Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

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

So, about a month ago Callmebc was indefinitely blocked because he had basically given up on "editing in a collaborative spirit" and was becoming abusive and disruptive over the topic. Since there was no apparent way to fix his behavior, he was blocked for a long period of time. While blocked, he has remained up to date as a lurker on the topic he was previously engaged in, and we have been (quite genially, I might add) discussing how his editing habits might be improved, since he has an honest desire to contribute to these subjects in a constructive fashion. As you can see from his block log, he has not been a perfect editor, to put it mildly — however, we've discussed a lot of these issues, and I think he has a sincere desire to begin "editing in a collaborative spirit".

Since I'm not here to play parole officer, or pretend I'm some kind of behavior-police (something which I do not believe is the correct role of admins), I've mostly discussed with him how to address the concerns many people brought up in his previous blocks, and the discussion which led up to his indefinite block. In any case, since I didn't want to put words in his mouth or set "conditions" for unblocking him, we decided that he should work up a statement of compromises that he's willing to make to engage his unblock.

Statement by "Callmebc"

I wish to be unblocked from Wikipedia. I was indefinitely blocked apparently because of my attitude -- I put accuracy above all else, and I don't play well with others whom I suspect of not being honest. This has led me to be combative and somewhat sarcastic at times, with both other editors and admins. While I feel very strongly that whatever comments I have made were entirely justified in context, I understand that Wikipedia is not all about being accurate at all costs -- it is a social, collaborative effort requiring some degree of patience, tolerance, encouragement and giving editors and admins the benefit of the doubt even when I strongly disagree with what is being said or done.

I've been inactive over a month and thought about behaviorial & attitude changes I can agree to that would strike a balance between my wanting things accurate and up to date in a timely manner, and the Wiki process of collaboration and WP:AGF. This is what I think would be a good compromise:

1) I will refrain from making any changes at all to the main article page without first going through a Talk page discussion. If the discussion degrades to WP:TE, and WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, and WP:GAME (as is often the case with politically sensitive topics), I will still avoid simply going ahead to make the changes anyway and instead will follow Wikipedia policies regarding WP:DR

The only exceptions I'll will be blatant vandalism and substantial undiscussed changes I have problems with in terms of accuracy and content -- I will just revert the first as a matter of course, and will revert the second with a note on the editor's home page to please discuss first on the Talk page. In the second case, if the editor makes an effort to discuss the changes, I will follow consensus and not object to putting the changes back even if I still have problems with them. If it is an issue with a single editor wanting to change something and there is no other feedback from anyone else, I will instead again follow Wikipedia policies regarding WP:DR rather than engage in an edit war.

2) I will endeavor to be polite, regardless of the circumstances and provocation. The articles I tend to be interested in are politically charged and regularly draw in anonymous IP's, sock/meatpuppets and the like. In the worst case I will only adopt a neutral tone and will strive to avoid even making sarcastic remarks, however "appropriate" the circumstances might be.

3) I will give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and then some, regardless of my suspicions. I will even go further and start with a clean sheet in regards to editors and admins I have bumped heads with in the past and regardless of my personal opinions. In real life, you get to pick your job but not your coworkers, and you are expected to get along regardless. The same is much the case with the Wikipedia -- you can pick which articles to work on, but you can't choose your coeditors, and you should try to get along regardless. They may include people you would never want to socialize with, but that's not the point of why you're there in either case.

4) In a nutshell, I will endeavor to improve the quality of articles without violating, however accidently, the collaborative spirit of Wikipedia.

-BC aka Callmebc

---

As you can see, it basically amounts to a self-imposed probation on all articles, with civility probation attached. I think this will satisfy most of the concerns which surrounded his editing pre-block, but I wanted to bring it up for discussion here. So, what do you think? It would be helpful if comment could focus on particular requirements you think are not met in this, if you are opposed. For consideration, --Haemo (talk) 04:02, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, I am always concerned when users try to get themselves unblocked in unusual fashions. I would rather Callmebc go through (since email is not disabled) and just request an unblock through unblock-en-l@lists.wikimedia.org first before coming here. If that is rejected, then fine, but AN/I is frankly too fast for a discussion of this type. If some admin is willing to consider it, I'd suggest unprotecting his user talk page and discussing it there instead of here. No opinion, just a random admin musing through. Frankly, after seeing your diatribes as unblock requests, I'd say to at least wait until the end of the month before even considering it and learn why your unblock requests got you deservedly blocked even worse. I'll add this: if (1) this thread goes nowhere, (2) he's emailed unblock and they've denied it as well, have him email me and I'll consider unprotecting his talk page after December 28 [that would be one month since his talk page was protected]. Even then, I'm going to ask that at least one of the users who you are edit warring with agrees to the restrictions and will reblocked immediately and permanently for any nonsense. After this many blocks (and especially given the attitude during the blocked periods), I think I'm being way more than fair. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

To be fair, this is not really an "unusual fashion". I was discussing with Callmebc on-Wiki when he was appealing his block in the usual fashion. However, our discussion was cut short when his talk page was protected, but he had contacted me via email, so we decided to continue the discussion via email. There is nothing unusual about this, and it seems slightly bureaucratic to insist on jumping through hoops like reposting an extensive discussion we've had via email on his talk pages, or emailing a list which will only result in a discussion here — since this is clearly a case where the community needs to get involved. To be fair, in addition, its now been more than 1 month since his block was implemented. With respect to the "too fast" comment, the community sanction board was merged with WP:ANI — so this is de facto the only place to bring up discussions of this nature; the consensus was that WP:ANI is not "too fast", but is in fact the correct forum for these discussions. --Haemo (talk) 08:11, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

To be honest it may seem bureaucratic but it is justified, he knew his talk page was going to be protected if he used it disruptively and he went ahead and gave a rather pointy reason for unblocking, wich was: "See below -- I was in the middle of composing an answer and proposition to Haemo when MaxSem shot first without asking me any questions. That wasn't nice or WP:CIVIL of him, was it?" the talk page was protected shortly after this last request was denied, there is no reason why the desicion to protect could be considered out of place. - Caribbean~H.Q. 08:30, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying it was out of place — I was simply explaining that the discussion we began there was continued via email, instead of by arguing over the protection. I merely made the comment to explain why it was not an "unusual fashion" — i.e. it's not as though he contacted me out of the blue, or something, asking for an unblock. --Haemo (talk) 08:35, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• If Callmebc is unblocked, it should be on the proviso that there is a topic ban from articles related to George W. Bush's National Guard service, interpreted liberally and to include all comments including on user talk, and on a permanent final warning about WP:BLP. See VRTS ticket # 2007103010015799 and VRTS ticket # 2007111410017735 for evidence of this editor's single-minded determination to pursue an agenda in violation of WP:BLP, causing great offence to a living individual in the process. I am not in favour of unblocking, personally, but as I say, any unblock should be contingent on some form of editing restriction. The above comments about "accuracy above all else" do not augur well, indicating that Callmebc self-identifies as a bearer of The Truth™, rather than accepting or engaging the numerous legitimate criticisms. Guy (Help!) 09:00, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

  I don't have OTRS access, so I'll take your word for it. Since he appears to be mostly involved in the Killian Documents issues, and global warming, I'm not sure if he'll be willing to agree to that. However, he might, so I will consider broaching it with him after this discussion wraps up. He may be the bearer of The Truth™, but I think his comments show that he's realized that he has to compromise and engaged with us unenlightened ones, as well. --Haemo (talk) 09:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree with the above. Normally he would be allowed to use his talk page to argue his point but he abused it for days so no one should act like he deserves to be unblocked or any sympathy for his circumstances. Now, he should go through the process and ask via email. Frankly, I didn't realize he was getting to the point of OTRS tickets (I probably wouldn't have even offered to unblock if I knew he was that far gone) so Guy's topic ban has to be strictly enforced (I don't even want him on the talk pages there). Maybe even a requirement that he can only go on articles that don't have WP:BLP concerns? Either way, if he does "jump through all the hoops", I'll go to each of the talk pages and ask about him. Frankly, Haemo, I'm doing him a huge favor (as I feel this is going to take a lot of my time) and honestly, I'd prefer it if I felt that he realized that editing here is a privilege, not a right that can be abused and then "I'm sorry", "all is forgiven" after a diatribe against everyone. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, he's a passionate guy — he's shown me as much in his emails. I think he has experience which might be of use to the project; however, the problems related to his behavior are an issue for the community to settle. Passion and conviction are not a recipe for temperance — as his past behavior has shown. However, I think he understand now that temperance is necessary to participate in this community. As you can see, he's made some serious concessions and appears willing to talk about things. This is a big step forward, and means a lot more than just an "I'm sorry". --Haemo (talk) 09:32, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• This editor should not be unblocked at this time. I have had first hand experience in dealing with him. Instead, advise him to participate successfully in another Wiki, such as WikiNews, for three to six months and then he can apply for reinstatement. - Jehochman ^Talk 09:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• Do you really think that would help? The issue here is behavior; our sister projects are not test-beds for problem editors, and we should not use them as such. If we refuse to unblock him due to behavior problems, why would should inflict that behavior on a sister project in order test the waters for an unblock? It seems backwards — if he's trustworthy enough to edit WikiNews, then he should be trustworthy enough to edit Wikipedia — the negation of this should apply equally. --Haemo (talk) 09:32, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• Sister projects have much less visibility as Wikipedia. Those who merely want to soapbox won't bother. Those who have a sincere desire to participate will. - Jehochman ^Talk 09:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not sure that's compelling. Perhaps they have a sincere desire to participate in a proper encyclopedia, not WikiNews or Simple English Wikipedia? An editor could very well be ready to turn over a new leaf, but not want to spend half a year doing something they have no interest in as a litmus test for whether they want to use Wikipedia as a soapbox. Many editors who want to contribute in good faith, and have turned over a new leaf would balk at such a suggestion and refuse. It's seem pretty punitive, and serves little purpose — if he's unblocked here, and starts soapboxing, then he'll have violated the terms he's already agreed to, and will be blocked. I don't believe in sending our problem users to other projects, especially as part of litmus tests which have no precedent (IIRC) and little evidence that they will actually do what we want. --Haemo (talk) 10:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• JzG, I have OTRS access but can't see that one, either... o.O - Penwhale | ^{Blast him / Follow his steps} 09:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I really don't support him being unblocked yet, I know that unblock consideration can take place anytime but the last time he displayed disruptive behavior was about three weeks ago, while blocked this shows disregard for losing his editing privilege wich makes me question his desire to return, not to the point of assuming bad faith but I have to wonder if his intention is to push his past agenda in a more subtle manner. I wouldn't even consider unblocking this user without severe editing limitations like the ones presented above. - Caribbean~H.Q. 10:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify, he's come up with those above by himself as suggestions for restrictions he feels are reasonable. --Haemo (talk) 10:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I was refering to Guy's topic ban, and the subsecuent comment that sugested that said ban was extended to talk pages. - Caribbean~H.Q. 10:46, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Callmebc has repeatedly used talk pages to promote precisely the same offending content that was a problem in article space, and his abuse of his talk page for this was a factor in it being protected. I fixed the OTRS ticket links, incidentally. Sorry about that. Guy (Help!) 16:31, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I guess I can go along with this. The tone of his message is reasonable and the editing conditions he's come up with for himself look quite decent. Someone will always be around to enforce them. I don't think a topic-ban is necessary - if he comes back and does the same thing over-and-over-again we can just slap the ban back on. Cheers, Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 10:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• I really do think we need to make it crystal clear that no comments about the individual concerned will be tolerated. Callmebc has offended the complainant, and the best course will unquestionably be for Callmebc to refrain form making any further comment in respect of this person. If that is acceptable to Callmebc then I have no objection; if Callmebc will not undertake to leave this person alone then I cannot support unblocking. Guy (Help!) 16:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I am a firm believer in second chances, but I think the myriad chances given to this user to shape up have been completely exhausted. It's rather easy for uninvolved spectators to say he should be allowed to try to edit articles again, but as a person who's borne the brunt of his attacks and incivility, I wouldn't consider it an option. ~ UBeR (talk) 19:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not exactly saying that; rather, I'm giving him an avenue to express his desire to contribute, and the concessions he's willing to make. You've mentioned that your concerns stem from his incivility and personal attacks. What more would you like to see from him that is not already expressed in terms of what he's agreed to? --Haemo (talk) 23:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, my first restriction on him potentially is that he stay off article space completely for one month, once and if he's unblocked; only talk space edits. I want to see if he is actually interested in discussing his views and can get others to agree based on persuasion, not by force. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:04, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm a non-admin who has had a lot of contact with "BC" since before he registered as Callmebc. While our opinions about the Killian Documents are quite different, I would like to note for the record that he has helped improve our articles about those documents in some fairly significant ways. "BC" has sometimes drifted into a self-defeating pattern of incivility (this appears to be cyclical, as do his bursts of amazing energy), but I'd like him to get one more chance. CWC 03:55, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Since ArbCom determined that User:Vintagekits deserves a second chance, then this erudite and productive editor deserves several - and promptly. Alice^✉ 14:22, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Callmebc was deleting my edits because he couldn't find an online copy of cited material, and later because he couldn't find what was in it. He could still do that under his understanding of truth: "The only exceptions I'll will be blatant vandalism and substantial undiscussed changes I have problems with in terms of accuracy and content -- I will just revert the first as a matter of course, and will revert the second with a note on the editor's home page to please discuss first on the Talk page." Only his unnecessary Talk messages will increase. -- SEWilco (talk) 03:45, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Callmebc doesn't have ('special counsel') Giano on his team, so I should imagine that if he pulls a stunt like calling good faith editors vandals and reverting them, he will get chopped off at the legs again - this time justifiably.

Callmebc needs to promptly give the undertaking to refrain from any personal comment whatever concerning the "complainant" (as Guy suggested) and then he should be unblocked. A preliminary step should be for his talk page to be unprotected so that he can give plain and unequivocal assurances there in full view of the aggrieved parties (and, hopefully, those same parties can confirm there and then, on Callmebc's talk page that they accept the undertakings in good faith). Wikipedia is a collegiate project and Callmebc needs to demonstrate that he has learnt that now; his relayed statement above certainly talks the talk - unprotecting his talk page would mean we could all be satisfied that he walks the walk too. Alice^✉ 05:29, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, just exactly that. Guy (Help!) 23:49, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• I hope I don't seem like a sucker here, but it seems that callmebc recognizes the problems that lead to his block/ban and will endeavor to prevent them in the future. I, for one, would be supportive of a trial unblock to see how it goes. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 16:51, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Passionate at times. If he can control that, he will be a great editor. In addition, notice that, to the best of our knowledge, he has not used socks which supports the view that he is a good editor, just loses it at times. Give him a chance. Brusegadi (talk) 06:47, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

• unblock It is Christmas. Give him a chance (again). Seriously, he states he will make a strong effort to improve. He can always be blocked again if he reverts to his old ways. Gtstricky^{Talk or C} 17:02, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Another non-adminstrator who's had exchanges with callmebc in the past; well said, Gtstricky, and a Merry Christmas /or insert winter holiday of choice/ to you all. htom (talk) 17:51, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

It's now five days since the matter of Callmebc's block and user talk page protection was raised here.

Although Guy does not seem to violently disapprove of the protection being removed, he's still omitted to un-protect User talk:Callmebc (I also requested that here).

Mindful of ArbCom's opinion in another matter: "Since administrators are strongly discouraged from reversing one another's blocks, it is of particular importance that blocking admins respond to good-faith requests to review blocks they have made. Similarly, administrators who perform independent reviews of unblock requests are expected to familiarize themselves with the full facts of the matter before marking the unblock request "declined."" and "It is important for all users, but especially administrators, to be aware of their own agendas, feelings and passions, and to deal with them appropriately, avoiding both biased editing and ill-considered administrative actions.", can anyone now suggest a way forward since the consensus seems to be to exercise some generosity of spirit here? Alice^✉ 02:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks like no admin is willing to unblock. Having said that, I will make an offer. I've had a little experience with Callmebc and think that he is capable of being a constructive editor -- even a very good editor -- if he can rein in his passions. I'm willing to unblock Callmebc and give him advice as to how he can proceed constructively. The condition I require is that if he goes over the line, I will reinstate the block at my sole and uncontested discretion. I'm willing to serve as an informal advisor but am not willing to get into an endless back-and-forth. If he gets into a rut of tendentious editing or other inappropriate behavior, I re-block and wash my hands of the matter. Raymond Arritt (talk) 03:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that's very fair, Raymond. I hope Callmebc and Guy will think so too.

By the way, I've stolen your Highland Cattle for my user page. Alice^✉ 03:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Listen, just relax. I too am willing to unblock him, given the discussion here, but I want everyone to be able to chime in, and to get Callmebc's opinion about some of the suggestions made in the thread. I have been in constant contact with him via and email, and he is pleased with the way things are going. There is no need to create any additional conflict over this issue. --Haemo (talk) 04:08, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I oppose the unblock, as an editor who sees that callmebc still thinks he's got 'The Truth', as evidenced by his opening statement justifying all he's previously done: "I put accuracy above all else, and I don't play well with others whom I suspect of not being honest." That's "I have The Truth, thus I did the right thing and you all can't see it." Why would we continue to invite someone back whose 'apology' is 'yeah, but i was right and they weren't so they started it and i was just fixing everyone's mess'? No. No more agenda warriors and POV pushers, we have plenty. ThuranX (talk) 14:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

With respect, Thuranx, I don't read it that way. I read it as him being honest and non-delusional about his own innate motivation and world outlook and recognising that it will take a big and constant effort from him to adapt to our collaborative way of doing things.

But I do think that this is a dialogue that you (and possibly others) need to be having with Callmebc himself - which is why I would strongly plead again for his talk page to be unprotected right now. Alice^✉ 20:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Suspicious behaviour from User:Geryt69

Watching recent changes I noticed the above user making a small edit to an article, changing a png to a PNG in an image name. I looked at his contributions and became suspicious as he replaced the image on several pages with the edit summary "minor edit". So I compared the two images in GIMP and there is a small difference in the map shading. I've reverted as hanging an image for a different one clearly isn't a minor edit, but it looks to me as if a user created a sock in order to make the change, which seems strange. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 19:18, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Professionally speaking I would always prefer a png to a PNG or a jpg to a JPG. Thanks, SqueakBox 20:10, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

So would I but the reason I reverted was that the two images are actually different, although the difference is not obvious. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 21:31, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Steganography? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 02:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The difference is around northern Greece, southern Macedonia, southern Bulgaria, Albania, and northwest Turkey. It looks like the languages spoken there have been slightly moved around. Kesac (talk) 04:16, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The differences are slight, but real. It was marking them as a minor edit, and by a newbie, that made be suspicious. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 10:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

note: The relevant links here are Special:Contributions/Geryt69, Image:Languages_of_Europe.PNG, and Image:Languages_of_Europe.png. —Random832 18:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Based on the actual changes, looks like this is related to Macedonian nationalism. —Random832 18:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

User:hopiakuta

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

I've kept an eye on this user since a virtually indecipherable post made by the user on an article talk page. The user page is a ton of gibberish code and pasted templates from all over WP, and the talk page is more of the same. I don't know how the user either expects to communicate with or respond to others with the state of the userspace, but I felt it was borderline enough not to merit blanking without a second opinion. Could somebody take a look and consider a course of action? MSJapan (talk) 23:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the userpage should just be deleted? There should be an Mfd though. The talk page doesn't look like a big deal thoug, just a warning not to sign with a name that isn't yours--Phoenix-wiki ^{talk · contribs} 23:23, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

There are already three or so threads on this user; he uses a screen reader. I believe the most recent one is on a subpage of AN/I. There are users working with him. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 23:27, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

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

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/User:hopiakuta. Gimmetrow 23:37, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec) With the best will in the world to User:hopiakuta (I perceive him as well-intentioned) and other users, I am aware from experience that there are communication challenges here, and it's not just a one-way issue. He (?) clearly thinks in a different manner, both functionally and structurally, from the mainstream. I feel a little guilty discussing him in his absence (?), but it seems fairly clear that the issues are not going to go away; however, I am also aware that several users have made valiant attempts to decipher the issues with him. I don't think he would welcome the deletion of his user page; having seen it, it seems to be a place where he keeps things of interest to him. It may seem like gibberish to some, but I'm sure to him it makes perfect sense. The issue seems to be how we can talk to hopiakuta, perhaps off-wiki, to try and reach some accommodation for his (and our) obvious differences. Although he uses a screen-reader, that is not the only issue, and I'm not sure where this can fruitfully go. However, with twelve minutes to go until Christmas, I wish him, and everyone else, the compliments of the season. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 23:49, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

To be sure, he does not seem to use a screen reader, he's said he uses an ordinary browser (albeit one with, apparently, unicode problems and large page issues) with a large font. —Random832 00:35, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Let's be nice to hopiakuta! Delete the user page? That's like vandalism, isn't it? For some of the world, it's Christmas. What a thing to do during Christmas; vandalise a user page and try to say it's the community's consensus. Hi, hopiakuta, welcome to WP! Congolese (talk) 05:27, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I personally think if he wants to put stuff we don't get/understand on his userpage, as long as it's not directed at other editors or offensive, who cares? We have a diverse community and many of this user's mainspace contributions improve the encyclopaedia - often minor edits making needed corrections. I'd worry more frankly about the POV pushers and vandals and trolls who actually damage the encyclopaedia. Orderinchaos 07:16, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

That would be fine, if that were the case, but there are some perfectly understandable statements made by him in that other discussion. When he can describe his symptoms without all the templates and such, and can therein avoid linking every other word, the fact that it happens elsewhere seems to me to be a matter of intent, especially if he's making a mess of things to try to make a POINT to get some sort of accessibility implementation (which I do not believe would solve the problem). MSJapan (talk) 20:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Please remember to assume good faith. —Random832 22:08, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, please AGF. Read the linked sub page at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/User:hopiakuta. This person, if you read their off-Wikipedia writings, writes like he does here everywhere. Please don't disparage a person with obvious problems! Lawrence Cohen 14:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

My partner's a psych and reckons whatever it is limits his ability to organise, so he have to have everything in front of them while he works. Hence the seemingly random storage of all sorts of pasted text and linked text in userspace (note he does *not* do this in mainspace). He's obviously very intelligent and is well versed in the English language, which is great as it means he can be of use and benefit to the project, and in fact, if one examines his contributions, is of use and benefit to the project. Therefore why treat him like he's doing something wrong? We're aware of the issues, so we can assist him in his goals here where he requires it and ignore whatever he chooses to do in his userspace, which he obviously sees as a necessary part of him being a solid contributor. The rules on userspace are basically for two reasons - to prevent it becoming pseudospace (i.e. articles that don't meet our notability or other criteria effectively finding a new home) and to prevent it from becoming a home for personal attacks or other directed abuse or BLP violations. Neither of these is occurring. Orderinchaos 16:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Mathewignash, fair use and image uploading

Resolved

 – last chance spent and gone — Coren ^(talk)

Long story short, this user is yet again uploading images with inaccurate or incomplete licensing / rationale. He was originally blocked here for failure to heed notices about his uploading habits, after which he stopped uploading box art sans rationale. He was told here (bottom of the thread) that photos of copyrighted images can't be given free licensing because they're derivatives of copyrighted works, and has received two later warnings for uploading screen grabs of TV clips with no rationale. He's still at it. Chris Cunningham (talk) 12:01, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Just block him already. This has got to be at LEAST the fifth or sixth time I've seen him in here. Let's get that clampdown effect going already. ThuranX (talk) 14:33, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I've indef-blocked him. He was already on a parole from indef on the condition that he not upload images anymore. — Coren ^(talk) 15:52, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to point out that there was discussion on Steel's page which led to an amendment that he would be allowed to upload images if he told an admin first. He asked for permission for a bunch of files in November. But of course it's possible that his medium-term memory loss kicked in again. Chris Cunningham (talk) 16:09, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Hrm. The parole did change and currently Mathew is allowed to upload his own GFDL images (but no fair use images) as much as he likes, and he's allowed to add rationales to already-uploaded fair use images providing he doesn't remove the no rationale tag (so someone else can check it over - something that (seems to be working). I thought of noting the change in his block log, but that thing is already very long and the parole could have later changed again, so I didn't. In hindsight, perhaps I should have, and I apologise for any confusion. The warnings he got yesterday were for fair use images uploaded in mid-2006, so I'm unblocking since everything seems to be in order here. – Steel 15:05, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Quite allright; I did look around a bit but didn't find the discussion that led to changing the conditions— I'm leaving a note on the user talk as well. — Coren ^(talk) 16:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation

A persistent anonymous user is adding dubious sourcing, POV edits and edit warring concerning litigation involving this company. Also engaging in personal attacks on Talk pages and in edit summaries, such as [1]. --Samiharris (talk) 18:13, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

This page is currently listed on WP:3O. Just thought I'd give the admins a heads-up on that. — HelloAnnyong [ t · c ] 18:48, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Article has been protected.--Samiharris (talk) 14:16, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

GusChiggins21 blocked for edit warring by involved admin

Hi everyone. User:GusChiggins21 has been blocked for edit warring by an admin who was involved in the edit war. As I have stated on his page, I believe this was a personal block, and unfortunately, was far from the first personal block for this admin. To make matters worse, the person did not even violate 3RR, and the block was for 1 week for a first time offens; the only warning received was from another person who was just as involved in the edit war (believe me, those kind of warnings only exacerbate the situation). If this bit with RKLawton/Sarah777 tells us anything, it was that this kind of stuff is not right. The block was (surprisingly) declined without much comment, so I have brought it here. The Evil Spartan (talk) 02:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

On the surface, the block looks inappropriate and the {{fact}} tags look appropriate. I'll admit, though, that this is way over my head so I may be missing something ... but in the cases I examined, the places where he added fact tags seemed to be material that was not addressed in the existing cites. You should notify Raul of this discussion so that he can participate if he would like. You should also notify the admin who declined the user's unblock request. --B (talk) 02:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Given what I've seen I would unblock and ask the involved admin to recuse. As a noob I feel uncomfortable undoing the actions of an other admin.--NrDg 02:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Then maybe as a noob, you should look at the facts of the case, and offer an opinion that actually makes sense. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 04:01, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Woha, don't bite his head off. henrik•talk 10:10, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course, this is par for the course for Herr Executioner. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 13:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know why that made me LOL, but it did. :) Orderinchaos 00:14, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

First, GusChiggins is involved in an roving edit war on many intelligent design related articles with half-a-dozen editors who patrol those articles. They tend to attract POV pushers (like him). He was warned of his disruptive behavior, and persisted in it anyway. Moreover, EvilSpartan claims I am involved in this roving edit war. This is false. I haven't reverted any ID related article in two weeks or more (not withstanding the revert I did at the time I blocked him). The block is legitimate on its face. And lastly, I stand by every admin action I've ever done, EvilSpartan's insinuations not withstanding. If he has a problem with my previous actions, come out and say it. Otherwise, it's clear that they are what they are - empty claims, without merit. Raul654 (talk) 03:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

His editing on [Michael Behe] certainly constituted tendentious editing and most likely 3RR. I haven't looked with a microscope to see whether 3RR was formally violated, but that doesn't matter: the purpose of 3RR is to forestall edit warring of the type that GusChiggins21 was engaged in, not to provide an inviolable right to a certain number of reverts per 86,400 seconds. Raymond Arritt (talk) 03:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

As one of the editors who "patrol" these articles (love that terminology), GusChiggins activities were, at first, not very concerning. But I think 6RR exceeds my personal patience level (which, as most of you know, is about 4.7 seconds), irrespective of what the validity of his edits. However, since the validity of those edits are germane to the conversation, let's just say that the preponderance of evidence supports Michael Behe's absolute lack of support in science, notwithstanding the learned opinions of B and Evil Spartan. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 03:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Adding one or two fact tags maybe, but this sort of fact-bombing isn't the way to win friends and influence people. Gimmetrow 03:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

One more thing. Did B or Evil Spartan, the obvious unbiased individuals that they are, fail to read over the fairly large number of warnings given GusChiggins? Well, just in case you missed them, and I know it was difficult, since there were SOOOO many, but here are a few.

• Speedy deletion
• Edit warring
• Edit warring and personal attacks
• Personal attacks
• 3RR warning-Note this was done by me.
• Civility request

This must be a world record for a user only around for about 30 days. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 03:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Essentially, GusChiggins has quickly engaged in disruptive editing in violation of WP:POINT, apparently gaming the system though this is probably due to sincerely held beliefs and misunderstandings about policy rather than deliberate mischief. To take an example, here a fact tag is added with the comment The statement that they are "plausible link" need citation. when the next reference cited (at the end of the following sentence) covers the point in detail. GusChiggins does not grasp or accept NPOV: Making necessary assumptions, and supports fighting for a portrayal of evolution that deviates from the scientific consensus.[2] The block for edit warring is amply justified, and the user needs to learn to work constructively towards consensus and to show a willingness to learn rather than barging in demanding that all others comply with his distorted understanding of policies. .. dave souza, talk 09:57, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Point of clarification – GusChiggins has been blocked for WP:Disruptive editing, not edit warring, and his actions fit the Definition of disruptive editing and editors remarkably well. .. dave souza, talk 11:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Raul routinely blocking users with whom he's in an edit war

If he has a problem with my previous actions, come out and say it. Otherwise, it's clear that they are what they are - empty claims, without merit.. I do have a problem with your previous blocks. I believe you have repeatedly blocked users with whom you are in an edit war or whose edits you found disagreeable, under sometimes misleading edit summaries, and always for far longer than allowed by WP:BLOCK. Since you asked for examples, I will provide almost every non-checkuser, non-maintenance, non-vandalism block you have done in the past several months:

Special:Contributions/88.97.182.121 - (The Great Global Warming Swindle) 1 week for "vandalism and POV pushing" for this. No warning, Raul directly in an edit war with this user.

Special:Contributions/24.99.55.240 - (WTC) 1 week for "vandalism" (in fact, was POV pushing, had no warning, did not deserve block).

User_talk:Obedium - (Global warming) - As stated on the talk page, "Really, the problem is that Raul654 is in an edit war with this user, and blocked him inappropriately. The indefinite block is only an extension of that. ~ UBeR (talk) ". Raul in a direct edit war with thisuser.

Special:Contributions/199.82.243.71 - (The Great Global Warming Swindle) - blocked, apparently, for having the chutzpah to state this. Reverted by Raul. Raul in a direct edit war with this user.

Special:Contributions/69.29.207.159 - (Intelligent Design) blocked for this innocuous mistake.

Special:Contributions/204.9.255.65 (Intelligent Design) "vandalism" - blocked for this and removing a small section, without warning. Article which Raul edits, giving opposite point of view.

Special:Contributions/Mawest217- (Intelligent Design) - blocked for "vandalism" for having the chutzpah to add an {{NPOV}} tag to an article you routinely watch: [3]. Reverted by Raul, in a direct edit war with Raul.

Special:Contributions/204.52.215.13- (Intelligent Design) - blocked for POV pushing for again, adding POV tag: [4]. Speaking against Raul's POV on an article he routinely edits.

Special:Contributions/67.180.115.190 - (Intelligent Design) blocked for "POV pushing" for [5]. Reverted by Raul, in an edit war with Raul.

Special:Contributions/207.250.84.10 - (An Inconvenient Truth) - blocked for inserting the word "controversial", with a source, and after using the talk page, and in a direct edit war with Raul: [6].

Protected article - (Global warming) protected your own version of the page: [7]

Yqtb: (Intelligent Design) locked his talk page for removing a message from you: [8], which is allowable by policy (not to mention blocking him 24h for quite mild vandalism on an article you were involved in).

Special:Contributions/70.144.68.148 - (The Great Global Warming Swindle) - blocked for "POV pushing": [9]. Reverted by Raul, in an edit war with Raul.

User:UBeR - (global warming) -blocking for 3RR, etc. on an article which you clearly have a stake: [10].

Special:Contributions/Brittainia - (global warming) - edit warring.

User:Rtc - (Intelligent Design)- blocked for "trouble-making" (which, as every time, involved a point of view opposite your own)

User:Iantresman (ultimately global warming related) - blocked for "harassing" a user whose POV you agree with on the articles they were editing.

Special:Contributions/65.202.145.2- (The Great Global Warming Swindle) - blocked for a week for POV pushing for this (reverted by yourself of course, which is not POV-pushing, and certainly not justified without a warning, and most certainly not from an admin who is POV pushing in the opposite direction.

Special:Contributions/68.145.124.154 - (The Great Global Warming Swindle) - blocked for edit warring with you.

Special:Contributions/Zeeboid - (The Great Global Warming Swindle) - blocking an editor with whom you were in dispute, and losing a good contributor for it while at it.

Special:Contributions/216.67.29.113 - (ID) [11], etc. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive229#Admin_blocking_a_user_with_whom_he_was_in_an_edit_conflict ANI thread.

At this point, I tire of going any further back than April (I believe the mountain of blocks above suffices). So, no, to answer your questions, my statements were not "empty claims, without merit." The Evil Spartan (talk) 13:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Once again, as is so often noted here on AN/I, an Admin has stood up for and rigorously enforced Wikipedia's policies, esp. about NPOV, on a controversial article, and someone is right there to file a complaint that their fringe theory isn't being given due weight. When are we going to protect good admins making good blocks? We ought to have a policy permitting blocks for spurious and malicious reporting of admin abuses. I looked at a few of these, not all, but a lot of these IPs like to add weasel words or spin the intro to fit their anti-global warming attitudes. I'd bet that a checkuser would show that some of this is the same editor, coming back week after week. Raul654 is a solid admin who is protecting Wikipedia from stupidity. Stop wasting WIkipedia's time, and AN/I's time, with baseless accusations. ThuranX (talk • contribs) 13:59, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't have said it better myself. It's clear from the half-dozen admins commenting above that EvilSpartan's thread here has absolutely no merit, that this should never have been brought here in the first place, and that he's wasting everyone's time. Raul654 (talk) 14:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

That looks like more wagon-circling from the admins, who think that there should be more policies to let them shoot the messenger whenever anybody dares to criticize their behavior and actions. *Dan T.* (talk) 14:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It also looks like a continuing attempt to make the system more cumbersome and bureaucratic, so that admins are prevented from blocking disruptive editors on topics they are knowledgeable about. If pristine "uninvolved" admins are ready to spring into action every time a problem is reported this would not be an issue, but don't forget these are issues subject to organised attempts by well funded outside bodies aiming to distort WP to present their own view, regardless of policies. .. dave souza, talk 16:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It would appear that you'd like admins to have Judge Dredd-style powers to be judge, jury, and executioner in all disputes, including ones in which they're a partisan themselves. Implicit in this is an ideology that admins are always right, critics are always wrong, and the ends justify the means. *Dan T.* (talk) 17:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It goes without saying that all actions are open to and subject to review. If one takes a drastic action, there is more chance it will be reviewed rather than less. The review may come out endorsing the action, or reverting the action, or just serve to show the divisions in the community. Alternatively, the cost of no action may be immense - I've known of cases of active disruption in articles which I've been involved in, had to declare a conflict in, come here and got absolutely no response. Orderinchaos 22:57, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

My own two cents: The block is good. ARB has repeatedly stated that admins are to be given wide latitude in blocking tendentious editing, especially when faced with organized efforts. The corresponding complaints in ANI are simply an extension of that disruption. Yes, Raul might have gotten another admin to block, and probably would have had no difficulty in finding one— but also the blocks were not controversial by any stretch of the imagination and he did not need to do so. — Coren ^(talk) 16:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't sort this out but it looks like we may have a legitimate problem with Raul's use of the blocking function. Administrators of all people should follow the rules. A claim that the rules were broken for the sake of enforcing policy or protecting the encyclopedia is no excuse. We can all point to policy to support our view of what a page should look like. The WP:BLOCK policy cannot be more clear: Administrators must not block users with whom they are engaged in a content dispute. That holds as well for fringe science as it does for any other subject. When an administrator uses a block to enforce his version of a page edit, he is simply making his own edits count more than other people's. We may disagree about what constitutes good science, or which version of a page content is aligned with policy and which is not, but those disputes get resolved through dispute resolution, not blocking users. Even when dealing with POV pushers as persistent as the intelligent design proponents and global warming deniers, we have to play by the rules. Again, I cannot conclude for sure that this got out of hand but the complaint seems to have some merit. Blocking users, without warning, after one or two objectionable edits in an article he himself is "patrolling" seems to be a breach of block policy. Raul does not seem to be taking any of this to heart, so the logical next step is an RfC and if that does not resolve it an ArbCom case. Wikidemo (talk) 17:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Strict adherence to policy is not an end in itself. The articles at question here are infested with persistent sockpuppets, organized POV-pushing campaigns, and other obstructions to writing an encyclopedia. Editor time and energy are not infinite resources. Those resources should be devoted to writing an encyclopedia rather than battling the onslaught of obvious sockpuppets and POV-pushers. Raymond Arritt (talk) 17:21, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Lately, the "emergency exceptions" to policies, justified because "policy is not a suicide pact" and "organized campaigns" must be countered unmercifully, seem to be swallowing the policies themselves. All manner of due process, civility, not biting newbies, and so forth are considered to be quaint old-fashioned concepts that need to be set aside in the present emergency situation. But one should bear in mind that those in power anywhere like emergencies because it gives them the excuse to grant themselves emergency powers; and such powers, once granted, are rarely voluntarily relinquished. *Dan T.* (talk) 17:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Writing as one of the editors who has to contend with this endless parade of trolls, POV warriors, malcontents, sock puppets, meat puppets and even organized campaigns to disrupt these pages by public relations firms paid to do this, I applaud Raul's efforts to slow them down a bit. We need to be protected a little, or else productive editors will just say to hell with Wikipedia and leave. I get tired of people who want to support editors who are only here for one purpose only: to destroy Wikipedia, or turn it into a political or religious tract for their own minority views. Use your heads people. Do you want to build an encyclopedia or not? The people that Raul blocks, at least in the cases that I know, are not here to build an encyclopedia. They are here to stop others from trying to do so, however.--Filll (talk) 17:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

A problem I'm seeing is that these sorts of things are percieved of as being genuine content disputes. These are not matters of a set of sources and facts being legitimately disputed, or an editor attempting to add or remove content based on reasons presented on a talk page, but which other editors don't agree with. This is a number of mostly IPs hopping on, and pushing POV, without talk page use or clear summaries, but through the introduction of Weasel words, 3RR vios, and so on. I'd note also that some of the summaries presented above aren't as clear as they could be, and in fact, when you look at the actual history, these are borne out to be false. The ONLY one I see (and I looked at a few more) which COULD be argued is Special:Contributions/69.29.207.159, wherein even the revert summary makes a spelling error, adding a third word to the mix. Here, yeah, he might've pulled the trigger too soon, but I'm willing to listen to him on that before judging it wrong. But others here dropped out paragraphs critical of Behe, or added in 'might', 'maybe', and all sorts of weaselly terms, designed to game the system.

If this were legitimate content dispute, I'd be right here railing against Raul. If Raul and these editors were all discussing things on the talk page, and Raul said 'I'm right, block block block', I'd be cleaning the contacts to (metaphorically, lest I get yelled at) fry him. Admins can't leverage buttons to 'get their way'. However, editing a hot topic against consensus and without discussion to change facts into POVs and disparage the topics isn't real content disputation, and Raul isn't 'edit warring' or 'content warring' with them, he's maintaining the article at a higher standard of quality. I wouldn't even support 3RR warnings against him, because this type of POV pushing, without discussion, robotically adding stuff to break down the factuality, is vandalism. And the IP editors and other offenders KNOW IT IS. ThuranX (talk) 17:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Coren and Thuran. It appears to have been a good block. If someone (EvilSpartan? Dan?) thinks that the editor should not have been blocked, please make the case. I think people here would be interested in looking at the arguments for and against. The arguments appear to be entirely bureaucratic. Guettarda (talk) 18:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Not bureaucratic at all, and I certainly want to write (and am writing) the encyclopedia. I've just found that administrators acting like cowboys is at least as disruptive to the process as errant vandals, POV pushers, and so on. No matter what you call it and how clear you want to make it, the underlying question of how to cover global warming and intelligent design (not to mention Arab-Israeli conflict, the Armenian genocide, homeopathy, trivia sections, whether punctuation goes inside or outside the quote, etc.) is a content dispute. I spot checked the above list too, and most of the blocks would be premature and unwarranted for any administrator - and in the case of Raul violated the block policy if they concerned his article. I don't want to make some grand comparison of Wikipedia to democracy, but people need to keep their heads and stop forsaking the rules and saying the sky is falling just because we get an occasional vandal or single purpose editor. We should be counseling administrators to act with restraint, dignity, and due concern for the rules, not banging the drum for them to be blocking other editors on whim. Wikidemo (talk) 18:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I want everyone to follow the rules, and all blocks should be subject to proper review on request, but this looks very much like rule creep. It's a long stretch to suggest that Raul was in an edit war with GusChiggins, who certainly was breaking the rules. .. dave souza, talk 18:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikidemo is completely correct in his assessment. The WP:BLOCK policy means what it says. Raymond Arritt is right about one thing: that there is organized POV pushing going on -- but it is happening on both sides of the content dispute. This calls for dispute resolution, not for the abuse of admin powers and "might makes right." --Niels Gade (talk) 22:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Niels that's where you're wrong. NPOV does not state that all sides of an issue, theory or statement be used in an article. It states that the ones that can be verified with reliable sources. It is getting tiresome that someone put whatever they want in article, then whine all the up the bureaucracy of Wikipedia that they are the aggrieved party. NO, it doesn't work that way. I looked over Raul's blocks, including the ones I observed personally, and he was stopping POV warring. When I revert a POV warrior, I do so knowing that I have verifiability behind me. So I'm not warring. I'm keeping the barbarians away from the gate. So, what you call a content dispute is only half right. The content is being disrupted by an organized few. So, are you on the side of verifiability and reliability? Or are you on the side of everyone has an equal voice? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 22:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikidemo, PLEASE explain how 'Science is a dirty lie, there's no Global Warming cause Jesus made it right after he made people" is really any sort of CONTENT dispute, instead of a POV push? That's exactly what goes on in these articles, faith against fact. We deal in facts here, not faith. There's no CONTENT in the CONTENT disputes you allege. Did you actually LOOK at those editors' contributions? ALL, not just the ONE conveniently leasts severe which EvilSpartan cherry picked to make Raul look bad? I did for about all of the ID ones. With the exception of 'teological/theological', which I already noted isn't so solid, all the others I looked at showed multiple POV pushing weasel word adds, removal of sections of fact and citation, or additions which made it sound like science is just a pagan faith. That stuff is directly in the face of WP:VERIFIZABILITY and WP:RS. There's LONG been a policy that religious doctrine isn't 'verifiable' inasmuch as its' interpreters address current events, like GW and ID. I'd like specific instances of how this stuff really counts as arguments over actual content, other than that they're changing words and articles contain words. They aren't adding meat and trimming fat here, they're cutting out that which offends their version of the truth. If we were to consider that sort of action genuine, resolvable content disputation, we'd be a big group of morons, because thousands of years of theology has only splintered 'Truth' more and more. Please be specific. Thank you. ThuranX (talk) 00:00, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Also endorse the block. Others including Coren, Thuran etc have put it well - it appears more than enough warnings had been issued, and it is unfortunate that those admins that work in certain controversial sections of the encyclopaedia come in for such intense scrutiny when they decide to use the power they've been entrusted with to end some of the madness and try and get things back on track. I think pretty much no-one could categorise my own views/statements on admin action as being in favour of harsh treatment - I've spoken out against some really poorly thought out and seemingly punitive blocks at times - but I also believe chances can be exhausted and good faith can be tested to its limits. Orderinchaos 22:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikidemo, you clearly are unaware of what we are dealing with in controversial areas. 3,4, 5, or 10 or more new sock puppets, meat puppets and POV warriors per day in some cases. Organized coordinated attacks on our articles (see [12] for example). Public relations organizations paid to attack and undermine Wikipedia. It is a nightmare. Raul stands between a semi reliable encyclopedia and complete chaos in these areas. And if you do not realize that, you are sadly mistaken and misinformed.--Filll (talk) 23:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

And thank goodness admins are always on the side defending Wikipedia from "organized coordinated attacks" rather than participating in the attacks themselves! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.240.76.181 (talk) 13:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Muhammad

User:Totipooh has been disruptively removing controversial portions of this article, without any consensus. While I believe that the editor is acting in good faith, we cannot continue to just revert him all day. I request a short-term protection of Muhammed until this blows over. Lankiveil (talk) 03:00, 26 December 2007 (UTC).

Semi-related is this web petition, I unfortunately suspect we'll have a lot of new editors happy to unilaterally censor the page in the coming days. Lankiveil (talk) 03:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC).

So protection would be best? J-ſtan^Contribs_{User page} 03:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Totipooh (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) doesn't appear to speak English and has done nothing but repeatedly blank material from the article. (6 times in an hour.) Any reason he/she shouldn't simply be blocked? I don't see any need for further protection to the article - it's one disruptive SPA who can simply be blocked. --B (talk) 03:08, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Just checked the article, it's already semied. If others come do the same thing, it might be easier to fully protect it than to block everyone, depending on how many there are. J-ſtan^Contribs_{User page} 03:10, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I think protection will be best, the recent edit history of the article is nothing but the images being removed and then reverted, again and again. This particular user might be blocked (although blocking someone who doesn't speak English does not seem terribly sporting, I fear it may sadly be necessary), but that petition site should send a crop of replacements before long. Of course, I leave it up to whatever you admins deem most appropriate. Lankiveil (talk) 03:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC).

The article is already s-protected. Full protection is only used for an edit war. But in this case, it's one person vandalizing the article, not an actual dispute. --B (talk) 03:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The user moved from the article to the talk page and started blanking pictures and leaving comments like "Pictures Removed By Your Brother Ahmed Natik Please Ask Allah To Reward Me The Jannah" in their place. I have blocked him as a vandalism-only account. Problem solved. --B (talk) 03:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Another user there is now making what appears to me to be legal threats [13]. AliveFreeHappy (talk) 05:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I've now added the legal threat warning to the editor's talk page. --slakr^\ talk / 05:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Block em all, let allah sort em out? ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 03:18, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Please edit protected Waterboarding article

Editors have reached a consensus regarding a change of the first three paragraphs. I am asking any administrator who sees this to edit the article: please replace the first three paragraphs of the article with Shibumi2's version found here, along with expressions of support from most editors who have weighed in on the subject. Neutral Good (talk) 03:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

There is no such consensus. Please read the talk page. Lawrence Cohen 04:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The specific section that he claims supports this edit is:

• [[14]]

I've asked previously, as more and more people keep bringing this Waterboarding article to the noticeboards (all the noticeboards, in fact). Can we get a variety of admins to come in here and review the arguments? It's getting damned incivil in there now, and it's going to only get worse in the next two days as people return from Christmas break. Nearly all the heated disputes are directly related to interpretation of policy. Lawrence Cohen 04:18, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a note as well, this "new" account called Neutral Good left a warning of some sort on an another user's page at User_talk:Inertia_Tensor#Warning:_Do_not_remove, warning him to not remove that notice, which is a bit out of line. He seems to be a "bad hand" account of an editor intricately familiar with Wikipedia. Lawrence Cohen 04:11, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Note: a quick look at User:Neutral Good's contributions to date is consistent with the hypothesis that User:Neutral Good is a single-purpose account freshly created by an experienced editor, apparently solely for astroturfing the Talk:Waterboarding page. -- The Anome (talk) 14:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

And rather aggressively, at that, leaving warnings on various users talk pages with warnings within warnings that they aren't to be removed, along with threats to "fix" the article once semi-protection became irrelevant to him (this is before the article was fully protected again, before he could "fix" it). Lawrence Cohen 14:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly, Neutral Good edited their own talk page to remove critical comments [15] immediately before editing WP:AN/I. I wonder just how many real people are behind the various "waterboarding is not torture" accounts, many of which have similar styles of writing and argumentation? -- The Anome (talk) 14:21, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Haizum

In looking more at this, is Neutral Good (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) actually Haizum (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)? Read this old ANI archive and User talk:Haizum. He was banned for very aggressively going after others, had a major bone to pick with me because I wouldn't let him twist policies to his suiting and break NPOV on Blackwater Worldwide, and vowed to return under sockpuppet accounts on his talk page unless he was unblocked. He wrote:

I'm fully capable of coming to terms with my actions. However, I will not volunteer this when it is clear that there is a double standard in play, specifically when my edits are trolled for alleged infractions that were never subject to administrative action. I feel that is a fair stance to take. Now, we can do this honestly; I will accept a long but limited block for my actions with the mutual understanding that there was past administrative malice and a questionable ANI, or, I will change my IP address (I subscribe to two different ISPs) and create a new account with a blank slate. Yes, I'm sure at this very moment you are recoiling at my ultimatum, but note that my preferred concession keeps me publicly accountable for my block log. I ask you, which is preferable? --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 20:57, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

This seems very, very similar. And it's been just over a month, since Haizum was removed from any editing ability when his talk page was protected. Lawrence Cohen 14:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Another Haizum sock

Please block User:Newanda, a demonstrated sock of Haizum as well that somehow wasn't blocked before. Thanks. Lawrence Cohen 14:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Block both. Evidently SPAs. Will ^(talk) 14:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Filed RFCU at Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Haizum. Lawrence Cohen 16:01, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Stalking

So... this has gone on for months now... so maybe this is pointless. There have been a number of complaints filed and 24-hours blocks enforced, but Alice continues to harass me, following me onto pages I edit and trying to start fights. After being told to shape up by multiple administrators there was about a two week break in which she left me alone. Now she is at it again, this time at Kingdom of Kongo where she has massively spammed the talkpage.[16] She then went and encouraged another editor to get into a dispute with me.[17] Since this user doesnt contribute anything to Wikipedia (see Special:Contributions/Alice), why hasnt she been banned? Jose João (talk) 03:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I looked at the diffs you posted, and the article history. Alice isn't the problem. You are. Mr Which??? 04:21, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

That's a really intelligent thing to say. Really, based on that comment, I truly value your input. Jose João (talk) 04:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't give a damn whether you "value" my input or not. You're the problem in the disupute. From the diffs you posted, and the history of the article you posted, Alice isn't a problem. Period. Mr Which??? 04:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Please try and maintain basic civility ([[WP:CIVIL). Jose João (talk) 04:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I have done so. Writing "damn" doesn't make a post uncivil. Mr Which??? 04:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes it does. Bstone (talk) 04:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Or are you saying that every time someone swears in a post, it's uncivil? That seems a ludicrous proposition on the face of it. Mr Which??? 04:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Good natured vulgarity can be appropriate, but you have been rude and uncivil. I ask you to please stop. Bstone (talk) 05:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

"Good natured vulgarity"?!? AN/I is truly turning into a theater of the absurd. I have been neither rude nor uncivil in this discussion, and I'll thank you to stop accusing me of such. Ask around. Find out how many other people thinking using the word "damn" in anger makes one's post "rude and uncivil." Mr Which??? 15:05, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

We will agree to disagree. Have a good day. Bstone (talk) 15:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Based upon what you've posted here, it appears that no such stalking has taken place. Not only that, but it appears that your charges that Alice does not contribute to Wikipedia are baseless. Finally, it appears, based on what you've pointed to here, that she encouraged another user who you are in conflict with to utilize the standard procedure established for conflict resolution. Did I miss something that you are inferring here? --Mhking (talk) 04:29, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• For the record, he's now dropping 3RR warnings on my page for restoring the sourced material he deleted en masse (and without discussion at talk) at the article in question. Mr Which??? 04:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

If you do not understand what is under dispute, then do not try to mediate. Jose João (talk) 04:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No 3RR has occurred yet. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 04:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Right. You leave 3RR warnings before any violation. When there's a violation you report it to the 3RR noticeboard. A warning prior to a report is required as proof the user was aware of the rule. Jose João (talk) 04:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Right. Are you aware of the rule? Because you're now on the edge of it, and violating WP:OWN all over the place, as well as making frivolous complaints to AN/I. Mr Which??? 04:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

MrWhich, I noticed you removed the valid warning from your talkpage, incorrectly stating it was invalid. Just so you know, if you try and revert again, I post the diff of the warning, not a link to your talkpage, on the noticeboard. Please abide by {inuse}-politeness. Thanks, Jose João (talk) 04:49, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Users are allowed to remove warnings from their talk pages, per WP:TALK. There is no incivility, except for what is being brought upon by editors who are being overly hostile in the pursuit of this. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 04:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• I also don't care what you "noticed", Perspicacite (Jose Joao). The "warning" was improper, as it was placed by someone on the verge of 3RR themselves, and who is far more invested in the article. I'm not going to get blocked protecting this article from your mass removal of sourced content. Mr Which??? 04:53, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• (ecx2) And he's now using the {{in use}} template to prevent anyone from interfering with his mass deletion of sourced material. Mr Which??? 04:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No, actually, I am using the inuse template to source the material - much the same way I did with Angolan Civil War. Jose João (talk) 04:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

And while we're discussing politeness, isn't it considered impolite to redirect your user page to your user talk page? (as the user in question has done here?) --Mhking (talk) 04:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No. A user is allowed to do that, per WP:USERPAGE. Can we stop making mountains out of mole hills? Seicer (talk) (contribs) 04:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Noted. Fair enough. --Mhking (talk) 04:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, it seems as if some users are wanting to make mountains out of mole hills -- on both sides of the argument. Currently, Kingdom of Kongo has an inuse template, so it is fair to assume that massive changes will occur on the affected page. Given that not all changes are complete yet, let's not rush to conclusions that sources may be curtailed or outright removed.

It would have been nice to have discussion before the massive editing would have occurred, but I see no major reason to revert all the changes at the moment. Let's see the finished result and base a discussion at the talk page based on that -- use WP:THIRD and etc. if there is any disbelief later that an error has ocurred.

There is also no appearant stalking by Alice (talk · contribs). She posted some useful guidelines and policies that need to be aided by.

Let's keep a cool head here guys. No incivility has yet been performed outside of the word "damn," which is not showing incivility -- given that Wikipedia is not censored for language, and that the word "damn" was not in reference to one particular user. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 04:57, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Now Jose Joao has unilaterally deleted Alice's post to the talk page. I will be re-adding it as a vandalism reversion if he continues. Mr Which??? 06:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Have fun with that. Oh, and 3RR applies to talkpages too, just so you know. Jose João (talk) 06:29, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• If you continue to disrupt the talkpage (and removing appropriate comments constitutes disruption), I'm certain you will earn a well-deserved block for that disruption. Mr Which??? 06:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

MrWhich, you may want to recuse yourself from further discussion here. The above comment is entirely uncivil. Thank you. Bstone (talk) 01:00, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Telling someone they could be blocked if they continue to disrupt is uncivil? Care to expand? Mr Which??? 01:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Warning or informing someone that certain behavior is blockable is fine. Saying it is "you will earn a well-deserved block" is hardly civil. Please do take care for this. Bstone (talk) 01:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Nope, sorry. You have a right to hold that opinion, but it's simply not true. If he continues to disrupt, his block will be "well-deserved", it's as simple as that. Mr Which??? 01:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

We will have to agree to disagree. Have a good evening. Bstone (talk) 01:21, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

(untab) Might I suggest, as someone who is completely new to this incident, that both Mr Which and Jose João step away from their keyboards and calm down a little? Mr Which: I don't think you're being uncivil (I dislike the use of the word 'damn' greatly, and as far as I'm concerned it is uncivil, but unfortuntaly as far as general concencus is concerned it definitely isn't), but you are being abbrasive. I'd suggest cooling down a little. Equally, Jose João, I haven't looked at any histories etc., but judging from others comments, it would appear that you are in the wrong. Before retaliating again, I would suggest that you too take a step back and calm down. Perhaps if both parties did this, mole hills would stop being mistaken for mountains... _TheIslander 01:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Edit warring and blocking over Wikipedia:IRC channels/wikipedia-en-admins

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Referred to ArbCom

---

I see Phil Sandifer (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) has blocked Giano II (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log) for 72h over the 3RR violations at the subject page. I am frustrated by what is going on there as well but I don't think blocking (of one participant) is the answer. I have offered to unblock if Giano will undertake to stop revert warring and work to find a way through this. I seek consensus for that offer. ++Lar: t/c 05:01, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

This whole dispute is a despicable mess. I don't really know what Phil Sandifer is trying to accomplish by blocking Giano; the page is already protected. If Giano is not unblocked soon, then I will do it myself. Sean William @ 05:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The page is not protected. Dmcdevit·t 05:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, so it has since expired. Then, since Giano has stopped, what's the issue? Sean William @ 05:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• I have to interject here. I unprotected the page. It didn't expire. The protection was without basis, as it was meant not to protect a page from vandalism, but only to allow admins to edit it but not Giano. That was obviously an attempt at winning a content dispute with the use of the buttons, and that's flat out wrong. In fact, the fact that the author of the page, who is also a primarily invested person in the subject of the page, issued the protection should never have stood even a second's analysis in the first place. Don't we worry about conflict of interest anymore? I've been accused of WP:OWN for wanting a picture to stay, but I never used protection to get my way. Geogre (talk) 06:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I concur. I'm not sure why Giano has been singled out, there seems to be bad behavior there by a number of parties. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 05:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Again for the same 3RR violation? This isn't helpful. I support an unblock. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 05:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Not for the same 3RR violation, but for violating 3RR again on the same article. Raymond Arritt (talk) 05:11, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

EVERYONE really ought to undertake not to edit war over this, but if we start handing out blocks for revert warring here, the list ought to be a bit longer, there is a lot of tag team reverting going on on both "sides". So singling out Giano doesn't seem right. Still, I'd prefer if he undertook not to revert war. (regardless of who else is doing it) That was my offer. If someone else chooses to unblock him without that undertaking that's their affair and I won't oppose but it wasn't my offer. ++Lar: t/c 05:08, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I forgot, Giano's probably in bed sleeping off his holiday feast, he hasn't edited for a few hours. So an undertaking not to revert war may be some time in coming if he were willing. ++Lar: t/c 05:10, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, if it were another person I'd be happy about Lar's proposal, since a block serves no purpose when it is preventing no harm. However, this particular person has made it more abundantly clear than any other non-banned user in memory that no amount of agreements to stop disruption should be trusted. I would agree that Giano has had legitimate grievances, but his only response ever seems to be to magnify disruption and drama with the exactly wrong ways of going about disagreeing with others. I have less than zero confidence that he is interested in actually pursuing polite dispute resolution about the actual issue here, and reinforcing his immunity from community norms with Yet Another unblock. Has no one yet realized that if a user has been unblocked 10 times in expectation of good behavior only to be blocked again that we should no longer expect good behavior? Dmcdevit·t 05:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Blocks are preventative, not punitive. If there is edit warring on the page, protect the page (again... it was protected for a while, I assume it expired?), don't block one (and only one) party to the edit warring when there are multiple parties warring. If the edit warring doesn't stop, then seek additional remedies. Blocking Giano for 72 hours accomplishes what? Increases drama and that's about it. An arbcom case has been initiated, that would be the place to deal with long term issues. I do not agree that Giano's only response to issues is to magnify disruption and drama, I don't quite think that's a fair characterization. I do deplore his approach when the red cape is waved under his nose, to be sure, but this block of one (and only one) warring party solves nothing. That the community has figured out how to get his goat by now is an indictment of what exactly ??? ++Lar: t/c 05:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No, chronically unblocking on no reasonable presumption of good behavior is what has been causing the drama. And starting this thread is just more of the same. "Punitive" doesn't mean "severe" and "preventative" doesn't mean "short." I'll tell you what the block prevents: more disruption from this user who has been involved in nothing but it for several days straight. You're missing the whole point of protection and unblocks on condition of good behavior. If someone has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to reform after such dispensations, then you are only enabling the disruption by indulging them with page protections and early unblocks. None of this has any bearing on whomever he was edit warring with. By all means warn and/or block them as the situation calls for, but don't bring up a red herring. Dmcdevit·t 05:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

There are several other people, who I won't name to avoid drama, who also have chronic unblocks but have (through being an invested user) continued with the borderline behaviour. If this is a reason for a long block or ban on Giano, then those other editors should face the same summary justice. It works both ways. Carcharoth (talk) 11:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

He was blocked for 3RR, unblocked, and the page was protected, so there really wasn't any justification for reblocking him. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 05:11, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Giano should be unblocked so he can at least address an arbcom case that has been filed naming him.--MONGO (talk) 05:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• 1st revert: 20:55, 25 December 2007 "Arbcom has no control"
• 2nd revert: 20:59, 25 December 2007"RV not a beleif that happens to be the truth! - now stop edit warring"
• 3rd revert: 21:01, 25 December 2007"Rv back to the truth"
• 4th revert: 21:03, 25 December 2007 "rv edit warrior who seems to have an aversion to the truth'

Seems like obvious disruption per WP:POINT.--Hu12 (talk) 05:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

And the team of folks that was doing the reverting on the other side of the issue? Them, too? Videmus Omnia ^Talk 05:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

You make lots of sense, Videmus. That could be a problem when dealing with those who want to see Giano taken out. Mr Which??? 05:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Giano has been offline for almost five hours. In the past hour, John254 has initiated an Arbcom case on this issue, and Phil Sandifer blocked Giano for 72 hours. This does not give the impression of positive interaction to resolve an issue. Risker (talk) 05:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Whenever someone brandishes their certitude of having "the truth" things rarely end well. Raymond Arritt (talk) 05:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

My gut instinct says that anyone convinced that edit-warring over this sort of "content" is a good use of their volunteer hours ought to be trout-smacked, if not blocked. Same goes for anyone who hits 5RR with an edit summary reading: "Rv to truth; Now stop edit-warring!". But that's just my gut instinct. MastCell ^Talk 05:21, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I missed the memo where we stopped blocking for egregious and deliberate 3RR violation. Please go ahead and point me towards it. Otherwise, this is as straightforward a block as they come, and I am shocked to see any serious consideration of overturning it. If I missed a 3RR violation from somebody else I am happy to block them as well, but this is clear cut and deliberate disruption and a flagrant violation of 3RR. What possible justification is there for undoing the block? Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Because it was already dealt with. You know, hours ago, when Giano was still online and available? He was blocked, then unblocked, and resolution was reached. Sheesh, it'd be really cool if you had bothered to do some research before dropping a block for activities on such a disputed page. Mr Which??? 05:24, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  • My fault. He had been threatened with a block by Ryulong (another involved admin). Much discussion ensued (you know, in the thread right above yours on Giano's page), and resolution was reached, as East points out. Mr Which??? 05:29, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    • MrWhich: regardless of how upset you might be, I think the level of sarcasm you're using here is not likely to produce good results. Just my view, take it as you like. ++Lar: t/c 05:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    • I fail to see anything looking like a backing down or calming on the part of Giano - in fact, I see a comment to the effect of "I would rather be banned than stop." I am also somewhat perplexed by the notion that a deliberate and egregious 3RR violation is something one threatens blocks with. Giano knew full well that he was crossing an electric fence line. Threatening a block was pure theatrics. This is a simple matter - if you egregiously and deliberately violate 3RR, you get blocked. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, my block was for the six reverts on December 25th. I see no blocks in his log after the 23rd other than mine, and so it does not seem accurate to say that he has been blocked for the same violation twice, unless we have recently amended our blocking policy such that once you are blocked for something you can then violate that policy to your heart's content. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Would it have perhaps been better to leave this to an uninvolved administrator, since you're apparently an operator in the IRC channel under discussion? Videmus Omnia ^Talk 05:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I had already squashed that by protecting the page; Giano did not touch it after its expiration. Blocking him again just pours gasoline on the fire. east.718 at 05:27, December 26, 2007

My understanding is that deliberate and knowing 3RR violations are blockable more or less straightforwardly. The fact that the page was protected to stop the edit war does not seem to me to remove the validity of a 3RR block - if it did, we would ultimately not have a 3RR blocking system given the routineness of protecting pages during edit wars. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Phil: It might be a good approach then to block everyone that was edit warring? You've singled out one person. Or perhaps to bring the concern here and seek consensus for the block? Or ask an uninvolved admin (not me, by the way, I think I'm involved enough) to carry it out? ++Lar: t/c 05:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Were there other 3RR violations? Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The 3RR is not a weapon. It is also not a legitimate excuse to block a single person when everyone is revert-warring. Protection is optimal in a situation such as this. Sean William @ 05:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• The "bottom line" is that if blocks were going to be handed out for that messy edit war, the list should have been MUCH longer than one. Mr Which??? 05:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No, there were technically not other 3RR violations, and no, Giano is not exempt, but 3RR is a bright line, not an entitlement. Unless the others revert warring during the same time period were also blocked, (there were more folks on the "other side", go look at the edit history and you'll see) you're singling out one editor and that's not really fair. Guess what, WP isn't fair and that's generally a good thing... but if you want this block to stick, you need to show equanamity in my view. ++Lar: t/c 05:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The admin who dealt with the edit warring decided to protect, rather than block, so as not to have to block multiple people presumably. It might have been wiser to leave things that way. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 05:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I do not see anybody else who deliberately and flagrantly violated policy in the way Giano did. Frankly, Giano's edits were so transparently disruptive that I have trouble treating their reversion as substantively different from reverting vandalism, but that is neither here nor there - in my judgment, Giano made a flagrant and extreme violation of a policy that is explicitly a blockable offense, making his block straightforward. If there are other straightforward blocks, I will make them. Otherwise, please feel free to block for what you see fit - I deliberately limited my actions to the conservative one, which was blocking a clear and deliberate 3RR violation. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I see many people who "gamed" 3RR by tag-teaming Giano. This is a blockable offense as well. Oh wait, they agree with you, so you consider their reversions as merely reverting Giano's "vandalism." Wow. I didn't think anything could make this block look any worse, but this last post accomplished just that. Mr Which??? 05:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Another note - having an arbcom case raised against you does not give you immunity from straightforward blocks such as 3RR blocks. If Giano wishes to make a statement, I'm sure somebody will move it from his talk page to RFAr for him. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• This is an odd situation - were the other people doing the reverts on the page (Ryulong and Betacommand) participants in the IRC channel as well, or just Phil? Were the edits to the page being discussed there? Videmus Omnia ^Talk 05:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• • I have not been in the IRC channel in a week and a half, and have no information to speak of on what the larger dispute is about. I saw a 3RR violation to the tune of six reverts. I blocked. That is the extent of my involvement in this matter. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Unless the other edit warriors on that page (and yes, the other side was tag-team edit warring. No ifs ands or buts about it.) receive similar blocks, this seems to me it's a "Cuz it's Giano" block, and not only would I support an unblock, I would think the consensus here supports any unblock that I would make. SirFozzie (talk) 05:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you have evidence of tag-team reverting as opposed to multiple editors who actually and genuinely believe Giano's edit to be wrong? If so, please present it and I will block straightaway. But remember - agreement between users does not constitute tag team editing. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• WP:DUCK perhaps? Or is the rule, "If they agree with the blocking admin, they're just participating in "agreement between users"?

Perhaps it's time to start looking for more inventive solutions: unblock Giano, on the strict condition he stops revert warring on that page; impose a temporary single revert restriction on anyone editing the page in the future, blocking any and all violators; look into the substance of Giano's complaints -- I disagree strongly with the way he's going about things, here, but the complaint itself appears legitimate, or at least worth inquiring about. – Luna Santin (talk) 05:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and unblocked. Sean William @ 05:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I doubt the problems will end here, hence the proposals above. – Luna Santin (talk) 05:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I am off to bed, as it is late and I am tired, and, more to the point, I have nothing further to add to this discussion at present - Giano made six reverts in 24 hours. I blocked at a reasonable duration for deliberate and egregious 3RR violation. This block does not preclude blocks on other editors, and I will not unblock anybody if somebody feels that other editors should be blocked. But this is not a block based on deep and subtle reasoning - there are three reverts in excess of what is allowed. I blocked. Very simple.

If I missed any 3RR violations on the part of other editors (including clear cases of actual tag-team reverting as opposed to multiple editors who agree that the edits were rubbish) please note them on my talk page and I will block in the morning. I maintain that this is a straightforward 3RR block, and strenuously deny any involvement in the underlying dispute - I've not been in IRC in a week and a half, and am unaware of any history of dispute with Giano that I have, though I may well be forgetting something. I would, frankly, be shocked at any overturning of the block, as it is wholly within the letter and intent of policy. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I suppose Phil has been in IRC and heard tag teaming there? I suppose he is counting David Gerard's "edits," which are reverts? Never mind that, though: blocking in an instance like this is obviously inflammatory, not preventative. Look how much disruption it is producing, how little it prevents. Look at how much tempers have risen, how little they have subsided.

The idea of talking to the other parties as if they were equals has never occurred to those wringing their hands over "edit warring," I know. I know this because they are absent from the talk page to the article.

When you see really widely respected people editing one way and the other, you can either form the conclusion that one side is edit warring or that the sides aren't talking. If you conclude the former, you are wrong. If you conclude the latter, then just go look at the talk page and read it. You'll see, then, whether there is dialog or monolog.

In this case, the facts say that en.admins.irc has been the home of horrible behavior. The other side wants all suggestion that such might have ever occurred (and all in passive voice) edited out, and they say that they have the facts because they spend all day in the channel. Well, there is a way to prove it: we can post the damned logs. That would be improper, so people have been e-mailing the people who don't want the edits, trying to enlighten and persuade. Oddly enough, they have gone on edit warring, engaging in WP:OWN, and saying that there are no such instances. Amazing.

Phil is neither neutral in this nor uninvolved, and blocking for 72 hours is absolutely insane when there was no attempt at resolution beforehand. In fact, there have been no attempts at resolution at all. Geogre (talk) 06:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a shred of evidence of my involvement? Because if not, that's a rather flagrant personal attack there. Phil Sandifer (talk) 06:05, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Are you, or are you not, an IRC-channel operator? Vested interest in the content of that page, I would say. Mr Which??? 06:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• No more than I have a vested interest in any other policy page for being a Wikipedia administrator. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

All this is very disturbing. We see experienced editors who are edit warring, and a proposal that a clear violation of 3RR be overlooked. The fact that the admin requesting the unblock is on record as a strong supporter of Giano only adds to the overall unseemliness. I agree with the gist of Giano's comments about IRC (having been a former participant there) but he went about this entirely the wrong way. Could we full-protect that stupid page for a week or so -- on the wrong or any other version -- until people's tempers cool down? Raymond Arritt (talk) 06:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

That might have worked, in a universe where the page hadn't already been protected several times and yet administrators continued the edit war despite the protection. I already count about eight unambiguous instances of abusive administrator action not even counting the edit warring and rampant misuse of rollback. David Gerard, Geogre, and Wknight94 all made reverts while the page was protected. David Gerard and Geogre both used protection powers during the edit war they were involved in. Doc glasgow and Sean William both reversed another admin's block without allowing enough time (10 minutes and one hour, respectively) for consensus or input on the matter. Coredesat and David Fuchs both blocked a user that they also reverted in that edit war. All for this inconsequential project-space page about an IRC channel. It's ridiculous. Dmcdevit·t 08:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Dom: You have made my point... while I find Giano's edit warring abhorrent, clearly he knows far far better. But, when you looked into this matter, you found bad behaviour by far more parties than just Giano. Blocking just Giano is partisan, I fear. I don't think compounding the matter by blocking everyone else you named off (now, well after the fact) would be at all constructive so I don't buy Phil's argument that others should go ahead and block whomever else they feel deserves it. That seems a recipe for a range war if you ask me. Raymond: I think it's irrelevant that I was once an adamant opponent of Giano and now find he has useful things to say while deploring his methods. I call partisanship as I see it. Geogre: If you're including me in those who are hand wringing about edit warring by one side, you far miss the mark. I think all parties here were warring and talking past each other. That includes you, at least to a certain extent, as well as Beta, David G., Irpen, AzaToth, Cordesat Ryulong, you name it. The lot of you know better. There have been bouts of people actually trying to talk a bit on the talk page but they don't seem to last very long before it descends back to talking past each other, and then edit warring again. And for what? ++Lar: t/c 13:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The proper way to resolve an underreaction is not to lessen the reaction. That's the height of illogic, and it's what we do every time. If Giano reacts badly to a perceived wrong that turns out to be an actual wrong, we need to stop exonerating him just because we don't want to deal with the other users opposite him in the dispute. We ought to do something about both, not neither, or this will continue to recur indefinitely (as it already feels like it has extended indefinitely in the past). Isn't it time for someone to realize that another summary unblock simply isn't going to help? Dmcdevit·t 17:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

As the edit war has resumed, I have asked for page protection at WP:RFPP. It is to be hoped that the protecting administrator has nothing to do with any of the edits over the past few days or with operation of the channel. I share in Dmcdevit's sense of absurdity. Risker (talk) 08:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I've fully protected the article for 7 days, per policy and left the following comment on the talk page -> : Fully protected for a period of 1 week, after which the page will be automatically unprotected. - okay, folks. I'm a regular WP:RPP patroller, as many of you will know. I've not, to my knowledge, ever edited the article before. I've no interest in who-did-what-to-which-revision but I know an out of control article when I see one. This needs to stop. To that end, I've fully protected the article against editing for a period of a week. This is no more nor no less than I would do with any other article and, as with anything other dispute, please, please work towards consensus on the talk page here. All of you should know this stuff already. If there are any changes to be made in the interim, please use the {{editprotected}} template here so everyone can see it and judge accordingly and, hopefully, a neutral admin can hop in an do what's needed. If anyone does otherwise, I'll be less than impressed - you all know the rules - Alison ^❤ 09:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Distortions

Apparently, the air must be cleared, as people are both condemning Giano and protesting his 'unfair' block without knowing, frankly, jackshit about what they were talking about. Let's lay down the facts about what happened first:

• Giano violated WP:3RR- look at the page history; continual reinsertion of same content to prove a point. Once reverted, no discussion except 'squelching the truth' accusations in edit summaries.
• No one else violated 3RR- the edits of Giano were reverted by five editors, only on of whom reverted more than once.
• An uninvolved admin made the first block - i.e., me. I warned Giano about the 3rr violation, he continued, and so I blocked. I was not involved in the incident which caused Giano's edits in the first place.
• the block was preventative- not punative; it was only one hour because a) I knew Giano would whine to some sympathetic admin with a distortion of the truth, and b) I figured that the short block would be enough to stop Giano from continuing his edit war. You don't protect a page when only one editor is edit warring. Subsequent unblock/blocks, I have no jurisprudence about. David Fuchs ^(talk) 17:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  • That you don't see "edit warring" there from anyone other than Giano says more about your judgment on the matter than anything Giano might "whine" (another indictment of your impartiality) about. Mr Which??? 17:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

David's judgement here looks sound to me. Why is everyone who disagrees with you "partial", Mr Which. Thanks, SqueakBox 17:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

As an admin who has nothing whatsoever to do with this dispute and hasn't been on IRC in months and was denied access to the admin channel when I requested it last spring and generally agrees with Giano about IRC, I endorse David's summary and actions. One person repeatedly reverting to their version of a page against near-unanimous agreement otherwise isn't an edit war and there's no logical reason to block anyone else. --B (talk) 17:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC) Note: I was not explicitly refused access, rather, my request for access was not responded to and I stopped pursuing it. Nothing more should be read into this than that I am not a member of the IRC channel and that I support David Fuch's actions. I'm not upset about not having IRC access nor am I overly interested in spending any time on it. --B (talk) 03:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Why are some admins denied access? Lawrence Cohen 17:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No earthly idea. IIRC, this was back during the spring right before the Virginia Tech massacre and I ceased to care about it at that point and didn't pursue it any further. --B (talk) 17:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Mr. Which: for the benefit of people like you, I posted the above message. Can you tell me how there was other edit warring when Giano reverted five other editors that many times? Giano might have legitimate beef; he usually does. But his approaches, i.e., edit warring, continually incivil behavior, et al., are not solving any problems. What I mean by the 'whine' comment is that Giano is going to protest his block and an admin who didn't know what went down is going to unblock him; that's the story told by his block log. At the same time, I am not endorsing further blocks after me; blocking Giano for a longer period of time would not help fix the problem, and my attempt was only to stop the constant reversions. Am I impartial? Fairly. But that won't stop me from voicing my opinions- and that's what the whining comment was. It doesn't change the facts I enumerated above. David Fuchs ^(talk) 21:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Violation of the three revert rule and disruptive editing to prove a point should be enought to justify a block, I know that would have been my action, this is not one of those situations that justify a user breaking the 3RR. - Caribbean~H.Q. 21:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I have recently previously unblocked Giano (to re-apply the original tariff that had been increased without consensus) and I was pretty much aware of the reasons for the original block - which is why I reinstated it less time served. Unless you can provide diffs or any other evidence that indicate which areas of discussion I have not reviewed, I suggest that insulting statements regarding any lack of knowledge from other admins more likely indicates your own lack of perception on the acumen and cogitating abilities of those sysops who have acted differently - but also in the best interests of the encyclopedia. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Look at the block log of Giano, and follow the discussions. David Fuchs ^(talk) 23:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• To LessHeard. Inflamatory/diatribe edit summaries really don't help. Pedro :  Chat  23:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Again? LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Back to the issue at hand, we are supposed to be discussing the first block on Giano's account for breaking the three revert rule, now here is what I don' understand, why is there a debate ongoing over if the action was sound or not? just take a look on the article's history, Giano reverted several users with the basis that his version was "the truth", wich is quite obviously a matter of perception thus he was edit warring over his POV wich is disruptive, regardless if his "truth" was correct or not, this is a good example of disrupting the project to prove a point, on the other hand Giano surpased the limit of the three revert rule while edit warring wich is a blockable offense, now David noticed this and proceeded to block as is the normal procedure with hundreds of cases of precedent to justify the action, that is supposed to be enough with the witness. - Caribbean~H.Q. 00:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

The idea here is that if those reverting Giano knew that 3RR was being flouted by Giano, they were equally aware that they were carrying out a revert already carried out by someone else. That still counts as edit warring. If you watch an edit war in progress, or look at the previous diffs, and you step in and carry out one of the reverts, then you are participating in the edit warring. It's the same analogy as in the "slow motion wheel war" described at this old version of WP:WHEEL. The correct approach when seeing an edit war like this in progress is to protect the page, contact everyone on their talk pages with warnings and an invitation to discussion, and start a discussion on the talk page. Instead, all those involved carried on merrily editing, page protection or no page protection (well, not in Giano's case, as the page protection excluded him from the party). But my point here is that a single revert can still be edit warring. It depends on what awareness is shown of the situation, as seen in edit summaries and so forth. Carcharoth (talk) 02:26, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• The above makes a lot of sense, and is what I've been trying to say all along. Mr Which??? 02:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

What this is boiling down to is friends of Giano protesting that how dare we hold their hero accountable for violating 3RR, enemies of Giano wanting to hang him from a lamppost, and others caught in the crossfire. Sad. Raymond Arritt (talk) 04:04, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

That is a distortion in itself, as you missed out those who think both Giano and others were engaged in edit warring and all sides should have been briefly blocked for that, or none. I have no problem at all with Giano being blocked for 3RR. What I do object to is others claiming innocence and saying "we weren't edit warring - it was him". Carcharoth (talk) 04:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

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

Autoblock, please help

Moved out of above archive, as relates to a problem which affects many admins and is only marginally related to the case at hand. Orderinchaos 10:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Giano has been unblocked, but remains autoblocked. Could somebody please help (and then, could somebody PLEASE teach me how to undo autoblocks according to this horrible new system? It didn't use to be a problem!) Bishonen | talk 10:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC).

I have removed Giano's autoblock. --Coredesat 10:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Coredesat. Would you (or someone else) have time to educate your fellow admins on how to undo autoblocks? It's a reasonable request from Bishonen. We don't want the technology to lead to a reduced pool of admins who have the knowledge of how to undo an autoblock. Do the instructions at WP:AUTOBLOCK cover the new system? Carcharoth (talk) 11:16, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I sort of found it by chance by browsing Special:Ipblocklist until I found the first autoblock mask corresponding to Giano's 72 hr block, then unblocked that number on the regular unblock page. WP:AUTOBLOCK seems to say that we have to do just that, as weird as that sounds; it states that admins have to keep an eye on the block list for any additional autoblocks that pop up as a result of an initial block. I suppose this means the tool is useless in its current form; the last time Giano was caught up in an autoblock (one I admittedly caused), it took ElinorD a little while to find the mask for it, and we both found it at about the same time. --Coredesat 12:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Checkusers can trace autoblocks a lot easier, but we could do with explicit permission from the user to do so. Of course we promise not to reveal any information from the check. --Deskana (talk) 17:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have found the tool useless in its current form. I used to undo a lot of autoblocks, for instance always keeping an eye out for distress posts from the unfortunate User:WBardwin. It was easy. And now it takes a checkuser, unless you find the "mask" (wot?) by chance? Please tell me you're kidding. Why has the technology been, uh, improved to such a point? Bishonen | talk 18:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC).

Does the autoblock tool not work any more? I'm guessing not because I don't see anything there more current than Nov 27. Is it just temporarily down or is it going to be fixed? --B (talk) 18:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I've had the same problem trying to undo unrelated autoblocks - they just don't show up at all and I have to actually get the user to send me previewed code by email, preview that myself and use the links to unblock. Orderinchaos 22:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Legal Threat against Wiki at Talk:Muhammad

Made by Farazilu (talk · contribs), see [18]. --Strothra (talk) 06:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

User has already been warned and given a link to the policy. Nothing to see here. -- Kendrick7^talk 06:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

He has been blocked until the threat is withdrawn. --Versageek 06:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

He has been unblocked, details are in his talk page history.. --Versageek 06:59, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Farazilu

Resolved

 – User:Farazilu now blocked for a number of problematic behaviours

He has, among other things, declared a cyber crusade to remove images of muhammad from wikipedia. Also, he thinks it's encyclopedic to call Adolf Hitler a hero. See: Special:Contributions/Farazilu. I honestly don't think he will ever be civil or back down. Zazaban (talk) 09:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking ay his contributions I have to say that he is here for drama rather than writing an encylopedia. Some people enjoy conflict for conflict's sake but do we need to tolerate them here? I think not. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 10:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. We definitely do not need more people who aren't interested in looking at things from multiple sides and respect compromises. henrik•talk 11:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

He is, also rather problematically, organising the edit war on Muhammed externally, (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/removal-of-the-pics-of-muhammad-from-wikipedia) which has got that article locked down. WilyD 14:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Well as long as the article is protected, the only problem will be in related articles being targeted (if there is rampant vandalism is can stay protected forever, thats what edit requests are for).

Someone might want to start watching articles in related categories like Category:Muhammad, Category:Prophets in Islam, Category:Islam, and Category:Arab statesmen for cross-pollinated vandalism/POV-pushing Mbisanz (talk) 14:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, he's blocked indefinitely, check his block log for reasons why. We're never going to get any productive contributions out of this one in a million years, so there's no point wasting everyone's time. A depressing specimen of the Neo-Nazi-flavoured Islamism arising in the UK. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 17:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Talkpage posts removal

A user has just gone and removed several posts from Talk:Owen Hart. Is this against policy? Cheers, Davnel03^{Sign It, Junior!} 15:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

While removing other users' posts can be frowned upon, removing posts not directly related to improving the article is somewhat different. Wikipedia is not a message board or social network, and the posts removed regarding Owen Hart's death appeared to border on speculation and conspiracy talk rather than ideas about how to make the article better Whitstable (talk) 15:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. At WP:TALK, one of the examples given as an appropriate time to edit others' comments is when you are deleting material not relevant to improving the article. This removal seems to fit that description. There may be an argument to be made about archiving the discussion instead of deleting it, but there's really no reason to leave it on the talk page. --Onorem♠Dil 15:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Using a secondary account for disruptive purposes

There is a chance that Whitstable (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is using the account Whitsttable (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) for personal attacks and incivility. I already left a warning about the incivility and personal attacks here and the user acknowledged seeing them here. Now, there is a chance that the users are not the same, based on this comment. My opinion, is that User:Whitsttable is the one that needs blocking, as they are the clearly disruptive account. Maybe a checkuser? - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:00, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

See below. Whittstable has been indef blocked for attacking, amongst others, Whitstable. LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:08, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It appears User:Rjd0060 clicked on user:Whitsttable to issue a warning without noticing that the vandal had redirected their user page to mine and talk page to mine, hence the warning was left on my page and not that of the vandal. No harm done, though. Whitstable (talk) 16:16, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

That is correct and I have since removed the warnings, with my apologies. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

re Whittstable (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and User:Whitstable

I have just indef blocked the former for attempted harassment of various wikipedians, including the latter. One of the acts of vandalism was to redirect User talk:Whittstable to User talk:Whitstable. I should be grateful if anyone with the requisite skills could undo the redirect. Oh, and please feel free to review the block and tell me I got it right (or tell me I was wrong, if you really must...) LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Clearly protection of that talk page is needed as he is still redirecting it. EconomicsGuy (talk) 16:10, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I should be allowed to make sockpuppets if I want, because I'm an experienced user. I am far more advanced than most of you here, so please do not even think about blocking my sockpuppets again. Whitstable. (talk) 16:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Too late. — Satori Son 16:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

These accounts are clearly a violation of the username policy, as they're attempting to impersonate another user. I've blocked two or three this morning already, and I'm expecting another 60 or 70 before lunch. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 16:18, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Impersonating a username is one thing, attempting to use such impersonations to attempt to sully the impersonated account is another. Is this grounds for checkuser to find and (temp) block the ip/range? LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Might be worth thinking about what is going on here, here and here Whitstable (talk) 16:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

There is sockpuppetry involved and he claims that his address changes when he disconnects his modem (see here). - Caribbean~H.Q. 16:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like Iamandrewrice. He also left these insane ramblings on Jeffpw's talk page earlier today. EconomicsGuy (talk) 16:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

And this edit which is an anagram of my username and appears to suggest I am a sock. WP:DUCK seems to indicate it all goes back to the same source? Whitstable (talk) 16:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Another - User:Whitstabble - creating redirects again. Whitstable (talk) 16:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC) Another

WP:DUCK indeed. If last time is anything to go by block first ask later. Last time Yamla had to rangeblock nearly 200.000 IP's for 3 hours to stop this. This guy is seriously annoying as you and I already know... EconomicsGuy (talk) 16:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

And I know too. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Now been shown that User:Pollypenhouse and User:Listsvery now banned as socks of User:Iamandrewrice - same email addresses for the accounts, see here and hereWhitstable (talk) 17:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Semi protect ANI

Should ANI be semi-protected for a while, till this guy gets bored? I just RV'd another one. Lawrence Cohen 17:05, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, semi-protected for 12 hours. SirFozzie (talk) 17:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Range block

Something has to be done before this all gets out of control again - another apparent sock Whitstable (talk) 17:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you take it to RFCU. We can't block a range without knowing what it is. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 17:53, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

That sock now added to existing RFCU Whitstable (talk) 17:59, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I've already investigated this and there is nothing that can be done. --Deskana (talk) 18:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

In which case, revert, block, ignore. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 18:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

In that case could his pretty obvious sock Clarissamelissa (talk · contribs) please be blocked before causing more disruption and allowing him to evade his ban in general? I'm sorry if you can't stop this by repeating the three range blocks Yamla used last week to stop him. EconomicsGuy (talk) 18:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Blocked by User:Golbez. Could any future socks be sent to WP:AIV to DENY recognition. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 18:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

User:SqueakBox's disruption at Larry Sanger and related articles

• Removed Sanger's name from the [[English Wikipedia] article.
• Removed Sanger's name again.
• Claims that "enforcing neutrality" is his "specialty" and accuses everyone opposing his position of "trolling." In previous notes on his talkpage, he specifically accused me of "trolling" with no evidence, and refused to provide evidence of it when asked.
• Spreads this dispute to other, completely non-related issue.
• Further diffs from various Wales- and Sanger-related articles.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10		11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20		21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30		31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

The above diffs are across the project, on nearly all the Sanger- and Wales-related articles. This user has shown that he's unwilling to compromise, and has insisted that he has "no POV" on these matters. The above diffs indicate otherwise. He has accused those who revert his POV edits of "stalking" and "trolling." Mr Which??? 19:29, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

To be fair, in one case, it was stalking - I ended up rv'ing fourty nondiscrimate reverts. Will ^(talk) 19:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it wasn't "stalking", though you're free to view it that way. Bramlet did indiscriminately revert SB's edits, but assuming good faith, I think he was simply mistaken in his reversions of some of the edits, seemingly assuming that all of SB's edits were his point-y mass edits of the Sanger- and Wales-related articles. I've presented a ton of diffs showing SB's disruption, and his lack of willingness to stop. You replied two minutes after I posted it. There's no way you even took the time to review them. Mr Which??? 19:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Where was I mistaken? I did not indiscriminately revert SB's edits. I reverted only his edits related to Wales and Sanger. Bramlet Abercrombie (talk) 21:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

When you start indiscriminately reverting someone forty/fifty times, AGF flies out the window. Will ^(talk) 19:46, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Not when SB had been POV-pushing his edits across the project. Bramlet messed up, and reverted too many of his edits, but that does not excuse SB's actions. Mr Which??? 19:49, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Did I ever say it did? I just gave you one example where he was being stalked. Will' ^(talk) 19:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec) On the same note, there is an ongoing content debate between these guys on the Sanger talk page. As soon as Squeakbox began to lose the argument, and sources were produced that buried his view that no sources supported Sanger as co-founder, he went and began editing out every reference on Wikipedia that called Wales co-founder or Sanger co-founder. A wrong doesn't make a right, but Squeakbox was also very wrong and needs to stop. Lawrence Cohen 19:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Erm, how is defending the neutrality and integrity of the project a cause for posting on AN/I. I agree with Jimbo that people like Mr Which should be told to stop trolling this issue, and end the issue there. Bramlet most certainly was stalking me, spending all his time following me around and reverting my edits in a SPA way and thus this issue has already been dealt with here, and satisfactorily. If anybody has been out of line today it has been Quackguru for claiming that reverting his POV pushing at Larry Sanger is blockable as if somehow he were the founder of the project. Thanks, SqueakBox 19:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

This is not a content dispute and is perfect for admin review. You were asked on the Sanger talk page if the 80+ sources that cite Sanger as co-founder were with or without merit. You then went and made all these revisions. I'd advise admins to read this section. It does appear disruptive on your part. You'd also claimed it was a BLP violation to say Sanger is co-founder. What BLP violation is that exactly? Lawrence Cohen 19:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Not on the Larry Sanger page I didn't. How is it relevant on pages that have nothing to do with wikipedia? IMO it is not apropriate for AN/I, its just more trolling from MrWhich, who appears to be one of a number of editors who hold a grudge against wikipedia. Its time we took a neutral stance against troll warriors who want to smear Jimbo's good name on this project. Thanks, SqueakBox 19:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Accusing me of "trolling" again probably isn't your best course of action here, SB. Mr Which??? 19:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Well if you are trolling, which I suggest you are, it clearly is my best approach. You seem more interested in attacking Jimbo than editing the encyclopedia and this is becoming very tedious. I suggets we take Jimbo's advice and warn off all the POV trolls on this issue, there apear to be 3, Braml;et, yourself and QuackGuru. You al know you are trolling because you have been told before so there are no excuses for trying to slur Jimbo's good anme on this project. Thanks, SqueakBox 19:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Squeakbox, how does it violate NPOV and BLP, amazingly, to say Sanger is co-founder, when it's widely supported and sourced? Once these sources were offered up, you immediately began calling everyone a troll, and unilaterally excising any reference of "co-founder" from these articles. Lawrence Cohen 19:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It clearly violates BLP because of Jimbo's numerous statements on the matter. It violates NPOV because we need to be neutral and not take Larry's stance on this as fact, as again Jimbo has pointed out on numerous occasions. Thanks, SqueakBox 20:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

What statements from Jimbo under BLP trump 100+ reliable news sources and supported you removing all reference of Sanger as co-founder from all of Wikipedia as soon as sources calling Sanger a co-founder were supplied? What reliable sources carried all these statements from Jimbo that you claim trump NPOV? Lawrence Cohen 20:05, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

None. Jimbo is no different than any other user who has an article about him.Mr Which??? 20:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

But if someone were to undo Squeakbox's edits to the Sanger related articles, it would be stalking? I'm confused. Because he made so many edits, anyone going through and fixing his out of policy errors would be stalking?? Lawrence Cohen 20:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I think you accidentally placed this reply (apparently intended for Sceptre/Will) as a reply to me. Mr Which??? 20:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it was a reply to you based on the fact that Squeakbox's mass edits appear to unsupported by BLP as he claims--but I was implying, that, if I were to go and fix his mistaken edits, I would be tagged as a stalker. That is confusing. Lawrence Cohen 20:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• I'd ask reviewing admins to note these ongoing personal attacks when deciding what course of action to pursue regarding this user. Mr Which??? 19:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Regards these users, don't you mean?. Your own behaviiour is what is unacceptable here, Mrwhich. You appear to think you can troll Jimbo with impunity, and me too judging by this thread. I bought this issue to AN/I myself the other day, why are you repeating it. Thanks, SqueakBox 20:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Note ongoing personal attacks. No trolling by me is either evident or proven. Mr Which??? 20:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• I wouldn't be too sure of that. Guy (Help!) 20:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• I'd ask you to prove that with diffs that show me trolling on this issue or withdraw. Don't make this personal, JzG. Thanks, Mr Which??? 20:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - I have been involved in the "co-founder issue" as well, just for disclosure. I have to say SB, that you lose credibilty when you lump ALL the editors who disagree with you on this issue as "Sanger supports" or "troll warriors who want to smear Jimbo's good name" ect, ect. It seems that you have taken this on as a personal cause or something. The reason I feel it is important has nothing to do with the indiviuals involved but more about how "facts" can be "bastardized" over time and history can morph based on people's involvement, ect. If Wikipedia can't even keep track of who its founder{s} were/are, why are they to be trusted with ANYTHING else? Anyways, --Tom 20:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

As a newbie I think there is an interesting general question to be considered here:

Are prolific, valuable and veteran editors such as Squeakbox and Giano expected to conform to the same rules as newer, less high profile contributors?

Do they deserve a greater margin of toleration and rule-bending as super heroes and guardians of righteousness- or should they be setting an example of rectitude for lesser mortals to follow?

I must admit, I don't know the answer to that one... Alice^✉ 00:01, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I suspect that you have some idea to the answer; but here is my understanding of the situation. All contributors are required to conform to the rules, policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. However, editors of long standing are often given more latitude in allowing them to stretch the definitions of said policies providing they are working to the spirit of the policies. LessHeard vanU (talk) 11:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Happy holidays -let's have a truce

I am very happy to not edit at all on this issue till January 2. I am re-considering my approach for then and gathering information, specifically about which articles are disputed as there are a fair few, re this issue and collating it off-wiki. This issue wont be resolved here, can we please just all chill, accept that every article involved the dispute is at the The wrong version right now. I welcome comments on my talk page or via emails (private) from anybody re this issue. Thanks, SqueakBox 21:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Until you withdraw your personal attacks accusing me of "trolling", and resolve to stop unilaterally changing the content without consensus or verifiable sources on your side accross the project, there's no "truce" to be had. Mr Which??? 21:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of your opinion of SqueakBox's editing/POV this is an offer of peace that should be accepted. At the end all of this battle over co- or not co- is not helping here and the encyclopaedia does not need to be finished today. I've been watching this with some amusement since failing Larry Sanger as a good article. All concerned in this lame and self-referential edit war need to relax, have a cup of tea and reread Wikipedia:Don't be a dick and WP:TIGERS. - 22:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Peripitus (talk • contribs)

Are you serious? He accuses all who disagree with him of "trolling", and then, when someone finally compiles the evidence of disruption and posts to AN/I, he offers a "truce"? And then you post the DICK and TIGERS links? Wow. Mr Which??? 22:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

MrWhich, a christmas branch was extended, in keeping with the holiday spirit. Let's not get all Grinchy, shall we? just accept the offer made in good faith and enjoy the rest of the festive week. There's a whole new year standing ahead of you, just waiting to be filled with squabbling and pettiness. A few days of harmony won't kill any of us. Jeffpw (talk) 22:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

An admirable sentiment, but MrWhich is factually correct about sequencing and I don't detect any apology or sentiments of contrition in SqueakBox's "truce offer". Try and put yourself in MrWhich's shoes... Alice^✉ 22:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, they did agree not to make the edits between now and January 2. That allows some tempers to cool, which can only be a good thing. Orderinchaos 00:18, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Blanking the Dana Ullman article and then protecting the vandalism

Resolved

 – Content dispute. Nothing to see or do. Move along. — Coren ^(talk)

• First of all, as soon as Dana Ullman was told that he was not allowed to make changes at his own biography article, he stopped doing so. That COI "warning" on that article has already been on too long. Also, the "changes" that he made were simply responding to a skeptic's request for reference information (thus, he provided reference information).

• There has not been an "edit war" at Dana Ullman's article. There was an edit that provided specific reference to the letters of Charles Darwin and to a book written by a physician who is widely known to have been Darwin's favorite doctor (James Manby Gully). This link to Dr. Gully's book confirmed that he is a physician who used homeopathy alone and/or with water-cure treatments. The skeptics also deleted an interview with Dana Ullman from UC Berkeley's alumni magazine. Because a skeptic wanted a reference that Dana Ullman was arrested and that he won his court case (this skeptic actually referred to him in his edit as a "quack" which breaks Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons), it was surprising that this interview got deleted, especially because the editor's remarks prior to the interview with Ullman established the fact that he was arrested for practicing medicine without a license - and won an important court settlement.

• The most common antagonist to the Dana Ullman article has been an anonymous person who wrote: "I much prefer this version", after his page was "stubbified" and then "protected.": "Can we just delete the page now." 86.146.119.116 (talk) 20:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

• Please note that one of the skeptics (McGeddon) approved the good references that were provided to the Darwin letters, the Gully book and the UC Berkeley, and he simply improved the formatting of the information. And yet, 86.146.119.116 did an UNDO. He explained his actions in this way:

"The only reference is Dana Ullman, who is not a good source by Wikipedia standards. The Berkeley piece was an interview with him, and his articles on his website are no good either. 86.146.119.116 (talk) 22:58, 25 December 2007 (UTC)"

Someone responded:

"You are wrong about everything that you just wrote, and considering your strong biases against the man, this is predictable. The link to UC Berkeley's article included an introduction to him written by the editor of the magazine, which includes some information about his arrest for practicing medicine without a license and the victory of his court case. As for the other references, it seems that you didn't even see them. They were to Darwin's letters and to Dr. Gully's book. Considering the fact that I just said these things above, it seems that you are not even reading what others write but only seeing what you want to see. Thanx for showing your colors here. Now that you know the truth, what are you going to do to correct it? 71.198.193.248 (talk) 23:54, 25 December 2007 (UTC) "

To which, the skeptic wrote:

"Funny. Darwin's letters prove that Ullman is wrong! 86.146.119.116 (talk) 11:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)"

It seems that this person didn't even read the Darwin letters that were linked, and even if he did, its still not clear why he chose to delete them.

• The bottomline is IF his article needs protection, it should have been protected when there were good NPOV references, not in its "stubbified" vandalized state. There appears to be a coordinated effort to delete information about Dana Ullman, or provide misinformation about him, and even to delete the entire listing, even though there was previous agreement that his article as a well known author on homeopathy was noteworthy. Arion 3x3 (talk) 20:11, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Actually, turning a disputed biography into a stub and protecting is normal practice; calling a stripped article "vandalism" is not productive. Discuss the issue on the talk page. — Coren ^(talk) 03:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Just a note. When writing an edit summary, using the words "Nothing to see here, move along" is just bound to attract attention to a thread. Human nature and all that. Having said that, you were right. Now, let's see what I can put in the edit summmary. Carcharoth (talk) 03:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

That may or may not have been my intent.  :-) — Coren ^(talk) 04:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

the GFDL and attribution

I am trying to reconcile my understanding of {{gfdl}} with the current mechanism for renaming categories.

Currently, unlike articles, when someone proposes renaming a category, a brand new category is created, with the new name, but the text of the old category. Its revision history shows it having a single author -- the robot that created it, not the actual human authors.

Any different revisions the text of the category underwent are lost. And, if I am not mistaken, if that category had a talk page, it is silently erased.

We grant generous rights when we release our contributions under the {{gfdl}} But don't we retain an entitlement to have the history of our contributions retained?

It seems to me the current mechanism doesn't retain the attributions in our contributions to the text of categories. Geo Swan (talk) 20:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that the consensus is that the prose contents of categories are trivial, and mostly scenes a faire material which isn't subject to copyright in general; it's meta-information and not subject matter. I suppose there are cases where a category would bear enough originality and prose to be protectable, but then a simple acknowledgment in the edit log should do. — Coren ^(talk) 21:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

They are, or should be anyway. However, Cydebot does list the editors of the old category, so the information is retained in the history of the new page. If there's a talk page for a renamed category, it gets moved to the new name, e.g. here and here. About as good as can be done with the current system. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Not all the editors are shown in the edit summary if the edit history is too long. Some of the edits made to category pages are creative enough that they should be preserved per the GFDL. A solution would be to move the category page to the new name (along with its talk page). The way that could be implemented is, I believe, as easy as making category pages move-protected by default, rather than having the software completely prevent movement of category pages. Carcharoth (talk) 01:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that that's simply a great idea. Though I have a vague recollection that categories should be "empty" before "turning into" a page (which then can be moved). - jc37 02:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

In answer to Coren -- I have started categories where the text has been vandalized. I have started categories where the contents clearly were longer than too trivial to merit copyright protection. I don't see how the suggestion that a mention in the edit log could be sufficient for those instances where the category has been vandalized, or has been the subject of disagreement, or edit warring. It still seems to me that this does not fulfill the wikipedia's obligations to honor the rights contributor's retain under the {{gfdl}}.

I don't understand why category renaming should lose the edit history, when the edit history is not lost when articles are renamed. Geo Swan (talk) 14:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

If I am not mistakedn the current mechanism erases the content of comments in Category talk:* space. I checked my edit history and came across a contribution to Category talk:Chadian rebels. Even if, for the sake of argument, the comments here were misplaced -- I dispute that this means they should be flushed without any warning or discussion. Geo Swan (talk) 15:10, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

There are almost a dozen entries in the edit history of Category talk:Afghan politicians. If trashing the talk pages of categories is due to a programming design choice then, IMO, it was a poorly advised one. Geo Swan (talk) 15:17, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Long-term vandalism with suspected sockpuppetry

Not sure if this is the correct place to post this. I believe user Frank mad (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log) and I.P. 66.176.219.186 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) are the same person. Both users have contributed to the same articles, vandalizing them repeatedly by removing sourced information and pushing POV. This can be seen in their contributions page. The I.P. has just been blocked for 3 months but the user is now using their user account (Frank mad) to continue vandalizing. Edits pushing POV on White Latin American by deleting the exactly same information by Frank mad [19] and the I.P. [20] [21] are identical. This user will not communicate with other users who have tried to talk to them, including myself. This makes it hard to try to come to a mutual understanding, but in this case erasing info. is considered vandalism. The user and I.P. have been repeatedly warned and told to not remove the info; they still do so, and it is reverted, however, they come back hours later to do it again. I don't know what action should or can take place but this reverting every day has to come to an end. -- LaNicoya  •Talk•  22:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this is one of the right places. WP:SSP might be another... And not only that, you should write the account up to AIV, an admin'll block him from there. After that, if he does come back, it'll just be block on sight, if possible. You may want to keep track of the socks. Happy Holidays from —BoL 00:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Blocking discussion and vandalizing AfD

I tagged the Uka Uka article as having some article issues[22] and also tagged for a suggested merge to the List of Crash Bandicoot characters article[23]][24] on the 24th under the assertion that it does not meet the notability requirements to be a standalone article and is almost entirely plot and game quites. User:CBFan reverted the tagging on the List article on early on the 26th proclaiming there was no discussion[25]. I retagged and started a discussion.[26]. He removed, again, saying my merge reasons made no sense[27]. On the Uka Uka article, he also removed all of the tags on the article, claiming I "hate" the character and he called the tagging vandalism[28]. Since this editor was blocking all attempts at a merge discussion, I gave up and AfDed the Uka Uka article. Less than two hours after I filed it, an anonymous IP vandalized the AfD and redirected it to the Uka Uka article[29]. From the edit summary and the IP tracing back to the UK where CBFan is also located, I strongly suspect this was CBFan acting while not logged in (edit summary again said I hate the character and am biased against the series). CBFan seems to have some serious ownership issues over these articles and I believe he is crossing the line by refusing to even allow th]]e articles to be tagged for legitimate problems. My attempts as discussing the merge proposal just resulted in his again claiming I hate the character and have never played the game.[30].

From his own user page, he is obviously a huge fan of the series and seems to be unable to look at the articles from the necessary neutral POV. I don't think further attempts to discuss the situation from me would be useful or have any positive results, so I am asking for admin intervention. Collectonian (talk) 00:09, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• You have not provided a single legimate reason as to why the article should be merged or removed. The "reasons" you have given are either blatant lies or make no sense. Furthermore, Uka Uka clearly meets the criteria in order to have an article. I seriously suggest you rethink your discussion before putting ANY article up for merging or deletion. And yes, I am a fan of the Crash series. And that is how I know that the reasons you gave are blatant lies. HOWEVER, your claim that I can't look at an article neutrally is not only a blatant lie but it gives Crash fans a bad name. Look in the List of Crash Bandicoot characters talk page, and you'll see that it was ME who suggested that the former article we had for Doctor Nitrus Brio be deleted because he didn't fulfill the criteria. Uka Uka does, so I don't see your problem. CBFan (talk) 11:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Furthermore, now I've read your comments more clearly, putting an article up for deletion purely because you didn't get your own way is, really, not what we want for Wikipedia. If you don't get your own way, you need to accept it. CBFan (talk) 11:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• He is also canvassing User talk:Freqrexy, User talk:Illustrious One‎, User talk:Cat's Tuxedo‎. Ridernyc (talk) 11:32, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• I am canvassing nobody. I am meerly getting the attention of people who actually KNOW what they're doing. CBFan (talk) 11:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Being obnoxious and messing with the process is not likely to help your case. If it is as notable as you say, there should be no problems, but your behavior is reflecting poorly on the case. JuJube (talk) 12:15, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Considering that Uka Uka fits the strict rules that we made for a Crash Bandicoot character to have an article (that he/she should have appeared in half or more of all the Crash games, half or more of the six games in the Main Series and that he has a lot of material to work with), I really never saw the problem. He is notable. N Brio, who previously had an article, did not, and that's why he was deleted. Then add the fact that Collectonian didn't help either by actually deleting any attempts to fix the article. Currently, the way I see it is that either Uka Uka is allowed to keep his article via the guidelines written out, or only Crash is. Certainly, there is no reason as to why Uka Uka's article, and by this I mean only his article, should be deleted, especially as Collectonian failed to post any legimate reasons as to why that should be the case. CBFan (talk) 13:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Is this evasion of a permanent block?

User:The King of Clay was recently blocked permanently for unacceptable behaviour, including potemtially highly libellous comments about living people. Two requests to reconsider this block were denied because of (on my reading) the nature of the abuse, and the prior history of vandalism. I think this user has re-appeared with a slightly different username: User:Clay for the King‎ as can be seen on an apparently fellow user's talk page (see User talk:Fanku.) If it is the same user, is this an evasion of a permanent block at all? Given the behaviour of the blocked user, it may be an idea to determine whether it is or not.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Would there be anything wrong with the user creating a new account, if that is what has happened, as the User:The King of Clay was blocked, not banned? Whitstable (talk) 00:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Although creating a new account and using it in this manner could be grounds for the block becoming a ban, perhaps. Whitstable (talk) 00:53, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

(In answer to your first response - thanks for it, by the way) I'm not sure. That's why I asked the question. I guess the most charitable reaction would be to monitor the user's behaviour with the new username (if it is the same person) carefully to see if the same patterns of offending are manifesting themselves again.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:57, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes this is block evasion - I have indef'ed the second account. They can appeal the indef block on the first account to unblock-en-l or Arbcom or other admins, but sockpuppeting around it is not appropriate. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 01:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Sleeping sockpuppets waking up at TFD?

Something fishy is going on at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 December 25#Template:STLmedia and Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 December 25#Template:PHLmedia. The templates were nominated for deletion by Spencer1151 (talk · contribs), the user's first edits. The only !voters so far are BombBuilder (talk · contribs) (a new user), KansasCity (talk · contribs) (joined Wikipedia in December 2005) and BeerBelly82 (talk · contribs) (joined in December 2006, but has very few edits). They all appear to have come to this discussion out of the blue. This comes across as sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry. Aecis^Brievenbus 01:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

May I recommend that you file this case over on WP:RFCU as it's pretty obvious that abusive sock-puppetry is going on here - Alison ^❤ 01:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

A better way is not to get all worked up. Just consider the merits of delete or keep as fairly as possible. Much of the sock problem is not really a problem at all. If there is a wacky idea, it doesn't matter if one person or 20 socks support it, it is still wacky. If your idea is wacky, it shouldn't matter if one person has a very reasonable and logical argument or if 20 socks have the good argument. A convincing reason should overcome defective reasoning, whichever side has the socks. Spevw (talk) 01:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that it is often the case that a majority will support a controversial stance, but without expert and unbiased input, a balanced view appears remote. This is usually left to hope, or more costly processes, in which the participants may not be qualified to assess conflicting points of view. It's also clear that Talk Page discussions are in general inadequate to deal with major types of conflict about content. It's all very well to talk about convincing reasons and defective reasoning, but given entrenched attitudes and politics, socks should be irrelevant and the process at present is a little clumsy, in my opinion. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 02:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

User does not sign posts, ignores warnings

69.143.119.244 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has made several edits to talk pages, and has been warned three times to sign his posts. He has not signed them. Can any action be taken on this? Thanks. JetLover (talk) (Report a mistake) 01:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Now says s/he will do that. Never mind. JetLover (talk) (Report a mistake) 01:36, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

For what its worth, signing your posts is completely optional - it's just worthwhile if you want people to listen. WilyD 01:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that the point of !nosine!? bibliomaniac15 04:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

User page that could possibly be considered to be advertising

Maybe it's fine, but I was just wondering whether this user page (user Walice111) was inappropriate, being perhaps advertising or practically a personal website. I haven't discussed this with the user because the user has not edited since Nov. 12. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

From his first edit, it would appear that he's sixteen and may not be clear what Wikipedia is about. Assuming good faith, I would regard this as a test, and since he's not been around for a while, move it to a subpage but leave a reference on his main page. That way, if he comes back, he won't lose that content. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 01:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Twsx

This user has for the last few months waged a constant edit war on at least two pages (Dissection (band) and Amon Amarth). He has been warned many times before about this. I reported him before but no action was taken as this was the first time he was reported. However, User:Scarian had a conversation with him telling everyone if they continued to edit war they would get reported and blocked. Well, Twsx refused to listen, obviously, because he's right back at edit warring. I ask for a block. As you can see from these history pages: 1 and 2, the user has waged a long running war and has an agenda that no one wants (users such as myself and other keep having to revert him). Thank you. Blizzard Beast ^$ODIN$ 18:11, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Notified editor of this thread. Pastordavid (talk) 18:52, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification, Pastordavid. As I have had to respond to this very issue (with this very user) too many times before, I have created a small page listing my arguments on the matter. It can be found here. Thank you. ~ | twsx | ^talk_cont | 18:59, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

That page Twsx would have you look at is ridiculous and biased against me. It also brings up many old issues and edits that I have done in the past. For one it brings up that I have been blocked twice for edit warring on two different pages. I agreed to stop a long time ago and I would like to point out that Twsx is now doing the same thing I was blocked for and that is not acceptable. Blizzard Beast ^$ODIN$ 19:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I have warned this user a couple of times about his(/her?) POV pushing and warring behavior, without any success. I have tried to stop the POV pushing through discussion on a larger scale here. As users couldn't agree with each other I proposed a truce (here). Since the truce has been in place all edit wars and POV pushing have stopped.. except for the ones Twsx was involved in, despite numerous comments on Twsx' talk page. Kameejl ^(Talk) 20:48, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Some comments I've posted on Twsx' talk page. [31], [32], [33], [34] Kameejl ^(Talk) 21:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

On Dissection (band) and Amon Amarth edit wars are still going on, we really need help. Kameejl ^(Talk) 01:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• See WP:RPP for help stopping the edit warring. Avruchtalk 04:41, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Trenton, Ontario

I've been reverting back and forth with IP 67.70.41.80 (talk · contribs) about adding a name to the notable residents list. The user keeps adding a person they say is a PhD candidate from that town and I haven't been able to find any indication that this person is sufficiently notable to include - consequently, I've been reverting it. I've tried to engage him/her on the talk page, but no luck. I can handle the reverting, but this user has taken to vandalising my user page (adding block templates). There was a hiatus over the last few days, but today the same thing happened again from 99.249.160.47 (talk · contribs). It happens about twice a day max, but it's persistent. Would it be possible for an admin to give these IPs a warning for vandalism? Blotto adrift (talk) 02:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

You can warn the IPs yourself. --WinHunter ^(talk) 05:52, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Orangemarlin 2

Hi, I am being harassed by this user, and am not sure what to do.

OrangeMarlin has a history of viciously attacking anyone who says a word in my defense,[35] and has done so again today.[36]

On December 25, he filed a request for ArbCom enforcement against me,[37] but his request was opposed by many editors: violet/riga, Thatcher, Ghostmonkey57, The Evil Spartan, and Sbowers3. Nevertheless, OrangeMarlin continues to harass me by making frivolous threats to seek ArbCom enforcement against me, regarding the exact same issue that those other editors weighed in about.[38] Frankly, I would like some help here. So, in the holiday spirit, can someone please risk the further wrath of OrangeMarlin by helping me out here? Thanks.Ferrylodge (talk) 05:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

You're the one on parole, not me. And my complaint was supported by many more editors. So, go for it dude. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 05:27, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I have not been blocked or banned from any topic or article, and am as free as you are to edit appropriately.Ferrylodge (talk) 05:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• my advice to both of you is to chill out. my observations are that both of you push the edge of what is acceptable behavior, knock it off. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 05:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

That's the whole point, Rocksanddirt, I am trying to get OrangeMarlin to knock it off. He is insisting upon deleting longstanding accurate images at the fetus article, against consensus. Those images have been in the article for many months, and he has no consensus to delete them. He has not suggested any particular inaccuracy about them, and the images are amply supported by medical sources.[39] They do not represent any POV. OrangeMarlin is POV-pushing; he does not want a fetus to be accurately shown, and so he is seeking to delete the images. Simple as that. OrangeMarlin has some fantasy that I am a pro-life Christian (I am neither).[40]Ferrylodge (talk) 05:41, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Aren't you under Arbcomm-mandated restrictions? Guettarda (talk) 05:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe I said so in my initial comment.Ferrylodge (talk) 05:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Then why are you edit-warring? You say you are "as free as you are to edit appropriately", but you aren't "as free as [anyone else]" to edit inappropriately. So why not just stop edit warring? Guettarda (talk) 05:56, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I did not revert OrangeMarlin's POV deletion of the images. I'm here seeking advice about his POV-pushing and his harassment, and his attacking anyone who supports me (saying he can't wait to see them "fucked" and calling them "antisemites"). If Wikipedia is going to empower people like OrangeMarlin, then Wikipedia is in big big trouble. I realize you folks work together, and I'm sure the emails have been flying, but isn't there some minimal level of acceptable conduct?Ferrylodge (talk) 06:01, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a real easy way to avoid trouble FL. And you know what that is? The easy way to avoid trouble is to just...avoid trouble. You are a big boy I know and you know how to do that. So why tempt fate? Do you have some sort of masochistic streak? Do you love to get in fights? What is wrong with you anyway? Come on. Just play nice.--Filll (talk) 06:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

See comment at 05:49Ferrylodge (talk) 06:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

If you are under arbcomm restrictions, why are you engaging in this sort of behaviour? You are edit warring, and claiming that you were returning to the "consensus" position...and yet, over the course of several days, no one has supported your edits. You are under arbcomm restrictions. You should not be edit warring. Since you are engaging in questionable behaviour, the correct course of action is for other editors to warn you that you are headed down the wrong path. The fact that you haven't gone far enough down that path to warrant a block doesn't mean your behaviour is acceptable. Given your restrictions you need to be mindful of the advice given by other editors. "Thank you, I'll try to avoid that in future" is the correct response, not "You're harassing me!" As a result of your own actions you don't have as much freedom of action as other editors. Try listening to the advice given to you by other editors. Err on the side of caution. Don't edit war, not when you are restricted. That's just common sense. Guettarda (talk) 06:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Guettarda, instead of making incorrect pronouncements like "no one has supported your edits", why don't you visit the fetus talk page, and the ArbCom enforcement request that OrangeMarlin filed, and you'll see that there was plenty of support? Or you might actually use your own judgment, and think to yourself: isn't it appropriate for an article about the fetus to have accurate images of the fetus? The "behavior" that I am engaged in is attempting to prevent a POV-pusher from suppressing very valuable, longstanding, accurate, well-sourced information here at Wikipedia.Ferrylodge (talk) 06:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

You are under arbcomm restriction, and you are edit warring. That is unacceptable behaviour, whether it gets you re-blocked or not. You are under arbcomm restrictions, so you need to listen to advice and warnings given to you by other editors. If you have "consensus" behind you, you have no need to edit war - someone else, who isn't under arbcomm restriction, will fix the article. If you find yourself in a position where you "need" to revert other editors, repeatedly, then you apparently don't have consensus. Regardless, there is no reason for you to edit war. Wikipedia won't collapse if the images are absent for a few hours. If you can't refrain from edit-warring, you need to step away from the article for a while. Because, after all, you are under restriction. Guettarda (talk) 06:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Guettarda, I am not edit-warring. I am here trying to discuss another editor, whom I have not reverted, who has been harassing me and POV-pushing. I'm sorry that you choose not to address the harassment and the POV-pushing. Good night.Ferrylodge (talk) 06:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you are edit-warring. You admit as much above. You are under arbcomm restriction. Repeatedly reverting another editor is edit warring. On top of everything else, you were revert-warring while making claims of "consensus" which are not backed up either by the article's edit history or on the talk page. Filing a complaint against another editor who warns you that you are in violating at least the spirit of your restrictions (and, as I see it, the letter) appears to be little more than an attempt to stir up trouble for another editor because he had the gall to call you out on your misbehaviour. I see edit warring, refusal to listen to advice, and tendentious behaviour here. This is troubling behaviour on your part that badly needs to be addressed. Making unsubstantiated (and allegations of "POV-pushing" and "harassment" is also unacceptable. Guettarda (talk) 07:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a real easy way to avoid trouble FL. And you know what that is? The easy way to avoid trouble is to just...avoid trouble. You are a big boy I know and you know how to do that. So why tempt fate? Do you have some sort of masochistic streak? Do you love to get in fights? What is wrong with you anyway? Come on. Just play nice.--Filll (talk) 06:14, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

FL, you are the editor with the long history of behavior problems, isnt that so? And the one with an agenda to push. And the one on probation for doing exactly what you just did with those images. I think someone on probation would use common sense and just recuse themselves from all editing and discussion of articles where they are known to have a problem, and are basically unwelcome. Wouldn't that be the sensible, neighborly thing to do?--Filll (talk) 05:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure Filll, don't address anything I actually said. Just complain that I don't impose a harsher penalty on myself than ArbCom imposed.Ferrylodge (talk) 05:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

You should be smarter than this FL. Keep your nose clean, for gosh sakes. Clean up your act and stop acting in a fashion that is not likely to end positively for you or for WP.--Filll (talk) 05:56, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

See comment at 05:49.Ferrylodge (talk) 06:04, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Filll, why are you resorting to personal attacks? Ferrylodge is, I'm sure, someone who steps over boundaries at times. That does not mean he has given up the right to come and make a legitimate complaint here. People should be able to come here and count on being treated fairly- even if they are not good editors, if they have a real complaint, that complaint should be dealt with as any other. And they should not be subject to personal attacks. This is the administrator's noticeboard. Are there any neutral admins here, who in addition to getting the facts right and trying to get Ferrylodge not to edit war, will give his complaint a fair and neutral hearing? WP is in very bad shape indeed when you can't count on AN/I. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 06:41, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I've protected the wrong version of this page for a week, or until a consensus emerges. I suggest Ferrylodge continue the very genial discussion began on the talk page, and reflect on the principle that edit warring can be considered disruptive. I further suggest that people engaged in disputes with other editors refrains from appearing out of the blue to revert them, since that can be considered disruptive as well — not to mention more than a little intimidating. I might mention I'm more than a little concenred about the tone some people are using with Ferrylodge. Just because someone is under parole, does not mean they should be treated like an errant child, or are not equally worthy of respect as other Wikipedians. Treat each other like adults. --Haemo (talk) 07:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Just because someone is under parole, does not mean they should be treated like an errant child. True. But look at FL's behaviour - he denies the facts that are clear to everyone (not edit warring? supported by consensus? defender of NPOV?), drags months-old comments unrelated to him to try to paint OM as "vicious" in his response to FL... He's under restriction, but he refuses to see why he should not engage in edit warring. And when someone calls him on his misbehaviour, what does he do? Bring false claims of POV pushing and harassment here. That's unacceptable behaviour for any editor, not merely one whose behaviour has earned him both a community block and arbcomm restrictions. Guettarda (talk) 07:24, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm taking about comments like "You should be smarter than this FL. Keep your nose clean, for gosh sakes." No one over the age of 12 should be frankly chided in such a tone — it is distinctly humiliating and could easily be provocative. My comments are not about the substance of the comments made (since I am, honestly, unfamiliar), but rather the tone in which they are delivered. Editors should be able to discuss behavior they believe is "bad" on the part of another user without treating that user like a child. --Haemo (talk) 07:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow- now that's more like what I'd expect on here (: ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 07:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow - I just realised the diff FL was using as the basis of his claim that "OrangeMarlin has a history of viciously attacking anyone who says a word in my defense". It's a diff from October which was related not to B's "defense of FL", but rather, to B's witch hunt in which he tried to use FL's RFAr to attack other editors, one the admin who implemented the community block of FL (but was otherwise uninvolved in the issue), and the other who was totally unrelated. B's attacks and insinuations were highly inappropriate, and deserving of criticism. Whatever the issue, using these comments to try to portray OM as someone with a vendetta against FL is highly misleading. Guettarda (talk) 07:24, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

He may not have much of a complaint, or even made a complaint when he shouldn't, or he or may not have presented it well. But he still deserves to be told so in a civil tone. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 08:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I preferred your comment when it was more colorful. Regarding your comment, there are degrees of "wrong," and losing one's temper ('civility') is a rather human response to a prolonged problem. Antelan ^talk 08:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow Guettarda, I am surprised at how you mischaracterize things. The person who you say was "totally unrelated" to my RFAr was in fact deeply involved, in both intimidating me not to pursue an appeal to ArbCom, and in trying to get me banned from Wikipedia during the ArbCom proceedings.[41] Anyway, what OrangeMarlin said to B was reprehensible,[42] and completely consistent with what OrangeMarlin said to Evil Spartan a few hours ago when Evil Spartan spoke up in my behalf.[43] I am surprised that you defend that kind of filthy incivility.Ferrylodge (talk) 08:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe a number of Orangemarlin's recent edits have been uncalled for, but not on an excessively disruptive level. Granted, it is understandable to perceive The Evil Spartan's comment (that used the ch-word) as a snide comment aimed at Orangemarlin's religion, and it is understandable for someone to get upset if they feel someone is making fun of their religion, it would have been more professional to leave a personal note on The Evil Spartan's user page explaining how the comment can be perceived to be offensive, instead of publically throwing around the term anti-Semite. But the Orangemarlin had already received a warning from an involved admin about this before FL even filed this complaint, so it seems like everything on that matter had been settled.

On the second half of FL's complaint, there is also some validity. First, I'd like to point out that there isn't only opposition to the WP:AE thread. That said, Orangemarlin's edit summary of the revert on fetus,[44] plus the talk page comment [45] were inappropriate. In the edit summary, Orangemarlin mentioned reporting FL to ArbCom, which appears to be an idle threat, because no subsequent report occurred. On the talk page comment, Orangemarlin mentioned "tak[ing] pleasure in reverting Ferrylodge's POV edits".

Finally, I agree with Haemo's comment I further suggest that people engaged in disputes with other editors refrains from appearing out of the blue to revert them, since that can be considered disruptive as well — not to mention more than a little intimidating.

In summary, I believe Orangemarlin has been a little brash, and should try to be more careful in the future. We should all try to be nice and civil to other editors, even the ones with whom we disagree. Hopefully, my comments, and the comments of a few others, can be taken by Orangemarlin to be constructive criticism, and no further admin action is necessary.

As for the content dispute itself, AN/I cannot solve content disputes, and we shouldn't be discussing content here. RfC and other tools can be used to help resolve disputes. I will make one general statement: While I can understand reverting to an older, longstanding version when someone tries to add controversial new content. When it comes to deletions, it's better to keep the controversial material out of the article until there is a new consensus (because the burden is always on the ones wanting to include content). The "long standing content" argument doesn't seem to work here because this is a case of deletion, not addition. Long standing content can become stale. (if that makes sense. I feel like I could have worded that better).-Andrew c ^[talk] 14:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Motion to ban Ferrylodge from Wikipedia

• Endorse banning Ferrylodge from Wikipedia -- Ferrylodge is clearly a disruptive editor. I have seen enough from this thread alone to see that this is what is going on. I believe a community ban is in order. Since the last community ban was overturned by arbcomm, there has been ample opportunity for second chances to be given to this user. Obviously, Wikipedia is not the right place for him since he views it solely as a battleground. Show him the door and give himself and the community a break. ScienceApologist (talk) 09:01, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

What are the procedures nowadays for a Community Ban? Are there any particular standards? It seems to me that the ArbCom decision has already given you a remedy to pursue, and you ought to pursue it if you think I've violated what ArbCom asked of me. As I said, OrangeMarlin has a history of attacking,[46] and he has done so again today by levelling absurd charges of antisemitism against someone who was speaking up for me.[47] I have no regrets about bringing that fact to people's attention. I'm sorry you choose to overlook it. As a Jew, I take great offense when I hear frivolous bogus charges of antisemitism, because it trivializes the real thing. Today, OrangeMarlin also swooped in to revert an article he was not involved in, thereby causing the article to be protected, while falsely accusing me in his edit summary of POV edits and of violating ArbCom restrictions (when all I did was restore longstanding sourced content that had been removed against consensus).Ferrylodge (talk) 09:13, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

"when all I did was restore longstanding sourced content that had been removed against consensus" - actually, from the discussion on the talk page at Fetus, there was some support for OrangeMarlin's change, which continues to grow, while it appears that you were the only one in opposition. A stale article is hardly evidence of consensus. Antelan ^talk 09:27, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I have not reverted OrangeMarlin. Before he swooped in, there were two editors (myself and Ghostmonkey57) who were against removing the longstanding, well-sourced, accurate images; one editor was seeking to remove the images (i.e. IronAngelAlice). You would see that I am telling the truth if you would read the talk page. If consensus is to remove the pictures, then I have no desire or inclination to stand in the way of that consensus, no matter how misguided it is.Ferrylodge (talk) 09:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

These comments do not inspire faith in this editor. How much abuse has to be hurled before we decide an editor is being tendentious and disruptive? I see every indication that Ferrylodge is sewing havoc where 'ere Ferrylodge roams. Has there been even a single contribution that was positive today? ScienceApologist (talk) 09:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

If you're asking about article edits during the past 24 hours, they've been much fewer than on previous days, due to all of this ArbCom-related stuff. However, I did manage to make some fairly extensive edits to an article aboutlegal tender, as well as an article about Mitt Romney. The day before, I made quite a few edits to several articles regarding Arctic shrinkage. None of the aforementioned has been altered or reverted. You can look at my contributions, of course. ScienceApologist, I'm sorry that you think the fault is all mine.Ferrylodge (talk) 09:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

YMMV. One way to avoid being banned is to avoid contentious arguments. If you are proud of the contributions that you outline and think that they will stand up to all scrutiny, why do you insist on making edits that make us question whether it is worth it to have you around as an editor? ScienceApologist (talk) 09:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

ScienceApologist, I assume that the edits to which you refer are the edits where I sought to restore images of a human fetus to the fetus article. I do not understand why anyone is criticizing those edits. At the time I made those edits, the images had been in the article for more than four months, and two editors were opposing the removal by only one editor. Have you heard of the administrator Thatcher? He looked at those particular edits of mine, and said I was not being disruptive at all:[48]

"I have a problem with the characterization of FerryLodge's conduct as disruptive. A lot of that depends on context and on the point of view of the other editors....These drawings do not come from a partisan pro-life web site but from a commercial site for expectant mothers that seels [sic] advertising. (As such, the links should perhaps be removed, however). Is there a question about there accuracy, and in that case, has anyone tried to find images from medical or scientific sources? The rationale for complaining about these images seems extremely suspect, and the idea that an article on fetus will describe but not illustrate the stages of fetal development seems to be an extreme point of view of its own....I can not see how the article on fetus can not have drawings of different stages of development (assuming they are accurate)...."

ScienceApologist, I came here in good faith with what I thought were some fairly straightforward complaints about OrangeMarlin. And instead I'm threatened with a community ban for some perfectly reasonable edits. I don't quite know what to make of it. He goes around calling people who support me "antisemites". He swoops down on an article he's not involved in, and reverts while accusing me of POV, when he knows that admins like Thatcher have already said otherwise. I just don't know what else to say.Ferrylodge (talk) 10:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Reject, this is pure harrassment. People, please stop attacking the person who is making a genuine complaint. Deal with the complaint instead. Guido den Broeder (talk) 14:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Arthur Ellis sockpuppet again

Community-banned user Arthur Ellis (talk · contribs) now seems to be using 64.26.148.20 (talk · contribs). Can someone please block it as we did for 64.26.147.175 (talk · contribs) three days ago? For more background, please see see Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Ceraurus). See also Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Warren_Kinsella#Log_of_blocks_and_bans. Thanks, Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 05:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

And another obvious sock

Resolved

 – Sockpuppet blocked. Will ^(talk) 15:11, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Could someone familiar with the Arthur Ellis background please also take a look at Chucky the barber (talk · contribs)? His first edit to an article consisted of reverting to a 5-day-old version of an article frequently edited by user:Victoriagirl. I am not sure if this is an Arthur Ellis sock but it is certainly not a new or helpful account. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 06:36, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I am not a "sock". It seems anyone who disagrees with Clayoquot is a "sock". I reverted the David Suzuki article to a POV-tag version after Clayoquot said her altered picture of him made him look more "dignified". Seems like a POV comment to me. Chucky the barber (talk) 14:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Workurban (talk · contribs)

Workurban (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) may be a sockpuppet of a banned user. "Workurban" is probably a name inspired by those annoying captcha confirmation codes when you register an account or forget your password. Sockpuppeteers have been known to use these captchas to name their accounts. His first edit is to "remove POV" from Zune. If this looks familiar, please investigate. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 06:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

NPA problem with disruptive editor

"you are a mentally-ill freak, an idiot, and above all, a madman and a lunatic!"

User:Marcus2 has several months worth of NPA warnings on his talk page, as well as article talk pages where he interacts. Stuff like this is totally unacceptable to civil editing. Additionally, calling someone an idiot in an edit summary, "stay the fuck out",

Additionally he is disruptive (deleting sourced information, using socks to back up his opinion) to the Powerpuff Girls article because of his personal dislike of the topic. I suggested several months ago that he not edit articles on topics that he doesn't like but he's been acting out like this on this article for over a year.

Kindness has not been a way to get through to this user about either civility or article disruption. His userpage claims Asperger's syndrome but that cannot excuse such gross incivility as the headline. Admin attention is needed. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

He appears to have taken a leave of absence. I reckon he got a little hot under the collar, and realizes it. I think we'll have to wait and see if this affects any change in his behavior. --Haemo (talk) 07:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that. He's sporadic already, but I've tired of his appearances on some pages. A break should be well enough. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

V-Dash quattro

After reviewing the contribs of SPD V (talk · contribs), I have blocked him indef and, as per JzG's warning to him here, blocked V-Dash (talk · contribs) for two weeks for abusive sockpuppetry. I would appreciate a review of my block. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 09:01, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It's a little difficult to determine the relationship between SPD V and V-Dash, since the former only edited article space and the latter seems to have recently confined themselves to the talkpage. Providing you are certain that the correctly indef blocked puppet was being used by V-Dash then I concur with that block also, per JzG's warning. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Closing AfD without consensus by User:Uncle G

This user closes AfD without consenus, he did it twice without reason [49] [50]. What to do? ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 09:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• You were arguing for a merge, not deletion, and thus AfD would not have helped your cause. I see no misdeeds by good ol' G. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 09:14, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• 1. That looks like he did it "once", and 2. He provided a very clear reason. Just because you don't like the reason, doesn't mean he didn't give one. JuJube (talk) 09:15, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Further, preservation of Wikipedia's copyright (GFDL) prohibits deleting and merging, as the history of contributors must be maintained; thus, merging must be followed by redirecting the source page, not deleting it. Also, if an article has content worth keeping, there is really nothing to accomplish by deleting instead of redirecting (if the GFDL requirements didn't exist). Consider that any content "deleted" from Wikipedia remains on the servers, the logs viewable to normal users, and the content itself viewable to admins. As such, deleting content does not inherently benefit Wikipedia by saving space or through any other manner. Deleting content only ever benefits Wikipedia by making permanently invisible (to regular editors) content that is, for whatever reason, "bad." So what happened here wasn't any bad move by Uncle G, who was merely immediately closing an AFD whose nomination would be impossible (and without purpose) to actually satisfy. For future note, you should really try to work things out with the admin you disagree with before bringing it here, instead of just reverting him and telling him he has no right to do that. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Tulkolahten (talk · contribs) is edit warring. First he puts up German_Charles-Ferdinand_University for deletion, trying to deny the century-old German history of the University in Prague, the he edit-wars with the closing admin. Next thing he just did was moving Brünn death march, forced by Czechs, an event in which over 5000 Germans were killed, to Brünn march. A German who would do a similar thing in Germany or Austria would be severly punished for holocaust denial. -- Matthead  DisOuß   09:32, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Nobody is denying anything, I just moved the page from biased words to sourced unbiased words. And I also explained the part of the massacre per source. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 09:41, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• I've restored the closure once, as well as pointed Tulkolahten to the boldfaced text in that closure. I'm busy writing World Conference against Racism 2001 (AfD discussion). I'd appreciate it if another administrator dealt with restoring the closure again and explaining to Tulkolahten, perhaps in another way, what the boldfaced words apparently have not explained. (See also Special:Undelete/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/German Charles-Ferdinand University.) Uncle G (talk) 09:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Antolikebeer

Resolved

User Antolikebeer should be blocked from editing due to his vandalism on certain pages

Check the history for Hong Kong International School. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.78.52.152 (talk) 10:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the report; I've given him a final warning. Next time, please report continual vandalism to Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism, as you will most likely get a faster response there. Raven4x4x (talk) 10:52, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Fishpaste15

[Fishpaste15] has created Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV:An Alien‎, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles V: Shredder's Back!‎, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles VI: The REAL Secret Of The Ooze‎ , TMNT VII: The Seventh Shell-Shock‎ today. They have been "prod"ed per WP:CRYSTAL, but I suspect that this is pure vandalism. --Dawn bard (talk) 11:32, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

One wonders at the quality of this user's edits elsewhere: [51]. The Evil Spartan (talk) 13:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Apology

This is an appology from Ben Lavender (Iamandrewrice) for originally pretending that my friend's (Joe) account was mine. My account name was 'Iamandrewrice.' Another person, called Andrew Rice, got annoyed with me about this, and decided to also try and impersonate me. When I pretending that Joe's account was mine, he got annoyed with me too, and that is when my then only account got blocked, as did Joe's, and he made more accounts to try and evade the unfair block, but gradually, as tempers rose, those accounts became less constructive. He says that he is greatly sorry for this (I am on the fone to him right now, and his IP address is blocked, so I have to say this for him). Also, another friend called Alex was greatly involved, but I cannot contact him right now, as he is currently visiting his mother in hospital. Joe would now like me to write his exact words of appology:

"hello wikipedia, this is Jose, I would like to profusely appologize for my vandalism and disruption of the wikipedia system. To start off with, i had one account, 'Spidermanhero,' but when Ben got upset, he labelled my only account as his, so therefore, it was soon classed as a sockpuppet obviously, and blocked. I then created more accounts, i cant even remember their names. Because I was angry at ben and wikipedia for blocking my account unfairly, I made more accounts to get my point accross. As my temper rose, these accounts soon became disruptive. I also worked alongside Alex, and Im sure he is sorry too. I made one last account, 'Listsvery' and for the time period I was on there, I was editing constructively (please see contribs) and I really did want to help wikipdia. Alex also made the account 'Pollypenhouse' to edit constructively too, and by this time, neither of us was still attempting to im personate Ben. However, our accounts were labelled as sockpuppets of Ben's, which annoyed us greatly. So Alex and I took things into his our own hands and spoke to someone who we thought was very good with computers, Craig Bass, who then made personal attacks at Whitstable himself. Myself and Alex went logged onto Ben's myspace account and saw some emails we considered depressing, so Alex contacted EconomicsGuy with his concerns. Since then, we have explained the whole situation (well I have anyway) to Ben, and he has more or less said he forgives us. Hail Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. I have asked God for forgiveness and hope that you can forgive me too. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. " Here he says

well that was from Joe anyway.

Now my turn: I am so so sorry. I shouldnt have lied originally about my friend's account being my sockpuppet, just because I wanted to pretend to my adopter that I was a better user than I really was. I give you all a great appology for this. I really do understand how much wasted time this has cost us all. However, none of us ever wanted to vandalise, and i'm guessin that this state would have just spiralled even further out of control between us all. However, jeff threatened to tell the school about it all, so I, as well as everyone else involved (I am speaking for Alex here too, considering he is in hospital visiting his mother) got very scared by this, and decided that we must finally try and discuss this properly, and just lay down our truthful appology. I must add, that we all wanted to help contribute, but we understand that you are all very annoyed at the situation now, and will probably be glad to see that back of us, even if annoying you wasn't actually our original intention. We do hope however, that maybe at some point, we will be able to help contribute again, but obviously, we realise the limits of this. Again, i would like to give my sincere appology to everyone involved in this dilemna, and if I could give you back all those wasted hours of your precious time, I would. My only hope is that at this special time of year, we can forgive eachother, as I have done with my friends for impersonating me and logging onto my wikipedia/myspace accounts, and as my friends have done to me for getting their acccount blocked.

oh and also, someone called Craig got involved after Alex spoke to him. 'User:Fishyghost'

in addition to this, the person called Andrew Rice in real life, has an account called 'User:Andyman949,' and I think he was involved with Alex from time to time, from what I gather. Apparently, according to Joe... Andrew, Alex, and Craig have been working together as a team. But Andrew and Craig have not had as much input, and are not really significant in this, and were just basically doing what Alex told them to.

This is a list of accounts that I am now about to label truthfully (well from what we can all remember anyway):

suspected accounts

• User:Bilecheck (Joe)
• User:Christine118247 (No one to do with us)
• User:Clarissamelissa (Alex)
• User:Dom56! (No one to do with us)
• User:Economicsguyyouneedtolisten (Alex)
• User:Fettes (Joe)
• User:Goodwikipidian (No one to do with us)
• User:Hazeltheturkeyfarmface (Alex/Craig)
• User:How dare you guys! (No one to do with us)
• User:Iwantanothergo (Alex/Craig)
• User:Just2saythis (Me... I think anyway)
• User talk:Maltesepuppy (Me, from what I remember)
• User:Mod58! (No one to do with us)
• User:Newlinecinema (Joe)
• User talk:RatTailReuben (Andrew Rice)
• User:Reevesgla1919 (No one to do with us)
• User:Ricestormdramadesk (Joe)
• User:Salteds (No one to do with us)
• User:Sorryforvandals (No one to do with us)
• User:Strawmen01 (No one to do with us)
• User:Strawmen02 (No one to do with us)
• User:Strawmen03 (No one to do with us)
• User:Table'sWhits (Craig)
• User:ThisSUREAINTWhitstable hohoho (Craig)
• User:ThisaintWhitstabble (Craig)
• User:Turkeyhazel (Alex/Craig)
• User:Whitstabble (Craig)
• User:Whitstable. (Craig)
• User:Whittstable (Craig)
• User:Wikiaeiou (God knows... I think this was me...)
• User:Wikikoolkid (Me)
• User:Wikilove123 (No one to do with us)
• User:World.without.friends (No one to do with us)

confirmed accounts

• User:Andrewricethelavalamp (Andrew Rice)
• User:Andrewricethelavalump (Andrew Rice)
• User:Andrewricetheloverlump (Andrew Rice)
• User:Andrewsbaby (Me)
• User:Andrewsclone (Me)
• User:Benniguy (Me)
• User:Blackhouse123 (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Bobby Boggles (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Burningandrew (Me)
• User:Christine118500 (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Christine118Maureen (Nothing to do with us
• User:Christineandrew (Me)
• User:Dom58 the Second (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Dom58! (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Donatenowkid (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Eastort (Joe)
• User:Georgereev (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Hazeltheturkeyfarmfaceinyourface (Craig)
• User:Hazeltheturkeyfarmfaceinyourfacemunchingonyourlips (Craig)
• User:Iamnotandrewrice (Me)
• User:ImAJewWhatAreYou? (Alex... it could have been me though, to be honest I have no idea)
• User:Imgoing2killmyself (Me)
• User:Joeseth1992 (Nothing to do with us)
• User:LGBratz (Alex)
• User:Lifeissoperfectandimsohappy (Me)
• User:Listsvery (Joe)
• User:Logitechfan (Joe)
• User:Matador300 (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Moe not Krusty (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Mrfurgusson (Andrew Rice)
• User:Mrsfurgusson (Andrew Rice)
• User:Narnia101 (Joe)
• User:Orangestreetcat (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Physics&Art (Joe)
• User:Pollypenhouse (Alex)
• User:Radiation111 (Joe/Me)
• User:Shannon46 (Nothing to do with us)
• User:SpidermanHero (Joe)
• User:StrictlycomeTurnip (Alex... but Im not sure)
• User:Sugarcaddy (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Teenytinythompson (Nothing to do with us)
• User:Theresnothingleftworthlivingfor (Me)
• User:WiArthurWho (Me)
• User:WikiDemoness (Nothing to do with us)

Yours sincerely, Ben (and Jose on the phone too) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.241.192.147 (talk) 13:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Assuming good faith, it looks like this was an off-wiki dispute that spiralled out of control and which the people involved are willing to end. I think this needs some analysis on how the accounts listed here as "Nothing to do with us" were tagged as sockpuppets. Incidentally, I've linked the names above —Random832 13:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

These users have promised me via email never to disrupt Wikipedia again if I do not continue contacting their school. We'll see if they follow through. If they don not, I certainly will. Jeffpw (talk) 13:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

This fulfills my demands made through e-mail for not filing an ISP abuse report on condition that this ends here. EconomicsGuy (talk) 13:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but this seems no more than we've already seen. "I've been stupid, I won't do it again. It wasn't my fault.". The apparent fulsome apology above doesn't make all this time-wasting and asinine abuse "not to have happened". I see no reason not to continue to make the school/ISP aware of the abuse that's taken place. Where's the guarantee that this abuser or abusers won't start again somewhere else - they state (though at this point AGF has gone so far out of the window that I wouldn't believe a single word even if true) that they've been abusing WP and Myspace - where else do they think a little sockpuppetry and breaking of terms of use might be amusing in the future? Tonywalton ^Talk 13:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know whether they're really sorry, but I at least think it's plausible that they've suddenly realized that online hijinks can have real-world consequences; I think that in this case, assuming good faith would mean keeping the bargain made by the users who were talking with them, and giving them a chance to disappear before reporting them. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 13:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

We really are genuinely sorry. Can you please unblock all those accounts which had nothing to do with us (wait, apart from 'OrangeStreetCat' which Alex, now back from his mum's hospice, just remembered was his... he's also talking to me). I dont know what else to say. We all do want to help edit, but we realise this situation is at least for the moment in any case, impossible. Thank you for listening this time though.89.241.192.147 (talk) 13:53, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Interesting series of diffs.

  here he is as some anon taunting us.

  Here he says he is someone other than ""Ben", the user who was being checked.

  Here, too, he claims he is not "Ben.

  And here we have "Ben's" heartfelt apology.

  I don't know if the apology was heartfelt or not, and I no longer believe anything any of these socks say, but I will uphold my end of the deal and not contact the school any more if the disruption stops. But as I said in email, if I even suspect that the disruption has returned, I will not hesitate to do everything in my power to ensure the user(s) are punished for wasting our valuable time. Jeffpw (talk) 14:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

For the sake of completion, I'd like to add these diffs, too:

suggesting there are a number of users

suggesting lots of fake accounts

Both edits were prior to the appology (sic), though - but a different IP from the one highlighted by Jeff above Whitstable (talk) 14:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• I have made it clear that the condition in addition to the above post/apology is that this ends here. The steady flow of e-mails asking me not to press the submit button on the abuse report while they were typing this makes me assume good faith - somehow I'm still able to that though there isn't much desire left to do so. This was apparently an attempt to get even with Wikipedia that went totally out of control. EconomicsGuy (talk) 14:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Newbie edits heads up

Benazir Bhutto has been severely injured in a suicide bombing. I fully expect a load of edits to this article; we shall need experienced editors to watch over changes. The Evil Spartan (talk) 13:25, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, she's dead. Someone please semi-protect for an hour or so til we can work this out. Too many edits at once. The Evil Spartan (talk) 13:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It will need Semi-Protecting for more than an hour, probably a week. Cheers, Davnel03^{Sign It, Junior!} 13:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I've semi-protected the article for one week. This news... is very upsetting to me.-FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 13:42, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Good call FQ, we don't need unconstructive edits to this article at this time. Ryan Postlethwaite 13:53, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I am going to sprotect 27 December 2007 Rawalpindi bombing for the next two days, as it is linked in the assassination section at Benazir Bhutto, for the same reasons. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I was just coming here to say someone created that page. 13:57, 27 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ridernyc (talk • contribs)

Might want to unprotect after a day simply because it's linked from main page, and a lot of people will be watching it at that point. The Evil Spartan (talk) 14:02, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Banking conspiracy theories

The following articles are biased terms to push a POV. All of the information in the below is in other articles on Wikipedia, such as Fractional reserve banking and Fiat currency.

• Debt-based monetary system
• Debt money
• Debt-free money

All three center around a conspiracy theory regarding the Federal Reserve, stemming from a misunderstanding on how fiat works. Ironically, the article acknowledges this in its opening paragraph:

Conventional economic analysis does not generally use the terminology "debt-based money." The link between the currency regime (for example, fiat currency or precious-metal backed currencies) and the banking regime (fractional reserve or full reserve banking) is not seen as fixed, however (virtually all banking systems worldwide operate on some form of fractional reserve banking). Neither is the insight that banks "create money by extending loans" considered new, and the subject is covered in most introductory economics textbooks and many popular reference works.

As a result, it's pretty clear the article should not exist. "Debt-based monetary system" and "debt money" are terms used by non-economists and conspiracy theorists.

The article is sourced in an amateur writer Michael Rowbotham, who according to the article on him has no particular education or experience in economics.

According to the conspiracy theory, whenever money is created by central banking, it's created as public debt which the public must pay. Central bankers, therefore, are engaged in a conspiracy to steal wealth from the public through overprinting money. For anyone who has read How the Fed Works on howstuffworks, this is patent nonsense. The article treats the Austrian Business Cycle Theory as a legitimate economic concept, but it is heterodox economics.

From the article: There are two main kinds of debt money contraction that can cause a collapse in the value of inflated assets. (The Austrian Business Cycle Theory)

I tried to have debt-based monetary system redirected to fractional reserve banking, have debt money redirected to fiat currency, and have debt-free money deleted, but none of that was successful.

This has been talked to death on Talk:Debt-based_monetary_system and RFC was followed, but the articles stay up, partially due to people guarding the page. Some are POV pushers, such as User:Karmaisking [52] [53] and User:N0 D1C4 [54] [55]. Others, such as User:Sm8900 seem to have reverted my edits in good faith, but it's not quite clear why they'd want to keep the pages up.

69.138.16.202 (talk) 15:17, 27 December 2007 (UTC)