:::Sorry, I actually had the [[WP:REVDEL]] tab open and I was gonna do it right after the indef block, but then I had to get the door. Then shit kept happening and I sorta forgot. Anyway, now {{done}}. [[User:El_C|El_C]] 18:49, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
:::Sorry, I actually had the [[WP:REVDEL]] tab open and I was gonna do it right after the indef block, but then I had to get the door. Then shit kept happening and I sorta forgot. Anyway, now {{done}}. [[User:El_C|El_C]] 18:49, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
::I'm a Brit, who is going to have to speak to his class of children about this tomorrow morning, and I think we should try to keep our knickers as twist-free as possible about this silly, childish piece of vandalism. [[WP:DENY]], and all that. I doubt this is a compromised account - more likely just an editor who is fairly immature (which some of their talk page comments would seem to support), who thought this would be funny and no big deal. I thought a one-off warning would do the trick, but I have no problem with El C's block. Either way, this is wrapped up now - let's not reward this sort of silliness with any more attention. [[User:Girth Summit|<span style="font-family:Impact;color:#006400;">Girth</span> <span style="font-family:Impact;color:#4B0082;">Summit</span>]][[User talk:Girth Summit|<sub style="font-family:Segoe print;color:blue;"> (blether)</sub>]] 18:54, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
::I'm a Brit, who is going to have to speak to his class of children about this tomorrow morning, and I think we should try to keep our knickers as twist-free as possible about this silly, childish piece of vandalism. [[WP:DENY]], and all that. I doubt this is a compromised account - more likely just an editor who is fairly immature (which some of their talk page comments would seem to support), who thought this would be funny and no big deal. I thought a one-off warning would do the trick, but I have no problem with El C's block. Either way, this is wrapped up now - let's not reward this sort of silliness with any more attention. [[User:Girth Summit|<span style="font-family:Impact;color:#006400;">Girth</span> <span style="font-family:Impact;color:#4B0082;">Summit</span>]][[User talk:Girth Summit|<sub style="font-family:Segoe print;color:blue;"> (blether)</sub>]] 18:54, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
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The speech is very simple. The medal count of the World Cup races (sum of the podiums of Downhill, Slalom, Super-G and so on) has always been reported in the skiers' infoboxes, although medals are not actually awarded in these competitions. After all, in the "medaltemplate" the possibility is given to specify what it is and "World Cup race podiums" is a perfect description. Marbe166 (talk·contribs), on the other hand, felt he had to remove this statistic from the infoboxes of only a few active athletes. And luckily it hasn't bothered to do it from the hundreds and hundreds of infoboxes of athletes in which this statistic has always been reported. Over time we tried to involve the various projects in a discussion, but with poor results. Very few have intervened, however it is believed that by asking for the simple confirmation of the status quo, if anything, it should be the other user who seeks a broad consensus and does not constantly revert. --Kasper2006 (talk) 16:59, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Forced to ANI after trying to discuss reverts with the user, the various projects (but with very little participation), the Teahouse, the "dispute resolution" and having opened the discussion in the talk of the skier Federica Brignone. --Kasper2006 (talk) 11:24, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Let's get one thing straight here. Those stats have never always been reported in all skiers' infoboxes. It has been added to SOME infoboxes of, mostly Italian skiers, and a few select others. It is using the medaltemplate, which, as is apparent by the name, is to be used for medals, and only medals, i.e. for World Championships, Junior World Championships and Olympics. Therefore, including WC podiums in the infoboxes is NOT status quo and is wrong. It clutters the infoboxes with too much information, the line must be drawn somewhere. However, it is interesting information, but it is better suited as a separate table in the body of the articles. I remove them when I see them, but I do have a life outside of Wikipedia, therefore I am not going through all the thousands of infoboxes of alpine skiers that there is. That would be an endless task. --Marbe166 (talk) 17:22, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fantastic!. So in this sixth attempt of mine to find out who between you and me is right someone will have to give us some answers. --Kasper2006 (talk) 11:53, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have a lot of respect for the ANI in progress, but after 10 days of silence on the part of the administrators I thought it appropriate to give a shock by explaining in a Wikipedia article what was happening (I add contents and the user disrespectfully continues to delete them) --Kasper2006 (talk) 06:26, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not entirely sure where this discussion is meant to go, but I think the WP:ARS needs to be dealt with as a constant source of WP:CANVAS at certain discussions. While the ARS purports to represent a WP:NPOV, the name itself of the project, and their representative participation in canvassing discussions such as Talk:Titus (dinosaur)#Merge proposal and Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Titus_(dinosaur) show that the ARS is drawing people with no significant input to mass !vote on merge and deletion discussions without contributing beyond rallying over a single point of guidelines that is subjective and not a rule. This group of editors is disrupting discussions that have been kept open for over two weeks without contrary opinions present, in a situation where administrative oversight is explicitly not required and now have begun an edit war to restore the article to its original status instead of arguing for why it should be kept, contradicting the initially established consensus of the situation.
Further note, my notification of WP:ARS of this ANI has also led further members to join the improperly re-opened merge discussion. See here, where a member followed the ANI notification on the talk page to find this discussion and from here went to the merge to cast their vote to keep.IJReid{{T - C - D - R}}00:52, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't been involved in the ARS for years. But keep on trying to claim everyone opposed to the merge and the deletion is a part of "insert group here". SilverserenC00:54, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly its not up to me to care or decide. Regardless, you stated that you were brought into the discussion via the notification of the ARS which you also state you are not involved with. Forgive me if this seems counterintuitive. IJReid{{T - C - D - R}}01:01, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, very nice. Apologies for the misunderstanding, I have struck through the above comment. I thought "notified" was corresponding to my use of it on the ARS talk page notice. IJReid{{T - C - D - R}}01:18, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Seconding this. The "rescuing" operations have only ended in the article's content being "uneditable", with an edit war nearly starting over whether to un-merge the article to its "stubbed" state just prior to the merge, or to the state at the end of the AFD before substantial improvements had been made. The ARS essentially made the article worse. IJReid{{T - C - D - R}}01:35, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but that cannot effectively happen when said improvement process is conducted without the involvement and contrary to the opinions of editors from relevant WikiProjects. From what I have seen, I feel that participation at AfD (even if not the stated goal) has been the crux of the ARS improvement efforts that I have come across to date. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 01:42, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I keep seeing this WP:OWN position about dinosaurs, that only members of certain Projects know best and the rest of the community should stand aside. I've seen it expressed at least 4 times now in various ways by multiple people in these discussions. -- GreenC01:58, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a semi-active member of WP:ARS so I may have bias. But I've noticed a pattern of members improving articles, including the one we are talking about. I would encourage you to test your assumptions and look at the article history and you may see that ARS members are enthusiastic to improve articles. CT55555 (talk) 02:02, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is to my knowledge not officially the case. ARS is at least notionally supposed to exist solely to improve articles, not to participate in deletion discussions. Having a wikiproject for former is fine; the latter is absolutely unacceptable and would obviously be WP:CANVASSing. If they're doing that (ie. listing an article on AFD there regularly results in the same people from the project turning up to !vote) then the people who are doing the listing should be topic-banned from AFD for canvassing. User:7&6=thirteen was topic-banned for his own conduct, of course, but I think that every heavily-active ARS member should be reconsidering their own conduct to make sure that they're not doing similar things, especially since my recollection is that in previous discussions many ARS members specifically said that 7&6=thirteen's conduct was typical for ARS. And for people who are worried about ARS canvassing, rather than focusing on ARS as a whole, I would suggest similarly looking at people who regularly post AFDs to ARS and what the results are - if it seems like it's regularly resulting in functional canvassing then they should be asked to stop, and (if they continuously refuse and the problem persists) brought here so they can be individually topic-banned from deletion-discussions as well. That's probably going to be simpler than seeking broad solutions to ARS as a whole, since we have existing procedures and standards for that sort of thing. And the fact is that there is only a tiny handful of really active ARS members; obtaining topic bans against two or three people would functionally end it (which isn't necessarily to say that all of them necessarily warrent topic bans - I didn't look too closely beyond a cursory skim during the ArbCom case. But if you want to show that ARS is a problem, it amounts to examining the conduct of that handful of people either way.) --Aquillion (talk) 18:07, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, "not sure where this discussion is meant to go"--you started this report, IJReid, so you should have some idea of where you want this discussion to go; the passive voice is not helpful here. And I am wondering what's wrong with the participants at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Titus (dinosaur)--seemed like a pretty lively discussion where people made sentences and arguments. Drmies (talk) 01:25, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience, often the ARS "improvements" to articles at AfD constitute injecting unencyclopedic passing mentions, non-independent or primary material, and other UNDUE content to drive up byte size and referencing, which then forces other participants to rebut each addition so that !voters aren't misled by what superficially looks like a well-sourced article. Another issue is that members rarely have any background in the subject and so are not familiar with the type of media it generates; this means they don't recognize industry-specific "tells" of routine and promotional material that are rightfully disregarded by editors in the field. So I am not at all surprised the page got loaded up with like three refactored press releases and other exhibition hype once ARS got involved. JoelleJay (talk) 07:14, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm involved, and a semi-active member of ARS, but I'll try my best to provide what I hope is an impartial summary of events:
I was the first person to comment at the AfD and because the article was in such bad shape, I flagged it on the WP:ARS page as an article that could do with improvement. link As I hoped, that did motivate a bunch of people to improve the article. I improved it to and it was quickly B-class quality.
There was some concern that the article was PROMO in nature and after a healthy debate, the AfD closed no consensus. link on 14 July
On 17 August, despite the lack of consensus to merge at AfD, a conversation to merge was started. link
That felt like trying to re-do the AfD to me, I opposed. But I seemed to be in a minority of one. I considered making a fuss, but I have more important things to worry about, so I did not.
Within the past 24 hours, I got pinged as someone from the AfD noticed the merge was happening and the people who voted keep at AfD chimed in objecting to the merge.
In the meantime, there was an objection to a quote in the article. An IP address logged on and said they were the expert quoted in The Guardian and they did not make the quote. That was a sticky situation, as it seemed like a good faith objection, but unverifiable. WP:TRUTH is relevant, I think. Someone helpfully removed the quote and added another quote, I think a diplomatic solution.
Now it seems like there is a bit of an edit war happening with people reverting the redirect, people favouring different versions of article, and someone adding what seems to me like too many tags.
In my opinion questions to consider are: is there canvassing? Is it reasonable to propose banning an entire group based on individual members actions ? Is edit warring happening? Are people trying to re-do the AfD because they didn't like the result? I recommend we respect the AfD result of no consensus and people stop trying to merge this article, consensus wasn't reached at AfD to do so. CT55555 (talk) 01:53, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I see that. It's not a verified Twitter account, but I assume good faith in the IP edit and I hope I conveyed clearly above that I saw it as a good faith objection. It seems very likely to be by the author, although the quote was cited in a reliable source, and therefore WP:TRUTH explains why the quote could have been kept; to me that would be a very unpalatable outcome, so I commend the editor who found a better quote and gave them wikipedia love (a goat I think) to thank then for the diplomatic solution. :-) CT55555 (talk) 02:06, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
According to WP:MERGE, a merge discussion should notify interested parties, and there needs to be a merge template added to the top of the page. Neither One of these things were done [the tag]. As a result the initial discussion was 100% support with a few like-minded people. They attempted to quietly make this merge without notifying anyone who might oppose the merge, nor follow the merge procedures. After a proper notification is finally done, and the merge vote doesn't go his way, he blames ARS and seeks to delete the entire group. -- GreenC01:54, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Those in the AFD for this were contacted, regardless of if they were in the ARS or not. This is what should've been done at the start. Those who failed to eliminate the article in AFD, are now the ones complaining that someone is keeping them from getting their way in the merge discussion. DreamFocus02:36, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Contrary to your whining, there is no requirement that participants in an AfD be notified of a merge discussion. The discussion was appropriately brought up in the relevant WikiProjects, which is what policy calls for. It was left open for two weeks, consensus was achieved, and then someone threw a fit and got ARS to back them.
Is my assessment harsh? Yes, but the vote-stacking and empty arguments from people with no real intention of improving the article in question has more than gotten on my nerves. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 02:49, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
During the AFD a lot of work was done on the article by members of the Article Rescue Squadron. [2] So yes, we do like to improve articles, not just eliminate most of their content and keep a small amount of information in another article. DreamFocus02:58, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, the extent of my own participation in the merge discussion is limited to my votes and comments. I do not have an agenda to exclude keep voters. I did not check whether relevant parties were notified, but I think the onus of doing so is on the initiator of the merge discussion and not the participants. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 02:51, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
According to WP:MERGE, all requirements for the discussion were met. The article was tagged, the project pages were tagged, and the people who were involved with discussing the article's status within the context of merging were also present. Many AFD votes were cast as simply !keep, without discussing or considering the party voting to !merge. An admin is not required or meant to close merge discussions. It was open for two weeks, after which there was a very clear consensus to redirect, which was done by a party who was allowed to per WP:MERGE. And those who were watchlisting the article would have been well aware of the substantial changes I made to it to demonstrate during the course of the merge discussion how the only argument presented to keep was frivolous. Whether the article was merged after the point of my edits or not was not my concern, but those who voted to !keep have *also* started edit wars contrary to the due process of overturning a merge discussion consensus. Instead of re-opening the discussion while the current revisions were allowed to stand, the discussion was re-opened by mass reversions back to the point several weeks prior to the discussion closing, undoing all edits that had been done since the AFD to improve the article from a piece of promotional fluff.
The article was created by a one-goal editor with no other edits to coincide with the promotional press tour of a new exhibit. It does not deserve to have been created, should not be maintained in its current outdated form, and requires the attention of editors who will do more than simple !vote. Only five editors improved the article during the course of the AFD, three of which voted to !delete. The ARS, beyond the efforts of CT, did not "rescue" the article. They only cast votes that match with their groups title to "rescue", while drawing the efforts and attention of those editors who are spending time to improve contents of the topic at hand off of improving the wiki and into these backend discussions that cannot be closed for months per site guidelines.
This ANI was created by me to source external input on what site policies say should be done. I am indeed blaming the ARS for bogging down the otherwise smooth continuation of progress improving the overall topics at hand, by arguing over bytes on a website. The pages edit history shows how its content was being continually reduced to remove WP:ADVERT details, all of which was undone by the improper and mis-motivated re-opening of a closed discussion. IJReid{{T - C - D - R}}02:58, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I also wish to emphasise how the closing of the AfD *very clearly states* "any follow-up discussion should be a merger proposal on the article talk page". This was exactly what was followed. The AfD was not attempted to be "undone", it was followed up with in exactly what the closing admin suggested, to preserve article and edit history while allowing editors of the subject to evaluate if the content was deserving of its own article. Claims that the AfD result should have stood for time immemorial are argumentative and false. IJReid{{T - C - D - R}}03:05, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The AFD ended on 14 July 2022. It seems like the merge discussion was delayed until far less people would notice who might disagree with you, then a notice played on a Wikiproject those who supported this in the AFD would see it but no one else. Just feels like someone is gaming the system here, trying to get only those who agree with them to notice what was going on, and upset when those they don't agree with find out and show up anyway. DreamFocus03:11, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Claiming a merge discussion was delayed is definitely not assuming WP:GOOD FAITH. I did not even start the merge discussion. And talking about how notifying the only wikiproject the article is under is insufficient is not supported by any guidelines or policies. WP:ARS does not care about the quality of Dinosaur articles, nor should they. The quality of Dinosaur articles is under the content of WP:DINOS, which means they are the only group that needs to be notified about the articles under their umbrella. Notifying the other participants of the AfD would have been a nice courtesy, but see how very clearly this example shows that too many cooks are spoiling the broth. The article is in limbo, unable to be changed much by anyone without others reverting it in opposition. Administrators are not *meant* to be required in every discussion, but WP:ARS is forcing them to be.
And to be clear, I do not care what happens to WP:ARS, beyond how it is clear from editing histories and involvements in the discussions here, that a larger project presenting their !votes without any other considerations resulted in the group of a smaller project of active editors being overwhelmed and outnumbered, exactly what WP:CANVAS is supposed to help prevent. IJReid{{T - C - D - R}}03:18, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Administrators are not *meant* to be required in every discussion, but WP:ARS is forcing them. Your the one who started this ANI, trying to drag admins into a mess you and a few others created by not properly notifying everyone from the start. Your rationale that only WP:DINO should be notified is another example of WP:OWN and is the heart of the problem. You still don't recognize anyone but the DINO group as valid ("ARS does not care about the quality of Dinosaur articles", "DINOS.. are the only group that needs to be notified", "too many cooks are spoiling the broth"). You and some others have a OWN problem, it's why proper notification was not done, why you have such bad faith toward anyone that disagrees with you. -- GreenC07:30, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Without administrative involvement, every subsequent discussion on the article will devolve into a !vote, where the editors of the project are simply outnumbered even if all of us wanted to !merge. And note, not all of us have cast votes. Not all of us have cast the same vote. Because we, unlike the Article Rescue Squadron, are not expected to want to !keep by definition of our project title. IJReid{{T - C - D - R}}13:21, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. Looking at the talk page, there was a prior discussion involving 7&6 thirteen. It settled out fine there was no gang up. The problem I think is your trying to make drastic changes like deleting or merging the entire article. Why have you not tried to resolve the oldest exhibit question with a talk page discussion, or am I missing it? If you have quality evidence that directly contradicts the source, then you should have no problem resolving it, in some way. People are not unreasonable. But when you attack, blame, edit war, try to ban, claim expert exceptionalism, etc.. I don't know man, this is a life lesson. -- GreenC17:18, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whilst it is acceptable to say that an article requires the attention of editors who will do more than simple !vote, I am not sure that saying Unless you are going to contribute to making the supposedly deserved article a nice article, please don't vote spam. I do not want to spent 10 hours of my day working to make a nice article for content that you think deserved a nice article. This will be my only announcement (emphasis in original at [3]) raises the level of discourse. Wikipedia is about consensus and whilst having people improve the article is preferred, there is still value in getting views from those who do not. Gusfriend (talk) 07:51, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
* I've been on record for years now as not in any way, shape or form being a fan of ARS; I've long since believed that they were far readier to Thwart! Deletionists! by any means to hand than to do the work to rescue articles. More than one member (no one's forgetting AD, right?) has been tbanned over the more egregious of their antics.
But. It has been a universal practice for many years to notify people interested in deletion discussions. The Twinkle XfD templates even have an option to notify particular Wikiprojects of a filing. If you have evidence of edit warring or tendentious editing against individual members, report it on that basis. But little as I care for the attitudes and antics of a number of its members, ARS has as much right to be notified about a deletion discussion as any other Wikiproject. A "cure" for this complaint would be far worse than the disease. Ravenswing 10:32, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ravenswing, is a merge proposal considered a "deletion discussion" (I genuinely don't know, I don't participate in that area)? Is it standard to notify each participant in every prior AfD whenever there are major developments to the page? JoelleJay (talk) 23:03, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've been compelled to take contested merges to AfD to confirm (or not) the merge, and in such cases, they follow all the standards of AfD. Beyond that, while I'm not the frequent AfD flyer I was ten years back, it was sometimes the case that someone filing a 2nd (3rd, 4th) nomination would ping the people involved in prior nominations, but it was never then a requirement. Ravenswing 00:51, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whilst I've long been a critic of the ARS and their persistently irritating ITSNOTABLE and IFOUNDITONGOOGLE antics - some of which are apparent on the AfD - I do have to say that the sources, including a couple of heavyweight UK papers (and there are others) do IMO push this over the GNG line. One thing I would say, though - anyone reading this article would probably conclude that this is a complete T-Rex skeleton ("Titus is reportedly the first genuine Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton exhibited in England in over a century"), when only 20% of the actual bones are real ones. Somewhat misleading, that. Black Kite (talk)10:51, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would second this, I read the article last night when this ANI popped up, I thought it was a good article and moved on. Going back now, it isn't explained anywhere that it isn't a "full" skele, it certainly does seem like it's a full skele (up until I read your comment, I thought it was), and the Guardian clearly says The fossil was around 20% complete once fully conserved, so although it is a ‘real’ skeleton, many of the bones are reconstructions made of black obsidian.FrederalBacon (talk) 11:27, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That is where probably my biggest gripe comes from. The article devolved into multiple edit wars over whether or not the content as is stands (which is from several weeks prior and before substantial revisions) is promotional and reads like an advertisement. Details such as not specifying most of the "mount" is just Stan (dinosaur), describing the display as the first in "over a century" (when there is an NHMUK specimen that has been on display since 1915), and weirdly describing the conservation and photogrammetry of the bones by saying how "Steven Dyer of ThinkSee3D" did it, all read like promotional details.
But those details are unable to be removed because whenever the article is "reduced to a stub" it is reverted. Despite an informational stub being much better than an article that is half advertisement. IJReid{{T - C - D - R}}13:19, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're making the mistake of thinking that the ARS participants actually know anything about the subject of the article they're "saving". That has never been the case. Black Kite (talk)13:41, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The talk page discussions on these issues are missing. Did they get archived somewhere? I'd like review what has been discussed. -- GreenC17:08, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's just a list of complaints in a thread inside a merge discussion - what is anyone supposed to do with that? There has been no serious attempt to follow the content dispute resolution processes. A sincere attempt would look like a separate talk page discussion, for each issue, a paragraph neutrally explaining the problem, why your editing a certain way, then make the edit, wait for a BRD cycle if any, and discuss. None of that has happened. Except one time with 7&6 thirteen and it was easily and civilly resolved with no gang up.-- GreenC17:47, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's because there was no content dispute until the merge discussion was reopened. The changes are a straightforward extension of the source reliability issues discussed with 7&6. None of this was an issue until editors decided that they wanted to vote on the version of the article immediately following AfD. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 17:56, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Diff/1104706924/1104805537. This would best be resolved on the article talk page, one issue at a time, as you did with 7&6 thirteen. People can be reasonable, but that sneaky-looking merge really caused a trust problem and we see the result. The best way is show good faith working with people, not patronizing with WP:OWN comments DINO-knows-best and trying to force change with ANI attacks on ARS. -- GreenC19:00, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I hope you realize that editors can be individualistic actors. I participated in the merge discussion as a matter of procedure, restating my opinions from the AfD, and I don't care and I shouldn't have to care about whatever the opener or closer of the merge did. I don't care for this ANI thread either, because I did not initiate it, I am not trying to shut down the ARS, and I am only here to provide statements of pertinent fact. I also didn't perform the edits in that diff, and it is not my responsibility to defend them. I am seeing a broad pattern of conflating the actions of different editors here and in the merge discussion, and I do not think that is constructive. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 20:30, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
People who were against merging(deleting 90%) of the article in the AFD, are also the same ones against doing it in a merge discussion later on. Knowing people would be against it, so waiting until they felt no one would notice, then doing it, then complaining when those who participated in the discussion before found out and were still against it, is just ridiculous. DreamFocus16:54, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Eliminating most of the article from public view, by replacing it with a redirect and a small amount of its original content found on another page. Of course you can claim hey, they can look at the history of the article and read the rest of the information there if they want, but whatever. DreamFocus17:02, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Did you not look at any of the places you linked to? A long article replaced with a redirect to a small amount of information already on the list page linked to. DreamFocus17:15, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What you're describing did not actually happen. None of those merges actually happened because they were all opposed by ARS. A merge proposal is not a proposal to delete 90% of the article. It has nothing to do with the length of the content. And even if it did, it's not like it matter how long an article is: quality, not quantity. And hell, one of them was a split not even a merge: that would have led to multiple, longer articles: ARS still opposed. And of course I looked them, I even participated in those discussions, that's why I remember them. You guys don't care about content, you only care about winning arguments, it doesn't even matter what the argument is. You want to flatter yourselves as heroes, "defenders of the Wiki," which is why you swoop in, block vote, spam articles, then give each other barnstars.Levivich17:22, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When did anyone claim anything was merged? The way a merge proposal works is that you propose first, then merge. And, again, it's not about quantity of information, it's about quality. WP:NOTEVERYTHING, WP:DUE, etc. Levivich17:25, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:DUE is indeed exactly the issue here. ARS editors have added content to this article without consideration of due weight and neutrality befitting of the subject matter, because they are not subject area editors (as pointed out elsewhere in the discussion above). Multiple attempts to point out issues with neutrality by subject area editors have repeatedly been dismissed and not engaged with both at the AfD and at the current merge discussion. Only when one has spent time editing articles in a particular subject area and trying to gather appropriate sources to do so can one understand what sources are appropriate and what sources are not. This is not elitist, this is fact. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 17:35, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's not one of the links I posted, now is it? Did you not look at any of the places you linked to? is what I was responding to. Levivich17:33, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that the previous case does not preclude another case in the same sphere, especially when the discussion was more-or-less narrowly scoped to the editing in that area by those editors who were ultimately named parties. Izno (talk) 01:38, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If enough editors have a problem with the existence of ARS? Then open an RFC (or whatever is required) at the appropriate place (likely a Village Pump), on seeking whether or not the WikiProject should be 'retired'. GoodDay (talk) 16:28, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Already been done multiple times already. Only people complaining are those that are upset a small number of people showed up somewhere and dared to disagree with them on something. DreamFocus16:55, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a long-time critic of ARS – not the concept of salvaging articles that simply need to be improved, but as a place where there could potentially be canvassing concerns. However, the complaint here is a waste of time and should be closed. Partly as a result of some topic bans and partly as a result of genuine cooperation, there really is very little in the way of misleading other participants in AfD discussions. The key thing is that any deletion discussion that has been listed at ARS should be marked as such with Template:Rescue list. That way, it is transparent to everyone at the discussion that ARS has been notified, and experienced AfD closers understand how to take this into account. Occasionally, someone forgets to add the template, but in that case you can simply add it yourself (as I do from time to time), without any need for making a drama out of it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:19, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmmm. I came to the discussion because I had participated in the AfD and was kindly pinged by someone. Luckily I came across ARS, a fine group of valuable editors, not too long ago, and since have witnessed many of its members topic banned. I take it there have been past attempts to close ARS, which I have no way to understand as that just seems so counter-Wikipedia improvement that the concept itself should be Wikibanned. Randy Kryn (talk) 17:33, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I like how so many here have to set up their comments and show their bonafides with statements like: I've been on record for years now as not in any way, shape or form being a fan of ARS. Regarding the article; over templating for what seems like revenge reasons and WP:OWN behavior are both not collegial but the dino people have been doing that to the article - and they have circled the wagons which is ironically what they accuse the ARS of doing. One only has to read the comment by the editor who started the merge and then closed the merge and then redirected the article to see it was sneaky shady behavior. CT55555 pointed to it above: we should usually attempt to discreetly make merge notices on the article talkpage first, rather than take them to AfD, which usually attracts unwanted outside attention. I remember that same editor being tendentious in another AfD about another Dino. And last night Hemiauchenia posted on several noticeboards lamenting the revert of the redirect and asking for help A user has decided that the Titus (dinosaur) discussion was improperly closed, and has now pinged all AfD participants. Feel free to vote if interested. It would be nice we could work together. We could also remind the dino group that they do not own the subject. And remind them that RS does not have to come from a professor to be RS. Hey, dinosaurs are supposed to be fun! Lightburst (talk) 23:45, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whilst I've long been a critic of the ARS and their persistently irritating ITSNOTABLE and IFOUNDITONGOOGLE antics - some of which are apparent on the AfD - I do have to say that the sources, including a couple of heavyweight UK papers (and there are others) do IMO push this over the GNG line. One thing I would say, though - anyone reading this article would probably conclude that this is a complete T-Rex skeleton ("Titus is reportedly the first genuine Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton exhibited in England in over a century"), when only 20% of the actual bones are real ones. Somewhat misleading, that. Black Kite (talk)10:51, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would second this, I read the article last night when this ANI popped up, I thought it was a good article and moved on. Going back now, it isn't explained anywhere that it isn't a "full" skele, it certainly does seem like it's a full skele (up until I read your comment, I thought it was), and the Guardian clearly says The fossil was around 20% complete once fully conserved, so although it is a ‘real’ skeleton, many of the bones are reconstructions made of black obsidian.FrederalBacon (talk) 11:27, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I like how so many here have to set up their comments and show their bonafides with statements like: I've been on record for years now as not in any way, shape or form being a fan of ARS. Regarding the article; over templating for what seems like revenge reasons and WP:OWN behavior are both not collegial but the dino people have been doing that to the article - and they have circled the wagons which is ironically what they accuse the ARS of doing. One only has to read the comment by the editor who started the merge and then closed the merge and then redirected the article to see it was sneaky shady behavior. CT55555 pointed to it above: we should usually attempt to discreetly make merge notices on the article talkpage first, rather than take them to AfD, which usually attracts unwanted outside attention. I remember that same editor being tendentious in another AfD about another Dino. And last night Hemiauchenia posted on several noticeboards lamenting the revert of the redirect and asking for help A user has decided that the Titus (dinosaur) discussion was improperly closed, and has now pinged all AfD participants. Feel free to vote if interested. It would be nice we could work together. We could also remind the dino group that they do not own the subject. And remind them that RS does not have to come from a professor to be RS. Hey, dinosaurs are supposed to be fun! Lightburst (talk) 23:45, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Yes JBL there is quite a tendency to overreact in one direction - for instance I once said someone was grinding an axe and an admin demanded a retraction as PA. People have said worse in my direction and it is fodder. Just in this discussion we can see the admin Black Kite bringing up their open bias. I am just here to edit and improve the project. I hope to read some of you four articles when I have time. It is helpful for us all to remember that we are building an encyclopedia - and we cannot do that with less editors participating. Lightburst (talk) 00:53, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I would not have such a bias if I still didn't see certain members of the ARS treating deletion discussions as battlegrounds and spending far more time commenting on AfDs than actually improving articles (this does not apply to all ARS participants, as I have said many times before). Black Kite (talk)09:25, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Case in point of my comment above, another case of conflating separate editors involved in the process. It's very easy to see that User:YorkshireExpat was the one who closed the merge discussion. And claiming that the report is being rejected as RS on the basis of not "coming from a professor" is incredibly reductionist when there are clear neutrality issues. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 00:43, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Named T-rex skeletons probably do merit separate articles folks, even when incomplete (as basically all of them are, although I think we have about 90% of Sue). T-rex is one of the few dinos for which we have a near- complete half-skeleton, so we can reconstruct the missing bits from the other side. But whole dino skeletons are rarer than hens teeth.—S MarshallT/C23:59, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think you need to look at the reasons for naming. Sue is a very complete specimen. Trix is notable for her age. Stan has an exceptionally preserved skull. All three are fairly complete. Titus, on the other hand, is 20% complete, and does not appear to have any other notable features. Also, the fact that it was found by a commercial paleontologist, suggests that the name may have been applied to increase market value. YorkshireExpat (talk) 08:05, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think your comments get to the heart of the tension here. I think some members of WP:DINO project don't want this article up, because they see that the skeleton's owners have some sort of profit/commercial motivation. I understand that sentiment. But wikipedia has lots of articles about commercial endeavours, it's not a database of social good or only academic and charitable things. I think some DINO project members want there to be a minimum criteria for articles that is something different from WP:GNG. But we create articles based on notability, not the completeness of skeletons or motivations of owners. With the BBC, The Guardian and the National Geographic writing about this, it's clearly notable. And the WP:GNG is what guides us, not any stricter criteria that the DINO project would like.CT55555 (talk) 16:58, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Does it pass GNG? Maybe, sure, I can accept that. But passing GNG does not mean that the subject warrants a standalone article (per the text of GNG), which is a far more nuanced consideration that is the subject of the current merge discussion. And this is where considerations of WP:DUE, WP:PROMO, etc. become relevant. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 17:40, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is exactly my problem with ARS: the entire group exists as a holdover from the "inclusionist vs. deletionist" days. They're an anachronism and clinging to this outmoded philosophy is detrimental to the encyclopedia. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite18:34, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really count myself as either a deletionist or an inclusionist (improving a nominated article to the point where it becomes kept makes me happier than deleting it, but I think I !vote delete more often than keep, because most deletion nominations are made in good faith for subjects that legitimately look like deletion candidates). That statement of neutrality out of the way, I am tired of seeing the continual wars here between some deletionists and some inclusionists who have such bad-faith assumptions about the people on the other side of the dispute that they would prefer to see them shut out of the process rather than having the open and honest discussions that we need. Both the people finding and nominating non-notable articles, and the people finding and improving articles on notable topics that are so badly-written as to appear non-notable, are performing constructive activities. We need both things to happen. The improvement to the encyclopedia made in both of these ways is more important than getting your way by shutting out all opposing opinions. Neither the existence of bad deletion nominations nor the existence of badly-done cleanup attempts (the recycled press release sources cited above) are evidence of wrongdoing, just of the human imperfection that we all suffer from. I am tempted to propose a WP:BOOMERANG block on IJReid for inflaming the struggle rather than trying to come to peace with the fact that not everyone is going to agree with them on every decision, but I suppose that won't help either. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:09, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What year is is?! I remember when this was a big problem ca 2008/9 and we didn't take action then against the project as a whole. The issues were the same, a project nominally devoted to 'rescuing' articles had a much more productive time disrupting deletion discussions (since that is vastly easier than rescuing articles). I don't think any actions we are likely to take will have much of an impact, but we should keep an eye out for LGRdC... Protonk (talk) 23:36, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As an addendum, the wailing and gnashing of teeth about the idea of having a point of view on deletion is silly and tiresome. None of us possess the view from nowhere and it is actually much easier to pronounce ourselves neutral and perform disgust at those who have the temerity to have an opinion than it is to accept that we might have a perspective worth operating from. Protonk (talk) 23:55, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal: ARS project members prevented from directly voting on articles listed on the rescue list, but are allowed to edit the articles.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I think that this has been proposed before, and I think this would ameliortate a lot of the canvassing issues inherent to the nature of the ARS. The whole idea of "rescuing articles" should about improving them. Allowing ARS members to improve the articles and then let independent editors assess the notability would be a significant improvement. Hemiauchenia (talk) 08:49, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose How do you define a project member? I've been accused of being a member before and I have had the page in my watchlist before (can't remember if it is now), but have also come across and voted on AfDs without realising they were being discussed at ARS. NemesisAT (talk) 09:10, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose more revenge is not what is needed. Are you going to "let independent editors assess the notability" of paleontology articles? Also are you going to individually notify the hundreds of editors who signed up at the project? This smacks of, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the ...." Lightburst (talk) 10:57, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose (noting I am an ARS member) because I do not think it is necessary because I do not think it has been demonstrated that ARS members or as a group have done anything wrong, and imposing a new rule on hundreds of editors would be a strange move in such circumstances. CT55555 (talk) 11:04, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: Quite aside from placing an unwarranted restriction on editors who've done nothing wrong, this would be comically easy to thwart: all it would take would be for members who didn't care for the sanction to "quit" the group. (Possibly to create a new project: Article Salvation Cadre, anyone? They might even decide that a good way to avoid persecution would be to organize off-Wiki, and who could blame them?) I'll say it again: if you believe that particular editors are being disruptive, report them and bring your evidence to the table. Otherwise, the easiest way to avoid accusations of a kneejerk witchhunt is not to have one. Ravenswing 11:18, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This is ridiculous as it was when previous brought up. Any member of any Wikiproject can edit articles and vote in AFDs for them. DreamFocus11:38, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Even if you believe that the primary purpose of the ARS is to be a canvassing tool, this wouldn't fix it; all it would do is to get people to stop admitting they're using the canvassing tool. —Cryptic11:47, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Suppose I participate in 20 AfDs, then join ARS? Suppose I exit ARS, participate in 20 AfDs, and then quit? This will serve as a way to limit the membership of ARS, but it it's unenforceable, and it discriminates against every member of a group based on the actions of some. There's a lot of words I can think of describing that sort of action, and all of them are nasty. Jacona (talk) 13:17, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Banning an entire WikiProject membership, isn't a good precedent. Besides, one would need only to resign as a member of a banned WikiProject, to get around such a ban. GoodDay (talk) 13:25, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - There's the problem of defining a member, first of all. If it's the membership list, anyone can just remove themselves. If it's votes on articles listed there, well I'm sure lots of people active at AfD but not ARS would be caught, too. Probably the only way would be some number of edits to the rescue list? Regardless, it's messy. Still, maybe five years ago I argued for something similar: that ARS members should be allowed to !vote if they're actively involved with improving the article. Today, however, the urgency is gone. The relatively minor kerfuffle that led to this doesn't actually look that problematic, and we've actually been successful at sanctioning many of the most disruptive figures at AfD. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 13:31, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for the same reasons as others oppose above. The way to fix the problems is to continue doing what we've been doing: hold individuals accountable for their individual actions. Levivich16:04, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This user has been, since the beginning, changing every link related to Uyghurs -> Yugurs. Claiming Uyghurs are not descendants of the Uyghur Khaganate. While they're not fully, here [7] below it explains how Old Uyghurs are one of the people forming their ethnogenesis. It's not also true that Yugurs are "actual" descendants", since they're mixed with Mongolian ethnic groups.
So this user has been POV pushing since a while. Also has various edits against Turkish language as well. Removing relevant cognates in various topics. Haven't seem him putting once a sourced content, plus removing various stuff calling "fake information", etc.
@Red-tailed hawk: I'm not sure, but he has generally disruptive behaviour. I don't see him anywhere (sometimes he does copy paste from another article) putting a sourced content. Always removing and edit warring. Beshogur (talk) 22:31, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd argue this might already be covered. Historical revisionism regarding a race subject to genocide is typically a key part of that genocide itself, it seems to me that editing to delegitimize the Uyghurs' ethic history would fall under that. FrederalBacon (talk) 22:47, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, historical revisionism relating to the genetic history of the Uyghurs could be linked to this, but I've generally not seen this sort of specific rhetoric in the context of Uyghur genocide (though there is some rhetoric about mixed bloodlines adopted by the Chinese state). That the modern Uyghurs are not the direct descendants of the ancient Uyghurs (i.e. there was mixture of ethnic groups in the area) is a position that major historians of Xinjiang such as James Millward (see this for more citations) have taken. And Millward is not actually someone who denies any of the abuses in the region (it's quite the opposite, actually). That being said, nobody reputable (as far as I know) claims that modern Uyghurs are not descended at least in part from the Old Uyghur people who lived in the Uyghur Khaganate.
That being said, the specific claim that the Yugurs are the direct descendants of the Old Uyghurs is not something I have ever seen advocated for by anybody serious. To be frank, I have no clue if this is something common among Yugur nationalists, but I don't think it's something that's related to Uyghur genocide, broadly construed. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)16:11, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion: Proposal to Expand GS/uyghur to include the Uyghurs more broadly
Support as proposer. I believe that this expansion would allow for administrators to better handle disruption relating to the topic of Uyghurs more broadly. I believe that the expansion of this regime will save our community time and will prove for a more coherent way to protect Wikipedia from future disruption in this area. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)14:16, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Question Is anyone able to provide diffs to show this is a widespread problem bigger than this one editor? It's not clear to me that the diffs above (POV pushing as they may be) are related to the Uyghur genocide without some serious leaps and dot joining. Do edits changing pre-14th century Uyghurs to Yugurs relate to the CCP line described in the RFA article? Happy to have this explained to me if I've misunderstood. I also don't think its good that a decision to expand these sanctions is buried in this AN/I filing. Can these discussion be moved to somewhere with more visibility? Vladimir.copic (talk) 00:10, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To answer the part of your question around this being at ANI, a link to this discussion was posted to AN on September 4. I have no objection to CENT-listing this if you'd like, but I think that the notification at AN is more than sufficient for this sort of thing. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)05:48, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Now we just need admins other than myself (and Girth) to actually make use of this sanctions regime. BTW, this is one of three sanctions regimes which I, personally, treat with utmost severity (the other two are WP:GENSEX and WP:CASTE). Ask me xwhy. El_C16:01, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think disruption surrounding a race subject to genocide should be expected beyond the articles directly related to the genocide. Giving the admins the tools to deal with that makes sense to me. FrederalSay Hi19:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This user been making unexplained and unsourced additions/changes for too long. They have been warned multiple times about it (as far as a year(!) ago) [22]). Though still keeps doing the same thing. I don't think I have ever seen this user write in the edit summary field, let alone in an actual talk page. As you can see here, even when reverted, they sometimes later come back to the very same article and makes a similar edit/restore their revision.
This is not a revert-athon by HistoryofIran; the user has been reverted also by LouisAragon, ShaveKongo, and Jay D. Easy just in the edits i looked at. About forty of his last one-fifty edits have been reverted, which implies to me that there is an issue. Pinging Ad Orientem, who blocked Syed Ali Ibn Ahmed previously ~ maybe he could be blocked for longer, as 48 hours doesn't seem to have had an impact. Happy days ~ LindsayHello16:09, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Indeffed User has been disruptively changing the spelling of names without any explanation, despite multiple warnings and attempts by other users to discuss. As far as I can see, user has not responded once to the numerous warnings or here. A 48hr block does not seem to have phased them. This is a collaborative project. In this kind of situation, communication is not optional. Am open to reducing the block conditional on constructive engagement by this user. Until then... -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:23, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Maxwell14134 (talk·contribs) was first informed about how different national varieties of English are used on Wikipedia through a notice on their talk page in October of last year, and how you should not be needlessly changing the version used based on personal preference. Since then, they have recieved numerous more messages from different editors on their talk page about making the same unnecessary changes, but despite the notices getting more and more stern they have completely ignored every single one of them and instead continued to make the same edits.
Since MOS:RETAIN sensibly exists, these edits are irritating for other editors and the complete lack of communication despite also being asked to use edit summaries several times on their talk page also does not help matters. Editors are meant to collaborate and I'm not convinced Maxwell14134 is a net positive for the site when they constantly irritate other editors by inserting their personal preferences into articles and refuse to listen to anyone who attempts to communicate with them. TylerBurden (talk) 15:00, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
At least some of these seem to be de-mixing confused ENGVARS (recent example), or justified by MOS:TIES (lots of Hong Kong articles, which I presume should be essentially British English), but at the least he needs to develop his edit summaries & so on. Johnbod (talk) 15:15, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying all their edits are bad, but the issue is with the pure preference ones such as changing from American to British spelling on a Norwegian article like in diff 6 where there are no ties and MOS:RETAIN should apply. It's pretty clear they have a preference for British spelling and is needlessly making changes on articles where it is not needed based on this preference. TylerBurden (talk) 15:29, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Many of their edits are valid but they persist in a pattern of edits to eradicate -ize endings in favour of -ise. Per WP:ISE and MOS:IZE, both are acceptable in British English so WP:ENGVAR and MOS:TIES are no justification for their edits. Only an internal-consistency argument would hold and does not seem to pertain to the examples I have seen. What's more, at least some of the examples have no strong ties to either Britain or America. Their lack of response to the raising of these and related matters, over months, is not encouraging. Mutt Lunker (talk) 15:55, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
More or less what I was thinking. The perfect outcome of this would be that they finally address the issues people have been raising to them, and stick to making productive edits thereafter since they have proven capable of doing so. But that isn't possible as long as they ignore any complaints about their more problematic edits and simply continue doing the same thing. TylerBurden (talk) 16:27, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
He has edited since my very clear warning about communication was put on his talk page. He's about 1mm away from a block to get his attention and force discussion. Dennis Brown - 2¢23:32, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So far the edits appear to be fully within the expectations we would have for changing engvar, so maybe they get it. I would leave this open and monitor a few days. Really, WP:Communication is required, but total compliance will work in the absence of communication. And it is fine to ping me when changes are noticed in a report, as I'm active on it. Dennis Brown - 2¢19:14, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This edit may be worth considering and it's an odd one, in the sense that it is the reverse of their usual forcing of -ise over -ize, changing "privatisation" to "privatization" in this case. It seems just as arbitrary and unnecessary though as the edits that are of the usual direction and there is no edit summary to explain. I'd guess that, as a Commonwealth variety of English, as for British English there is no requirement for -ize over -ise (or vice versa) in Nigerian English and, with all the warnings they've had, they are aware they should be communicating about their edits. They clearly are still failing to pay heed. Short block and a(nother) reminder? Mutt Lunker (talk)
I had already blocked Maxwell14134 before I saw this discussion. Whether I would have made the same decision had I seen the discussion first I don't know, but as things are I see no reason to change anything. Of the edits that I have looked at, all of the changes to national varieties of English are either clearly correct or at least arguably justified, so I don't regard that as a problem. However, two things which I do very much see as problems are Maxwell14134's persistent failure to ever cite sources, and their persistent failure to communicate, whether in the form of edit summaries or in the form of responses to talk page messages. That includes failure to explain when changes to national varieties of English are justifiable, which would have saved a number of editors trouble. As for the lack of citations to sources, for a large proportion of the edits that I have checked I have no idea whether they are valid or not, which should not be the case, as it is Maxwell14134's responsibility to make sure that all content they post into articles is verifiable. I hope that the block will encourage Maxwell14134 to at last take notice of the messagesthey have received, and change their approach, so that a longer block won't become necessary. JBW (talk) 13:24, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, my take on the -ise/-ize issue is as follows. In US English -ize is close to universal, so it makes no sense to use -ise in any US context. Certainly in British English, and as far as I know in most other varieties, -ise is so overwhelmingly the majority spelling that it is natural to use that in contexts specifically referring to non-US English contexts, despite the fact that -ize is widely accepted as a valid alternative purely on the basis that the original editors of the Oxford English Dictionary chose that spelling. I also say that despite the fact that my personal preference is for -ize: we should all follow what is most widely accepted, and not allow our personal preferences to influence what we do in Wikipedia articles. Consequently I don't think that Maxwell14134 should be criticized for changing -ize to -ise in, for example, an article relating to South Africa, although I wouldn't have made that change myself. JBW (talk) 13:39, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
JBW (talk) 13:39, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Edit conflict, this is a reply to the last but one post but I'll stick with it:
Thanks for blocking them but if the potentially ENGVAR-motivated edits you have looked at include "-ize" eradication from British English articles, there is no arguable justification for that. If their initial ignorance counts as one, it certainly doesn't after they were informed of WP:ISE and MOS:IZE. I tend to use -ise myself but I'm sick of the time-wasters who wage campaigns to impose it (or, as is probably more common, -ize) in BR Eng articles. Mutt Lunker (talk) 13:50, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Maxwell's two day block is about to expire later today (UTC), doesn't seem like even the block has produced any response from their side which I don't think is a great sign. WP:BLP violations are obviously a much bigger issue than ENGVAR, so hopefully the block and its notice is enough to finally get the point across both in terms of references and edit summaries (or indeed any communication) though at this point I'm questioning if this is a WP:CIR issue as well. If they go straight back to their old ways after this block, then I don't know what to suggest other than harsher methods to deal with it. TylerBurden (talk) 03:57, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'll make it short and blunt, Yenieian seems to be on a Turkish pov pushing mission. Pretty bold claims I know, let me show you some proof;
Obsessed with changing the result to 'Ottoman victory' in a GA(!) article Siege of Güns, completely disregarding its status and well sourced content. Initially, he outrighted altered (sourced) info and slammed his own personal commentary instead 27 June 2022, came back a month later and tried the same 15 July 202215 July 2022. Now another month has passed, what does he do? Removes/alters sourced info once again with no edit summary whatsoever regarding it, whilst slamming multiple random, cherrypicked and badly cited sources [23][24][25].
Indeed, I was actually suspecting the same thing. Moreover, Yeniseian has now suddenly stopped editing in the midst of all this (he might start it again now that I've said that it though). He is probably chilling in another sock account. Moreover, this EIA result of Kapgan Kağan/Yeniseian and Gokturklerrr is even more interesting [30]. The two have shown to be randomly hostile towards me as well [31][32], coincidence? As for the EIA between Gokturklerrr and Kabz15 [33]. Obviously these EIA results might not have been suspicious if they all weren't brand new users, but they are. --HistoryofIran (talk) 06:03, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Can we please get a closure on this? They are literally still continuing their edit war as well [34]. Imho, with the evidence posted here, this is a quick and easy matter. --HistoryofIran (talk) 12:11, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think I made a mistake about two weeks ago in opening a moderated discussion at DRN. In any case, I would appreciate if one or two admins or other experienced editors would take a look at the RFC at Talk:Flag_of_Antarctica#RFC_on_main_flag_used_in_the_country_data_template and comment on whether there have been any irregularities. The RFC was initiated by User:Vanilla Wizard on 20 July. There was then a Third Opinion request by User:Federalwafer on 13 August, who also requested DRN on 13 August. The Third Opinion request was closed as stale on 19 August, and I opened the DRN. Legobot then removed the RFC ID, also on 19 August, which is what Legobot is supposed to do. Federalwafer then inserted new RFC IDs, apparently three times, and on 28 August User:Redrose64 fixed the RFC ID and said to stop churning the RFC. On 31 August, Federalwafer asked to pause the RFC while a sourcing issue was resolved at DRN. This sequence of events annoyed me because it seemed to me to be gaming of the system, so that I was no longer capable of being a neutral mediator. (I probably shouldn't have started the mediation, because I should have checked for an RFC, which takes precedence over other forms of dispute resolution.) So will someone else look at the dispute, please? Also, since the RFC has now been running for about six weeks, first, should it be deactivated, and, second, should formal closure be requested? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:18, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, looking over the talk page and the DRN discussion, my takeaway is this (and please, correct me if I'm badly mistaken): (a) back in the 1990s, Some Guy from a UK outfit that's interested in flags (but, however, has no official or statutory authority) proposed a flag for Antarctica; (b) In 2002, an equally unofficial flag loving bloke took several of them on a trip to Antarctica, passed them around, and an unknown number of bases/installations displayed them; (c) this particular flag has never been officially adopted, largely because the article concedes in the lead that there's no statutory, unitary authority for Antarctica with the power to do so, yet (d) despite a solid consensus that Wikipedia should not use any flag icon templates to represent Antarctica, (e) there's edit warring and hot debate going on as to whether Some Guy's flag actually flew twenty years ago, and whether some sources saying so are reliable or not?
I honestly have to agree that it's petty. But just to clarity, the DRN discussion and the RFC are not about the same topic, or at least I don't think they are. The RFC is about the flag template, and the DRN discussion is about a single sentence in the article. Note that the sentence doesn't say anything important, it's 13 short words that mostly just add on to what the previous sentence said. What I find most bothersome isn't that Federalwafer disagreed over its sourcing, but rather that they seemingly viewed the dispute over the sentence as a trojan horse to make other, unrelated changes to the article. Either they believed in good faith that its inclusion or lack thereof truly had far-reaching implications for the rest of the article (a rather odd thing to believe), or they fixated on it as a bad faith justification to try to throw a wrench into an unrelated RFC by suggesting that editors were basing their !votes off of misinformation and that more editors would have !voted for their preferred option if only the words "several bases flew the flag" weren't in the article. Either way, this was too small of a content dispute to warrant being brought up at three different noticeboards. This has been much, much more exhausting than it needed to be. Vanilla Wizard 💙04:14, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The RfC was started after many verified sources had been removed and continued after what I believe to be questionable claims had been added. To me it seems clear that the content of an article influences an RfC (both the claim you added, @Vanilla Wizard, and others that had been removed.) But if the consensus from this and the DRN discussion are that they don't and that the RfC should proceed, then I won't interfere. Federalwafer (talk) 13:56, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'll admit I've never done an RfC before and should've looked into the details before trying to re-add the ID. My only goal was to get it listed on the RfC noticeboard and didn't know it would send notifications. I did it twice is because Legobot immediately removed the first ID for an expired tag, so I tried again with the "don't auto-expire code" in, which is when I learned I should've kept the same ID from before. Federalwafer (talk) 13:46, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
User:Federalwafer - The RFC was started on 20 July, and then was automatically deactivated on 19 August. Why did you restart the RFC at the time? Also, now that it has been running for more than six weeks, after being extended, should it be turned off and formal closure requested? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:09, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
At the time consensus had not been reached. It was 3-2-3 for each of the respective options (Bartram, True South, none). Formal closure has been requested by Vanilla Wizard. Federalwafer (talk) 01:23, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Theworks84(talk·contribs·count) keeps on changing the uses of the dating format of pages from BCE/CE to BC/AD even when the BCE/CE format was the primarily used format on on the page (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) or when the format is already used consistently on the page (1).
Their arguments given for their changes also are inconsistent, since at one point they cite the fact that a page was initially written using BC/AD for their changes (here), but they disregard that another page had used the BCE/CE format from the beginning to change its format (here). Their only motive seems only to change the use of dates format in the pages to BC/AD rather than BCE/CE.
Actually diff #1 at Alexander Sarcophagus was a good edit - an American student had made an undiscussed conversion to BCE last December, contrary to WP:ERA. This happens very often. I haven't looked at the others, but it might be wrong to assume he is incorrect. Johnbod (talk) 03:17, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I should also point out that Antiquistik has engaged in an edit war on the Iškuza page as well regarding the same issue. I have manually reverted these changes. I appreciate that Antiquistik has added much good content to many of these pages but that doesn't give them them right to change the style to fit their personal preference. Apology accepted, but please next time you disagree with some of my edits Antiquistik write on my talk page first so we can discuss the problem or disagreement rather than attempting to get me banned for no reason Theworks84 (talk) 15:48, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doug Coldwell has repeatedly engaged in promotional editing, seeking to promote himself in articles. He first did this at Preparation (principle), initially in 2020, before being reverted by another editor [38]. Last month, he added it again, and I removed it [39]. Three days later, he added the same promotional material about himself again [40], before promptly being reverted by User:Praxidicae. I gave him a formal warning on his talk page that these promotional edits were unacceptable on August 20th [41]. I had hoped Doug had learned his lesson and would stop doing this. Alas, on September 1st he did it AGAIN, this time on Michigan eLibrary[42]. Clearly, nothing any regular editor says to Doug will convince him to stop using mainspace to promote himself, so I am seeking sanctions against him, or even just a warning from an administrator to stop his self-promotional edits. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:08, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This seems like a rather flagrant violation of MOS:SELFREF and WP:TONE, but those aren't conduct issues, and I'm not sure I buy this as PROMO. What's he promoting? His existence as a Wikipedia editor? If there's anything for AN/I to address here, it's a failure to communicate / subtle edit-warring. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she|they|xe)01:14, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there's certainly him ignoring all attempts at communication, for starters, ignoring consensus that such edits are wholly inappropriate (as discussed at Talk:Preparation (principle)), and yes, editing promotionally about himself. I feel like it's pretty self-explanatory that adding photos and prose about yourself is not appropriate. Consider the following, which Doug added to Preparation (principle): A Wikipedian from the state of Michigan does this by visiting his local town library for reference books and searching through Google. He uses the interlibrary loan system to borrow books not at his local library. He says that with access to thousands of extra books this way it is like having the Library of Congress at his fingertips from where to borrow books. What is this cited to? Why, none other than an article in a local news organization about himself. And also adding the following photo and caption, which I am copying here verbatim. Wikipedia User Doug Coldwell prepares in creating a new article by surrounding himself with library reference books for research.The real reason we're at ANI, though, is that he has deliberately ignored any and all attempts at communication. Multiple editors including myself have communicated to him this behavior is unacceptable, and we're greeted with complete silence from Doug, while he continues editing elsewhere. This cannot continue. Communicating with other editors is not optional. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:33, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's the prose, and there's the picture. For both, there's obviously a WP:COI. That isn't disqualifying, but certainly means that Doug should be extremely careful and not do things like, you know, repeatedly reinstate something when others challenge it before finding consensus for it. That's good practice regardless, but when you have a COI not doing so is a recipe for disaster. Doug's been around a while and is clearly "here", so I don't really have a problem with him adding this stuff [one time]. The prose is IMO a bit much indeed, but it and [more so] the photo have a bit of early/mid-00s DIY Wikipedia feel to them. It's not bonkers to add a photo of someone doing research at a library to an article about that library, for example, and a line about researching for Wikipedia may have a place somewhere. The main thing is, again, he just shouldn't have reinstated any of the edits (and should've been using the talk page more). — Rhododendritestalk \\ 02:08, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am in agreement. Doug should be indefinitely blocked, to force him to communicate. He's actively editing as we speak while continuing to ignore all attempts at communication. He's either unable or unwilling to engage with other editors; either way, communication is not optional and at the point I believe a block is the only thing that he will respond to. If he then engages with the community and addresses the concerns here, the block can be lifted. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 19:07, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Going to make a comment here about something related. Doug has repeatedly sent up GAs that are just not up to standard. While I've been able to salvage two, they required me rewriting a lot of prose, such as Talk:Mail chute/GA1. At Cone Mills (the article that has had four GA nominations), he failed to address prior concerns about missing content. Talk:Joshua Lionel Cowen/GA1 was sent to GAN with significant typos (including one of the last name of the subject), images of strange provenance, and other issues. I made these comments, which feel representative:
With all due respect, I feel like I'm a judge on a cooking competition—and, more often than usual, your offerings are undercooked in ways that are peculiar to you.
Unfortunately, he has not substantively engaged the quality issue, either here at ANI or at other user talk pages, nor has he engaged the self-promotion issue. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 18:40, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't appear anything has changed since 2007. Another user summed it up nicely then too: This is the second article I have seen by Doug Coldwell in two days. They are both empty pieces of nonsense, formed about a small fact, and bolstered by irrelevant references. This editor is seriously disruptive. Septentrionalis PMAnderson. I think we can all agree that Doug is probably writing in good faith but we require more competence than he's been able to demonstrate...PICKLEDICAE🥒 20:40, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The most immediate problem here is the failure to engage with other editors in a meaningful way, which makes it impossible to solve the other issues. I am inclined to try with a shot across the bow, to see if we can get him to actually talk to others. As such, I am about to block him for three days. Salvio21:12, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's worth noting that while it was 15 years ago, the ANI thread I referenced is still relevant, as are the ones in years after that, discussing this exact same behavior, failure to engage, failure to accept any criticism and demonstrating ownership, which isn't brought up directly here but should be as it's a large part of the problem and has resulted in massive amounts of nonsensical WP:OR to the tune of several hundred thousand bytes of text. PICKLEDICAE🥒 21:15, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I wholeheartedly agree that Doug's editing is problematic in more ways than one and I'm not trying to pre-empt any further action the community or another administrator may wish to take. I am merely hoping that we can get him to talk to us, to see if we can solve the problem without an indef block... Salvio21:31, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I meant to reply to myself anyway, I didn't think your block was pre-empting anything. Though, I will say Doug's response to said block is...pretty bad. Sorry for any confusion. PICKLEDICAE🥒 21:34, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Pasting your response to every single person that brought this up on your talk page isn't doing you any favors, Doug. Are you going to address the actual issues or not?
I'll be glad to discuss the problem What is the actual issue? I have to go to bed now, but if you will give me the issue I will reply tomorrow morning.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 22:14, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'll be glad to discuss the problem What is the actual issue? Have you considered reading the beginning of this thread...or your talk page? Or the many article talk pages where these problems have been neatly outlined for you? PICKLEDICAE🥒 22:17, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So you didn't see the multiple times your edits were reverted with detailed edit summaries, or the talk page discussion at Talk:Preparation (principle), or the warning I posted on your talk page before you left me with no choice but to take this to ANI? That suggests a level of incompetence which would merit a WP:CIR block. Surely you can come up with a better excuse than that? How about, "I thought that the rules didn't apply to me because I have lots of GAs and DYKs" which appears to be the real reason? Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:20, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused - so exactly why am I being pinged to this discussion? Trying to read through this extensive thread and its subthread this morning, still haven't caught up... Shearonink (talk) 14:12, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry you got pinged, Doug is mass pinging editors familiar with his work to try and defend himself here. The gist of it is Doug did some self-promotional edits, ignored all attempts by editors to tell him not to do so, and didn't even engage here until he was blocked. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:14, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doug Coldwell, the fact that you claim to not understand what the issue is, after it being explained to you over and over again is really quite concerning. Your fellow editors do not want you promoting yourself on Wikipedia with either text or images. Period. Your failure to acknowledge and respond to that basic criticism is powerful evidence that you are not a responsive, collaborative editor. Nobody cares about your FAs or GAs when you fail to respond to legitimate concerns about your self-promotional edits. Cullen328 (talk) 05:46, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Its casual sentiments like "Nobody cares about your FAs or GAs" which make this page an awful place. It may come as a surprise to some in this thread that many users prefer to create article content and not seek out user interaction, a sentiment that many who frequent this page could benefit from. I hope Doug acknowledges and obliges the self-promotion issues, but I also hope that other editors in this thread reconsider their attitudes, which have resulted in repeated and unproductive sarcasm, insult and an exceptional lack of AGF. Aza24 (talk)05:53, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, Cullen's kinda right. You can have a lot of FAs or GAs, but if you continually promote yourself (and as Praxidicae has said, this goes back to at least 2007), your credibility gets weaker and weaker. Plus, WP:COMMUNICATE. ♠JCW555(talk)♠ 05:59, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're ignoring the context here, Aza24. 'Nobody cares about your GAs' seems like fair comment when someone's copy-pasted response at multiple venues to concerns about edit-warring and COI editing is 'look at all my GAs'. GirthSummit (blether)06:01, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am certainly ignoring context, but on purpose. I don't see why it's okay for any editor to disparage someone's genuine contributions to the encyclopedia, and the fact that it was done so casually (and subsequently approved by other editors) is all the more frustrating. This is already becoming a tangent from the topic at hand, though, so I will not press further. Aza24 (talk)06:07, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Aza24, I should have phrased myself more precisely at the expense of brevity, and should have said, "nobody cares about your GAs or your FAs when discussing your self-promotional behavioral issues outside the GA/FA review process". The editor's recent comments are evidence that they do not understand, accept or take on board the criticism that has been offered. The editor could have put this issue to bed instantly by saying, "Yes, I recognize that some of my edits might be considered self promotional, and I promise to never do so again" But they have not done so. That is troubling. Cullen328 (talk) 06:39, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid the "I've had many thousands of edits/I've had FA-GA-DYK nominations, and that immunizes me against having to follow behavioral policies or guidelines" is a long discredited concept. Just ask the likes of MickMacNee or Lugnuts. Ravenswing 06:15, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The picture shown above was put in Preparation article and Michigan eLibrary (MeL) in Good Faith, because they demonstrated just that. It was for illustration purposes for the article. It was not an intentional self-promotion. As you can see in the hundreds of articles I have created I never do any kind of self-promotion. There has never been any complaints that I have done self-promotion. I would have thought with the 500 Did You Know articles there would have been some complaint. That also applies with the 234 Good Articles I have done. None of the GA reviewers have brought that up as an issue. It has only been an issue starting with the Preparation and MeL articles. If I had been doing self-promotion it would have showed up way before now.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 06:12, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you have already told us exactly how many GAs you've had your hand in on. You have also already told us exactly how many DYKs you claim to have. Do you think that repeatedly trumpeting these accomplishments is the best way to convince us that you're not self-promoting? Ravenswing 06:20, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doug Coldwell, the discussion has moved well beyond any COI issue to the question of whether your judgment is such that the community can trust you to edit at all. Can you not see that this version [43] of your now-notorious Preparation (principle) article is absolutely inappropriate from top to bottom? -- that literally every sentence in it borders on the bizarre?
In the medical field, preparation is to decide what branch to pursue (i.e. aid, technician, nurse, doctor, specialist, scientist, dentist, veterinarian). One of the first steps might be to get some medical experience by being an assistant at a local hospital or volunteer medical technician. Another step could be to do research projects for doctors. Another step is to study on your own and do practice Medical College admission tests. Another step would be to apply as a student at a selection of several colleges and universities that would give the medical profession you are interested in. Another step could be to learn another language, like Spanish. Another step is to learn about financial aid options for financing medical school.
The reader is also told that
In vocational school, preparation is to get a skill for a career to be able to produce a lifetime income. Some of the courses involved to achieve this are in mechanics, woodwork, metal work, electricity, construction, photography, chemistry, and physics.
That weirdly narrow career advice is cited to an article called "True Tales of Peril and Heroism" published in 1913. Let me repeat that: 1913. EEng08:01, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My 500 Did You Know articles have been viewed by at least 2000 editors each. That means that over a million editors have seen these articles and none have put in a complaint that I was self-promoting in any of them.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 08:09, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This shockingly bad non-encyclopedic prose brought to light by EEng is just more evidence that we have a serious problem here. Perhaps we have a problem with the GA review process as well. Why would any editor experienced with GA and FA write so poorly? I have avoided that whole sideshow in recent years as a waste of time. Is there a more serious problem there? Doug Coldwell, please stop patting yourself on the back for your articles and page views. It is unseemly in this discussion. Cullen328 (talk) 08:25, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's just scratching the surface of how bad the Preparation (principle) page was. Looking at the AfD, EEng brought up other examples of frankly baffling writing. I really hope that EEng's suggestion that every one of Doug's article creations needs to be scrutinized doesn't need to come to fruition, but with how bad this page got, I really don't know. ♠JCW555(talk)♠ 08:33, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Dough Coldwell, I just said that possible self-promotion is no longer the issue. You really appear to be incapable of comprehending anything anyone else says. I'll ask it again: can you really, at this late date, not see how bizarre your "preparation" article is (particularly the version I linked above)? EEng08:39, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@EEng I'm wondering if we should propose a ban from Doug talking about how many GAs/FAs/DYKs he has so it would require him to focus on the substance of the complaints... PICKLEDICAE🥒 12:50, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doug Coldwell: You maths is faulty. There is no reason to think all editors are unique. Also do not confuse readers with editors. Most readers even if they notice problems do not comment or do anything. As a BLPN regular, I can say there are articles with significant BLP problems with higher view counts where no one has ever complained. When you are talking about multiple articles it gets more complicated, still I won't discuss this further since it's beside the point anyway. Nil Einne (talk) 14:10, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Doug Coldwell: a hint, if people are concerned about self promotion, you bringing up how many GAs etc you have in nearly every response is actively harming your situation not helping it. It strongly suggest that you apparently do not understand what self promotion is and why it's harmful. While self promotion in talk page comments isn't such a big deal, since concerns have been raised over your self promotion in article space, the fact that your responses are so poor makes us think there is no hope for reform and so the only option may be some sort of sanction. Nil Einne (talk) 08:41, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that an Administrator should use this app https://sdzerobot.toolforge.org/gans to see how many Good Articles a particular editor has done before making any decisions on any proposals. Of course those that have made few or no Good Articles want to stop those that have made over 200 Good Articles. It looks like a case of jealousy, as those that have made few or no Good Articles wish they could do that but are not able to.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 09:23, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have some GAs myself, but unlike you I don't go around bragging about it in every comment I make, or acting like my GAs make me above the rules. I also don't commit copyright violations in my GAs or have them get deleted, unlike you. Quite frankly, I'm astounded you haven't been blocked again yet. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 13:27, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Let me just quote you in bold here, for all to see:
It looks like a case of jealousy, as those that have made few or no Good Articles wish they could do that but are not able to.
We are well in truly in crazytown now. For the third time: do you, or do you not, see what's wrong with this [44] bizarre shitpile you nominated for GA? EEng15:04, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's hard to want to block an editor who has many positive contributions to the project. It becomes a bit easier when they're using their contributions as a cudgel to silence those who have concerns about their conduct. Hi, I'm FrederalSay Hi16:55, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doug, your 200+ GAs and 500+ DYKs will not save you. And for the most part, they're not the area of concern here, either. Legitimate concerns have been raised with regards to your editing habits, and to downplay them as a case of jealousy is completely uncalled for. XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 15:28, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doug, please stop. Are you familiar with the Streisand effect? People are now combing through your GAs and finding fault in them, even proposing limitations on you nominating. Please just address the argument. Etriusus (Talk)15:30, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that "self-promotional editing" is a very strange title (with very nasty implications) in light of the actual issue at hand here, which is that a guy who's written many hundreds of articles put a photo of himself in one of them. Granted, the way he did it was pretty silly, and my opinion is that he should leave it out (and probably shouldn't have put it in in the first place). And the edit-warring is clearly an issue, but framing this in the same way as some random UPE spam account seems confusing and counterproductive. jp×g12:06, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, jp×g, the title is appropriate in that he keeps trying to insert those photos in articles even after being told he shouldn't: this ANI was filed after his multiple attempts to add himself to Preparation (principle) were reverted with explanations of why they were inappropriate, most recently on August 17 and 21, and he added a nearly identical section to what he'd inserted in Preparation, complete with the picture above, to his expansion of Michigan eLibrary on September 1. It's the sheer persistence that's troubling here, along with the failure to engage editors who point out issues with anything but his GA and DYK stats. BlueMoonset (talk) 13:41, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at their most-recent article creation, Arthur P. Yateswas a pioneer and leader in railroad photography and He made an excellent reputation for himself as a railroad photographer and was considered the finest in the field in the world in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. seems to be sourced to a self-published book from 1908, and an 1896 book published by the YMCA where the content consists entirely of quotations from an interview with Yates. I don't think that's properly sourced.
Looking at their most-edited articles led me to William Austin Burt and equatorial sextant, where Burt made the first equatorial sextant is tagged as dubious, and a 2020 message at Talk:Equatorial sextant/GA1 points out that there were equatorial sextants invented long before Burt, such as Flamsteed's 17th-century equatorial sextant. Burt had a patent for an equatorial sextant, you might call it "Burt's equatorial sextant", but not the first. The claim is sourced to some pretty dubious sourcing, including a biography of Burt written by one of his descendants. A similar issue occurred with Talk:Burt's solar compass/GA1. I question the notability of these articles.
William Austin Burt also makes the claim that his typographer (typewriter) was the first writing machine in America. This dubious claim is dubiously sourced to very old sources... "The replica has been since 1922 in the Smithsonian Institution" is sourced to a 1922 source, for example. Our article Typewriter#History give a different view.
Making a lot of articles is great, but they have to be accurate, and they have to be properly sourced. This strikes me as moving too fast and loose. In particular source selection seems lacking. I don't think Rhodo's proposal below really gets at the heart of the issues, and Doug's one-sentence reply -- in light of what else he's written here -- doesn't reassure me. Levivich23:34, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who has been editing here less than 1 year I hold Good Articles in a particularly (and possibly over the top) high esteem so I am very concerned seeing someone adding the statement This library is the world's largest evaluated and organized Web based electronic library of online resources. with reference {{sfn|Davidsen|1997|pages=101-106}} at Michigan eLibrary (diff [45]) before nominating it for GA. It would be easy for someone to miss the fact that the information is from 25 years ago and think that it is currently true.Gusfriend (talk) 06:57, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, I fear this is the problem with much of Doug Coldwell's editing: he indiscriminately pastes into articles any random junk that falls in his lap. Often the result is a rambling article with odd details -- superficially making sense, perhaps, but on closer examination full of inappropriate and outdated stuff. But once in a while the stars align and you get that "Preparation" monstrosity. EEng07:16, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doug's responses here are eerily reminiscent of Mathsci's bizarre self-aggrandizing non-sequiturs in the discussion that got him indeffed this past June. That is not a good trajectory to follow and if Doug doesn't get with the program now I can't see this ending up in anything besides a site-block eventually. JoelleJay (talk) 00:30, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal (Doug Coldwell)
Appologies to all if this is to soon to propose anything. I am concerned about the following here:
Seeing Preparation (principle) go from nominated for GA status to what is looking like a snow delete within 3 weeks.
The number of times that articles are repeatedly submit an article after initial rejection with minimal change.
Their lack of engagement with other editors on talk pages unless it is to do with GA/FA.
Their response that they can't be doing anything wrong because of their GA, FA and DYK work.
Their comment about GA reviewers.
After spending time thinking about it today an appropriate response I propose the following:
That user Doug Coldwell is prohibited from nominating articles for GA or FA status until after they have got a consensus on the article talk page.
This would require them to build a consensus both of the content of the pages that they are working on and the appropriateness of a GA/FA nomination. As always please feel free to disregard my idea.Removing proposalGusfriend (talk) 07:58, 5 September 2022 (UTC) 12:23, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The Good Article nominations must have been appropriate, as why else did 234 of them get promoted to Good Article. Perhaps I paid off the reviewers. This app shows how many Good Articles an editor has made. https://sdzerobot.toolforge.org/gans Getting a consensus from those that have made few or no Good Articles doesn't make sense. How can those that have made few or no Good Articles give a consensus to the appropriateness of a potential Good Article? That's saying that the Good Article reviewers that do reviews on a regular basis, like the ones I mentioned above, are not competent or able to do a review on one of my GANs. That's saying that those who have made few or no Good Articles are a better judge than the reviewers that do Good Article reviews on a regular basis.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 08:59, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doug, please, stop digging. Multiple experienced editors are voicing, in good faith, their concerns regarding your edits and you continue to fail to engage meaningfully. Unlike before you are now talking, but you're still not listening. You reiterate the same argument, that there can't be anything wrong with your edits because you have multiple GAs. I am afraid we are in full WP:IDHT territory. Salvio09:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This targets the wrong thing. The issue is about self-promotion and communication, not directly about GAs and FAs. The terms of this proposal have simply led Doug to continue avoiding that issue and go on about the irrelevant issue of how many GAs he has contributed to and who makes the best reviewer. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:20, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My reasoning was that they seem to want to promote articles to GA status and this would require them to communicate with others about any concerns that they have including self promotion if they wish to continue to propose GAs as any concerns from other editors would stop it from getting consensus. Also, separately to the self promotion and lack of communication, several people have commented about the quality of some of Doug's nominations especially the preparation page.
I am more than happy for someone to come up with a different (and hopefully better) proposal with the hope that Doug doesn't talk himself into an indef ban. Gusfriend (talk) 10:32, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If self-promotion on an article is the issue, keep in mind that at least 2000 editors have looked at each one of my 500 Did You Knows. None of the 1,000,000 editors have brought up anything about self-promotion. I would think if I was self-promoting on articles on a regular basis that at least a few of these 1,000,000 would have said something. None have. That idea has only come up lately by these in this ANI. I believe an Administrator should use this app https://sdzerobot.toolforge.org/gans to check out what Good Articles these editors have and that will give an idea why they wish to stop someone that makes a lot of Good Articles. BTW, while these editors in this ANI are wasting their time trying to stop me from making Good Articles I just made another one. Check out William Buchanan (locomotive designer) that I turned into a Good Article this morning before breakfast. --Doug Coldwell (talk)— Preceding undated comment added 11:05, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Doug Coldwell I have only been following this discussion tangentially, so am not fully up to speed with the proposals here. However, I think I can safely make this statement - in this context it does not matter how many Good Articles or DYKs you have. Nobody here is trying to stop someone that makes a lot of Good Articles, nor does having a large number of them make you somehow immune from Wikipedia policies or community norms. The fact that you seem to be unable to grapple with the issues presented here and merely parrot the same line is increasingly concerning. firefly ( t · c ) 11:09, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Here is an interesting observation I have noted. The article I turned into a Good Article today is about a train locomotive designer. The previous 6 Good Articles I have recently made have to do with trains. The main instigator in these issues of this ANI is User:Trainsandotherthings. Perhaps just a coincidence. What are the odds?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:35, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
About the same as the odds that in that new GA, your sentence "he frequently did repair work on the historic DeWitt Clinton engine and passenger cars." and the source sentence "he frequently did repair work on the historic De Witt Clinton engine and cars." were arrived at independently? Fram (talk) 11:42, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fram, thanks for pointing that out -- I was the GA reviewer and I have not been spotchecking Doug's work for close paraphrasing. I'll go back and check the ones I've promoted to GA recently. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:58, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to remind everyone that there is presently an open CCI on Doug Coldwell; it has been open since early 2021. It is distressing to see continued issues with copyright, and that alone might merit a block. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 13:58, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I wish I'd known about that before reviewing his articles; for experienced editors I only occasionally do source spotchecking, but I will have to do it for all Doug's work now. But should he even be nominating at GAN before the CCI is finished? I know nothing about the CCI process, but wouldn't it make more sense to insist that he help clean up the problems he caused before continuing to edit, particularly since we have at least a couple of examples that show the problem is continuing to happen? And even if the normal approach is to let an editor continue to edit, surely formal reviews of their work ought to include some way for the reviewer to know that the CCI existed? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:14, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Christie: CCI does not have the power to require an editor to clean up their own work, that would require a per-user community consensus, which we might pursue here. I've never seen an editor make a concerted effort of their own volition, as I recall. We also take a stance against having the CCI "follow them around" under the (incredibly optimistic) assumption that they will "go and sin no more" after it has been opened. Perhaps this is not always the case, but it has worked in past, especially with older edits from more established users. Something further is likely required here. IazygesConsermonorOpus meum19:10, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, thanks for the information. I'm going to be doing random spotchecks of every GA I review from now on, as I suppose every GA reviewer should. I don't know what "something further" is, but I agree the current situation seems unsatisfactory. The problem is that, as anyone who reads a lot of Doug's articles can see, Doug loves doing obscure research and writing it up, and he is clearly capable of being a very valuable contributor, but on the other hand, it's not clear he fully understands why his work is being criticized. I hope we can find some way to respond to these issues that doesn't drive him away. I am about to start going through the seven GAs I recently reviewed of his; he has told me he's gone through them again to check for source problems and close paraphrasing, and if they come up clean this time that would be a very good sign. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:30, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Christie: A not-insignificant part of it might be cultural; I will be the first to admit I'm significantly more likely to do extensive spot-checks on an editor with fewer nominations than an experienced one. This is even basically written into our FAC policy, wherein first-time noms should expect comprehensive spot-checking, and those with a few bronze stars in the bag rarely are. Have to be the change you want to see in the world, I suppose. I'll do a better job of it going forward as well. IazygesConsermonorOpus meum01:50, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Doug ColdwellEven if the filer of this report did notice the issue because of some overlap in editing interests, that does not in any way make the report deficient. There are multiple experienced editors here expressing concern with regards to conflicts of interest, edit warring and a failure on your part to engage constructively with those concerns. As Salvio said above, this is starting to seem like a disruptive refusal to get the point. firefly ( t · c ) 11:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, as this proposal does not really make sense to me. What does it even mean to build consensus for a GA nomination on a talk page? Most of these articles are on fairly obscure subjects, and for many of them Doug is either the creator of the page or its only serious contributor in the last decade. Is the idea that he would be limited to creating a talk page section, and then sitting around twiddling his thumbs for fifteen years waiting for a second person to show up? It is true that Doug makes a lot of typos. It is also true that he half-asses the formatting on his references sometimes. However, I've reviewed seven of his GA nominations, and they were all passes, and they were all quite fascinating works of great detail that very few around here are capable of. They required copyediting, so I copyedited them, and passed them, because they were good articles, and the product of some very long hours poring over old newspapers and old books and interlibrary loans and bad OCR. I think that, at the absolute strictest, it may be condign to forbid Doug from renominating GAs without talk page consensus. If the proposal is to kick him out of nominating GAs, the proposal should say that, instead of some strange procedure that nobody else has to follow and is basically a guarantee of never being able to nominate. jp×g11:59, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The problem is communication, not really GA nominations; we need Doug to engage more meaningfully with people who find issue with his edits, and making it harder for him to nominate articles for GA won't help with that. Also, it seems Doug will need more explaining what is wrong with his edits (not an unreasonable thing to ask, given that he feels like he has edited very successfully for many years as attested by the GAs; I can imagine it to be mystifying when suddenly the fundamentals of his editing get attacked and everybody else expects him to understand why suddenly everything is different from what he thought it to be). A "no quick renominations" restriction would make more sense. —Kusma (talk) 13:26, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that a "no quick renominations" restriction might make sense, though that doesn't actually address the reason why this thread is here. An example: I recently failed his GA nomination of Four-Track News; the GA review is here. It was failed because it only covered five years of a century-long history of the magazine. He renominated it immediately with four short extra sentences about the rest of the magazine's run, and the nomination was promptly removed by BlueMoonset, who posted this note on Doug's talk page. I can't tell whether Doug ever thought the reasons I failed the article were valid, but I should add he did post on my talk page to say he'd renominated it, and I promised to take a look at it (and had not done so till today) and I also found some more sources that could be used for the article. I agree with JPxG that most of Doug's work is completely unproblematic, but episodes like this are a concern. But to apply a restriction like that when that's not the issue that brought him here seems a bit harsh. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:55, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Given all the concerns addressed above, I agree with Phil Bridger, if communication is the issue, GA and FA nomination doesn't seem like the issue to address. Hi, I'm FrederalSay Hi16:49, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is a painful discussion to read
What do we do with a long-time, productive, good-faith contributor who writes lots of articles but is not as skilled at on-wiki communications as others? That's the underlying question. We certainly have no trouble accepting the opposite skillset: those who don't really write anything but are very good at understanding and enforcing rules. We need both, folks. This is a community and an encyclopedia, after all. This is and should be a diverse place, which is, yeah, frustrating as hell sometimes.
I mean, I get it, this is difficult all around: it's frustrating to try to communicate with someone on a collaborative project just to have those communications repeatedly ignored, missed, or misunderstood; and it's frustrating to write articles collaboratively but more or less on your own most of the time, then be confronted with social norms you don't understand and get dragged to a place like this where people bring up a whole range of gripes about you (and even explicitly tell you they don't care about your content work because your on-wiki communication skills aren't up to snuff -- ouch). It's painful for everyone, and with the proposal above the discussion is sprawling and increasingly chaotic such that at this point I couldn't blame Doug, who may find the social aspect of Wikipedia less fun than the encyclopedic aspect, for being overwhelmed and scattered.
We seem to be on a trajectory towards some sort of long-term block/sanction, and considering what led to this IMO we shouldn't be. So maybe rather than additional proposals for sanctions, we can try to provide Doug with a way out -- one that's as simple as possible. For example, perhaps Doug can simply say "I agree" to these simple terms:
Do not add material about yourself to a Wikipedia article directly. If you want, you may propose it be added on the talk page, but do not add it yourself.
Really really try to pay close attention to talk pages (especially your user talk page), and try to make time to respond even if you're not sure you need to. People appreciate knowing their concerns have been heard.
If you're having trouble understanding a problem someone has raised, and they are not explaining it effectively, reach out to an editor you trust for help. Do you know any of the other Michigan Wikipedians in real life? Sometimes it can help to actually meet up with a group rather than try to figure things out on-wiki.
I hope this helps rather than hurts. Other things came up, but this seems like a reasonable starting point. Let's try to move this towards resolution? — Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:12, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As the filer, I actually would prefer for Doug not to be blocked. That's not my desired end goal here. His responses here have unfortunately made that more likely, but I think Doug is capable of editing here constructively, and I would like to see him continue to improve articles. But to do that, he needs to take other editors' concerns and criticisms seriously. I don't have anything personal against Doug - while I think his recent conduct has been wholly unacceptable and unbecoming of an editor of his tenure, I've seen he is capable of good work when he puts his mind to it. With all of that said, I think this is too light. It took a block just to get him to even respond to criticism - what's stopping him from repeating that behavior in the future? If Doug pledges to change his behavior regarding communicating with other editors going forward, rather than simply saying "I have 500 DYKs and 234 GAs, therefore the rules don't apply to me", at least for me I'd be willing to meet him there and have this end without anyone being blocked. But Doug has to agree to meet us in the middle, instead of continuing to act like his conduct is perfect and editors are only criticizing him because we're "jealous". There's actually not much overlap between him and I in terms of what we write GAs about - I write about railroad companies and rail yards, and I don't believe Doug has done any articles on those two subjects, maybe one or two of the former a long time ago? Regardless, his accusation that I filed this thread because I'm "jealous" of him is absurd and I'd really like to see him withdraw that accusation. In summary, we need a real commitment that Doug is going to change his behavior going forward. Given his responses here, I doubt he will agree to do so, but I'm going to hold out hope just the same. Other editors have raised concerns about other aspects of his editing as well, such as copyright and the creation of the ridiculous Preparation (principle) article, which we will also need to see him acknowledge. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:26, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'd like to propose this discussion be closed, with a reminder to Doug that we may wind up back here if not cautious about this stuff. I know some other things have come up in this thread, but since they all seem to be rooted in communication, perhaps we can take them as they arise, where they arise, rather than trying to address several things at once here. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 17:02, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Being able to explain in detail implies a particular understanding of the nuances of Wikipedia social norms than I think we will see, and is that really a deal-breaker? Being able to "explain in detail what the issues were and how to avoid them" is a different requirement from not engaging in those issues further, after all. Since the underlying issues have to do with communication and (originally) self-promotion, isn't it worth waiting and seeing if Doug takes on board the things he has just agreed to? YMMV. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 17:14, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Given Doug's repeated statements that he doesn't understand the issue, a summary of the issue by Doug would be very helpful to demonstrate that he now does understand and isn't just guessing at what people might want to hear. MrOllie (talk) 17:20, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Good proposal, thanks Rhododendrites. There seems to be a lot of spite at play here, directed at Doug. I'm sure if those engaging in this behaviour were in the same room as Doug, they'd behave very differently. I've worked with Doug on dozens of articles and all I've experienced is a diligent and good-faith editor. Perhaps this wall of text translates as "shouldn't edit war", in which case we're really done. Perhaps it translates as "don't self-promote" with which I agree, but it's done. The message has been received, and those distributing vitriol can now move on to their next victim. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 17:06, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You'll notice I and a number of other editors have not disputed that Doug is a good faith editor. However, his conduct the past few days has been objectively poor. It shouldn't take a block to get someone to respond to the community. I would be ok with this being closed, but only if Doug receives a formal warning about not avoiding communication when other editors have concerns regarding his edits. Otherwise, I oppose this being closed. Doug has made a brief statement saying he agrees not to repeat the problematic edits, which I am happy to see, but I am still waiting to see that he has a clear understanding of what the issues are, and how he will avoid repeating them. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 17:13, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To me, this is just plain and simple bullying and belittling a good faith editor. Of course, that's just my opinion and I'm not casting aspersions or making any personal attacks, rather I'm just suggesting that the continued berating of a good faith editor to somehow unlock a code by saying exactly what certain people want him to say is somewhat disgusting and disappointing. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 21:47, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Given Doug's agreement to go with these conditions, I support accepting that and closing this now. Going forward, any possible future problems can be taken one at a time rather than confronting Doug with a lot of things at once in a potentially overwhelming manner (as, for example, can happen at ANI when people often identify all sorts of different things at once and make blanket demands on an editor). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:26, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is a real benefit to the community easing up here but I object that the issue is he is "less skilled" at on wiki communication than others. The issue was he didn't! He refused to! And when it became an actual problem he needed to be blocked to actually engage here. We aren't saying that he needs to spend all his time on the boards--we are saying that refusal to communicate about problems PLUS the continued generation of problems results in a serious issue that needs some actual resolution. The response can't always be "well, go tell him he is messing up" because as noted above, he has just ignored previous responses. If Doug doesn't want to be confronted with problems all at once he can respond to things one at a time, otherwise refusing to bring them up all at once is tantamount to letting them continue. Protonk (talk) 00:04, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Doug Coldwell is warned by the community that he must make a reasonable effort to respond to good-faith concerns about his editing expressed by other editors. If, in the opinion of an uninvolved administrator, Doug is not abiding by this warning, he may be blocked for up to one week. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 17:25, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well what do you propose then? I'm trying to find something that addresses his behavior and can get support. Feel free to suggest your own proposal or a change to this one. I'm trying to make sure this doesn't just get closed with no action taken. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 17:53, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So, I'm one of the GA reviewers who was summoned by Doug. The issues, as I understand them are: subpar GA nominations, self promotion, and lack of communication. Currently, Doug has 14 GANs open, and he is such a prolific nominator I am not surprised some issues slipped through the cracks. Perhaps a temporary slow-down to his nominations (max him at 5 for a bit), or at least have him go through his current noms to make sure they're up to snuff would be a happy medium. I don't think a total ban on GANs would be a good idea, but having him show a sign of good faith he intends on being more communicative/receptive to feedback would be a good start. I can settle for a warning as well, as long as Doug demonstrates corrected behavior.
For the record, I have reviewed a handful of his GANs in the past and have had no issue with him. No GA nom is perfect and he's far from the worst I have seen. He's been very punctual on responding/answering questions, and it would be a massive detriment to Wikipedia if he were banned over this. You don't get over 200 GAs just by bumbling around, he clearly has a knack for it.
The difference is that the community is giving specific feedback that the editor's conduct is below the community's expectations, and that they (the editor) need to do better. Mackensen(talk)18:06, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The feedback has been given, in the section above, and Doug has agreed to the proposed conditions. "You are warned to do the things you already have to do, or someone might do something they're already allowed to do" is just hot air. But then, this is increasingly becoming the hot air noticeboard these days. He's been pilloried, and we should just leave the poor man alone now and let him try to adhere to what he's already agreed. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:30, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When I opened this, all I wanted was Doug to say "Sorry, I won't do COI editing anymore." and that would have been the end of it. If he had said this on his talk page when I tried to communicate with him about it there, this thread never would have happened. I can't control what other people say or add. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:36, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Does a "formal" ANI warning have any meaning? If he fails to adhere to the stuff he agreed above, people are going to bring him back here and point to that discussion anyway as proof that sanctions are needed, and given how many people were pushing for serious sanctions already, it clearly won't go well for him. Having people line up to say that formally seems like unnecessarily gilding the lily. --Aquillion (talk) 18:32, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think the feedback cycle is important. If this thread is something other than a pillory, or hot air, then the community needs to tell Doug, concretely and specifically, what aspects of his behavior aren't up to expectations. That given him something actionable going forward. Mackensen(talk)18:50, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Pointless. He's been warned. All this "prove he knows exactly what he's done wrong" is just a ballache and a proper example of wiki-lwayering. How much actual disruption has occurred here, and is it more or less of a waste of energy and bytes than this ANI report? Mackensen nails it above, this ANI is a poor performance, with some hysterical hyperbole levelled against a good faith editor. Suggest enough damage has been done in total, close and move on. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 21:29, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with all of the above comments; "formal warnings" are meaningless. He's been told already. It doesn't add more weight to being told "formally" (whatever that means). Warnings, admonishments, etc. etc. are meaningless forms of double secret probation. We only need someone to be told that their behavior is a problem, and it only takes one person to do that. This entire thread is sufficiently informing Doug Caldwell that there is a problem. Once they have been made aware, the next step is always some sanction or action (topic ban, block, page block, whatever). By the time something reaches ANI, it is time to discuss an actual action; presumably the person has already been told they are creating a problem, because if they haven't, we tell the OP to tell them exactly that before requesting a block. --Jayron3218:57, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
It's not fucking wikilawyering, he's spent most of this time denying there even is a problem, no matter how many times people explain to him. It's making sure we don't fucking end up here again in a month. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:42, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is nothing to do with me. Your anger is pretty clear for all to see here. I suggest you should work on that a bit before casting stones at everyone else. My de-sysop was like nearly a decade ago, and I don't regret losing the bit for a moment, and acknowledged the issues surrounding it. I've developed since then and realise that the behaviour I'm seeing here from others is abhorrent, bullying and unhelpful. But thank you for demonstrating exactly the kind of behaviour that means you should take a looooooong break. Your behaviour here is not helpful at all, quite the opposite, and it's genuinely sad to see this dogpiling onto a good faith editor, just to punish him. Several people here should be genuinely ashamed of themselves. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 22:21, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Doug's been hammered here. He's a good faith editor and all these various calls for "he needs to demonstrate he understands what he's done wrong" are simply bullying and belittling. Let's just get on with life, and if Doug makes any further infringements, let's hope we can deal with it satisfactorily. In the meantime (insert something here about assuming good faith and not continually and doggedly pursuing active punishment) suggest a few of the more rabid commentators chill out, and cease & desist this pursuit which will ultimately be of literally no benefit to anyone. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 21:44, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support The GAs are being reviewed again, the "inserting himself in articles" that people had questions about has been stopped, the mentioned article above is heading for a SNOW delete, the other behavior (while not currently addressed to everyone's satisfaction) isn't something we are going to fix here in ANI. While I firmly believe TAOT wasn't jealous or anything else that was asserted above, and I have significant concerns about the fact that it took a block to force engagement, the editor is engaging now, on multiple venues, and none of the proposed sanctions above have support. If there are future concerns, they can be addressed, but at this point, I think the issue brought forth in the ANI report has been resolved, even if it isn't to everyone's satisfaction. FrederalBacon (talk) 22:15, 5 September 2022 (UTC) Struck and amended FrederalBacon (talk) 15:52, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Given Mackensen's points below, and the fact that the editor's most recent GA has serious issues, I don't think this should be closed until further action is taken. FrederalBacon (talk) 15:51, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support At this point, I don't think ANI will serve any roll in fixing the issue at hand. As much as I don't like the idea of 'kicking the can down the road' its equally not worth dragging him through the mud any more than he already has. If this behavior persists, we can always look back to this ANI for proof of repeat behavior. I get that TAOT wants something more concrete but the cacophony is too disorganized to effect any actual sanctions. Frankly, we all need to chill out a bit. Etriusus (Talk)22:38, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Soft Oppose While I don't condone many of the more vitriolic comments, Mackensen & Levivich have both raised very serious points on the quality of his GAs. I do support some type of mechanism to vet his GAs or slow him down so that his GAs can be of higher quality. Etriusus (Talk)18:02, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose If you're going to complain about AGF you should honor it yourself. It is not "bullying and belittling" to request the bare minimum of WP:CIR and WP:COMMUNICATE from an experienced editor. This is clearly a necessary ANI with valid good-faith comments from multiple editors. ––FormalDude(talk)22:58, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Take a break. The pile-on is absurd. It's not like this is an ongoing damage limitation exercise. The incendiary abuse going on here is beyond belief. And the ANI formation is calamitously bad. Perhaps those complaining should take a step back and better formulate their issues for the next time. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 23:06, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is my first comment in the discussion. The only reason it seems like it's a pile on is because Doug continues to give vague and unconvincing responses. Not everyone has the patience we do, and it seems like you're doing some WP:PEARLCLUTCHING. ––FormalDude(talk)23:25, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support closing this but I agree with FormalDude above, it isn't bullying to demand that editors actually engage with their talk pages when needed. I'm sorry that long-term refusal to do so has backfired spectacularly on someone and that sending copy/paste messages announcing their number of GAs has not availed them, but pointing this out isn't wrong. Nor is it wrong to be concerned that the problem isn't actually solved. Protonk (talk) 00:12, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I frankly don't think the proposal Doug agreed to is sufficient (nor does it have consensus as such). We had several editors bringing up multiple very specific problems, including clear copyright violations and inappropriate references, and every single one of his 6 responses to those complaints (none of which had anything to do with GAs; he happened to ignore the one comment that initially brought those up), as well as all 4 responses in the first ban proposal AND 3 comments on his TP ANI notice and block appeal, were variations on or literal copy-pastes of
I'm not sure what the issue is??? I can demonstrate I have made 234 Good Articles. Of those in 2020 I made 60 Good Articles in a 60 day period of time, averaging 1 Good Article per day. I have created 500 Did You Know articles. Here is a list of my multiple article Did You Knows. Here is a list of my Did You Knows that have been placed in DYK Hall of Fame. This article was put on the main page as an official Did You Know 36 hours from when I created it. Do you need more?
including this ABF aspersion:
I believe that an Administrator should use this app https://sdzerobot.toolforge.org/gans to see how many Good Articles a particular editor has done before making any decisions on any proposals. Of course those that have made few or no Good Articles want to stop those that have made over 200 Good Articles. It looks like a case of jealousy, as those that have made few or no Good Articles wish they could do that but are not able to.
Earlier today his direct reply to EEng bringing up examples of barely-coherent unencyclopedic passages on modern medical career advice that he had cited to an article called "True Tales of Peril and Heroism" published in 1913 was this:
My 500 Did You Know articles have been viewed by at least 2000 editors each. That means that over a million editors have seen these articles and none have put in a complaint that I was self-promoting in any of them.
So I am not convinced he now, suddenly, understands exactly what the issues are. If he has the skills and time to guide other editors on the nuances of Commons image licensing on his talk page, he could have acknowledged the multiple warnings he received from Trainsandotherthings outlining precisely what he needed to stop doing and we wouldn't be here. He chose to ignore it and continued edit-warring descriptions/pictures of himself into mainspace instead. JoelleJay (talk) 02:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, this is what I've been trying to impress upon people - it took sustained refusal to communicate to lead us here. I still would be ok with dropping this if Doug would explain he understands the concerns here, but I have not seen that yet. That's all I want. It's not about punishing anyone, it's about preventing this from happening again. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 20:27, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose closing - I rather agree with Joelle Jay above this. None of the proposals here have hit the nail on the head, but I do not think that the problem has been adequately dealt with, and simply saying "he knows better now after this discussion" and closing the discussion is clearly not accurate and is therefore not the appropriate response. The fact that this editor created very poorly written and conceived material is a serious concern, as such things make Wikipedia look ridiculous. I believe that there is a need for some kind of formal sanction to provide guidance for Doug Coldwell, but I'm damned if I know what form it should take. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:22, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just to point out that Doug Coldwell having written 60 articles in 60 days -- a fact of while he seems so proud -- is in fact a big part of the problem. EEng05:32, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The more I read about the issues regarding the editor's content (It appears below as though his most recent GA had copyvio and poor quality source issues) the more I'm beginning to support a CBAN. I still don't know if it's there yet, but the more issues that are found, juxtaposed against the aspersion casted above (People are just reporting because they're jealous they can't make GAs), in addition to the fact that a block was required to force engagement, isn't promising, IMO. FrederalBacon (talk) 16:14, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sympathetic to the view that there's no administrative action to be taken here, but I'm also worried that closing now will have the net effect that Coldwell feels vindicated in doing the same things he was doing before. To me his boasting about "234 Good Articles I have done" is a big red warning flag. I am in strong agreement with Sammi Brie that many of his GA nominations and I think also many of his passed GAs have been subpar: badly organized, badly sourced, badly written, and overloaded with picayune detail. His typical response to GA reviews is to just keep asking the reviewer to suggest new wording for every issue until they get tired of responding and pass it, or (if they fail it) to quickly renominate and try the same thing again with a new reviewer. That's not the issue here (the nominations I have seen had no hint of self-promotion in their content) but it suggests a similar lack of self-awareness. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:16, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You might think so, but still today in Special:Diff/1108869547 he is using the recent GA pass of one of his articles as justification for claiming that he is vindicated against claims of bad scholarship and copyvio in the article, and proposing only cosmetic copyediting-level patches, rather than making any serious consideration of the alleged problems in the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:26, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Meanwhile, I just quickfailed yet another of his GA nominations (I don't review them very often because every time I do it's a quick fail and a quick renomination and that just feels sad and pointless) over yet more recent copyvio: Talk:Conrad Hubert/GA1. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:56, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I have started reviewing New York Central and Hudson River Railroad No. 999, as I mostly work with trains these days. This was promoted to GA just a few days ago. This is presumably his most recent work and should represent the state of his art. I (and another editor) immediately found probable copyright violations and the use of low-quality sources. If I had reviewed this article, I would have failed it. To relate this issue back to the question of self-promotion, I think it's clear that Doug Coldwell is proud of the breadth of his contributions. He should be, 200+ GAs is impressive. The issue is that the depth doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Writing a GA or FA takes time. Source analysis takes time. Fellow editors, how many articles were in limbo for years until we had the right sources? That's the feedback that Doug needs: that he needs to take his time and produce fewer, but better, articles. We also need to be frank with him that the system failed him, by promoting articles that weren't ready yet. That's not his fault; it becomes his fault if he's unwilling or unable to take on valid criticism of his work. Mackensen(talk)11:58, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Talk:New York Central and Hudson River Railroad No. 999#Speed record was posted on May 26 and apparently ignored. Turns out, the claim that the 999 broke a speed record is disputed, if not outright doubted or dismissed, by scholars. I don't get how this got through GA on Sep. 1, and this concern was not addressed. I just tagged the article and posted some sources for discussion. Part of the problem is that the entire article was sourced to sources from ~100 years ago, with nothing modern. These sorts of factual errors are a big deal; we're misinforming the reader in our haste to make GAs. So I oppose closing this and my idea for a proposal is that Doug agree to go through all of his GAs and creations and confirm they meet WP:V, WP:RS, etc., before creating any new articles or nominating any new GAs. Once he's done his self-review, he can post a note confirming same on his user talk page. Levivich15:21, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
BTW I see the problem as over-reliance on free-to-access sources, like public domain sources and local news from 100 years ago via Newspapers.com, without consulting better sources like 21st century academic books, journal articles, etc., so that our article ends up saying, in Wikivoice, whatever people were saying in local news 100 years ago, rather than what scholars are saying today. This is a WP:TIER1 sourcing v. WP:TIER3 (with some WP:TIER4) issue. Levivich15:30, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support I don't see the need for a big drawn out ANI thread like this with so many personal comments. This is not a topic ANI is good at addressing. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:24, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What's the ideal venue here? A conduct RfC? Practically speaking we don't have good venues for problems which amount to "this editor is doing something they should probably stop doing" rather than bi/multi-lateral disputes or issues centered around a particular set of articles. Protonk (talk) 16:58, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I think there are just too many colored flags to leave this situation where it is now. I agree that we should avoid making snap decisions to push away long-time editors that have made good contributions, but what I'm seeing of DC's attitude is still too much to ignore. Their posts here and their user page show that they assign great value to the FA/GA icons, and particularly the 'possession' of them. Constantly trumpeting their own counts, and saying that the concerns of people with less GA contributions should be sidelined, makes it seem like they see this as a competition of some sort. At this time I personally don't support any block or ban on DC, (though I wouldn't oppose), but as someone mentioned above, closing the discussion at this point will probably lend DC more feelings of validation than intended. Regardless I think something further has to be done, else I expect that there will not be an appreciable change in behavior. GabberFlasted (talk) 16:20, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. In my mind the first salient question is whether Doug, overall, is making the site better. And second, whether he is acting in good faith. I believe the answer to both questions is yes. I can confirm that Preparation (principle) is an absolutely awful article (and undoubtedly some other contributions need scrutiny), but those can be addressed by more targeted deletions/reversions/warnings on specific contributions. There is really no constructive reason to keep attacking a user through mass discussion on ANI who seems to be acting in good faith. Caleb Stanford (talk) 17:06, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose closure without any further action. It's clear from comments upthread that there are issues with his editing, including but not limited to a lack of engagement with reviewer comments, close paraphrasing/borderline CV/unattributed PD copying, and the incomprehensible prose pointed out by EEng. His copy-and-paste "I have more green circles than you" response to valid concerns is extremely concerning to me (and it's not the first time he has responded in this way to people). Communication is required, and that kind of response can't be excused by assuminng that the editor in question has poor social skills. We can respect someone's efforts as an editor while at the same time recognizing that there are problems with it that need to be acknowledged and corrected. ♠PMC♠ (talk)18:43, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I stand with a lot of editors here in being against closure, but not quite certain what the resolution is. This could have been much easier but Doug seems unwilling to make concrete changes to his behavior after years of commentary. Yes, he gave a brief approval that he'd fix things. How will he go about them? He seems less certain than any of us. He still remains unwilling to compromise from what I've seen, and has yet to retract blatant ABF aspersions against fellow editors that they are jealous of his success (which reveals a great deal of his motivation IMO), and very strange accusations that the filer has a villainous plan behind the filing here. Doug, there is a light out of the tunnel, but you need to calm down and discuss fixing your past mistakes and not making them again, rather than continue to bloviate on your past successes. Refusing to communicate at first set you up in a very bad spot here, but you can fix this. Please do. IazygesConsermonorOpus meum19:40, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I'm not comfortable with this being closed without some form of consequence. Even though Doug clearly edits in good faith, many of his edits and, to a lesser extent, his conduct regarding this discussion, raise legitimate concerns that can't be overridden by simply acting in good faith. XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 12:10, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Proposal: Remove autopatrol user right
I've been reading this thread, including the various points over whether a sanction is required or not required, whether to close or not close the thread, and how to balance the identified issues with moving forward and balacing Doug's good contributions with the problems that have also been identified. I would like to propose a possible solution of removing the autopatrol user right from Doug, and that he cannot re-apply for a minimum of six months (which is a long time given how prolific Doug is in creating articles). This does two things: (1) it practically relates to the creation of articles that have problems (either in encyclopedic value like the Preparation article, or the copyvios that have been identified), and (2) sends a message to Doug that improvement is needed with something to work towards (regaining the autopatrol right). Singularity42 (talk) 17:19, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support - This seems like an eminently sensible response to the problem, enabling DC to continue to create articles, but subjecting them to community control. I would also point out that the entirety of the thread would seem to point to problems with the GA approval process. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:12, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose One of the articles that made it to GA was almost immediately identified after further review as having a questionable source and potentially a copyright vio. Mind you this was after the above mentioned "Community control" of a GA review. If the community is not catching the mistakes the editor is making already, adding further burden to the volunteers to check MORE of his contributions by removing AP isn't going to help, at all, and this also falls significantly short of addressing the wide ranging issues identified by many editors above.FrederalBacon (talk) 20:17, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I mean either way WP:CCI's just going to have to review all of DC's contributions anyways. The CCI only goes up to 2010. Whatever solution happens, it needs to make sure that we don't have even more to review after this. Sennecaster (Chat) 21:14, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, the longer this goes on, the more I'm becoming convinced the only way to prevent even more review of this editor's contributions is to stop them from contributing anymore. I mean, if we are to the point where it's pretty clear someone is going to have to go through everything this editor has done, I don't think the arguments about his contributions outweighing the problems are valid anymore, personally. FrederalBacon (talk) 21:29, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think a WP:SBAN is a bit nuclear in its response. The longer Doug takes to respond properly, the worse the sentiment is going to change against him. That isn't to say there aren't legitimate contributions he has made to wikipedia, but there're a lot of moving pieces. New page reviewers, GA reviewers, and ANI boards have all failed to properly catch the issue, I have reviewed some of his GA noms and even I cannot say I am without fault. There's an old saying "It takes a village to raise a child" and Doug was likely under the impression that some of what he was doing was probably right, since it had been reinforced so heavily.
This isn't mean to absolve him of all of this, rather I want to point out that WP:SBAN is a huge leap, especially when smaller, corrective steps can be made. Doug has made quality contributions, I doubt all of his GAs are poor quality (As that would implicate dozens of GA reviewers), and we would be remiss to throw him out into the cold like that. Doug does need to respond, however. I cannot condone his comments thus far since he's flirting with some very serious accusations. Etriusus (Talk)21:56, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is absolutely the nuclear option; That's why no one (including myself) has proposed it yet. But almost every editor here is staring at all of these issues and scratching our heads going "Well what can we do about all this?" None of these sanctions seem appropriate for the issue, nor cover the entire issue, but most agree action is needed...what do we do? Well, that's something we can do. I don't think it would have support yet, I don't think it's absolutely needed at this point, but the longer this goes on, the more baffling the responses to the issues are, and the more the issues crop up....it's hard to see that as anything but the most complete solution to the problem. FrederalBacon (talk) 22:05, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever solution or action is taken, it cannot and should not create more burden on people who review his edits. If any solution allows for more copyright violations to fly under the radar, for poorly sourced content being pushed through our quality article processes repeatedly and at a rate that the reviewers cannot handle, I am going to oppose. Sennecaster (Chat) 22:27, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps editors are reluctant to suggest any action, out of fear of being jumped on by other editors and accused of trying to "punish" Doug or of being inflammatory. I've certainly been cowed into not suggesting anything else. I don't think a CBAN is the answer unless all else fails. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:40, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think after the discussion below has made it clear that further action is needed, but no further action has been proposed, it is evident there is a hesitation from editors to propose those actions. FrederalBacon (talk) 04:47, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support I had a look for prior discussions of the removal of autopatrolled and it is a matter that hasn't been subject to a lot of administrative discussion. No sensible administrator would grant autopatrolled to a user who has been found to have engaged in copyvio. That seems reason enough to remove the right at least until any ongoing investigation into the copyvio has been concluded and/or other remedies are worked out by the community. As imperfect a venue as ANI clearly is, I do hope further discussion can help D.C. change both his editing behaviour and to communicate better with other editors. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:47, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support as it's apparent here that Doug is clearly not trusted anymore by the community to edit unpatrolled. Insistent, continuously sustained IDHT when people call out his mistakes and unrepentant copyvios are not traits I'd like to see in a person with privileges that allow them to bypass quality control. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 15:33, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This isn't likely to solve the underlying problems, because his content is likely to pass a cursory new page patrol, but continued recent copyvio (e.g.) make this necessary as a minimum step. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:35, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a minimum step, per various comments above. I was hesitant to support this because as FrederalBacon says it means more of his contributions will be marked as requiring review, which means we're giving ourselves more work to do. But I think that work is necessary; if Doug continues to contribute, his work does need to be checked, for a while at least. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:19, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Regardless of what, if any, other sanctions will be levied against this editor, the copyvio issues makes this a pretty common sense thing: autopatrolled is meant for trusted editors who regularly create articles and demonstrate familiarity with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, especially those on biographies of living persons, copyrights, verifiability and notability. (emphasis mine) An editor with ongoing copyvio issues very clearly either lacks the required familiarity with the copyright policies and guidelines, or cannot be trusted to follow them, and should therefore in either case not have the autopatrolled user right.
Support Late to the party, and not intending to comment any further other than that anyone who has the autopatrolled flag had better be damn near flawless at article production. It's not a perk, it is supposed to reduce the burden on reviewers. Issues like the ones demonstrated above show that review is very much needed. Pull it. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:43, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Elmidae has it: this is only to reduce new page reviewer burden, not a privilege. There should be a low threshold for pulling the flag, as it doesn't deprive the user of any abilities; it just adds a secondary review that is invisible to most users. (And I'm a new pages reviewer, so I know of the burden.)— rsjaffe🗣️18:45, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Given the long-term issues with copyright/close paraphrasing, it makes sense for NPPers to look at this. I don't see this as particularly burdensome on either Doug's end or on the end of the New Page Patrol, so this seems like a narrowly tailored way to provide for accountability going forward. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)14:29, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As I have recently promoted some of Doug's GAs, and had not spotchecked them as I did so (my mea culpa is above), I thought I should take responsibility for rechecking them. I asked Doug to go through them first to make sure they were clean; my thinking was that if he could show he knew what the problems were and was willing to fix them, it would be helpful. I'm sad to say that the first check, on Charles Grafton Page, is not going well. My talk page comments are here. I was unable to access a couple of source but found problems in about half the text I was able to check. For a contributor to leave in this many problems in so little text while the subject of a CCI and the subject of an ANI thread that covers this problem is astonishing.
I believe Doug is acting entirely in good faith, so the only explanations I can come up with are that either he doesn't understand the problem, or he doesn't understand what it means to do a recheck. I don't know what to do about this, because there's no question that we'll lose a dedicated contributor if we drive Doug away, but I don't think things can continue as they are. Iazyges says above: "CCI does not have the power to require an editor to clean up their own work, that would require a per-user community consensus, which we might pursue here. I've never seen an editor make a concerted effort of their own volition, as I recall. We also take a stance against having the CCI "follow them around" under the (incredibly optimistic) assumption that they will "go and sin no more" after it has been opened. Perhaps this is not always the case, but it has worked in past, especially with older edits from more established users. Something further is likely required here". I think the evidence so far is that we can't assume Doug will "go and sin no more".
I'll keep going through the Charles Grafton Page article, but I'm going to delay reviewing the others till the close of this thread, in case something drastic ends up happening such as the stubification of some or all of Doug's work. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:03, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So, just for the sake of clarification: this is a check made after he was made aware of the issues, as well as aware of a recheck, and specifically said this article was good to go for recheck? FrederalBacon (talk) 04:58, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually Doug made no edits to it at all when I asked him to recheck. I said "I am going to spotcheck the GAs of yours I've recently promoted"; this one was promoted on 19 August. I didn't check to see that he'd edited it before started to rereview it. I suppose he simply forgot it was one that needed to be checked, or assumed I wouldn't go back that far (only three weeks). Either of those is still not a good sign. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:31, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What do you see as a way forward from here in terms of improving the editor's behavior and encouraging them to do better with avoiding the copyright issues? FrederalBacon (talk) 20:47, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have been unable to think of a solution that is both likely to work and not the nuclear option. I think the comments made elsewhere about Doug's motivation being in conflict with the goals of the encyclopedia are at least partly right, and it's very difficult for someone to change their behaviour if their motivation is unchanged. I can't tell if he understands our copyright rules well enough to follow them. My usual instinct is that people are what they do, not what they say, and he edits like someone who doesn't understand the rules. Elsewhere in this thread someone makes the point that editors can't be assumed to sign up to fix other people's problems; I don't mind redoing the GA reviews I did and delisting those GAs, and ripping out the copyvios I can find, but what about the sources I don't have access to? I gather that CCI's approach is to create a giant worklist for other editors while allowing the problematic editor to continue without helping. I can see the reasoning, but the result here is not good. It would be less work for the community to delete articles, or revert to before significant contributions, where there's a pattern like this. It's painful to say this, because in some ways I admire Doug's work -- as I've said elsewhere, he could be a very valuable contributor. But sadly he isn't, and the evidence so far is that he either can't or won't change. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:16, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
CCI can and regularly does apply WP:PDEL. In an ideal world, CCIs would be on newer users who are blocked for copyvio and then unblocked because they understand copyvio, but it's not that in many cases. Basically, 12-13 years ago the community wrung its hands over the collateral damage of PDEL, as a very high profile case happened with bot blanking and presumptive deletions, and we have the incredibly and overly optimistic take that we have now. We can't force editors to help; it usually doesn't work and I can think of 2 cases out of the at least 250 I've heard of or worked on where the person in question helped. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have situations where blocking for copyvio this late into someone's editing career, but here we are, and unless DC can give absolute assurance to us that he understands the copyright policy, and how to not closely paraphrase, and that there is a legitimate improvement in his work, I think there needs to be a block from at the very least, mainspace. Sennecaster (Chat) 21:31, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd argue the time to acknowledge he understood copyright policy was when the CCI was opened last year. And, you know, at pretty much any point in this ANI that has now been going for 4 days, and the editor himself hasn't engaged with since day 2. This is a discussion, at this point, that looks as if it might determine his ability to continue with this project, and there hasn't been a response to a single issue here since he agreed to Rhododendrites' well intentioned, but now eclipsed by larger issues, suggestion of a resolution above. So, is he seeing this discussion getting increasingly negative due to the copyright issues, and not replying, or is he not reading it at all? Neither option is particularly thrilling. FrederalBacon (talk) 22:13, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I hadn't thought of a mainspace block. It would be slightly less of a nuclear option, though I doubt Doug would edit much, if at all, outside mainspace, so it would probably have the same effect. Not being familiar with CCI discussions I don't want to pontificate but I would have thought PDEL should be the default. If breaking copyright rules doesn't get you a scarlet letter, doesn't require you to fix your own messes, doesn't stop you from editing, and leaves your bad edits in place (since we don't have the manpower to clean most of it up), what is the incentive not to break those rules? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:15, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Good question! On top of all that, CCI regulars are lambasted and attacked every single time we try to bring copyright violation issues from established editors to the community's attention. At the fairly recent Martinevans CV discussion, we were treated by many people as though we were personally assaulting Martin, as if WP:5P3 - not violating copyright - is an impossible standard we can't expect people to uphold. ♠PMC♠ (talk)22:58, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, I think some of the time, it was the way the copyvio problems were reported, rather than the problems themselves. Certainly, I took a neutral stance with Martinevans123, and decided the best thing to do would be to help tackle the CCI, which has unfortunately stalled. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)08:57, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have found issues with sourcing before (here), and while I was not that pleased to see no re-checking was done before the next nomination, I do not believe the problems were close to meriting "something drastic" like general stubbification. I do not think the general issue of GAN reviewing inconsistency can be addressed here either. CMD (talk) 10:44, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The stubification would not be an answer to sourcing problems, but to th apparently still rampant copyvio problems despite being already the subject of a CCI investigation (a combination which does deserve both an indef and stubbing or draftifying all their articles, or reversion where they didn't create but significantly added to articles). If we had some indication that they understood the seriousness of the issues and some evidence that they truly worked on the problem, instead of doing some perfunctory edits, things might be different: but it seems as if they have little or no intention to abide by such basic rules and see themselves as above them. Fram (talk) 10:58, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The copyright problem is severe enough as it is. WP:CCI is expected to manually review every single substantial (over 150 bytes, adds content besides refs) edit made by Doug Coldwell up to now, since the level of copyvio that David Eppstein, Fram, Mike Christie, myself, and others is well into the territory of expanding the current CCI. This is absolutely unfair and unacceptable, especially if DC doesn't understand copyright policy. It's unfair on the GA reviewers, it's unfair on copyright editors, and it's unfair to the community in general. There are not enough editors who care to do a proper review and have time or enough energy, to rewrite entire articles to a GA standard for someone else. Sennecaster (Chat) 13:40, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I believe, then, that this whole situation leaves the community with little choice of what action needs to be taken here. Doug's actions have caused an increased burden on the community significantly, and given the fact that this has been addressed with them before and they are still committing blatant copyright violations, we can not trust the behavior to change. FrederalBacon (talk) 15:02, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And just when we were finally getting a handle on the GA nom backlog. I'm sure there is plenty worth saving, but it'll be painful, especially tracking down the sources in print. I hate the idea of stubifying 200+ GAs, but it's gonna take some serious manpower to clean up this mess. GA reassessment frankly can't handle that load. Etriusus (Talk)13:31, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have been following this discussion from afar, as my off-Wiki life has been taking precedence. From my bystander observation, many of the disparate issues brought up here are centered around a focus on the value of "shiny things" – in this case, good articles and DYKs. Concerns are brushed aside because those that have made few or no Good Articles wish they could do that but are not able to. Articles are nominated, removed for nomination on the basis of serious issues, and are renominated hours later with no or minimal improvement. Cone Mills Corporation has failed four times because no improvements have been made between those nominations. That seems absurd. Then there's whatever is happening here. I think even a temporary TBAN as it relates to GAN might have to be in order to stop some of the bleeding until concerns around copyright and lack of communication are remedied. — GhostRiver14:44, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Really not a fan of that Then YOU will earn a GA green icon for being the nominator and I will earn a GA green icon for being the creator of the article. bit in link provided; quid pro quo is certainly an acceptable thing in terms of "oh you review one of my FAC/GANs and I review one of yours, but make no promise of outcome" but it basically seems like he's trying to pass off fixing the issues, or else just try to ram it through by having someone else nom it and stand by it. Not good. IazygesConsermonorOpus meum14:49, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh my various colored nuvola icons. I was worried when making my comment that I focused too much on Doug's love of GA icons, because I thought it was just my bias against self-promotion at work. But that thread is just full of even more of what we've seen him say here, as well as some new brags we haven't. I've been biting my tongue because I don't take it lightly but I have to say it now. I'm having concerns that while Doug Coldwell is acting in good faith he might be bordering on technically NOTHERE. I want to stress that he is acting in good faith (as far as my understanding of good faith goes) but this talk of I happen to be in the top 5% (#18 of 360) of [...], seemingly never bringing up GAs or DYKs without bringing up his or someone else's statistics on it, and generally paddling circles around his accomplishments instead of discussing literally anything else, just can't be ignored. If this comes off as too harsh or aspersions please tell me but I felt this needed saying. GabberFlasted (talk) 15:11, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's a very strange situation, I definitely agree. No one can doubt that he's acting in good faith I would say, but his strange refusal to take ownership of his mistakes pushes him into NOTHERE, on top of collective behavior. I'll be the first to admit I went about hat/icon collecting when I was a young (age and experience-wise) editor, but this is a man of much life experience and a fourteen-year tenure. It's unbelievable that he is unaware of the copyright policies, not only has he had a very long tenure, but he has actually guided others in understanding copyright policy; it is becoming increasingly obvious that he simply doesn't care. A CCI investigation has been set up under the understanding he would "sin no more". He went forth and sinned, creating yet more work for the CCI team. Now, in the middle of an increasingly adverse discussion that he had to be blocked to convince him to take part in, he has promised that he has reviewed some of his more recent works. Either he missed a few as above (concerning given the small pool of them), has no idea how to review his own works (concerning, as he should have access to all of the sources for a recent work), or he simply doesn't care. It seems increasingly that, although a good faith editor, his driving motivation is to get those awards, and he is unwilling to compromise or heed others warnings on the matter. TL;DR: He's a dedicated and good faith editor, but his general mindset that his achievements make him immune from criticism or policy is very concerning. IazygesConsermonorOpus meum15:26, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
From looking through the thread, this seems to be exactly what's going on. In pursuit of more green buttons, quantity has taken precedence over quality, which has led to issues discussed here. It's clear that Doug has contributed a lot to Wikipedia, but you can't hide from valid criticism behind GA's. I've never created a GA on my own, and I'm sure it's a nice little dopamine kick, but it's a problem when it becomes the most important thing, more important apparently than even the quality of the articles themselves. Perhaps limiting Doug's partaking in the GA process at least temporarily would be healthy for both him and the site. TylerBurden (talk) 22:40, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal : Indef block
Above, Fram has suggested an indef block for Doug, given persistent and uncorrected issues with copyvios. Others have suggested a block, but only from mainspace. As well as the ongoing CCI, I notice that Conrad Hubert has just been quickfailed at GA because of plagiarism issues. I know we don't like indeffing longstanding contributors, but doing it for extensive copyvios has longstanding precedent. Your thoughts please. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)08:27, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support indef I don't like that it has reached this point and was about to propose the following (that I have included in case it helps people figure out a solution) but I think that an indef is required:
Removal of auto-patrolled rights (proposed and consensus gained above)
Doug can continue to edit pages and propose that they be elevated to GA/FA but someone else needs to submit them for review
Doug cannot make a DYK submissions unless the article has been extensively reviewed by other editors (i.e. after a GA/FA review)
Support with regret. We have significant copyright problems here, including an open CCI for historic issues and ongoing issues to this day. Cleaning up copyright issues requires an immense investment of volunteer time, orders of magnitude greater than inserting the violations in the first place, and therefore we must be willing to take action to "stem the flow" in cases where editors seem to be unable to comply with our policies on the matter. This is particularly critical in the case of prolific contributors where violations seem to be common, as the scale of the problem will naturally be larger. firefly ( t · c ) 09:32, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support: It is painful to need to indef ostensibly highly productive editors. We've had to do it a bit too often this year. And a large part of the problem is the mania for Chasing Shiny Things: to get on the Top 100 edits list, to rack up FA/GA/DYKs, to rake in the barnstars. The further problem is that this mess highlights the painful truth that the GA process is seriously broken. There is no frigging way that so many substandard articles should have been promoted, no frigging way that so many copyvios and plagiarisms fell through the cracks, and if there are just too few eyeballs going over GA nominations, or if they're too quick to promote and careless about thorough vetting, the GA process needs to be suspended until these issues are resolved. (And if the result is that Wikipedia has fewer GAs, then tough shit. A lot of us are down on Doug for his relentless self-promotion. Self-promotion doesn't become prettier when it's Wikipedia itself touting all those shiny GAs.) This isn't a matter to resolve at ANI, of course. But as long as Doug is pulling a Lugnuts, and his answer to all these issues and exhortations to clean up his own mess is "But I Have So Many GAs/DYKs!" on endless loop, we do have the power to address that, and we must. Ravenswing 10:56, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ravenswing: I think a large part of the issue with Doug's articles specifically is that he uses eclectic and old sources; a lot of them don't exist in any digital form, and therefore won't show up in Earwig's Copyvio Detector. Indeed, a lot of his articles that had blatant copyvio came back as 0%-2%. I would consider it a revelation that reliance on such tools may be too high, in conjunction with the previously discussed cultural issues that the regulars rarely get spotchecked. I won't say GA is perfect, but I don't think the entire process need be shut down at this point. IazygesConsermonorOpus meum12:11, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So there's no set standard/rule on spotchecking. It's agreed upon that some spotchecking must occur, since everyone is going to make some minor edits went synthesizing sources. GA reviewers almost never spot check printed sources since it would require tracking down the original text, i.e. going to a library. Additionally, if we spot checked everything, we would just become a de facto FA review. GA just means 'decently written' and similarly has different standards than FAs, sources that fly at GA reviews (namely blogs written by experts in the field of study) would never get by at FA reviews. Copy-vios are not tolerated at any stage of an article's life (I 100% agree with lCOm, we do rely too heavily on earwig). It wouldn't be worth shutting down the process, frankly we just need more reviewers to lighten the load of the ~50-100 regulars who do conduct these reviews. Etriusus (Talk)13:44, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Etriusus: Well, even at FAC it's pretty much baked in that editors without any FAs should be spot-checked (the essay itself says that Coords will usually (code for always, but good cover for when they forget, you know how shifty and untrustworthy that lot is), whereas those with even one usually aren't. As Mike Christie and I discussed above, it's a cultural issue that I think will likely have to be individually tackled. IazygesConsermonorOpus meum13:52, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
we just need more reviewers or fewer/better submissions. Overwhelming the queue is why "60 GAs in 60 days" was a bad idea. And DYK suffers from this problem 100x worse. The fundamental problem of all WP:HIGHSCORE editing is that it floods and overwhelms our review processes. Which basically means editors who have lots of time to do lots of GA/DYK/whatever are monopolizing the time of other editors, and the result is sort of disenfranchising editors who have less free time. The editor who has time for 1 GA has to wait because there's someone else who nom'd 100 GANs, etc. We need across-the-board rate throttling to protect against this. Levivich😃13:55, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich: A not-insignificant part of that is areas of reviewer "expertise". I like to review stuff I'm familiar with because it gives me a good handle on what might be missing. Most of Wikipedia is white men, so some topics get premium spots in the amount of expertise; i.e. war and history GANs usually get picked up faster, all else equal. IazygesConsermonorOpus meum14:00, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
More GANs should probably be quickfailed then they are. Unfortunately, in my experience, quickfailing a GAN subjects you to personal attacks from the person who believes that you are unfairly targeting them and not giving them a fair shake. So when reviewers see something that should be failed out of the gate due to poor sourcing, copyright, or poor prose, they are less likely to take it and QF it, thus reducing the queue, and more likely to leave it so that the fail becomes somebody else's problem. I don't know the solution to this problem, but one is sorely needed. — GhostRiver14:21, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, and I think we're all prone to it. There's many a time where I've Seen Something -- a new page submission, an AfD, an ANI filing -- where a casual glance tells me that I'd have to spend at least a half hour researching it to be able to make a meaningful, thoughtful response ... and my wife'll be home from work in fifteen minutes, and I need to get dinner started, and I shrug and say screw it. Ravenswing 15:49, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In a perfect world, we would have the manpower to deal with any and all articles that make their way through GA review. Unfortunatly, that is not the case. WP:GA has already ruled out QPQ due to the can of worms that opens. Limiting how many noms one can submit (e.g. 2 per month) could, in theory help, but then we're throttling entire wikiprojects and would likely end up with too many reviewers. I can agree that 60 GAs in 60 days is peak Wikipedia:Editcountitis and we should have mechanisms to prevent such egregious examples. I think that GA and FA reviews need to be more strict about spotchecking/not assuming experienced editors are always going to get it right. Etriusus (Talk)14:25, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: He's been warned, so why not give him a chance to change? Sanctions aren't meant to be punitive, right? He's clearly a good-faith editor. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 11:08, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your question, in the section Checking some recent articles of Doug's above, Doug was given a chance to fix some of the issues before a recheck and there were still major issues afterwards. Additionally there has been a CCI investigation open since last year but the copyright and close paraphrasing issues have continued since then. Gusfriend (talk) 11:17, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And beyond that, take a look at his responses above. He just keeps on repeating "But I have so many GAs! I have so many DYKs!" This is not the reaction of someone who recognizes that he screwed up and resolves to do better. Ravenswing 15:53, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support As others say, a very painful situation to block a productive editor, but it seems that the chase-shiny mindset will not allow him to contribute in the form that he needs to. I completely reject the notion that a warning here would suffice, was that not exactly what the CCI case being opened against him was? An open CCI investigation was not enough, he continued to make more work, especially by having the copyvio-infested articles be GAs, and therefore inherently harder to work with. As firefly says, we must stem the flow of the copyvio. I would love to see Doug come back at some point, and become a productive editor once more, but only after clearly demonstrating he understands what he did wrong and the issues with his mindset. At this juncture, I think an indefinite block is necessary. IazygesConsermonorOpus meum12:06, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The editor's quite productive, doesn't seem to be running into civility issues, and is quite competent. The issue with copyrights seems to be the hangup (for good reason), but the more narrowly tailored action of removing his autopatrolled right would surely enable us to provide accountability for any future issues with copyright; this is something that New Page Patrollers do check for. The point of blocking someone is to prevent future disruption, and I don't see a CBAN that would be enforced as an indef block as being anywhere close to a narrowly tailored way to prevent future disruption and not to punish users for past actions. I do think Doug is here to build an encyclopedia and that a block at this point is not justified. The expectation should be painfully clear that any copyvio will not be tolerated going forward and may result in escalating blocks, but an indef for a long-term good-faith user who had a clean block log at the time this thread started is plainly excessive. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)14:27, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comrade, I invite you to read the first two days' worth of this thread. You will see firstly that Doug pole vaults right over CIVIL by casting aspersions, accusing editors bringing up issues with his conduct of being jealous of him, and opening this thread to bring him down. You will also see that Doug is not entirely competent, as demonstrated by the copyright violations even as he apparently understands image copyright, and poor quality submissions to GAN. All of this can and has been worked through before, but I am sad to say that those cases are the minority with Coldwell's submissions. Please, read this thread and review your opinions. –♠Vamí_IV†♠15:40, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vami IV: I read the first two day's worth of this thread before I made my comment. The only place that Doug seems to have had civility issues (as far as anyone has brought up and as far as I can tell) is this thread, where he's frankly acting defensively and is reflexively pointing to the boatload of quality content he has written. The comment about jealousy was bizarre and is not acceptable, but I do not believe that this reflects a long-run civility issue inasmuch as it reflects being flabbergasted at being taken to ANI.
The other thing that you bring up is sending bad submissions to GAN; a solution to this is to have reviewers simply decline their submissions if they fail the criteria. If this is so overwhelming that it causes problems at GAN, then the proposal by Etriusus in the section below should suffice. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)16:04, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The evidence above convinces me that Doug either can't or won't abide by our copyright rules, and either way that's unacceptable. It's a painful situation but I don't think anything short of this will be effective. To Red-tailed hawk's comment just above: he has an open CCI, and after this thread started, when asked to clean up some articles before I checked them again, he left in multiple problems. That's not the behaviour of someone who is willing and able to comply with our copyright policies, which means anything short of a block won't be effective at preventing future disruption. As for being here to build an encyclopedia, I agree he's not deliberately breaking the rules because he feels like it, but per other comments above it seems his motivation is collecting GA icons much more than building an encyclopedia. I don't know if WP:NOTHERE is quite fair; it's not that he's here to damage the encyclopedia. But he's not editing in a way that improves it and there's no evidence he will, or even can, in the future. And finally, to your point that he's productive; yes, he's produced a lot of article text, and no doubt there's a lot of copyvio-free text in his work. But the work required at CCI, which may well be extended to many hundreds more of his articles, far exceeds the work he's put in. The net effect of his work to date is negative as a result. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:37, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that CCI is incredibly time-intensive, but looking at the CCI itself, there have been 50 articles checked so far. Out of those 50, 49 have been marked as not containing copyright violations. In other words, 98% of the articles that have been checked in that CCI's contribution survey were found to not contain copyright violations. In light of this, no doubt there's a lot of copyvio-free text in his work seems like quite the understatement. I just can't get behind indeffing an editor who commits violations of copyright/close paraphrasing in such a small proportion of the articles they write, especially when they have a clean block log—a warning with escalating blocks for future copyvio seems much more narrowly tailored to prevent future disruption.
The only thing that's separating Coldwell from other editors who have similarly low rates of inserting copyright violations into their work is that Coldwell is a prolific content creator, so any CCI is going to take a LONG time. But frankly that doesn't seem like a terribly good reason to indef him to prevent future disruption; having NPPers review his new creations going forward seems like a much more appropriate step that addresses the issue of infrequent copyright issues. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)14:55, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Red-tailed hawk see User talk:Doug Coldwell#Spotchecking your recent GAs (and subsequently this attempt at editing down) and Talk:Conrad Hubert/GA1 for extremely recent examples. Just found another one actually, and I only looked at the first 2 sources. This isn't blatant as others, but it still does not give me confidence. I don't think this is infrequent. The CCI also only goes to 2010, as that is what the previous range was identified as; either DC recently started closely paraphrasing/adding text, or this has flew under our radar entirely, even when investigating the case as normal. Once I get the time, I'm going to properly go through DC's GAs and see if this is recent only or not. As for the 50 articles checked; CCI usually does not check longer articles until near the end of the CCI, especially when we are faced with diffwalls and/or 10k+byte additions, and that is where most of the problems lie. Sennecaster (Chat) 15:53, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Red-tailed hawk (edit conflict) Not commenting on the rest of your argument or this whole discussion - I haven't read it all yet - but, "Out of those 50, 49 have been marked as not containing copyright violations. In other words, 98% of the articles that have been checked in that CCI's contribution survey were found to not contain copyright violations" is a misconception of how CCI works, could you please strike it? You'll note that the majority of the reviewed edits are at the bottom of the page, which is where the smaller edits go when a CCI is filled out. Smaller edits tend to introduce smaller sentences and non-copyrightable material, so it's practice to remove them first. You'll note the larger edits, at the top of the CCI, have mostly remained untouched; as with the majority of CCIs, that is where the majority of violations will be. Looking at a few of those quickly, this edit has several sections copied from here, and Kitch-iti-kipi is still close to this source. I see close phrasing on Antimonial cup, Daniel Van Meter, and a few other ones. I'm sure I'd find more if I was able to have a more in depth search. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk)16:18, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I will go through a variety of the articles listed on that CCI today. If the proportion of copyvios in those works is significantly higher than what it appears to be based off my math above, I'll strike my comment. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)16:30, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Considering that the first two articles on that CCI that I could obtain all the sources for turned out to have copyright vio/close paraphrasing issues, I've struck my comments above in line with Moneytrees's comment. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)17:58, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I'm not usually one to get involved at ANI but I came across this discussion today by chance and having skimmed it so far it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Clearly Doug is one of Wikipedia's most prolific and productive content creators, including in a number of highly niche/historical areas, and an indef block should be only the very last resort after other methods have been tried and failed. It seems to me the issue stems from the GA/DYK WP:Hat collecting (which then leads to substandard articles being rammed through GA and quality control issues) so a prohibition from nominating articles for GA/DYK for 1 year seems like the logical first step. Maybe a block of 1 month (noting that before this Doug has had a clean block log for however many years) would send a message that something needs to change especially on the IDHT/copyvio issues but an indef block at this time is excessively heavy handed and inappropriate. Satellizer el Bridget(Talk)15:07, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose indef - I've seen nothing from Doug that I would ever consider bad faith. I'm taking the copyright stuff quite seriously, but I'd like to see other things tried before going straight to indef. Doug Coldwell, I'd be willing to look over a couple articles a month before they're taken to GA, on the condition that they aren't nominated until it can be established that they're reasonably close (no copyvios, appropriate image use, general GA basics). Doug, is that something you'd find acceptable? Hog FarmTalk15:47, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support, to prevent further introductions of copyright violations, with the understanding that an indef does not necessarily mean infinite. –♠Vamí_IV†♠15:54, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support with the understanding that indef doesn't necessarily mean indef. The time for change to copyrighted content was when the CCI was opened last year. There are blatant copyvios as recently as last month. There were specific attempts to get the editor to improve the copyright violations in recent GAs, with no effect. I understand the desire to not indef a prolific editor, but when the width and depth of their contributions are suddenly thrust onto the community to fix due to continued non-compliance with copyright policy, how prolific a contributor is becomes a detriment, not an asset. FrederalBacon (talk) 16:16, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
People are wanting to block Doug because of clear copyright violations, without any acknowledgement from Doug that he understands the issues and will fix them. I'd argue, if Doug were to spend the time reviewing and understanding the copyright policy, and were able to appeal his ban to the community with the explanation that he knows what he is doing isn't compliant with policy, then indef doesn't mean indef. FrederalBacon (talk) 16:37, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When an editor is indeffed for copyvio, if they legitimately appeal, they are asked to explain copyright policy in their own words. Usually they're unblocked after that unless other outstanding concerns exist. Temp blocks haven't worked historically in general for this issue. Sennecaster (Chat) 16:47, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I know Doug's been given a chance to recheck some of his articles and has not done it adequately. But that's under the stress of the moment, which is far from ideal. I say give him a bit of breathing space, with no more new articles or GAs etc for now, and let him try to address the problems under kinder conditions. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:20, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, not doing anything *is* not fixing it adequately! And yes, I know what happened - but it doesn't change the fact that it's all in a very stressful environment, which is not a good way to judge how he might respond in better circumstances. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:08, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well I guess that's where we differ. You give him the benefit of the doubt to improve because of his contributions. I don't, because someone with over 70,000 edits shouldn't need handholding to know they can't CTRL+C and CTRL+V material into an article. FrederalBacon (talk) 17:27, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You really don't need to lecture me on the obvious, you know. I can see we differ - I could tell that from the word "support" in what you wrote above. Anyway, I respect your opinion and I'm not trying to pick holes in it - so please return the favour and go badger someone else now, eh?Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:44, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry, it wasn't unkind: Words on the screen don't always reflect the meaning behind them, I don't blame anyone for a misinterpretation, and I wouldn't blame you for getting pissed if that had been my intent. FrederalBacon (talk) 17:56, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose in favor of an indefinite but appealable GA/DYK as I outline in my !vote in the next section. I'd like us to try something else before going to indef. Yes, Doug had serious communication issues, which required a block (good block btw). My experience with him in the last couple days leads me to believe the block worked, as I have not really had any communications issues with him while working through content issues. For example, see Talk:New York Central and Hudson River Railroad No. 999#Bunker as well as Doug's recent edits to that article. Yes, he mentions the GA thing, but only once, and despite that, he engaged promptly and civilly, and made edits to the article that addressed the issues raised. It was a totally normal interaction from my point of view, and that gives me hope that these problems are fixable (see also the "Speed test" section of the same talk page, and Talk:Charles Grafton Page#Source checking and Doug's recent edits to that article). Now, even if the communication has improved, there are still other issues outstanding: source selection and copyvio/plagiarism/too-close paraphrasing. That's why I support a more limited ban in the next section. I think we should give Doug a chance to fix it all. Now, if he ignores everything, and just goes on editing as before -- if there are any new copyvio issues, for example -- then I would support an indef block. I feel like right now we should be at the step right before indef, but not quite at indef yet. Levivich😃16:25, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as long as other options are on the table. To be clear, though, the subsection I started above no longer seems to apply. This thread is still painful to read, but for somewhat different reasons at this point. We're no longer primarily considering how to handle a productive contributor who has a rather checkered history of on-wiki communication and made some mistakes regarding information about himself, but rather an apparently widespread problem with the content. I'm nearly always going to support trying something else first, before jumping to an indef/cban, however. There are some other possibilities being floated which seem like they may be worth trying. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 17:58, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal : Ban from GAs/DYK nominations indef
This isn't mutually exclusive to other sanctions that may be levied against Doug. User:Satellizer brought up the idea of removing Doug's ability to nom GAs and DYK pages. Likewise, it has been discussed how much his WP:HIGHSCORE mentality has gummed up the GA backlog. Between removing autopatrolled rights and throttling back his GA noms, perhaps we can get enough oversight to correct his behavior. Added based on User:Levivich's comment: The ban will be indefinite but is appealable. The ban will go for a minimum of 1 year and until Doug has resolved the copyvio/plagiarism/etc. issues raised here at ANI. In addition, following the end of his ban, limiting his GA & DYK nominations to 3 of each per month until he has demonstrated a track record of quality nominations (we are not repeating 60 GAs in 60 days). There likely needs to be a village pump conversation about an overall max to the number of Good Articles one can nominate at a time, but that is a separate issue.Etriusus (Talk)15:36, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support, if only to provide some relief to GAN. My own experiences with Coldwell and many of the comments above make me wonder if this will have long term effect on Coldwell himself. I seriously doubt that this will encourage him to shape up, either, as he could just bulk up an article and then sit on it for long enough to get someone else to nominate it, or wait out the ban. –♠Vamí_IV†♠16:15, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support indefinite GA/DYK ban, appealable after problems are fixed - I like this idea but would prefer to tweak it slightly. The ban from GA/DYK noms should be indefinite rather than limited to any specific time period, and of course "indefinite" does not mean infinite. Doug should be able to request an unban, and in the request, should confirm that he has gone through all of his creations (yes, that's hundreds; yes, it will probably take a year) and fixed the problems raised here (including both copyvio/plagiarism and sourcing). Then editors can check and confirm and decide based on that whether to lift the ban. This would allow Doug to demonstrate to the community that he has made the necessary adjustments in response to community feedback. Levivich😃16:16, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. My concerns, elucidated above, are mostly targeted at the WP:HIGHSCORE approach that Doug takes to his GAs and DYKs, and by removing this aspect of the Wikipedia process, hopefully some other concerns will remedy themselves. Additionally, this will provide some relief for the CCI team as they work through his content, as well as GA reviewers who are burdened by the overflow of his submissions. — GhostRiver16:38, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
support This whole thing has been just frustrating to read. And its sad to see Doug take no ownership other than "Look how many things I've done." I think that Doug should be given a very short WP:ROPE and be given a chance to figure out how to correctly source and cite without copyright errors. If Doug can learn to craft GA quality articles without significant oversight, then I would love to see them appeal this, but I think some serious growth needs to happen, along with some ownership of the problem before nominations resume though. Nightenbelle (talk) 16:51, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that 82.23.69.143(talk·contribs·count) is a person called Dove Windsor who is submitting false edits about themselves. These include edits to Jenny Ryan asserting themselves as her partner (I cannot find any sources for this), and several dozen edits to Ed Annunziata claiming to be the co-creator of Ecco the Dolphin (not a subject I'm familiar with but I think this is clearly false).
In response to a revert I made to Jenny Ryan expressing scepticism that Dove Windsor existed, they posted on my talk page linking to an external wiki article about them which states that they are from Leicestershire. The IP address they are posting under is also in Leicestershire. This has led me to the conclusion that they are Dove Windsor. JackWilfred (talk) 21:31, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Adding to this, they also seem to be vandalizing the page of a star system, claiming to be from there and changing the name from TOI-1452 b to "Honorem", with the accompanying star being renamed from TOI-1452 to "Solaris". Diffs: [46][47][48]Lamaredia (Kasper D.L) (talk) 17:44, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Black Kite, here is a diff and here is the 1lib1ref info on Meta but it says the contest ends in June so thinking there is a separate contest somewhere. S0091 (talk) 22:11, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Right, I think I've fixed all the articles that Anyaegbumercy actually broke. The question is - are the citations that they're adding actually any good? Because if they aren't, they need to stop (or be stopped). And secondly, where can we find out if there is a separate contest somewhere? Black Kite (talk)22:28, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That #Aflibwk sub-campaign is organized by the team at AFLIA: https://web.aflia.net/aflibwk/ but local event organizers across Africa continue to encourage folks to continue editing well beyond the end of the campaign and they seem to be talking with the organizer -- who will probably connect with the AFLIA team about feedback they got on the training. There is sometimes light prizes for the big campaign, but since its after the prize period, its likely just a satellite event inspired by the theme. This happens a lot with campaigns: events can happen well after the international campaign has ended.
As an observation/opinion though (more based on my experience as enwiki editor, than in my professional capacity): @S0091-- there is really nothing wrong with someone adding extra citation needed statements and doing them with small edits -- its not exactly as clean as the most experienced English Wikimedians would prefer -- but it also a bit harsh to demand a newcomer stop doing something that is constructive (if a little repetitive). You have to remember, that for most of these folks -- its the first time they realize that Wikipedia is something they can edit, so are learning by doing. However, since most of the participants in #aflibwk are librarians: they are also good at learning through documentation and advice, its part of their professional training, so communicating with them onwiki is a good way of encouraging different actions.
I hope that is helpful context, and as always -- campaign activities are organized in a decentralized manner -- so its a learning process for many involved, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Astinson (WMF) thanks for the reply. The issue was the volume of tags being added to individual articles along with some other issues. For example, about 20 citation needed tag were added to a single article. At least for one editor, they had received complaints on their talk page so myself and other editors did try to communicate but were not getting responses. They finally responded yesterday and now we have very constructive ongoing conversation which is what I was aiming for and why my initial post here was not calling out any specific editor but simply trying to find a contact. I think everyone's goal is to improve Wikipedia and for everyone involved to have a positive experience which starts with communication. Thanks again. S0091 (talk) 17:38, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
User:Nightscream (a former administrator with a long record[50]) is still on a WP:POINTY roll (user history). If this was a legitimate cleanup campaign you would expect this user to participate in the cleanup they claim they want or let the Wikipedia process play out. But the users actions consist of continual WP:DE edit waring,[51][52][53][54][55][56] talk page WP:TEXTWALL/screeds/personal attacks[57][58], name calling (anyone with a contrary opinion is a "serial policy violator") [59][60][61], and modifying other editors talk to prove they were right/vindicated by admins
[62][63]. Several editors at reached a consensus at Talk:Radio (no sign of Nightscream with Nightscream chiming in once to point out how everybody else is wrong) and after a week of cleanup edits Nightscream came back without talk page comment and started reverting again[64][65][66]. Looks like a pattern of ramping up edit warring on the weekends when they know there is minimal administrative over-site. Its gotten to the point of WP:DAPE[67].
And it continues on, all other editors are "the violators", users of "shady tactics", to be ignored, and Nightscream has the blessing of admins re: "ANI already looked at my practices and ruled it "no violation""[68]. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 11:52, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the history of Radio, I see Nightscream removing large amounts of uncited material, and a number of editors - including yourself - simply putting it back without adding citations. WP:V is quite clear - "Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source." Meanwhile, there are claims that "talkpage consensus" overrides policy. No, it doesn't - sorry. So, why are you restoring huge swathes of uncited material? Black Kite (talk)13:12, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Referring to other named experienced users as "serial policy violator"s in edit summaries is incivil. Ironically, this has even happened in response to an edit summary that already linked WP:ESDONTS. Nightscream, is there something unclear about the civility policy or can you agree not to do this again? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:34, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)There appears to be some disagreement on this point even amongst administrators. This sort of behaviour has been brought here before and on previous occasions it is the material removers who have been blocked for being disruptive. The material in question is such that it is correct in what it says and can be found in almost any half decent book or encyclopaedia covering the subject (See WP:BLUE). I note that several of the editors in question are attempting to restore the material and cite it, but the position is being made difficult because Nightscream immediately deletes it again before the references can be added.
Nightscream regularly makes personal attacks on anyone who disagrees with him and will misrepresent complaints to bolster his position. As stated above, he claimed to have been taken to this board where his actions were vindicated (this is the first report AFAIK). This was patently false. He had been taken to WP:ANEW for edit warring where the result was no violation, which was only because he had not made more than three reverts (at the time of the report). 86.181.0.154 (talk) 13:36, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You'll need to provide specific examples for supporting the "regularly" (and, strictly speaking, a huge amount of examples for the "anyone") in the second paragraph. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:38, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
if it can easily be sourced to any reference book on the topic. add that book as a source before readding the content. Don't just restore with the lack of citation and then say you are working on sources, that's not the way it works on WP Masem (t) 13:39, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There are general references on the page that support material that was been removed. I agree that inline citations are best and required for quotes or content likely to be challenged, per WP:IC, but at least some of the material removed is practically WP:BLUE and not a matter of WP:OR. The existing citation needed tags were more helpful in flagging content concerns than the mass removal of content. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 15:06, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
if the general refs supported that, it would be trivial to add a named ref to fix it, but that does remain the onus of those wanting to retain the info particularly after it been flagged for some time. thats just being lazy to not fix. Masem (t) 15:16, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Which is part of the process that was happening when the latest wave of mass removal happened and something that the mass removal makes more difficult to fix. If there weren't active efforts going to address the issues, the claim of laziness might be valid, but there were editors working methodically to improve the sourcing when the latest wave of mass removal happened. That's not constructive. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:01, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot summon up much sympathy when those uncited paragraphs could easily be added back one at a time with a suitable citation, instead of a bunch of people blindly reverting them back and then not doing anything about the problem. This is not a difficult problem to solve - indeed, some users like LuckyLouie appear to be attempting to fix the issues by adding citations. Others seeingly can't be bothered to do anything but revert the uncited material back in, which is achieving nothing.Black Kite (talk)13:47, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There is no deadline on this stuff and there were, at last count, three editors working on it. If you read the talk page we were all stepping on each others toes so I for one held back so other editors could finish their edits. Talk page consensus was to edit the live article to make cleanup way simpler, but then Nightscream's disruption started up again. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 14:16, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Again - consensus does not trump policy. WP:V is quite clear - don't add stuff back in without citations. If you can't be bothered to add the citations, don't add the material. This is basic Wikipedia 101 stuff. If there really were three editors "working" on those cn tags they would have been fixed in less than an hour. They've been there for months. Black Kite (talk)16:54, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please have a look at the talk page discussions (e.g. Talk:Radio#Sourcing_by_section, Talk:Phonograph_record#Uncited_material_in_need_of_citations) before making your less that an hour assessment of the situation. No matter how small the task is, it is made unnecessarily difficult by all the disruptive editing going on. If Nightscream's editing pattern is approved and widely applied, it would be an abrupt shift from WP:NODEADLINES to WP:NOW. We're likely going to achieve reduced engagement of some formerly productive editors. I have enough deadlines in the rest of my life and WP:NODEADLINES here is very attractive to me. If our work is unwelcome because we don't choose to spend significant pieces of our WP:VOLUNTEER time dragging out and formatting basic citations for uncontroversial material, please continue to support this editing pattern and we will leave you alone. ~Kvng (talk) 17:31, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you haven't got time to add citations to uncontroversial material, I'm sure there will be someone else who has. I'm not particularly "approving" Nightscream's editing pattern, but I'm somewhat bemused that an article with large amounts of uncited material that could easily be cited is still uncited. Some people seem to have spent more time arguing with Nightscream that actually fixing the problems which would mean Nightscream no longer has anything to complain about. Black Kite (talk)17:35, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In NODEADLINES I just can't find anything that suggest it's fine to reinstate large amounts of uncited material and just wait for the citations to be inserted later. This VOLUNTEER argument doesn't hold water: if our time is limited because we're volunteers but we can edit war over uncited material, have huge talk page discussions, and start ANI threads, then certainly we could have found the time to verify one section at a time and then reinstate it. If any of those sections had been reinserted with proper citations, we wouldn't be here, and Nightscream likely wouldn't have reverted. Drmies (talk) 17:39, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The the editing pattern is to apply {{cn}} tags liberally throughout an article, wait a month and then remove everything that has not been addressed. It's one month deadline.
The WP:VOLUNTEER issue is not about how much time you have, it's about choosing what you want to spend your time on. However, this is a colaborative project so if you just want to work on articles but are not interested in engaging with other editors, you probably won't last long. So back-and-forth editing and talk page discussions are necessary.
No, I don't want to spend my time bickering with other editors so the perfectionists will likely get their way here and the rest of us will need to decide whether we're comfortable working in an environment where uncontroversial material can be summarily deleted before anyone has a chance to fix it. Do I want to try to build a house in an environment where others believe the objective is to WP:DEMOLISH it? Not a new question, obviously, but this editing pattern definitely puts it in my face in a bigger way than deleting articles at the margins does. ~Kvng (talk) 14:45, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"The the editing pattern is to apply {{cn}} tags liberally throughout an article, wait a month and then remove everything that has not been addressed. It's one month deadline."
That seems to have been something he proposed in the more recent discussion. It's not policy, no, but it's within reason IMO.
We have, as I have said in another discussion of this issue, declined over the years to establish any rule regarding the presence of uncited material in an article, other than that it can always be challenged and may be subject to removal and that BLP-violating material should be removed if no sources can be found, in recognition of the fact that there are many different types of information and many different types of articles and thus it's probably better to let the editors working on those pages decide. Obviously this isn't working here. Daniel Case (talk) 19:18, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Kvng: "AFAIK it is something Nightscream came up with."
OK, thanks for linking to that original discussion. From here it looks like you took the pieces of JW advice that supports your campaign but ignored big chunks of it (strike a balance, don't make it a campaign, work with local editors, not every single thing needs a source, don't be a jerk). I think I did a reasonable job of answering @Daniel Case's question though. ~Kvng (talk) 03:23, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The issue here is not whether any one particular article might benefit from having more citations. Of course a great many articles would benefit.
Rather, the issue is Nightscream's behavior: the unwarranted fact-tagging activity taken up by Nightscream in the course of otherwise useful article improvements. For instance, at the radio article, Nightscream performed a series of edits in July, adding some good references and supported text, but also adding fact tags to the most basic stuff. Nightscream added a fact tag to the uncontroversial sentence "An omnidirectional antenna transmits or receives radio waves in all directions, while a directional antenna or high-gain antenna transmits radio waves in a beam in a particular direction, or receives waves from only one direction." Nobody at all questions whether this is true. The lowest level radio technician will know this.
Um, well, actually, a directional antenna has higher gain in some directions more than in others, but not necessarily in "a particular direction" or "only one direction" (as you of all people, I should think, would know). EEng23:48, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Nobody at all questions whether this is true. The lowest level radio technician will know this." See WP:NOTBLUE.
The issue is not whether anyone is questioning this. It is that policy from the highest levels on down has long been explicit and clear that sources need to be cited. (And by the way, most of humanity are not radio technicians). If that is so clear and uncontroversial then the Internet or any library should be overflowing with sources that could readily be cited.
In an age when a whole bunch of people can get together on the Internet to reinforce each other's convictions that the Earth is flat or that (closer to this topic) 5G signals can cause a global pandemic Wikipedians should be treating the sourcing requirement as if it were nothing less than brought down from the top of Mount Sinai, newly inscribed on stone tablets by the fiery hand of God. Daniel Case (talk) 19:14, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, it means in all directions perpendicular to the to the attena have the same radiation. They then get progressively worse until they are useless at high and low angle elevations. Sure that means the "cover" a lot of directions but certainly not all. I can't help but feel this is a good example of why we should use sources.AlmostFrancis (talk) 15:13, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The word "omnidirectional" still means "in all directions". Antenna engineers have chosen to (mis)use this word because the vast majority of applications are terrestrial, where the only directions that matter are sideways. They are using the word with its two-dimensional meaning in a two-dimensional context. The sentence that got tagged would not have been helped by a source, because viewed in three-dimensions, it is actually wrong. It could have been sourced, using any source that assumes a 2d context. We must, I think, be a bit cautious about how pedantically we write. Factual writing is a balancing act between not misleading those readers who can't supply the context, and not confusing those who automatically do, but who will lose track of what the article is trying to say if it is side-tracked into a long explanation of a concept that doesn't fit into their context. Elemimele (talk) 17:25, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be mistaking etymology for definition, which doesn't change the fact that saying a onmidirectioal anttena radiates in all directions is wrong, that would be isotropic (assuming they ever invent one). If you don't believe me take a gander at the sourced definition at our article on omnidirectionl antenna. And again this shows why we need acutal sourcing, to defend the misdefinition you are inventing a source that would for some reason discuss a three dimension torus in a two dimentional context.AlmostFrancis (talk) 19:36, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Unhelpful tangent
I think it should be allowed to call those who persistently violate policies "serial policy violators." People here called me worse things and none of them were warned or blocked. The only mistake I can see here is to write a complaint for such petty issues.
I mean you should be banned from editing as a disruptive SPA whose main contributions are to downplay the Armenian genocide, argue that gamergate wasn't a harassment campaign and argue that our articles on the war in Ukraine were biased against Russia. You don't belong here and your presence is, or ought to be, unwelcome. Protonk (talk) 21:45, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nightstream continues his behavior recently removing large amounts of "unsourced" material from Magnetic-tape data storage. WP:V is actually not so clear - "Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source." I added emphasis to "may be removed" because WP:UNSOURCED clearly states that when removing material one should "state your concern that it may not be possible to find a published reliable source, and the material therefore may not be verifiable." Nightstream failed to make such a statement and as far as I can tell has no particular subject area expertise by which to raise such a concern. So far Nighstream has failed to respond to my request that he state his concerns. I suggest that WP:UNSOURCED be revised to require editors to state "your concern in detail" and that time is not sufficient reason to remove material. I would appreciate consensus here that I can restore the material to Magnetic-tape_data_storage. Tom94022 (talk) 19:50, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Addin sources one at a time to a part of an existing article is one thing. Figuring out how reinsert a sourced part back into the article unnecessarily adds to the work. Tom94022 (talk) 05:44, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's why you could take the entire unsourced portion out and work on it on the talk page, in draftspace, whatever.
Comment Let's be clear about this - Radio is a disgrace. It's an important article, and yet the vast majority of the article simply spews "facts" without a single source (they almost certainly are all facts, but who could be sure without citations?). Yet when an editor says "hang on, this article hasn't got any sources for large amounts of its content" the response isn't "we must source this" but instead "how dare you point this problem out". It's nonsensical. An admin might block Nightscream for persistent incivility, but they aren't ever going to block them for pointing out that an article is not only sub-standard, but has been for some significant time. Black Kite (talk)22:16, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
IMHO, the right way to go about improving an article like radio is to start excising the material that is obvious original research and probably came out of someone's brain, while having access to technical manuals and out of print engineering library books so that the good material can be verified, in a kind of WP:BEFORE. Understandably people are upset when statements like "An omnidirectional antenna transmits or receives radio waves in all directions, while a directional antenna or high-gain antenna transmits radio waves in a beam in a particular direction, or receives waves from only one direction.," are removed instead of verified. It is easily sourced[73]. I think it's legitimate that some users are miffed at the level of excisement of old material from articles that the remover isn't going through any effort to verify. These articles do have huge problems and Nightscream is trying to improve them. However, they should try to find references for what seem to be facts first, and he's going a little too wholesale, and being too defensive and snippy when people start to react to the removals. For example, they removed the statement, "Most tape drives now include some kind of lossless data compression." That seems like an easy statement to verify and add references to. The exercise is left to the reader, but unless there's a copyvio, the job of major rewrites and surgery should be done by someone familiar with the topic area and able to give love to the topic. Andre🚐22:31, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think the issue with that is editors familiar with the topic don't necessarily understand what needs to have a reference, as the details appear so obvious to them. Someone with less knowledge is need to point out that it does need referencing. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 13:17, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The source you linked to does not verify "An omnidirectional antenna transmits or receives radio waves in all directions". The source says While the prefix omni—implies that the antenna is able to receive signals from any direction, technically omnidirectional antennas are usually only omnidirectional in a single plane. For example, depending on its orientation, an omnidirectional antenna may detect signals to the North, South, East, and West, but not above or below.Levivich15:52, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The quoted text you quoted verifies that an omnidirectional antenna is able to receive in all directions. The part about a single plane could be added to clarify that omnidirectional may be scoped or limited, not truly every possible direction. The source also includes the text, An isotropic antenna (also known as an omnidirectional antenna) emits the signal uniformly in all directions. In other words, at distance d from the antenna, in any direction, the transmitted signal power is the same. Although building a truly omnidirectional antenna is not feasible, this ideal antenna is frequently used to simplify range estimation analysis as well as provide a reference point in comparing different types of antennas. which supports the transmission part. There are 2 additional sources for the statement now in the article, as well: [74][75]Andre🚐16:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Most tape drives now include some kind of lossless data compression." is exactly my point there is no concern that this can be verified and it is a violation of WP:UNSOURCED to remove it. Tom94022 (talk) 05:44, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:V is not a negotiable or otherwise optional policy. It is a requirement to source material appropriately. Reverting back in material while refusing to source it in line with WP:V is both disruptive and a deliberate attempt to undermine our core policies. Repeated reverting of unsourced material should lead to an indefinite block until the editor commits to abiding by WP:V. This discussion should have been closed immediately with an instruction and a warning to follow our sourcing requirements. Most of the above text is merely mud slinging that has no backing by our core content policy. Either source material when you return it to the article or don't source it and don't return it until you can. There are not any other options. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:50, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually that's baloney. "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." WP:BURDEN also takes into account that other editors may have objections. When you get to that point its normal to work it out on the talk page. Talk page/editorial consensus was reached via policy, sources, common sense, and suggest alternative solutions. It should also be noted that Nightscream never fulfilled the further step "it is advisable to clearly communicate that you have a considered reason to believe the material in question cannot be verified." Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 15:28, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. I had been waiting a day or so on how to compose my response here, but I see now that much of the links I would have supplied to past discussions, including those at ANEW, have already been presented here, along with some of the arguments I would have presented for why most material on Wikipedia needs to be supported by citations. Citations allow the reader to know where the information comes from.
To provide some background, my practice of fact-tagged articles with large amounts of uncited material, and then moving that material to the talk page after a month if no one intervened is derived from a 2009 discussion on Jimbo Wales' talk page, where this was suggested as a compromise between outright deletion and leaving such material in the article indefinitely. I accepted this suggestion. No one has any had any problem with this until now.
I attempted to engage the individuals who opposed this in recent discussions on a number of talk pages, and every time I provided counterarguments that I felt falsified their statements, or even asked them point-blank questions about things they had said, they refused to respond directly, choosing instead indirect rhetoric, ad hominem distortions of my viewpoint, etc. For example, at User talk:86.181.0.154, that editor twice spoke derisively of editors like me who “quote all manner of policies” for removing uncited material. When I asked how their citations of those policies was wrong, he did not respond. He also claimed that two other editors were blocked for removing uncited material from the Alternator article, which he says remains uncited in the article. I asked him these editors made a practice of moving material to the talk page, or if they were blocked for things other than this, like edit warring, and asked for diffs showing who these peopel were. Silence.
Binkerstreet claims "Only disputed facts must be verified with a citation." WP:BURDEN says otherwise.
I criticized these editors for their pattern of refusing to respond to my counterarguments in a post on the Radio tap that summarized these instances, and included more of my rebuttals. Much like this post, it was longer than my typical ones, as there was too much ground to cover with a more succinct one, but 86.181.0.154 replied "TLDR", and later elaborated "And I still haven't read the wall o' text and have no intention of doing so." Kvng replied "Please try again", even though he had never responded to any of my other rebuttals that were much shorter. It is for this reason that I gave up on that discussion, for the most part.
Information cannot come from the personal knowledge of the editor. That's original research, and is strictly prohibited. Saying "it's known to any topic expert" or "found in any textbook" is not acceptable. How do I know that it's known to experts or found in textbooks? I don't. I don't know who any of the editors on this page are, any more than you know who I am. That's why we include the sources from which material is derived, and not our personal knowledge, as in the case of Chetvorno, to name one example, who admitted that he wrote most of the radio article without sources. I politely asked him on Aug 23 why, because I wanted to understand his view on this matter. He refused to answer that question.
I'm an "topic expert" on my hometown. But if you look at that article, you find that everything in it is supported by a citation. Ditto for the newest high school in town, which opened in 2009. That's how I single-handedly got that article to Good Article status. Ditto for the Saga article, which I also single-handdled got to GA status. And the Miles Morales article. Compare this to the work of people like Chetvorno and his allies here. Do you honestly think that his stated practices make for a better article, and a better encyclopedia?
86.181.0.154 stated above "that several of the editors in question are attempting to restore the material and cite it, but the position is being made difficult because Nightscream immediately deletes it again before the references can be added." This is a lie.
In the first place, the individuals in question here did blanket reverts of my talk page moves, restoring not only material to which they had (thankfully) added citations, but also the rest of the material as well, which remained uncited, as seen here. What does 86 mean here by "before"? If they were planning on adding citations to it, then why not restore that material once they have those cites? Why restore it without them? Remember, a diff is included on the talk page showing where each uncited passage was before I moved it, so one can restore passages on by one when citations are added to them. And if they want to do it all at once, why not work on the Sandbox?
Second on this point, the individuals in question also did knee-jerk blanket reverts of all articles on which I performed talk page moves, which zero indication that they intended to add citations to all that information, including:
Two-way radio, Magnetic storage, Microcassette, UNIVAC I, LP record, RCA Red Seal Records. Those reverts were done five days ago. No sources have been added to them, nor have any of those editors endeavored to compromise by telling me they intend to.
86.181.0.154 claimed that the uncited info in radio "has pretty well all existed in the article for many years. It therefore has a de facto consensus for its inclusion even from many respected editors in the field." Daniel Case debunked this notion fairly well here. Editors like me remove newly-added uncited passages to articles all the time. Are you saying that this is wrong, unless these claims are disputed, or unless they go undetected for some unspecified length of time? Or is it believed that removing newly-added single passages is okay, but removing entire sections of uncited material that make up the bulk of an article, which in some cases have been uncited for as many as 14 years, is wrong? How does it make rational sense to say that adding a single one is bad, but entire sections is okay?
To pose a question that no one would respond to on the radio tp: On the Isaac Hempstead Wright article, I had to remove uncited additions of that actor's date of birth several times ([76][77][78][79][80][81]). Are you going to argue that those editors constituted a "consensus", and that I was edit warring because there were more of them than I? Because his dob is not "disputed"? If no one caught it, does that mean I'm wrong to remove it?
If those who close discussion like these believe that my talk page moves and reverts consitute edit warring, then say so, and I'll stop. Right now, that doesn't appear to be the case, with only ones screaming "consensus" are those favoring adding uncited material to articles. Genuine discussion must be predicated on interpretation of policy. A handful of editors on one talk page who decide that they can just ignore what WP policy says, and who go silent when you falsify their arguments isn't that. If a consensus discussion is needed for the wider community, then let's have one. If a compromise is needed, then let's work one out: Should I wait two months before moving material instead of one? When restoring material, should only the cited material be restored? If editors truly intend to add citations, should they not make a good faith resolution to do so, and state this to others? I'm open to ideas, but the lack of straightfowardness among the Uncited Brigade here does not give one cause for hope. If we do not resolve the question of whether my reverts are genuinely a violation of policy/guidelines, then I do not intend to stop upholding policy, as it is plainly stated.
WP:CONSENSUS says that WP:V > something Jimbo said in 2009 because V has consensus and Jimbo's comment is just the opinion of one person. "...some things are simply common knowledge to the point that demanding a source (or else removing it) is just WP:POINT" is pretty much the opposite of the consensus view. It is not just "desirable" to source everything, it's required. Levivich15:49, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think anyone is saying sourcing isn't required by WP:V. The concern is whether or not mass removal of content that is supported by general sources but not inline sources 1) improves the article and 2) makes it more likely for editors to add inline sources. The consensus I saw on Talk:Radio is not that all of the removed material was fine as is, but that editors were better able to add sources without having to navigate the mainspace, the talk page, and edit diffs to figure out what was needed. If Nightscream's mass removal serves to set a fire under editors to improve the article, and I'd note that there have been efforts to add in sources since this mess began, then it seems to have worked. However, insisting upon a single path to improvement that creates additional burden when we're talking about uncontroversial material that's supported by the page's general sources but still needs inline sourcing added feels very BITEY and POINTY and overall not productive. If the removal reversion was followed by no action, I might feel differently, but that's not the case here. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:09, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
People indeed seem to be saying that sourcing isn't required by WP:V (example: "Only disputed facts must be verified with a citation."), and they're reinstating unsourced material. Even here, you've said, "editors were better able to add sources without having to navigate the mainspace, the talk page, and edit diffs to figure out what was needed". The suggestion that we should leave unsourced content in an article because it makes it easier for editors to source is anathema to me. Who cares about the editors? This is about the readers. I'm with the other editors here who are saying this is very, very simple: if someone removes something as unsourced, nobody should put it back without a source, period, end of discussion. If that makes it harder for editors, that's just too damn bad. We don't leave unsourced material in an article for the benefit of editors. Levivich16:16, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Lacking inline sources but still supported by general sources isn't the same in my mind as unsourced. What I'm hearing in these comments is that only inline sources are acceptable. If we were talking about BLP violations or fictional/obviously incorrect content that would be one thing, but it's not the case here. Yes, I think readers are better served by having material that's supported by general references remain in the article while editors are going about fixing it. That's not an unusual position and one reason citation needed tags exist. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:28, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:BURDEN specifically says inline citation, and that's global consensus (and has been for a long time, at least the four years I've been here). General references are fine until someone removes uncited content, at which point it should not be restored without an inline citation. Levivich16:32, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Inline references are preferred for sure, but when we used to create articles back in 2005 or whenever, it was pretty acceptable to create an article for a major topic like radio with a few general references. Over time the articles became unwieldy thus necessitating cleanup and inline references. I think just all of the mass removal makes it hard to respond to challenges. Challenging unsourced material is fine, but if someone says they can source all or most of the material, it's also proper to engage in that dialogue versus a mass removal. Andre🚐16:32, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:BURDEN also specifically says 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. and When tagging or removing material for lacking an inline citation, please state your concern that it may not be possible to find a published reliable source, and the material therefore may not be verifiable. Mass removal with the blanket declaration WP:OR doesn't seem to satisfy either of those considerations. Again, I agree that inline sources are best and that editors should be working to provide them, but it's clear to me that the mass removal doesn't improve an article. Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:44, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agree to disagree on the first point, especially since the existence of general sources for uncontroversial material (even though inline sources would be better) fails to establish a WP:OR issue. To the second point about long-standing CN tags, I agree that a CN tag that's been sitting for a few years is a problem; I see fewer problems with one that's a month old. However, as I stated before, NS's initial removal set a fire to start work on the improving Radio. That seems like a win to me and something that benefits readers. The insistence on making those improvements only from the talk page and piecemeal reinsertion is POINTY and not helpful to readers or editors. Even if NS's mass removals meet the letter of policy compliance, they do not serve the goal of building a better encyclopedia. Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 17:11, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In my view, adding uncited content to an article makes it worse; moving uncited content to the talk page makes it better. Sourcing the uncited material would be best, but sourcing what you can and moving the rest to the talk page is building a better encyclopedia. Returning uncited material to mainspace is not building an encyclopedia at all, it's reckless and risks misinforming our readers. What's most important, above all else, is that everything is well-sourced. Levivich18:03, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Tcr25: They can indeed serve that goal, if they spur others to add sources to that material, which they have. It accomplished this on the Western Electric article. It accomplished this on the History of McDonald's article. And it accomplished this in the Radio article (the uncited info that was restored along with the cited info notwithstanding).
Possibly the most successful example of this is on the List of suicides article. It was filled with uncited entries, and during the 2009 discussion on the matter, it was argued that it was sufficient that they were cited in the parent articles of those notable people. Putting aside the fact that one WP article cannot serve as a cited for info in another, and each article containing a given piece of info needs to have the citation, I did a deep dive into those entries under subheading "A", and guess what I found? Quite a number of them lacked cites. So after the uncited entries were moved, little by little, we moved them back, along with new entries, and now that article is one of the best-cited list-type articles on Wikipedia.
If your goal was to set a fire behind editors to fix it. Then congratulations, your first removal did that. That you insisted upon continuing to remove content after the reversion, which was done so that edits could be made to address the concerns is where you crossed the POINTY line. It also pushed the editor working most methodically on the issue to stop working on it. If it was just reverted and left alone, you'd have a stronger argument, but that wasn't the case at least for Radio.
Beyond that context matters. Radio was created 19 years ago and has been edited over 6,000 times since then. During that time, standards for referencing and verification have evolved and changed. While inline sources may be the gold standard now, general resources have a long history of use and acceptability. Particularly on a long-time article, something that may appear unsourced has simply not been updated to current standards. Should it be improved. Of course. But WP:BURDEN does require some discretion on the part of an editor to consider the likelihood that sources may exist before removal. With an article like this, there are a lot of ways to address the issue if you don't have time to try to find a source yourself. Beyond CN tags, raising the question on the talk page or asking in a relevant WikiProject may help. (I only found out about this dispute because the bulk removal was brought to the attention of WikiProject Radio.) Unless something is clearly false or a BLP violation, asking and trying to solve the problem, rather than excising material that may well have met sourcing standards when it was added, is more productive and is more likely to get the content sourced instead of leaving choppy text or partial information in the main article. If this were all new material added in the past month, my opinion would be different, but that's not the case.
You said below that you don't think its fair to expect you to attempt to find sources for everything before you remove it. I'd agree that you're not obligated to find sources, but you should make an effort to determine if something may well be verifiable before going straight to removal and consider looking for less aggressive ways to call on others to help address the issue. Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 19:23, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Two additional points, one of which is something I missed above, and the other, an addendum;
@ToBeFree: I apologize for the personal comments in my edit summaries, and will not continue to do this.
Second, I have resolved not to do any uncited info tp moves or revert any of the others' reverts until this discussion reaches a resolution or closure.
However, User:Kvng just reverted one of the articles, and even referenced the fact that the matter is under active discussion here, but did this anyway, arguing, "Let's not involve more articles until we have a resolution," apparently not cluing into the fact that reverting that article does not mean that that article is "not involved" in this discussion. Makes of that what you will. Nightscream (talk) 16:25, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Andrevan: "However, they should try to find references for what seem to be facts first…"
I do. On radio, for example, after doing an uncited info/tp move, I added two citations to an uncited passage. On cassette tape, after my tp move, I replaced an uncited paragraph with a larger version w/ 4 cites of three sources. On the phonograph article, I expanded a section with material supported by 19 cites of 12 sources.
But I cannot be expected to do this will all the uncited info found in all articles. This would not be feasible, fair, nor reasonble. It is far more reasonable for each person who adds (or wishes to retain) information to be responsible for citing it. This is far more fair and far more reasonble a distribution of labor, which will make articles more verifiable. It's also in keeping with WP:BURDEN, which says, "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."
Nightscream is admittedly not expert in tape drives or lossless data compression; by analogy then, any fact about which any reader is ignorant requires a citation. I don't think this is Wikipedia's policy. As it turns out the passage is true and readily verifiable, but do we want to source every fact? I again suggest that in keeping with WP:BURDEN any editor who wishes to remove unsourced material must first state a detailed concern on the talk page as to why the material may not be verifiable. I would further suggest expanding WP:BURDEN to state that bulk removals are not permitted and stale unsourced dates are not a valid concern for removal. Tom94022 (talk) 19:32, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see a cart in front of a horse there. Nightscream does not need to be an expert to challenge statements. Which policy is that alleged requirement from? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:37, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"by analogy then, any fact about which any reader is ignorant requires a citation. I don't think this is Wikipedia's policy. As it turns out the passage is true and readily verifiable, but do we want to source every fact?"
Once again I am astounded by these arguments that sound like they are made by people broadcasting on Radio Free 2007. Yes, "any fact about which any reader is ignorant requires a citation". Almost, anyway ... see NOTBLUE: "A cite to a reliable source reassures people, even when the statement appears obvious. ... Be aware of the individual and unique nature of each of our readers." And further down: "When a statement that you feel to be obvious is challenged, try to think of a person (such as a person in a foreign country) to whom the statement might not be obvious, or a situation in which your obvious statement might be wrong." As I have noted before, I read CITE as requiring citations except where we have made explicit exceptions, like plot summaries (and that is too much for some people) and the "see also" section (again I have encountered editors who question that).
So it is policy and yes, we want to source every fact that we can except in the instances where we have agreed we don't have to. Nothing complicated about this. Daniel Case (talk) 20:38, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That isn't complicated, but I think skips over one of the main issues here. The Radio TP and page history show that several editors were willing to address the concerns about inline sources and that that work had been done. There was also a consensus that addressing the concerns could best be handled in the mainspace and not with a piecemeal approach. That work was being done when the second wave of removal began at which point this whole process devolved. My main reason for engaging here is that I believe the wholesale removal of content lacking inline sources when general sources are present and there's no reasonable expectation that the information is false or violating BLP is not appropriate. If the material were removed with specific objections or questions, maybe it would be a different call, but I wouldn't want to see this ANI leaving anyone the impression that the best approach is mass removal of material based upon a generalized objection and insistence upon a single approach to fixing the concerns when editors are willing to being the process of improvement. Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 21:43, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
At the same time, your account elides the fact that much of this material had lain uncited in the article not for weeks, not for months, but years. And not in an article about some lengthy rebellion in 14th-century Central Asia. In an article about what no one can deny is a core subject. For editors who have been working on the article to say they need yet more time to find sources for material they then insist is such common knowledge in the field as to perhaps not even need to be sourced is, at best, disingenuous.
If it were a new article, an article about the aforementioned hypothetical obscure historical event, perhaps we could be indulgent. But there's not much room for excuse here. Daniel Case (talk) 21:52, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Tcr25: "The Radio TP and page history show that several editors were willing to address the concerns about inline sources and that that work had been done."
And if they reached out to me to work out a compromise, and said something to me along the lines of "Okay, look, we'll source all of it, just give us time," then I would have agreed to this, and backed off tp give them some time to complete the endeavor. But they didn't. They made a practice -- and this is all of them -- of refusing to respond directly to my arguments, choosing instead the Indirect Approach, which consisted of rhetorical statements, Straw Man arguments, repeated moving of the goal posts, etc. The fact that they also reverted all the other articles that they did without any indication that they were planning on working on sourcing them (Two-way radio, Magnetic storage, Microcassette, UNIVAC I, LP record, RCA Red Seal Records) also makes it harder to argue that they were interested in a good faith compromise that involved sourcing all that.
And as far as your "second wave" remark, I only reverted the uncited passages that they restored, which does not prevent them continuing to restore cited information.
I get the response to your initial effort wasn't very kind or inclusive, but your responses to it were also very defensive. Footnote #5 at WP:BURDEN seems relevant. Did things spiral out of control, yes, and there was uncivil behavior on both sides. But that's not the point going forward. The actions that happened after the initial revert (maybe it was after the second one ... the changes happened fairly quickly in sequence) was that work began on improvement. Maybe there should have been more engagement with you on how to go about it, and maybe you should have acknowledged those efforts and asked what the intentions were, but the point remains it was happening. You saw that work was going on because you didn't revert some bits that had been fixed, but the need to preserve the mass removal seemed more important than engaging on ways to fix it. I'll give you credit for lighting a fire to address the old CN tags, but people began working on putting the fire ou and you threw more fuel on to it (and the back and forth over reversion overran any discussion of improving things). I'll state it clearly: I think the mass removal of content lacking inline sources from an article, when it can reasonably be assumed to be validated through the general sources and is not violating BLP, does more harm than good. CN and similar tags should be added in a reasonable manner to call attention to the deficiencies or material (from a single section) can be removed with clear articulation of the concerns under WP:BURDEN. It those tags are aging, seeking out editors or WikiProjects that might address them would be advisable. But wholesale removal based on a generalized concern of multiple, unconnected sections is not a helpful practice. Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 22:41, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"...maybe you should have acknowledged those efforts and asked what the intentions were..."
They don't answer my questions. I've pointed this out repeatedly here and elsewhere, and you can see this in the discussions on my tp, the radio tp, Jimbo's tp, etc.
"...but the need to preserve the mass removal seemed more important than engaging on ways to fix it."
How exactly was I "preserving the mass removal" if I only reverted the uncited portions?
Again, if they had told me what their intentions were, then I could've backed off and given them time to find sources for those uncited sections. But no indication was given by them that they would, and other indications were given that they would not: Namely, the blanket reverts of my tp moves on other articles, which I listed and linked above.
"...the mass removal of content lacking inline sources from an article, when it can reasonably be assumed to be validated through the general sources..."
How do you know that this can reasonably assumed? How did you form this conclusion?
This sounds like a variation of the labels "probably good", "potentially good", and "possibly correct" that the anti-citation editors here have used to refer to the material in question. On my talk page, where Johnuniq repeatedly used these phrases, I asked him at least three times how one determines if material is "probably good" and "potentially good", and he persistently refused to answer. I asked him again on Jimbo Wales' talk page, and got the same sound of crickets.
"But wholesale removal based on a generalized concern of multiple, unconnected sections is not a helpful practice."
Moving long-fact-tagged material to the talk page is indeed helpful, and the fact that it spurred editors on the articles I've described here illustrates this. Do you believe that the citations that have been added to the List of suicides article have not been helpful? Do you dispute that my fighting to get that article to its current state was what did this? Nightscream (talk) 14:20, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"They don't answer my questions." To be fair, most of the questions I see from you on Talk:Radio are argumentative and included alongside accusations of policy violation — "Which editors are these? Who has "reviewed"? Where? When? Can you link me to these "reviews"? ... Do you dispute this? Yes or no?" — which is something that doesn't come across as an invitation to discuss.
"...if they had told me what their intentions were, then I could've backed off ..." You responded to comments on August 18 where sourcing was discussed and on August 19 Chetvorno said he specifically: "I'll work on sourcing it, but it's going to be a while."
How exactly was I "preserving the mass removal" if I only reverted the uncited portions? You scaled back the amount removed after all of it was reverted and some of it was improved. It should have been clear to you from the work being done (as well as the talk page comments, even if they weren't addressed to you) that the reverted material was being addressed. You still insisted on putting things back on the talk page. The idea that you were right in what you had done seemed to be more important to you than the decision by those undertaking the work as to how to approach the task. If you feel otherwise, I'm sorry for making that assumption, but that's how it appears to me.
How do you know that this can reasonably assumed? Because of some basic knowledge of the subject matter (I spent over 15 years as a journalist covering broadcast technology) and some experience of using things like cordless phones and walkie-talkies. I may not have a source at my fingertips, but even a quick search in Google Books at one of the general references would pop up at least a snippit preview can confirm some basic information. To me that's a pretty low-effort WP:BEFORE step that should help assure you whether or not something is likely correct. You said below that you didn't think it was "feasible, fair, nor reasonble" to suggest you take such action before removing material that lacks an inline citation. I'd disagree and if it's too much to do that then maybe you're taking on a larger task than you're prepared to see to fruition.
"the fact that it spurred editors on the articles I've described here illustrates this" That's a possible way to view it and one that I've acknowledged in these discussions. My objection is that you rejected the restoration of the material as part of an effort to fix it. As for List of suicides, I don't have the time nor inclination to do a deep dive on what you did there, but from a quick glance it looks like you played a more active role in making the improvements there than you were doing here.
That said, I do have concerns that you view the best way to approach article improvement is through fighting. Your approach may pay off at times, but it is clearly uncivil and can discourage other editors from participating. I know I've walked away from improving articles over WP:OWN and WP:CIVIL situations. Sometimes it's easier to just look away than to deal with someone who engages by attacking. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 17:28, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This debate seems to have gone way beyond Nightscream, and become a debate on the relative importance of WP:BURDEN and WP:PRESERVE. There does seem to be a genuine conflict. I've read a lot of comments above that summarise to "What's the problem with removing the uncited material? Just put it back in with a citation!" But that is explicitly contrary to WP:PRESERVE and begs the question of why we bother having the {{cn}} tag. I think many of us relatively inexperienced editors could do with some clarity on this wider question. Elemimele (talk) 20:22, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That is not "explicitly contrary to [the editing policy]". The section you're citing is about content issues in general, including grammar issues. In a subsection called "Problems that may justify removal", the first example for such problems is "unsourced and contentious material", with a link to the verifiability policy. And no, this debate here isn't beyond user conduct. ANI is especially not a venue for discussing proposed policy changes; if you believe a change is needed, WP:VPP and the policy's talk page are proper venues to propose it. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:34, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@ToBeFree:, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult. The policy issue is inseparable from the conduct issue because you cannot penalise someone for ignoring a Wikipedia policy if the policy is contradictory. The sentence that I'm reading in WP:PRESERVE states "As explained above, Wikipedia is a work in progress and perfection is not required. As long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they should be retained...". The sentence I'm reading in WP:BURDEN is "Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed...". To be fair, both articles go on to discuss verifiability, but both talk about the possibility of verification rather than the presence of verification (the section you quote comes from specific guidance on BLPs, which obviously deserve the very highest standards). I don't want to propose a change in policy. I just think that from an admin perspective (I'm not an admin, you're going to have to deal with more debates like the one above so long as it's not clear; and from a normal editor perspective, policies should be settled in the correct venue, not by admins establishing a sort of "case law" by interpreting unclear rules on this noticeboard. Elemimele (talk) 21:27, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No offense taken. Regarding the quoted sentence, while nitpicking about wording may fail to address the intention of a policy, the "would belong in the 'finished' article" part may be important. Because this is exactly what's being challenged. Without a citation, we can't know if this material is worth keeping, and lacking such knowledge, the default state of the article is a lack of challenged/disputed material. That's not BLP-specific, neither in the editing policy nor the verifiability policy.
And yes, you are correct about the meaning of "verifiability": The verifiability policy is about verifiability, not absolute direct inline verification through a photo of the cited book with the relevant text highlighted in yellow. Adding verifiable material without a citation is not a violation of the verifiability policy. Restoring it in unmodified form after it has been challenged, however, is. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:38, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ding ding ding. Restoring challenged material requires an inline citation. Full stop. Somebody restoring material with a {{fact}} tag without replacing that tag with an inline citation is violating core policy and should be sanctioned if they refuse to stop. If the "general sources" back up the material, then learn to use a named reference and cite it everywhere appropriate. But all challenged material requires an inline citation to a source that directly backs it up, that is the bare minimum here. nableezy - 21:48, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Restoring challenged material requires an inline citation."
The problem is that people regularly remove information not because they are challenging it, but simply because it is uncited. Jahaza (talk) 22:30, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Like Elemimele i think this discussion has gone way of track.
I suggest the simple question is whether "talk page moves" such as practiced by Nightscream wherein wholesale removal of multiple, unconnected sections of an article to a talk page is based on an unstated concern over number and age of {{cn}} tags constitutes WP:disruptive editing or WP:edit warring?
Note that in all the references on removing unsourced material say unsourced may be removed, not that it shall be removed and none of them cover talk page moves as practiced by Nightscream. WP:BURDEN does require an expressed concern, which as near as I can tell in Nightscream's case, his unstated concern is the number and age of unsourced tags. There is one little bit of guidance in a note buried in one of the references that an editor who placed a sourcing tag should expect an answer in one month but no further guidance. FWIW, personally I have little concern to the date on an unsourced tag; in articles where I have some expertise, I find them to be amost always attached to facts that are readily sourceable so I expect that most are placed by readers without subject expertise. When reading articles in which I have no expertise I give the benefit of good faith to the original editors of those articles that their unsourced facts are readily verifiable and that the subsequently added unsourced tags are misapplied. In one article Nightscream cited a tag 5½ years old as a concern - that tag had survived about 225 page edits and hundred's of thousands of page views without any editor or reader finding a need to respond; that suggests to me the it is highly likely to be sourced since no editor felt compelled to respond.
In the two articles that I follow, Nightsrcream has removed about 31% of the content to talk pages (15k/36k and 27k/88k). There are about 503k pages with {{cn}} and about 371k pages with {{refimprove}} tags. If such behavior is acceptable the impact upon Wikipedia content will be severe.
In my view talk page moves are disruptive behavior which inherently leads to edit waring and should be banned. As a banned practice returning the material becomes a reversion of a banned practice and not subject to the many sourcing requirements. Alternatively, we could view any objection to a talk page move as a dispute which as part of normal dispute resolution restores the article to its original condition with imposing any specific policy such as sourcing.
Already one editor has decided to reduce the scope of his work as a consequence of allowing talk page moves. If this does become an allowed practice then I suspect many other editors witll reduce the scope of their activity and Wikipedia articles will suffer both from loss of content and the reduction in effort. Tom94022 (talk) 16:40, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Riiiight. So deleting unsourced statements from articles is wrong. Moving them to the talk page so they can be sourced and moved back is wrong. If nobody in 200+ edits over 5 years has sourced a statement, that's fine and it should be left there. Uh huh. Can you people hear yourselves? We're an encyclopedia, not a fucking blog. FFS. — Trey Maturin has spoken16:43, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In a reductio ad absurdum sense, sure. But I don't see that as the issue. The issue is mass removal of content without specific objections that indicate some degree of WP:BEFORE has been done. That there may be stale CN tags is annoying, but they aren't a call to strip large amounts of content blindly. I'm sure we've all seen wrong or outdated information in an article and then decided to either fix it, tag it, or remove it, but that's not what happened here. And even if we accept that the mass removal was helpful in spurring editors to take action on addressing the lack of inline sources (for material that is covered by the page's general sources), that doesn't excuse the insistence that only one way to address the concerns is acceptable. In this case, the reversion of the removal was followed by efforts to work on the sourcing. The insistence that that work be handled in a piecemeal way and the incivility in forcing the issue. is where the root of the conflict lies as far as I can see. It's when the action became disruptive and a hinderance to addressing the issue that was raised by the original action. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:56, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The only problem that I see in this report is that there are users who think that restoring challenged content without adding inline citations is acceptable. Yes, if material is uncited, and then challenged, it may be removed. Yes, that covers a huge swath of Wikipedia content. Yes, people may dislike the idea of the uncited material they are responsible for inserting in to an encyclopedia article is being removed. No, that is not a problem. If you want the article to have some content then source it. The end. If you want to restore the material removed after a challenge then source it. The end. If you restore it without sourcing it then you should be blocked for repeated violations of core policy. Again, the end. The only thing being done blindly is the restoration of content without providing the requested sources. That is the only thing in this section that requires administrator attention. nableezy - 17:32, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The lack of citations that allow a reader to know precisely where each piece of information came from is a specific objection.
What other ways to address this do you propose, and why weren't these ways brought up with me when I attempted to engage those other editors in various talk page discussions?
As far as the "incivility" is concerned, that did not typify most of my edit summaries, and I've apologize for that and resolved not to continue that type of e.s. In any event, that is not the cause, or even a major factor in the problem that spurred this discussion. It's the notion by man that citations are not necessary.
I'm sorry that people's fee-fees were hurt because, after only 200+ edits and just 5 years, someone decided that the most-read encyclopedia in the history of the world should start asking that one of the most fundamental policies of the entire endeavour should be followed and gently removed some uncited passages to the associated talk pages literally seconds before the guardians of those articles finally, after 200+ edits in 5 years, got round to citing them. And that the response to such badly hurt feelings is to re-add the uncited material without providing the citation requested, complete with the tag requesting that one is found, results in the poor, distressed people dragging the editor in question to a dramaboard in order to argue that the editor in question is the one being disruptive. Can you people even hear yourselves? Cheeses H Crust. — Trey Maturin has spoken17:45, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please stick to the issue of talk page moves.' As it turns out the 5½ years ago an IP tag bombed the article with 26 unsourced tags. I and about two dozen editors have over the years ignored them, in my case because for the most part they appeared to be unjustified. Tom94022 (talk) 17:47, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Moving the material to the talk page is a courtesy so that editors who are interested in finding sources have a starting point. Would you prefer the material just be removed and not moved to the talk page? Cus thats the other option here. nableezy - 17:52, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In one case this disruptive editing did cause some finding of some sources but in two cases the disruptive editing has led to this discussion with little or no additional sourcing and one editor reducing his activity. The editors of those pages responded literally seconds becuase in their view such editing is disruptive (mine view too). As disruptive editing, the resolution is to restore the removed wholesale material and discuss specific concerns/disputes on the talk page. Perhaps we should have an expiration date on {{cn}} tags. BTW I don't use the {{cn}} on pages I edit; if I have some issues i fix them or use the {{dubious}} tag and discuss my concerns. The {{cn}} tag takes no effort to impose but when injudicously applied places an undue burden on an editor - talk page moves are that on steriods and should be outlawed as disruptive (as should tag bombing like Nightscreamer recently did). Tom94022 (talk) 18:28, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Your view is at odds with our policy, sorry. The disruptive editing is the reverts to restore material that has been challenged. That should be sanctioned. nableezy - 19:40, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In reverse order:
From Talk:Radio: I was able to make some progress adding sources, but only at the rate of a few paragraphs per day. I could not go any faster, most will agree this type of work takes time. But now with these mass deletions of uncited text from the article, it's needlessly made more difficult to add needed cites while keeping track of duplicate citations. I'm certainly not a "serial policy violator" and it's sad to see other editors disparaged this way. Sorry, but I won't be working on the article again until the situation is resolved and the disruption ends.
Your incivility (scare quotes aren't appropriate) was also evident on the talk pages, which is likely why you didn't get the sort of polite engagement you seem to be asking for here.
I've made several suggestions as to how I think you should have approached it. Basically, don't use a flamethrower when a scalpel will work. CN tagging is an acceptable approach and addresses the concern of a missing inline source. Be open to the idea that you might well be wrong or that other approaches may be acceptable. Scale back your instinct to fight and take a collaboration-based approach. Don't be surprise that people don't respond well to being shouted at. Do the work of WP:BEFORE even if it means it takes you more time and effort.
The lack of a citation may be a specific objection, but it's not the sort of objection that's mentioned in WP:BURDEN. When tagging or removing material for lacking an inline citation, please state your concern that it may not be possible to find a published reliable source, and the material therefore may not be verifiable. Cutting something like "AM (amplitude modulation) – in an AM transmitter, the amplitude (strength) of the radio carrier wave is varied by the modulation signal" because it lacks an inline cite doesn't seem to be a good faith expression of your belief that it may not be possible to find a WP:RS. Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 18:04, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Using cordless phones and walkie talkies enabled you to assume that the text above could be validated by general sources? How?
I don't view the best approach to improvement to be through fighting. I believe it to be through including citations for most material. With regard to disagreements, I believe the only approach is to comport oneself in a manner characterized by intellectual honesty, coherence, consistency, straightforwardness, and transparency, and there was a glaring lack of it from those who disagree with me on the various talk page discussions.
Fountains appears to have said that he won't work on the article again "until the situation is resolved and the disruption ends." This discussion will end sooner if not later. As for "disruption", well, if he is referring to requiring citations, or if he is unwilling to discuss timetables for adding them, then that's unfortunate. Rolling up his sleeves and adding himself to the effort to add citations would've improved that endeavor.
I did not reject the restoration of the material. I rejected the wholesale reverting of both the uncited material along with the cited material. I appreciate your point that I could have tried compromise on whether to restore the radio article piecemeal or not. Can you appreciate that those editors were not interested in responding to my statements, unlike you have done here? Are you aware that some of them did blind reverts on several other articles that I listed here, with no indication that they had any intention of sourcing them? You go on and on about "incivility" on my part, when there is nothing inherently "incivil" about moving uncited info to a talk page, yet you make no mention of the rampant hostility on their part, like when they deliberately distorted my statements with Straw Man arguments, on the radio talk page, on Jimbo Wales’ talk page, etc. Why is this?
I do not see why the passage on amplitude modulation does not need a citation. There is no reason to omit a cite for that passage any more than for any other, and I don't believe "that it may not be possible to find" an rs for that, nor do I understand where you got this idea from. From these comments, I get the sense that you and I simply have fundamentally different ideas of how this encyclopedia should work, and are at the Agree to Disagree Threshold.
If there's a way I could've approached this better that I haven't mentioned here, I'm sorry I didn't. But going forward, we can resolve this. I would suggest that we resolve to source the material in question, and I'm willing to compromise on timetables and whether to do it piecemeal. But there has to be transparency on this. And when you consider that a couple of the editors who are not getting their way here have restored to revert the way I organize or name subheadings on my talk page, I question whether they are genuinely interested in this. Prove me wrong. Nightscream (talk) 18:14, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would appreciate it Nightscream if you would raise the level of this discusion above the specifics of the Radio article and various incivilities to address the issue of his practice of talk page moves. In two other instances there has been no incivility, little to no finding of sources by editors other you and all the editors have considerred your practice and requested or implemented reversion. I do not think any timetable would be acceptable and I suspect you would not agree to concencus deletion of inappropriate sourceing tags. Tom94022 (talk) 18:28, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Youre the one that needs consensus for reinsertion (WP:ONUS), youre the one that needs sources for reinsertion (WP:BURDEN). You keep proclaiming your view that the removals are disruptive, but that view seems to be distinctly lacking in consensus. nableezy - 18:45, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Two quick responses before I stop responding point-by-point, because I think we're approaching the point where it is not productive. I also think Tom94022 is correct in wanting to focus on the issue of mass removal of material to talk pages.
1) I don't believe "that it may not be possible to find" an rs for that, nor do I understand where you got this idea from. That is part of what WP:BURDEN asks editors to consider in removing content that lacks an inline cite. If you think it may well be able to be sourced, then removal may well not be the best approach. The amplitude modulation line is one that seems to be something that quite obviously should be able to be sourced, so add a CN tag and move on instead of deleting it.
2) I rejected the wholesale reverting of both the uncited material along with the cited material. Yes, but that was the consensus of those approaching the task as how best to begin addressing the concerns. Your doubling down on your approach made the situation worse. I'm not excusing anyone else's behavior in the matter, but I do think you could have deescalated things and chose not to. Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 18:45, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry that we have to agree to disagree here. I do not know that the line about amplitude modulation is "quite obviously" sourceable, and I don't see how we can expect any read to assume this.
As for the issue of talk page moves, something like nine other editors here (plus others in other discussions) appear to support my practices, so it looks like the talk page moves have consensus. I'm not clear on what two other instances you are referring to (please clarify). citations need to be added. If waiting a month after fact tag/refimproving an article is not sufficient to spur editors to add them, then suggest an alternative.
I acknowledge your point about BURDEN, but I would ask howe, in your view, that jibes with the portion of that policy that says that it is the burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material. How would this be applied to so many articles whose bulk consists in large part of uncited material, in your view?
Again, how did it make the situation worse if it resulted (at least in the radio article) in citations being added? Isn't the intransigence and what some here see as "incivility" on my part really just a matter of a poor attitude on the part of those who opposed added citations from the get go? Those editors did not want to address the concerns until did the talk page move. Look at the discussion on that talk page, where a number of them (not all) argue against citations, and employ all manner of sophistry to rationalize this ("consensus is more important than policy"). If they were genuinely interested in discussing how to address that matter in a way that in your view, should not have involved a tp move, then why didn't they do so during the month after I fact-tagged the article and adding the refimprove banner to the top of it? Nightscream (talk) 19:32, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Here's how amplitude modulation looks like, perhaps illustrating why some might consider the above-quoted description to be obvious. I have added reference pages to the now-existing citations, so the result should be fine now. There is no inherent issue in challenging such information; Wikipedia is improved by the resulting citations.
Nightscream has apologized for the incivility, Kvng is removing the articles from their watchlist ([82]). People (not surprisingly) disagree about what is obviously verifiable and what is not. This can't be resolved at ANI, and there is no need to resolve this kind of disagreement. We can note, however, that WP:BURDEN generally benefits those questioning the verifiability of material and places, well, a burden on those who want to re-add the material. Perhaps that's an issue, but even if it is, ANI isn't the venue for changing it.
Edit warring is disruptive even if you are (or at least strongly believe to be) right, though, and this does also apply to enforcements of the verifiability policy in articles unaffected by the BLP exemption of the edit warring policy. This should be clear by now.
This is not the place to explain how something works. The very fact that Nightscream has admitted that he has no knowledge of how radio works means that he should leave the article alone because Wikipedia requires competence in a subject before you edit it. 86.181.0.154 (talk) 10:34, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. Wrong answer. And you have now just made a deliberately menacious statement. First of all, that is an essay, and not a policy or guideline. I can't imagine why you would actually attempt ot claim an essay illustrates that Wikipedia "requires" the ideas stated unless you were being deliberately deceitful. Second, that essay says nothing about competence in a subject being required. In fact, what it explictly spells out in a bulleted list what it is referring to in the first section after the lede. If we're treating essays as if they're policies, then should I cite WP:EXPERT (Wikipedia has no formal structure with which to determine whether an editor is a subject-matter expert, and does not grant users privileges based on expertise; what matters in Wikipedia is what you do, not who you are. Previously published reliable sources, not Wikipedia editors, have authority for the content of this encyclopedia.) Just who did you think you were fooling with this claim? Nightscream (talk) 14:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Nightscream: Your WP:BATTLEGROUND approach made it worse. Even if you had handled it better, this still is a sharp turn emphasizing policy over collaboration, deadlines over volunteerism, and perfection over incremental improvement. It is whiplash-inducing and creates an environment where WP:POINTY academics may be comfortable but I'm not sure who else is. You can't achieve your goal of raising the quality of targeted articles if you drive off all the qualified contributors that could make them better. The effort you briefly induced at Radio was short-lived and not sustainable or scalable. If I understand correctly, your vision is that deleting stalled work-in-progress leaves us with a high-quality encyclopedia. I don't think it will work out that way in the short or long term and I'm not feeling like sticking around to find out who's right. ~Kvng (talk) 20:15, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You do not understand correctly, as that is not something I've ever said nor implied. That's just a Straw Man argument. If you wanted to know my stated position, you could just have read it, and respond to it on the basis of its plain wording, and request clarification where needed. But you couldn't do that, could you? Nightscream (talk) 14:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Where you went astray was in refusing to read my actual statements, repeatedly evading them by refusing to respond directly tot hem, and employing bad faith tactics to jusitfy this conduct, including lying/false accusations, evasions, repeatedly moving goalposts, etc. Nightscream (talk) 16:04, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Responding to one part because I think it is at the heart of the matter. how did it make the situation worse if it resulted (at least in the radio article) in citations being added? The citations were added in while the material was in the main article space, not the talk page. You lit the fire, but kept feeding the flames. That was what wasn't helpful and the ends don't justify the means. Even though article improvements may have sprung from your actions in this case, I don't believe as a habit that such mass removal of content solely because it lacks an inline citation is supported by WP:BURDEN and don't think you should take away from this process the idea that you don't need to give some careful consideration of how your approach may be disruptive and harmful to the project. I'm not calling what you did vandalism, but an article can also end up being improved as part of cleaning up bad faith edits. It can call attention to an article that has otherwise gone under the radar (in my case, it wasn't your removal of content that drew my attention, but a post to WikiProject Radio saying there was need for help with citations), but I would hope there are more productive ways to achieve that. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 20:36, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Tcr25:, thank you for your straightforward criticism and your suggestion about a post on a WikiProject. If I were to make a post on the WikiProject at the same time that I fact-tagged/refimproved the article, and made a point to find citations for some of it myself, and no one responded after a month, or did not express a good faith resolution to fix all the uncited material, would you still be opposed to a talk page move?
@Malcolmxl5: It has not, to my knowledge. Blanket reverts of my talk page moves have not been undone, since I chose not revert these reverts during this discussion. Or do you mean that I can now revert those, fixing the problem?
In a related question, does Levivich's September 6 resolution here have consensus agreement, given the number of people that I've observed here who have agreed with or expressed support for requiring citations, and tp moves? Nightscream (talk) 14:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, I do not mean you can now engage in reverts and do not think it would be a good idea if you were to do so. I am though disappointed to hear that uncited content has been returned to main space and I expect those who did to cite their sources very soon. -- Malcolmxl5 (talk) 14:19, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Since you asked, I think that engaging with a relevant WikiProject (or several WikiProjects, depending upon the topic) after you tag material that needs citations would be a good first step. I still don't think that mass removal of content that lacks an inline source for that reason alone to the talk page is a good practice, however, and I object to Levivich's proposal's second statement. I don't think it is in line with the portion of WP:BURDEN that calls for you to determine whether or not material may be verifiable before removal. The lack of an inline source or a badly out-of-date CN tag (which to me would be years old, not a month) may be an appropriate reason to remove something, but it shouldn't be done en mass. Each statement should be examined and considered before removal, particularly in an older article that includes material added when citation expectations were different. That doesn't mean the material shouldn't be sourced or tagged as needing sources, but it shouldn't be removed in an indiscriminate manner. I'd again point out that the improvements to the article have come while the material in concern was in the article space, not while it is on the talk page. If the efforts to improve the article are ongoing, even if you think there's a consensus that your approach is the right one, pay attention to the work that's being done and try to respect how those who have undertaken the task are accomplishing it. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:22, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If a reasonable amount of time has passed, and noone has made an attempt to fix the missing references, then I see no reason why the content can't be removed. Especially if an attempt has been made to add additional references. The entire onus for fixing the issue can't be, and isn't, on the editor noticing the issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:27, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the onus lies solely on the person who noticed it, but I also think it's the sort of thing that should be approached in a reasonable manner, not blanket removal of large amount of content spanning multiple sections of a page in a manner that is at odds with WP:BURDEN. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 15:22, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Tcr25, do you believe that I should engage with a project every time' I find articles with large amounts of uncited material, across different topic areas? And if so, what form or depth should that engagement take?
Yes, of course. If your intent is to see the article improved, I think that seeking the help of people who are familiar with a topic and understand where to seek out sources makes sense. I'd also say you should probably try to figure out who added the material and, if they're still active, ping them about it too. If the material lacks inline citations (again, you keep saying "uncited material," but that's not necessarily accurate if general sources are on the page too) and you can't find them yourself, then go to those who might be able to. You've asked several times here "how do you know" if something is correct or verifiable without a source: The answer is you do some work. If you feel the task is too big for you alone, then seek help or accept that there isn't a quick fix. In response to the "it's policy" argument, two things: 1) WP:BURDEN includes some guardrails on content removal that I don't think are being followed, and 2) WP:5P5 exists for a reason. Sometimes "it's policy" isn't the best answer to a problem. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:49, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actively, I wouldn't go so far to say that it's an absolute, since that word means "without exceptions", though I'm guessing you were using that term in the loose sense with which others use it?
"I'd also say you should probably try to figure out who added the material..."
C'mon, Tcr25, you want me to find out all the editors who added uncited material that often makes up the bulk of an article, and do this with all the articles I come across? No, I'm sorry, but it just isn't reasonable to put all of that responsibility on me and other pro-inline cite editors, along with all the other regular editing responsibilities I have vis a vis my watchlist and other articles. We need a better compromise on this. I can meet you halfway in terms of beginning discussions on WikiProject tps after fact-tagging articles, diving into the edit histories of all those articles, and sifting through them to see who added what--? I'm sorry, but that's way too much to put on me or other pro-inline cite editors.
And yes, I have "done some work", as I've stated repeatedly. On radio, for example, after doing an uncited info/tp move, I added two citations to an uncited passage. On cassette tape, after my tp move, I replaced an uncited paragraph with a larger version w/ 4 cites of three sources. On the phonograph article, I expanded a section with material supported by 19 cites of 12 sources.
If you can think of a better shorthand term for material lacking inline citations, I'm open-minded to it. :-)
I'd like to ask you three other questions:
1. Do you agree with Levivich's September 6 resolution here, at least a modified version of it that includes opening a discussion on a Project talk page, attempting to source some of the content myself as a good faith gesture, and moving the uncited info (again, waiting on you for a better term) after a month if it does not appear that the community of editors on that project is making a good faith attempt to source it?
2. Should we agree to this, may I contact you in the future if I need help implenting these changes to my approach and getting responses to them?
3. Should the reverts of my talk page moves be undone, in particular thsoe on which other editors made no indication that they intended to find sources for them? Nightscream (talk) 15:31, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Here's the issue, NS, if you want to undertake a sweeping review/revision of an article, then, yes, it's going to involve a lot of work. Looking for a quick fix isn't acceptable. No, I don't think you need to find all the editors who inserted something, but taking a look at when it was inserted might give you a clue as to whether or not it is material that may lack an inline cite but was originally sourced generally. Remember, the standards have evolved so something added in 2012 with appropriate sourcing may need additional sourcing now. You've asked how can someone know if something is sourced to a general reference when an inline cite is missing: The age of the content can be a clue.
You mention all your responsibilities, unless there's something about your role here that's not obvious to me, you're a volunteer just like almost everyone else on the project. You set a scope that's appropriate for you, and you can modify that as you choose. I don't think you can justify making en masse cuts and removals based solely on the lack of inline citations because a different approach would be too much work. That's your choice, not an obligation or responsibility.
I agree you've fixed some citations. I'd say adding CN tags is also acceptable work. But I think under WP:BURDEN you have a responsibility to make a reasonable assessment about all the material you want to remove. An inline source may be needed, but it's absence isn't a mandate to remove content in every instance without some investigation.
To your three questions: 1) I appreciate that you're trying to find a middle ground, but so long as mass removal is on the table, I'm opposed. I think that mass removal is at odds with WP:BURDEN's obligation to provide specific objections that the material may not be verifiable. More methodical moves that explain the specific concerns might be acceptable. As for an appropriate timeline, I think WP:NODEADLINE is better guidance than WP:NOW. Again, we're all volunteers and some corners of the project are going to have more active souls than others. If something lingers with a CN needed tag, that's not the end of the world (or it's a reminder to go back and address the concern yourself when you have time). 2) Sure, feel free to reach out, but absent changes to your approach don't expect me to back you up on these sorts of en masse moves. 3) No, I don't think the reverts of your talk page moves should be undone, because I still see the original move as flawed. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:09, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When you say, "taking a look at when it was inserted", you seem to be referring to small, individual passages. Again, we're talknig about entire sections that sometimes make up a large bulk of the article. You want me to dive into the edit history to sift through it to see where each piece of info lacking a cite came from?? I'm sorry, but that is not reasonable, and is far from a middle ground compromise. Nothing personal. Nightscream (talk) 16:15, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not taking it personally, and I hope you aren't either. You've asked me to expand on my concerns and ways to address them. Reviewing edit history is something I do when I'm questioning how info made it into an article and it's not clear from the text or the sources. I'm suggesting that the edit history can help you figure out if something is genuinely uncited and may not be verifiable or if it's lacking an inline cite but may have been sourced in a different manner. I do expect you to consider each piece of information removed and not just assume that if there's not an inline cite, then you have to excise it. How you go about that is your own business and working method, but if you can't provide a specific reason for the removal and support your belief that it's unverifiable or WP:OR, then expect to continue to have people challenge you on it. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:28, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Carter. Any editor wanting to remove any one {{cn}} tag has the obligation to make a good faith effort which should either result in adding a reference or removing the material with an explantion in the Edit Summary or on the talk page or both. I see no reason why this does not apply to a all the tags prior to a "talk page move." Tom94022 (talk) 16:56, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nightscream is wholesale deleting unreferenced parts of article but is making no attempt to find references himself but expecting everyone else to do the spade work. And continuing on this rampage coupled with threatening to get anyone who disagrees with him on his talk page blocked shows "Little or no interest in working collaboratively" and "Treating editing as a battleground" - the personal attacks listed above are further evidence.
I might also add "Dishonest and gaming behaviors" because when an edit warring complaint was made to WP:ANEW and was (correctly) judged as 'no violation' because Nightscream had only made three reverts (at the time of the complaint), he then proceeded to parade this result falsely claiming that the adjudicating administrator had condoned his mass deletions at WP:ANI. 86.181.0.154 (talk) 10:50, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Here is another attempt to see if there can be any consensus regarding "talk page moves". Previously we have tried to decide whether or not it constitutes WP:disruptive editing or WP:edit warring?
I suggest an even simpler question is whether "talk page moves" such as practiced by Nightscream wherein wholesale removal of multiple, unconnected sections of an article to a talk page is based on a concern over number and age of {{cn}} tags and/or other such sourcing tags constitutes vandalism?
Vandalism is defined as Removing all or significant parts of a page's content without any legitimate reason so the question is whether or not some large number of stale {{cn}} tags in an article is a ‘’’legitimate reason’’’ to remove significant parts of a page’s content?
If it is not a legitimate reason then like all vandalism, the removed content is restored without necessarily examining it for any problems.
If it is a legitimate reason then no unsourced content may be restored with first being sourced.
While the intent of "talk page moves" may have been to improve an article it appears that in practice it has failed to make significant improvement in any article and in at least two articles (Magnetic-tape data storage and Cassette tape) would remove significant parts of those articles without any improvement. Furthermore in all articles where applied it has been opposed by the article’s editors, led to contentious discussion in the article's talk pages, resulted in at least two editors reducing their efforts in the articles (count me here) and led to this unending debate.
Vandalism is not defined as "Removing all or significant parts of a page's content without any legitimate reason". Per WP:VANDAL, Wikipedia defines it as "editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose, which is to create a free encyclopedia." Where is your "removing all parts..." definition from? It doesn't appear at WP:VANDAL.
Moreover, my tp moves are not done "without any legitimate reason." Just because you disagree with that approach is not the same thing as saying that the person doing so does not have a legit reason for doing it, which is an ad hominem argument.
And yes, it has improved articles, and I've mentioned some of them here, and repeatedly. It improved the radio article by spurring other editors to add citations to it. It did this with the Western Electric and History of McDonald's article. It prompted List of suicides to go from an article that was largely uncited to one what is probably one of (if not the) best-cited list-type article on Wikipedia. Nightscream (talk) 18:36, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Poll on whether or not a large number of stale sourcing tags is a legitimate reason to remove such material from an article
Comment: There is support that an editor should expect a response to posting a sourcing tag within 30 days of posting; however there is not any guidance as to what said editor can do if there then is no response. So in one sense "stale" may mean any sourcing tag older than 30 days, that is, most sourcing tags are stale but they still are valid. Tom94022 (talk) 18:46, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would you prefer "old" or some statement of time like "> than 1 month" or perhaps just remove "stale"? In any event, since they are always valid, I take it then you agree one cannot remove any unsourced tag or such tagged content without a gf effort. So can you wholesale remove unsourced content without a gf effort? Tom94022 (talk) 18:23, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that if we decide we need rules for this (as I have previously commented on more than one occasion, we have thus far decided that this is best left to the editors on individual articles), it is better done as a formal policy discussion, not as a poll added to an AN/I thread. Daniel Case (talk) 18:30, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you mean by "gf effort" that pro-inline cite editors like me have to try and find sources for all of it, then no, abosolutely not. I do sometimes find sources for individual passages in articles on my watchlist or related areas, and have done so with the articles in which I've found compose of large amounts of uncited material. But expecting people like me to do all of it is not reasonable. The burden should be on those who favor its inclusion. I'll help, but if there is not an effort on the part of those editors, then tags should not be removed, and a talk page move after some length of time (a month? more than a month?), with a diff showing where the material was in the article (as has always been my practice) is acceptable. Nightscream (talk) 18:36, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What I have found sufficient, at least when I've done this on a more limited scale where I think the stated fact is contentious (i.e., extraordinary claim; contentious BLP info gets taken out immediately per policy) is a) tag, and note in edit summary that if this isn't cited in a few days it gets taken out, then b) post on the talk page near the end of that period pleading for someone who might know where to find a source to do that and then finally c) take it out. Daniel Case (talk) 18:52, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think the crux of the issue is that what's at issue here is not on a limited scale and isn't involving material that can reasonably be considered contentious. Your process sounds reasonable if the stated fact is contentious and you've been unable to find support for it. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 18:56, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Respectful admins, I have cited a reliable contemporary source, based on genetic research on the Hazaras, which clearly says that the Hazaras are very closely related to the Central Asian people, especially the Turkic populations, than to the Mongolians and East Asians or Indo-Iranians.[1] The sources and content of user KoizumiBS are a repetition that has already been included in the article of Hazaras, there is no need to repeat it.--Iampharzad (talk) 04:31, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am reporting a series of conduct issues and WP:COMPETENCE concerns with Cmguy777. This editor and I have intersected with each other a few times because we both primarily edit articles about early United States history. I have observed a pattern of problematic behavior which I wish to bring to the community's attention.
Cmguy777 is the kind of editor to change "to" to "too" when "to" is correct. [83] This editor also adds "the" to sentences when it is totally unnecessary and will shorten paragraphs that are supposedly too long, and in the process leave a paragraph without a reference at the end. This was done to an article that this editor knew to be under featured article review. [84] Here is an example of them at the same article making tiny sections which contain content not covered in the section title. [85] Here he is adding random links an article when the links are already included in the text. [86] Cmguy777 is the most prominent recent editor of the Ulysses S. Grant article, a featured article. Cmguy777's continued addition of trivial content to the article is primarily responsible for the fact it now stands at a ridiculous 18,594 words. Search through the editing history from the last couple of years, and you will find him adding large amounts of content-more than any other editor-to an already long article. From a cursory glance, his excessive piling on of content seems to have more or less destroyed that article and made it a suitable candidate for featured article review.
On the Ulysses S. Grant talk page, Cmguy777 advocated removing mention of Grant being ranked poorly compared to other presidents from the article on the basis that historians who ranked him poorly were racist. [87] That appears to be an example of attempting to censor scholarly voices because of personal bias.
There is an ongoing content dispute at Andrew Jackson. Cmguy777 has been heavily involved in the dispute, despite admitting (upon being asked), that a 20-page summary of Jackson's presidency by historian Richard B. Latner in a larger work about presidents, which he kept trying to promote both in the article and on the talk page, was the only scholarly source that he had read about Jackson. This editor's behavior there has been, from start to finish, atrocious. The issues at this article center around allegations made by some editors that the article is too favorable to Jackson. Cmguy777 added an unfavorable assessment of him to the Legacy section. However, what he chose did not come from a book. Instead, he dedicated a new paragraph to a single-sentence summary of a Vox article written by a non-scholar. [88] There were entire books on Jackson written by scholars that didn't receive that much attention. He also added a citation to the page in the Bibliography [89] even though the Bibliography is clearly only for monographs, not websites. After the source was removed from the Bibliography, Cmguy777 went on the talk page to shriek hysterically about censorship. [90] When told that the work should not be used because it was not written by a historical expert, he made an absurd comparison to Ken Burns' Civil War documentary, as if that and this random Vox article were of similar importance. [91] After this was removed, Cmguy777 added a critical assessment of Jackson from the Latner source. [92] Part of the content that he added was a sentence saying that Jackson was hostile to abolitionism. I told him that the sentence should be replaced because it did not say anything about Jackson's legacy but simply repeated a basic fact that was already mentioned earlier in the article. Instead, Cmguy accused me of having an issue with Latner. I tried to explain multiple times that my problem was not with Latner but with the sentence, but he wouldn't listen, and despite my protests, continually accused me of having a bias against the source, while also making broad statements about Jackson and slavery that had nothing to do with the conversation. [93][94][95][96] It's impossible to communicate with an editor who behaves like that.
An RfC was started on the talk page about whether to describe Jackson's Indian removal policies as "forced removal" or "ethnic cleansing." Cmguy777 disrupted it by posting off-topic and inaccurate statements about Jackson supposedly defying the Supreme Court by removing the Indians. However, the Supreme Court never ordered Jackson to do or not to do anything concerning Indian removal, so the statement was not correct. Not only that, but Cmguy posted these comments, which were not related to the subject in the RfC, in the section of the talk page devoted to the RfC, and did so in multiple different spaces, breaking the flow of comments. [97][98][99][100] An editor respectfully pointed out this problem on his talk page, [101] and he neither responded nor did anything to fix it. I went to Cmguy777's talk page to complain about these edits. Trying to justify his false claim that Jackson defied the Supreme Court, he said that our article on Jackson says that he did not enforce the Court's ruling. It was a misleading statement, because the article says, in reference to a Supreme Court ruling invalidating a Georgia law preventing whites from entering Native American lands, that Jackson did not enforce it because there was nothing to enforce. [102] I pointed this out, and he responded by accusing me of harassing him. [103]
Back on the Andrew Jackson talk page, Cmguy777 made a post seemingly accusing those disagreeing with his position on the article as being white supremacists. To his credit, he later struck this statement when an editor advised him to do so. Here is the diff: [104] In typical Cmguy777 fashion, the edit was placed beneath an unrelated comment rather than the comment to which he was responding, making it difficult to follow the conversation.
Cmguy777 has engaged in disruptive editing at the article by twice adding material that was being debated on the talk page to the article without consensus or prior discussion. [105][106] Most recently, I started a new section with a proposal to try to resolve issues with one of the sentences in the lead. [107] Cmguy777 posted a message in response which basically ignored the proposal and instead contained, in a typical manifestation of that editor's behavior, unfocused ramblings about various aspects of Jackson's life with no clear suggestion for improving the article. [108] I was trying to find a solution to disputed material in the article. Edits like these distract from such attempts and keep disputes active after they should have ended.
In sum, Cmguy777's edits to articles are disruptive and unhelpful. Talking to Cmguy777 is extremely painful because they either cannot or will not engage in rational discussion. I believe that this editor is either a troll or there is a COMPETENCE issue that simply makes them incapable of productive edits or reasonable discussion. Perhaps it is some combination. The scary part is that they have been here since 2009, so this isn't some new editor who is just figuring things out. Whatever the reason for their misbehavior is, they should not be allowed to continue disrupting Wikipedia like this. I propose a block from editing or at least a strong warning to desist against future disruptive behavior and to encourage constructive discussion on talk pages. Display name 99 (talk) 20:31, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Response: I have not made any recent edits directly to the article but just resolved to talk on the talk page. Anyone can edit on Wikipedia. Unfocused ramblings? This is not true. I have made many suggestions to improve the article, including adding the term "African American" to the introduction and Latner's (2002) commentary in the Jackson reputation section. I had thought that Display name 99 and I had come to an agreement on adding ethnic cleaning to the last paragraph. I felt discussion in this manner had been stalling. My only motivation is to get Jackson to FA and remove the neutrality tags. If my action in that manner was premature I apologize. The article, as mentioned, is under current neutrality tags. There is a dispute over using the term ethnic cleansing. I believe this is a personal direct attack on my good faith editing of the article and talk page by Display name 99, who seems to control the article as to its content and must need Display name 99's approval. I do not shame other editors but encourage all editors to improve the article. I have created many articles on Wikipedia. My only intention is to get the neutrality tags removed on Andrew Jackson and get Andrew Jackson, a true American patriot, on a featured article on Wikipedia. I did take a break from the article's talk page, but my name was brought up on the talk page. Frankly, I am glad to have had this conversation. I feel that editors, including myself, are under the intense scrutiny of Display name 99's hawk-like oversight of the article. I have no desire to edit or contribute on the talk page to the Jackson article under such hostile circumstances. In an effort to cooperate, I will stop editing the Jackson article for a significant time, a month or more, including the Jackson article's talk page. I hope this will meet Display name 99's approval. Cmguy777 (talk) 21:13, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
First, the OP's initial comments are WAY too long. I didn't read all of them, but before they get to the Jackson issue, all of their diffs are from 2021, and much of what the OP accuses Cmguy of look inadvertent to me (like too instead of to). Second, Cmguy has about 50K edits and no blocks, whereas the OP about half that many, which is still a significant amount, and many blocks. Finally, I am not convinced that there is any significant problem with Cmguy. I certainly see no evidence of incompetence. For reasons that are unclear to me, it looks like this is one long personal attack.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:34, 4 Septemeditor22 (UTC)
Thank you Bbb23. Yes. I agree this is a personal attack on my integrity as an editor by the OP. Non the less I am steering clear for awhile of Andrew Jackson article to avoid any more personal attacks by Display name 99, the OP. Cmguy777 (talk) 23:03, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was also involved on the Andrew Jackson talk page and RFC where Cmguy777 and Display name 99 disagreed. This report seems retaliatory and is too long. Display name 99 has been warned of WP:TEXTWALL. I think Display name 99 should either present a narrower case of recent disruption or withdraw this report. Andre🚐23:09, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The report is as long as it is because I feel it needs to be in order to document the numerous instances of what I consider to be this editor's unconstructive behavior in both articles and talk pages. I cannot shorten it further. If you don't want to read the whole thing, you have the option of just picking a few paragraphs and responding to that. I won't withdraw the report because I believe that it is merited, but I won't attempt to force people to accept what I'm saying if they don't want to. Display name 99 (talk) 14:25, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Display name 99Blockedindefinitely: I've p-blocked Display name 99 indef from the article and talk page, because even a glance at this lengthy and attack'y report, at the article, and on its talk page, show consistent misconduct. Block notice here. El_C15:50, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
El_C, for such a drastic action, I would expect specific examples of misconduct by myself at the Andrew Jackson page and the talk page page to be mentioned by you. Your failure to include any is disappointing. Cmguy777 has edited disputed material on the Jackson page without consensus. On the talk page, he has seemingly called editors white supremacists and frequently posted rambling (and sometimes factually untrue) comments with no clear suggestions on how to improve the article in the middle of discussions on unrelated issues, impeding the ability of other editors to communicate. Please explain how that is not misconduct but whatever I'm accused of doing on those pages (I can still only guess because you haven't explained it clearly) is. Display name 99 (talk) 23:59, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not gonna prove a negative, because that's not a thing. But if you continue to attack other users, the indefinite sitewide block that was imposed on your account in 2021 is likely to be reinstated. And, if you continue to reject submitting a normal report that isn't filibuster in length, which no one is gonna read, then there's nothing really to talk about. In any case, you are welcome to convince another admin to lift this block by using the {{unblock}} feature. Thanks. El_C00:14, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Random example from the article talk page (diff): Yes, of course, I should have known that Cmguy777 would come by to leave a rambling comment with an unclear point that in no way helps move the discussion forward. Also, you say that the lack of editorial consensus on ethnic cleansing needs to be addressed. How? You can't force there to be consensus if there isn't. Stop trying to pretend like you can. Display name 99 (talk) 19:46, 3 September 2022 (UTC) — El_C00:30, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's not understandable, that's the point. Three admins now have told you that you need to put up a normal-sized report, or drop it. But you were, like, nah. So, it is what it is. Also, a "drastic action" would be to indefinitely block you from all of Wikipedia, as you had been twice before, not simply two pages out of ~six million. Meanwhile, as mentioned, unlike yourself, your opponent has been blocked zero times. El_C00:43, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Really? It's not understandable? Have you read the talk page and seen Cmguy777's off-topic and almost incomprehensible comments? To block me indefinitely from two pages, including an article that I successfully brought to featured article status, while citing no specific examples of misconduct, and later adding just one example of a slightly uncivil comment made to an editor who had been actively disrupting discussion on the page for weeks beforehand, and meanwhile ignoring that misconduct, is not acceptable. Display name 99 (talk) 00:49, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, really. No, I haven't in full. But you were given an opportunity to explain yourself without the filibuster, yet you declined. That is why we are where we are. Again, you can make use of the {{unblock}} function at any time. Any admin should feel free to do whatever with the partial block, including lifting it outright. I need not be consulted or even notified about that. El_C01:05, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You are free to take issue with anything you like about my report against Cmguy777. That is not, however, a sufficient reason for blocking me from the Jackson article and its talk page. Display name 99 (talk) 01:17, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, obviously, I thought a WP:BOOMERANG was called for. And, seeing as one of the admins who participated in this discussion and who had expressed similar concerns as myself, just declined your unblock request, I'm not the only one to think this. El_C01:26, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't address the point, which is your refusal to provide evidence of misconduct to justify your block, which at this point is downright appalling. And an administrator who participated in the discussion probably should have let an uninvolved administrator review the request rather than doing it himself. Display name 99 (talk) 01:29, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't address the point in your view. And an uninvolved admin does not become involved simply by commenting on an ANI report in their capacity as an uninvolved admin — see WP:INVOLVED. Sorry, I don't have much more to add beyond that at this time. El_C01:35, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Display name 99, I'm sure I don't have to remind you that I, as an uninvolved editor in the content disputer or in the history of the article, weighing in only after the article came to WP:FAR (now on hold pending the outcome of the RFC), have noted that you have very concerning ownership issues at that article, even if we account for WP:FAOWN. I am not familiar with Cmguy's behavior, as I intentionally avoided reading the content dispute so I could remain neutral until the FAR resumes, but your responses wrt the article size indeed indicated ownership problems are in play at this article. To bring an ANI, when your own behavior will be scrutinized, implies that you may be missing quite a few points. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:28, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have said that I disagreed with you about the article and would protest against your proposed changes within the rules of Wikipedia if an attempt to implement them was made. Any editor has the right to protest changes to articles that they believe are harmful. Display name 99 (talk) 01:32, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What you said was: " I would rather lose the bronze star than lose vital information in this article." I gave you two side-by-side examples of excess verbosity of non-vital information, and had to remind you that it's not your decision whether an article carries the bronze star, rather the community's, and that I was by no means the only editor who held the opinion that the verbosity needed to be trimmed; there were two others. Further, that you brought an ANI with such an excess of verbosity when my very complaint about the article is ... excess verbosity ... gives further concern about your own cluefulness. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:37, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@El C: Could you please reconsider your block? I've been working a little on Andrew Jackson as well, and have interacted with Cmguy for years. Have you? Almost every competent editor who works with him has had our patience tried with his style of editing. I'm trying to be kind, but I don't know how to put it other than that he isn't very competent. In June a university professor/Wikipedia editor asked me for advice in working with him; we discussed the situation by private emails. Ask User:Alanscottwalker or User:Parkwells.
Cmguy means well but is biased toward minorities, particularly Black and Native Americans, and against Whites. He expects modern sensibilities in people who lived one or two or more hundred years ago. He makes lots of spelling and grammar errors. He doesn't know how to use sources properly. He knows how to cite them, but typically finds some passage somewhere that he likes and vigorously tries to insert. I cringed when I read that Display name 99 said he "went on the talk page to shriek hysterically about censorship," yet I knew exactly what he meant. That's actually an apt description, just inappropriate.
And Display name 99 rightfully complained that you gave no specific reason for blocking him. His complaint was too long? Did you look at the talk page and follow Cmguy's comments? Perhaps Display should be admonished, but I don't see why he gets an indefinite P-block. Please consider unblocking him. Thanks, YoPienso (talk) 01:35, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yopienso, thank you! Finally, a voice of reason. I'm not a patient person normally, and what little patience I've had has been exhausted by the drama at this article, whic has now dragged on for about a month and a half. I have not always made my point in the best way possible, but my point is correct. Display name 99 (talk) 01:42, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please take to heart what other editors are telling you about your own editing. I've always found SandyGeorgia to be fair and reasonable. At the moment, I do think El_C was hasty in blocking you and over-zealous in making the block indefinite instead of for a few days. Nonetheless, since you realize you aren't normally a patient person, this action against you shows how important patience and collaboration are, not only at Wikipedia, but everywhere we interact with other people. Wishing you the best, YoPienso (talk) 01:47, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Yopienso. I'm not attacking SandyGeorgia's character. I feel like he's just wrong about the article. He is asking for the article to be cut in half when it is already within the realm of what is considered an acceptable length per WP:SIZERULE. It is well within a normal range for U.S. presidential biographies and was promoted to featured article at slightly above its current length. There simply isn't justification for the changes that this editor is proposing. I promised to protest these changes if someone tried to implement them, and explicitly said that I would do so within the bounds of Wikipedia's rules. I fail to see anything wrong with that. Display name 99 (talk) 01:53, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't think you were attacking anyone; I was encouraging you to listen to their good advice. It would be wise for you to stop commenting here. You're protesting instead of listening. This is my last comment to you, not because I'm being mean, but because it's just time to stop the conversation. We're not in our own private corner but on a Wikipedia talk page. Best wishes, YoPienso (talk) 01:57, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
DN it's so unfortunate that you are missing the bigger point (than size), which is that I was offering you a way to develop a collaborative environment on the article. That is what you turned down, quite stubbornly, I might add. When three editors agree with me, it appears there's a problem with how you have approached the dispute. Again, I don't intend to say Cmguy is right; I am ignorant on that matter, intentionally. But I know for sure that your approach will not lead to collaboration or to solutions. "My way or the highway" is rarely a good approach, on Wikipedia or IRL. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:58, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have reduced the length of the article by almost 2,000 words. It was at over 17,000 words before and is now less than 15,300. That isn't "my way or the highway." As far as reducing the length further, we simply disagree. Disagreements happen. I don't own the article, so if there is a consensus to reduce the length by more, I wouldn't be able to stop it. But I don't have to agree with it. Display name 99 (talk) 02:02, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I'm not inclined to unblock on the basis of your reasoning. If anything, your comment (shriek hysterically about censorship, etc.) only further reaffirms to me that it was the right call. El_C01:42, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Your edit summary is what made me wonder if it could be directed at me. That wasn't my comment, which is why I didn't think it was for me. I was quoting Display name 99. I said I cringed at it and I called it inappropriate.
I didn't say it was you. I'm aware it wasn't you. If it was said by you, why would I blame DN for it? It's just a personal attack by DN that I wasn't privy to until you mentioned it. El_C02:06, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That said, Yopienso, you come to my talk page with a lengthy unblock request on behalf of DN (link) that also attacks a different user, so not that stellar on your part, either, if we're gonna go there. El_C02:17, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
El_C, you have mainly cited my post at ANI as the reason for your block. I made that comment about Cmguy in my initial post, but you weren't aware of it until now? So you're admitting that you did not read the post that I made which helped serve as the impetus for your block? How is that appropriate? Display name 99 (talk) 02:20, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that you outright refused to trim your lengthy report even after multiple admins asked you to do so, was key in my determining that a WP:BOOMERANG was warranted. Also, you want the block to be lifted because I overlooked a personal attack by you? That makes no sense to me. El_C02:25, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Two administrators complained about length. Only one asked me to trim it. I only refused because it was not possible. I could not trim it without losing details of the complaint. If I could have trimmed it without cutting examples, I would have done so. Display name 99 (talk) 02:29, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This feels circular at this point, so I'll leave this to other admins. I suppose you could argue that my missing a personal attack by you is grounds for an unblock.
Or that your claim that trimming your very lengthy OP was "not possible" is likewise grounds for an unblock. Personally, I don't think it'll work, but who knows, I guess. In any case, I'm unlikely to respond further for the time being. El_C02:37, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@SandyGeorgia: Now that this has calmed down, can you please give me some constructive feedback?
Do you think the block was hastily applied or properly applied? Do you think the block was fair? (I think it was hasty and harsh.)
Do you think I was attacking anyone, and if so, who? (I wasn't attacking anyone--an attack is deliberate and I know my intentions. But, did I inadvertently bump into somebody?)
Do you think User:El_C is being heavy-handed or do you think he did a good job on this report? (I think he was brandishing the mop in people's faces instead of wiping up the floor with it. I think he was relishing his power.)
Well, this is lovely... relishing. But thanks for the ping, I guess. Anyway, I don't know your intentions nor did I comment on these, but you did attack Gwillhickers on my talk page for no apparent reason (link again). And now you're attacking me. GG. El_C04:20, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I won't defend everything that I wrote on the talk page or in my original post, but I agree that the block was both hasty and excessive. It didn't have to be indefinite when it could have been a few days. I appreciate Yopienso making these points. I don't think that he attended to attack Gwillhickers. I read his comment as an attempt at humor that maybe didn't come off as intended. I've never interacted with Gwillhickers as far as I can recall, so I don't have any opinion of that editor one way or the other, and thus my reading of the comment is totally impartial. Display name 99 (talk) 04:26, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Gwillhickers certainly didn't think it was a joke, but rather, viewed it as an attack (diff). Maybe YoPienso thinks that by attacking me now, instead, that will help you somehow...? I dunno, either way, it's disconcerting. One thing is certain, there's no shortage of troubling behaviour as it pertains to the Andrew Jackson page. El_C04:40, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well we are in agreement there. However, indeff blocking me from it in part on the basis of "perennial disruption at both the article and talk page" while only citing as evidence one moderately uncivil comment that I made on the talk page (and that after I had to ask) clearly isn't helping to fix the problem. How about this. This thread started because of my issues with Cmguy777. The problematic behavior that I observed by him extends to multiple articles. Yopienso certainly sounds like he can point out even more examples. But if I were to repost my original comment including only the parts about the Jackson talk page, and removing the parts that were too strongly critical and deemed personal attacks, would you consider removing the block? Display name 99 (talk) 04:53, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm done. And if that helps you with an unblock, I'm fine with that. But again, the p-block was largely a WP:BOOMERANG block, so that might be worth keeping in mind. El_C05:05, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Cmguy means well but is biased toward minorities, particularly Black and Native Americans, and against Whites." Wikipedia has a choice about the future and it is right here. We can look at this shit and say that it is merely a difference of opinion or we can boot people like this out of the fucking community. Protonk (talk) 04:47, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You not liking something another editor says does not mean that the other editor's statements are not tolerable. We don't ban editors because Protonk says they're bigots. Display name 99 (talk) 05:01, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Protonk, Yopienso, and Display name 99: I'm having trouble understanding what everyone is saying. First, the quote is from YoPienso's comments earlier in this thread. Yet, YoPienso did not respond; instead, DN 99 did. It seems that Protonk is, on their own, demanding that Cmguy be indeffed for anti-White bigotry and that they are unhappy with the fact that DN 99 does not agree with them. I might point out that at least in their comments, YoPienso offers no diffs in support of their allegations of bigotry.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:07, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I believe that is exactly what this sub-thread is indicating. I don't know if Protonk has seen any damning diffs but his quoting of Yopienso makes it seem like he hasn't, and that this flag was just picked up off the ground because of what Yopienso offhandedly mentioned. GabberFlasted (talk) 18:16, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
???????? I'm sorry but this is the LITERAL opposite of what I'm implying. I apologize for being terse and too vague. It must have been my mistake for the implication to be read that was endorsing this behavior and not pointing out that "Cmguy means well but is biased toward minorities, particularly Black and Native Americans, and against Whites" is an absolutely unacceptable statement and one which ought to call into question whether or not the speaker ought to be in the community. I have no complaints about CMGuy but YoPienso, who decided that was something which was ok to lob at an editor and DN99, who saw no problem with the sentiment, should be shown the door. Protonk (talk) 19:43, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ahh I see. The quote just happened to be a coincidence of a highly inappropriate casting of aspersions intersecting with an inappropriate racial attitude. I genuinely read that as you taking a stand against the implied racism. Thank you very much for clarifying. GabberFlasted (talk) 11:29, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It was clear to me that Protonk was reacting to the statement by Yopienso, which I agree was inappropriate. As Bbb23 says, Yopienso did not substantiate their allegation, furthermore, it is unlikely to be substantiated. But in case it wasn't clear, Protonk is saying that what Yopienso said was inappropriate, and that DN99's reaction to it also inappropriate. I have not seen evidence that Cmguy is biased against whites, and that seems to be at least a highly inflammatory accusation. Andre🚐01:24, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Andrevan, perhaps the allegation made by Yopienso should have included specific examples to back up the point, but it's not an inflammatory allegation if it's not worded unnecessarily harshly, which it wasn't. Protonk's response, saying that he should be kicked "out of the fucking community" and calling it "bigotry" (and then later saying that I should be banned as well simply because I decided not to condemn it) is what's really inflammatory. It's more inflammatory than anything I've written in this ANI thread or at the Jackson talk page. I've never called for Cmguy777 to be banned entirely from Wikipedia, even though he drives me absolutely insane. Your decision to ignore Protonk's vicious response and instead act like YoPienso was in the wrong is pretty nearsighted. I see that nobody has responded to my post below pointing out provocative comments made by an editor at the Jackson talk page whom ARoseWolf accused me of bullying, and whom I think they were referring to when they were talking about editors leaving the discussion at that talk page. Right now, it seems like there's a double standard at play here in which people on one side are harshly dealt with for stepping out of line, while people on the other side are allowed to say almost anything that they want without consequences. This doesn't excuse my own lapses in civility, which I acknowledge and which I recognize need to change, but until people like you and El_C start holding other editors like Protonk to the same standard as you do me and Yopienso, I simply can't take you seriously. Display name 99 (talk) 02:20, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am not an admin, I am just a guy who was involved with you on the Jackson noticeboard post and RFC. My observation is that you're responding more to tone than to substance. I didn't echo Protonk's call to ban you, but I think El C's block is sound. You have too much emotional connection to the article. I know, because I've been there, and I understand your feelings. But you have to listen and learn. As far as Yopienso's comment, it is absolutely inflammatory and inappropriate to accuse an editor of racism with 0 evidence. I didn't echo Protonk's call to ban Yopienso. However, I think Yopienso should retract their allegation or provide evidence. Andre🚐02:29, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also not an admin, and I'm sorry that you think it is ok to complain about "anti-white bias" but consider the word "fucking" to be uncivil. Protonk (talk) 02:34, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I neither endorse nor refute YoPienso's allegation, as I have not seen enough evidence in Cmguy's behavior to accuse him of racism, but your apparent belief that it's okay to say bad things about white people on Wikipedia and that anyone who complains about it should be banned is quite upsetting. Display name 99 (talk) 02:46, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, not Cmguy. Protonk claimed in essence that anyone who makes complaints about anti-white bias should be banned from Wikipedia. I was objecting to his statement. I do not accuse Cmguy of making racist statements against whites. Display name 99 (talk) 02:58, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That seems like a mischaracterization of Protonk's statement, Protonk seemed to be referring to the WP:ASPERSIONs of Cmguy's anti-white bias, which are a WP:NPA violation. That is a blockable statement to make unfounded accusations of racism. Andre🚐03:02, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't gonna return to this thread (no need to continue to ping me here, Display name 99, when I said I was done I meant it), but I just wanted to say that I, at least, understood what Protonk meant in their original post. Which is why I thanked them for it a few minutes after they had submitted it. El_C14:23, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I understood it, but it's also clear how a person could (in good faith!) misunderstand what Protonk wrote: in the key sentence We can look at this ... or we can boot people like this out of the fucking community, the referent of "this" is not specified either time; the sentence parses equally well with "people like this" being "people like Cmguy" (Bbb23's misinterpretation) as "people like Yopienso" (what was intended). --100.36.106.199 (talk) 16:14, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry that you think it is ok to complain about "anti-white bias" but consider the word "fucking" to be uncivil. There's no mention there that it matters whether the complaint is substantiated or not. Editors may make complaints of anti-white bias if they are substantiated. Protonk does not appear to agree. Again, I do not endorse Yopienso's statement. If he wants to provide support for it, that's up to him. But if they decide not to provide support for it, I agree that it would be best to withdraw it. Display name 99 (talk) 03:07, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly on the locus of this thread. It's not impossible I missed it in the overly long ANI request, but I would like to ask DN99 (or especially anyone else) for prior attempts to address the broader issue with the user short of a full ANI case. The two threads I saw were specific, and the latter hindered by poor interactions. I don't believe the user is a troll. I do believe it may be possible there are some issues. Speaking with regard to the page ban by El_C to DN99, as I started reading (including a detour to the original locus) I briefly thought that they'd been hasty, at least to indef level. Reading further I had to strike my position as incorrect - as it looks well warranted, from various further details and comment within and without this thread. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:52, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
YoPienso, thanks for the ping/question, but I am not an admin. I am a contributor to the FA process. I see (at least) two editors possibly damaging an FA, one of whom is certainly exhibiting ownership and has WP:IDHT issues. There are competent editors who work at FAR who are knowledgeable of the topic and capable of writing a neutral succinct article. I see no FAR regular who doesn't agree that the article has serious problems. I offered a methodology that worked when bringing a much more controversial article (J. K. Rowling) through FAR with its star intact. That suggestion for using a collaborative method was stubbornly rejected by Dn99, who does have a most impressive block log. Those are the only factoids I can opine on; behavioral issues are dragging down a bronze star. If you were asking if I felt attacked in this thread (???), no I did not. I do see Dn99 keeps shoveling deeper, though. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:46, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was involved in both the RfC and the FAR discussions. Multiple editors have expressed the ownership style of editing DN99 has taken with the article. The discussion went on long enough with quite a bit of circling and bad faith assumptions/personal attacks so I disengaged seeing as we were not going to reach a true compromise that improved the article to the point it represented, in actuality, the verifiable sources that are out there. The process will run its course. I can say that Cmguy is not a troll. They just have a different opinion and one that is shared by many reliable sources. Even though DN99 is blocked from the article and Cmguy is not, I would encourage Cmguy to treat it as though they were. They can continue discussions on the article talk page. I elect not to go back there as I am thoroughly disgusted by DN99's position in their arguments and their bad faith description of Cmguy as well as my own and several other editors that happen to disagree with them. There are many Natives and Native descendants who edit here, quite a few that have been involved in the discussion on the talk page. All have made sound and reasoned suggestions based on reliable sources but the most outspoken have likewise been given the "biased" descriptor by DN99 and driven off the discussion. --ARoseWolf15:14, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've largely agreed with DN99's editorial views and concerns but I also think others are correct that even when editors don't agree we need to respect CIVIL. As the editor who, as I understand it, did a lot/the most to get the article to FA status I can understand a feeling of OWN and we shouldn't discount the efforts DN99 made to get the article to the level it was at. It's understandable they may be protective of the article. I think part of the problem may be DN99 may not be used to dealing with a contentious topic area. I mean I figured most historical topics aren't likely to have a feeling like they are contemporary politics. DN99. EL_C is a pretty darn level headed admin. With the obvious exception of any time they have told me to behave, if they are concerned it's probably best to stop and think about how you are approaching an issue. I think it's really easy to feel like the other editors are mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes... or at least they are POV pushers. But the best answer is probably somewhere in the middle. I would hope that if you can really understand why El_C was concerned they will be willing to lift the block. It certainly can be frustrating to deal with an editor who edits first and asks questions later. Still, I've found that it's best to take is slow and try to work with edits as much as possible. Else, being bullheaded and not obviously in the majority is likely to end up places like this. Springee (talk) 18:50, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nosebagbear, I had addressed issues with Cmguy's behavior with him several times on the Jackson talk page and once on his user talk page, although admittedly not in the most respectful way. As I mentioned in my original post, Andrevan posted on his talk page asking him to clean up comments that he wrote on the talk page which were entered out of order and in between unrelated comments, and he neither responded nor did anything to fix it. ARoseWolf also criticized him for disruptive editing after he made an edit to the lead on a disputed point without engaging in discussion with other editors. ARoseWolf, my issue is not that Cmguy and I have a different opinion. It's actually been hard for me to figure out his opinion because his talk page posts are so opaque and filled with random off-topic observations and statements of fact without context. For example, he voted for "Ethnic cleansing" in the RfC despite saying that he agreed with me that the term ethnic cleansing should not be mentioned in the opening paragraph. That's just one example of not conveying opinions clearly. I'm not retaliating against him because he has certain opinions. I can barely even tell what his opinions are because of his style of discussion, which has become a major problem when he has posted so often at the talk page. But Cmguy and I have actually eventually arrived at the same conclusion, which is to reference ethnic cleansing in the final paragraph and not in the opening paragraph. My problem with Cmguy is his disruptive style of discussion. I probably disagree much more strongly with you and SandyGeorgia about how the article should look than I do with Cmguy, but I haven't made ANI threads about either of you because, while I feel that both of you are wrong about the article, I don't see any major conduct issues with you, whereas I do with Cmguy. Why does it matter if editors are Native Americans? Are their perspectives somehow more important than mine, as a white man? Lastly, when an editor posts in the RfC that they "have a deep antipathy for Andrew Jackson and curse his name" [109] and writes that the works of a reputable historian whose perspective they happen to disagree with is, among other things, "cringe-worthy fan fic" and "historical fiction" [110] (comments which, to their credit, they later admitted may have been "intemperate"), it doesn't seem wrong for me to speculate that they are editing from personal bias. I'm confused. People are saying that my approach is too combative. But then how is this okay?
Springee, thank you for your comments. But I have asked El_C for evidence of persistent disruptive behavior on the pages, and all that he provided me with was a single post which, though I have admitted was inappropriate, does not in my mind come anywhere close to justifying an indefinite block from the pages. Also, I wish to note your description of Cmguy as "an editor who edits first and asks questions later" and point out that you are second editor after myself to express concerns about Cmguy's behavior. While my own conduct is being scrutinized, his ought to be addressed as well. Display name 99 (talk) 19:05, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am staying away from the Jackson article and talk page. Other editors can figure out how to remove the neutrality tags. I do not in any way wish to create any controversy among editors or disrupt the article. In the best interest of the Jackson article, I am taking an extended break from editing on the Jackson article and talk page. Thanks. Cmguy777 (talk) 19:45, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the considerate approach, Cmguy777. When the RFC closes, if there is a conclusion that can be acted upon, then allowing some time for the dust to settle is good. If there is not, or if the dust does not settle, anyone can post to the talk page associated with the FAR on hold at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Andrew Jackson/archive1, and ping Nikkimaria to inquire about reinstating the FAR. When the FAR resumes, it should be possible to approach the issues in a deliberative fashion, as FAR is a "slow and steady wins the race" kind of place, without time pressure or the need for anyone to get hot under the collar. FAR allows for all voices to be heard, and works best with a collaborative spirit. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:16, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I just want to put in a good word for Cmguy777. I thought I remembered his user name from the revision history of the Nathan Bedford Forrest article, which was a place of contention in the past, but has been pretty stable for quite a while now. I did a good bit of work on it, and Cmguy777 contributed 149 edits. I don't remember ever having a problem with any of them, and I regarded him as a benefit to the project. Peace. Carlstak (talk) 04:13, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am the primary writer of the Jackson article. I brought it to featured article status and have helped maintain it at what I believe to be a high quality ever since. During the course of this neutrality dispute, I have offered two potential compromise solutions, both of which were rejected by the loudest voices on the other side, who in essence insisted on nothing less than absolute capitulation despite the fact that they had consensus neither in their sources nor in the RfC responses for their position. Some of them, like Carlstak, made extremely incendiary statements and didn't even try to pretend like they were editing from a neutral point of view. Contrary to repeated allegations of ownership, I have been the one doing the most to try to affect a compromise, and have sacrificed significant ground in order to do so, but I have been thwarted by the intransigence of editors like ARoseWolf.
Andrevan has told me that I have to "listen and learn." I have listened, and what I have learned is that none of that matters. It doesn't matter that I made Andrew Jackson a featured article or that I have been actively trying to end the dispute through negotiation with other editors. All that matters is that I lost my temper a couple of times in dealing with what I think any experienced editor who took 5-10 minutes to seriously study their contributions to the article and talk page (Someone please tell me, has anyone actually done that yet?) would agree was a disruptive and incompetent editor. I will be punished for that, while Cmguy777, the editor who caused that disruption, will not be sanctioned, and the other editors who make incendiary comments on the talk page and obstinately refused compromises that were reflective of the results of the RfC and the sources will likewise go unreprimanded. So far, that's what I have learned from this discussion. Display name 99 (talk) 04:11, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
DN99, I don't think anyone is doubting that you've done good work, but I think your ability to work collaboratively and dispassionately needs improvement. I speak as someone who has also had to learn how to improve in that area. I don't think you are being punished. You are being temporarily partially blocked from editing to prevent disruption, but if you were to apologize and turn over a new leaf and AGF, you will be likely unblocked. The fact that you are still claiming Cmguy777 is disruptive and incompetent says that the block is merited. Andre🚐15:15, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am politely requesting this noticeboard incident report be closed. I continue to be disparaged by a blocked editor DN99. I have not been editing on the Jackson article and talk page, nor do I plan to do so in the near future. I am staying away and taking an extended break from the Jackson article. Other editors can bring the Jackson article back to FA status. Thanks. Cmguy777 (talk) 17:19, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Andrevan, it's hard for me to see this as a temporary block. It was made indefinite when it could have easily been for a few days or a week, and no administrator has given me anything specific that I can do to have the block lifted. You say that my claim that Cmguy777 is disruptive and incompetent justifies the block. Have you studied that user's contributions to the article and the article talk page? If you haven't, I politely ask you to do so before criticizing me again for making those statements. I cited numerous examples of what I consider to be bad conduct by that user in my opening post. I have already said that some of my comments towards Cmguy777 were regrettable and inappropriate, but me being wrong sometimes does not excuse the fact that most editors here continue to ignore the unhelpful behavior by Cmguy777 as well as the battleground behavior of other editors at the Jackson page. While my behavior at the Jackson article has not always been admirable, the issues there are not all my fault. Now you'll probably say that you aren't saying that they're all my fault, but it does seem that way, as you and other editors here continue to criticize my conduct and only my conduct. Display name 99 (talk) 17:35, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of admitting your bad faith assumptions of others, like myself, you double down. As I have stated and continue to state. I have left that article talk page strictly because of you, your attitude and the way you denigrate others who have a different viewpoint than your own. It's always about how you did this or did that. How you made this article a FA. It's always about how you presented a compromise and how I, or someone else, somehow thwarted it. I'm going to be as blunt as I can be when I say this, it isn't about you. It isn't about me either so remove my user name from your vocabulary please and thank you. You think my intransigent viewpoint is such a terrible thing but there is no requirement for me to alter my personal viewpoint on anything so long as I honor consensus. If you have diffs where I have not honored consensus and edited the article at any point throughout this discussion to try and force my views into the article then please present them. Otherwise I kindly ask you to stop casting aspersions about myself and others. Actually, can you even infer what my actual views are about the subject or the article itself based on what I've written or are you going to go with further bad faith assumptions as you did on the talk page? --ARoseWolf17:53, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Roads4117
Editor user:Roads4117 seem to be paying lip service with the requirement to ensure articles are correctly referenced. Edit has appeared before:
The editor created A4421 road (Great Britain) with no references. I reviewed it and reverted to a redirect. It was then reverted back. I left a message suggesting then use draft or a sandbox to work on it and add needed proper references. They added two dodgy sources. The editor is paying lip service to the whole idea of referencing. It is effectively a copy and paste exercise on their part. scope_creepTalk16:46, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Scope creep, the reason why I didn't add references is because references don't matter, what does matter however is potential. I mean references do matter, although if you have potential, you can then add references at a later date. I agree, some of the articles I have edited look terrible at the moment, although if people come together and work on it, in one or two years time, it could be a fantastic article. In my opinion, I feel that users like John Maynard Friedman and many others at Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Highways/United Kingdom help me to become a better editor, although editors like Scope creep and Ritchie333 do the opposite effect. Since day one of editing on Wikipedia, all the way back in June, it has changed my life significantly, and for the better. If you took it away from me, by banning me from editing, or something like that, it would mean a lot to me. Back on your talk page, I said that the reason why I reply in short, sharp sentences was because it was part of my personality. You can't ban me for being who I am. It is also better than how I was communicating 6 weeks ago. Thanks, Roads411717:41, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Roads4117, when you write references don't matter, that is a troubling attitude even if you qualified it later. We have draft space and sandbox space for topics that have potential but are not yet ready for main space. I highly recommend that you do not add any article to main space that does not contain references to at least two and preferably three or more references to reliable, independent sources that devote significant coverage to the topic. That will prevent other editors from complaining about your behavior regarding creating new articles. Cullen328 (talk) 18:07, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Per all of the above; best practice is to ensure that references are already in the article, reliable, and sufficiently in-depth to pass WP:42. No article ever created that was well-developed and was sufficiently referenced to multiple, reliable, in-depth sources has ever had people request its deletion, or turn it into a redirect. You can either follow the guidance at WP:42 or WP:GNG or WP:YFA and make sure you have your sources already in place and do your research and your gathering of materials before you even start writing. If you decide to skip all of that guidance, expect people to delete or redirect your mostly blank article. --Jayron3218:50, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your replies. I will try to get into the habit of creating a new articles only if there are more than two or three references. Thanks, Roads411706:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Roads4117 Writing new articles from scratch is tricky, we all know how tricky it can be to find a niche, and to get used to the sourcing requirements. I don't know what experiences you've had in the past, but I expect that you're being rather unfair here to Scope creep, who is a very experienced article reviewer, and also to Ritchie333, who is enthusiastic both about writing high-quality articles, and about encouraging newcomers. If your interactions with them have been abrasive, consider this: you are expecting us to accept you the way you are; you also need to be willing to accept other people the way they are.
High-quality sourcing is all-important when putting together a new article. Don't just look for some random links - look for two or three high-quality reliable sources giving the subject in-depth coverage. If you can't find them, don't write article. And remember that nothing you write in the article should come from your own background knowledge, it should all come from what the sources you use say. If you can't find a source to support it, just leave it out. GirthSummit (blether)17:37, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
They're restoring links you had removed without discussion that were reverted by @Northamerica1000: back in June as rapid-fire and connected to the WP:ARBDEL issue. I certainly don't agree with the 'vandalism' tag by them, but the restoration of the links was proper. Also running to ANI because of a talk page blank (which they are allowed to do) is overreacting; expand your reason in your own words, and don't just template. Nate•(chatter)00:51, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm running it here because I do not appreciate being falsely accused of vandalism, especially when I politely asked the user to stop doing it and they kept doing it anyway. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?)00:56, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I work for Ansvar Insurance which is part of the Benefact Group of companies. The parent of the Benefact Group is Benefact Trust which is a charity. We have had a page for Ansvar Insurance for many years with purely factual content about our history and charity giving. I went onto the page to do a few corrections to the page and it was then deleted for 'Unambigious advertising' which I have taken great care to keep everything factual such as how we run the Eastbourne arm of The Hygiene Bank, other charities we sponsor, number of employees etc. Could I have advice on how to get the page back please and how I may make sure it fits in with the guidelines. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samantha Sanderson (talk • contribs) 07:55, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Samantha Sanderson Out of interest, I checked back on the history of the deleted article, which was created by an employee of the company and should have been deleted there and then because it did not make a claim of notability or include any independent references. Successive edits, by yourself and others, brought it to a level of blatant advertising where it fully merited deletion for that reason. There were basic errors such as writing in the first person. Please don't attempt to create the article again. Leave that for someone who knows how to use Wikipedia, and I'm sure such an attempt will be successful when the company has achieved the notability criteria. Deb (talk) 09:25, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(non-admin closure) The title mishap has been cleaned up. In the future, the OP is advised that this is generally not an admin issue, however. If such a title error was to happen again, they are advised to instead place a note beneath the main SPI on the new title's casepage and wait for a SPI clerk to perform the deletion. Regards, User:TheDragonFire300. (Contact me | Contributions). 20:37, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I wasn't reading this thread, but I was working the SPI queue and came across this. Superfluous report deleted, both accounts blocked, global locks requested, etc... GirthSummit (blether)17:27, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This user engages in meatpuppetry with ip users 103.134.40.132 (talk·contribs) and 103.58.75.198 (talk·contribs). Note the mobile edits and timing on Barlas and Borjigin articles, he steps in and reverts me back to IP revisions. Also another one 103.67.158.89 (talk·contribs) says: Sorry sir but you are wrong! I am as Moghul my-self i know better my heritage then you, i have sources like book's name (the secret history of mongols, the timurid iran politics, Tuzu-ke-Timuri autobiography of Timur, Baburnama autobiography of first Mughal Emperor Babur and etc.) and on Talk:Timur, Ajrun Amir'za-da [113] : No Timur-Nama was autobiography of Timur; claiming the fabricated book is true as well. They both use the word "autobiography". Note that sockpuppets of Rage476 (talk·contribs) [114] have similar edits on Mongol and Mughal related articles. Not sure if those are all one person or different. Beshogur (talk) 20:19, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whats going on here ! I see you always target me to everywhere which i edit i know IP person don't like you but i don't have any link with him, but it’s my personal fair i do revert if you don't like that then told me not to edit or, give me threat in administration boards not edit anything without your way of looks, Simple i don't have any connection with anyone nether any ips but claiming me a anything is not proof i am belong anything i am in my ways — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajrun Amir'za-da (talk • contribs) 20:46, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The IP range above is being used only for vandalism (and also for WP:DUCKY block evasion by banned user Bestf123). Administrative action would be necessary in order to prevent further disruption. Renewal6 (talk) 11:17, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've left multiple messages telling the user about WP:CITE and WP:CRYSTAL, but they seem to be ignored. With the blocks, all the warning messages and the explanatory messages, the user is either uninterested in following guidelines or it's a question of WP:COMPETENCE and a long-term block seems appropriate. (CC Mattythewhite, who has been dealing with this user a lot). --Adeletron 3030 (talk • edits) 11:50, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
administrator behaving ill, constant reverts
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Perejil_Island&diff=1108900318&oldid=1108899715 Cullen328, administrator, constantly reverts my edits, and he doesnt talk in the talk page answering me or arguing what he means. To me it's clear hindering of the progress of the page, I bettered the page I cleared the tendentious writs, the lies with fake references, as i say in the talk page and is clear. i reformed my writ to do it more politically neutral and clearer and better but it doesnt change him, he only reverts and reverts. I only add more clarity and knowledge to the article and then he says my edit is "poorly written POV pushing". the member is a bad administrator and as i see it he doesnt merit to be one and i think he can use his power against me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mvtqui (talk • contribs)
In the diff you provided right near the top was the addition ...nigh to Ceuta. With the end of the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco in 1956 Spanish military are set on the island until the early sixties, when Spain cedes with Morocco any habitation and symbol of sovereignty but reads herself the owner, setting itself Morocco parallel, so being that the island be waste. which is poorly written and I would have reverted just for that reason.Gusfriend (talk) 12:56, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Mvtqui, please heed these warnings above. I am formally warning you that your conduct is subpar and, if it continues, may results in sanctions. Thanks. El_C14:17, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For the sake of accuracy, I reverted twice, 2-1/2 days apart. The OP, on the other hand, has been edit warring for two weeks. Perhaps an uninvolved administrator can review the edit history? Cullen328 (talk) 15:04, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This concerns User:Panda619, who made a really disgusting edit to the Elizabeth II page here:[122]. That just came out of nowhere, and I don't think we should let an account just get away with such blatant disrespect and disregard for not only the encyclopedia, but especially the person in question (as well as her mourning family and country). TNstingray (talk) 18:25, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's a blocked troll. As for Panda619, I saw a final warning posted on their page and I'm likely to agree. Another outburst like that and I'll be happy to block. El_C blocked, so nevermind.RickinBaltimore (talk) 18:29, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Blockedindefinitely: User_talk:Panda619#Indefinite_block. As noted in the block message, I don't think a warning is enough. I, at least, am unwilling to take the chance. Nor do I think that we should fully protect, as some have suggested. That is not a reasonable preventative action here. El_C18:36, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(Non Admin) I am a British contributor to Wikipedia. I found the edit mentioned by the original reporter to be 'inappropriate', highly disrepectful and distressing. I appreciate Wikipedia has a diverse contingent of views, but to mock the death of an internationaly important figure is not conduct I would expect to see from Wikipedians in response to tragic current events which will impact the lives of Wikipedians both in Britan and the Commonwealth. Do oversighters read WP:ANI or should I speak to them in another way? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:40, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am legit disgusted here by Panda619's disturbing, tasteless and (rather) disrespectful edit. I'm not British, but this is pretty disgusting for somebody to outright mock her death like that. DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 18:46, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I actually had the WP:REVDEL tab open and I was gonna do it right after the indef block, but then I had to get the door. Then shit kept happening and I sorta forgot. Anyway, now Done. El_C18:49, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a Brit, who is going to have to speak to his class of children about this tomorrow morning, and I think we should try to keep our knickers as twist-free as possible about this silly, childish piece of vandalism. WP:DENY, and all that. I doubt this is a compromised account - more likely just an editor who is fairly immature (which some of their talk page comments would seem to support), who thought this would be funny and no big deal. I thought a one-off warning would do the trick, but I have no problem with El C's block. Either way, this is wrapped up now - let's not reward this sort of silliness with any more attention. GirthSummit (blether)18:54, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
--Kasper2006 (talk) 16:49, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Indeffed User has been disruptively changing the spelling of names without any explanation, despite multiple warnings and attempts by other users to discuss. As far as I can see, user has not responded once to the numerous warnings or here. A 48hr block does not seem to have phased them. This is a collaborative project. In this kind of situation, communication is not optional. Am open to reducing the block conditional on constructive engagement by this user. Until then... -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:23, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Here's how amplitude modulation looks like, perhaps illustrating why some might consider the above-quoted description to be obvious. I have added reference pages to the now-existing citations, so the result should be fine now. There is no inherent issue in challenging such information; Wikipedia is improved by the resulting citations.
Blocked indefinitely: I've p-blocked Display name 99 indef from the article and talk page, because even a glance at this lengthy and attack'y report, at the article, and on its talk page, show consistent misconduct. Block notice here. El_C 15:50, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Blocked – for a period of 2 weeks — p-block 2 weeks. Sorry, I overlooked their removal of past warnings. El_C 15:12, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Blocked indefinitely: User_talk:Panda619#Indefinite_block. As noted in the block message, I don't think a warning is enough. I, at least, am unwilling to take the chance. Nor do I think that we should fully protect, as some have suggested. That is not a reasonable preventative action here. El_C 18:36, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Done. El_C 18:49, 8 September 2022 (UTC)