Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
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Spies appear to be editing on Wikipedia

Yesterday, I alerted AN/I of a BBC News article reporting that Wikipedia has determined that the Democratic Party in the United States has been attacking its opponents on Wikipedia. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6947532.stm The CIA also has done the same thing.

Almost immediately, the AN/I warning was removed. I also placed a warning on 4 controversial articles (2 about Democratic Party members and 2 on Republican Party members). All except 1 was immediately removed. This suggests that there may be spies working for 3 of the 4 politicians.

One of the articles that have potential spies working for it is Barack Obama (warning was immediately removed from that talk page.) Ophrahwasontv was writing in that article.

It seems that spies have fooled an administrator into blocking an editor who was proven not to be a sock. See RFCU clearing Ophrahwasontv.

See [6] where it says Unlikely for Oprahwasontv Collaborating with spies, even if by mistake, is bad for wikipedia. Remember, wikipedia determined that there are spies working against us according to the news article. I am shocked by the spies on Wikipedia. Orginally, I thought that there would be little controversy about the article since Wikipedia, itself, determined that there is spying.

Ophrah should be unblocked as she was blocked because of spies campaigning against her. More importantly, any content dispute should be examined for content, not number of editors editing because that is subject to manipulation by spies.

I don't care about Ophrah so much but people who reported to AN/I (causing her block) fail the duck test. They (the spies who attacked Ophrah) appear like socks and they were NOT cleared by the checkuser. The article they edit contentiously had my Wikipedia warning and the warning was removed within seconds.

The duck test is "If you complain about the spies being socks" then you must be a sock (because once a sock did make such complaint). With that flawed duck test, the spies are invincible (everyone who complains about the spies will be blocked indefinitely).

I am not so concerned about Barack Obama or Ophrah. I am concerned about the spy issue on Wikipedia. Since Hillary Clinton's article talk page still has my warning, I don't think she has active spies on her article.Warningwarningwarning 23:32, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

If you feel that there are editors pushing a POV for or against certain politicians, it would be best to name them and provide edit diffs. Otherwise we can't really do anything about it. --Hemlock Martinis 23:36, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

This little tool, http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/, will identify IP edits on wikipedia coming from a specific organization. seems to be down quite a bit (sever load) and slow, however its amazing what it uncovers. Happy hunting--Hu12 23:42, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

This user has been indefinitely blocked for disruption. They were blocked earlier for similar behavior on politician's WP articles, promised the blocking admin they would positively contribute, and then re-started this all as soon as the shortened 24 hr block expired.

I have indef blocked on the grounds that this is disruption and a single-purpose account. Georgewilliamherbert 23:45, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Warningwarningwarning (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has just given himself away as being another sock of banned user Dereks1x. Oprahwasontv (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) was just blocked as another one of his 30 socks. See this and above here. I would suggest that bhwin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) also be blocked as per this: not as a sock of myself, Bobblehead, Jersyko et al, but as another SPA sock of Dereks1x, established, again, in a lame attempt to legitimize the bogus RFCU on us. Tvoz |talk 23:52, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

"Spies" editing Wikipedia? That's a fresh new twist on the cabal conspiracy theories... Grandmasterka 00:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually no it's not. I heard on the radio just the other day about how government officials in the US have been tampering with the Iranian pages... Timeshift 00:30, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and you don't have to just hear it on the radio, it is on the wikiscanner website, so you can see for yourself once it is back up. Not to say that the edits are bad, particularly from the CIA. Although it is a tad distressing this is how they are passing time. =) daveh4h 01:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

This is not about whether there is factual evidence of those edits by the CIA, other agencies, companies, etc... That's now widely known, and has been for some days now. There was no emergency or emergent situation that justified trying to plaster large sections of the encyclopedia with warnings like this. Georgewilliamherbert 01:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

If it weren't for the sockpuppet relation, I would say that indefinitely blocking this guy is a bit out of line. It is not unreasonable to imagine someone, not familiar with Wikipedia, hearing about this and trying to start discussion about it. I recall not too long ago a teacher being blocked because they posted a survey (about Wikipedia editing) to some user talk pages, without even getting a warning before the block. We shouldn't forget that many people will not know how we normally do things, and we shouldn't be quick to block like this. -- Ned Scott 00:39, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

In this case, the deciding factor for me was that they promised to change behavior to get the first block length reduced, and then immediately turned around and started the behavior once the block expired.

I am much more tolerant of troublesome editors who just don't get it than I am of ones who appear to intentionally decieve admins. There are many explanations for not getting it; there's only one for such deception: it's an account for which WP:AGF has been shown to be a mistake.

Anything is possible, and if this turns out somehow bizarrely to have been a misjudgement on my part then so be it, it can be reversed. But this person had several chances and has done pretty much the clearly worst thing they could after each one, short of outright baldly attacking other editors here.

If you want to give them another chance, I won't stop you, but I suspect you'll be dissapointed. Georgewilliamherbert 00:46, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, a good point. Given that he said he would change his behavior, it would be at that point that we know he was aware of how we do things. -- Ned Scott 01:09, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

You can submit your findings here as well. By the way, your thread title is misleading. I don't think a NYT editor can be described as a spy when editing wikipedia from h/er office. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 10:30, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

A quick aside about the CIA editing wikipedia

Although cyberspace has no national boundaries, Wikipedia's servers are based in Florida, USA, and the domain name ".org" is a US registration. If my reading of Tom Clancy novels - and other sources of folklore - are correct isn't the CIA prohibited from operating within US territory? I don't suppose it matters much to the Foundation, but it may have implications for the Agency. LessHeard vanU 13:03, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

AFAIK (and I too am a fan of Clancy) they can't carry out illegal actions on US soil, or operations such as surveillance or wiretaps. I don't see that this would stop them editing Wikipedia, which anyone is entitled to do. However, I'm not an expert. Walton^One 13:28, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

According to a CIA spokesperson, "the US Intelligence agency is editing Wikipedia pages in order to save Americans lives". Of course they are entitled to edit but i just find their reasons odd. Editors here are not entitled to defend anyone's interests. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 14:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, if they put outside interests ahead of Wikipedia's interests, that's a conflict. There's nothing special about the CIA as far as we are concerned. I'm not aware of any law that says website operators must allow the CIA to review and modify content as they see fit. Somehow I don't think many Congress people will vote for CIA censorship of websites, given that we have the First Amendment and the Constitution. - Jehochman ^Talk 14:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes WP:COI but sneaky vandalism as well at Ahmadinejad's article. ;) -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 14:52, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I can imagine a number of BLP violations that could put lives at risk. THF 14:50, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

(Reply to Jehochman) So you're saying that our internal policy of neutrality is more important than saving lives? For the record, I'm not American, and I certainly don't endorse routine censorship of websites. However, it's established that the intelligence and security services of the free, Western world have a right and a duty to do what is necessary to protect citizens' lives. Wikipedia's policies are important to us, but they are not the most important thing in the world. Morally, we should not be fighting against the intelligence services (whether American, British or otherwise) who are daily risking their lives to protect citizens. The situation would be totally different if a dictatorship such as North Korea or Iran, or a terrorist group, was editing Wikipedia to advance their agenda - they should be stopped. But not the people whose mission is to defend the free world. My moral commitment to freedom and protection of lives trumps my commitment to Wikipedia policies any day, and I hope others feel the same. Walton^One 14:56, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree w/ you about it is important to know what comes first (saving lives) but i believe your analysis is totally biased. What about CIA covert operations all over the world? (i.e Project FUBELT and tens of others) Saving lives? What about lies and misleading info about Iraq WMD? How many people died because of that war? -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 15:08, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

As an aside to an aside, I don't think OhmyNews is a terribly reliable source of information. The article FayssalF references above has several highly questionable, unsourced claims. I could be wrong, but until I see something more trustworthy, I sort of doubt that's a direct quote by a "CIA spokesperson". And did Wikipeida really "hire" Virgil Griffith? --barneca (talk) 15:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

It is on the BBC link above. And did Wikipeida really "hire" Virgil Griffith? Is this a conspiracy theory? So Wikipedia may only have recruited Virgil to trap the CIA. What about SONY, The Vatican, Al Jazeera, etc... editting? Is this a joke? -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 15:16, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

No, not a joke. The OhmyNews link you provided says, specifically, that Wikipedia "hired" Virgil Griffith. I don't think that is true. I use that as evidence that this particular source is questionable. The BBC article does not quote the CIA spokesperson as saying "the US Intelligence agency is editing Wikipedia pages in order to save Americans lives". That appears to be a paraphrase made up by the OhmyNews reporter. --barneca (talk) 15:21, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe but that's irrelevant as Walton was implying that CIA people are editing to save people's lives. How? He was also implying that CIA can edit but not the Iranian govt! This is insane. The important thing here are wikipedia policies and not charity. We are not a law enforcement body. If CIA has to edit here then it should abide by Wikipedia rules. If you think otherwise than CIA editing Wikipedia would not have appeared in most mainstream media around the world. And please tell me how come CIA editing would save lives? -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 15:32, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I think you think I have some agenda here. All I was pointing out is that I don't think a CIA spokesperson actually said the CIA is "editing Wikipedia pages in order to save Americans lives", and that the whole OhmyNews article should be taken with a giant grain of salt. Anything else you read into my comment is either confusing me with Walton, putting words in my mouth, or I suppose possibly my lack of clarity. That's why I called it an aside to an aside. I'll leave you and Walton to continue your discussion, and move on to other things. --barneca (talk) 15:48, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

The news story may well be junk. As pointed out above, it's on a single website and isn't corroborated by published sources. And I, too, doubt the accuracy of the statement they ascribe to an unnamed "CIA spokesperson". In response to FayssalF's earlier comments, yes, my analysis is slightly biased. 99.9% of the time, I, like other Wikipedians, abide by WP:NPOV and Wikipedia's other core content policies while editing Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia is in the real world, and there are fundamental values which, for me, supersede Wikipedia's internal policies. This is not intended as a partisan rant; I don't endorse all the actions of the CIA, and, as I said, I'm not even American. But we have to trust the people whose job it is to defend freedom and democracy, even if they (like everyone else) sometimes make mistakes, or take morally questionable actions for the greater good. Walton^One 15:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Why? --John 15:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Which part of my statement does your query refer to? Walton^One 15:33, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Why? But we have to trust the people whose job it is to defend freedom and democracy. Do you have to trust people who lied about WMD? It was the CIA who were responsible of a death of almost a million people in this shitty war. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 15:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, the CIA was pretty much on target about the intelligence leading up to the shitty war. Their reports were skeptical of claims that Iraq had a meaningful nuclear development program (or chemical weapons other than relics from before the first Gulf War), and generally agreed with the international inspection teams' failure to find any evidence of an active nuclear program.

The blame, in other words, goes higher in the administration, which ignored the CIA's skepticism and sought out competing intelligence that supported their desire for a case for war. The CIA has some very ugly dirt in its past, but as far as the Iraq war is concerned it seems to be pretty clean.

That doesn't excuse them for messing with Wikipedia to push an agenda, however. If they're making edits that go against the customary rules, they deserve the same reverts and locks any other agenda-pushing editor deserves. (And I agree that the "saving lives" argument is bogus; if something is public information it belongs here. If it's a "saving lives" sort of secret, it doesn't belong here because secrets are unverified, pretty much by definition.) -- Steve Schonberger 10:29, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

(reset indent) Sorry I wasn't clear. Why do you believe we "have to trust" an intelligence agency, who, for all they may well be trying to "defend freedom and democracy", will also by definition be working according to their own priorities, one of which is probably not to improve this on-line encyclopedia? --John 15:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Given that the CIA's covert operations are not public knowledge, any alleged revelation of any alleged CIA operations are not possible to verify according to Wikipedia standards, and are thus inherently ineligible for inclusion in Wikipedia. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 15:37, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Just because a government agancy uses "saving lives" as an excuse doesn't mean its true. I am sure people at the agency see their core goal as saving american lives so they could say that everything they do is to save lives. We could also probably save lives by rewriting history and writing out all the reasons for strife. We should not blindly trust "the people whose job it is to defend freedom," or we lose the freedom we are trying to protect. I am sure the KGB and the North Korean intelligence services also claim[ed] to be saving lives and protecting freedom. If the CIA wants to edit wikipedia articles let them follow the same rules that we all follow. -- Diletante 15:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

To answer various points. In response to John, yes, of course the CIA and other government agencies are working according to their own priorities, and not to improve the encyclopedia. However, what I was saying is that the priorities of security and intelligence agencies - saving lives and protecting freedom - are more important than improving Wikipedia. Don't get me wrong. I value Wikipedia, I think it's a great project, and I've dedicated hours of my life to it. But we should remember that there are things in the real world which are more important than the accuracy and completeness of our encyclopedia; security and freedom are among them. As to Baseball Bugs' point, no one is aiming to reveal alleged CIA operations or include them in Wikipedia; that's not what this discussion is about. Walton^One 15:43, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh, heavens. I am no fan of the new CIA, the political one, the one happy to undo the reforms of 1974, or any intelligence agency, but CIA editors are just editors. <shrug> It's possible that some wild-eyed editor writes, into an article, "Currently in a bunker at coordinates X by Y" and CIA editors know that that's actually a real position of troops, but the edit would be part of our usual process. If, on the other hand, they try to get Dick Cheney's house erased from photos on Wikipedia, that's another matter. They're just regular users, with regular rights, albeit with possibly specialized knowledge. Geogre 15:46, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with most of that, but not all. If the CIA, MI6, or another relevant agency privately contacted Wikipedia admins or the Foundation and asked to have a piece of sourced information removed from Wikipedia on the grounds of national security, then I hope we would do it. As a loyal British citizen, I can assure you that if MI5 or MI6 contacted me and asked me to make certain edits to Wikipedia, or use my administrative tools for a certain purpose, on the grounds of national security, then I would do as they requested. (Not that this would ever be likely - they'd more likely contact the Foundation directly.) Walton^One 15:50, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

And if there was an indication that you had done the latter, I would ask that you be desysopped. Hornplease 20:20, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

To put it another way, if a reliable, published source has some information about CIA operations, then it is eligible for inclusion. And if it's already published, then the "saving lives" argument goes down the drain. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 15:54, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

No, that's not at all what I was saying. I was saying that if, in theory, the CIA were to ask us to remove something that was cited to a reliable published source (whether about CIA operations or any other topic) on the grounds of national security, then we should do so. Bear in mind that even if something has already been published, putting it on Wikipedia (a high traffic site) is likely to significantly increase its exposure. If the CIA, MI6, or another relevant agency asks us to change Wikipedia in the interests of national security, we shouldn't ask why, or quibble. We should do it straight away. Walton^One 16:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That's the odd point Walton. In Wikipedia policies and guidelines, it is not mentioned that you have to accept requests from CIA agents AND NOT from the Thai or Zambia's intelligence. It is about common sense and not about which agency contacted you. Would you deny Pakistani or Iranian intelligence services requests in case they'd contact you? -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 16:02, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Woah, did something change while I was sleeping? We are still a free country, right? --Kbdank71 16:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I disagree completely, If the CIA asks the foundation to do something we SHOULD quibble AND ask why. We should not do it straight away without talking to a lawyer and recieving a court-order. THat is what freedom is, bowing to the whims of three letter agencies destroys our freedom. In the US our FIRST right ennumarated is freedom of speech and the press. -- Diletante 16:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Since when is there any evidence that anyone who is actually from the CIA has asked Wikipedia to do anything? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 16:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I have just been asked by my CIA handler to archive this hypothetical discussion begun by a disruptive sockpuppet so that we can all get back to work saving lives building the encyclopedia. MastCell ^Talk 16:32, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes please because someone has just used this thread at wired.com in the form of a complaint! They even know who is an admin and who is not! -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 16:39, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Forsooth! Ods bodkins! Sufferin' succotash! Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 16:58, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

(unindent)...Er, folks, it was just a lighthearted comment. As far as I am aware the FBI acts within US territory interest and the CIA outside - but a lot of Wikipedia is physically within the USA.

For one, I would be delighted if either or both agencies (and those of other Nations) were to openly contribute to WP - intelligence gathering is a lot more to do with sifting and analysing information from various legitimate sources than the cloak and dagger stuff; access to that kind of database would be incredible - but I am not so happy if some of the bastions of democracy (y'know - the goodies who would never lie or do anything bad, and are answerable to their mistakes) were to introduce bias into the encyclopedia. It is difficult enough trying to convince individuals that their beliefs or opinions are not legitimate grounds to alter pieces, I don't even want to try picking through the edits of professional purveyors of half truths.

As for the argument that defending democracy legitimises the use of non democratic methods is akin to the old joke of fucking for virginity. They are supposed to be working for us, not the other way round. LessHeard vanU 19:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

My comments here seem to have sparked a lot of controversy, so I'll clarify. All I was saying was that both individual Wikipedians, and Wikipedia as an organisation, have a duty to aid the lawful authorities of their respective countries. I stated earlier that if MI5 or the UK government were to ask me to perform certain edits or sysop actions to Wikipedia in the interests of national security, then I would do so; it's extremely unlikely that this would ever happen, however. I was just trying to make the point that my loyalty as a British citizen outweighs my loyalty to Wikipedia. Likewise, the Wikimedia Foundation is an American institution, and has a moral obligation to aid the authorities of the United States, if asked to do so on the grounds of national security. If the CIA or FBI were to ask the Foundation to make certain edits - including oversight removal of information - then the Foundation should just do it. They shouldn't quibble, ask questions, or throw the matter open to debate. There are values more important than Wikipedia's internal policies and guidelines, and loyalty to our respective countries is one of them. Walton^One 11:07, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I am sorry if my comments have affected you Walton or been misinterpreted but Wikipedia is no battleground. We have editors from all over the world here and if everyone would execute the orders or at least requests of their respective intelligence agencies then it would be a total mess especially that not all agencies are working together (well at least and according to notable media venues most intelligences have worked in harmony against the widespread terrorist activities around the world). CIA and the Syrian intelligence (just to name one and not tens) have been working together in good and bad stuff. Please also have a look at this [Image:ExtRenditionMap.gif]. True or not true is not our problem as long as it is well sourced.

Please bear in mind that Wikipedia main activity is to document sourced events. It means information which was already been appearing at the news or at least somewhere where public has already been informed. In case there is something unsourced (most probably it would be controversial or maybe dangerous to human lives) then be assured that ANYONE can delete such garbage as we have policies giving us that right. So a scenario where an intelligence service would contact you is nonsense. In extreme cases, those people know whom to contact and surely would not contact you.

Again, everyone is allowed to edit unless WP:COI is affected or vandalism involved. In other words, Wikipedia already does its job which you think you could have done it in case someone contacts you. The problem is if those agencies come here to delete references to things they don't want people to read about, in most cases not involving people lives but any those organizations' reputation (i.e. "Black sites"). In that case, i assure you that Wikipedia comes first and not people lives as no people life would be in danger if someone removes something about "Black sites". Cheers. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 17:08, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:COI is a guideline. --Tbeatty 14:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe you failed to get my point. As i said, if people's live are in danger than, they would know whom to contact and surely would not contact you or me. If there's no people's life in danger than they would have to pay attention to WP:COI. What about Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation editing the same articles the CIA would edit and they'd get into an edit war? Who would try to mediate or block one or both of them if they persist w/o "trying to discuss"? You? Or would you edit war yourselves?. - FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 20:52, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

It would appear that Conflict of Interest is more and more acceptable in the encyclopedia. And not just for US interests (though they compromise the integrity of the project too). PalestineRemembered 14:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Conflict of interest always has been, and always will be, impossible to prevent. There is no way to police who makes every edit and people with a direct interest in things often know/care the most about it. That's why we have a guideline rather than a policy about COIs. We discourage users from editing in areas where they have a conflict, but do not prevent it. We have neutrality and sourcing policies precisely to deal with COIs and other biases. Thus, COI is no more or less 'acceptable' than it has ever been... it exists. And we deal with it in the same way we always have.

As to the whole 'CIA/MI5 over-ride' discussion... anything which can be properly sourced is widely available already. If Wikipedia is giving something vastly wider coverage than it had previously then it doesn't belong in Wikipedia to begin with. So, if Wikipedia reported Geraldo's infamous 'troop movements moment' that isn't putting anyone at risk because the info was already widely distributed... if a soldier in the field posted the same thing such that it was available on Wikipedia and nowhere else it couldn't be sourced and should be removed. Ditto Wikipedia reporting on 'Valerie Plame' vs a NOC outed only on an obscure website and not picked up by the mainstream media. Wikipedia collects and retains information about things which have already been found notable by the rest of the world. Any information which is 'secret' doesn't belong here. Anything else which we might be asked to remove would be more on the order of altering the historical record to hide facts that are otherwise commonly available... and thus I'd be very much against it. --CBD 12:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

This is all getting very silly. Did you know that Wikipedia has contained CIA-generated content for years -- Wikipedia:Status of the porting of the CIA World Factbook. And did you know that we'd probably accept material from other intelligence agencies if they released it under a free license. (So if they can afford to lose all that copyright revenue on secret documents, they've managed to infiltrate Wikipedia.) Beyond that, as long as they don't violate the usual rules & guidelines (e.g. WP:COI), anyone can edit Wikipedia. -- llywrch 21:41, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's the most recent edit by the CIA, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lightsaber_combat&diff=prev&oldid=148067857 , go read it yourself. PROOF OF A CONSPIRACY!!! Calibas 02:48, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey! I'm a spy, and I've got a userbox to prove it! IPSOS (talk) 01:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Quite frankly, I'm more upset that the CIA is wasting my taxes in order to perform minor punctuation edits on Star Wars articles. Girolamo Savonarola 07:20, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

BetacommandBot and commons

Ive started a bot to move images to commons please see User:Betacommand/Commons β^_command 13:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

If that bot moves any of the free images I uploaded, I will block it. I don't want them on Commons, where I can't keep an eye on them and have them on my watchlist. Are you going to bother to ask users first if they want their images moved, or do you know best? Neil ム 16:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

wtf? read the wording of the GFDL. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 17:07, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

He said he'd block, not sue for copyright infringement. There are a lot of things that are legal to do in the US that will still get you blocked on WP. --W.marsh 18:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

One do not make threats about blocking the bot. Two if they are free images they should be on commons. Three please see WP:OWN. Four if you want to civilly discuss this then please do but threats are not a good thing. β^_command 17:04, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I hurt the bot's feelings. Why should they be on Commons? Please point me in the direction of the relevant policy that says this is the case. This is civil - please ask users before moving their images, as a courtesy, if nothing else. I would imagine many many users would not be happy, particularly if they hold the same opinion of Commons I do. Neil ム 17:10, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

What have you got against commons? Theresa Knott | The otter sank 17:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

(ec - note I was refactoring my response and got conflicted). I don't like Commons because it takes away local control, and allows people to merrily upload pictures of their meat and two veg and vandalise Wikipedia with them. I also don't like it because I wouldn't be able to watchlist my images. Neil ム 17:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Commons has a watchlist feature just like en Wikipedia. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 17:19, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

But I don't want to have two jump between two accounts. Sigh. Neil ム 17:22, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok please see WP:OWN as soon as you uploaded those images under a free license they no longer belong to you. so if wikipedians think they should be on commons then that is where they will go. as for not being able to watch images, do you have e-mail? commons e-mails you when pages on your watchlist change β^_command 17:21, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

No problem, I will delete them and reupload them under a suitable tag. Is there a tag I can apply to ensure they don't move to Commons? Neil ム 17:22, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

why not just use the commons e-mail tool? β^_command 17:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Why should I have to? Neil ム 17:37, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I think maybe you're missing the point that they're not your images. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 17:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Neil, only if they are fair use. Otherwise, free images can (and preferably will) go to Commons. And once they are uploaded, they not yours. Majorly (talk) 17:30, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

This isn't true. You own images you license under GFDL, you just have to let other people use them. But you still own them. Quite frankly, Neil is also well within his administrative priviledge to block Betacommandbot for disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point. Moving images to commons is disruptive. WilyD 19:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

WilyD I think you need to go read our policies again, in no way is moving images to commons disruptive. it been happening for many years now. and our free images should be posted on commons. any such block was out of the question. as for uploading images if they are free we can copy them to commons regardless of what you say. If you want to keep a local copy is a completely separate issue. β^_command 15:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think suggesting I would block the bot was one thing I should not have done. Neil ム 20:07, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

It makes perfect sense that they would be added to Commons, what doesn't make sense is that they would then be deleted from the English Wikipedia, an act which helps Commons not at all and only makes our life more difficult. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:21, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem is with Commons rather than the bot which is unhelpful but legit

I share Neil's sentiment but I must add Neil has no means on doing anything to have it his way. By uploading the images to Wikipedia under Commons-compatible license he has no way of preventing them being uploaded to commons. That said, this brings us back to the most serious problem of commons, its being subject to flukes. Suppose the editor uploads a free image to WP. Then, someone moves it to commons. Soon enough the WP copy gets deleted. Then, after the new attack of Commons' wannabe copyright lawyers (wanna a couple of names? can give you ten!) the image gets deleted from commons because the commons' view on a particular copyright rule changes again. Wikipedia image is gone by now. Result: article looses an image.

How can it happen? Many scenarios. Only user-created images uploaded under GFDL or cc-by-sa are reasonably safe forever. PD? No. Rules change. One day commons may move to allowing only world-wide PD images. Are you sure there is no country where the life of copyright is 300 years since the death of the author? Or that there cannot be in 5 years? Copyright laws do change retroactively sometimes.

Next: suppose the PD image is sourced to a web-site. In three years the site goes down. Some freak from the "copyright patrol" (wanna name? I can give you ten!) tags it as "source invalid", in ten days image is gone. Image's author who would have a better chance noticing the event on-wiki has no idea with what is going on on commons. Result is the same. Article looses image.

The problem is not the bot. The problem is with Commons. Neil, I share your sentiment. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do. You can beg Betacommand and his friends to not move your image but this would be asking for a favor and I doubt it would work. --Irpen 17:30, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Neil, while you may hold the copyright on the images, they have been licensed in such a way that we can copy them any way we want. What is more, Wikipedia has never made any sort of promise to you that it will host your images. If you want them to stay on Wikipedia, you best bet is to ask nicely, because you are not in a position to demand. Blocking the bot for such an action would be a highly inappropriate use of your admin tools. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 17:33, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Massive edit conflict ... what they all said, with a few additions, the most important one being about the ability to restore deleted images. If the Commons policy is in some way different from the EN policy, we admins can restore an EN deleted image, drop us a note. Or, well, I hate to even mention this, but if someone deletes an image for ... other inappropriate reasons ..., we can restore it as well. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

He's already deleting them. I am disappointed that an Admin would be this unaware of the terms of the GFDL, and would take such action. Of course, any particularly good photos can be undeleted, since the GFDL license can't be revoked. Thatcher131 17:36, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Does GFDL require that attribution must remain? Neil ム 17:36, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Thatcher131 17:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Then please explain where my attribution has gone from [1] and [2]. Then tell me again why Commons respects GFDL. Neil ム 17:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Well that image wasnt copied from wikipedia, if you want I can show you a few examples of my move to commons. I copy the upload history, page history, and the page text. making the transwiki'ing of images 100% GDFL compliant and covering all the bases and ensuring all users get credit for their work. β^_command 17:52, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That sounds great, Bc. Please do point to an example. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 20:15, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Neil, I suspect the problem was that you didn't explicitly give attribution in the image text, you just put GFDL-self, and assumed the self-part would be obvious. Betacommand, can you make sure the bot notes any GFDL attribution when moving an image to Commons? This includes giving the user name of the uploader when using GFDL-self. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:48, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Apparently commons user c:User:Billy1125 uploaded them without properly attributing them. You could ask on commons for them to be deleted or you could provide the proper information. Although I have not examined BCBot's code (and wouldn't know what to look for if I did) I suspect that the Bot will properly attribute all images, since failing to do so would raise yet another shitstorm. Allowing your images to be moved by the bot (or moving them yourself) would be the best way to guarantee proper attribution. Thatcher131 17:49, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

see my comment above. β^_command 17:52, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Massive edit conflict. Thatcher, You are right about the "yes" above but not fully right that GFDL cannot be revoked. Technically it can be revoked but it won't affect the derivative work where the image is already used or prevent taking a copy from the source where the originally GFDL image is copied. But one can prevent the image from being copied from the original place he uploaded it to by revoking GFDL. This is a technicality that affects little though. However, this has little to do with the problem of commons that make editors resent having their images move there. But, again, there is nothing one can do. True enough. --Irpen 17:43, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Neil (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) appears to be using his admin-bit to delete his GFDL images in protest under the "user request" CSD criteria. This seems disruptive, petty, and poor conduct to boot. It's terribly disappointing, and sets a poor precedent. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:48, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

If I were an admin, I would gladly follow his example. It's for nothing that I uploaded some of the images to Wikipedia rather than to Commons. Take Prokudin-Gorsky images, dating from before 1915. Some of them were modernized and colored by myself, and I could reasonably expect that my name as the uploader will be shown. Not at all. These pictures have long ago been moved to Commons and now may be seen on websites all over the world, without proper attribution of the original uploader or person responsible for their restoration. Can anybody name the person responsible for the restoration of Image:Sochi edited.jpg? Only I can. --Ghirla^-трёп- 13:08, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

He stopped at 13:31, August 17, 2007 Neil (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "Image:Lincolnblack.jpg". Thank goodness. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 18:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I have restored the few of them that were used in articles and not yet "commonized". The rest are only used in Neil's gallery and in one talk archive. Миша13 18:08, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

He just deleted another: "11:13, 17 August 2007 Neil (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "Image:Dryskislope1.jpg" (GFDL revoked. See my talk page.)" Petty. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 18:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

You are entitled to your opinion, Chairboy, but name-calling is not helpful. I have used my revoked any GFDL licensing associated with those images, until I can find a satisfactory license. Please see the note on my talk page regarding this. Neil ム 18:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not calling you a name, I'm ascribing the motivation of "pettiness" to your actions. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 18:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it is a good time to start doing something about the commons' problems as outlined above? We should at least try. --Irpen 17:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

C'mon, you know that AN/I has no dominion over commons. The question is whether Betacommand's bot obeys all requirements (attribution, etc.) - it does. Some users may be concerned over images deleted at commons, but it's easy enough to keep track of all transwikied files, the bot could even be modified to include a "Images transferred by such-and-such" cat in the process. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 18:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally, my higher priority than moving images is checking that things other people copied to commons was done properly. Just yesterday I found one of my photos had been copied there almost a year ago without attribution by someone who obviously didn't know it was necessary. In that time no one had figured out that a whole set of photos had been improperly copied from en.wiki to the very same image names. How hard would that be to check? — Laura Scudder ☎ 14:35, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Improper speedy deletions of the images should be reverted. The images should only be deleted if they've gone through a deletion review process. Neil, just because you uploaded the images doesn't mean you can delete them whenever you want to. Corvus cornix 18:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Would those images not be eligible for a speedy G7 deletion? Or does that not apply to images (and if so, why not? WP:SPEEDY says that "General [speedy deletion]criteria...apply to all namespaces."). --ElKevbo 18:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

As Neil has resumed his image deletion spree, now claiming to have revoked the GFDL from his images, and seems to have no intention of stopping, I have blocked him for 24 hours. I regret that this is necessary, but he is using his admin tools to disrupt the project on a potentially massive scale. --Krimpet 18:28, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Blocking an admin doesn't prevent him or her from using admin tools. Mike R 18:33, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

This is a bit much for even a mop wielding mouse without a law degree. User talk:Mikegodwin#Time for the WP's official copyright lawyer to weigh in. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 18:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Both Neils' deletions and blocking him are wrong solutions of a serious problem whose real solution is long overdue. --Irpen 18:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Blocking Neil is absurd and it's only going to make this conflict worse. If he isn't unblocked very soon, I'm going to review his unblock request. Sarah 18:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Krimpet unblocked Neil after off-line discussion in which Neil agreed to stop deleting and talk it out. Mike Godwin hasn't yet weighed in, but I suspect will probably be the definitive voice here. More news available at a very reasonable price ...  :-) --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 19:18, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict w/above)I apologize if my block was on the hasty side =/ -- I only resorted to a block as I was concerned that he intended to continue deleting images. After discussing it with him in private, he has promised to me that he will pursue his concerns in the proper forums, and I have unblocked him. --Krimpet 19:20, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, commons is a problem but this is even a bigger problem that plagues the Wikipedia. Please never ever "block on the hasty side"!. --Irpen 19:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

• One potential problem with commons that I haven't seen raised is the reason why commons was created: to a be a common repository of images that could be used across a range of projects. In other words, all the different language Wikipedias, and other projects as well, I believe, can use the same image that is on Commons. This is a feature, and often a desirable one. The "usage" tool on Commons exists to allow people to track how their images (where 'their' refers to them as the photographer) are being used. However, there will always be people who don't want to do things this way, and would prefer to limit their images to just one location. I wonder if there is a way to have a licence that does this: "free, but only use here"? Or is that against everything that the free content movement stands for? One of my free pictures was picked up and used in the French Wikipedia, which I was very pleased about, but I'm less certain what my reaction would be if I saw a picture I took being used in an article that was written in a language I didn't understand ((eg. Japanese). I would want to be sure they were not misusing the picture, but maybe this points at the real problem. A photographer releasing free pictures must, at some point, trust the re-users of the content to use the free pictures responsibly. Carcharoth 19:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is free! You need to understand what this means. Anyone can reuse your photo for any reason they like provided the follow the GFDL. There is nothing to stop somone bypassing commons and copying and pasting your image to another language wikipedia. There is nothing to stop soming copying and pasting your image to another internet site, even one you heartily disaprove of. If you licence under a free licence users are free to do whatever they want with the image as long as they follow the licence instructions. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 20:01, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Krimpet... I agree with Irpen, please think and discuss before you block. Now you seem to be apologizing to WP:ANI for a hasty block — what's that about? How about a word of regret to Neil, in his actual block log? You do realize it was previously squeaky clean, but will now forever more be displaying your claim that he used admin tools disruptively ? Followed only by your rather ungracious unblock message? Think about it. Please. Bishonen | talk 19:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC).

Bish, Krimpet has apologised and I have accepted. I don't think it's productive going after her at this juncture. Neil ム 20:06, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see widespread condemnation of his actions. As entertaining as jumping up and down on him after he's unblocked might seem, he performed a block he felt was correct, and unblocked it when Neil agreed to stop his spree and help work out a solution to this mess. If you still have a problem w/ Krimpet, do something about it other than sniping at an 'easy target'. While you're at it, do you disagree with the assertion that Neil was disrupting the project to make a point? 1. This conversation is evidence enough that he caused disruption, and 2. He's doing this to make a point about Commons, which he has a self-described irrational dislike of. Before you try and start a pile-up, consider the context please. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 20:02, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I won't comment other than to point out deleting 4 images is not a spree in any sense of the word. Neil ム 20:04, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Let's not jump up and down on either Krimpet, or Neil, they've made peace. We can talk about the issues, try to reach agreement ourselves, wait for Mike Godwin to be the Voice From On High, or both, but recriminations can only make things worse, not better. Let's aim for better. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 20:07, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm w/ AnonEMouse on this. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 20:18, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Blocking was a bad move. Images can be undeleted after discussion, there was no emergency here. Neil, as far as I can tell the problem with your images on commons is that a user uploaded images he did not own and used a false license. It's not as though this problem is unique to commons. There as here, no one knows about the problem until they are informed. I have a commons user ID and would be happy to fix the info if you wish. Or you could ask a commons admin to delete them and then transwiki them properly. In fact, the best way to preserve your attribution would be to let BCBot do your images. Thatcher131 20:09, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

• Could someone please explain, or point to an explanation, of the problems with Commons. I agree with some of the descriptions of these problems, and have stated some above. I'd like to also respond to two points above:
  • (a) Theresa Knott said: "Wikipedia is free!" Yes, I know that. But images are different from text. Text can be mercilessly edited. Images can be edited too, but there are restrictions on that. This might boil down to creative control. Many photographers contributing free content have no problem with their pictures being redistributed, but do have problems with their pictures being altered: (a) cropping; (b) cleaning; (c) colour levels; (d) other photoshopping stuff. Ditto for inappropriate use (eg. misleading captions), and failure to credit the photographer. Could someone explain to me which CC licence (the 'some rights reserved' stuff) is best for addressing these concerns, as opposed to the GFDL (was that license ever even intended to be used for photographs?).
  • (b) Christopher Parham said: "It makes perfect sense that they would be added to Commons, what doesn't make sense is that they would then be deleted from the English Wikipedia, an act which helps Commons not at all and only makes our life more difficult." - could he or someone explain this in more detail? Or point somewhere where this is clearly explained?
• Thanks. Carcharoth 20:33, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
  • • What gives you the idea that images are different than text? Images can be mercilessly edited according to both the GFDL and the CC by SA. The fact that we choose not to on the whole doesn't mean the licence stops us. If photographers have a problem with their images being photoshopped then they must not upload them to wikipedia. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 20:59, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem is the loss of control in moveing an image to commons and deleteing it from en. Commons is a seperate project with different priorities and lower levels of anti-vandle skills.Geni 20:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

When an image is deleted from here, editors can no longer include it on their English Wikipedia watchlist and administrators can no longer protect it. Changes to the image obviously affect our product but aren't in our recent changes list, aren't in our administrative logs. If we find recent changes, watchlists, protection, etc. to be useful features, why are we systematically destroying them in regard to free images? Deleting the image also introduces confusion about what is the proper place to discuss the image with regard to its inclusion in this encyclopedia: at the commons talk page or at the talk page of the deleted image page here? Commons isn't helped in any way by deleting the image from Wikipedia, so the effort we put into deleting images that have been moved to Commons is pretty counterproductive. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:48, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

You cannot "revoke" GFDL. From the license itself "Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein". "unlimited in duration". Thats the whole point of GFDL, and it is why people on Wikipedia do not get to control their contributions. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 21:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That would be true if GFDL were a contract; it is a licence, and can be revoked as long as the contributor remains the sole contributor. Neil ム 21:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Extreamly doubtful. Once you have released something under the GFDL people can continue to use it under the GFDL as long as they can get of hold of a copy.Geni 21:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

There no such concept as a "contributor" in GFDL. When you upload an image you own as GFDL, you're giving the Wikimedia Foundation a irrevocable license to use the image for any purpose. And very time someone's browser downloads this image, this person gets a irrevocable license to use the image for any purpose. That said, if you delete this image from Wikipedia, I can, for instance, re-upload it under a different name, as long as I credit you as the author and tag it as gfdl. --Abu badali ^(talk) 21:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Now you're all talking about the trees instead of the forest, but let me just point out something really obvious. I write, "Flannery O'Connor's stories always have a theological content, and she said that her sole theme was grace." Now, it gets edited. Fine. It turns into, "Flannery O'Connor ate boogers and liked a girl called grace." That's no longer my contribution. I.e. no one would credit the last statement to me. No one would say that it was my contribution. In fact, it's so obvious as to hardly need saying. However what is going on with the editing of a photograph is that the edits make it no longer the same photograph. I.e. it is no longer "My pet bird" but "Editor Bobo's picture of a bird." Because photographs are single objects rather than documents, because they "mean" all at once rather than in sequence, there is no way to change it "a little" and have it be "mostly the same." The moment you edit it, it's not the same thing at all. Therefore, any edit of a photograph is, in a sense, a brand new photograph that requires separate licensure. The original contributor basically allowed others to use the photograph, including using it as the basis of a new artwork created by editing, but the edited object is not the original. I would be miffed if someone said, "Geogre said Flannery O'Connor was a lesbian," and I'd be miffed if the photo of my pet bird suddenly had a pirate under its claws. It isn't that people can't edit -- the license allows that -- but then the result of any editing is no longer covered by the original donation/license. Geogre 21:45, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I believe you're more or less mistaken. I can only change your Flannery O'Connor's statements in my Flannery O'Connor statement because you licensed your Flannery O'Connor under GFDL. My newly created Flannery O'Connor is a derivative work from your original work, and we are co-authors. And per GFDL, I have the obligation to credit you and me, and the obligation to license my derived Flannery O'Connor's statement under GFDL (the viral copyleft thing). If I fail to credit you or to license the derivative work as GFDL, I'm violating your copyrights.

This is in no way different with images. When I draw a pirate on your bird's picture, I'm using my gfdl-granted right to create a derivative work. Again, we (you and me) are the authors of the derivative work. If I refuse to license this derivative work as GFDL, I'm also refusing my GFDL-granted right to use the image. --Abu badali ^(talk) 22:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

There are other laws which would see people get into a lot of trouble for inappropriately photoshopping GFDL pictures, such as those of a living person. That and basic ethics. This is why I, on principle, don't upload pictures of people under the GFDL. A more restrictive licence, yes, but not one that allows alteration of the original image. The equivalent here is changing a picture of Flannery O'Connor to "show" that Flannery O'Connor "is a lesbian". By the way, thanks to Geogre for using this example: Flannery O'Connor is a nice story, if a somewhat sad one. Anyway, the point is that images are different from text. Collaborative editing on a piece of text is very different to collaborative editing on an image. Try it some time. Carcharoth 22:54, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Which is why GFDL is not a very good license for pictures. See also the "moral rights" story in the Signpost this week, regarding the CC 3.0 license: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-08-13/CC 3.0. Carcharoth 22:57, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Do you understand that Wikipedia's policies does not allow you to upload images of living people under any license that would prevent modification? --Abu badali ^(talk) 23:02, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes I do understand that. When I said "I, on principle, don't upload pictures of [living] people under the GFDL.", that translates to "I, on principle, don't upload pictures of [living] people". You seemed to have interpreted it the other way, as meaning "I upload them under a different license", which is not what I meant. Another way to put this is: I'm not going to take a picture of someone and then say to them "is it OK if I upload this picture to the internet under a license that allows anyone to do what they want with it?" I wouldn't give someone permission to upload a GFDL picture of myself, so I don't presume to ask other people that question. It's an ethical stance, based partly on personality rights: "the right of every individual to control the commercial use of his or her name, image, likeness, or some other identifying aspect of identity". Essentially, there are other ways to bar commercial use of content, over and above the GFDL. Essentially, the GFDL does not operate in a vacuum. You have to consider other laws. If modication of a GFDL image leads to fraud, defamation, libel or slander, then the copyright status of the image becomes irrelevant. Do you understand that? Carcharoth 23:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

• And from that Signpost story: "Moral rights, as defined by most legal systems, include the right to "the integrity of the work", barring the work from alteration, distortion or mutilation." - that is the sort of clause I would be happy with. If someone can confirm to me that this new CC 3.0 license is better in that respect than the GFDL, I will upload any future pictures I take to Commons and allow free distribution, but not "alteration, distortion or mutilation". Or am I misunderstanding all this (quite possibly!). Any advice would be appreciated (and sorry for posting this here - where would be a better place to continue the discussion?). Carcharoth 23:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
  • On reflection, I think my position is better stated as "you are welcome to take a copy of the picture and modify it, but please remove me from the list of authors, I only want to be associated with the picture I took, not the modifed form you produce". But then that runs into the situations of people only cleaning or slightly cropping an image - I'd still want to be credited as the major author of the photograph. It is more the, "I'm going to take a copy of your picture, run it through a shredder, invert the colours, throw a can of paint over it, doodle on it, and then call it art" cases, that would lead me to say "well, I'd prefer it if you don't associate me with that". Does that make any sense? Carcharoth 23:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I think Christopher Parham's point above was a good one: deleting images that have been copied to Commons causes more problems than it solves, particularly with images whose copyright has expired. Since the English Wikipedia requires only that these images be public domain in the United States, while Commons requires that they also be public domain in the source country, the transwikiing process is full of traps for the unwary. Many images tagged {{PD-US}}, and at least some that are tagged {{PD-Art}} and {{PD-art-life-70}}, do not meet Commons's licensing requirements and are likely to be deleted there when someone finally notices them, but many people who transwiki images are unaware of this.

If we stopped deleting images after they have been transwikied, then Commons could make its own decisions about them without their being lost from Wikipedia articles. —Celithemis 00:55, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

• I don't know why anyone hasn't pointed this out, but a huge problem with moving images to Commons with a bot is that all the time people upload images under "GFDL" or "PD" that aren't, and are found on Google Image Search or the like. These usually get deleted after a time, but odds are the bot will just mindlessly copy them over, aggravating the Commons folk and vastly increasing the damage. —Dark•Shikari^[T] 04:00, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
  • to address Dark Shikari's issues I will not automatically transwiki images to commons just because {{commons ok}} is on the image. I only allow certain users to tag images to be transwikied users who use the commons ok and are not approved just get ignored. Users who tag images to be moved to commons are noted on the commons image when its moved. If I get a complaint from commons I will remove said user from the list and ask questions later. β^_command 05:01, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
• Not a lawyer, but I think that people are getting hung up on the difference between licensing an image and hosting an image. I think that it's GFDL for good once it's been released as such, but that doesn't mean that we have some moral obligation to keep the image here for people to see and copy. The free/unfree status of the image is not dependant upon its presence in any particular location, so it'd be just as free after it was deleted here as it was before - it'd just be less easily accessable. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 15:17, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

"No Commons" template

I feel that Commons has thoroughly discredited itself on many levels, so that many wikipedians are reluctant to have anything to do with it. Is it possible for them to upload their images under GFDL, specifying that they prohibit the image from being used on one particular website (and that particular website will be Commons)? If this solution is legally possible, I will create Template:GFDL noCommons and reupload some of my pictures under this license. Your opinions are welcome. --Ghirla^-трёп- 13:48, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Ghirla, such a template is not legally possible, and is ludicrous besides. By releasing your image under the GFDL, you are giving blanket permission for it to be used by anyone who abides by the terms of the license agreement, which Commons most certainly does. This is a necessary requirement for something to be free. If a work cannot be freely redistributed it isn't free at all, and we wouldn't accept it on the site. We do not allow users to upload their images with restrictive requirements. No "by permission only" and certainly no restrictions on where the image can be used. --Cyde Weys 14:38, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, if you want that level of control over your intellectual property, then don't set it free with a free license. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 14:41, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I do not think this could be legally possible. GFDL and such restriction seems to be incompatible. Perhaps the only way to avoid an image to be transferred to Commons would be to tag it with a licence that is compatible here on Wikipedia but not compatible on Commons. But an important point is that this argument is made of two rather separate points. One is that an image is copied to Commons and the other is that is delete from Wikipedia. Since the main part of the problem is the second one (since a person who has upload an image here under GFDL was ok that the image was copied anywhere and in modified version too, I can no see that the main problem could be the copy to Commons). So preventing the copy to Commons would not solve the actually problem, but it would just a way to stop this procedure. By the way even preventing a new image to be copied to Commons, would not prevent that an old image could be copied to Commons (and this even if the image was delete).

One more point that I would like to note is that if an image is delete and that is not what the community wants, the image should be restored. Now here there is the difference that it is automatically believed that an image once upload to Commons could be (safely) delete from wikipedia and does not to be restore on wikipedia. Now the short way to solve out the problem that an image is delete is to undelete it, and add a note of the reason of that, putting a note that the image is not delete again for it have been uploaded to Commons. But on the other hands it should be investigated the reason why an image should be delete (for instance having it on more than one place use disk space - i am actually not sure on this), and it would be a good idea to discuss the problem arose with this discussion among the involved communities (including not only the English Wikipedia and Commons, but possibly other projects too and surely involving developers - since the reasons for commons to exists are first of all of technical reason).

All of this actually rise me one more question. Would be interesting a feature that allow to include on a page a specific version of an image? This would avoid the problem that a page is vandalized by change an image that it include. (a similar result would be get by forbidding to uplad an image with the same name, but this is a way that I like less). -- AnyFile 14:39, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

There is no license a Wikipedian is allowed to upload under that is incompatible with Commons. You must choose a free license when uploading an image, either (certain) Creative Commons, GFDL, public domain, or something like it. We do not allow users to upload their own work under more restrictive fair use clauses. --Cyde Weys 14:50, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Please see WP:AN#Crafting a response to attempted GFDL revocations; it is very relevant to this discussion. --Cyde Weys 15:18, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to second the position that you may not license an image to be used on Wikipedia under conditions that do not allow it to be copied to Commons. There are legitimate issues on Commons with miscopying information when things get moved, deletion policy, and such, which should be corrected or otherwise dealt with—but not by using a restrictive license as a tool to exclude content from it. (I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping a local copy of images that get copied to Commons, if people feel strongly about it.) Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 16:40, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Is this true? Image:Outersolarsystem objectpositions labels comp.pngthis image I've assigned various licenses, some of which are appropriate for commons, one of which is not. Somehow, I don't trust commons not to delete it. I can at least keep an eye on it here. I'm tempted to remove the "candidate for commons" tag on it. WilyD 15:44, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

CSD I8 is not sacrosanct. It can be rewritten or removed, if that's what the collective wisdom suggests. Angus McLellan (Talk) 17:05, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

If there is a real risk of an image we would consider acceptable being deleted on commons or replaced with a significantly different image, then I8 should be modified. I8 assumes that the existence of a commons image makes it pointless to have a local copy. A different risk of deletion or change at commons invalidates that assumption. I say this as a matter of logic, while holding no opinion on the actual risk level. GRBerry 03:38, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

It is pehaps worth noting at this point that CSD I8 says that images may not be deleted under it if the image description page contains an objection to moving them to Commons. So, while you may not actually stop anyone from copying your free image to Commons — provided they do so according to the license you've chosen, in particular preserving attribution where required — simply writing "I do not want this image to be moved to Commons." on the image description page is enough to prevent it from being deleted from Wikipedia. (And yes, there probably should be a template to that effect, if there isn't already.) Personally, I think doing so is silly and counterproductive, but if you want redundant copies of your images to be kept on enwiki, you can have it that way. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

The project has NEVER been wikipedia only. If you don't want your image to be copied to any website in the world then don't release it under a free license. We don't want non free material. Secretlondon 14:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm slightly amazed that someone can get to be an administrator and yet still not understand free content.. Secretlondon 14:09, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Preventing a move to Commons is legally impossible, obviously. But how about we change WP:CSD#I8 to say "The image cannot be deleted if the original uploader objects for any reason"? --- RockMFR 19:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

• Frankly, no. That only encourages WP:OWNership and petty WP:POINT responses like the above by Neil. I echo Secretlondon's amazement, and believe Neil should have his adminship revoked. >Radiant< 12:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

  As per my message on your talk page, Radiant, either file an RFC or stop making such comments. I am not asking for the image to be Wikipedia only - I have no objection whatsoever to it being copied to Commons or anywhere else. All am I asking is that a local copy be retained. I am not sure how that should lead to my adminship being revoked. Neil ム 17:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

  How is this statement supportable, in light of your attempt to rescind the GFDL licensing of your images? You were clearly disrupting the project to make a point about Commons. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 18:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

  For which I was blocked while discussions took place, and when I agreed to no longer attempt to revoke anything, I was unblocked with a polite apology. Yes, I did attempt to revoke GFDL. I was convinced not to, for the good of the project, and will not do attempt to do so again. Can we let it go yet? Neil ム 21:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Something perhaps not pointed out so far

Guys, I see this, and all the legal wrangling in this thread is not what worries me in the slightest. What worries me is several problems with bad image uploads that newbie users seem to have. I do constant image patrol and see these all the time:

1. Faux licenses. There are dozens of images per day which are uploaded under a clearly false pd license (e.g., screencaps). A bot that blindly copies them to commons will be abetting this problem.
2. WP:NOT#MYSPACE problems. I also see a ridiculous amount of image uploads which are just "me and my boyfriend johnie!" with no other contributions. Why move these to commons.
3. Commons already has a huge backlog. You think ours is bad. There's is months - this will exacerbate the problem. This is not just a philosophical problem. Uploading ridiculous amounts of pd images means fewer eyes to spot errors, and fewer admins to hit the delete button. This will greatly compound problem images.
4. Notifying users of images up for deletion is no longer possible.

Please think of all this before wholesale approving this bot. The Evil Spartan 20:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Please note that I am the bot operator in this case and I agree with the points that you have stated. the automatic transwiki doesnt just happen because {{Commons ok}} is on the image. I only accept images tagged from approved users. (users who know what they are doing and have been added to my list) such users should understand and be able judge images that are ok for commons. all my bot does is allow users to easily move appropriate images to commons. those users are logged on the uploaded commons page. If I get a user who abuses the process and a commons admin brings this to my attention I will revoke access no questions asked and said user might be blocked under our WP:DISRUPT policy. such abuse is not welcome and I hope users who are trusted with access to the tool have enough respect and intelligence not to screw things up. β^_command 21:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

If indeed the bot is run in such a way, this would alleviate a good many of my concerns. I just think that we should be sure there is a pair of eyes that see an image before it is transfered. The Evil Spartan 00:09, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I've uploaded many images under the GFDL. Someone could legally re-upload them all with "This image sucks!!!" written over them. And yet I don't think anyone would say we have to provide hosting for that, even if it is legal, so arguments purely along the lines of "We have to allow it because it's legal" are naive here. My point is that maybe we should look beyond what's legal and think about what's best for the project. If someone is contributing images and really wants a local copy to remain, we don't have to let that happen... but would it kill us to do so? Deleting the local copy when all it apparently accomplishes is annoying the uploader, and possibly making them not want to ever contribute anything again, seems like the actual WP:POINT being made here here. --W.marsh 01:09, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Why don't we just say, then, that the uploader has no authority to prevent anyone moving a free image to Commons (and indeed voluntarily relinquished such authority the moment (s)he chose to license the image under a free license), but that a local copy will be retained if the uploader so requests? I personally don't see the point, the accounts are still as free at Commons as they ever were and come complete with a watchlist, but I've never had anyone object to an image move to Commons. For those few who do, we'll move it but keep a local copy too. What would be wrong with that? Whether anyone likes it or not, Commons is a sister project devoted to free images, and free images in the end belong there just as much as dictionary definitions belong on Wiktionary. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Not a bad idea, then, to create a template that amounts to Template:Keep copy here which contains text for users and is recognized like a reverse robots.txt by bots ... it says 'go ahead and copy, but just copy and nothing more'. Or ... one could parameterize Template:Commons ok with 'leavecopy' and values 'y' or 'n'. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. --Ghirla^-трёп- 08:26, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

What Seraphimblade said... There shouldn't be any issue with copying GFDL images over to Commons, but there isn't any reason to delete the Wikipedia copy or relink articles to the Common copy if the original uploader wishes. As long as the local copies aren't being deleted after they are moved, I'm fine with the bot.--Isotope23 ^talk 14:54, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Perverted Justice

I've just gone through Perverted-Justice and removed all outbound links to their site because they are redirecting all our traffic to page set up for the "Wikipedia Visitor" which discusses Wikipedia as a "Corporate sex offender" and our alleged protection of pedophiles, "Literally, anyone that points out the large-scale pedophile campaign to subvert Wikipedia is an enemy to Wikipedia itself, according to them. Due to that, we've set up this redirect to properly inform Wikipedia readers regarding this important issue. With Wikipedia continuing to try to get their project used in classrooms across the world, it's important to note the danger inherent in the public accepting the project as being factual considering their acceptance of even extremist special interests such as pedophile activists as legitimate editors of their "encyclopedia." " The page also has links, similar to those some might remember User:XavierVE posted before he was indefinitely blocked a few days ago, to a "Wikipedia Campaign" page which contains a list of Wikipedia editors alleged to pedophiles. Related AN/I discussion here. Sarah 07:17, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes should be delinked completely as an attack site and any related accounts blocked as necessary. Theres no place for ideological witchhunts on wikipedia, for any purpose. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 07:46, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

What about all theese links from other wikipedia pages? Do they all need to go too? Theresa Knott | The otter sank 08:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe the policy is to remove absolutely all links to pages that attack wikipedia editors, and block people who re-introduce them. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 08:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

PJ itself doesn't host the content which complicates matters.Geni 12:33, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how that matters. Furthermore, wouldn't it be prudent to go ahead and add this to the blacklist (for now)? --ElKevbo 15:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

That... is exactly what they accuse us of doing. Is there some reason why we're trying to hide criticism from a legitimate and active organisation? Would it not be better to counter it? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:31, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

...in fact, now I've read their post, to try and claim Peej is an attack site is utterly unjustified. Their reasons for listing us as Corporate Sex Offender is "Wikipedia accepts pedophiles as editors with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.". But we do. Pedophiles who do not self-identify as pedophiles are not blocked, but allowed to edit. Why are we trying to hide this fact and label the site that respectfully and politely points that out as some kind of vicious attack site? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:36, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how you can say it isn't an attack site. The page refers users to a site where wiki editors are labelled pedophiles. The basis for these allegations are little more than hearsay. The founder of that site was blocked from editing here because of such frivolous personal attacks. He's just taken those attacks elsewhere. That he's decided to manipulate the encyclopedia in this manner to further this personal crusae should not be tolerated. Vagr4nt 20:02, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Dev. How do you think PJ is going to take this? Do you think they'll understand what an "attack site" is? Or do you think that will just support their case that Wikipedia is "supporting" pedophiles? Didn't ArbCom want to be informed by email about pedo related stuff?

I really don't see that this as an attack site. I think if outbound links to the PJ main site redirect to the "Hello Wikipedia Visitor!" page, that would be ok, the only issue is they are complicating outbound links where they are used as a reference. Maybe this can be explained to them. If the outside world hears the Wikipedia has labeled PJ an attack site, some eyebrows are going to be raised. Just a note. daveh4h 15:35, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I agree with your statement that it's "[not] an attack site" but if all of our links to the site are being redirected then our links to the site are pretty useless for nearly every purpose. From a purely practical point of view, until those links are allowed to link to...whatever they're supposed to link to, our links to that website need to be edited or removed as they're simply not serving their intended function. --ElKevbo 15:39, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

That is so completely not the point. If their redirection is making it difficult to use it as a source, we should be contacting Peej to ask if they will either take their redirect down or provide an option to go on to the page linked to in the first place. I fail to see how that in any way warrants blacklisting Peej altogether. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:43, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

If you (or anyone else) can resolve the matter then that would obviously be the way to go. It would certainly be easier than us doing anything (removing links, hiding them, etc.).

Further, I don't necessarily support blacklisting this website. I merely offered that it would be prudent if the decision were made to block the site then adding it to the blacklist would seem to be the easiest way to do it. --ElKevbo 15:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

By the way, if ArbCom asked to be notified of events like this, has anyone done so? --ElKevbo 16:15, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

The whole idiotic "no links to attack sites" policy amounts to a witchhunt in its own regard; see my essay on the subject. Nevertheless, the site's redirecting of inbound links from Wikipedia to a different page is grounds for temporary delinking until they change this behavior. *Dan T.* 15:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, it's useless like this, and given my experience with XavierVE, I doubt it'll ever be useful. Prohibitions against linking to attack sites are stupid, prohibitions against linking to attack pages make much more sense. As long as they're forcing us to do the latter, we might as well drop all the links. WilyD 15:54, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I will contact Peej to ask if they will either take down this redirect or allow people to go on to the original link. In return, could I please ask that this absurd delinking stop until I get a reply. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:56, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not experiencing this redirecting. Powers ^T 15:57, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I am. Are you sure that you're using a link from Wikipedia? I just made one of the links in their main article active (in a preview; edit was not saved) and it does get redirected. --ElKevbo 16:06, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I am experiencing it too. I have emailed their admin address and will report back regarding what they do. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:10, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe your browser is configured not to send referrer strings when you follow links? *Dan T.* 16:27, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

As one of the blockers of XavierVE, I have to say, removing all these links is a mistake. PJ serves a useful purpose and that is not as an attack site. You'll note that it does not specifically target Wikipedia. It's a broad, partisan site that does publish some negative information, but it is not an attack site, and definitely not one that is designed against wikipedia. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 16:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

If they're all redirected then most of the links do not serve their intended purpose. I think one could make an argument that links intended just to link to the website without linking a specific document on the website (i.e. the PJ official website in the article's "External links" section) be preserved. But other links that are used as references for specific documents no longer link to those documents and need to be dealt with as we deal with other "dead" links. --ElKevbo 16:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

For those who dont know Xavier got blocked indefinitely a few days ago. This isnt the first time this has happened, very reminiscent of when Daniel Brandt, who was also indefinitely blocked at the time, did the same thing (witht he same BADSITES controversy Dan refers to. I agree with Dev on this one. I think the links should be restored but with the nowiki command so they have to be pasted in to one's webbrowser, which is what happened in the Brandt situation, SqueakBox 19:46, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

First off, of course it's an "attack site", by any reasonable definition of "attack site". I don't think they'd deny that they're interested in attacking, exposing, shaming, and ultimately destroying pedophiles; that's rather the whole point! But if they're attacking Wikipedia as a "corporate sex offender" for not participating in their crusade, then they've strayed beyond that ambit: instead of targeting pedophiles they're now targeting anyone who is insufficiently zealous in rooting out pedophiles. Wikipedia has no obligation to indulge that sort of "if you're not with us, you're with the terrorists pedophiles" attitude.

Second, if they're redirecting links from Wikipedia to a page full of attacks on Wikipedia, then those links are not useful references. If you intend to make links to various pages on their site, but in fact those links get redirected to a page full of libel about Wikipedia editors, then there is no point in having those links -- they're actually a net negative for Wikipedia readers. --FOo 20:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I broke all the links used as references, so now they have to be entered directly into a browser and no longer redirect. Problem solved as far as I can see. Arkalochori 20:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I just got a reply from Peej:

We could do that, but Wikipedia policies state that any redirection is

cause for delisting. Plus, the other point of contention, we're not going to stop linking the Wikipedia Campaign article on our CSO Wiki. Which ironically is linked from other places in Wikipedia without a massive firestorm of anger being raised (see, Pedophile Article Watch talk page).

We're quite pleased with the links being removed from Wikipedia. This will do two things, one, it will reduce the google relevancy of the Wikipedia article about us, an article rife with error and editors whose sole purpose is to try to use Wikipedia to attack us. Secondly, having the article without links to our organization but links to other organizations that attack us will make the average person, unaware of the problems of Wikipedia, wonder why the hell the article has such a overt bias.

Lastly, the idea that websites cannot "respond" to a Wikipedia article by redirecting is quite curious. The policy itself is nonsensical. It is Wikipedia saying that their editors, no matter who they are, can write whatever they wish about a subject and that subject has no right of response. 'Tis an unjust, silly policy and one we have no interest in

cooperating with.

So, ignoring the aggressiveness of the email, I have to ask: our policy on redirection says WHAT?! Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 20:58, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

They're clearly trying to provoke Wikipedia into showing bias against them, so that they can in turn use this against Wikipedia. Aggressive enforcement of the pseudo-policy against linking to "attack sites" plays right into the hands of people like that; all they have to do is make their own site into an "attack site" in the eyes of the BADSITES warriors to get Wikipedia to be heavyhanded in censoring it, which can be a public-relations coup for them if their aim is to show that Wikipedia is a nest of censors who can't stand criticism. *Dan T.* 21:08, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

We completely are if we block all of Peej because they don't like our policy on pedophiles. It's not like they're being abusive. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 21:15, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, this is a situation where WIkipedia is damned if we do, and damned if we don't. If we remove the links, which PJ admits are only designed to insult and denigrate all of Wikipedia as a group of pedos, or pedo-lovers, PJ says 'they won't link to us 'cause we tell teh troof.', and if we DO link to them, then we're 'all STUPID kiddie-touchers who can't even prevent PJ from bringing teh ebil into da lite'. Either way, Wikipedia is going to look bad.

I'd also be willing to wager that XavierVE is monitoring this very thread, and enjoying our frustrations. This is also clearly him 'punishing' Wikipedia for banning him for his libelous behaviors and attacks on our editors. I am concerned he may go even fruther with this 'revenge' theme, and go after additional editors whove offended him in the past.

Given that we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't, I'd say that the above mentioned cut n paste situation is probably dishonest, and we should instead put a template at the top stating 'Some source links in this article may cause your browser to go elsewhere, as a result of deliberate hostilities against Wikipedia by PJ.com'. readers can figure out for themselves taht PJ isn't interested in promoting balacned and well cited coverage, and will (hopefully) understand that instead, PJ is agenda warrioring the situation, which would make them look childish. Go for a solution as radically transparent as possible, one that makes it clear that PJ won't allow readers to read about PJ if they come from Wikipedia. Let the readers figure it out. ThuranX 21:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

While our policies on pedophiles is significantly better than it was at the beginning of Martch (which PJ acknowledges while lauding the actions of Jimbo and Fred Bauder) it still, IMO, has a long way to go. Perhaps instead of trying to label PJ as a BADSITE we should look at our current pedophiel policy and certain things are going on re that on wikipedia (such as the locking down of the terrible POV pro-pedophilia activism and our tolerancce of editors who dont identify as pedophiles on wikipedia but do do so off wikipedia in a way that makes it obvious it is the same person). I put the PJ criticism, obviously with a ref, inott he criticism of wikipedia article a couple of months back and it was certainly still there before this lastest event came up. Thanks for giving us Peej's email, certainly confirms to me that we should not have an article about tis founder and be extra careful re BLP in the PJ article itself, SqueakBox 21:24, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, this is almost certainly the case, and I suspect they'll just keep escalating the provocation until we're forced to do something. I've dug through XavierVE's history a lot since I was the one who deleted his User talk after he was banned to purge all the problems (which it was rife with) and it's very clear he came here with the purpose of getting himself banned to show that Wikipedia is a safe haven for pedophiles. I'm sure he'll just keep provoking us, and I'm sure the only thing we can do that makes sense and will be effective is ignore it. As long as we can't link to his website correctly, I see no point in trying and failing. WilyD 21:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, with all the rhetoric going back and forth, I'm going to ask: Are they making unfounded accusations against specific editors? If so, we need to get rid of links to it posthaste, as we should most certainly not be linking to sites which call a specific editor a pedophile or anything else. On the other hand, it appears to me that they are criticizing Wikipedia in general. While they may do so in harsh tones, I see no reason not to link to such a site. Even the New York Times has criticized Wikipedia as a whole at various times, shall we ban all links to them? Refuse to link to Slashdot, as posts there are often critical of Wikipedia? There is nothing to be gained by simply refusing to acknowledge criticism of the project in general. If it is well-founded, we should take it to heart; if unfounded, we should simply ignore it. Attempting to suppress it lends it credence, is that what we really want to do here? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:22, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Acusations against individual editors are on their corporatesexoffenders site rather than their PJ one although the page you are redirected to links to the corporatesexoffenders site.Geni 21:24, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly how "doesn't appreciate it when you run around calling random people pedophiles" translated to "supports pedophiles," and yes, the timing of this with Xavier's blocking makes this all seem rather petty; those are factors to consider in terms of our overall approach, here, but we shouldn't be writing articles in terms of who we are or aren't on good terms with (see NPOV, after all), and I'd prefer we didn't let ourselves get sucked into an adverserial whirlwind for no particular reason. My greater concern is that, with the links redirected, they're no longer going where they're intended to go. The nowiki solution appears to fix that well enough, for the time being. – Luna Santin (talk) 21:34, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

What a pointless thing to do. Wikipedia, as an entity, is now a "passive" sex-offender? Ten thousands people are being slandered because we refuse to acquiesce to his point of view in our articles and policies? Wonderful. Yeah, whatever. Personal feelings aside, he has rendered it impossible to link to his website.... however, you can still us his website as a source if you don't actually link the address. ELs are never required to cite a source... even if it's an online source. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not reasonable for anyone to expect to draft Wikipedia into their campaign, no matter how right and good that campaign may be. Wikipedia cannot be anti-pedophile any more than Wikipedia can be anti-Mafia. Indeed, we can probably talk about this problem more sanely if we use the Mafia as metaphor:

We report truthfully on notable and newsworthy crimes committed by the Mafia, but the project itself doesn't take a stand that the Mafia is evil. We certainly don't take the direction of Mafia-related articles from the FBI, the Carabinieri, or anti-Mafia crusaders.

Even if almost all Wikipedia editors hate the Mafia and regard it as an incarnation of evil itself, Wikipedia as a project is limited to reporting the facts. It is utterly wrong for an anti-Mafia project to demand of Wikipedia that we bar mafiosi from contributing. It is simply libel to accuse Wikipedia of being mafioso simply because we won't adopt anti-Mafia policies. --FOo 03:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

There are many efficient ways to deal with the possible problems of "pro-pedophile" edits and listing Wikipedia as a corporate sex offender is not one of them. Recently, I speedy closed the AfD of NAMBLA and was accused of siding with the pedophiles and of making Wikipedia a sex offender. In my mind, this is a clear sign that the push to expunge perceived pedophile POV from Wikipedia has taken a definite turn towards witch hunting. In fact, I would not be surprised if the mere expression of my sentiment gets me a few "who's side are you on?" questions. Let's make things clear: no we don't ask if editors are pedophiles and it would be rather silly of us to ask since anyone with an agenda can easily lie. That's not how we do things: we watch articles, we edit them, we block people who try to push a point of view with utter disregard for consensus. It's a lot more time consuming but it's also a lot more effective in the long run. We don't delete articles because we find their subject objectionable, we make sure they stick to the facts. PJ thinks we should do things differently and I'm sure they'll be welcomed at Conservapedia but this is how we've worked and it's working pretty good overall.

Of course, as a practical matter, the links should be removed or nowikied. But I suggest it's also worth revisiting their relevance on a case by case basis in any case. The website of PJ is most certainly not a reliable source or one with the required level of objectivity and attention to details like, say, truth. I just don't understand why they would even be mentioned on the Criticism of Wikipedia article. Let's face it, this is a marginal organisation with very questionable methods: if the New York Times or even The Christian Post starts labeling Wikipedia as a corporate sex offender then it'll make sense to include this but PJ? Give me a break... Whatever happened to due weight?

Yeah, I'm sure PJ will get a kick out of posing as the victim of censorship. But I don't see any sensible argument for why we should care. Pascal.Tesson 04:11, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you said, but I do feel obligated to point out that if Peej's methods were "questionable" they a) wouldn't have Information Sharing Agreements with 2/3rds of the law enforcement departments in the US and b) would not have successfully had 221 pedophiles convicted representing an 100% success rate. Given how useless my local Child Protection agency is in comparison to that, I find it very unfair that you would attempt to call them marginable. Certainly if I were a pedophile I would have stopped hanging out in US regional chatrooms by now. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 08:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I also disagree strongly with the removal of the P-J link from Criticism of Wikipedia. Such censorship (that's what it is, folks) just makes us look like we have something to hide, which is of course the (intended?) effect of the counterproductive BADSITES policy. But even if the link goes, I really can't understand removing all traces of P-J's criticism from the article. This absolutely makes us look like we're hiding something. It's not for us to decide if an organization like P-J is so "marginal" that we shouldn't even allow a reference to them in Criticism of Wikipedia. As Dev920 points out, there is at least a strong case that the organization isn't "marginal" in any objective sense of the word. I am restoring P-J's comments on Wikipedia to Criticism of Wikipedia, though I won't restore the link, pending a community decision. Casey Abell 13:01, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Replace "pedophile" with "communist" or "atheist" or "fascist" or "darwinist" or anything else. Attacking editors is grounds for delinking the site from wikipedia. People who re-introduce the material that is offensive to SlimVirgin and CBerlet get banned immediately, I don't see why this should be different.

It doesn't matter whether it's true or false. It doesn't matter whether a wikipedia editor is a convicted criminal, a pedophile, a war criminal, an Israeli spy, a CIA agent, a space alien - none of that matters, only the person's behavior on here, and trying to expose some kind of potentially damaging personal information about an editor is not acceptable. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 12:59, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

It should be noted that P-J's comment now restored to Criticism of Wikipedia is a general criticism of the project. The comment doesn't even mention any specific editors, much less attack them. If we're going to start censoring such general criticism of Wikipedia based on the asinine BADSITES policy, we deserve all the bad press we can eat. Casey Abell 13:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Harassment#Off-wiki_harassment Harassment of other Wikipedians through the use of external links is considered equivalent to the posting of personal attacks on Wikipedia...off-wiki harassment can be grounds for blocking, and in extreme cases, banning. see also WP:NPA#Off-wiki_personal_attacks. We need no longer believe that these individuals on-wiki actions in adding these sites was in good faith. Blacklisting is also a viable choice.--Hu12 13:19, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

This is America, a relatively free country, and neither wikipedia nor any other organization or individual is under any obligation to make public statements about any public issue. The allegation that wikipedia is "protecting" pedophiles (or rapists or bank robbers or whatever), presumably by not asking them "are you now or have you ever been a pedophile (or rapist or bank robber or whatever)?" is your basic McCarthyism. I'm reminded of the story of a film director being grilled by the HUAC. A committee member asks him if he's ever made a pro-Communist film. "No!" Then another committe member, with raised eyebrow, asks if he's ever made an "anti-Communist" film. There's no winning that kind of game. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 13:26, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind repeating myself. I am not restoring the link to the P-J redirect page, even though I disagree with its removal. I'll let community consensus decide that issue, though the redirect page contains no mentions of specific WP editors, much less attacks on them. But, yes, this is America, and P-J has every right to criticize Wikipedia in general for what they see as failings of the project. Eliminating all mention of that criticism from articles such as Criticism of Wikipedia just makes Wikipedia look bad and P-J look...well, not exactly good but certainly the more innocent party. Is this what P-J's critics want? Casey Abell 14:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

No, it does not make Wikipedia look bad: it makes it look consistent with its content policies. That section of criticism of Wikipedia focuses on Wikipedia's presumed problem with "contributors with idiosyncratic beliefs". Ironically enough, the notion that Wikipedia is a corporate sex offender is precisely an "idiosyncratic belief" and one that should be given due weight. PJ is of course free to think this but it's important to stress that this accusation is not taken seriously by anyone of note and in particular is not taken seriously by law enforcement. I just don't see how this can be treated any differently than a rant on some mildly successful blog. Undoubtedly, PJ will have a field day with the removal and will pose as the victim but we have to stand up to the bully and recognize PJ for what it is: a small extremist organization with dubious methods. Yes, we tend to be more sympathetic to it because we perceive it as having ultimately worthwhile goals but this is beyond the point. They are unquestionably efficient and the parallel with McCarthyism is very good. Even participating in this thread is risky: if you bad mouth PJ you'll become a suspect, a censor, someone who for whatever motive is trying to protect pedophiles (and hey, what motive could that be? wink wink nudge nudge). You'll get accusations like the ones here thrown at you, you may end up on PJ's suspect list like User:Tony Sandel which most likely means you get a flood of abuse on your talk page from anons wound up by PJ's attack page. Let's return to sanity: there's no good reason to link to the PJ website from anywhere but the Perverted Justice article. Pascal.Tesson 16:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Why are you determined to badmouth Peej? I just wrote you a post above countering your accusation that they use dodgey methods and your response is to claim that they are small (which at 45,000 members and 221 pedophiles locked up, multiple websites and well into the Charitabke foundation process they emphatically are not), extremist (they want pedophiles locked up and children to be able to surf safely online - if that is an extremist goal you'd better lock up most of the Western world), and use dubious methods (221 pedophiles locked away, acres of press coverage, agreements with almost every law enforcement organisation in the entire United States, you'd think someone would have shut them down by now if their methods were dubious. Instead they get ask to work with departments to do mass stings. That's a ridiculous claim.). Every point I just made is readily available on the Peej website, and on the media coverage of Peej. So why do you insist they're an enemy? :::Peej's beef with us is that we don't hunt down and ban pedophiles - which we don't. I fail to see what is slanderous about that. If they want to label us a Corporate Sex Offender on their website, let them, meh. It's Wikipedia's role to allow everyone to edit as they wish, not put them through some kind of inquisition to discover the "right sort" of people. It's the duty of Wikipedians as individuals to report suspected criminals to their appropriate authorities, as we do stalkers and people who make detah threats. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 18:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Unless there is real evidence that wikipedia is actively nurturing criminals, then links to pages making such a complaint amount to nothing more than slander. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 16:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I like how the specter of McCarthyism is being invoked to justify censorship. All sorts of what I consider unfair criticisms of Wikipedia are linked from Criticism of Wikipedia. I don't rip those links out of the article because I think they're nothing more than slander. The article exists to record and discuss, well, criticism of Wikipedia. The fact that some editors dislike a certain source of criticism is no excuse for eliminating any mention of the source from the article. The link in the article mentioned no names and made no accusations against individuals. I won't restore the link because there appears to be (wrongly, IMO) no consensus to do so. But the attempt to eliminate any mention of P-J's criticism is pure censorship and I will oppose it. Casey Abell 18:48, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

You are however failing to address the issue of due weight. When did PJ become an organization that carried any sort of weight regarding "corporate sex offender" accusations? As far as I can tell these accusations have gotten zero echo in mainstream press and I don't see why it should be brought up here. In fact, in the blogosphere, they have often been met with a chuckle [3] [4].

To answer Dev920, I love how you've subtly started asking "why are you determined to badmouth PJ?", thus continuing the kind of pressure tactics that are a growing concerns with some members of WP:PAW. Like I said, PJ is not an extremist organization for opposing pedophiles. It is an extremist organization for insisting that the best way to deal with pedophiles on the Internet is to expose them by any means and post personal contact information about them on the Internet so that they can be harassed. Anyone who stands in their way is quickly labeled as a pedophile or a passive supporter of pedophiles and they routinely divulge personal information about these people, again with little or no care that their accusations are well founded. There has been extensive discussion in mainstream press about concerns with these methods. PJ does get quite a bit of support but again it is marginal. The "45000 members" figure comes, I believe, from the Rolling Stone article and corresponds to the number of users registered on the PJ forum. This is not an unusual figure even for extremely fringe websites. And the idea that they are an important organization because they have a lot of websites is, well, rather unconvincing. Pascal.Tesson 20:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

As you clearly haven't read the site there's no point continuing this conversation. I'm going to find my guinea pigs. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 21:21, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

As Mr. McEnroe was known to say, you cannot be serious about the undue weight argument. This is the entire reference to P-J in Criticism of Wikipedia: "Wikipedia has also been criticised for failing to deal with pro-pedophile activists, and has been described as a "corporate sex offender" by Perverted-Justice." Depending on how you count, this makes about two dozen words – in an article of nearly 8,000 words excluding notes and links.

Frankly, you should stick with WP:IDONTLIKEIT on Perverted-Justice. At least this argument doesn't maintain that two dozen words in an article of 8,000 words is undue weight. Of course, I could argue WP:IDONTLIKEIT about lots of stuff in Criticism of Wikipedia. I think McHenry's comparison of Wikipedia to a filthy john is grossly unfair, nothing more than professional jealousy from a former Britannica functionary. I think the Wikipedia Watch whines about admin abuse are ridiculous, especially since admins gave Brandt his wish to have his article deleted. I think a lot of the allegedly humorous criticisms are the lamest gags since the last time I tried to make a joke. I think much of criticism in the article is exaggerated, unjust, flat wrong, stupid, silly and really really dumb.

But guess what. The article isn't called Criticism of Wikipedia that Casey Abell thinks is just and reasonable. We know what the article is called, and that title means it should include all sorts of criticism, even if it comes from people and organizations you and I don't like.

I've already compromised more than I think I should. I've removed a link that named no names and made no attacks on any individual editors. This means that I've basically given into BADSITES, which was the craziest, silliest, most misguided attempt to make policy since the last time I thought about writing policy for Wikipedia. But I won't acquiesce in total, outright censorship of criticism from an organization just because some editors don't like it.

Wikipedia's article Perverted-Justice contains a "Criticism" section that runs to more than 1,500 words. But whoa, if we try to put two dozen words of P-J's criticism of Wikipedia into an article, it's "undue weight." Sorry, but it belongs in Criticism of Wikipedia along with all the other sometimes unfair and wrong and not nice criticism. This encyclopedia really is not censored, and that will be my final comment on the matter. Casey Abell 21:41, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The difference here is that the criticism of McHenry was widely publicized and to a lesser extent, so was Brandt's. The PJ criticism on the other hand was not picked up by anyone of note and is, in effect, a rant from a collaborative blog. As such, its mention in the criticism of Wikipedia article is giving it more exposure than it has received anywhere else and that is undue weight. Pascal.Tesson 22:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Breaking my promise not to comment again. Another editor pulled the evil, horrible, intolerable two dozen words from Criticism of Wikipedia. I'm tired of the fight. Censorship wins. I could do something equally silly, like pulling all the criticisms from the article that I think are stupid. Or I could make a justified undue weight argument on the huge "Criticism" section at Perverted-Justice. But why bother? "Consensus" looks flat wrong to me here, but you really can't win them all. Casey Abell 15:12, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Cite a place where P-J's criticism of Wikipedia is mentioned in a newspaper, and it will be added to the article. Basically, there are a thousand websites out there critical of Wikipedia. There will be a hundred vandals indefinitely blocked just today, and I'm sure ten of them will run to their blogs, so that will be ten more. We can only mention the notable criticisms, as in Wikipedia:Notability. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Chatmag News [5] has picked it up in a way highly unfavorable to P-J, but you wouldn't consider that reliable, I guess, though it does show up in the Google news cache. But how many newspapers picked up the Black Mystery Month "satire" of Wikipedia, which gets about as much space in Criticism of Wikipedia as the former P-J mention? Or the vandalism to the Larry King article, which actually gets a lot more space (but is pretty funny, unlike the lame Black Mystery Month effort). I could cite some more examples from the article, but...you win. I won't restore the awful two dozen words. Casey Abell 16:35, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

This whole scenario disgusts me. I hate how PJ is trying to tear apart sites that are not totally in favor of the organization instead of trying to prevent sexual abuse. This attitude of Von Erck's will implode his organization. I would like to ask him to read Death Note - There are more than a few similarities to the main character, Light Yagami. Hopefully the overzealous attitudes possessed by Light and the character's ultimate fate will tell Von Erck that he needs to change his approach. WhisperToMe 15:31, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

What I find disturbing is the level of intimidation exercised by PJ, both as regards Wikipedia coverage of PJ in general, and their ability to go after individual editors. This 'chilling effect', as news analysts like to call such reactions, are invariably going to lead to a 'win' for PJ. Either we let them edit as they please, or we surrender our policies, or they pick any of us to report as a pedophile, or supporter thereof. Regardless of our clearly stated intent to maintain neutrality on Wikipedia, and regardlessof the Occam's Razor nature of such behaviors, no one here wants to be on the recieving end of such accusations and the resltant job loss, social death, and so on that come from knee-jerk reactions to such accusations. I note that many people here have said they're concerned about such patterns. I'm beginning to think that this whole mess might be best off left to the WP:OFFICE and Jimbo himself to sort out. We're just editors and admins, we're volunteers. Let someone who gets paid to deal with potential off-wiki harrassment and such deal with it. ThuranX 03:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Since when is P-J "winning" on Wikipedia? The site's chief editor has been banned from WP [6] and the organization's criticism of Wikipedia has been censored from the encyclopedia. Meanwhile, a huge "Criticism" section of the Wikipedia article on the organization accuses it of many failings. That's a strange kind of "win" for P-J on Wikipedia. Casey Abell 13:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Some thoughts from Jimbo, speaking here in terms of general principles. WP:BADSITES is a rejected policy, as it should be. There is of course a noble concept behind it, and it is my belief that a more carefully formulated restricted version of the policy could in fact pass muster. We are under a general moral obligation, in my opinion, to be thoughtful about what sites we are linking to, and why, and the harm that a site may be causing is one factor that should of course be considered, though it will not in most cases be an overriding factor. Once upon a time there was a web page on the net with a photo of my little girl, claiming that she is retarded due to fetal alcohol syndrome caused by my wife being an alcoholic due to me forcing her to suck dicks for $10 each during pregnancy. That whole string of blatant lies does not count as valid "Criticism of Jimmy Wales", it is nothing more than hatred. I would expect that among the many reasons not to link to that, the fact that the site was viciously immoral by any coherent standard should be a factor.

In the current case, the kind of criticism being leveled against Wikipedia itself is not, per se, hateful. It is inelegantly expressed by people who clearly are quite excited by their mission. It is not, in my opinion, a *valid* criticism, but it is at least within the realm of debatable. What should Wikipedia's policies be towards editors who are active pedophiles? How could it be enforced? "Don't ask, don't tell" is NOT our policy. Something close to that, though, is inevitable under almost any conceivable stated policy, since if someone is a pedophile, and doesn't tell us, what can we do about it? (And surely no sane person would suggest that we randomly inquire as people sign up for Wikipedia whether they are pedophiles or not.)

Reasonable people can question whether our articles on pedophilia are biased. There are some reasons to think that some of them could be at times, of course. One problem is that pedophilia activists have no qualms about editing those articles, but lots of good people just prefer to steer clear. There is a great great irony here in the ridiculous apprpoach that P-J is taking... their propensity to label people as "pro-pedophilia activists" on public websites makes it *less* likely that good people will want to assist in making these article as good as possible. And their own incivility on the site means that they have been unable to assist in a meaningful way.

What would please me would be to have some kind, loving, thoughtful, forgiving, reasonable anti-pedophilia activists going over these pages carefully and helping to make sure they are neutral. At least some extremists on either side will be unhappy with anything other than a one-sided rant, but in my long experience, there are usually very thoughtful and kind people who have the courage and wisdom to write neutrally even on emotionally difficult topics. We should encourage that kind of behavior.

As to the instant question of what to do about the links, I think this question has nothing at all to do with BADSITES or attacking us or criticizing us or whateve. The simple rule should be: does the redirection interfere materially with the experience of the reader who is trying to learn more. In this case, I believe it does. What I would support P-J doing is putting a message on their site saying "Welcome from Wikipedia" with a short sentence or two encouraging the reader to visit their critique of Wikipedia page, while at the same time, leaving the rest of the page alone, i.e. doing a dynamic insert based on the referrer rather than a total redirect. As a Wikipedia editor, if I want to link to a particular page on their site for sound editorial reasons, but their redirection policy makes it impossible for me to do so, then I have to conclude that the link should be omitted in favor of just doing a more extensive quote.

There is one page on their other site (the wiki site) which names specific individual wikipedia editors as being pedophiles. A couple of them whose talk pages I checked have flatly denied it. I would consider that page to be a hate site page engaging in reckless speech about innocent people, and that's the sort of thing I think we should have the good sense and dignity not to link to directly. At the same time, I suppose there is actually no reason why we would be linking to that page directly.--Jimbo Wales 16:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I wonder though why you wish for kind, loving, thoughtful, forgiving, reasonable anti-pedophilia activists going over these pages carefully. What would really benefit these pages or for that matter any pages are kind, loving, thoughtful, forgiving, reasonable editors whose approach is as clinical as possible. Activists editing on Wikipedia spell trouble, no matter how good their cause may be. Sure unkind, unloving, thoughtless, unforgiving, unreasonable activists do far more damage but an encyclopedia is never well-served by writers who are emotional about the subject of their edits. This is true for pedophilia-related articles, true for abortion-related articles, true for Israel-related articles or any controversial subject. Rational discussion and meaningful compromises are hard to find with activists, even the best-intentioned ones. Pascal.Tesson 21:28, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Amen to that, Pascal.Tesson. I've had it to here with activists of any kind going on editing sprees at Wikipedia. I'd rather editors be cold, Spocklike and uncaring than be driven by activist issues they feel passionately about. wikipediatrix 21:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Guess what, I agree with Jimbo! I agreed (reluctantly) with the removal of the redirect link, which didn't name anybody. But I don't see why P-J - a highly notable though controversial organization by any reasonable standard - shouldn't have its criticism of Wikipedia briefly noted in the article that is designed to note criticism of Wikipedia. I don't think P-J's criticism is fair, either. Wikipedia is not a "corporate sex offender" in my view. But as I said before, Criticism of Wikipedia contains lots of stuff that I don't agree with. At any rate, I've become way too involved to remain unbiased. I'll let other editors hash out our treatment of P-J in Criticism of Wikipedia and elsewhere in the encyclopedia. Casey Abell 21:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The issue in this thread is the redirection of all links to P-J on Wikipedia to their criticism page. Not about the content of said pages, unless I missed something in the reading of this lengthy thread.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 02:08, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Old dispute?

I seem to recall an old dispute with respect to PRT, some transport system that is allegedly a hoax, involving a number of disruptive, aggressive and tendentious editors. According to User:Avidor, this has flared up again (see his talk page). Does anyone here know what this is about and how to deal with it? >Radiant< 13:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Avidor failed in an attempt to bring a COI complaint against me ("Mr Grant - No COI"[7] and parallel discussion[8]), and he is dissatisfied with the outcome.[9][10] --Mr Grant 18:00, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

This is a bizarre dispute over personal rapid transit, centering around my area (Minneapolis) because a Minnesota senator supports trying to fund it. I've only ever heard of a handful of people that actually support it (although the bridge collapse adds an interesting twist to it) and why it's become such an issue on Wikipedia is beyond me. I can go back and find the long AN/I thread about it, but it hardly seems worth it. Grandmasterka 18:13, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It isn't a Minnesota Senator, it's a State Representative Mark Douglas Olson. What the Wikipedia article on Personal Rapid Transit doesn't explain is why this supposed transit mode has no support among traditional transit organizations or transportation professionals while support for PRT comes from individuals and groups opposed to conventional transit such as light rail and commuter rail. PRT is a classic stalking horse for people like Rep. Mark Olson who is opposed to rail transit because he can claim that there is a transit system that is "faster, cheaper, better than LRT". Since PRT does not exist anywhere, PRT promoters can make any claims they want... even that PRT guideways can be built with robots.... and David Gow (Mr_Grant) is the Seattle contact for the Citizens for Personal Rapid Transit.... Gow should be banned from editing the PRT page as well as other PRT promoters...Avidor 03:59, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I was thinking of a certain other representative who does support it. (Not state senator - my bad.) Grandmasterka 06:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Avidor is now going around Wikipedia repeating the same claims[11] he made in his COI case against me, claims that were found to be baseless.[12] I don't know if Wikipedia has a policy against double jeopardy, but I respectfully request Avidor be directed to stop.--Mr Grant 16:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Mr_Grant (David Gow) refuses to say whether he is paid to promote PRT, which apparently includes editing the Wikipedia PRT page and attacking me like this.

You raised the issue of my income at COIN, and yet my edits were found not to be COI. The issue should be considered closed. The link you provide is parody, and cannot be considered an attack in that it refers to things you actually did.--Mr Grant 18:48, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

But, you don't have to take my word... here's a scan from page # 221 from the book "Transpotation for Livable Cities" by Professor Vukan Vuchic of the Univ. of Pennsylvania[13] and the professor gives PRT only one paragraph. Professor Vuchic declares PRT to be "imaginary" and "infeasible"... Avidor 17:44, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Vuchic's opinion is mentioned in the PRT article and he is cited in the references. What's the problem?--Mr Grant 18:48, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

And the PRT fans trashed his opinon in the article calling them "flawed"...Professor Vuchic writings are peer reviewed. Most of what's referenced on the PRT pages comes from PRT fan sites (many of them haven't been updated for years). 2001 was the last news entry on the "Skyloop" website. 2004 was the last news entry on the Skyweb Express web site... and Jpods... and of course, like the rest of the article, the stuff on the PRT page is written by fans of PRT. For instance stuff by editor Bill James who is none other than Bill James, who built a PRT model called Jpods and is seeking funding to build more... Avidor 19:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Vuchic IS IN THE ARTICLE. Both pro and anti views are represented. You may say "trashed," others would say Vuchic's views were "debated."

You are continuing to rehash issues that were disposed of by the now-closed COI case you brought, which was resolved in my favor. I proposed to revise Bill James' edits to improve the article[14] and you failed to respond. --Mr Grant 20:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

"Debated"? This is a well known tactic by groups and individuals who promote controversial ideas like PRT and Intelligent Design called teach the controversy. Professor Vuchic's remarks about PRT are only controversial among PRT promoters. Mainstream Transit groups like Transit for Livable Communities and the Sierra Club North Star have resolutions against public funding of PRT...Avidor 21:28, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Now anyone who debates is a right wing extremist? "Debate" is debate, "teach the controversy" is when the proponent uses it to give equal time to views that are demonstrably false or unsupported by verifiable evidence. If there was such evidence about the PRT concept I would not object to it being in the article. The resolutions you cite, and have cited many times before, are political documents. One reads:

• "because the proposed technology has never been built anywhere in the world, there is no real engineering data to create reliable estimates of costs and benefits. Due to these concerns and the scarcity of public funding for established transit, the TLC board passed a resolution in April opposing state funding for PRT at this time. [emphasis added]"

Taking them at their word, I would expect them to be open to change this opinion if their concerns were to be addressed, by evidence. The other includes:

• "(6) does not oppose the study and possible use of automated, small-cab vehicles on fixed public guideway for limited geographic and functional sites such as airports or large educational or business campuses, as long as such systems are financed by the entities being served. [emphasis added]"

This is fine with me, it is a fair political position. But again, the "Whereases" reflect assumptions, many well-founded, but many also could be addressed by the results of subsequent PRT work now being done in Europe, e.g., evidence.

These links describe political opposition to PRT as a policy. Neither puts PRT in the same league as Intelligent Design.--Mr Grant 22:00, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Really? Explain why staunch opponents of any spending on transit such as Michele Bachmann and Mark Douglas Olson authored legislation for and promoted PRT in the media?Avidor 22:37, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Avidor, you are being disruptive. Please stop harassing other editors over a content dispute. The standard for Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth, so your arguments about public policy are wholly misplaced: WP:NOT#SOAPBOX. If the article has POV problems, discuss them on the article talk page and use dispute resolution. But to outside observers, you look like the POV-pusher and an uncivil violator of WP:MULTI, which is counterproductive to whatever it is you are trying to accomplish, which one hopes is the improvement of the encyclopedia. THF 22:45, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

AFD keep

I'm presently in conflict with another admin (User:Crum375) who claims that, if an article has an AFD resulting in "keep", that article may not be edited, merged, or renamed. I claim that all three of those are regular editing actions and that AFD does not in any way prohibit that. Perhaps not so coincidentally, he wrote the article in question. Could we get some outside opinion from other admins please? >Radiant< 15:12, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

In general hypothetical theory (i.e. without seeing an article) a Keep doesn't mean an article exists in suspended animation post AFD and those things you've mentioned absolutely can be discussed and undertaken if there is consensus to do so. This is essentially the same thing as when an article is deleted, it may be recreated at a future date provided it meets relevant policies and guidelines. An AFD outcome just decides if the current article as it exists stays or goes it's not a content discussion. I'd also mention that WP:BRD is a good guideline here.--Isotope23 ^talk 15:26, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Of course every article can be edited - that's a fundamental part of wikipedia. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Also consensus can change. Majorly (talk) 15:40, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

AfD does not in any way prohibit normal editing actions on the article afterwards. If, however, there is consensus on the AfD about an editing-based decision (e.g. if there is a clear consensus at an AfD not to rename a page), making that change boldly afterwards (especially soon afterwards) without further discussion first is probably a bad idea, not because it goes against AfD policy, but because making a change that you know consensus is against is probably a bad idea. (I don't know the details of the specific situation, so what I say may be irrelevant to it; I'm talking in general terms here.) --ais523 15:45, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreement with ais523. If an article survives AFD, it certainly can be edited, but immediately merging it away is probably not the best idea. Unless, of course, that's what the AFD said. Please give the specific case if you want more details. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:54, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

The article in questions seems to be Mourning sickness. As best I can tell, the main point of contention is that it was originally at Anna Svidersky. The AFD on that article, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anna Svidersky (2nd nomination), resulted in a "keep". As soon as the AFD ended, the article was redirected to Mourning sickness. Radiant, who did point out Crum375 was the creator of the article, didn't mention it was Radiant who created the AFD on Anna Svidersky, and when it was closed as a "keep", promptly redirected it. I don't really have any comment on the actual discussion, just thought all the facts should be mentioned. Neil ム 15:58, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

In the AfD it was pretty much acknowledged even by the "Keep" voters that the article wasn't actually about Anna Svidersky herself, but the reaction to her death. I would have thought, though, that the article should probably have gone to "Death of Anna Svidersky" or suchlike rather than to a catch-all article about public mourning. ELIMINATORJR 16:03, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

The Mourning Sickness article was created after most of the editors at the Anna Svidersky article noted that the one single element that was notable or encyclopedic was the reaction to her death. As Crum himself noted "The notable element in the article is the so-called (and reliably sourced) 'mourning sickness' phenomenon, Crum375 19:40, 7 August 2007 (UTC)" Unfortunately rather then focus on this encyclopedic element, the Svidersky article tried to act as a biography for a decidedly non-notable person and essentially became a memorial filled with details about when Anna was a little girl and got a reprimand in elementary school for acting up and the time she cut off her hair and donated it to charity, etc. The overwhelming consensus of both AFD's is that Svidersky is not notable nor is her death but rather only the reaction to her death. The section of the Mourning Sickness article dedicated to Svidersky is meant to retain the notable info that the Keep editors wished to retain but with the focus squarely on the encyclopedic content. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:25, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

To get back to Radiant's question: of course an AfD keep does not preclude later actions such as redirection, moving, merging, or editing of any kind. That said, when an article has just been kept at AfD, it should be thought of as a debate that bears on what to do with the article. To ignore the opinions in the debate is probably unwise... but then, WP:BRD gives a simple way to resolve it, and those debates don't always show a clear opinion on particular solutions. Mangojuice^talk 16:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Heh. Looks like the AFD had some people saying it should be merged, just like this, and some saying it shouldn't. Good faith dispute. Go talk it out on the article talk page; you may want to contact the people who participated in the AFD. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but the point that most people are missing is that the "article to merge to" is, as Agne points out above, not a seperate article, but a rewritten version of the same article as started during the AFD. >Radiant< 08:13, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Radiant has blatantly misrepresented Crum375 (note the lack of diff), who is far too experienced to make the claim falsely attributed to him. What Crum375 actually said, less than an hour before Radiant posted here, was, "Please leave this article alone, with the correct post AfD Keep name, until consensus is reached on this talk page."[15] That is entirely in line with the AfD consensus, which the closing admin summed up as, "The result was keep. Please defer merge related comments to article talk."[16]

The history of this is that on 7 August, without any discussion, Radiant moved the article (about a murdered teenager, Anna Svidersky) to the name of the murderer, David Barton Sullivan, [17] which is peculiar, since the sources focus on Svidersky, not Sullivan, as indicated by Google hits 26,500 [18] and 73 respectively.[19] When this was reverted Radiant immediately nominated the article for deletion. The result, as above, was keep and discuss any merge; Radiant then redirected the article, again without any discussion on the article talk page, to Mourning sickness,[20] when it was obvious that this would be a controversial action. His action was reversed and he reverted.[21]. I left a note asking for consensus to be reached first before the redirect was made.[22] The matter was still in dispute on the article talk page, and Radiant made the redirect twice more, [23] (with needless history merge) and [24] (incorrectly claiming consensus). Discussion is still ongoing on Talk:Anna Svidersky, and there is no consensus for the redirect. Radiant's conduct is not exactly a shining example.

Tyrenius 04:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Irony strikes again. My point is that there is no such thing as a "correct AFD keep name", as the many editors above state (since AFD is irrelevant to article naming and renaming). You're just mudslinging here, rather than contributing to the actual discussion. >Radiant< 08:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Presumably the first time irony struck was the "mudslinging" that started this thread. AfD isn't irrelevant if the consensus was "defer merge related comments to article talk", which you failed to mention. You've misrepresented Crum375 again by taking a quote, "correct AFD keep name", out of context: it was only made in this specific application and with the proviso "until consensus is reached on this talk page." There was no notion of it being an absolute statement. You raised the point of correct conduct concerning the AfD, so your own history, which you implicitly associate with "regular editing actions", is relevant and also subject to review. Tyrenius 13:21, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Radiant, I just politely asked you on your talk page to please consider performing a history split for the 2 articles you merged. I perceive that a certain amount of bad blood (or at least irritation) has been aroused among several of us, but I think that with the collective experience of the editors interested in the future of that article, we can come up with a better solution than the mourning sickness redirect/history merge. Even if some of the past discussions haven't gone well, I think you can trust most of us editors to be civil, prodcutive and deferential to both policy and consensus. There has to be a suitable compromise in store.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 00:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Repeated personal attacks by Rondus (and his sock C00483033)

Resolved

 – Rondus and C00483033 have been indef blocked as sockpuppets of indef blocked User:Frater FiatLux

Rondus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is a supposed new user who from his very first edits began personal attacks against me, starting with his third edit. This message was spammed to multiple pages, and when it was reverted by multiple editor, began also to be posted by C00483033 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log). The latter is clearly a sock of the first. Here is a list of the subsquest posts and reposts:

• [25] 04:50, 8 August 2007 by Rondus
• [26] 05:09, 8 August 2007 by Rondus
• [27] 05:20, 8 August 2007 by Rondus
• [28] 06:01, 8 August 2007 by Rondus
• [29] 06:03, 8 August 2007 by C00483033 (first edit)
• [30] 06:06, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [31] 06:17, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [32] 06:23, 8 August 2007 by Rondus
• [33] 06:34, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [34] 06:36, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [35] 06:46, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [36] 06:47, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [37] 11:31, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [38] 11:34, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [39] 12:06, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [40] 14:24, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [41] 14:59, 8 August 2007 by C00483033
• [42] 19:43, 9 August 2007 by C00483033
• [43] 19:49, 9 August 2007 by C00483033
• [44] 11:16, 10 August 2007 by C00483033

It is interesting to note that the edits by C00483033 were not done using undo or revert, but appear to have been copy and pasted.

These posts continued until C00483033 was blocked for disruption. Rondus was not blocked. He continues to make personal attacks against me despite explanations and then warnings on his talk page.

Two sockpuppet reports have been filed, first Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Frater FiatLux (2nd) and later Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Kephera975, yet despite the obvious sockpuppetry and disruptive editing, no action has been taken. Could someone please take the time to look into this? IPSOS (talk) 18:15, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand. Rondus / C00483033 have accused you of conflict of interest and vandalizing the article. You characterize this as a personal attack in violation of the WP:NPA policy. You are pretty sure that they are a pair of socks, and have asked for a review. The diffs you posted are from 11 to 12 days ago. Is this ongoing? What sort of remedy are you asking for from the admins who monitor this board? --Rocksanddirt 18:34, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this is ongoing. Here are the latest attacks: [45], [46], [47], [48], [49]. He has been warned repeatedly by myself and by other editors on his talk page and on Talk:Alpha et Omega. The sockpuppet C00483033 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) was only blocked for 3RR and not indefinitely as is usual for obvious socks. I would like an admin to block the sock C00483033, warn Rondus about both sockpuppetry and his continuing attacks, and for someone to evaluate the sockpuppet reports to determine if it is reasonable to believe that Rondus is a sock of indef blocked user Frater FiatLux (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) and indef block him if he is. IPSOS (talk) 21:49, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

A Wikipedia administrator recently proteted the "Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn" page due to the behavior of User IPSOS and 3 other users. The administrator characterized this behavior as "HOGD activism." I have merely pointed this out in related discussions, which has caused User IPOS to harass me, despite my repeatedly telling him that his issue is with the administrator rather than with me. User IPSOS has dogged me wit improper tags, filed frivolous sock puppet reports, etc. In short, he has used ever conceivable bullying tactic possible while trying to skirt the rules of Wikipedia. Today's episode is just one more instance of his bullying me as a new Wikipedia member.--Rondus 23:20, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Note: that hadn't happened yet when you started attacking me on your third edit on 8 August, and the frequency of repetition you have adopted even after I have clearly denied the accusation multiple times makes your actions definitely qualify as harassment. IPSOS (talk) 00:15, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment from third-party. This disruption is active today on Talk:Alpha et Omega. There was a gap after the AfD, and now they/he are/is back and making insulting and unfounded accusations against IPSOS and other editors.

In his comment above, Rondus mis-quoted the admin who protected that article, to manipulate the discussion. This statement from Rondus is false:

The administrator characterized this behavior as "HOGD activism."

Here is the actual edit summary from the admin who protected the page:

too soon to revert war over, or merge, content; let's tone down perceptions of Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn activism

The admin mentioned perceptions of activism, not actual activism. Rondus has used this mis-quote several times in his repeated personal attacks against IPSOS and others.

I'll re-post for convenience the links to the two sockpuppet reports. These reports both list Rondus and C00483033. While the reports are not conclusive about all the listed editors, those two accounts have:

• virtually identical behavior
• cross-posted the same comments multiple times as listed in the reports
• both were created in the first week of August,
• both immediately began posting to the identical topics
• both have between 50 and 100 or so edits.

here are the SSP links:

• Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Frater FiatLux (2nd)
• Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Kephera975

About my interest here: I did not know of IPSOS until the recent AfD where I also encountered the two disruptive accounts. I have edited the related articles a couple times, but before the AfD I had never edited them. I have thousands of edits on completely unrelated topics and no vested interest in this topic.

It appears that C00483033 and Rondus are either sockpuppets or meatpuppets.

But whether they are or not, I know from seeing them in action that their comments continually contain personal attacks and disrupt article talk pages from the topics at hand. --Parsifal _Hello 02:30, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I just see the editor User:Rondus as saying Ippy has a COI and so on, not extreme personal attacks. User:IPSOS on the other hand has used repeated warning templates on Talk:Alpha et Omega and on Rondus' talk page. Including 'this is your final warning. If you continue to do this you will be blocked'. He has made comments on Rondus' talk page along the lines of 'I'll ensure you and your sock are blocked'. While I agree Rondus is probably a sock or a puppeteer, the use of templates including a 'final warning...continue and you will be blocked, and the 'I'll make sure you're blocked' I think is a bit much. Then again, this user Rondus might well end up blocked for his sockpuppeting, may well even be a sock of a banned user.:)Merkinsmum 18:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Frater FiatLux (2nd) case has been closed, with the result that Rondus and C00483033 have been indef blocked as sockpuppets of indef blocked User:Frater FiatLux. --Parsifal _Hello 01:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Disruptive attacks by user Matthew

User Matthew (talk · contribs) repeatedly readds an attack to user User:Videmus Omnia, calling him "Soldier Boy"[50] [51] [52] [53]. Mathew had been warned by me[54], Quadell[55] and by Videmus[56] [57], but removed the warnings with funny edit summaries [58] [59]. Although Videmus, the target, keeps calm, such attacks are disruptive to all involved in the discussion. Would someone try to explain Mathew that this kind of behaviour is inline with our community spirit? Thanks in advance.

This is not the first time Mathew has ignored warnings about calling names. [60],[61] [62]. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Abu badali (talk • contribs).

I'm considering a block. It's really time we put an end to this situation where hordes of people think they can get away with hostilities against editors who do the thankless job of image patrolling. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

The diffs regarding me can be seen at User:Videmus Omnia/Attacks and incivility. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 19:20, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

The user continues to readd the attack[63] and mock the warnings[64]. --Abu badali ^(talk) 19:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Matthew has been informed of this thread. — Scientizzle 19:22, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Since Grandmasterka (talk · contribs) blocked him for 24 hours I don't think he will be contributing here.--Isotope23 ^talk 19:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

As I said above (edit conflict?), I have already warned[65] him about this thread, but he mocked the warning[66]. --Abu badali ^(talk) 19:25, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I was just about to post here: Blocked, but with room for leniency. I might be gone shortly, so handle any unblock requests without consulting me. Grandmasterka 19:27, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Yep... I'm not convinced 24 hours is enough time for Matthew (talk · contribs) to grow up, but I support the block. This isn't the first time Matthew (talk · contribs) has engagend in this sort of silly trolling so I'm not sure I see a case for leniency.--Isotope23 ^talk 19:29, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Matthew's talk page specifically states "No spam" - this means for image warnings as well. Spamming generic image warnings is both annoying, and, in Matthew's case a waste of time, since it states "No spam". I'd disagree it's a "thankless job". Thankless maybe, because who wants to thank someone who has nothing better to do than go round tagging images with a script? It's hardly difficult work either.

As for the personal comments, I have to agree that he's taken it too far. Majorly (talk) 19:30, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It's thankless because you become the target of such attacks, and have to patiently and diplomatically repeat arguments about unnecessary non-free images... But if you don't think it's difficult, feel free to join the team. We're hiring ;) --Abu badali ^(talk) 19:34, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

The image warnings aren't spam, they're mandatory. Can you imagine the screaming that would ensue if images were tagged and uploaders not informed? Videmus Omnia ^Talk 19:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

(To Abu) No thanks... I'm here to write the encyclopedia, not as a robot. Anyhow, I know exactly what it is like (see my early Commons edits where what I did was mostly robotic tagging.)

(To Tim) If I ever get them, I'd remove them as spam. See Wikipedia:Don't template the regulars. Majorly (talk) 19:41, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Removing them is entirely legitimate: it means that you've read them. Just don't use a snarky edit summary :) In most cases, however, the purpose of using such templates is to inform someone about the state of an image they've upoaded, not explain Wikipedia's entire fair use policy. Yet, these templates do the latter, possibly a dozen times over, on the same user talk page. Why not make a shorter version (something like "Your image, Image:Image.png, has been tagged with {{rfu}}, tilde tilde tilde tilde"), and use only one section for all image notifications? Image template spam sucks. Gracenotes^T § 19:49, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

A good way to avoid the templates is to check back through upload logs to make sure that uploaded images are in compliance with policy. :) Videmus Omnia ^Talk 20:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, editors are supposed to go through every image in their upload log several times a day to make sure that it hasn't been orphaned (replaced by a free image)? I don't think so :) Given that fair use is more about the usage than the image itself, this doesn't seem feasible. Regulars don't like to be annoyed by long policy explanations; since notification is mandatory, do so without policy explanations. Simple enough! Gracenotes^T § 02:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Endorse block. That was just plain silly, and an enforced wikibreak is merited. We should treat each other with more respect, at least in public. Moreschi ^Talk 19:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong but Matthew also equals MatthewFenton (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) where the block log is quite impressive. —Wknight94 (talk) 19:57, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Why was the talk page deleted on the above account? Videmus Omnia ^Talk 20:00, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

RightToVanish, though that evidently isn't working. Moreschi ^Talk 20:02, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... Pardon my inexperience with m:Right to vanish but how can you invoke that but then not only not vanish but continue tacking on numerous entries to an already long block log? —Wknight94 (talk) 20:15, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

He had his account renamed using usurpation, and apparently never redirected his old pages to the new ones. As far as I know, he never used Right To Vanish. Grandmasterka 20:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, guess he did try to vanish once. I've re-redirected those pages. Grandmasterka 20:26, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Endorse block. Matthew seems to have some problem with image patrollers. Either way, Videmus Omnia is an important part of the project, and we need to take measures to stop people from needlessly insulting him. --Deskana (banana) 20:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

...and if you see his smarmy response to the block message, which apparently tries to tack onto the insult with what Matthew no doubt feels is a clever play on the term "vet" I tend to think he got off a bit easy with 24 hours.--Isotope23 ^talk 20:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

fully endorse Matthew has been long over due for such. hes been making personal attacks and other CIVIL issues for months. (I wish I had this kind of support when I was getting attacked for my non-free image work) β^_command 21:56, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Matthew's recent conduct and comments have been unacceptable, but the deletion of his prior userpage and talkpage containing his full real name were user-requested and were reasonable requests based on off-site trolling and harassment to which he was being subjected at the time. Newyorkbrad 22:01, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I'mma get choo banned! actually, I'm not - I'm just making the 66 cabal paranoid ;) Will ^(talk) 01:13, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

If the previous usertalk was deleted under a Right to vanish request, his subsequent return to Wikipedia under the new account would seem to indicate that the vanish has been canceled. Perhaps they should be restored, comments? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 01:24, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

On a side point I find it ridiculous that what Tim is doing is referred to as 'templating the regulars'. 'Templating the regulars' is about things like civility warnings, those twee AGF warnings, etc... The image warning templates contain such information that can really only be communicated via a template - I'm not about to go making that stuff up as I go, I would leave key information out. VO is doing a fantastic job and gets more than his share of crap for it. Block was totally justified, but I think it would take rather longer than 24 hours for Matthew to learn how to get along with his fellow users. ~ Riana ⁂ 05:17, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

See what Gracenotes wrote above, which I agree with. When you get a lot of image notices, there's no need to template each and every time. Also, Matthew specifically states on his page not to post them, but users do anyway. He's probably sick of it. Majorly (talk) 14:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Responding to Chairboy, I tend to agree. Can you invoke right-to-vanish and then not vanish? When you leave behind a page-long block log in the process, that seems more like "Avoiding scrutiny from other editors". —Wknight94 (talk) 11:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

His pages were deleted for other reasons as well, that I won't go into on a public forum (see NYB's comment). Majorly (talk) 13:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree 100% with Riana about the difference between using a template to inform someone that an image is up for deletion and using one to tell an experienced editor that they may be blocked for reverting, or that they should "take a look at the welcome page if [they] would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopaedia. The former is not in the least bit patronising, as the template contains information that the user normally needs, and that can't be adequately written by hand (I'd get all the details and all the links wrong, unless I spent fifteen minutes composing, previewing and correcting the message). The latter is, frankly, rude, and is usually intended to annoy.

On the issue of the deleted talk page, please guys. Just leave it. If someone has used his real name and regrets it, now understanding the possible real world consequences, let's respect his privacy. This is not a case of a hypothetical User:Mushroom Soup pretending to vanish but coming back as User:Granite Wall, so that Granite Wall can be as rude as he likes and will get away with it because nobody will realise that he has ever been blocked before. Believe me, if he continues his bad behaviour (as Matthew seems to have done), he'll soon amass a long enough block log to be able to stand alone. And there are enough admins who know his previous identity that he isn't really going to get away with too much on the grounds of his new attempts to be anonymous. While I wholeheartedly endorse the block, and was considering blocking him myself, I would suggest that exposing and further publicising the real life identity of an underage editor (he is underage, isn't he?) against his will is far worse than calling another editor "Soldier Boy" (obnoxious though that is). See WP:HARASS, where it says:

Posting another person's personal information . . . is harassment, unless that editor voluntarily provides or links to such information himself or herself. This . . . applies in the case of editors who have requested a change in username, but whose old signatures can still be found in archives.

On the issue of his deleted user page and talk page, everyone has the right to have old versions of their userpage deleted. The talk page history has not been deleted. The talk page was moved to his new name, and the redirect was deleted. That is perfectly appropriate, and nothing to get excited about. ElinorD (talk) 14:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I've had trouble with this user for months now, as you can see here - [67]. He is often sarcastic and patronising toward people on FAC pages - Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Apprentice (UK) also. Something really needs to be done here. Dalejenkins | 19:43, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The Kate McAuliffe vandal is back

These days, I am seeing that the IP block list is partially covered with Kate McAuliffe usernames again, and these usernames are created by the Kate McAuliffe vandal. I found 5 Kate McAuliffe related usernames this week:

• User:Andrew Hartford has a crush on Kate McAuliffe
• User:Lord Zedd has a crush on Kate McAuliffe
• User:Andrew Hartford has a crush on Kate McAu!iffe
• User:Optimus Prime has a crush on Kate McAuliffe
• User:Optimus Prime has a crush on Kate Kate McAuliffe

Since I attend the same school as the Kate McAuliffe vandal, I would have to talk to him when I see him, but I don't know if this will work. This has been going on on Wikipedia since last year (months before I was new to Wikipedia). Yet I found more Kate McAuliffe usernames on Simple English Wikipedia as well. There needs to be a way to stop this sneaky socks parade. NHRHS2010 ^Talk 00:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Ask the librarians to suspend his internet access from school AND have lunch time tutoring. And, have his parents monitor his internet access. Wikipedia should be blocked from this person's computer. Miranda 00:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Hopefully all his usernames are blocked and the good news is that I know that his original IP (User:67.81.102.11) is definitely indefinitely blocked. Is this the first time you've ever heard of the issue about the Kate McAuliffe related socks? If not, when was the first time you've heard of this issue? This person is really annoying since in addition to Wikipedia, he endlessly talks about Kate McAuliffe...anytime. NHRHS2010 ^Talk 00:31, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Also, you might want to tell the school principal as well about this incident and have someone on the Wikipedia press team to send an e-mail to the school to be aware of the situation. I have heard of him before on creation logs as well as WP:CHECK. Miranda 00:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, the good news is that everyone at school knows about this situation. NHRHS2010 ^Talk 00:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I just yelled at the Kate McAuliffe vandal on the phone and threatened to report him to the school administration and he says that he will stop (I really hope so). Hopefully I don't see one piece of "McAuliffe" in the user creation log or IP block list. NHRHS2010 ^Talk 00:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I'm a bit late on this, but we do have a username blacklist. MER-C 10:17, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Alice Bailey Board

Hello,

User:64.142.90.34 is engaging in disruptive and tendentious editing on Alice Bailey.[68]

1. User:Kwork tried to link one editor to external links (unknown as to whether or not these links are really related to the editor). I warned him that this is not appropriate and he defended himself but didn't push it. Then, User:64.142.90.34 made personal attacks against another editor quoting heavily these external links (really escalated the discussion into a strong personal attack). [69][70]

2. User:64.142.90.34 continues to revert good faith efforts at neutralizing the Alice Bailey article, using known wiki words to avoid like "claims." Here's where I made the original change: [71] Here's where he reverts: [72] [73] Here are my efforts at trying to discuss the issue with him, to which he has never responded and just reverts: [74] [75]

3. This is a small issue but it shows User:64.142.90.34's pattern of disrespect for other editors. Despite repeated requests from multiple editors, both in the talk pages and on his personal talk page, he refuses to sign his name. Recently, he has agreed to at least date stamp his posts. But again, this shows a lack of willingness to work with other editors in a good faith manner. For example:

a. It would help if you would sign a name, any name, so I know which editor I am talking to. Kwork 22:19, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I am the editor that does not sign a name. :-) ... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.142.90.34 (talk • contribs) 21:44, 16 August 2007.

b. Also, would you please sign your talk page discussion? Sethie 03:15, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not necessary. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.142.90.34 (talk • contribs) 04:41, 16 August 2007.

And, on his talk page: [76] [77]

The above postings show a pattern of disruptive and tendentious editing that many editors have had to deal with (please see talk page for very strong POV pushes that are motivating edits). Again, the most serious recently is the wholesale link and pasting of external postings on the page, linking them to an editor.

Thanks for looking at this. Renee --Renee 01:21, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

As a regular on the Bailey page I would confirm I think there is a problem, SqueakBox 01:23, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I have put the "non-discussion forum" template at the top of the page, and asked people to stop throwing around their conspiracy theories about why people edit the way they do.

However the page is on the brink of going out of control any help would be greatly appreciated. Sethie 02:17, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• Alice Bailey semiprotected for one week. Please discuss edits on the talkpage before editing, even non-affected editors. Also, please consider archiving the talkpage. Thanks. ~Kylu (u|t) 04:10, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I am grateful that you undertook the semi-protection of the Alice Bailey page as a way of cooling down the problem, and it is my hope that you will now have the dedication to plough through the history of the page and of the talk page associated with it and to make some determinations of fact. There have been calls for mediation, charges of meatpuppetry and cabalism, and charges of COI with respect to this page -- most made by a user named Kwork. I think Kwork is correct in his analysis of the situation, but to date there has been no help from Wiki admin types. Meanwhile, the charges against me, to which you responded by semi-protecting the page, were made by several of the people whose names had been mentioned by Kwork (Sethie, Renee, and Squeakbox). For the record, Kwork is unknown to me, and it is regretable that by challenging my participation, on the basis of my chosen anonymity and my "tendentiousness", the serious issues raised by Kwork against Sethie, James, Renee, and Squeakbox are again being tabled.

Interestingly, your semi-protection of the page was made while the page was displaying the ugly grammar problems that have been repeatedly introduced by the programmaticly reverting editor named Renee. Her signature mark is an incomplete sentence in the "Criticism" section of the page, specifically the pargraph that deals with the Lucis Trust's responses to charges that have been made by authors who cite evidence of racism and antisemitism in Bailey's writings. You can see it there now, and repeatedly in her history of revisions.

Also, with respect to my anonymity, this is an experiment on my part. I have previously edited under a user name and may do so again. I am in no way connected with the subject of the biography or her opponents. My other recent edits can be looked up; they involve occult and New Thought writers such as William Walker Atkinson, Charles Fillmore (Unity Church), L. W. de Laurence, Emma Curtis Hopkins, and Cheiro; stage, radio, and screen entertainers such as C. A. Alexander, Jean Hersholt, Macdonald Carey, Herb Jeffries, Robert Ripley, and Gaahl; and general interest topics such as toothpaste, the Sago Mine Disaster, Harbin Hot Springs, Hash House Harriers, and tasseography.

12:54, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for blocking editing to the article for one week. I was hoping that could be done, but did not know how to request it. The situation is chaotic and spinning out of control. I had requested mediation because of Sethie's enforcing his views by edit war. Unfortunatly, I do not have the computer understanding necessary to get even such a request as that to work, and it was not listed. Since that request the situation has gotten more complex and difficult. There is an RfC (requested by Sethie), but Renee (while a nice person)is not neutral. Would it be possible to have someone from WikiBiography (more likely to be neutral) to participate in the RfC? I have no understanding how that request would be made, but I think it important. There is also a question involving meatpuppets. Thanks. Kwork 13:59, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Abuse by user:Tariqabjotu

I feel harrassed by admin Tariqabjotu. He keeps blocking me whenever he gets the chance when I get into disputes on some articles. I don't break 3rr and I never instigate edit wars, but he keeps blocking me for "edit-warring". I'm looking for outside opinions on this before he gives me the "I'm just being a neutral admin" speech. I just noticed that he's edit-warring on the Israel article right now, so I don't understand the double-standard. Egyegy 02:14, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

First, I fail to understand how his edits on Israel (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) at the moment constitute edit warring - they seem to be uncontroversial changes, and he is reverting no one. As to instigating edit wars and violations of the three revert rule, neither of these is a prerequisite for blocking for edit warring. If a user is disrupting Wikipedia via multiple reverts, uninvolved sysops may use their judgement with regards to blocking the user in question. Your recent edits on Arab (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) seem to fit that description, ie disruptive edit warring that doesn't seem to be violating the three-revert rule, as do your recent edits on Middle East. Tariqabjotu seems to have been correct in his block, "03:17, August 18, 2007 Tariqabjotu (Talk | contribs | block) blocked "Egyegy (contribs)" (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 36 hours (revert-warring on Middle East and Arab, despite previous blocks)". I have don't have a good way of assessing whether he's completely uninvolved, but he certainly hasn't been involved in those two edit wars. In conclusion, I see no abuse. Picaroon (t) 02:53, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

First of all he edits Middle East articles, so we know he is not "uninvolved" at all. Second of all, he was edit-warring on the Israel article. Take a closer look at his contributions and the talk page. He even admits that he was "battling" with the regular editors on the article [78]. His battling made everyone angry [79] [80] [81]. See he is not like an uninvoloved editor. His battling on the article was disruptive. For him to block me three times in a row without breaking 3rr not just shows bias but hypocrisy also. This is why I'm asking someone to take a neutral view of this. Egyegy 18:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

SallyForth123 evading 3RR block with dynamic IPs

Earlier tonight I blocked SallyForth123 (talk · contribs) for violating 3RR on Hurricane Dean. Shortly after the block, she resumed edit warring as 75.36.172.192 (confirmed by checkuser). After blocking that IP and resetting Sally's original block timer, she returned again to edit war under 76.221.184.143, also making similar changes and removing quotes from Hurricane Katrina here. I blocked that IP for a week and extended Sally's block to a week. Now she's back as 76.220.203.157. Hurricane Dean has since been semi-protected, but she may return to carry on her edit warring elsewhere (MO seems to be changing all present tense to past tense and removing quotes from articles despite the referencing and consensus to keep them in). Also, the Dean article is linked from the main page, which means it may not be semi-protected for long. Could someone help me resolve this issue (possibly with a rangeblock, although ISP is AT&T so may be difficult)? --Coredesat 02:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

She appears to be back again. Again, I need help dealing with this. --Coredesat 21:00, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Several more IPs. --Coredesat 21:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Paulie's World

I usually don't worry too much about what a user has on their userpage, but I think this particular page might require some administrative action. It includes a message encouraging other users to upload copyright infringements and an infobox stating that he approves of vandalism, both of which are plainly inappropriate. As a separate issue, there's also a link to a photograph that might violate US laws on record-keeping of sexual materials, in that it depicts two young nude boys. I don't want to engage the user directly, since I don't have The Tools and thus can't take any administrative action if it becomes necessary. Would someone else please have a look at things and maybe see what they can do? Thanks. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 04:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• I think that communication is unlikely to be helpful, considering the following message at the bottom of the user's userpage: "Leave me a message on my talk page and I will read and respond as soon as I login." -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 04:15, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• I slapped a speedy tag on it. Pure trolling, with few, if any, actual contributions to make this even borderline. Hopefully an admin unburdened by excessive bureaucracy will nuke it. --Calton | Talk 05:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Ryulong (talk · contribs) took care of it. If this sort if behavior continues, hit my talkpage and I'll handle the situation.--Isotope23 ^talk 12:55, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

How about the photo? Is any action necessary on that? I don't want another PublicgirlUK situation... -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 18:48, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• Hiya! The image on my page was vandalism. Feel free to ban the IP as it wasn't me. But thanks for checking the history first before deleting my entire userpage. That was very cute of you Wikipedia :) I also did nothing wrong. Almost all of my edits are to my userpage and not to any Wikipedia articles themselves. Since when does what I write on my USERPAGE come into question, especially when it is mostly text with no potty language? I thought the point of User Pages was to allow people to express themselves with their own opinions and break NPOV. What's next, deleting people who support fascism? Holla! Paulie's World 20:13, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

At the present time, I'm pretty sure that actually deleting another person is a violation of WP:CIVIL, and fortunately the software has quite limited capability in that regard. The matter of the image isn't really related to you, since you weren't the initial uploader. Your userpage was deleted because it violated the section of WP:USER dealing with "material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute". If you'd like to recreate it without encouraging vandalism, copyright violation, and other things of that nature that are prohibited by policies/guidelines, I don't think anybody would have a problem with that. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 20:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I lobbied for a Soylent Green version of the software but no one would bite... —Wknight94 (talk) 21:30, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Matt57

As posted on User talk:Matt57#WP:HARASS and Elonka, I've blocked Matt57 for 24 hour for intimidating behavior and stalking another editor. A certain amount of oversight over other editors (including admins, of course) is obviously beneficial: it keeps us all honest and playing by the same rules.

Going so far as to dig through someone's life and prying out things the other person is trying to keep from public view, when they're quite frankly none of any of our business, however, is quite something else. I've redacted a comment (which will hopefully be deleted soon) of Matt57's which in my opinion shows disturbing behavior on his part.

Hopefully, instead of backfiring on me and causing more wiki-drama, this will cause him to rethink his current behavior and change it to something a bit less frightening to us. Just think of how you'd react if someone were digging up your personal information and posting it all on a site that gets mirrored and google-indexed many times a day.

I can only hope that this causes more help than harm. Opinions and views on the situation are requested. I've obviously been opaque on the actual subject matter for a reason. Thanks. ~Kylu (u|t) 05:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen the deleted comment, so can't offer any review of it - perhaps it is blockworthy, as you say…

…but you invited Matt57 to edit articles which Elonka isn't editing.[82] To my knowledge, Matt57 isn't editing any articles which Elonka is also editing (though she's invited him to do so.) Which articles did you have in mind when you wrote that?

What Matt57 has been doing is vetting articles that Elonka created last year contra WP:COI - for example this glowing resumé for her father - for original research and other unsourced material, of which they are mostly comprised. That's not harassment.Proabivouac 05:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Whether or not it is harassment, it is, IMO, incivil of him to single out a particular user in such a way when he appears to have a history with Elonka. I also note numerous complaints about the zeal with which he's taking an axe to them. IMO, it would be wise of Matt57 to keep away from these articles in the future and leave fixing them to other, uninvolved editors. There are plenty of other bad articles on Wikipedia; in fact, there are many far worse than this. I've seen no credible allegation that these articles contain inaccurate statements; rather, that they contain possibly unverifiable statements and are unduly favorable to their subjects. I'd suggest that Wikipedia can survive a few puff pieces on Elonka's relatives quite well, that no harm will result by their remaining for a while in an unfixed state, and that Matt57 find something else to worry about. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 06:09, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

"…they contain possibly unverifiable statements and are unduly favorable to their subjects."

Unverifiable and unduly favorable are violations of policy which I should like to correct. Will I, too, be blocked if I do so?Proabivouac 06:17, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

For the record, I supported her RfA, albeit with strong misgivings, per Danny's oppose, due to COI concerns. I became aware of this issue when MAtt57 was unjustly blocked after having been framed by sockpuppets of two banned users; see this thread.Proabivouac 06:21, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

It would depend on how you did it. Why is it so important to you to fix THESE particular possible flaws in the encyclopedia above others? Why is it so important for Matt57 to do so right now? There are some issues that need immediate fixing; those covered by BLP, copyright violations, etc etc. Other issues like these can be handled slowly if necessary, and are best handled when there is contention by attempting to involve as many others in the decision as possible, so that the results are seen as fairly representative of consensus rather than a personal dislike or issue. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 08:06, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Fred Bauder once suggested that "aggressively checking the logs of editors with whom you are in a dispute may constitute harassment". Since other arbitrators discarded this principle as a "step in the wrong direction", I believe our definition of harrassment should be reexamined. As I infer from ArbCom's handling of the Abu badali case, Matt's actions should not be qualified as harrassment. He is simply enforcing our principles, just like Abu badali was. --Ghirla^-трёп- 09:54, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not: I'm involved in all kinds of things. This is just item that's been on my plate since it was brought to the community's (and my) attention on this noticeboard.

Although I will point out that there is a probable BLP violation on Elonka Dunin right now: "Dunin, however, investigated further, and got Dunn to admit that he faked the impersonation, as well as his own death, in a pathetic attempt to gain attention."[83][84] Hopefully, someone will fix that soon.

Re "It would depend on how you did it."

The following diffs illustrate the model I'd like to apply to the articles in question:[85][86] Granted, I might be accused of being partial toward the editor who did that; however I'm confident that he wouldn't have taken this action were it not mandated by policy.Proabivouac 09:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I've been unfortunately dragged into this dispute over the past few days, and I must say I fully endorse this block. Matt57's behavior towards Elonka in this dispute has been wholly unacceptable: digging through her contributions and stalking her across wikis and other websites, aggressively attacking contributions she made years ago, and constantly accusing her of shady wrongdoings, such as accusing her of conspiring with administrators against him in IRC (accusing third parties who offer an outside opinion as being part of her "cabal," which is how I got dragged into this), and even accusing her of harrassing and wikistalking him. Even after Elonka made a completely reasonable request for him to stop (complete with many diffs of example of the behavior I just mentioned), he only seems to have stepped it up further. Matt57 needs to know that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated whatsoever. --Krimpet 06:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Krimpet, you threatened me with a block on Commons following Elonka's threatening me on this wiki,[87] (since-deleted page) and conversing with you on IRC.[88] So if Matt57 has accused her of "conspiring with administrators against him in IRC," I'm afraid this strikes me as very credible.Proabivouac 06:17, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Proabivouac, your levels of incivility and serial assumption of bad faith has been on par with Matt57's in this dispute (and it appears that I have conflated your allegations with Matt57's; it was not he who made the accusations of her conspiring with administrators, it was you). I did answer a request for informal third-party clarification from Elonka on whether Image:Mohammed kaaba 1315 bew.jpg was acceptable on Commons, on the public channel #wikimedia-commons. It was after answering her question and ending the conversation with her that I noticed that this appeared to be part of a larger dispute, so I dug deeper and noticed it was spilling over from here on en.wiki, so I gave you a mildly stern warning that disrupting Commons as part of this dispute on en.wiki would not be tolerated. You then immediately accused Elonka of conspiring with me to threaten you with a block on Commons, though I could have just as easily discovered your disruptive behavior through Recent Changes or any other number of channels -- Commons is a much smaller community than en.wiki. And I notice after another uninvolved admin came across the dispute and concurred with what I said on your talk page, you accused him of exactly the same thing. Your pattern of assuming bad faith and instantly accusing other editors of wrongdoing is completely out-of-line. --Krimpet 06:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Krimpet, when I see a threat on this wiki, followed by an IRC conversation and a threat for a block on Commons, what am I supposed to think? I asked Elonka about this several times (deleted page, e-mail) and got a carefully-parsed non-answer each time, which does nothing to promote an atmosphere of transparency and trust.

On Wikipedia, it would certainly not be considered disruptive to remove a user-degraded image from a gallery of otherwise historic artworks; rather it would be considered disruptive to repeatedly add it, as Elonka has done. If things work differently on Commons, and original user art or defaced (literally) historical works, is welcome, contra stated policy, then I suppose it is - I've nominated it for deletion, and we'll see how that turns out. You made no attempt to discuss any matter of substance with me on my commons talk page, or on the talk pages of the relevant galleries, you made no attempt to answer any of my questions about Commons policies - I had to find them on my own - (talk about WP:BITE) - and your accusation of "disruption" remains completely unfounded. If anything, it is another excellent illustration of why discussions should take place on-wiki wherever possible, so that the matters can be examined openly, without being prejudiced by one-sided conversations to which affected editors are not privy and cannot respond.Proabivouac 07:18, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I remember one of Matt's comments at Elonka's RfA. It was quite excessive. There is no sign of acceptance of anything in Matt's response to Elonka's comment here [89].

Aminz, we've been talking about this for awhile now at User talk:Elonka/Work1 for awhile now. You can't see it, because it's been deleted. The bottom line here is that Elonka views bringing her COI articles in line with Wikipedia policies as harassment. You can say, well, it'd be better if someone other than Matt57 did it, and perhaps you're right…did you have anyone in particular in mind? Because these articles have been blatantly out of step with WP policy for over a year now, and no one's anything about it.Proabivouac 08:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Matt is unique in several aspects: There is only one user that writes the username of Itaqallah as "ItaqAllah" and it is Matt (can one ask why only and only Matt does that?). Matt insists in using people like Craig Winn in criticism of Islam article. Just to give you an idea of who this guy is, I'll provide some quotes from him: "Hitler simply followed Muhammad's path...Muslims, like Nazis and Communists, can’t be trusted...Muhammad, Islam’s lone prophet, qualifies as the most evil man to have ever lived...Prophet of Doom is the best documented and most comprehensive presentation of the Islamic scriptures ever written...Muhammad was the perfect Satanic prophet...As an expert on Islam and terror, I know that all good Muslims are terrorists and that most all terrorists are Muslims...Decadent egomaniacs like Muhammad are deeply troubled and tortured souls..Muhammad was a terrorist." --Aminz 07:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

You appear to be canvassing, and to have forgotten hadith Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220. Arrow740 09:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I am unsure, Aminz, how this has any bearing on the discussion at hand. Neil ム 08:05, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Matt needs to stay away articles associated with Elonka, because his behavior looks like stalking. Whether it is or not is irrelevant; it's what it looks like that matters. He has followed other editors around after disputes with them, which has been discussed on AN/I at least once, so this isn't an isolated incident. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 08:10, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I endorse the prevention of the posting of private material on this website and therefore and by extension the blocking of users, for what seems like a necessary and or appropriate length of time, that introduce such content; blocking is not punitive, but preventative, so I think that what has transpired between Kylu and Matt57 is probably to the benefit (and, possibly, the safeguarding, in relation to the consideration and insurance of every users right to keep certain private information/s unrevealed to the community) of those involved. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 08:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I, too, strongly support this principle and any actions taken to uphold it.Proabivouac 08:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

However, according to Matt57's unblock request, this information was already avaliable on User:Elonka/About…

if so, it seems that Matt57 has been blocked twice in a row for infractions he did not commit.Proabivouac 11:52, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• That was hardly a "completely reasonable request to stop". Rather, something that starts with "formal notification" is probably misguided to begin with, and it appears to contain any number of leaps to conclusions. Something doesn't seem right here. >Radiant< 11:21, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
• I only glanced at this in the past, and assumed Elonka was mostly in the right. The behavior of her more aggressive supporters is making me think again, and making me wonder if I was foolish to support her RfA. Blurring out the face of Muhammad bothers me, but that is a question I would let Commons to deal with, as long as we do not use the bowdlerized picture in any of our articles. Tom Harrison ^Talk 12:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
• Kylu, again, this was no private information. Its all there at User:Elonka/About. This was a completely unfair block where you probably trusted Elonka whatever she told you in email or on IRC. The link I posted in my message to her is publicly available on her wiki's main page (that link is available publicly again, at User:Elonka/About). I had only suggested her to use her own wiki as a scratchpad. I'm tired of all these blocks and threats which are all about trying to stop me from Elonka's family articles, which contain huge amounts of poorly sourced or unsourced OR and which were originally made by her in violation of WP:COI. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:07, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Examined and unblocked

I have investigated this block and the surrounding edits and come to the conclusion that it is both unwarranted and punitive.

• Matt is told to go edit articles Elonka is not editing. However, that's precisely what he IS doing.
• With respect to editing articles on Elonka's relatives, judged by his contribs log he has actually been moving to other subject areas the past few days, and hasn't been editing much overall.
• Matt is told to not store deleted content in his userspace; however, many editors do so, and so does Elonka. The two were holding a conversation in her userspace, that she wanted deleted and he wanted retained. That's hardly inappropriate.
• Matt is told not to post links to people's private sites; however, the link to Elonka's private site is easily found at the top of the links section in the article on her. So he's hardly revealing anything shocking.
• Then we have the standard red herring about the IRC cabal, which should simply be ignored.

I suspect this block is partially based upon Elonka's so-called "formal notification to cease harassment". However, this notification contains numerous overstatements, proofs-by-assertion and misinterpretations. Of course, the title itself is begging the question. It reads as if somebody combed through Matt's contribs and picked out everything that could be construed as problematic.

• For instance, it says "multiple editors were telling [Matt] to back off" followed by six diffs; these diffs are of three editors, only one of which is telling him to back off.
• It refers an image deletion on commons, where allegedly Matt is "continuing with bad faith accusations", whereas his comment in question is "I've told this to Elonka many times but she fails to understand this." which is hardly extreme.
• And, it says that "on the few other subjects that you're working on, you're getting complaints there too" which (1) is irrelevant, and (2) two people complaining is hardly indicative of a problem editor (heck, anyone who does deletion closure gets more than that, daily).

What we have here is a content dispute. While it could be argued that Matt has a conflict of interest over this content, it is obvious that Elonka does, since the content is about her family (which have been subject of COI complaints in the past). I am aware that she hasn't been editing them recently, but she is vehemently opposing certain edits to them, albeit indirectly. Neither side has been particularly nice towards the other, and tempers are flaring all around. However, we do not solve content disputes by blocking one side. Hence, unblocked, and I suggest taking the articles to WP:RFC. >Radiant< 12:55, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe the above analysis is flawed and the decision goes against the grain of the discussion here, which is supportive of the block. I have no time to go into this further. But I ask Radiant to reconisder overruling a block made intelligently and in good faith. WjBscribe 13:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

As the phrase "conflict of interest," like "stalking" and "harassment" has been bandied about rather carelessly in this discussion, for example here, let's refer once again to the relevant guideline. I quote from WP:COI#What is a conflict of interest?:

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a forum for advertising or self-promotion, or a vanity press…Adding material that appears to promote the interests or visibility of an article's author, his family members…places the author in a conflict of interest…If you do write an article on area in which you are personally involved, be sure to…cite reliable, third-party published sources

It should go without saying that nothing in this page has any bearing whatsoever on anything Matt57 has done.Proabivouac 13:18, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

While I agree with the spirit of the block, the objectionable activity (call it stalking, harrassment, conflict of interest, whatever you will) seems to be ongoing and long-term, and I doubt a 24 hour block will solve problems. Hopefully all parties will heed Radiant's sensible advice. Some form of content arbitration needs to take place here. ~ Riana ⁂ 13:28, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

For all who supported my block and/or are telling me not to edit Elonka's articles: here's the basic situation. Tell me what to do, except not to edit articles on Elonka's family because anyone can edit any article:

• Elonka created and edited these articles last year in the first place, which amounts to multiple violations of WP:COI. She was aware of this policy but as far as I know, she was never warned for the violations.
• Today, these articles still exist, with no reliable sources and often, no proof of notability (Antoni Dunin, Stanley Dunin etc.)
• I decided to take up the task of looking at these articles, taking out unsourced OR, examining the quality of the sources.
• She asked me to stop editing her family articles (WP:OWN). What? Shouldn't she be the one who is told the same as per COI?

Am I doing anything wrong? If you tell me to stay away from Elonka for a while, I can do that, but dont tell me not to edit these articles. Even Jimbo has taken out unsourced or poorly sourced OR from Elonka related articles. I should be allowed to edit these articles. Whats wrong with that?

So, what is the reasonable resolution of this whole affair? I'm willing to take a break to let things cool down on both sides but I wont accept anyone telling not to edit these articles, because I have every right to do so as long as I'm following policies. Please also tell me now why Elonka was not warned for making these COI violations at that time and why she was allowed to freely promote her family members. Keeping your friendships and biases aside, please ask yourself: what is the right thing to do for these articles with OR and COI problems? --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 14:02, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Matt57, you make the mistake of comparing Elonka's actions from a long time ago against the COI guideline as it exists today. Fortunately this is a wiki, so you can go look up an old copy of the COI guideline and see what it said at the time. Also take a look at an old version of WP:V.

These articles should be cleaned up, or possibly deleted, but not by somebody with an axe to grind. You shouldn't edit these at all because you obviously have such strong feelings about Elonka. Would it make sense to post these articles to WP:COIN to get more neutral editors involved? - Jehochman ^Talk 14:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at the old versions of the policies yourself. The old copy of COI still admonished people about articles promoting their family members. When Elonka was aware of the policy, this is what it said at that time:

any material that presents the appearance of being intended to in any way promote the personal notoriety of the author, or one of the close family members or associates of the author.

WP:V was also pretty clear at that time: "Personal websites and blogs are not acceptable as sources"

Ofcourse I would be glad to post this to WP:COIN. In the past, when I sought outside advice for this affair, I was accused of forum shopping. I dont have any axe to grind. I've been fair in every way. If I'm told not to edit these articles, I'll contact Jimbo and tell him that people are being allowed to promote their family members and those who come in to deal with these problems are threatened with blocks, and I'll remind him that he has himself taken out unsourced OR from Elonka related articles. Again, I'm willing to take a break, seek community input on my edits on these articles and invite people to edit and provide feedback but its wrong to tell me to stay away from these articles. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 14:26, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Matt57, the point is that many editors think what you are doing is stalking. Personally, I find it spooky. I had no interaction with either you or Elonka until I happened to vote in her RFA and left a message on her talk page. I have watched what you are doing and even commented on it to you in the early stages. There is nothing wrong with cleaning up the articles. There is something very wrong with your continuing obsession. Leave it to someone else and move on. -- DS1953 ^talk 14:28, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

You like Jehochman and others have supported Elonka in her RfA. Please leave your personal biases aside. I've mentioned that I can take a break but its unfair to tell me not to edit these articles. I'm seriously going to think about contacting Jimbo about this. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 14:34, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe I have a personal bias to leave aside in this case. As I said, I had never any interaction with Elonka in my three years here before supporting her RFA. I have commented on many RFAs during my time here and don't believe that simply deciding that someone would not misuse the tools makes me biased in their favor. (In fact, there are some editors from whom I wish I could withdraw my previous support). What's more, I even happen to agree with you that the articles need to be trimmed of non-encyclopedic material and, in some cases perhaps, deleted entirely. What I don't believe is appropriate is for you to continue to act in a manner that many people consider to be stalking. Driving over the speed limit is neither legal nor safe but if you followed my neighbor around calling the police every time she went 32 mph in a 30 mph zone, I would say you have a problem that is worse than her exceeding the speed limit. -- DS1953 ^talk 15:23, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

DS1953, per the now-banned anti-Merkey SPAs, you are absolutely correct about which would be worse. However, Matt57 isn't following her around, not even to a single article. The "stalking" consisted of Matt57 finding a user subpage she'd created to harass him.Proabivouac 15:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

DS, I didnt follow Elonka anywhere. She made that whole page on me, which I happened to see using her contribs (seeing someone's contribs is not stalking, per WP:STALK) and I responded to that page on its discussion tab. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

How about as a compromise both Matt57 and Elonka agree not to edit these articles for a while? And maybe someone could list the articles we are talking about. Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Elonka doesn't edit these articles directly; she just threatens those who do. And her threats come true.Proabivouac 14:41, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, she doesn't edit her family's articles anymore. Most of them can be found here (this is public information, people, lest I be blocked again for posting this 'dangerous' link: User:Elonka/Genealogy. The ones that are being discussed and evaluated nowdays are Antoni Dunin and Stanley Dunin. They're full of unsourced OR that Elonka put in last year. The talk pages of these articles prove that there are almost no non-trivial reliable sources. And yes I can take a break from these articles so we can let things cool down everywhere, but if I'm told by others not to edit these articles at all, I will take that seriously. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 14:49, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Matt57 can raise an article RFC, a third opinion, or a notice at the COI noticeboard (or all three). This should attract outside editors to the articles without the drama that comes from Matt and Elonka having previous negative interactions. If other experienced editors agree with Matt's concerns, Elonka would have no leg to stand on. Thatcher131 14:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the nuetral input. This is what I'll do, after taking a break and letting things calm down a bit. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 14:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - this would be exactly the right thing to do. Yes, the articles need to be fixed - but your doing it directly is not going to help, since there is the appearance (true or not) that you are taking an axe to them because of previous disputes between you and Elonka. Asking others to fix them is the right approach. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 20:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I was unable to post more about this matter earlier as I had to catch a train. I am very disappointed this block was overturned. It seems to me that Raidant substituted his own judgment for that of the blocking admin against the consensus here. Instead of raising his analysis in this thread so it could be discussed further and his points responded to, he went ahead and unblocked because he thought that was the right thing to do, not because there was a consensus to unblock. These issues with Matt's conduct are longstanding and his recent attentions towards Elonka are only a recent manifestation. Whilst I agree that there are OR problems with some of those articles, his approaching of blanking most of the content (rather than just that which is unsourced) has been criticised both by myself and Shell Kinney (who has bene doing great work improving those articles). For example Matt seems unable to accept that inline citation is not required by policy, that sources do not have to be in english and that print references are as good (if not better) than online ones. His conduct - goading Elonka on her talkpage when she has understandably decided not to edit those article's further due to WP:COI concerns seems to be trying to place her in a catch 22 situation. Damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. His approach to the matter has been hostile and combative rather than collegial. Myself and Durova have both warned him that his content has crossed the line into harassment. Other admins (including critics of Elonka) have concurred. Matt57's aggressive approach is not limited to Elonka - SlimVirgin also appears to have recieved very unwelcome attention following a disagreement between them. I also note that in discussion in general he is quick to disruption to make points and seem to regard compromise and bowing to consensus as weakness. This attitude is fundementally at odds with what this project is about. WjBscribe 17:18, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• Response. >Radiant< 09:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like a request for comment might be in order. Tom Harrison ^Talk 17:24, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

WJ, you were one of the nominator's in Elonka's last RfA so you're not a nuetral party here. I'm just being bullied to stay away from Elonka's family articles, this is what its all about. As for SlimVirgin, she has had conflicts with a lot of people, not just me. If blanking the content was wrong, was Jimbo wrong too? About me opposing consensus, consensus right here on this section has been that Elonka's articles have serious problems and thats what I've said too. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 17:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Matt57, there may be problems with these articles, but you are not the one to fix them. I'm glad you stated (above) that you wouldn't be attempting to do so yourself in future, but would instead bring up any problems in forums where other editors might help out. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 20:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know much about this situation, but from reading this ANI thread I don't think Matt57 should have been blocked. Kylu's elliptically-worded post that opened this thread seems to be mostly about the (attempted) revelation of private information, and as far as I can see Matt hasn't revealed anything that wasn't already publicly available. If Matt is stalking or harassing Elonka, it might be beneficial to set out the evidence in a user conduct RfC; the community can then evaluate whether blocking or other remedies are necessary.

By the way, Antoni Dunin is now at AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Antoni Dunin (2nd nomination). --Akhilleus (talk) 18:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which, on WP:COIN#Antoni_Dunin, Matt57 stated he wouldn't be involved in the AfD for now, yet has involved himself in the debate there anyway. In the meantime, interested parties may wish to review my response to the unblocking and opinion of the situation if you'd like. Leave responses here please. ~Kylu (u|t) 20:14, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Kylu, your allegation on which my block was based on was that I leaked out sensitive information on Elonka and that turned out to be false. It was all public information. Next time, please investigate matters before blocking someone and dont listen to people on IRC (you admitted IRC was involved), because if someone says something about me, it might be a complete lie or a misrepresentation and I cannot be there to correct the facts. I dont know why Elonka frequents IRC so much and why she doesnt contact ANI here when she has a problem. Is that because she knows she has an advantage over the person she wants to get prosecuted since they cant see whats being said? The IRC logs should be available by the way, because I want to know what she has been saying about me. By the way, I took out my vote as a suggestion from THF. Its amazing Elonka walks free while I get blocked and harrassed and told to stay away from her articles, in which she has violated COI herself. Thats because she has all these admin friends whom she contacts on IRC to get them to stop others from doing anything to her family articles. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 21:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

In case it wasn't clear above, Kylu, I am wholly in support of your block, which I think was thoroughly deserved. IMO, Matt57 has a propensity to do things on purpose to irritate those he's had disagreements with (i.e. WP:POINT) and has a major problem with being told he shouldn't do something. There's a lot of editors on Wikipedia who can make the articles on Elonka's relatives be NPOV, or argue for their deletion if they're not ever going to be good encyclopedia articles. Matt57 should be nowhere among them. It's not unreasonable to ask people to avoid conflict and avoid doing things on purpose to annoy others, even if the conduct is within the normally acceptable sphere of edits. Arbcom has done so in the past and will do so in future (frequently). Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 20:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

There's only one thing to discuss on this whole affair: whether the sources are enough or not. If they are, please take part at the article's discussion page. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 21:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Matt: IRC RC Bot and Wikipedia IRCD[90]. As I stated , IRC is my preferred method of seeing recentchanges. The block wasn't based on that one incident of personal information (which you didn't post as article-related, and if you're following RS as strictly as you say, shouldn't even be a site to pique your curiosity) but because of the pattern of harassment. Want to know WHO I was listening to on IRC when I first started considering the situation? Visit irc.wikimedia.org, channel #en.wikipedia. RC's a bot. It spits out a list of all the changes on Wikipedia, rather like having a realtime, scrolling special:recentchanges. The channel is, for the most part, full of bots. I have not once seen RC (or any of the other bots) squeak a word, other than RC spitting out its continuous feed. On that server, in fact, Sending messages to channels is not allowed, you can watch but you can't touch. (from the irc.wikimedia.org welcome message)

Did anyone else on regular IRC mention the situation? Sure did, but that was after I'd already made up my mind and started acting upon it. Please don't presume to know what my thoughts and motivations were. I'd like to point out that earlier, in "regular" irc, I suggested to a different admin to not make blocking decisions based on advice gained on IRC. You have to be responsible for your own decisions, and I not only stand by my block, I'm dismayed that you've decided to see Radiant's unblock as clearance to continue your actions. ~Kylu (u|t) 21:26, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• Response. >Radiant< 09:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Kylu, in the post which began this thread, giving the reason for your block, you wrote, "Going so far as to dig through someone's life and prying out things the other person is trying to keep from public view, when they're quite frankly none of any of our business, however, is quite something else." Did Matt57 do that?Proabivouac 01:07, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

(Copied from Radiant's talk page) Radiant, I agree with WJBscribe that Matt needed to sit out this block. He has been practically stalking Elonka because she tried to mediate between him and some Muslim editors during a content dispute, and he didn't like the suggestion she came up with. This left him with the sense that she is too pro-Muslim (when in fact she was just trying to find a compromise). He tried to do the same to me a while back after a dispute at Islamophobia, after which he also decided I was pro-Muslim. I forget the exact details, but he later turned up at a couple of articles I edit a lot and tried to cause a problem. He also implied that I was creating sockpuppets that appeared to be him in order to discredit him. I saw on AN/I that there were allegations of harassment from other editors too following content disputes, so this is a pattern. What has made it worse in Elonka's case is that the articles he has stalked her to are about her family, and so there are privacy issues. The behavior has been a bit creepy, to be honest, and Kylu was right to block, in my view. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 05:06, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

• Response. >Radiant< 09:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC

I, for one, completely agree with what Radiant said and think the block was uncalled for. Matt editing the Dunin articles is not stalking. Following Elonka on pages she edits, etc, is stalking. Matt is completely within his right to edit these articles, and no one has a right to stop him from doing so. He doesn't need to be bothering Elonka with what he's doing, but that is all. If Matt isn't allowed to finish cleaning these articles up, I'll volunteer myself to do so. -- Ned Scott 05:30, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I generally agree with Radiant's contention that "we do not solve content disputes by blocking one side". Any attempts to issue blocks instead of pursuing standard dispute resolution procedures are ill-advised and reflect poorly on those who demand their opponents to be blocked from editing, especially by advocating, manipulating, and politicking behind the scenes. I guess we move to arbitration next. --Ghirla^-трёп- 09:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Hacked account being abused

Minor, bored student-type vandalism by Ben chang93 (talk · contribs) appears to be due to the account being hacked per Template:Australia-school-stubby will hickman. Perhaps it should be blocked. Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 06:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Looks like he stopped, don't think it's a hacked account, just a new account with which this kid is pretending to be one of his friends. I'm inclined just to watch for now, but if the vandalism starts up again, I think an indef is warranted -- Samir 07:49, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Be on the lookout for an open sock drawer

I would keep an eye on Scientology-related topics per this indef'd user's page before I reblanked it per WP:DENY. It seems to me he may be planning to use sockpuppets. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 07:28, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Muntuwandi Still Reverting

Here are the latest, can someone please do something permanent! He won't even use edit summaries [96] --Phral 09:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know much about your stories but it is clear that it is an edit warring. Just a note for everyone, please discuss your issues at the talk page. There has been no discussion since August 13. If not i'd be obliged to protect the article at the wrong version of course. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 21:59, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

To butt in for a moment. I too have problems with Phral with reverting MY edits and his racist views. (This is not an attack, he is proud of that). See his response to my comment on his talk page. The link above was a legitimate good faith revert, because what was there before was inaccurate. Carol Channing is not Mulatto. Also, trying to bait me on my talk page. I can provide many more, but will not clutter this page. FYI. - Jeeny ^Talk 08:12, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not racist, just a realist. And I was genuinely interested into what is motivating Jeeny to delete so much information and try cover so many things up, much like Muntuwandi does. --Phral 08:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Birmingham Pub Bombings

Edit War. Should this page not be protected? Banksareas 10:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Sockpuppet of User:Aatomic1, who is currently blocked for a week for edit warring on that page. Kind regards. 217.44.10.252 10:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

This is obviously a sock of a blocked user blocked for trying to insert lists of dead in numerous articles, dispite no consensus to do so being achieved on the talk pages of these articles. These lists add nothing of encyclopedic value to articles and are just memorials.--padraig 11:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

This editor is now using a second sockpuppet [97] 217.44.10.252 12:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

While the sockpuppetry is obviously wrong (and I have blocked the sock indef) I don't see the problem with inserting lists of the dead into the articles. I looked randomly at a few other terrorism-related articles, and found plenty with such lists in. Some have, some haven't. This seems like a particularly pointless edit-war. ELIMINATORJR 13:09, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

No problem per se, but the edits are a part of a far wider "unseen/underground war" between British and Irish editors that spans essentially every article relating to British-Irish politics/geography/hitory (or at least every article that both side knows are aware exists). Its intractable and insidious, and every minor edit is (and should) be seen in the context of that wider "propoganda war" - either as a provocation or as a movement within it. It always existed but is now getting out of hand and has reached the point where it is self-fuelling. --sony-youth^pléigh 13:20, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Banksareas was the first sock which is not blocked at present, he switched to GingerAstaire after three reverts. 217.44.10.252 13:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I realise the "policy" behind it. Personally, I don't believe that mere lists of those killed contravenes WP:NOT#MEMORIAL - they would if they went into any more detail than a mere list - so if we're going to remove lists of people killed in incidents (terrorism-related or whatever), then that has to extend everywhere and would involve the deletion of entire articles (i.e. List of victims of the Virginia Tech massacre). I've blocked User:Banksareas as well, btw. ELIMINATORJR 13:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I semiprotected it (for seven days) a little while ago to deal with the influx of newly-minted socks. If it looks like further edit warring is going to go on, then I would suggest any admin feel free to change that to full protection. The article was fully protected for three days last week (by another admin); I hope that got the point across, but you never know. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Is it worth taking Aatomic1 and the socks to checkuser? My experience of the turf-war desctribed by Sony-youth tells me there are plenty of potential candidates for the sockpuppeter. Moreover, Aatomic1 is currently blocked for a week. If we are sure he is evading the block, it should be reset, if not extended. Rockpocket 01:37, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Confirmed RFCU

Resolved

 – Account indefinitely blocked as an abusive sockpuppet by ELIMINATORJR. --Onorem♠Dil 13:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello administrators. I have a incident.

User:Dutyterms was confirmed by administrator Voice-of-All, as a series of sockpuppets of User:Bason0. But Dutyterms has not been blocked yet. Can someone cope with it?

A related WP:RFCU is Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Bason0#2nd request. Thanks. --Nightshadow28 11:48, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• I blocked Dutyterms yesterday for 24h for 3RR. This hasn't expired yet, and per the checkuser I have extended it to indef. ELIMINATORJR 12:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you very much, ELIMINATORJR. This incident finished. --Nightshadow28 13:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Sockpuppet editing abuse

Is there anything that can be done to bring one user under control? AGENT 7 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) created a number of Salamis-related articles (in poor English, unreferenced - and difficult to reference because sources are mostly in Greek).

After warnings and a couple of blocks for removing cleanup and {{unreferenced}} tags, he/she - judging by identical edit patterns - has switched to working via variable IP sockpuppet addresses: continuing to add unsourced material, removing maintenance tags whenever they're put back, and refusing to communicate on the matter.

Articles concerned are:

• Aianteio (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Aias Salamina F.C. (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Ampelakia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Agios Georgios, Salamis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Batsi (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Dimitrios Mpogris (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Kaki Vigla (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Memos Mpegnis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Paloukia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Salamis Island (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Selinia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views).

I asked for semiprotection, but they didn't think it was important enough. No response from Wikiproject Greece. This is very unhelpful: surely someone shouldn't be allowed to evade editorial checks in this way (as well as impeding the cleanup process). Gordonofcartoon 12:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, seems most of the Greek regulars are still on vacations. I'll try to contact the guy in Greek, sometimes that makes them more cooperative. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:14, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Seems I'm unsuccessful in getting this user's attention. I left him friendly welcome messages, in Greek, on both his account's and his latest IP's talk pages. He continued to edit showing no reaction whatsoever. I then gave him a symbolic attention-getting block of 10 minutes, just to have an opportunity of giving him an explicit link to his talk page that he would certainly see. No reaction. Don't know what to do with him. He's certainly a good-faith contributor, but totally uncommunicative. Seems he has never used a talkpage at all so far. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

He's certainly a good-faith contributor

I agree, to the extent that most of the material is probably basically accurate. But some of it is promotional crap and all of it unreferenced, and refusing to cooperate with the cleanup process looks deliberately perverse (as does going anon to escape censure). Gordonofcartoon 16:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Pubic hair

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Content dispute. Thatcher131 15:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

We could use a little help over at Talk:Pubic hair and Pubic hair. DavidShankBone and I have been, frankly, edit warring over whether his photo belongs in the article (the deeper context here is that that article had another picture which he replaced some time ago in the face of mixed consensus, but now in the face of renewed mixed consensus as the result of an RFC he's decided that "mixed" means that his artistic product stays.)

The last straw, which I find infuriating, is that he's decided that my quoting another recent comment within the RFC section on the talk page, which doesn't support him, is impermissible, and is trying to remove or inappropriately refactor my quote out of the RFC section, even though I politely asked him to stop. I'm at 3 reverts, so I can't do anything about it. But I find such behavior extremely disruptive to the conversation, and am deeply upset. I think we could all do with some calm, neutral input on his (and, of course, my) behavior. Nandesuka 13:37, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Nandesuka Warrior d'Pubic hair, admin of all things

This hairy situation has a lot of kinks. Back in June in an effort to raise the quality of the anatomy articles with their collections of camera phone shots of chests and cocks, I asked a friend who is a professional model and quite chiseled if I could document his body for Wikipedia. Typically paid, he did it for free. He's on teeth, scrotum, erector spinae, et. al. He's also on pubic hair. He replaced a grainy, poorly lit, fuzzy image that had bizarre coloring. There was a discussion about it. What was decided was: 1. Consensus was not to use the previously existing photo; 2. my photo was better quality; 3. there were some side comments that because my friend shaved around his pubic area (as models do), perhaps a bush in natural state would be preferred. Enter Nandesuka two months later, who first removed my photo calling it spam, despite the consensus on the Talk page. He also edit warred over at glans penis - consensus went against my photo there, and I relented. User:The_Rambling_Man, however, had to speak to him about his edit warring. Did this stop him? No. He took the edit warring over to pubic hair. [98], [99], [100]. We began to talk about it on the Talk page: Great! Four people were involved 1. Nandesuka, who doesn't want my photo; 2. Geogre, who wants no photos; 3. David Shankbone, who wants his photo (and had consensus); 4. Nick Michael, who previously voted to include Shankbone's photo. Based on those four, User:Nandesuka declared "consensus reached"! and began removing the photo again. [101], [102], [103]. This time, User:Raul654 had a word with Nandesuka about his behavior after I raised it to his attention. That was yesterday. We have an RfC about whether to use my photo. One editor posted on the older discussion that he liked the previously replaced pube photo--completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Not according to Nandesuka, who moved it to the RfC discussion and then used it to--once again--edit war and remove the image, instead of letting the RfC take place. There's the situation. Instead of allowing the pubes to fall where they may with my photo, Nandesuka wants to straighten out the pubes unilaterally. This is the behavior of an admin? --David Shankbone 14:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

This dispute gave me a(stupid)n idea: thus, I bring my latest edit to Chipmunk to review! El_C 14:34, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• I also note the following: Nandesuka thought the original photo was poorly isolated, so I cropped it to compromise. That wasn't good enough. He said it is poorly lit, even though every pube is visibible, no bizarre shadows (except to cover the model's unit). Then, against all of his arguments, he removes my photo for the one that is even worse technically than mine. This is really about me; Nandesuka is obsessed with me and my pubic hair photo, obsessed I tell you! He is, in his words, "distracted" by it. But it's clearly the best pube photo we gots. --David Shankbone 14:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

This is an editorial dispute. Unless an admin action is needed I don't see the point of coming here whenever somebody does not want you posting your photos. Try dispute resolution. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 14:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not the one who brought this up, it was the other editor (above). And if the admin issue needs to be fleshed out, it was a case or edit-warring while an RfC was in motion. We were working out the content dispute, as we did at glans penis, except one editor felt the need to continually take unilateral action and edit war. And that is an admin issue. It was just more convenient he brought it up first. --David Shankbone 14:59, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that Shankbone's summary above completely omitted my input per the RFC. I don't think his photos are high quality, I've had this issue with Shankbone on another article, and he doesn't seem able to be objective about his own photos or respectful of the RFC process. It's interesting that he omitted my objection on the RFC from his summary above. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

This looks like a content dispute that has become personal. If reflects poorly on all parties, but especially (as far as I am concerned) on the administrator involved. It is not specifically an admin dispute however, because it does not involve misuse of administrator tools. Thatcher131 15:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

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

user:Blaxthos

The User user:Blaxthos has a continuing history of personal attacks against me since I first encountered him earlier this year resulting in an inability to have constructive dialogue. He creates a hostile environment making it difficult for anyone to work in good faith with him. The latest involving what I believe is an external link which violates WP:EL WP:RS and WP:UNDUE in the Fox_News_Channel_controversies article see talk Talk:Fox_News_Channel_controversies. Instead of providing reasoning why the link does not, he has again resorted to attacking me; working in concert with the user USER:Italiavivi. I have tried to work with the person, but they simply refuse to assume good faith. Arzel 14:09, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Blaxthos made two comments that I saw. He was angry but was replying to earlier comments you had made. It seems that you are having difficulty convincing the editors of your view. I would suggest everyone get back to commenting on the content -- not each other. --JodyB _{yak, yak, yak} 16:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

No, this goes way back to my first encounter with him. He makes condensending remarks to everything I say. Instead of discussion the issue he continually questions my motives and I am tired of it. He seems to think that since he has been here longer and knows more policy words than the average person he can say whatever he wants. When I in turn researched up on various policies he assused me of Policy Shopping. Check out his essay, it was written in respone to me! Arzel 14:20, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Colyton Grammar School

User:Largekiwi keeps substituting correct information in the Colyton Grammar School article with rubbish. Please do something about it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.217.156.8 (talk)

I left the user a warning and watchlisted the page. --Onorem♠Dil 14:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Penis Vandalism

Resolved

Can someone who understands templating and coding take a look at Boston, Massachusetts. Its one of a hundred or so US place articles where a link to a picture of a penis was placed in the upper right corner. I can't figure out how this was added, and I really want to get rid of it. New England ^{Review Me!} 16:18, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Signsverse (talk · contribs). All gone now. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 17:24, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I never would've thought that was the template he changed. New England ^{Review Me!} 17:45, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Always remember to protect your high-risk templates, kids. Grandmasterka 18:59, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Page war

User:Tregoweth keeps moving and changing the List of Disney Channel Original Movies to a version he likes. He then abused his admin powers by protecting the page so that other users cannot change it back. His change and move was done without reaching consensus with other editors or even discussing the matter on the talk page. The page layout and name was decided on through consensus a while back, and though consensus can change, he has not even bothered to ask for other opinions or tried to obtain consensus even after being asked to by 2 users. --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 16:31, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The protection of the article was wrong, but note that Tregoweth unprotected the article 5 hours before you made your ANI report. No harm, no foul. The rest is a content dispute. --barneca (talk) 17:00, 22 August 2007 (UTC) p.s. A little more discussion on the talk page (without using the phrase "puke" this time), and a little less mindless reverting from both sides, would be a good move too. --barneca (talk) 17:02, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Protecting the article was actually a mistake -- I intended to only protect it from moving (which is a *different* sort of mistake). As I have no real interest in the subject of the article, I'll withdraw from editing it. —tregoweth (talk) 23:53, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Plastic piping systems needs to be deleted and salted

Resolved

Banned user Grumpyrob (see RFCU) is now editing as User:Sparrowgrove, and has simply put the content removed from Plastic pressure piping systems and one other article he tried to start on piping systems into this new article. The socking is blatant, as this is the only article he has contributed to (as with all of Grumpyrob's other socks), and so he needs to be blocked and the article salted. I will file an RFCU to try to get any sleepers, but this is so obvious that the CU will be declined as obvious and unnecessary. MSJapan 17:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Uhm, I'm sure this is a dumb question, but humor the new kid on the block... why are we deleting this article? It seems to not be vandalism, is cited and referenced...? - Philippe | Talk 17:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I was just getting ready to ask the same thing. Sockpuppetry aside, what is the problem with the article itself? Plastic piping systems are very common, and this is useful information that is sourced. - Crockspot 17:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC) Also noticed there does not appear to be a deletion log on Plastic pressure piping systems. - Crockspot 17:41, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll have to check, but the one article (by Grumpyrob/socks) was created as a POV fork of another, and it has been repeatedly deleted. Back with the diffs/links in a few minutes. Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 17:43, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, the old dreaded and nasty PVC vs. ABS war. *shudders* - Crockspot 17:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The sources don't exist except for one. Pipestock doesn't sell a manual (I checked), the book by the prof is non-existent in his list of publications, one of the "books" cited is actually a PDF not by the person it is claimed to be by, and the one book that did exist is over 20 years old, so I can't imagine the material is current or accurate. Also, Plastic pressure pipe systems (sorry, wrong link before) is not the fork; Plastic piping systems is, and I'm going to need to hunt through my contribs to find the industrial piping one that was the same. MSJapan 17:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, see, these are salient details that are important to the story... :-) - Philippe | Talk 17:52, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) The previous article was Industrial plastic pipe systems, which was a POV fork of Plastic pressure pipe systems, and was deleted August 8. Here's the Checkuser case and the AfD for Industrial plastic pipe systems, which was speedily closed. Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 17:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• I deleted the article per WP:CSD#G5 because this is the exact same article that Grumpyrob (talk · contribs) keeps creating at different namespaces with socks. I'll salt if it returns. I also blocked the sock as Grumpyrob (talk · contribs) is indef'd and this is most certainly a puppet.--Isotope23 ^talk 18:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Sock puppet evading block and making disruptive edits

Resolved

 – Sockpuppet account blocked.

user:Guivon is the latest incarnation of a very long line of sock puppets used by a permanently-banned individual. Besides breaking the rules by evading his countless blocks, he makes disruptive and counterproductive edits, posts insulting comments on talk pages, and deletes other editors' legitimate comments on his talk page (and on at least one article talk page). Yes, I know it's not technically against the rules to delete comments on your own talk page, but it shows blatant disrespect to other editors, as does his uncivil comments in talk pages and edit notes. An IP check came back with the result "very likely". See Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Purger and Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Velebit for some of his other accounts.Spylab 17:48, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Blocked indefinitely as a sockpuppet. MastCell ^Talk 18:45, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Johntex's dishonesty (BSA)

I’d like to address actions by Johntex. While they happened a while ago, I stopped contributing soon before, and so didn’t find out about them until later. I made an edit and included two links in support of my claims. Johntex then claimed that I hadn’t included any cites, and I pointed out the two links that I had included. He then denied that I had included those links. I repeatedly and in excruciating detail explained where to find them, yet he continued with his claim. I will put a screenshot of the two links on Johntex’s Talk page.

When I pointed out that he was lying, he had the gall to declare that I was being uncivil by commenting on his dishonesty. Furthermore, this followed an attempt on my part to initiate mediation proceeding. Rather than first bring these issues up in that arena, or otherwise attempting to resolve his alleged issues with me, he simply moved to silence me by presenting a one-sided description of the situation on this page. He filed a complaint based on a dishonest presentation, even going to far as to accuse me of lying in insisting that he was lying. To top it off, he never gave me any notice of the complaint, and gave the complaint a nondescriptive title that included neither my name nor any reference to the article in which the dispute arose. It was only through wading through pages and pages of the history page that I was able to find it, and even then only because I recognized Johntex’s name.

In my opinion, this sort of behavior is simply unacceptable, and if he isn’t banned from editing, he should at the very least be stripped of his administrative authority. No one with such a contempt for the truth should be in a position of authority in a site which has the truth as its primary mission.Heqwm 19:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

You have yet to offer any proof of misconduct on Johntex's part. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 19:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Verifiability trumps truth. On that note, some diffs provided here might be helpful. --Onorem♠Dil 19:31, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

John has not done anything recently that would warrant any sort of block or strip admin privileges. In the dispute you are mentioning, it seems he was very civil and stated his side of the story. Also, its rather redundant to add further comment on a mediation case that was closed in November 2006. As mentioned above, if you can provide recent diffs which illustrate incivility, lying, or unacceptable behavior then that would warrant comment or action. Diffs from ages ago are really ancient history.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 19:37, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Reply by Johntex:

1. Heqwm is referring to events that occurred in October 2006. That was many moons and many edits ago.
2. However, I described the situation fully in my response to the mediation cabal case openned by Heqwm. I provided plenty of diffs that I believe make clear that Heqwm was the party violating WP:CIVIL.
3. None of the above is a surprise to Heqwm. He replied to my posting at the mediation cabal case, so he is being dishonest or disingenuous to now claim that he was unaware of my comments.
4. Heqwm did abandon the mediation cabal case although he did continue to make a couple of edits to the related article and talk page[104] [105] before he left Wikipedia.
5. For some reason, he is starting this conversation up again in multiple places (here and at the cabal case). His "notification" to me was placed on my User page, not my Talk page, so I found it only by accident. I assume this was a simple mistake by Heqwm. Johntex\^talk 21:10, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
6. However, he continues to violate WP:CIVIL in accusing me of lying with no evidence whatsoever.
7. I also believe that he is now, just as he was then, violating Wikipedia is not a battleground, which states "Wikipedia is not a place to hold grudges, import personal conflicts, or nurture hatred or fear. Making personal battles out of Wikipedia discussions goes directly against our policies and goals. Every user is expected to interact with others civilly, calmly, and in a spirit of cooperation.. Do not insult, harass, or intimidate those with whom you have a disagreement." His dredging this up is nothing short of disruption and harassment.
8. I recommended that he be strongly cautioned against disruptive behavior and/or receive a short block so that his disruption is checked and so that he will understand this is not the right way to go about rejoining the project.

Thank you, Johntex\^talk 21:10, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Hijack an article .. then hijack an entire wikipedia for yourself?

What will they think of next?

The Herero language is spoken by perhaps 133,000 very poor people in Southern Africa. The Herero Wikipedia (http://hz.wikipedia.org) failed to ever gain traction and it was recently closed as being nothing more than a spam magnet.

Today, an established editor on en.wikipedia, Striker buzcu (talk · contribs · count), substantially revised our Herero language article to make it describe an unrelated, artificial language based on Turkish and English called "Wikiherero" (spoken by "50 to 100"). He added a number of internal wikilinks from en.wikipedia to articles on hz.wikipedia.^{[106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114]}

It turns out that in the last three days, hz:User:Turkiye created 15+ new articles on the supposedly defunct Herero Wikipedia about Turkish topics. Not being fluent in Turkish (or Wikiherero), I don't know what they said but it had something to do with Turkish soccer, not Herero culture or African fauna.

I reported the usurpation on meta, reverted the wikilink additions and restored the Herero language article. An hz.wikipedia admin has deleted the bogus pages on hz.wikipedia and blocked Turkiye

I leave it to admins here to figure out what, if anything, you might want to do about Striker buzcu. Stealing an entire wikipedia does not appear in our grid of standard warnings, so I was at a loss as to what to say on his talk page. (I settled for "very bad" but I hope I don't get hit with an {{uw-agf1}} warning myself since this was only his first hijacking.)

Cheers, --A. B. ^(talk) 19:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• At a glance, some of this may have spilled over to the official list on meta at m:List of Wikipedias. Further review from someone more familiar with the situation is probably needed. --W.marsh 20:13, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Good catch -- I reverted the meta vandalism.^[115]

--A. B. ^(talk) 20:23, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Accusation of bias and illegal activity

I've just been accused of deliberately promoting illegal activity, when in fact all I'm doing is trying to prove that said illegal activity is significant and relevant.

This user is persisently edit warring and removing valid informatin despite reverts by four different editors, and he refuses to discuss his changes on the talk page. He's saved from 3RR violation only by the fact that I keep editing the page to try and make it more acceptable, so it's not going back to the exact same version every time. Now that it's turned to personal attacks I am angry and upset and I don't know what to do anymore.

Please advise. --Masamage ♫ 20:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

FYI, WP:3RR says "An editor must not perform more than three reverts, in whole or in part, on a single page within a 24-hour period. A revert means undoing the actions of another editor, whether involving the same or different material each time." (emphasis mine). --barneca (talk) 22:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Looks like the timing is just spaced out enough that it's not a violation. But that wasn't really my concern anyway; I'm more worried about the edit warring and total lack of good faith. (On another page, where he's fighting a similar fight, he smacked me with "There ARE rules here, face it."[116]. Incidentally, he refuses to cite any rule that illegalizes mentioning the existence of fansubs in a series' production history.) --Masamage ♫ 23:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Folken de Fanel should be warned about legal threats. Corvus cornix 23:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Fansubs are against copyright laws in some countries. Maybe that's what Folken is referring to. Either way, I believe that Folken has been edit warring. bibliomaniac15 Prepare to be deleted! 23:22, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Request semi-protect for Brandon Teena

Resolved

 – Semi-protected.

I've been through this before, but I've been away from WP for a long time so I'm a little hazy on how things like this should be handled.

Several IP addresses (63.215.29.115, 162.58.0.232, and maybe also 63.215.29.119) have been revert-warring and making generally unconstructive edits on Brandon Teena for some time now. I suspect at least these three IP's to be controlled by the same user, whom I suspect but can't prove to be former user Duke Patton. A primary goal of the anonymous editor(s) seems to be to insert a negative claim re: the subject against consensus of other editors. There has also been a good number of posts which border on or are outright personal attacks (Note, these were by .119, not .115 or .0.232; .119 has not to my knowledge attempted to revert war on the main article, but has been equally unconstructive in talk space and I strongly suspect, due to sharing the same local netblock, to probably be the same person as .115).

Here are two identical edits made by 63.215.29.115 and 162.58.0.232, reinserting the negative claim I referred to above: [117] [118]

Editor .115 has introduced what he claims are sources on the talk page, but these sources repeatedly turn out not to say what he claims they do. Regardless, he does not wait for consensus to develop before going ahead and reverting. It's clear to me that this editor has no respect for consensus.

I'd like to request that the article be temporarily semi-protected from edits by anonymous users. Cheers, Kasreyn 20:14, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protected for a period of 2 weeks, after which the page will be automatically unprotected. For reference, the alphabet-soup board dedicated to protection requests is WP:RFPP. MastCell ^Talk 21:06, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Help requested versus "George Reeves person/BoxingWear"

An old "friend" of ours, the George Reeves Person (admins, please read the deleted history of this page to get the back story) is active again, harassing several users. I could use a bit of help. More specifically, those he targets could use the help, since most of the people he collides with are new users he abuses when they correct his edits on articles relating to his various interests: boxing, basketball, Balkan and middle eastern politics. A lot of good people can be driven off by this person. You can recognize him by his non-native English, use of all lower-case and all upper-case, run-on sentences and comma splices, and completely uninhibited incivility and abuse. He has not been an actual vandal for a while—except for when he goes berserk and starts leaving threats on people's user pages—but his edits are rarely useful. They usually get reverted by other editors, which is when he becomes abusive.

Caution: anyone who becomes involved in this will become a target for harassment. You will receive hateful and threatening e-mails signed by "different" people, and if you edit under your real name, you are likely to receive harassing telephone calls as well. This person, who is one of our longest-term and most poisonously hateful troublemakers, will attempt to find out your real identity, and will post about you on the various anti-Wikipedia attack sites.

His past aliases include User:BoxingWear, User:Projects, User:Vesa, User:Gildyshow, and others. He has asked to be called "Goran", "George", "Gordon", and his hate-mails to me are signed "Vanessa". When asked to moderate his behavior, he responds with violent abuse, often pretending to be multiple people. He usually edits from the ranges 66.99.0.0/22 and 64.107.0.0/22 (Chicago Public Library), although he has used other IPs which trace to the Chicago area. All the anons on Severo's talk page since August 1 are him. When range-blocked, he uses open proxies. When confronted, he makes threats such as this one (note the sneaky change to another user’s comment: this is a characteristic of his editing style). Also this from today is special. Thank you for any assistance, Antandrus (talk) 20:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I issued a 3 hour block similar to the one you instated with the IP earlier. Edit: I was about to protect the talk page from editing but Anetode simply deleted. I'll keep a watch on those pages as well throughout the day.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 20:31, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I've also semi-protected AN/I, there's no need to tolerate this kind of abuse. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 20:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you both; much appreciated. The more people aware of this one, the better. By the way, he will attempt to remove this thread from the archive once it expires from this page (for example notice the exceedingly persistent pest here) Antandrus (talk) 21:10, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Have you received the nasty email quoting this post yet? Natalie 22:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Hm, no, I haven't (nor did I get the e-mail he said he sent to me yesterday, inviting me to meet him at some parking lot or other in Chicago) but then I put "Vanessa" in my killfile a few months ago. I'll look in my deleted messages. Did you get one? I know you have gotten them from him before. Antandrus (talk) 23:00, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I tend to get emails from him (also signed "Vanessa") referencing whatever post I've made that mentioned his name. He also sent a couple of emails to my college - best quote: "WE R BUILDING WEBSITE TO LET ALL KNOW U R NEONAZIS WHO HARBNR EM". I have some of the archives mentioned below on my watchlist, but I'll add the others, at least. Perhaps we should indefinitely semi protect them, though, since there really isn't any reason for anyone to need to edit the archives. Natalie 06:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

GRP deleting threads about himself from the archives

There's another problem now. I've caught him numerous times deleting all the threads about himself from the archives; I was wondering why Google was finding so little, when I know he has been discussed again and again. See [119], [120], and [121] for several examples. He usually uses open proxies for this particular bit of sneaking. I don't know how many more there are like this, or if there is an easy way to find them. Thanks to Luna Santin for catching the last of these three back in May. Antandrus (talk) 03:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

• This is troubling (and highly inappropriate of GRP). Perhaps we should have the devs implement some kind of auto-protection for archive pages, to prevent people from fabricating history. >Radiant< 11:05, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Eden Tate

My block of Eden Tate (talk · contribs) as a sockpuppet of the banned vandal, Internodeuser (talk · contribs) aka Zordrac (talk · contribs) aka 123.2.168.215 (talk · contribs), was questioned by Everyking (talk · contribs). I bring it up here for discussion if necessary. Posted by Everyking to my discussion page:

You have blocked Eden Tate as a sock. Can you please explain your evidence for this? It doesn't look like you've posted it anywhere.

My response, on my discussion page. "Have you been following the discussion on unblock-en-l? If you have not, it will take you some time; some of the emails are almost 5000 words long. Eden Tate is not mentioned there specifically but the whole Zordrac/Internodeuser/Blissyu2 issue has been raised. This is a banned vandal who is known to use sockpuppets and to be "less than truthful" about the use of said sockpuppets. The timelines fit as do the styles of the edit summaries and the edits themselves. Zordrac has also taken an interest in this particular article, mentioning it in email to me and in messages to unblock-en-l. And note for the record that the Nelly Furtado article now includes in the introduction paragraph information about Portuguese citizenship, though now in such a way as it does not violate WP:MOSBIO, so I am most definitely not blocking this user because he disagreed with me." --Yamla 21:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

User_talk space inquiry, accusation of 'harassment'

Ferrylodge (talk · contribs) is part of a dispute at Talk:Fred Thompson concerning whether or not to include the age difference between Sen. Thompson and his wife, Jeri Kehn. In the process of this dispute, Ferrylodge took exception to my referring to incorrect statements about the article's revision history as "lies," in addition to my portrayal of his all-caps bolded comments as "screaming." After responding to me once on his User_talk page, I attempting to clarify why certain text formats are taken as "shouting" or "screaming" to him; he is now deleting my comments and accusing me of "harassment." He is not removing my initial comment, only my attempt to clarify to him. Is there anything that can be done of such misrepresenting comments in User_talk space? If he is not going to allow me to clarify my remarks to him, I would appreciate if he would remove my comments altogether instead of only leaving the first half. Italia^vivi 21:17, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Lesson learned; do not use the terms "lies" or "screaming" when referring to another contributors edits, follow the guidelines at WP:CIVIL. I will politely request that Ferrylodge remove all (or allow you to) of your comments at the talkpage. LessHeard vanU 21:30, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Italia^vivi 21:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I sure wouldn't refrain from referring to all caps typing as shouting (it's mentioned at all caps for a reason). We have italics and bold for when emphasis is needed. All caps is just obnoxious. Circeus 21:41, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I just had the rather unpleasant experience of wading though the recent talkpage history at Talk:Fred Thompson. I now have a rather different view of the situation, and will be commenting there. LessHeard vanU 21:45, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Before this closes, didn't we have a big deal with Ferrylodge regarding civility before, in his dealings with User:Bishonen and User:KillerChihuahua? If I'm correct, which I'm pretty sure I am, these civility issues are well to the point of necessitating a preventative block. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 14:05, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Swatjester, please be careful here. If you are suggesting a preventive block against me, be aware of the following. The user Italiavivi received three separate warnings from administrators yesterday, for his conduct toward me. Both LessHeard vanU and Tango warned him here, and ElinorD warned him here. While I understand your zeal here, it is misdirected.Ferrylodge 14:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I haven't followed any of the Talk:Fred Thompson history. However, I recall that Ferrylodge was blocked for continuing to post on KillerChihuahua's page after she had made it known that his posts were unwelcome, and after he had been warned. I think it would be sending a terrible message if administrators upheld that block and then to allow Italiavivi to keep posting on his page and reverting him when he removes the message. Incidentally, unless I've miscounted, Italiavivi posted the same message five times last night, including four reverts. That's completely unacceptable. People shouldn't ever alter someone else's signed comments (e.g. changing "your harassment" to "your alleged harassment" in a heading), but they do have the right to remove the post altogether, if it's on their own talk page. I know it's frowned upon, but it's not forbidden; and edit warring to keep an unwanted message on someone else's page is forbidden.

Swatjester, unless there's evidence of some very inappropriate behaviour from Ferrylodge at Talk:Fred Thompson, I don't see that his previous block for pestering KillerChihuahua is relevant, except as evidence that we must equally scrupulously respect his right not to have people pestering him. ElinorD (talk) 14:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

User Space Harassment

The editor Italiavivi will not stop posting at my talk page. See the history. I warned him here, but he keeps posting. Please help.Ferrylodge 21:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

As described above. I have kindly asked him to remove our entire dialogue per User:LessHeard vanU's advice. Italia^vivi 21:41, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

See above. I am posting at Talk:Fred Thompson.

Policy for user talk pages is not the same as policy for other talk pages.Ferrylodge 21:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I have warned User:Italiavivi for violation of WP:NPA. If the warning is transgressed please take it to WP:AIV, or report it here. I'm clocking off. LessHeard vanU 22:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Harassment is not tolerated on wiki or even off-wiki if it relates to a wiki issue, see: WP:NPA#Off-wiki_personal_attacks, Wikipedia:Harassment, and Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Disruption. Rlevse 22:13, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I haven't reviewed the rights and wrongs of the conflict as such, but the userspace harassment is unacceptable in any case. Ferrylodge has made it repeatedly clear in his responses to Italiavivi that I's posts to his page are unwelcome and that he, F, feels harassed by them. Since Italiavivi hasn't been editing since EllenD asked him nicely to leave Ferrylodge alone, I guess now isn't the best time to bonk him with a stern formal warning. But if he comes back with more of the same, even one more post, that's what I will do. Ferrylodge, feel free to alert me in case I miss something. Bishonen | talk 08:53, 23 August 2007 (UTC).

Thanks.Ferrylodge 14:29, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

User:SallyForth123 evading block

See Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/SallyForth123. SallyForth123 has already been warned about circumventing the block here one day ago. Sancho 21:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The reason I posted this here is for input as to how long to extend SallyForth123's block for. Sancho 21:53, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

A week looks reasonable to me. If she continues, I'd probably go up to a month and then move to indefinite (but not infinite). Lift it if she agrees not to engage in any further block evasion or edit warring. --Yamla 22:06, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Not an admin, but I concur with Yamla. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 00:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Need help

The user is switching IPs as we block them. See Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/SallyForth123 for the list so far. How can we deal with this more effectively? Sancho 01:43, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Are there particular articles she targets? If so, I would say semi protection is the best bet. Otherwise, keep blocking the IPs (short blocks, I'd say) and restarting the original block. Natalie 06:52, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

She had previously edit warred on Hurricane Dean (2007), Template:HurricaneWarning, and Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles, constantly reverting in the name of WP:NOT#NEWS despite the fact that it was a current event - this led me to post twice on this noticeboard earlier. She apparently also had some disputes on articles related to STS-118 and removed quotes from Hurricane Katrina. Some of these articles have been semiprotected already. I'm not entirely sure of the history of the STS-118 disputes. --Coredesat 11:51, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I put all of those on my watchlist. I guess the new IPs weren't happening so quickly that we couldn't just block them as they come. (I was using 48 hours... too long?) Sancho 13:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

She also was using an actual account when the IPs weren't active: Mineo3 (talk · contribs). It is now blocked. There have been several warnings left at the IP talk pages prior to their blocking and at SallyForth123's talk page, including a warning about extending the original block to an indefinite block. SallyForth123's block will last about six more days as it stands now. Sancho 14:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

(UI)I can give history on the STS-118 issues. As one of the major contributors during the mission, she questioned my removal of "drama" words, stating that the press said them, so we should use them. (Specifically, a very anti-NASA reporter over-dramatized the tile issue, and refused to listen to what the managers said, and used phrases like "NASA is very concerned" (untrue, if you listened at the conferences) and twisted their words with relation to the importance.) The reason the tile was looked at so extensively, never had to do with safety of the vehicle, it had to do with processing times once the orbiter was back on the ground. She basically accused me of trying to push a "NASA" POV, when what I originally said was that if it was not stated by NASA during the conferences, it was speculation on the part of the media, whose goal is to dramatize issues like this, ultimately to raise circulation numbers. There are a vast number of reliable, neutral news sites, and I listed them for her, stating that I obviously was not NASA-centric as I added a balance of the NASA press releases, and of other sites, such as CBS News, CNN, AP, Space.com, Nasa Space Flight, and a variety of other references (she was using Yahoo and other such sites). But the whole time, the discussion was not heated, was not contentious other than her basically not agreeing that up-to-the date revisions should happen (same issue she had with the Hurricane Dean article) and her adamant refusal of allowing any "present tense" words into any article. Others participated in the discussion, and agreed that we would use past tense. However, I also don't think it is necessary, or always helpful in every situation, such as her edits to the Hurricane Katrina article, turning statements like "The hurricane is expected to cause (number of dollars in damages)" into "was expected to cause", especially since those figures are still being revised today, so using present tense is acceptable. She has some very rigid, absolute rules that she believes Wikipedia should follow without question (and I'm not saying they are all incorrect, some of them are valid, such as having no "naked" URLs inside an article) and while she did seem to compromise, and did not engage in edit wars on the STS-118 article, it did tend to be disruptive when she'd revert all the tenses, especially when it was something that was ongoing, like the analysis of the tile damage. But none of the contributors reverted her edits or argued about the validity of her concerns, we merely requested that she not blindly believe the media, when she doesn't know as much as NASA does. With all technical articles, the main source should be coming from someone familiar with the subject, and clearly, the best source for that in this case, was NASA. Now, all that being said (I'm sorry this is so long) she also had some other problems with the way it was written, but again, discussion took place, and agreement was reached by everyone. And I'd say that the article did not suffer for her contributions. However, I happened upon this report, and it really surprised me at first; she seemed to me, to be so adamant that every single tiny letter of Wikipedia policy be followed, I thought it strange that she'd go and blatantly abuse the system in this way. I'm not really all that surprised, I guess, because looking at this addition to her user page, would indicate that she didn't really think too highly of Wikipedia. (Link seems to be dead, but it was a breakdown of the most-viewed pages, showing mostly pornography-related articles at the top.) At the time I saw that, I wondered if this might go sour somehow... So, there you have the "Verbose Ariel" version, again I'm sorry it is so long, but at least this provides a fuller picture. ^Ariel♥Gold 14:49, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

NPA

Resolved

 – The Evil Spartan 00:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

New user RichSatan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) reacted badly to my application of the {{w-graphical}} welcome template, thinking it was a reproach. Thereafter he continued to attack me on my talk page, despite the whole four npa warnings, calling me lovely names like faggot, shitbag, and telling me to go fuck a dog. I don't think a block would be forgiving, but will someone outside of the dispute please explain things gently to this guy? Thanks VanTucky ^(talk) 22:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah. I already blocked for 24 hours, after the user responded to my NPA warning with this. (It's amazing how much all caps edit summaries stand out in the recent changes page.) If this user shows some understanding of how their behavior was inappropriate, I don't mind if the block is lifted, but not before that. Natalie 22:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow. 8 edits, 7 of which are talk page edits calling people every name in the book. I'm not sure you wouldn't have done better giving user an indefinite block; gets the point across much better if he ever decides to return. The Evil Spartan 00:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

"Reacted badly" seems to be a bit of an understatement. :) Kuru ^talk 02:43, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Large number of POV edit on Article 4th generation jet fighter by unregistered users

Resolved

 – Article semi-protected

Hi there

I was wonderin' if someone could have a look at the unregistered user edit numbers on the article 4th generation jet fighter.

Its definitely POV edit - all of it and its getting out of hand. The factual integrity of many sections of article - especially in relation to US F-22 vs Eurofighter and any subsection w/ even remote possiblity of Indian involvement - have all but collapsed. Some users are constantly pushing their on POV into large section of this article completely unchallenged.

Surely something must be done to stop such an interesting encyclopedic article to be ruined completely.

I have asked some other users, but don't know any admin guys. PLEASE HELP!! -- Ash sul 22:10, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:RFPP is that way :) Will ^(talk) 22:15, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Indeed :) I've semi-protected the page temporarily, in response to a 3RR report. ELIMINATORJR 22:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks dude EliminatorJR -- Ash sul 22:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Hungrywolf

Resolved

 – Blocked earlier today

Hi everyone. This user continues to insert unencyclopedic content and links into the article Field Commander. He has mercilessly revert warred to include information about his gaming site (as a note, I found out about this via an RFC on him, which was soon deleted because it was not "properly certified"). In any case, this user's conduct is totally unhelpful; he continues to revert war, and has paid no attention to the RFC brought out on him for this clearly unencyclopedic content. I would appreciate if an administrator could please use some kiddy gloves on him, or perhaps be a little more assertive in warning him. The Evil Spartan 23:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• I blocked him for 24 hours this morning. He'd exceeded 3RR in an edit-war, so I reverted and gave him a final warning about introducing his unencyclopedic material. He then proceeded to revert again, so I blocked him. I'm not sure about the behaviour of some of the other editors on the article, but I've talked to him by email and I think he gets the message now. ELIMINATORJR 00:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scott Jessop relisted

I listed this yesterday on AfD. It was delisted by Special:Contributions/Alex_Mae. I have relisted on today's AfD, for a full discussion. Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 00:56, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Note, there is an OTRS ticket on this article. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 13:57, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

The AFD was closed, and blanked for privacy reasons. Please do not reinstate it. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 14:03, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Recently blocked user back as Kremm

Resolved

See Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Frater FiatLux (2nd) and Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Kephera975 for evidence and determination. Kremm (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is disrupting Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Inc. (second nomination) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) just like all the previous socks. IPSOS (talk) 01:06, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:Country data Russia

This template was recently vandalised by an anon, which caused some havoc, as the template is included in others, and it is hard for most users to detect it. It took me about 5 minutes to sort out everything to solve the "puzzle", but Warofdreams beat me. Now, my question. Are country-data high risk templates? Even if they are hard to find, is it worth protecting all such Country data templates to avoid future confusion? Have I blown this out of proportion (I'm joking a bit but I'm also a bit serious about the last question)? Maxim_(talk) 01:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I semi-protected Country data Russia, it is used in thousands of pages. As to others, a better place may be WT:PROTECT or Wikipedia talk:High-risk templates. If the others are used as much as Russia is, it may be worth discussion to semi-protect or full protect if there is no reason at all to make anything but minor changes. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 01:51, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I think I'll sprotect major/controversial countries (USA, Canada, Germany, France, UK, China, etc.), and that's all I think. Maxim_(talk) 01:58, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Spam Blacklist spamming

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_CheckUser_information#Possible_sockpuppets_at_Talk:Spam_blacklist

After a checkuser investigation, the following users have been blocked on en:wp as socks of Wiki En Wiki (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log), whose block has been extended to indefinite for multiple wiki spamming and attacking users, as well as persistent sockpuppetry. The underlying IP has been blocked as well.

• user:TrainForGain
• user:Guanchemilon
• user:Drivehave
• user:WikiableHome
• user:Responsible Responsibility
• user:Gold Rush Gold
• user:Keen Anthrop
• user:Antrhop Keen
• user:Political Beauty
• user:Gogggggle

During the investigation I discovered the following users already blocked:

• user:Wiki En Wiki (was extended to indef)
• user:Uiki En Uiki
• user:WikiWiki En
• user:Political Guru

As always I invite review of my actions. ++Lar: t/c 02:08, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Don't see anything wrong here. You know, if someone reasonable screams at you, I think its only then you have to worry about having screwed up. Otherwise, be bold and all that such. David Fuchs ^(talk) 02:15, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Block them without mercy, a quick look on his and the socks talk pages will reveal he doesn't care about being discovered, also add this IP address to the bunch User talk:70.45.48.178. - Caribbean~H.Q. 02:30, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced reverting on Dalmatia-related articles

I hope someone can help, because I simply do not know what action to follow. I am dealing with an Italian editor (Giovanni Giove) constantly reverting thoroughly discussed and referenced edits without a single logical argument to support him. These are the articles in question: Republic of Ragusa and Forth Crusade. In the Republic of Ragusa I have worked hard to represent both sides in the Slavic/Italian conflict, that rages here, by writing a nobleman's name in this fashion: Slavic/Italian. This person threatens to constantly undo my labour for no good reason (both are valid since the Republic of Ragusa was indisputably predominantly Slavic).

In the Fourth Crusade article, a debate raged about the vulgar (as opposed to Latin, "Iadera") name of the city of Zadar, in 1202 (time of the Fourth crusade). References have been brought forth confirming the view that this was "Jadra" (pronounced Zadra) and not "Zara" (and that the name "Zara" actually evolved from "Zadra"). Giove found no references supporting his "Zara" version and was proven very mistaken in the argument on the talkpage, during wich he stated that Romans (even in the 5th century) are the same thing as Italians (classic Mussolini rhetoric). Lacking any logical argument, he started quoting 19th century history books that used the name "Zara" as default name for the city (not mentioning the local vulgar name in 1202), ignoring the fact that we are talking about the vulgar name at the beginning of the 13th century.

I appologise for the lengthy explanations, but bear in mind that we are talking about a person that uses the relative obscurity of these articles to promote a truly irredentist and revanchist point of view by placing misinformation on the world's most popular encyclopedia. i.e. he tries to show that Dalmatia, for some reason, should rightfully be in Italy (mostly based on his "Roman Empire = Italy" claims.) I hope someone can do something... DIREKTOR 02:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

From your explanation, this appears to be a classic problem for the Dispute resolution process. nadav (talk) 03:05, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

DIREKTOR didn't mention that Giovanni Giove is not paricipating in the discussions properly, consensus is not the object of his interest, he repeatedly continues to revert and "POVerize" the articles that he's concentrated on without concerning the talk page solutions or conclusions of other users built on regular sources or compromises among other users. There's no need to link these accidents since practically 99% of his contributions are of the same kind as I've described. The point is that this user is not participating in the Wiki community. Cheers. Zenanarh 13:14, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Help With Out of Control User

I'm posting this here because admin User:After Midnight said I should on his talk page.

I've been editing some articles on Wikipedia for awhile. It's a lot of fun and I'm always happy to contribute when I can. However, someone named User:Nascentatheist has really irritated me.

This user has recently vandalized my user page and marred my talk page with all sorts of accusations. It all started when I disagreed with him about a link on the Kearny High School (San Diego) article. See the talk page here [122]. After he started being really aggressive to me, I didn't say much because I didn't know what to do, but it has only gotten worse.

This user has attacked and belittled me and I just don't know what to do. He has said that I'm a worthless contributor . . . and he has hurt me deeply. Please see what has happened and help me. I'd like to continue contributing, but I don't know if I will unless this guy stops. --Creashin 02:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Dispute resolution is around the corner, next door to your left. Miranda 02:29, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I see no vandalism of your user page. He has accused you of being a sockpuppet. That is not vandalism. You may, however, want to point the user to Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets where they can get their accusations listened to and resolved one way or the other. --Tango 13:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

DCGeist (talk · contribs) and User:Videmus Omnia

Resolved

Edit war over, moved to WP:IFD discussion --Haemo 04:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

The above user seems to have gone ballistic about the nomination for deletion of some non-free images on a featured article. The user is deleting the reports from WP:IFD and deletion templates from the images with WP:STALK allegation. I tried to intervene on their talk page, but I got an accusation of stalking as well, even though I had never heard of this user or article until less than an hour ago. Could someone please intervene before this gets out of hand? It seems to be primarily a WP:OWN issue on the article and images. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 03:28, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

No, it's primarily a WP:BURO and WP:Use common sense issue. Image warrior has decided to target this Featured Article--which was vetted and passed via the FAC process just over two months ago. The user has nominated a series of historical images for deletion, all of which have complete and detailed fair use rationales and all of which support and are supported by the textual content of the article--just as they all did when they and the rest of the article's contents were vetted in FAC. I have no more gone "ballistic" in response to the user's actions than the user himself has in his insensible mission to eliminate valuable content from Wikipedia Featured Articles and waste the time and energy of those contributors who maintain their quality in the best spirit of the encyclopedia. The user seems to take particular exception to my use of the word "harass" to describe his actions and their effect. I refer him to the definition of this common term in Merriam-Webster's: "exhaust, fatigue; to annoy persistently; to create an unpleasant or hostile situation for...; to worry and impede by repeated raids." That strikes me as an exquisitely precise description of user's behavior.—DCGeist 03:54, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

How has the user "targeted" this article? He has decided to put 3 images up for deletion with a perfectly reasonable rationale - "these images are not necessary to illustrate information in the article". That argument is a very reasonable one for deletion of a fair use image in any article, featured or not. Again, you might think these images are "valuable content" but obviously Videmus Omnia disagrees - it is an issue for the Wikipedia community to decide at IFD, not for you to decide unilaterally. I find it very strange that you accuse him of "stalking" and, now, "harassing" you, considering all he has done is nominate 3 images for deletion (with no previous history of ever being involved in a dispute with you) and respond to accusations that you have made against him, in addition to policies that you have violated (such as the one that prohibits users from unilaterally removing good faith nominations for deletion). ugen64 03:57, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Continuing to disrupt by blanking warnings [123], [124], [125]. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 03:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Removing items from the WP:IFD board, removing notices that they were up for deletion from their pages is not appropriate behavior. If this is as clear-cut a case as you believe it is, then they will be speedily kept. Accusing another editors of harassment and Wikistalking following a single editorial dispute with you is not civil nor does it assume good faith. It is also far from civil to accuse them of trying to "subvert" the quality of the article, calling them "image warriors", and claiming they're on a "insensible mission to eliminate valuable content" and "waste the time and energy of [other] contributors". You need to calm down and stop making personal attacks. --Haemo 04:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

The deletion notices have been deleted from the image pages yet again <sigh>. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 04:10, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Just hold on — lets see if the situation can be defused without more edit warring --Haemo 04:12, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Even in light of these messages? [126] [127] Videmus Omnia ^Talk 04:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't think he will revert again for at least 24 hours (seeing as he so kindly reminded me that he already knew about the 3 revert rule), so for the moment I think the issue is over. ugen64 04:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

On the plus side, at least the edit war is over. --Haemo 04:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for helping out. I'm sure another dose of incivility will be headed my way from someone else tomorrow. :) Videmus Omnia ^Talk 04:25, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Golly. I guess this sure ain't the place to remind anyone of WP:BURO and WP:Use common sense. Would you all explode if I typed in WP:IAR? Oops. Sorry.—DCGeist 04:37, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Good faith content disagreements are not the place to ignore all rules — being the experienced editor you are, you should know that. --Haemo 04:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I guess I don't have to wait - I got puerile and ludicrous immediately. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 04:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Yep, you sure did li'l buddy. Thanks for wasting my time with your peurile ludicrousness, or ludicrous peurility. As you'd put it, sigh-h-h-h.—DCGeist 04:37, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Please refrain from personal attacks. --Haemo 04:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Isn't it great that I can be attacked and insulted right on the Administrator's Noticeboard, with no consequences for the attacker? 04:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Videmus Omnia (talk • contribs).

I have blocked the user for 24 hours for repeated incivility, trolling, removing notices from images against policy after multiple warnings, blanking IFD entries, etc. If anyone thinks this block was inappropriate, please let me know. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 12:49, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

After reviewing the user's contribs my only concern is that the block may be too short. Raymond Arritt 13:03, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Block evasion by User:Jagzthebest

Resolved

This indef blocked user has returned as the rather obvious sock account JagzthebestX (talk · contribs).--Atlan (talk) 04:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

While obviously that's not a great situation - he seems to be contributing in good faith, and frankly, while I'm hesitant to make judgment - a remark like this to an unblock request - "This is way too long to read" - seem kind of insane. While I'm obviously not the authority on this - I would at least give JagzthebestX one chance.--danielfolsom 04:40, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

That would be a different matter. Indef-block means, well, indefinitely blocked, after all. x42bn6 Talk Mess 11:28, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

• Indef does mean indef unless properly lifted.. Blocked accordingly, advised to file an unblock req at main account or discuss with blocking admin. Deiz talk 12:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Kızıl Şaman

Resolved

Kızıl Şaman (talk · contribs) no constructive edits all his edits are basically controversial or attacking editor editors like: [128], [129], [130] and one of his first edits [131] --Vonones 06:05, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

He does have a lot of vandal edits - however he also has only been given one warning - and he has made at least on constructive edit in this: [132]. I don't have authority on the matter, but I would say if he attacks one more person then he should be blocked - however we should give him one quick chance - because frankly the actions of some of the other editors haven't helped at all.--danielfolsom 06:23, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

He's mostly here to pick fights with other users, he contributes to Turkish Wikipedia.--Vonones 06:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

He has been warned; unless he continues to act incivilly, then no action should be taken. Neil ム 10:40, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Irqirq

Resolved

Irqirq (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Nochi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

• This user, is quite obviously, by just looking at his edits, the same user as Nochi who got banned recently. Now he's trying to make the ancient Sumerians into Arabs and Muslims. Seriously, can we ban these trolls permanently, or are we going to have to deal with "everyone is Arab" articles forever here on Wikipedia? Now, he's trying to make an article about Sumerian people, and it's typical soapbox material. What are we going to do about this? I am tired of getting into revert wars with this revisionist troll. As can be seen by this article, it was started by Nochi,[133] and now he's back to continue where he left off. — EliasAlucard|Talk 13:15 23 Aug, 2007 (UTC)
  • read the article again. I did not said that Sumerians where Arabs or Muslims. I said modern day "Arabs" like Kuwaitis and South Iraqis are the modern day Sumerians. You may search at Google to get proves, so I am Nochi just because he started this article? Irqirq 11:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
    • You even write like he does. No one claims that there exists any Sumerian people today. — EliasAlucard|Talk 13:29 23 Aug, 2007 (UTC)
      • Looks like the 3RR bell is ringing for Irqirq (talk · contribs) at Sumerian people. Deiz talk 11:33, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
• Article redirected, protected. Deiz talk 11:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks, great. — EliasAlucard|Talk 13:50 23 Aug, 2007 (UTC)

User:Siazon persistent, response inconsistent

Duplicate articles Sigma Rho UPLB and Uplb Sigma Rho. The articles' content has previously been in two articles, resulting in an A7 speedy deletion as Uplb sigma rho, and an AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sigma rho with result of merge/redirect to University of the Philippines. Should the duplicate articles both be redirected to University of the Philippines per original AfD, tagged db-repost (strictly speaking doesn't fit the criteria as previous actions were not AfD-deleted), prod'ed (though not uncontroversial), reroll as db-bio, or something else? Michael Devore 12:32, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Attack site

Michael Moore doesn't like me. (I won't include a link to his attack site.) I was wondering why I was getting so much vandalism of my user page. THF 13:43, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

If you really are involved in defending pharma corporations, you should not be editing the article on Sicko perhaps as a COI. As for your userpage, can an admin please semi protect it. --SevenOfDiamonds 13:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I am complying with WP:COI. My edits have all been discussed on the talk page, and, for the last couple of weeks, have consisted solely of non-controversial reverts of vandalism and WP:OR. My userpage is semi-protected. THF 13:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

What admin intervention are you seeking? --SevenOfDiamonds 13:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know. What's standard procedure for delinking attack sites? [134] THF 14:05, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

SiCKO is protected too. I've contacted Moore to see if he will remove the "edit" links to the article and userpage as they really just feed disruption. I'd like to wait a reasonable amount of time and see what his response is before proceeding with the other options here. I'm not so sure just mentioning an individuals name, what they did, and their wikipedia edits is an attack (presuming of course it is true information)... an edit link however really can't be seen as anything other than an invitation to disrupt.--Isotope23 ^talk 14:10, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not really sure where the "attack" is here. --SevenOfDiamonds 14:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

You might first check Special pages/External to see what links there are and what they are used to source. Some of the links are legitimate references supporting material about Moore and his work. Others claim to be reprints of news sources. In these cases we should verfy and cite the underlying work instead of Moore's re-print. Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

• We can't delink Moore's website from his articles simply because he highlights who one of his detractors are. There is no policy that supports this, and although I agree the links are invitations to disruption, they don't fall under any definition of 'attack site' --David Shankbone 14:29, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea what the attack site policy is (and haven't seen anyone cite to it yet), and ask only that it be applied neutrally. If it doesn't apply to an outside site deliberately causing disruption to wikipedia by encouraging harassment of an editor and vandalism, then it doesn't apply. Whatever the policy is, is. What did we do when an outside site attacked SlimVirgin? (I honestly don't know.) THF 14:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Separately, the semi-protect isn't working, as a brand-new user was able to vandalize my userpage. THF 14:38, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:DENY them the honours. Block them without warning as a vandal-only account. (What I'm doing). Maxim_(talk) 14:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

The semi-protect is probably working. That account was created nearly 7 months ago. --Onorem♠Dil 14:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

(EC)That user was registered in 2006, but made its first edit today. I've gone ahead and full-protected your page. --Ed (Edgar181) 14:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Eyrian and Wikipedia in culture

I have to get this out of my system. While primarely a content dispute, I have major trouble over how User:Eyrian is conducting in this matter. The whole discussion can be seen here. Basically, Eyrian removed half the page [135][136] and I reverted him twice [137][138], and he reverted me twice [139][140]. Now, I am more then willing to discuss any changes to the page, but I cannot make him see the error of his ways. I believe he should have engaged in discussion after he was first reverted. Instead, he kept reverting, and probably would do it again. Not willing to risk 3RR myself, I stopped.

Now, as he is the only one wanting to remove the content, I told him repeatedly he needs consensus before making the change. But he doesn't seem to grasp that concept. And to top it of; he is an admin. Like I said, want to discuss the changes, but I'm putting process before content here; it has become a matter of principal for me. So I would like some 'peer review' on his behaviour here. — Edokter • Talk • 14:42, 23 August 2007 (UTC)