feel free to ask if any of this is unclear: yes, these are problematic edits. Yes, they should not have been made. Yes, Æthereal should make no more of them. Yes, Æthereal should be warned against doing so. (Hey, that's already happened, and they even promised not to do so.) Yes, these problematic edits should be reverted. (Whaddyaknow, I've been in the process of doing so.) And yes, I've already said all of that above, and I'm rather at a loss as to how you could have ignored my prior comments.

  Got all that? Hope so. But no, I do not go from any of that to suggest that Æthereal should be defenestrated, burned at the stake, community banned, or whatever else extreme measures that one can infer you desire. Æthereal has a clean block log, there's only one other warning in their talk page history, and they've been steadily editing since March without hitherto running into significant protest. This is not -- yet -- a situation where shrill and strident calls to man the ramparts are at all called for or necessary. It is not that I don't comprehend what you are saying. It's that I don't agree with your conclusions. Ravenswing 09:51, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Ravenswing, where exactly did Æthereal "promise" to stop making these kinds of sly coatrack "defamation by implication" edits? I couldn't find that comment. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:39, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• I very much support the remarks made here by Starship.paint. "Beyond the pale" was my exact reaction at first encountering this bulging coatrack, quite beyond any I'd previously seen. I saw an extensively woven pointed point-of-view agenda at every turn, so turned to Administrators for input, seeing that this is no one-off, nor an off-week, unfortunately. This editor's actions would seem to now require on-going scrutiny, were they allowed to proceed on Wikipedia. I expect that sanctions would be called for, and await the wisdom of experienced Administrators to see to that. Lindenfall (talk) 23:43, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
• It's clear that Æthereal should be indefinitely topic banned from editing any article with mentions of Epstein or his associates. Is something more needed? An indefinite WP:BLP topic ban? Johnuniq (talk) 02:24, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
• It's not only surprisingly pervasive Epstein; here is a similar treatment of a different subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Barnard_College_people&diff=1057955321&oldid=1057954419 Lindenfall (talk) 18:06, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

• This pattern of edits is not reflective of someone here to build an encyclopedia. Sennalen (talk) 22:08, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
• They've been unusually clever about how they went about it, but WP:NOTHERE. There were a series edits (key points 1 2 3) made to The Washington Post article that linked news coverage of the 9/11 attacks to a 1980 journalist scandal. There's plenty of other bad edits like this and this as well. --RaiderAspect (talk) 06:05, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Proposal 1: indefinite BLP topic ban (Æthereal)

In light of the additional evidence presented above by Ravenswing, RaiderAspect and Lindenfall, that this disruption is prevalent over multiple lists/articles [74] and multiple topics involving living people including Black Lives Matter [75], Washington Post and its Pulitzer prizes [76], Communism [77] and China [78], I propose an indefinite BLP topic ban for Æthereal. This will leave them the opportunity to edit in historical/non-human topics in the meantime to demonstrate that they are indeed HERE to build an encyclopedia, and with six months of this maybe they can appeal the topic ban to lift this. However if they instead continue to disrupt in other topics, then we can proceed with further sanctions. Naturally as proposer I support this. starship.paint (exalt) 07:52, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ravenswing, RaiderAspect, Lindenfall, Sennalen, and Johnuniq: - notifying commenters above. starship.paint (exalt) 07:52, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• Support Coatracking muck (similar to WP:ADAM) is the wrong approach to developing BLP articles. I looked to see when Æthereal last edited their talk. It was in 25 February 2019 in response to a complaint regarding this edit which used a reference that failed to verify the claim. Johnuniq (talk) 08:30, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
• Support though I'm not an Administrator and am unsure whether I ought to vote here. (Please delete me out if that is the case.) Lindenfall (talk) 22:03, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
• Support That seems fair Sennalen (talk) 16:38, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Proposed COVID topic ban for User:Adoring nanny

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

---

• User:Adoring nanny (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Diff of sanctions notification: [79]
• Diff of final warning: [80]

Taken as a whole, this editor's contributions indicate a pattern of tendentious editing. Most egregiously:

• They have created User:Adoring nanny/Essays/Lab Leak Likely and China COVID-19 cover-up allegations (at the somehow more POV-titled "China COVID-19 Cover-up").
• Most recently they frivolously removed [81], doubled and tripled down when challenged after their final warning, and continued to 1AM argue the point here and here and here and here.

I think a COVID-19 topic ban is an appropriate remedy. Notified: [82] VQuakr (talk) 22:13, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

It's a different point. I encourage the community to participate in the RfC.[83]. I am proposing inserting material supported directly by a WP:BESTSOURCE. The community may want to ask itself which is more WP:TEND -- including this material, or leaving it out, even though we include a parallel reason supporting the same underlying claim. Adoring nanny (talk) 22:34, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Just to expand on the above, I have accepted the community's judgment that Frutos should be included in the article. The question then becomes how to include it. I am not going to repeat the blow-by-blow here. You can read it at the RfC. But the bottom line is, we are including one reason Frutos gives for rejecting LL. Given that, how can it be WP:TEND to include two more, with an 8-word summary? Adoring nanny (talk) 23:17, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

If you are seeking a topic ban due to DS, shouldn't WP:AE be the correct venue? Isabelle ^🔔 00:46, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@Isabelle Belato: I'm no expert, but I thought AE was for enforcement of a ban enacted under a DS, not enactment of a ban. VQuakr (talk) 00:51, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@VQuakr AE is the correct venue for both in topics covered by discretionary sanctions. Thryduulf (talk) 02:08, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

To be clear, you can still request community bans, for which this is the correct venue. But WP:AE guarantees the section won’t be archived without closure, and sectioned discussion prevents excessive derailing, so it’s usually a bit better when you have it as an option. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 02:14, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, RE: guarantee — unless yours truly forgets to double back... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ El_C 09:19, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Pretty much all of the user's edits are righting great wrongs in the COVID-19 topic area, and it's not a secret that "if a person edits Wikipedia largely or solely to promote one side of a contentious issue, then the project is almost certainly better off without them". Based on comments like Special:Diff/1056312056, Special:Diff/1032520195, Special:Diff/923340717 and Special:Diff/833001259, I would even support banning them from the English Wikipedia in its entirety rather than a single topic area. Kleinpecan (talk) 14:21, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Their userspace essay is a self-indictment of WP:NOTHERE, as are their comments pointed out in diffs above. I can also add this diff of them removing RS content w/o explanation at Chinese government response to COVID-19. They've violated discretionary sanctions enough and if this does not go through I'd probably open an AE. ––FormalDude ^talk 17:57, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

If one looks at series of edits, the sequence here is: Another user removes four sources and some text.[84] I restore three of them and the text [85]. You restore the fourth.[86] I was trying to be polite by not reverting the full edit by the original user. It was simply more convenient to do the restoration as two edits, rather than one.Adoring nanny (talk) 20:06, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. WP:UOWN says on a user page "Purely content policies such as original research and neutral point of view generally do not apply unless the material is moved into mainspace." so the critiques based on content or POV are not PAG violations, and WP:NOTHERE + WP:1AM are not even PAGs. One of the article edits was merely a removal of one of several cites, to what Wikipedia calls a "news and opinion" site, without change of article text, which FormalDude put back without discussion. Calling the others double-or-triple downing is strong language for what look to me like distinguishable attempts to change wording, and there was some possibly biased language to change, e.g. replacing "pointed out" with "said" is specifically required by WP:SAID. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 21:37, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
• Support. This user has a history very supportive of tendentious editing. Point by point:

Expand to see comprehensive point-by-point evidence

Repeatedly making edits/arguments against consensus ad nauseum (A) Pushing a POV sentence into an article, against all opposition: [87] [88] [89] [90] [91] (see the entire history of this page: [92] merged as blatant POVFORK) (B) Make sure we don't cite Shi Zhengli's opinion on anything, even when it is DUE, until it aids in pushing a POV: [93] [94] [95] Often makes extensive arguments trying to delegitimize WP:RSes and convince others they are unreliable: (A) Distrusts science and scientists, does not consider peer-reviewed publications reputable or useful, in contradiction to WP:SCHOLARSHIP and WP:BESTSOURCES [96] [97] [98] [99] [100] (B) Delegitimize the WHO and anything published about their investigation, unless it serves a POV purpose ([101]): [102] [103] [104] [105] [106] [107] [108] Deleting well-sourced additions of others, in service of consistent POV editing (pro-Trump conspiracy, pro-lab leak): [109] [110] [111] [112] [113] [114] [115] [116] [117][118] Often urges others to "assume good faith" while not doing so oneself: [119] [120]<--'Mainland Chinese participants in an RfC cannot be trusted'. (paraphrased - double quotation marks were converted to single quotation marks to make this clear, my apologies to anyone who misread this as a quotation.) <---Respectfully, withdrawn Escalates small disagreements unnecessarily when consensus is clear (see above issues with Shi Zhengli and attempting over many months to get her NPOV- attributed statements removed from articles, resulting in RfC which is decided unanimously) Assigning undue importance to a single aspect of a subject (see above hyperfocus on including lab-leak perspective and removing WHO and scientific mainstream perspective.) WP:SPA and WP:RGW: See User:Adoring nanny/Essays/Lab Leak Likely: logic and reason are not Wikipedia policy... Wikipedia can't be trusted on controversial topics, particularly where powerful interests are at stake. and many other above instances of hyperfocus. Seeing editing as being about taking sides: see: User:Adoring nanny/Essays/Lab Leak Likely and more particularly, off-wiki coordination with other POV editors who were TBAN'd: [121] [122] and POV defenses of user conduct that resulted in TBANs: [123] [124] Cites WP:BLUE and other essays in efforts to support following WP:TRUTH in an effort to circumvent WP:PAGs: [125] [126] [127] (see also: user essay)

For all the reasons above, I would assert that Adoring nanny has a history of WP:TE in the COVID-space in particular (and some bleeding into American politics) and for this reason should be TBAN'd from COVID-19, broadly construed. If their disruption in American politics continues, it may be a good idea to TBAN that as well. But, for a while, that disruption has been pretty quiet. No need to TBAN when the disruption is not ongoing, and if the user acknowledges that they should not remove well-sourced content or otherwise violate discretionary sanctions. (edited 20:01, 30 December 2021 (UTC)) — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:35, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

My goodness, you certainly have more time to throw things at me than I do to refute them, so I'll pick just one. Is the content I removed at this edit [128], which you cite, currently in the Flynn article? Should it be? Does my edit summary message that it is "not biographical for Flynn" make sense? Adoring nanny (talk) 23:43, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose COVID tban broadly construed Apologies for being a broken record, but there are just too many places someone could get into trouble without meaning to if they're editing anything after March 2020. —valereee (talk) 23:54, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Shibbolethink: above you accompany this diff with the following: <--"Chinese participants in an RfC cannot be trusted".

But the diff shows that Adoring nanny actually said (quoting in part): i.e. "participants from mainland China risk arrest and disappearance if they are too critical of the CCP." Please explain. I want to understand where that first quote is from, if it is even one (which I'm thinking probably not). Thanks. El_C 01:22, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

yes sorry it's a paraphrase. I will change it to single quotation marks instead of double. When I quote, I typically use greentext as you have done, but I sometimes get lax with double quote marks. If you read the exchange in full, I would consider this the sentiment which this user expresses. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:53, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink: also specifically, it's not just a paraphrase, but an especially bad one, and you use quotations marks, so again, it's masquerading as a possible quote — a big no-no (on both counts). Example of why it's bad: I have a friend (of decades) who lives nearby. She is Chinese. We don't live in China. Adoring nanny spoke about participants from mainland China, which would not include editors like my friend (well, she never edited Wikipedia, but you get the point). Please be more judicious with evidence. This is important. Thank you. El_C 14:08, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Shibbolethink please can you strike the text El_C noted concern with. It can be seen as an accusation of racism, which violates WP:NPA. WP:BOOMERANG may apply here. LondonIP (talk) 19:28, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I adjusted the text to exactly answer @El C's concerns. The paraphrase now describes a sentiment against Mainland Chinese users. if you think this is still an unfair paraphrase, please explain why. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:32, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Shibbolethink, the expectation is for you to use strikethrough alongside the adjustment, so the record reflects that it was, well... adjusted. El_C 19:36, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@El C: I did not remove anything, aside from double quotation marks. I used underline to indicate where things were added. I will double check and make sure this is consistent. But frankly, strikethrough on double quotation marks would be useless and confusing. If you'd like me to add that, I will. I have added an underline under "Mainland" to be consistent. I have added an explanatory note instead of strikethrough on double quotation marks. Anyone who would like to take me to ANI for not striking through quotation marks and instead explaining it in text, please go ahead. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:38, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Shibbolethink, the forthright thing to do would have been to retain the original bad paraphrase but strike it and then place that alongside the real quote, which once again reads: i.e. "participants from mainland China risk arrest and disappearance if they are too critical of the CCP." It really isn't that long. Please own up to your mistake in a clear and direct way. I'm not looking to shame you, but that sanitized "adjustment" is coming across as a bit evasive tbh. El_C 19:50, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I still retain the right to frame my arguments how I wish, within policy. That is what I have done, acting in good faith. If you did not intend to shame me, please consider that this is exactly how it is received. I have no intention of inserting a direct quote, the diff is there for all to see. Where I have directly quoted, I changed the color of the text to make it clear. I apologized for the misunderstanding. I underlined all insertions. I explained the modification. This is such a minor incident that at this point, I have no idea why we are belaboring it. I would appreciate it if we could collapse this thread when it is resolved, because it distracts from any attempt at consensus. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:52, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink: maybe consider how what you've written would be received by the subject of this ANI complaint. I am logging a warning for you at WP:AEL for WP:COVIDDS. Not so much for not going through the strikethrough procedure I recommended, but for an overall confluence of subpar conduct in this thread. El_C 20:06, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Please explain what subpar conduct you are referring to? I fixed it the moment it was pointed out to me. I explained the mistake. I apologized. If I'm going to be formally warned, I want an exact explanation so I can avoid the behavior in the future. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 20:07, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Shibbolethink, you seem to fail to appreciate the gravity of your error even now. I don't know why you keep repeating that you explained the mistake and that you apologized, when you've been constantly backtracking. No, I want this logged for the record, which is within my discretion to do. El_C 20:13, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Shibbolethink, why would you think it's okay to collapse my comments? I strongly advise you to step away from this thread. El_C 20:21, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Above, I said I would appreciate it if we could collapse this thread when it is resolved, because it distracts from any attempt at consensus You did not respond to this, so I figured I would collapse and you could revert if you wished. You reverted. I have no intention of doing it again. Please let me know if I've violated any policy or guideline by doing this. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 20:25, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry for the miscommunication, I appreciate the gravity of misquoting. It steals someone of their voice and besmirches their reputation. I've placed an apology in the context of the explanatory note of my evidence as well. I'm sorry for all the trouble this is causing. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 20:27, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

'Mainland Chinese participants in an RfC cannot be trusted' is not a paraphrase of the quote though... And if you say otherwise I think we need to have a competence discussion. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:32, 30 December 2021 (UTC) Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:32, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I'm just withdrawing the entire thing, because this is a waste of time and not worth defending. I get why some users find that to be an inaccurate paraphrase. I think I may have misinterpreted the original thread, reading it again. I don't think it's worth squabbling over. If you want to get me banned over it, please make a new ANI thread (or a subthread of this one). — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 20:34, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose and this is the wrong venue (see WP:COVIDDS). There is nothing wrong their user space essay, which says the same thing the team leader of the WHO-convened study said, as reported by the Washington Post. Said essay was nominated for deletion where most editors voted to keep. This is a politically charged issue that requires experienced editors like Adoring Nanny. LondonIP (talk) 04:38, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  Discretionary sanctions do not mean that ANI is no longer a venue for this complaint, it simply opens up additional venues (WP:AE). — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:57, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Simply looking at the diffs in the beginning of the thread (I did not check anything else):

1. What she did in her userspace is not really relevant.
2. There was a cover up of information related to COVID by China as a matter of fact
3. Neither her removal nor insertions look immediately problematic; they are sourced.

I did not check all diffs by Shibbolethink, but looking at first of them, the arguments by Adoring nanny are civil and not unreasonable. My very best wishes (talk) 05:32, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@My very best wishes:

1. How is a fringe manifesto in their userspace not relevant?
2. There is at the least no consensus on this on Wikipedia. Most recently the China COVID-19 cover-up allegations article was redirected for it's fringe POV and COATRACK material.
3. I don't know what to say to this. They're very clearly removing RS material and inserting POV material.
4. If you're going to weigh in, at least have the courtesy and respect to read everything in the discussion first. Other editors have put time and effort into their comments, and you judging them solely off of a first look is not good enough. I imagine that's the main reason why your points here seem so misguided. ––FormalDude ^talk 06:51, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

1 - I consider such manifesto a disclosure of personal bias (sure, there is one!). But this is actually a good/honest thing. Everyone has biases. It matters what they do in mainspace of the project. My very best wishes (talk) 16:22, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

2 -It does not matter. The stonewalling of this issue by China is simply a historical fact. My very best wishes (talk) 16:22, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

3 - This is a content dispute. And no, in the first diff, she removed strong opinion, not a factual information. My very best wishes (talk) 16:22, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

4 - No, a lot of such discussions are tl;dr. One has only an obligation to look at posting and diffs by someone who started the thread. My very best wishes (talk) 16:22, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

So consensus doesn't matter, nor does reading the discussion you're commenting in. That's a hot take. ––FormalDude ^talk 04:56, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

One has only an obligation to look at posting and diffs by someone who started the thread – I think we have a term for that. Drive-in ... drive-through ... driver's ed ... Wait, I've got it! Drive-by! A drive-by comment. Yes, that's what we call it. EEng 05:41, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, many people (me including) do not have a lot of time to participate. They can only look at the original diffs on the top to see if they are telling by themselves. I think that's OK. No one can ask more from uninvolved contributors. These diffs are not at all telling, at least to me. But this is easy to check. If anyone really believes the user should be sanctioned (I do not), please bring it to WP:AE. I think this subject area can be handled there. My very best wishes (talk) 17:47, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

P.S. I did check some diffs by S., but I do not think they are convincing. For example, this removal [129]. Based on the sources on the subject, yes, people from the group have been involved in making various accusations, but were all of them false as asserted in WP voice? No one can actually prove they were false; some of them could well be true. Same with many other diffs. My very best wishes (talk) 18:05, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

If you don't have time to participate thoughtfully, it's best if you don't participate. EEng 03:07, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I think I checked enough now and do not think this complaint is convincing. For, example, how this diff from statement by S. proves anything? And so on. My very best wishes (talk) 04:06, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Or that diff provided by S. as an incriminating "evidence" [130]? Yes, Shi Zhengli is "closely affiliated" and she is basically an accused party. Therefore, she is not an independent source per WP:INDEPENDENT (#2). The source is an RS and can be used on the page, but this is just not an independent source, exactly A.N. said.My very best wishes (talk) 19:39, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - While the user in question has clearly very strong views on the matter, those views (and user-space essays describing them) aren't in-and-of-themselves an issue. Questions about adherence to WP:PAGs should be the focus, not their personal POV. Hopefully the recently closed RfC the user requested closes the chapter on the potential slow-motion edit-war suggested by the proposer, and if not it seems like a simple case of ignoring consensus. Otherwise, the only topic worth discussing is the potential of WP:TE above. Bakkster Man (talk) 15:41, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose - having a userspace essay go against the house view here is not a reason for a ban. There some diffs that are concerning, particularly the ones that seek to diminish the view of anybody in mainland China as impossibly compromised, but tell AN in no uncertain terms to cut that out. But the user wanted to make an edit, was reverted, went to a noticeboard, took that feedback and then opened an RFC. That is what is supposed to happen. Being banned for holding the wrong opinion is not how things are supposed to work here. If he or she edits against the consensus formed in that RFC then sure, but until then see nothing so problematic as to merit a ban. nableezy - 15:45, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  Absolutely agree re: Being banned for holding the wrong opinion is not how things are supposed to work here. The issue is the particular behaviors of A) removing well-sourced content that opposes the user's POV, and B) repeatedly advancing the same POV arguments in every discussion, venue, or RfC, against consensus and against any policy-based argument. A is against WP:NPOV and B is blatant WP:NOTHERE. And, in combination with other behaviors, makes a case for WP:TE. That's the argument I would advance. Having opinions is the user's right. But what they do with them is another matter... — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:49, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Something being against NPOV is a content issue to be settled on the talk page and then if somebody wants to push it that far to an RFC. Only if they keep pushing after a consensus is settled is it a user conduct issue. As far as I can tell that has not happened yet. If it does, sure, topic ban, site ban, whatever. Right now however this reads like removing the opposition for being the opposition. nableezy - 21:58, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Just because others don't like what's being reported isn't a reason to ban the messenger. — Ched (talk) 15:56, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Unless my memory serves me wrong, Adoring nanny’s userspace essay was litigated at MfD and kept, so the community has already decided that the essay is acceptable. As for everything else, is there any evidence of edit warring, incivility, or WP:IDHT behavior? Are most of the user’s edits frivolous? If not, then what’s the problem? Mlb96 (talk) 16:16, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  A majority of the user's edits to COVID-19 related topics are examples of tendentious editing, as has been evidenced above by Shibbolethink. ––FormalDude ^talk 05:02, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  @FormalDude: its possible that some editors here don't consider the evidence to be very strong, starting with the first diffs, the accusation of racism, and the WP:BLUE thing. One can't just make a big list of diffs and expect all editors to comment on each and every one. LondonIP (talk) 19:34, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  I would expect any accusation of WP:TE to be accompanied by many diffs, as it is not an accusation to be taken lightly. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:42, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• What? I think it is bizarre that about half of the comments in this thread are arguing about some userspace essay of unclear relevance to the issue of the editor's conduct. Frankly, I am sick of hearing about this essay. There have already been AN/I threads about this essay. There have already been topic ban proposals over this essay. There was already a gigantic contentious MfD for this essay... in May. And it was kept -- nobody thought it was that big of a deal then, so why would it be a big deal now? Has anything changed? There has to be some kind of limit on how many times the same thing can be brought up. jp×g 20:34, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  You are using a rather unconventional definition of the word "nobody" there. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:56, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose This looks like a very dubious attempt to block a user simply for advancing positions some users dislike. I see almost no evidence above of Adoring nanny misbehaving, instead I see (1.) false citations attributed to them though they never said them, (2.) several diffs to them making political arguments on articles about politics. Newsflash: having different political opinions is allowed. So no, in the absence of any policy violations, Adoring nanny should not be blocked nor topic banned. Jeppiz (talk) 18:00, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
• Support. This is not about "advancing positions some users dislike" - that is a strawman. This is WP:PROFRINGE editing. Shibbolethink listed examples of it. Of course, this particular fringe narrative has been pushed by much bigger fish in the US, even by the saner one of the big parties and by usually reliable news outlets, and now people somehow have the impression that it is not fringe. But it is. The scientific sources tell a different picture from the non-scientific ones. It is like climate change twenty years ago. Wikipedia should follow the science, and someone who keeps knocking the keyboard out of pro-science editor's hands should be stopped. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:56, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

If a position is "pushed by much bigger fish in the US, even by the saner one of the big parties and by usually reliable news outlets" then by definition it isn't fringe. Also just FYI the scientific consensus is that there was some sort of coverup, is that what you mean by pro-science or are you talking about the potentia; lab leak aspect? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:24, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Horse Eye's Back, you must have missed the COVID-19 cover-up RM, AfD, MR, ANI, AN, RSN and creation of the newly created Chinese government response to COVID-19. Now a consensus has formed there that the Chinese government's response to the outbreak was just fine, based on data from a Chinese government website. LondonIP (talk) 20:15, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose, not really buying that we have a conduct issue here... To me this looks like a garden variety content dispute. I agree with Nableezy that basing conduct charges on a userspace essay is just not something we should be doing, Adoring nanny seems to do a pretty decent job of upholding our policies and guidelines despite their strong personal opinions and we need more editors like them. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:24, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose this looks like an attempt to win a content dispute by getting opponents banned. Regarding the two points from the filer - the "Lab Leak Likely" essay was litigated months ago and consensus was that it is fine in userspace. The second argument (and set of diffs) appear to be on multiple topics, but are primarily about "Frutos et al." I don't know who Frutos is, and since ANI does not decide on content disputes I do not need to find out. The process of debating a topic that people disagree with on a talk page is not problematic behavior - it is how the encyclopedia works. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 22:38, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Adoring nanny is a wonderful person and a good editor. This complaint of misconduct is just the latest of many attempts to lobby administrators to ban editors in the COVID-19 origin topic with the "wrong" POV. I am surprised they chose to go after an editor who always has such a civil attitude. I would have been an easier target because I have a very strong opinion on this topic and I operate ​​laboratoryleak.com. Shibbolethink also has a WP:SELFPUB reddit post on the lab leak they promote in article discussions, so they should not accuse others of pushing their POV, otherwise it could come back as a BOOMERANG. Francesco espo (talk) 23:23, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  Hi, I noticed you reference this post a lot. When was the last time I referenced it, do you know? I'm pretty sure it was at least 6 months ago. And have I ever mentioned it in article space? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 23:24, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

There's a bunch of editors, including Adoring nanny, who are on a major Right Great Wrongs spree over the COVID articles where there's a strong and consistent pattern of pushing conspiracy theories (e.g. lab leak, horse dewormer) as fact. I ran into them closing the RM at what is now China COVID-19 cover-up allegations, and it's not just a problem that isn't limited to just one user; it's an incredible disruptive group effort (I think there were, at one point, five threads in Wikipedia-space on that awful article running at once) which needs to be dealt with pretty sharpish. That said, I support a topic ban to allow them to touch some grass for once, and more topic bans for more users if the disruption continues. Sceptre (talk) 00:46, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Off topic: There is no evidence that ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID-19, but it is materially misleading to define it as "horse dewormer". It is an antiparasitic medication with human and veterinary application that "has been used safely by hundreds of millions of people to treat river blindness and lymphatic filariasis," according to Wikipedia.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:25, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

People aren't getting the ivermectin on prescription from a doctor, though; they're getting it from veterinary stores with a nice apple flavouring. Sceptre (talk) 21:29, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps (although Joe Rogan, for one, claimed that his doctor prescribed it to him), but I'm incredulous that "a bunch of editors, including Adoring nanny" are specifically promoting the veterinary form of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19. In the absence of diffs to that effect, your earlier comment appears somewhat overstated to me. Anyway, I digress...TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 12:14, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Sceptre, I'm going to WP:AGF and assume you have diffs of me editing something about horse dewormer somewhere. Would you kindly provide them? Adoring nanny (talk) 02:46, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support User is clearly here to advocate a fringe opinion on the subject matter, rather than improving the project's coverage of the topic. Zaathras (talk) 03:21, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Adoring nanny is a great editor with a great attitude towards working with others in helping to build Wikipedia. This looks more of a content dispute than a behaviour problem. Sanctions are not warranted here. Stefka Bulgaria (talk) 17:46, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose - looking through their mainspace contributions, I don't spot any policy violations. Whilst the essay you mentioned is based on questionable findings, as other people have pointed out, it's not a problem if it doesn't make it into any articles. MiasmaEternal☎ 03:32, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

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

Ping abuse by user:RogueShanghai

user:RogueShanghai will not stop pinging me even after I told them to stop pinging me and that I would report them on the noticeboard. This diff is my warning, and these are Rogue's incessant pings: 1, 2, 3 and 4. Ronherry (talk) 18:45, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Why don't you just add the user to "Muted users" in Preferences/Notifications?--Bbb23 (talk) 18:53, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Didn't know that was a thing. Thank You. Ronherry (talk) 19:08, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Let's be very clear: you messaged me on my own talk page accusing me of making personal attacks, I replied and defended myself, and showed proof of you making personal attacks regarding my editor status and making attacks accusing me of "not being able to write my own sentences." You avoided explaining why you made those comments, and said if I pinged you again you would take me to this noticeboard.

I replied that you chose to message me on my own talk page, and said that this isn't the first time you showed hostility towards me, where in the past you accused me of "not knowing what an FA is" and "editing without sources or facts." (Both of which are not true, all of my edits try to be sourced reliably.) That's what happened, from start to finish. shanghai.^{talk to me} 18:55, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• I'm torn between the impulse to (a) close this now that the muting option has been explained, in an effort to reduce tensions, or (b) leave it open to examine the feuding between these two editors more generally to see if one or both should be sanctioned in some way, or whether a one- or two-way interaction ban is in order, to not let it fester even more. I see sub-optimal personalization from both editors, and it's not immediately clear whether this is mostly one-sided or not, and if so which side. Thoughts? --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:27, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
• @Ronherry:, talk pages on Wikipedia are for communication with other editors, not for soliloquies where you're guaranteed to have the final word. If you send a message to a talk page calling out RogueShanghai, it is reasonable for RogueShanghai to respond. If you send a message to RogueShanghai's talk page, you should expect RogueShanghai to respond. You cannot demand that other editors refrain from engaging with you at the same time you're engaging them. Ravenswing 19:39, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ravenswing: I'm well aware of all that and I agree with you but you're quite literally false because the case you are describing is not the case here. I did use the talk page to communicate with them hoping to resolve it. But nah. The argument was going in circles. As soon as I realized that, I requested them to stop pinging me, but they didn't stop. Let me make myself clear here: I read all of their replies patiently and replied them all *before* I made my request to them to stop pinging me. I *stopped* reading the replies and didn't want to engage with them *only after* I made my request, which is valid. The conversation was leading to nowhere, because it was them simply discrediting me, and that means a consensus will never be reached. To put an end to it and not add more oil to the fire, I asked them to stop @ing me. That's it. I would expect you go through the timestamps of each reply (if you want to) and see the truth. But alas, you only read the other person's rant here and decided the fault is on me, when I didn't even type out my side of the story like they did. Anyways, it doesn't matter now. I muted them. Have a nice day. Ronherry (talk) 20:17, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Ronherry, at the end of your lengthy remark, you say Anyways, it doesn't matter now. I muted them. Why, then, did you bother to compose and post your lengthy remark? If you do not want another editor to ping you, then stopping your own discussion of the other editor is a really big part of that. Otherwise, you are inviting the other editor to talk about you behind your back, and that is a very bad thing. Cullen328 (talk) 06:06, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Cullen328, Excuse me? I was asked a question by a third person and I answered them. I had communication issues with Rogue only, not with an admin who is trying to mediate on noticeboard; of course, I will answer them [Ravenswing]. Now I'm answering you [Cullen], are you gonna ask me why I'm answering you as well? That's ridiculous. If I don't answer here, then the narrative would be "starting a noticeboard topic but not replying to queries". I'm gonna be blamed either way, so I might as well just reply here just to make myself and my stance clear. If you want me to stop answering here, I will. Because I'm not the person who will ping you if you asked me to stop it. Thanks. Ronherry (talk) 06:20, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps you should consider "yes I see your point" as a response? People who don't want to continue arguments should ... stop continuing the arguments. --JBL (talk) 15:51, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

(nods to JBL) Yep, that was my take. Ronherry seems to be just the type who has to have the last word. "How dare the other guy not shut up and concede it to me?" isn't usually grounds for an ANI filing, and perhaps Ronherry -- just this once -- will let us have the last word. Ravenswing 16:17, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ravenswing: Just want to mention that I am non-binary and use they/them pronouns, I hope you don't mind changing "guy" to "person", thank you :) shanghai.^{talk to me} 16:55, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

OFFS. EEng 22:49, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

FWIW: if Ravenswing speaks the same regional dialect of English as me, then "guy" is frequently gender-neutral (especially in the plural "you guys"/"youse guys"); and you are not the only possible referent. --JBL (talk) 22:01, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

(nods to JBL) Quite aside from that it was a generic statement, referring to no one particular person, so no, I'm not going to be changing my phrasing, any more than I demand others do when they get my gender wrong, "Ravenswing" not providing any obvious gender identity. Ravenswing 23:55, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, where I come from "guys" and (particularly in this convoluted hypothetical usage) "the other guy" is gender neutral. @RogueShanghai, I think you can specify your pronouns in your preferences, which will make them appear when hovering over your name. Some folks who have a strong preference also place them into their sig, which makes them very visible. —valereee (talk) 23:06, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

@Valereee, JayBeeEll, and Ravenswing: Sorry, just a bit sensitive about getting properly gendered right, I've been misgendered on Wikipedia before (whether intentionally or unintentionally) so it is a bit of a sore topic. In preferences, my pronouns are set to they/them and if you look at my user page I have a userbox that says I prefer gender-neutral pronouns. Thank you! shanghai.^{talk to me} 13:18, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

@Ravenswing: Also, would just like to point out that Ronherry's statement of "If you ping me again, I will report you at the noticeboard" very much falls under the first example of WP:INTIMIDATE. shanghai.^{talk to me} 17:18, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to mention myself that WP:INTIMIDATE is an essay with no actionable standing, that Ronherry wouldn't have violated it if it had (his threat, after all, proved not to be idle), and that if you do actually feel that dropping the stick and moving on is the best way to proceed -- with which I agree -- you really ought to drop the stick and move on. Ravenswing 19:14, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cullen328: For what it's worth, I don't have any intention to interact with or talk about Ronherry anywhere. This is only my second time embroiled in a dispute with him and I'm not looking for there to be a third- WP:DTS might be the best solution for all parties involved. shanghai.^{talk to me} 16:42, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• After the edit warring on Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry I wonder if RogueShanghai needs a stern warning --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 11:51, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Vandalism on Scooby-Doo page

@EvergreenFir:, hello again. Well, it seems the protection of the page Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo! Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog didn't do justice for that vandalizing anonym who does not seem to get the hints. A longer page block or the IP block would be helpful, if it is possible. Thank you in advance. Ромми (talk) 03:49, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Mike Novikoff keeps removing WP:DECOR per template

Mike Novikoff (talk · contribs) keeps removing flags and symbols for Russian oblast templates without consensus. Russian oblasts might be accompanied with a flag and coat of arms, which is similar to country/region infobox. Weeks ago, Novikoff reverts and reveals Ymblanter's name for indistinguishable for trolling, as a personal attack from edit summary to Template:Moscow Oblast.

Since that restored versions for Russian oblast templates might be affected:

• Novgorod Oblast
• Nizhny Novgorod Oblast
• Moscow Oblast
• Pskov Oblast
• Sverdlovsk Oblast
• Ulyanovsk Oblast
• Voronezh Oblast

--49.150.112.127 (talk) 07:26, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

OMG. So I should have a special permission to implement the MoS, and I should discuss it with every IP user. "Please, IP, will you let me implement it?". Frankly, I hereby ask for WP:BOOMERANG. — Mike Novikoff 07:41, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

BTW, it's rather suspicious that an IP user knows who Ymblanter is, addresses his first complaint against me exactly to him, and files a properly formatted ANI case then within few minutes. — Mike Novikoff 08:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

You see, MediaWiki nowadays is smart enough to tag some edits with "Non-autoconfirmed user rapidly reverting edits". Thank you Volker (or whoever does this there now at Fab). Jokes aside, what will you recommend to me? I suppose to start a discussion at WT:MOS, but is it really needed? It will be about "is MoS a guideline, or it isn't". So. While we are at it. Can you please just do something against this very disruptive IP, to save a lot of effort? — Mike Novikoff 09:36, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Just a placeholder to acknowledge I have seen this, I might react later of needed. May be to specify that the Op clearly means templates such as Template:Pskov Oblast, not the articles. The ANI discussion on Mike Novikoff was closed two weeks ago with a serious warning, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1086#Mike Novikoff and a strange way of edit-warring--Ymblanter (talk) 09:27, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not doing nor even saying anything against you, so what it's all about? — Mike Novikoff 09:36, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

But still no consensus for WP:DECOR only for headings, some regional templates has a flag and coat of arms. For example, any regional templates like Template:Kyiv Oblast in Ukraine to accompany with a flag on the top and coat of arms on the right. --49.150.112.127 (talk) 10:06, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:OTHERCONTENT is a well-known invalid argument. — Mike Novikoff 10:18, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

See also this (permalink). All we have is a content dispute started by an ignorant anonymouse who believes that it is recommended to need a flag and symbol per template but cannot support his belief. That's all. — Mike Novikoff 10:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: FYI: Content dispute over Russian oblast templates. --49.150.112.127 (talk) 10:34, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Having it closed as "content dispute" would be too weak. I'd rather see it as "49.150.112.127 is gone", before they point to my SUL and so on (that is, before they cast aspersions on me). — Mike Novikoff 11:04, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Please, please save me from this disruption. For almost ten years I only do things prescribed by the written rules, especially by the MoS, and thus strive to avoid any conflicts. So I'm really hurt by these weird accusations of the anonymouse. — Mike Novikoff 11:22, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I've been suspected for manipulation of Wikipedia's Manual of Style without seeking for consensus. @Ymblanter: I would like to impose community sanctions what have you done for WP:MOS, as a result of disruptive editing, personal attacks and oversight. --49.150.112.127 (talk) 13:02, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

What you are saying is almost incomprehensible. Just note that Ymblanter won't take any action here as WP:INVOLVED (because of {{Moscow Oblast}}). And you have quite a chance to get {{uw-mos4}} and then be reported yourself. (Admins: correct me if I'm wrong). — Mike Novikoff 13:53, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• Well, now I have a bit of time, let me write what I think about this. First, I do not know who the IP user is, I can not really comment on their motivation, and I do not think I interacted with them before today. (It is obviously not me, the IP is based in the Philippines, and I am in the Netherlands which is obvious from my recent uploads on Commons for example). I however interacted with Mike Novikoff. He is generally doing fine, but he is fully convinced that he is absolutely right and his opponents are always wrong, which is why he on a regular basis resorts either to personal attacks or WP:ASPERSIONS, going sometimes to the degree of lunacy. One example was his crusade against stress marks in Russian words. He was 100% positive that WP:MOS prohibits usage of stress, and started to mass-remove these stress marks. Users started to come to his talk page and protest: one, two, three, four. He responds that stress marks are not allowed, period. Finally, after I come there and say it must be discussed, he opens a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 222#Stress marks in Russian words, where he goes ballistic, his main opponent goes ballistic and gets blocked indef and eventually globally locked, and the discussion finally gets closed as approximate consensus (there were quite a few opposers), which apparently Mike Novikoff perceives as a confirmation that he just knows best. Fine, then he goes on a crusade on templates, which was the topic of the previous ANI and also of this ANI. When he gets opposition, he instead dismisses it and resorts to personal attacks, as we see in the linked ANI thread and also here. He has learned from the previous ANI thread that it is dangerous to attack me personally, presumably because I can do something bad to him. However, he has not learned that his understanding of WP:MOS is not necessarily the one everybody else shares, and that if the edits get reverted multiple times they must be discussed. Again, they were blocked indef in the Russian Wikipedia for a similar type of behavior, and they clearly are moving to the same end here. May be somebody could try to explain these basics to him, because if he learns this he might be a valuable Wikipedia user. I blocked him on Wikidata before for personal attacks for three days (and that was the first time I have seen this user); he asked that the block were revision-deleted from the log else he would never edit Wikidata. This is probably going to happen here after the first block, so his direct interest would be to listen to the advise and to correct his behavior to avoid blocks in the future, but for the time being I do not see this happening.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:19, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
  • He was 100% positive that WP:MOS prohibits usage of stress – I've never said that. Even though some references to the already existing policies were eventually included in the discussion closure, I've presented my own arguments instead. Users started to come to his talk page and protest: one, two, three, four. – First of these users didn't revert my edits, he agreed with my explanation and even encouraged me to write an essay. The second user is the same as third. He responds that stress marks are not allowed, period. – Anyone can see that these discussions were much more elaborate. Fine, then he goes on a crusade on templates – It's not a "crusade", it's one of the many things that I did regularly since long ago, so there was at least WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS, if nothing else. — Mike Novikoff 08:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

    No, if your edits get reverted on a regular basis, it means WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS does not apply. If you see that other templates of the same type has the images - well, there is a tiny chance that the templates are there but in 10+ years nobody noticed they do not comply with the policy, but more likely it is that people interpret policies differently than you do. The policy you cite does not say "Coats of arms are prohibited in templates related to the Federal subjects of Russia", it says something else which you interpret this way. If you see your edits reverted, you should check whether there is actually consensus to do it, and preferably in a broader forum, not on a page which is only watched by a couple of people. WT:MOS is probably a good venue.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:23, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• Boomerang The edit history at Template:Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) clearly demonstrates that Mike Novikoff's behavior is fine, and the IP editor's is not. Reverting an 18 month old edit with the edit summary of "indistinguishable" (apparently some allusion to the IP editor being accused of behavior indistinguishable from trolling) is the type of edit that should be reverted on-sight, and starting an ANI thread after a few of those edits are reverted is absurd. I don't know who the IP is either. I assume they are some form of banned user. If they are not, they should be warned that a pattern of tendentious editing will cause them to soon become one. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 22:26, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
• Comment I can't make heads nor tails of the IP's comments, but "indistinguishable from trolling" is a reference to this edit summary of mine (mentioned also in the previous ANI discussion), which was about one particular edit / edit summary. --JBL (talk) 23:23, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Sultan.abdullah.hindi

Sultan.abdullah.hindi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Right after his block for edit warring expired, Sultan.abdullah.hindi proceeded to immediately restore his addition to the Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji, without going to the talk page and reach WP:CONSENSUS, as well as prove the name he wants to add is WP:COMMON NAME. This is clear WP:DISRUPTSIGNS. -HistoryofIran (talk) 08:07, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I am not assuming good faith on the part of the other editor involved in this matter at this point. I did not restore my addition but rather only made an edit which is sourced. Blowing this out of proportion is an abuse of the system on the part of this other editor who seems to want to use this to harass myself. - Sulṭān ʿAbdullāh al-Hindi ^Talk 08:14, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Also, repeatedly attempting to use the rules in order to force a so-called consensus on a name already being used multiple times in an article with the exception of the infobox is another basis for my assumptions. - Sulṭān ʿAbdullāh al-Hindi ^Talk 08:16, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

You were reverted by an admin as well, who was the one who reported you. Prior to that, you were warned for edit warring by me, which you dismissed as 'cringe' [131]. Now you resumed your edit warring right off the bat, and accuse me of lacking good faith? You might want to reevaluate. Even if it might be listed like that in other articles, that doesn't mean it should be posted in that article, see WP:OTHERSTUFF. You did not restore your edit? What is this then? [132] [133] Is there any major difference between these additions? This is starting to look like a lack of WP:CIR as well. --HistoryofIran (talk) 08:26, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

What you are doing clearly involves WP:HAR and WP:GAME by twisting this matter to suit your ends over a name repeatedly used in the article but not in the infobox. Yes, I accuse you of bad faith gaming using your familiarity with the guidelines in order to portray this matter in the worst way possible. - Sulṭān ʿAbdullāh al-Hindi ^Talk 08:29, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:ASPERSIONS and WP:JDL at best. I'll let the admins deal with this. --HistoryofIran (talk) 08:31, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Your reversion notes of the article-in-point, which have not been brought forth yet, and your repeated attempts at making the worst assumption should reveal the insanity to them. - Sulṭān ʿAbdullāh al-Hindi ^Talk 08:34, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• Though it is unfortunate that Sultan.abdullah.hindi did not go to the talk page immediately after coming out of a block for edit warring, the edit they made is different from the one over which there was an edit-war, in as far as HistoryofIran's revert edit summaries [134] [135] [136] all objected to the use of the {{transl}} template in the infobox. To the contrary, Sultan.abdullah.hindi's latest edit does not use the template, and is actually a fairly straightforward typo correction: as can be seen from the lead sentence, it is "Ikhtiyar", not "Ikhtyiar".

I think that both users here should try better to assume good faith, and actually inquire into what the other editor is trying to accomplish, or is objecting to, rather than going straight into battlefield modus. Thanks! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:26, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

That was my initial concern yes. I later added in the talk page that user has shown no proof either that it was WP:COMMON NAME - this was written before his 32 hour block. As seen in the diffs, it's still the same name, just without macrons and being italicized. It is heavily unfair to put me on par with him in terms of assuming bad faith. There's nothing that indicates that I've made any baseless assumptions of the user, whereas he has here alone accused me of WP:HAR, WP:GAME, bad faith, and writing comments filled with 'insanity', whatever that is supposed to mean - all of this with not a single drop of proof. I've already tried to discuss with the user, but as seen here [137] and the edit history of the article he has shown no sign that he is interested in participating properly. --HistoryofIran (talk) 13:03, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Just look at the revision before the edit war: the infobox contains a different and misspelled (Ikhtyiar) version of the name than the sourced one in the lead. Clearly, what Sultan.abdullah.hindi was trying to do [138] [139] [140] was to correct the name in the infobox so as to conform with the sourced version in the lead, and fixing a typo and slapping on what they thought to be an appropriate template while they were at it. There's no evidence they were trying to impose a poorly sourced new name, as you seem to assume. Apart from the inappropriate {{transl}} template, there was no real issue here, and even that could have been solved with a friendly talk page conversation. There was no need at all for the revert war, the policy-namedropping, the ANI report.

You truly do great patrolling work around here, and as a fellow patroller I know how frustrating it is when people re-revert their bad edits rather than going to the talk page. But trying to figure out what other editors are trying to do in good faith, and posting friendly and communicative messages at the talk page with the aim of finding out what the issue is (see, e.g., my latest talk message after [141] [142]), it's all just part of the deal I'm afraid. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 17:56, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Lede or not, that still doesn't change the fact that the name is not WP:COMMON NAME (he changed the Uddin to al-Din btw). I'm not sure why you're dismissing the template issue so easily, that was one of the main issues as well which he edit warred for and whatnot. Fine, let's pretend you're right; Does that excuse his behaviour? Not at all. Could I have done better? Sure, but that's mainly because the user didn't even do the bare minimum. I did in fact mention what was the wrong in the edit summaries as well as create the discussion in the talk page, which we all saw what led to. The fact remains that he engaged in highly disruptive behaviour not only in the article (breaking WP:3RR against two veteran users, refusing to participate in the talk page, ignoring WP:CONSENSUS, resume edit warring right after his block etc) but also towards another editor (WP:ASPERSIONS, WP:NPA, WP:AOBF).

And oh please, spare me those nice words and tips. The fact that you're comparing my behaviour to this users is simply baffling. Here, I'll finish my last comment with a nice collage;

• 16:01, 28 December 2021 - Referring to yourself in the 3rd person is cringe (Removed my edit warring warning with this comment)

• 16:10, 28 December 2021 - What are you on about?

• 08:14, 30 December 2021 - I am not assuming good faith on the part of the other editor involved in this matter at this point. I did not restore my addition but rather only made an edit which is sourced. Blowing this out of proportion is an abuse of the system on the part of this other editor who seems to want to use this to harass myself.

• 08:29, 30 December 2021 - What you are doing clearly involves WP:HAR and WP:GAME by twisting this matter to suit your ends over a name repeatedly used in the article but not in the infobox. Yes, I accuse you of bad faith gaming using your familiarity with the guidelines in order to portray this matter in the worst way possible.

• 08:34, 30 December 2021 - Your reversion notes of the article-in-point, which have not been brought forth yet, and your repeated attempts at making the worst assumption should reveal the insanity to them.

There's putting good faith in a user, and there's this. But go on, make more excuses for him, defend him. Because we can all see what happens when he tries to do it himself. --HistoryofIran (talk) 00:00, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

He changed "Ikhtyiar Uddin" to "Ikhtiyar al-Din", as the name was given in the lead before they edited the article, and as it is given by the only source cited, without using the {{transl}} template to which you objected. How is this resuming the edit war? Requiring an editor who is adjusting the infobox to the sourced name in the article to prove that this name is the WP:COMMONNAME is just not very reasonable, as I'm sure you will see. You're absolutely right that the way in which Sultan 'defended' himself is very poor (and I do believe that a warning would be in place for that), but I assure you that you will catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:58, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Personal attack by Achezet

• Achezet (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Alexbrn (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Embolic and thrombotic events after COVID-19 vaccination (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Seeing this personal attack Special:Diff/1062765684 by Achezet following some edit warring between the parties means I'm pulling this here. I haven't examined the details of the dispute to judge who is right or wrong there, so have no immediate clue to the rights or wrongs of the discussion/edit warning, and the innocence or guilt of either party. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 12:09, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

While applying the appropriate ANI-notice notifications that the offending contribution has been reverted and Achezet suitably warned on their talk page. Unless there are problems with the contributions to the article (I have RL time to check) or edit warrning this may be the end of the matter here unless problems continue. THankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 12:32, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Looks like Achezet is putting content heavily based non-WP:MEDRS source back in,[143] bringing WP:THETRUTH about vaccine dangers to Wikipedia (never mind the page covers this properly from suitable RS thanks to the careful work of other editors). I've pointed them at MEDRS but they obviously don't understand what a primary source is and are aggressive with it, as can be seen from the PA. Alexbrn (talk) 12:49, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

May be bringing the article to include CVST as well as TTS, which is a matter under discussion. Achezet appears to be beyond a complete newbie (due to citation eloration) and has chosen to continue to edit the article rather than responding here. I have therefore reverted his contributions, which may be good faith, although I'm stretching my competency in the area epsecially without deep investigations (And I haven't got time). They do appear to be proceeding apace evening having been made area of Ds sanctions .... That is not to say there constributions may be valid but it needs consensus. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 13:42, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• Hey Alexbrn, quick question: you're not a replicant, right? El_C 15:55, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
  • How would I know? Alexbrn (talk) 16:04, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Well, do you wear a shirt or drive a car? El_C 16:06, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
      • [144]. I check myself most days, just to make sure nothing has changed. Cheers! Dumuzid (talk) 16:06, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@El C and Dumuzid: Is this a joke or does it insinuate Alexbrn needs to taken to a sockpuppet investigation? Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 17:47, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

It's Blade Runner-related banter. I think. Alexbrn (talk) 17:55, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Quite so. My apologies for any confusion; I simply couldn't resist. Cheers to all. Dumuzid (talk) 18:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

How dare thou question the integrity of Deckerd Blade, Blade Runner! Methinks there's a replicant afoot. El_C 19:31, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Look. this is probably going to BOOMERANG for me due to the fact I've challenged admin's AnddrewA and Omegatron at Talk:Embolic and thrombotic events after COVID-19 vaccination. And while I accept we should probably close this with Achezet taking stuff to discussion, there is still the matter of handling the discussions on that page in an appropriate manner, including: Talk:Embolic and thrombotic events after COVID-19 vaccination#Pfizer studies could be included in summary which is ongoing. I have a view on it but it is sense consensus that counts there. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 04:45, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Another range block needed; LTA IP hopper

The operator of these IP's has been trying, on a continuous basis, since at least 2018 (thats a staggering three years), to disrupt figures, data and sources content on Wikipedia. A range block was carried out in March 2021,[145] but they are still doing the same, i.e. actively trying to inflate/promote anything related to North Caucasus peoples on Wikipedia in a disruptive way. The operator tries to do this by inflating population figures without sources, changing battles/wars in favour of North Caucasus peoples without sources, removing connections between the North Caucasus and the region of the Middle East, removing sourced content, adding unsourced info, etc. They are also actively involved in diminishing the long history and influence of non-Caucasus peoples in the Caucasus region (i.e. Russians, Iranians, Turks, etc.), by, in the same way, either adding unsourced information or removing sourced information.

Pinging Oshwah as he carried out the rangeblock previous time.

Here's a list of some of the more recent IPs.

• 2603:8000:A403:8807:7C4A:B9F7:1F7:6B2 (talk · contribs · (/64) · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 2603:8000:a403:8807:3cf4:d46d:ff79:8b15 (talk · contribs · (/64) · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 2600:1012:b003:7bff:c98:c32a:9741:b4e2 (talk · contribs · (/64) · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 2603:8000:a403:8807:3182:158e:72c7:b7c2 (talk · contribs · (/64) · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 2603:8000:A403:8807:EC53:79F1:59CA:3BD2 (talk · contribs · (/64) · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 2603:8000:a403:8807:8dd7:58c4:efac:35e0 (talk · contribs · (/64) · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

- LouisAragon (talk) 16:23, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Pinging Ymblanter too as he protected several target pages last time. - LouisAragon (talk) 16:25, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

As a template on my user page says, I will not be taking administrative actions in this topic area.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:31, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

MORE: latest revert, for the dozenth time trying to add "North Caucasian peoples" to the Ossetians page. Edit summary: "your mama"[146] - LouisAragon (talk) 20:45, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I've blocked Special:Contributions/2603:8000:A403:8807::/64 for three months. Let me know if the problem continues from any other ranges. EdJohnston (talk) 21:30, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Editor keeps on putting false information in article about Devin Ratray

This guy from Croatia every day keeps on putting in false information about Devin Ratray getting his charges dropped. Every day people switch it back. This has been going on for a week or more. Can the article be locked from ip editors and his ips be blocked. It’s become annoying, just look at the edit history for Devin Ratray. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1000:B10C:3CA8:E539:6CC1:7AA:EB94 (talk) 20:00, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I protected the article for a week. If it resumes bring the article to WP:RFPP, please.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:22, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

User apparently trying to get to 500 edits quickly by removing and readding spaces

TheLanchKellfruit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This user has made more than 100 edits at The Avengers (2012 film), just removing and readding spaces. They did the same at Tron: Legacy. —El Millo (talk) 21:21, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I blocked indef and only after that noticed EdJohnston' s request to the user to explain their behavior. Since this is a controversial situation, I will unblock if a couple of admins think I should.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:54, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Your block seems correct to me. If he asks for unblock we can find out if there is any method to the madness. EdJohnston (talk) 21:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Agreed - good block in the absence of a very good explanation for this strange editing. GiantSnowman 21:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I endorse the indef block. Even if they are not straight-up system gaming, they are WP:NOTHERE to build an encyclopedia. BD2412 T 21:59, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I threw User talk:AgentEnthusiast in for free. Drmies (talk) 22:02, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Good block, Ymblanter! As far as I can see the only possible explanation for this is an attempt to game the system to get XC status. Could some clever filter-savvy person perhaps devise a way of highlighting this kind of series of pointless edits? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:00, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Don't know anything about abuse filter markup, but I think it's probably going to be something that checks for any/all of the following:

• The edit has added or removed a single character.
• The amount of edits done to a page in a row by a specific user within some amount of time exceeds a set threshold.
• The edit frequency of a user (that only includes very small edits, like adding one or two letters) exceeds some limit. ^{(probably not going to be as important)}

172.112.210.32 (talk) 04:40, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Also, Happy New Year ANI! 172.112.210.32 (talk) 04:43, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Testing in 1180. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:56, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

IP User 70.161.8.90 breaking WP:CIVILITY

The IP user 70.161.8.90 has shown incivility in their recent edits (see this and this). These edits and the language used within them are clearly breaking WP:PA. Lastly, in one of their edit summaries, he refers to some editors as "dumbasses". Pyramids09 (talk) 22:05, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Pyramids09: the DO YOUR HOMEWORK! of the first diff doesn't really cross the line of WP:PA, nor does the I'll discuss whatever I want from the second diff. I do wonder though why you didn't link to the you moronic hypocrite or the You're so devoid of mental acumen in that second 'conversation', which is wholly WP:NOTFORUM indeed? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:20, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Apaugasma: Oops, I only read through their most recent contributions. My bad. Pyramids09 (talk) 03:56, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Slow edit war at List of military disasters

Please see recent edit history. Disruptive editing/vandalism mainly by an ip. Please consider semi protection. Cinderella157 (talk) 22:55, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done Semi-protected for 10 days. I have a feeling that this was Worldwar1989 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) who didn't log in. De728631 (talk) 23:03, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Personal attack by some IP

I've just noticed this post. In my opinion, it is self-explanatory and it needs no additional comments. I will appreciate if some admin takes necessary measures. Thank you in advance, --Paul Siebert (talk) 23:14, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

•  Done redacted, rev-deleted and IP blocked from that talkpage. Black Kite (talk) 10:09, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Block evasion 14.226.25.254

• 14.226.25.254 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Latest IP used by disruptive editor who in the past has used:

• 113.178.44.106 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 113.178.44.5 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 14.226.24.7 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 14.177.240.82 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 14.177.7.174 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Impossibleultimate1545 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (see prev ANI)

Same geolocation (Hanoi, Vietnam) and ISP (VNPT), and the same sort of edits to the same topics (warships, missiles, etc.)

Range Special:Contributions/113.178.44.0/25 was blocked for three months at the end of October; 14.226.24.7 was blocked for one months at the same time. 14.177.7.174 was blocked for seven days on December 23. - RovingPersonalityConstruct (talk, contribs) 03:59, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

• Gotcha. Thanks. Drmies (talk) 01:17, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Reporting Victor Aify

Victor Aify (talk · contribs)

This editor is only adding the website The Afro Desk Journal in articles [147] [148] [149] [150]. Clearly that they are only using this account for promotion then anything else (WP:NOTHERE). TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 20:28, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Their last edit was about three hours ago. You dropped a notice on their talk page about one hour ago. It's unclear to me why you felt it necessary to escalate this at this time. (you also failed to inform them of this discussion, please be sure and do that in the future) Beeblebrox (talk) 20:51, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox: I only notice this editor just recently, you don't need to be rude about it. TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 20:59, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment)I think it's more there maybe should have been an attempt to discuss this at the user's talk page, and if that didn't work out or there was no response, or if they continued without explanation, some admin action would be needed. Just my two cents, anyway. Singularity42 (talk) 21:07, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Singularity42: Maybe I was being too fast about this, we see the editor response to this issue. TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 21:26, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd add that I really don't think my comment was rude. I challenged the basis of this report, but I wasn't rude about it. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:54, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

GalavantEnchancedMoon pblock needed on Railway Preservation Society of Ireland

• GalavantEnchancedMoon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Djm-leighpark (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Railway Preservation Society of Ireland (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Talk:Railway Preservation Society of Ireland/Archive 1 (edit | subject | history | links | watch | logs)
• Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Railway Preservation Society of Ireland
• Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 176#Railway Preservation Society of Ireland

Please note I (Djm-leighpark) claim to have been a member of the the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland (RPSI) between 25 August 2021 and 22 November 2021 and also between 29 December 2021 and 31 December 2021 which means I have a COI even despite resignation. My tendered resignation today (with request membership fee is retained for purposes of the society) is to indicate views and concerns here are my own and should not represent or reflect those of the RPSI. Djm-leighpark (talk) 00:51, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I bring to ANI the case of GalavantEnchancedMoon (GEM), whose edits, in my view, seem to POV with subtle and not-so-subtle over-promotion of the south area of the RPSI against the north area of the RPSI and these have resurfaced with the edits on 25th December Railway Preservation Society of Ireland. The explanation today at Special:Diff/1063017973 claims [151] addresses my concerns ... per my background and research detailed at Talk:Mullingar railway station and concerns/background at [Talk:Railway Preservation Society of Ireland#Mullingar] it doesn't. While the Mullingar issues are relatively minor they are a continuation of the behavior which caused this oversighter comment: Special:Diff/1038917193 ... (additionally BLP matters were brought forward and Wikipedia:Revision deletion needed at the RSPI article). The exchange between between Drmies and Mjroots at Talk:Railway Preservation Society of Ireland#COI/Neutrality concerns of 25 December 2021 edits. seems to suggest Drmies is encouraging Mjroots to raise at ANI (or maybe Pblkock? directly). GEM has currently won the edit war (I would have to do {{request edit}}, and the nearest a neutral came to trying to sort it out was at Special:Diff/1062501269 where they declared As an uninvolved editor (I've never even set foot in Ireland), my understanding is that this is a long-running dispute, and essentially all major contributors to the article have a COI. Which makes sense, because everyone else doesn't want to wade into the middle of a war zone (I certainly don't). I don't know how to resolve this beyond banning everyone with a COI from making direct edits to the article entirely and having someone neutral rewrite it (I am NOT volunteering to do this). (NB: I dispute need to TNT). In totality I suggest there is a substantial case for a Pblock of GEM, (which is what I have myself), with use of {{Request edit}} if appropriate, which I have to do myself. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 00:51, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• Happy new year, for your part of the world. We got a few hours to go. Yes, your COI is noted; you do not need to explain that every time. You placed one diff here of GEM's edits; I simply do not see, in that or other recent edits, how that somehow sets up one part against the other, and favors it. Now, I really don't mind a partial block for GEM, but I don't think you have made the case for it, despite the many words in this post. Drmies (talk) 01:12, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• Drmies: Your're an oversighter so you've access to the controversial edits. Given the nature of your previous comments this will end you with GEM being BLOCK'ed or me being me SEALION'd ... but was that your intention? I could make a better case but I'd to dox people? Is that what you want? Perhaps your conduct too needs to be scutinised? I need to work out if I need to dox people to make a stronger case? Were you goading Mjroots to take this here to take a "pop" at me? There are things to chew over. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 04:01, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

This doesn't affect just GEM though, does it? There are five editors named at talk:Railway Preservation Society of Ireland as having a COI. AIUI, Djm-leighpark is the editor accusing the other four of having a COI. He has self-declared a COI, which is why I PBLOCKED him from editing the article. GEM has denied being a member of the RPSI, which we have to accept in good faith in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary.

I suggested that a community PBLOCK discussion here at ANI may be the best way to resolve this, although since I published those thoughts I've been thinking and maybe AN might be a better venue, as there is less drama there. I will say that I am not going to PBLOCK an editor from an article just because another editor says they have a COI. Mjroots (talk) 06:53, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

@MMjroots: To repeat on 15 August 2021 at Special:Diff/1038917193 by Drmies which named the names: have rarely seen an article so clearly edited by "interested parties"--a quick glance at the history makes this clear already. Just look at all the redlinked names who sometimes just made a few edits and then disappeared--and most of those edits are adding unverified details about what trains the organization rides or what things they do. Like NAME1, or NAME2. NAME3 and NAME4 have a COI too, but it's the opposite interest. NAME5 looks like a former or current member who, on the one hand, wants to fluff up the article while taking stabs at old colleagues. I'm glad User:Pipsally came along in April to remove all those BLP violations, which I'm about to scrub from the history..., NAME2 is GEM, has been identified by oversighter Drmies as (Not just one editor Djm-leighpark) as having a COI. On 15 August 2021 I was not an RPSI member, and adding to COI on the talk page seemed appropriate. And if it wasn't many amdins have had employ opportunity to do so since. You might wonder why I'm singled GEM but they've resumed (what I allege is pointed editing) on 25 December 2021 ... which "feels" like sniping from "South" against "North" ... again. I would appreciate a need for a more private review forum .... and given evidence I've just had to elaborate here there miight need to be a WP:XRV, perhaps as well. Leprechauns couldn't had engineered a start like this if they tried ... not that I'm accused anyone of being one ... but I'll probably get the boomberang on that one. Welcome to Wikipedia 2022 says me eyes rollling ! 08:25, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

And what is the administrative action that a review is needed on? The only administrative action I've taken in this case is to PBLOCK you due to your stated COI. You've not objected to that action. XRV is not for reviewing an admin for failing to do an administrative action. That I haven't PBLOCKED GEM for the reasons I stated does not preclude any other admin from doing so if they feel it is justified. Mjroots (talk) 08:48, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

@Mjroots: Your actions, allegations, inconsistency and sometimes inaction. You repeatedly accuse me of being the originator of the suggestion of GEM's COI seem to fail to recognise Drmies pointed it out first. Totally appropriate action would be for you to remove the connected contributor from the article talk page first and say, "look Djm-leighpark" you made a mistake there and reverted that. I've no real desire to take this to XRV but unless I've misread something the inconsistencies are pretty horrible. Fundamentally your a good dude and doing useful stuff here. But your now involved (or perhaps better put dragged in) and it needs others not involved to sort out. And I am highly aware of the probability of a boomerang SEALION block at some point; thoug I promise not to do a picture injection this time as the consequence is still with us on the Chinese and Japanese trams! Djm-leighpark (talk) 09:23, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

For the record, I don't consider myself "involved" re any actions I take re the RPSI article, either in the past or in the future. I'm not a member of the RPSI and haven't ever edited the article. It is probably for the best that the community PBLOCK discussion is held and a consensus is formed. I will not be expressing an opinion should such a discussion be held, although I may comment if asked to do so. Mjroots (talk) 10:10, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Djm-leighpark, this is getting tedious. Drop the "oversighter" when you talk about me, please, since it is completely irrelevant. There's rev-deleted content, but that's old news and it doesn't concern anyone who is still active, and it certainly doesn't concern GEM. I think you need to stop trying to insult Mjroots, and you should stop trying to goad me. I don't know what a "sealion block" is. No, you don't need to dox anyone: what you need to do is prove disruption in the article (or the talk page) by way of diffs from the article or the talk page. I don't see any evidence right now of current disruption. Drmies (talk) 17:36, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, @Drmies:. Basically this boils down to a content dispute, doesn't it. Mjroots (talk) 18:36, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

: I agree there is a current content dispute: but I'd argue that also links to previous contributions by GEM and that objective continues. On that matter I'm doing at email to an oversighter I have some trust in. I have previously mentioned oversighter specifically as that position requires high standards, but I will respect the request not to mention it after this. As Drmies and Mjroots are currently in my opinion prepared to back their concerns expressed on the article talk page against what seems like SPA's and wish to classify this as a content dispute, perhaps they may conspire to close this, as content dispute should not be here? The chance of neutrals to sort it out, which has been requested for some time, seems remote, and I'd expect a {{request edit}} to get exoceted in the two months it might take to get implemented. I expect to be blocked for a month or more now or relatively shortly if not by a admin block then by a voluntary requested block to avoid a psychotic incident that would lead to a block. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 19:53, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

GEM arguably disruptive and POV edits

• The general angle to watch for is GEM presenting a point of view that is disparaging towards the Whitehead in the North or the management committee of RPSI. However, some members regard this as a waste of money and effort that would be better used on their existing locomotive and carriage fleet. This unsourced and therefore opinion piece expresses about the opinion of members express to distain at the decision at Whitehead proceed from this. This is actually a controversial decision: It takes parts which could have been used to build either a NCC Class W or a NCC Class WT; and its a very valid and devisive debate to about whether to go for one or the other. This also expresses the opinion that was a long-term flagship project and funds could have been more effectively applied to short-term needs. The issue with this is not necessarily that the opinion is incorrect, the problem is edit is disruptive, Wikipedia has been used to express and opinion, and possibly shows connection with membership. Trivial in itself, but problematic when combined with other problemss. Djm-leighpark (talk) 23:31, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
• At the risk of repetition, Special/Diff:1038917193 confirms extreme "interested party" editing over article revisions that have been Revision-deleted. Djm-leighpark (talk) 00:18, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• If we look at edits on 25/27 December 2021 ... the POV pushing resumes. Its valid to talk about operations ... but is selection of the phrase "The Society has extensive operations out of Dublin which are said to bring in the lion's share of income, according to Five Foot Three issue 43" the most neutral way to do this, and especially omitting the date of newsletter Five Foot Three issue 43 ... which is about 1996/1997 ... about 24 years ago. It still may be the case dublin generates more income ... but that's not the way to prove it. In terms of Mullingar needing to be at the top level ... its now a minor base if that ... it doesn't seem to directly have a safety case [152] (Section: If you would like to become a RPSI volunteer then you must:) .and seems to now be restricted to tow carriages [153]. The comment The last overhaul was completed in 2015 and the base is now going derelict with funding instead being channeled to Whitehead, including a council decision not to spend money on the green carriages based there ... it again feels like a winge opporunity at Whitehead. Its not to decry Mullingar's work or voluntary effort there ... its just consistent problematic POV pushing. With regards the "green" carriage one this one at least seems to be at Inchicore. In totality sufficient for a PBlock I'd argue. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 00:56, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

178.41.58.156 once again hijacking a redirect

• 178.41.58.156 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• Jendrik (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This is a follow-up from this discussion where the Jendrik redirect was semi-protected as a result of repeated hijacking by users then an IP. The protection has now expired and the IP has resumed their hijacking behavior. Is there an alternative approach here, since it seems protection might not be the best solution short-term? Jalen Folf (talk) 00:51, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I blocked the IP for a month. If they return, a partial three-year block from the redirect should be the next step.--Ymblanter (talk) 00:57, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

2022 United States Senate election in Vermont

• 2022 United States Senate election in Vermont (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Kerryraheb (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

It saddens me to have to escalate this to ANI on New Years. This situation first came to my attentions at Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Kerry_Raheb. Nevertheless, Kerryraheb has not answered any questions about COI regarding the election. I have even addressed Kerryraheb directly on their talk page. Instead, Kerryraheb has become increasingly combative about editing the 2022 United States Senate election in Vermont page.

I always try to reach out to COI editors and work with them (when they are not paid shills) however, I can't reach Kerryraheb. Cheers and Happy New Year. --SVTCobra 06:30, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

If the editor is who he claims to be. I must admit, looking at his edit summaries, edit-warring & obvious COI breaching. I'm amazed by his childish behaviour. GoodDay (talk) 06:50, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Obvious COI, indef PBLOCK issued. Mjroots (talk) 07:43, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Block evasion 2001:16A2:C195:96D7:CE9:60A9:AA1B:5A9E

• 2001:16A2:C195:96D7:CE9:60A9:AA1B:5A9E (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Latest IP used by disruptive editor who in the past has used:

• 2001:16A2:C1C3:377B:3C26:945A:5727:D2EA (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 2001:16A2:C168:7FAB:CC71:ECDC:92F3:88CE (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 2001:16A2:C1EB:7428:E859:8893:BFF0:FDC5 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 2001:16A2:C16C:4826:B1BD:5149:D940:D4A2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 2001:16A2:9077:2B00:DD28:AFCD:19D3:FD18 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Same geolocation (Jeddah, Mecca Region, Saudi Arabia) and ISP (SaudiNet), and the same sort of edits to the same topics (Incident management (ITSM), Problem management, Bachelor of Technology, Bachelor of Engineering, etc.). Extremely disruptive editing. Adding full of unsourced information's randomly. Even removing tags from the articles which are meant for improvement. Please do range block.--202.78.236.72 (talk) 13:37, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

List of Chelsea F.C. records and statistics

I did post at WP:RPP, but there seems to be a bigger issue at state on the article, the IP there is just seems disruptive against a few editors, there was a talk on the talk page. But the article has really just become a battleground. I really feel an admin needs to review the contrib history, talk page. Help stabilise the problem there, cheers. Govvy (talk) 21:55, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

46.138.206.0/24 : vandalism in Talk namespace

• 46.138.206.0/24 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
  

Serial cross-wiki vandalism in Talk namespace (offensive posts, mainly in Russian). Please impose a long-term partial block on this IP range for Talk namespace only (up to several months or 1 year please). This vandal has been active for many years, see also: previous IP range / earlier IP range / last contribs in ruwiki / last contribs in ruwiktionary.) Thanks in advance. — 2A00:1370:8129:6878:6B7D:C580:E39A:4F21 (talk) 23:36, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

One of the diffs which I have just revision-deleted contained apology of Holocaust denial.--Ymblanter (talk) 00:03, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

user:Mughal7867868055 IDHT, and harassment

• Mughal7867868055 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Even after told/reverted repeatedly, the user has been adding Urdu as official language to the article of Aurangabad. The user is also trying to remove pictures of the Islamic prophet. Today they posted a message to my talkpage, containing slurs/vulgarism, basically typical rev-del material. They also mentioned me being marathi speaker — I don't think they can edit here collaboratively. Appropriate action is requested. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 09:44, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  nevermind. Blocked a few minutes ago by TheresNoTime. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 09:49, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

@Iridescent and Anthony Appleyard: would you kindly revdel the diff above? —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 09:56, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

On this occasion  Done, albeit with the proviso that in general, revision deletion isn't a good idea except in very serious cases, since it makes it harder to for people to see the background in the event of any future appeal. In this case, it's not so much of an issue since this appears to be someone with no chance of being unblocked. ‑ Iridescent 10:23, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

@Iridescent: it was in Hindi typed in English. It was not good stuff. See you around :-) —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 11:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Incel

Would somebody close Talk:Incel#"The incel ideology" + new sources are available related to NYTimes front-page article and evolving international news story? No verifiable edits seem to be forthcoming from that thread. tgeorgescu (talk) 10:09, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

they asked for sources and now have 33 sources which they are ignoring, including one by Megan Twohey and Gabriel Dance, which has 5-6 paragraphs on the largest incel forum over multiple articles, and a Daily. They are rejecting sources in an immature fashion. 2600:8806:0:C2:D5A8:2983:190A:D79D (talk) 10:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Not demanding anyone add them, just giving a heads up, the news is already covering that story on sanctionedsuicide and sub-story on incels.co internationally 2600:8806:0:C2:D5A8:2983:190A:D79D (talk) 10:15, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

An article split to Incel Movement incels.co and/or SanctionedSuicide seems useful for anyone intrepid Wikipedian who wants to not ignore reputable outlets on that topic. There's dozens of sources which could be used 2600:8806:0:C2:D5A8:2983:190A:D79D (talk) 10:18, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

the news is already covering that story—good for them, we aren't the news. tgeorgescu (talk) 10:19, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm curious why it's considered notable for reputable sources but not Wikipedia? 2600:8806:0:C2:D5A8:2983:190A:D79D (talk) 10:21, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

See [154]: misogynistic edits, denialism of radicalization, and so on. tgeorgescu (talk) 10:27, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't appreciate defamation 2600:8806:0:C2:D5A8:2983:190A:D79D (talk) 10:33, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Mysoginistic edits: Hypergamy, Melanie Fontana. Denialism of incel radicalization: Talk:Toronto van attack and Toronto van attack, many at Talk:Incel (search for Minassian). tgeorgescu (talk) 10:42, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

A international news story with followups you are considering not notable because IPs edited those pages? I'm not responding to you anymore 2600:8806:0:C2:3114:691A:6104:C402 (talk) 10:53, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

An anonymous person cannot be defamed. tgeorgescu (talk) 10:57, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) I don't see that discussion leading anywhere useful. I'm sure that The New York Times itself would not claim to be more reliable than peer-reviewed academic papers, so I don't understand why someone from a group that usually disparages that newspaper would make such a claim. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:35, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

What the intial complaintee is gonna lobby to IP ban me out of a lie that the "wiki anyone can edit" can't insert multiple points of views. Oh no what can I ever do. 2600:8806:0:C2:D5A8:2983:190A:D79D (talk) 10:33, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that one of the "peer reviewed authors" (Alexander Ash aka diego) someone added in the todo of the article talk page is under congressional inquiry, who are petitioning the DOJ to prosecute him. As well as Montevideo police inquiry .That was in many reputable sources 2600:8806:0:C2:3114:691A:6104:C402 (talk) 10:43, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/technology/suicide-website-google.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8806:0:C2:3114:691A:6104:C402 (talk) 10:46, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• The WP:BLUDGEONING and lengthy WP:FORUM posts by 2600:8806:X at the current talk page and archives are a waste of everyone's time. I don't know what they're trying to do, but they don't seem to be here to build an encyclopedia. See e.g. their response to a request for specific, verifiable contributions: "Not my job". Well, it's not anyone else's job to wade through their endless rants either. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 10:52, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Sources are there for referernce for future articles or authors, they didn't even wanna click on them. And I do suspect this story and news was purposefully ignored by wikipedians who scrape google news for 'incel', as editors jumped on minassian story 1 day in but not this. Why? I dunno. There are possibly 500+ deaths associated with the SS site according to the story. And the authors mentioned diego and lamarcus ran incels.co and SS. It's a tragedy I feel is being unfairly ignored by WP and now framed as a problem with an IP. Page splits would probably help though as SS is only tied to incels.co, and that's just one forum, albeit the largest. incels.co Sanctioned Suicide Incel Movement etc would probably be more accurate ways to place refs in future imo2600:8806:0:C2:3114:691A:6104:C402 (talk) 11:12, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I think ppl probably add it in eventually, but the retisence and agression towards the story (pretty much only on WP) is odd. News stories should stand on their own without people trying to create wikidrama2600:8806:0:C2:3114:691A:6104:C402 (talk) 10:55, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I could go on about the other editors doing WP:NOTAFORUM or WP:RIGHTGreatWRONGs, as mentioned in the talk page, but it's pointless, I don't want people banned cuz this is about a real tragedy. 2600:8806:0:C2:3114:691A:6104:C402 (talk) 11:19, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

You have accused me of WP:RGW, but that's a completely baseless accusation. tgeorgescu (talk) 11:23, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

At the very least your edits comprised of mostly WP:NOTaFORUM and WP:IDONTLIKeIT, but it's fine, I'm just here today to build an encyclopedia not to create drama. 2600:8806:0:C2:3114:691A:6104:C402 (talk) 11:32, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

This formatting kinda evokes the ancient mediawiki method of making wikilinks, which was using camelcase. Just pointing that out, unsure if it means anything --50.234.188.27 (talk) 00:21, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Back to the story and followups I recommend any wikipedians to read it and the followups and international counterpart stories, it's a good story and could help build on this wealth of knowledge here at wikipedia.2600:8806:0:C2:3114:691A:6104:C402 (talk) 11:35, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

If not it's not a huge deal, someone else will add it. 2600:8806:0:C2:3114:691A:6104:C402 (talk) 11:35, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

The words about being here mean nothing, since those are not backed up by evidence. tgeorgescu (talk) 11:52, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

IP user x3 (same user) violating WP:SYNTH, WP:NPOV, WP:3RR, Wikipedia:Citation overkill and Wikipedia:Harassment

[155], [156], [157] (same user) an anonymous user based in the Phillipines has been edit warring recently. He is unwilling to engage, and has broken the 3 revert rule by this edit. [158]

Both me and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_Convergence&oldid=1063256721 Vif12vf have reverted his addition of social democracy and it's been explained to him why it is being reverted. Instead, he refueses to listen and is trying to [overkill it.] The explanation of his addition being reverted is due to WP:SYNTH. All sources he has added only refer to Gabriel Boric and not the party Social Convergence and alliance Apruebo Dignidad. Obviously by looking at the members of the alliance (founders Daniel Jadue of the Communist Party and Gabriel Boric) and the position, of Apruebo Dignidad, it's pretty hard to believe that the alliance would be social democratic, when in fact the social democratic alliance of Chile is New Social Pact. If his sources refered to the alliance and party specifically, his addition would be fine, however he is breaking WP:SYNTH (Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source. Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source. If one reliable source says A and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C not mentioned by either of the sources) by adding sources that only describe Boric as social democratic and therefore assuming his party and alliance are also social democratic.

His sources: "El Chile de Boric: una oportunidad para la socialdemocracia europea" - "Boric's Chile: an opportunity for European social democracy" "Gabriel Boric: qué significa su victoria en Chile para la izquierda en América Latina y por qué aún no se habla de una nueva "marea rosa" - Gabriel Boric: what does his victory in Chile mean for the left in Latin America and why there is still no talk of a new "pink tide" "El triunfo de Gabriel Boric en las presidenciales en Chile plantea la pregunta de qué izquierda representa. Tildado de "comunista" por sus críticos, y aliado con ellos, apunta no obstante a la Europa socialdemócrata como inspiración para el "Estado del bienestar" que promueve." - Boric, allied with the communist party, described as a communist by critics, Boric nonetheless points to social democratic Europe as an inspiration for the "welfare state" he promotes. Stephany Griffith-Jones, economista: “Boric es lo que en Europa se llama socialdemócrata” - Stephany Griffith-Jones, economist: "Boric is what in Europe is called a social democrat" So as mentioned, Boric might certainly be social democratic/looking positively at social democracy but none of these sources mention his party and alliance which has been described far left by some sources, and nevertheless even if Boric was a social democrat his comments about "burrying neoliberalism" is a bit strange for a social democrat. [159] Boric has had several labels on him but the question is about his party and alliance, and this editor is insisting that only because he found sources describing Boric as social democrat, his whole alliance/party is that.

Instead of engaging in an active discussion and being respectful, the editor has gone over the 33RR and used Wikipedia:Harassment by swearing towards me. [[160]]

And he is not only doing it to this party but several such as Chavismo (clearly a social democrat lol), which has led to other users reverting his actions. [[161]]

Nevertheless he needs to stop edit warring, and this is why a report has been made as he is unwilling to engage and only push his opinion in a violation of NPOV. Always the anonymous accounts going on a crusade to add in their opinion and in this case social democracy to every party out there judging his edits lol (8 parties in a hour), he would need a consesus for this too. So hopefully something can be done about this. BastianMAT (talk) 11:31, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Blocked – for a period of one week (/64). BastianMAT, for future reference, less is more; diffs are preferred over old revisions. El_C 13:36, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Yikes — sorry, BastianMAT, but this raises questions as to your competence. El_C 13:52, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Rushed it through a bit, hopefully it is not a problem. BastianMAT (talk) 19:54, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I mean, nothing bad happened, it's just concerning that someone who joined the project years ago doesn't know that new discussion sections go at the bottom rather than at the top of a page, especially when as you edit at the top it clearly states NEW ENTRIES GO AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE NOT HERE. And, having the header be absurdly lengthy, too. Oh well. El_C 22:26, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

My bad, I have made reports before and I do make regular ITN nominations. However, you are right, I did make a poor report this time and I acknowledge that. I will not repeat that, anyways, I wish you a good day and cheers. BastianMAT (talk) 22:32, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

No worries, BastianMAT, don't let roughnecks like me bring you down! El_C 22:46, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Obvious sockpuppet needs blocking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Haiyenslna Dronebogus (talk) 13:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

•  Done Black Kite (talk) 13:20, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

User using edit summary to abuse and insult

Mikey'Da'Man, Archangel has made various insulting edit summaries in the past couple of months. See the following examples of this disruptive behaviour: [162], [163], [164], [165], [166], [167], [168], [169], [170], [171], [172], [173], [174]. All my warmest wishes, ItsKesha (talk) 22:23, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Edit summaries recently include this and this giving the middle finger emoji, and this and this referring to people as "clown" and "brat".

For the avoidance of doubt - and I'll post this at Mikey'Da'Man, Archangel's talk page as well - WP:CIVIL applies to edit summaries as much as it does elsewhere. Such use of swearing and insults is entirely innappropriate. I cannot see any talk page posts informing this user of this before, so because I'm in a good mood this evening I'm willing to AGF and assume they were unaware, but any future infraction, no matter how mild, will result in an indefinite block. GiantSnowman 22:30, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

That's a puzzling (and very inappropriate) series of edit summaries, especially as they don't seem to be directed at anyone in particular. They need to stop, and I'd be interested to hear an explanation. I second GiantSnowman's advice. Mackensen (talk) 22:31, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Looks like @El C: has blocked them. Fine by me. GiantSnowman 22:33, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

There's nothing especially egregious about the insults themselves, they're just too much in their totality. Certainly, if they assure us they'll correct their conduct, no problem in unblocking. BTW, ItsKesha, for future reference, diffs are preffred over old revisions (déjà vu!). El_C 22:37, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I blocked prior to any the above comments (I am trying to be less toe-steppy, believe it or not!). El_C 22:53, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Regarding a different matter, I had asked the user on their talk page to be civil and avoid shouting/using all caps, they almost instantly reverted without responding. I checked their talk page history, they have reverted vast amounts of edits there. This incivility in edit summaries is something that dates back not just a couple of months but years. See [175] [176] [177] and [178], so I hope I can be forgiven for not wanting to go back years digging into their talk page history to see if there have been any prior warnings, but for future reference I will bear in mind to ask/warn prior to reporting regardless. Thanks all for your help and advice on this. All my warmest wishes, ItsKesha (talk) 23:21, 2 January 2022 (UTC)