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. 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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Threats to exterminate me, overdose of lead etc. on my User pages

Hi, I checked my User page and talk page today and found it had some very nasty edits made, threats, wanting me exterminated and given an overdose of lead and so on.

I have now undone the edits but they remain in the history record so I reckon right now it will be easy enough for someone to undo my undones and restore the abusive edits so it is not a satisfactory situation right now to say the least.

This is my user page and my user talk page - Peter Dow (talk)

The abusive and threatening edits have been made both by unsigned IPs interspersed with signed edits by one user called GeorgeFormby1

This is one such edit by IP of my user page to illustrate -

diff [1] IP 82.17.219.182

Helo, my name is peter dow and im a retard, i am a pathetic 47 year old nobody who has committed high treason against the Crown and should be traked down by mi5 and exteminatid.

The abusive threatening edits to my user talk page are

diff [2] IP 86.132.166.95

PETER DOW IS A MENTALLY ILL, DELOUSIONARY FRUITCAKE WHO NEEDS TO BE LOCKED UP FOR THE SAFETY OF OTHERS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.132.166.95 (talk) 10:44, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

and

diff [3] by IP 82.17.219.182

....Including, of course, the Queen and the entire Royal Family, When a government with some balls gets to power he'll get an overdose of lead-Duce Fox, Defender of the Realm and Crown 22:18, 12 August 3008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.17.219.182 (talk)

The pattern of edits on my user page done by IP 82.17.219.182 can be seen here [4] and you can see that that IP has been used for the abusive edits of my Peter Dow user page, and to edit, I presume, the culprit GeorgeFormby1's own user page. So if he thinks he is covering his tracks entirely by making unsigned edits he is mistaken.

The edits made by IP 86.132.166.95 [5] are not yet directly associated with anything else that I can see but it looks like the same guy in my opinion based on the timings of the edits - within a few days of each other.

So I need some administrator help to prevent this very malicious, abusive and threatening edits to my user page and to my user talk page.

I am quite new to Wikipedia and as a newcomer, it seems to be with Wikipedia user pages, is that, it is impossible for the user to protect his or her user pages from abusive and threatening changes - is that right? There is no way actually to take username ownership of your user page, to stop such horrible edits, is there?

So I don't know what action one can take - except initially to report the problem to the administrators. Do you ban editing from troublesome IPs? Well perhaps we can get to the solution once an administrator takes a look at the problem.

Thanks for looking at this and for helping as much as you can.

Peter Dow (talk) 12:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

It appears that the edits have been oversighted (removed) from your talkpage history. Under the circumstances, the persons able to remove the edits are also likely to be looking at limiting such edits in future so I think this matter can be closed. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:05, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me LessHeard vanU but the history of both my user page and user talk page seemed unchanged when I revisited those pages - no oversight removal of history edits which I could see - are we looking at the same Peter Dow (talk) pages? Peter Dow (talk) 13:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I would advise you to request semi-protection of both pages at WP:RFPP to avoid such things from happening again. It is completely allowed to request such protection :-) SoWhy 13:13, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey thanks SoWhy for the tip about semi-protection. I will now investigate that and take any action I can to protect my user pages. :) Peter Dow (talk) 13:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I've put level 3 warnings on both IPs talkpages. If you want to complain to the ISP the July vandalism on your talk page was from a BT IP - their complaint address is abuse@btbroadband.com and you need to send them this link http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Peter_Dow&diff=next&oldid=224544960. The August vandalism to your user page was from an NTL/Virgin IP address and their complaint line is pim@virginmedia.co.uk you'd need to send them this http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3APeter_Dow&diff=231534955&oldid=216438185 ref. Hope that helps. ϢereSpielChequers 13:33, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Gosh. lol Thanks WereSpielChequers Peter Dow (talk) 13:46, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protection will block any IP address from making any changes to your pages. Meanwhile, I'm wondering what an "overdose" of lead would be? That is, what would be a "normal" dose of lead? Anyway, if a registered user similarly vandalizes your pages, you could also get swift action by taking it to WP:AIV. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 14:29, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

"Overdose of lead" likely refers to shooting him or her with a gun (with lead bullets). It's a common expression. --ElKevbo (talk) 15:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Aha, as in "I'll fill ya full o' lead." Not good. And then there's the "exterminate" part, which means the authors probably watch too much Dr. Who. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 16:39, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Of the two the one I find more worrying is Special:Contributions/82.17.219.182. From the other contribs it could well be connected to user:GeorgeFormby1, who in any event has a user page that I would suggest an admin look at. I'm not necessarily saying that fans of Mussolini should be banned from Wikipedia, but threats of violence? ϢereSpielChequers 17:08, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't look to me like user:GeorgeFormby1 has anything to do with this. He simply removed an offensive sentence, which he may have spotted on RC patrol. Looie496 (talk) 17:28, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

You think? --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 17:47, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually it was these three diffs that made me suspect that user:GeorgeFormby1 might be connected to the vandalising IP. ϢereSpielChequers 18:03, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/user:GeorgeFormby1 submitted. I hope I only made one mistake in it. ϢereSpielChequers 14:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I think that this should be left open until the checkuser case is resolved. —Sunday ^Scribe 23:50, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/GeorgeFormby1 has been investigated and closed, user:GeorgeFormby1 was using one of those IPs and is indefinitely blocked and his IP address blocked for a month. Hopefully that will end the matter, but I'd suggest an admin put appropriate notices on the blocked account then this thread can be closed. ϢereSpielChequers 06:44, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Hrafn

Request that user be asked to stop tagging articles and that an admin try and enforce this. He/she says that this is an ownership issues that I may be blocked for ([6]), but I believe his tags are quite impartial and done not so much as to aid wikipedia as to pester me, because of our ongoing dispute resolution ([7]) and other encounters such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/McDonald's Menu Song. --Firefly322 (talk) 08:42, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

• tags
• reason for tags
• third party editor reinstating tag
• personal attack calling me a "troll"

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 08:55, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Firefly, as your second link shows you've started mediation as a dispute resolution, and despite requests have failed to provide diffs clarifying what your dispute is.[8] The fact that others have problems with your woolly writing is something to resolve by improving your writing, not by flying off into disputes whenever that's pointed out. Disclaimer: I'm named in Firefly's mediation case, but lacking diffs I'm not sure why. . . dave souza, talk 09:08, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree, basically, with Dave s. I don't see the "issue" here. Yeah, Hrafn and Firefly disagree on some stuff. That ain't newsworthy. Nobody is trolling anybody here, based on the links provided. This is a non-issue thread, and should be closed. If Firefly has a specific issue with an editor, F-fly should bring it to that editor's attention prior to bringing it to the drama-board. Keeper ǀ 76 01:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree, essentially. The majority of this dispute seems to arise from a misunderstanding of Verifiability policy, particularly WP:BURDEN. I don't think that uncited material should be restored pending verification, and I certainly don't think an editor should be reprimanded for removing uncited material. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 22:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Catherineyronwode

The following is taken from the current version of my own AN/I proposal against hrafn, located on my own user pages.

(removed to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Hrafn by Orderinchaos 07:30, 12 September 2008 (UTC))

catherine yronwode Catherineyronwode (talk) 22:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

tl;dr. Take it to dispute resolution. Corvus cornix_talk 22:46, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

o.O I think you've mistaken ANI for requests for comment, at the least, or arbitration. Kudos for the substantial amount of evidence gathering here, but ANI's not the place for such lengthy presentations. I suggest an RFC if there's a specific issue with hrafn that needs discussion. Tony Fox (arf!) 22:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Can someone please remove this? Verbal chat 22:59, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree; it's a nightmare of comprehension and deserves dedicated attention. No way is it an "incident". Suggest at best a subpage, otherwise moving to a Request for Comment. This page is for issues that can be dealt with expeditiously. --Rodhullandemu 23:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>Okay, must i make a Request for Comments first or can this go directly to Arbitration? Please post a yes or no reply. If i must make a Request for Comments first, please tell me how to do it. If i can take this directly to Arbitration, please tell me the relevant URL. Wikipedia is not my social outlet; i use it as a volunteeer area to write and edit. I am not interested in bureaucracy (e.g. how this MUD is run), and although i have edited here regularly since 2006 (and since 205 as an IP), i do not know how to make headway in this twisty turny maze of similar-sounding-but-entirely-different "We Can't Help You With That Problem" pages. I request the URL of the page where there will be people whose job it is to read this complaint and see that this problem be dealt with. Thanks. cat yronwode

I believe that that is common practice except in extraordinary cases, yes. Of course, nobody has the job of dealing with user complaints, but a number of friendly volunteers may be motivated to treat with you and discuss intereditor issues at a request for comment. Wikipedia:Requests for comment#Request comment on users has the instructions for posting an RfC/U. The request itself should be posted to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct. Please keep in mind that all normal user conduct policies and norms apply to requests for comment, including no personal attacks and no harassment. - Eldereft (cont.) 05:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I've copied it across to RFC - it can't go straight to ArbCom until efforts have been made to resolve the matter through some form of dispute resolution. If the RFC is sufficiently decisive and no change of behaviour is noticeable, then it could go to ArbCom if need be. Catherine's welcome to edit it to get it into the right form before it is listed and goes live (also needs a second observer of the situation to certify it in order for it to be a valid RfC). I have no opinion either way on the matter, but AN/I is definitely the wrong place for it - AN/I is a high traffic area where stuff moves through in the blink of an eye, this would have simply ended up in some forgotten archive within 2 days. Orderinchaos 07:34, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Hrafn (talk · contribs) has now retired, according to his user page, but if someone skilled with POV battles is looking for something to consider, I'd suggest going through this case - it looks like there's a problem here, but it's awfully detailed. Tony Fox (arf!) 15:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Not too sure this is resolved, despite Hrafn's retirement...Isn't there a saying about dancing on graves? --Smashville^BONK! 18:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a sad case where three or four, dare I say "cabal"...no better not, unrelated editors...oh wait a minute, they're not. Let me start again, there are three or four editors who think that original research is sufficient for placing their POV on articles. Typical of Wikipedia's broken system, instead of understanding that their edits are POV, they game the system through MEDCOM, ARBCOM, RfC, whatever else they can use, which frustrates editors. Hrafn is a great editor. He dealt with arcane subjects on this encyclopedia that we have to clean up. There was a personality clash. There was mild uncivil comments from both sides. Then the three or four editors dancing on Hrafn's grave on this ANI started wikistalking and moved into civil pushing. This is ridiculous. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It's also worth noting this exchange and the CVU barnstar above it...it's a sad state of affairs when users drive off other users and then pat each other on the back for doing it. And I think WP:AGF can be ignored once a user tells another user, "I shall remember your persona-names if and when our paths cross again.". Essentially, "Look out, you've made my list." --Smashville^BONK! 19:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

<undent> Firstly, please note that I came into this dispute because Hrafn asked for assistance, with particular reference to a page he'd been working on when Catherine and Madman had intervened, with an open statement from her indicating that she was wikistalking Hrafn.[9] A "real legal threat" she had not yet withdrawn had to be cleared before discussions could start.[10] By that time she had posted links to her page which forms the basis of her report here, and which appears to be a very badly researched attack page with ludicrously inaccurate assertions that have been drawn to her attention,[11] but which she still has not fully corrected in her posting here. Other claims are equally invalid, though I've not checked every one of them. The underlying dispute is between "anti-deletionists" who think "You are not supposed to go around deleting things just because they are not sourced. You are only supposed to delete unsourced or poorly sourced claims that you suspect of being false."[12] and editors like Hrafn who take WP:V as having priority. In discussions the "anti-deletionists" have pointed to WP:EP (WP:IMPERFECT[13] as a policy which appears to sanction preserving information regardless of whether or not it has a reliable source – in my opinion that policy is outdated and needs early improvement to bring it into line with core content policies and current practice. If priority is given to preserving unreferenced information, articles would never be deleted, and the instructions in WP:V about removing such information would have to be changed. That's not my understanding of the priorities of Wikipedia, but Catherine makes it clear that she feels that we must keep articles about non-notable organisations or individuals with only self-published sources as references, on the basis that she finds them interesting, and keep in information even if a simple check shows that it's inaccurate or unsourced. There's quite a culture clash there. . . dave souza, talk 20:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC) tweaked dave souza, talk 20:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It amazes me that this is an issue about Hrafn -- the real issue is Cat and her belief that any crap, even if not meeting RS and V, is OK because she wants it to be. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;^dissera! 16:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Let me add my name as one of the editors who are unhappy with Catherine's approach to Wikipedia. And what did here comment to OrangeMarlin on her talk page mean -- "I shall remember your persona-names if and when our paths cross again." An accusation of sock-puppetry or? Doug Weller (talk) 16:58, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

In a workplace, Hrafn's behavior as shown in Catherine's report with diffs would surely be a lawsuit waiting to happen. He could easily get fired for targeting a specific religious group like he did. Hrafn retired because his or her bad behavior came to light. If a couple of editors could simply say something not in WP:AGF or unWP:CIVIL or merely cleverly hidden slander to get rid of someone, then Catherine and I would already have retired ourselves considering this apparent backlash against us. --Firefly322 (talk) 23:25, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Admin censoring news of possible Wikiquote deletion

• Meta is discussing the deletion of Wikiquote, so I left a note with a link to this debate at the Pump.
• The post was censored a few hours later by self-proclaimed "rouge admin" User:Mr.Z-man. The deletion was made under a false pretense since a single post on the Pump is hardly "canvassing", and the post could have been amended if needed instead of suppressing the information entirely.

How an admin is allowed to act like that (and augment the apparence that something's fishy) I'll never understand. 62.147.37.92 (talk) 20:26, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

(You mean "rogue", not "rouge". "Rouge" is a color and a cosmetic. Saw the same error twice on Slashdot this morning.) --John Nagle (talk) 15:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

No, it is supposed to be rouge (it's an old joke). -- Donald Albury 15:54, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

What does this have to do with the English language Wikipedia? Corvus cornix_talk 20:53, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

It's relevant to all wikimedia users, particularly users of english projects - english wikipedia just happens to be one of the largest projects. --Random832 (contribs) 20:58, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikiquote is pretty much worthless. It doesn't have the kind of rigor demanded in wikipedia, so it's all OR; and it's generally run in a sloppy way - you might see the same quote several times within a given subject. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 21:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I don't believe the problem is that it's worthless, but that it is a liability. There are entire farms of egregious copyright violations in there, and no requirement for any sort of actual, you know, quotability of the material. — Coren ^(talk) 23:06, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

The thread was basically telling people to go and oppose the thread on meta. I have no problem with linking to the discussion, but please write such messages neutrally (as I said in the edit summary, if you had bothered to read it before reverting me and coming here). "There is a discussion on meta about disbanding Wikiquote" (with a link) would suffice. And then using words like "censored" while at the same time inviting me to amend it to make it neutral? And thanks for informing me of this discussion. Mr.Z-man 21:19, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

And yes, leaving a biased message is considered canvassing (campaigning, to be precise). Mr.Z-man 21:22, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Considering the heat we took the last time we sent a notice about a Meta discussion, I'm not sure canvassing in the WP projects about this is a great idea (and that the people at Meta will thank you for it). -- lucasbfr ^talk 21:30, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

• My personal scorefile gives -5 for censorship and -7 for suppression, less than -10 and you're in the "Nutters: Ignorable" category. Just for info, you understand. Guy (Help!) 22:46, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

  Heh. Good analysis as always Guy. That said, I like Wikiquote. That's where I started (pre-en-wiki), and where I frequently refer. I don't edit there though. If there's a way to salvage it, I'm game. Keeper ǀ 76 01:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

  • The concept of wikiquote is not bad. It's just that there's no oversight. It should be like the wikipedia article about city nicknames. Someone's oversighting that one, and anything with no citation gets zapped. If there were some discipline in wikiquote, it could be worth saving. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 07:01, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Discussion about broken diff in original post which has since been repaired

This is kinda off-topic, but am I the only one getting a really, really weird diff when clicking on the link above? One side of the diff shows an edit from Talk:List of German proverbs, the other the actual revert, and the title says "Talk:List of German proverbs, Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)" o.O --Conti|✉ 23:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC) Same here. Guido den Broeder (talk, visit) 23:20, 10 September 2008 (UTC) It looks like two characters were truncated from the original diff given ("79" should follow at the end). Here's what it should be: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28miscellaneous%29&diff=237518501&oldid=237507479 -- interesting -- I didn't know you could even "diff" between two separate pages. Antandrus (talk) 23:22, 10 September 2008 (UTC) Ah, that explains it. So you can basically diff any page with any page? That's weird. --Conti|✉ 23:25, 10 September 2008 (UTC) I never knew that... perhaps it's new? --Tango (talk) 23:38, 10 September 2008 (UTC) Nope, been around for ages. Quite helpful for comparing pages when someone's recreated something they shouldn't have. Orderinchaos 08:39, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Pigsonthewing blocked for edit-warring personal attacks.

Those of you with long memories will remember this user, who has twice been banned by the Arbitration Committee for a year at a time. This user has just come off his second year long ban, and has gotten back into one of his old, bad, habits, which is edit-warring a section on his user page accusing another user of being a stalker. He refused to stop edit-warring that section in, despite a consensus on ANI at the time (see User_talk:Pigsonthewing/Archive_13#Your_.22stalker.22_paragraph_on_your_userpage and sections below that for his intransigence on the issue). He's now returned from his second ArbCom ban, and is edit-warring again. I have blocked him 24 hours for it. I am bringing up this fairly uncontroversial issue because another administrator, User:Neil, who probably wasn't aware of the previous discussion (I'm trying to find the diff of the ANI discussion for it), and wasn't sure that it was controversial. SirFozzie (talk) 23:30, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive263#User:Pigsonthewing Is the previous discussion on this. SirFozzie (talk) 23:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, so soon? That's too bad. You made the right call here. Shereth 23:50, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

This is in my view a deplorable block and a deplorable block report, a completely wretched administrative action.

Sir Fozzle has provoked an edit war with a user with whom per Archive263#User:Pigsonthewing he has been in dispute with in the past; he hasn't just stumbled upon it, he has been the knowing precipitator of it.

Sir Fozzle knew at the time of his intervention that Neal had already started to talk to Andy in a respectful rather than an imperative tone about the notice but appears to think his own warn, war & ban approach superior.

The notice itself is entirely composed of Leonig's words. It is entirely possible to read it as a statement of facts and not as an attack. If we assume good faith, we must accept that it is not a categorical conclusion that it is an attack, and we should therefore tread with a care entirely lacking in the implementation of this block. We may nevertheless deplore the notice. But we have not been stalked by Leonig and we are in a different headspace entirely.

The block is entirely partisan, precipitate, arrogant, ill-considered and petty. It is absolutely the single least likely means of effecting change in the situation. It is the single most likely means of ensuring this whole notice thing will continue to rumble on with the same pattern of escalation. A completely counterproductive move which once more is most likely to lose us once more the services of an very good & productive editor.

I'm sorry. My view is that this block is both dim witted and abusive, and the block report entirely disingenuous. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

You can lay off the personal slander for starters, Tagishsimon. It doesn't further your case or cause. After reviewing the block and the prior actions of Pigsonthewing, I am endorsing the block. seicer | talk | contribs 01:15, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

As you well know, Tagishsimon, there was a consensus already that the section was a personal attack. You yourself participated in that discussion (linked above). You may not agree with it, I understand, but consensus backs me in this issue. SirFozzie (talk) 01:12, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

To clear one thing up, I have "known" Andy since prior to his first block, and was fully aware of the circumstances surrounding the issues he has/had with Leonig Mig. I don't think this block was particularly appropriate, as I had already begun to engage with Andy over his voluntarily removing it. SirFozzie was aware of this, and perhaps talking to me first rather than edit warring over the section and blocking Andy might have been a better route to go down. Andy is a difficult character at times, prone to "I know best" - a trait he shares with many admins! - but responds far better to polite requests as opposed to orders. If this ends up with Andy/Pigsonthewing being indef blocked after he responds badly to this baiting, I will be very disappointed but not suprised. Neıl ☄ 06:17, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, wouldn't it have been better to protect his userpage rather than block him? Most of his editing is fine, and protecting the userpage would have allowed that to continue. Seriously, if a year's block didn't dissuade him from adding the section, what difference is 24 hours more going to make? Neıl ☄ 06:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

That was actually tried last time. He started adding it to his user talk page instead. SirFozzie (talk) 07:04, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• This is a clear case of a vendetta being carried on beyond all sense, since Mig has not edited more than very occasionally all year. Pigs knows this is a problem, and his edit summary accusing others of vandalism for reverting it is unacceptable. If this ends up with him being blocked, then I won't be especially disappointed; if I can learn to walk away from those who bait me then so can he, especially when they do not seem to be active. Guy (Help!) 09:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• Support block (of any length) - the stalking note is a reference to events in July 2005 which have been hashed and rehashed dozens of times. 3 years have passed - let us move on. Occuli (talk) 12:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

In a clear case of Back to the Future, he is now again adding it to his user talk page (because that is the only page he is able to edit while blocked). The next time he adds the section, to ANY page, I will block him indefinitely, until such time as he agrees to not add that section anywhere. SirFozzie (talk) 12:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

The guy twice gets blocked for a full year, waits for his sentence to expire, and starts in again, and gets blocked again? Is there an anti-barnstar for ultra-patient vandals? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 12:54, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• Support blocking at admin discretion. I remember all the previous history of this debate, and in my opinion (as admin and bureaucrat of another wiki with over 3 years' experience) this kind of thing is ultimately detrimental to the project. As the history shows, Pigsonthewing has continued to disregard the Wikipedia way of doing things, and has no problem using inflammatory language and personal attacks when it suits him despite his vociferous protestations about others doing the same. Codeine (talk) 12:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

In short, he did it twice more, and in response I have blocked him indefinitely, and protected his user talk page for 48 hours due to disruption. When it expires, if he wants to be unblocked, all he has to do is state that he will cease and desist from adding attacks on another user, and drop the grudges. SirFozzie (talk) 13:06, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

No offense, but you need to step back and let another admin handle this. You are very clearly involved in this based on the previous discussions, and it seems like you're just looking for an ax to grind with him. I'm by no means Andy's biggest fan (and in the past I've railed against him for his attitude and the actions he takes), but it would be more appropriate to let someone fresh deal with it (such as Neil). —Locke Cole • t • c 01:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Community ban time?

The block log is deplorable, has waited a year to continue the same grudge, has twice been banned by arbcom for a year in seperate cases. Do we need him here anymore? Viridae^Talk 13:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• No, we don't, as I learnt from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pigsonthewing 2. The problem isn't Andy's encyclopedia-editing skills, it's the fact that he cannot cope with people disagreeing with him. When they do, he flames them, which he's been doing both here and, I believe, on Usenet, for a very long time. Two arbcom bans? And still more drama? Forget it, we don't need this guy. Moreschi (talk) 13:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
• Agreed, he's here to war with the community, not to write an encyclopedia. It amazes me that he comes of a ban and continues his ways. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 13:27, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
• As Moreschi says, his encyclopaedia-writing skills are actually quite good. There are not many editors who have gone through two year-long bans and returned, still committed to writing an encyclopaedia. For that reason I think it is worth trying to talk to him; if talking him round proves impossible, it may still be possible to work something out. Therefore oppose for the time being. Sam Blacketer (talk) 14:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
  • People have been trying to talk to Andy for years. They've failed. He cannot get along with people who even mildly disagree with him, and we will not change him. He's too stubborn, as the fact that's returned after two AC bans shows. Moreschi (talk) 14:22, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
• This sort of attitude is not appropriate, no matter how otherwise excellent the other contributions might be. Not getting the hint after two year-long bans pretty much garantees that the point won't be gotten, ever. — Coren ^(talk) 14:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
• Normally I would say this is being too quick to jump the gun, but given the unrepentant interest in continuing to hold a grudge long after the fact, I am forced to come to a different conclusion. The fact that after a year's ban he wastes no time in continuing with the vendetta, edit-warring over it, and going so far as to perpetuate the problem on his talk page after he was issued a block indicates that Andy has no interest in standing down, and that no amount of blocking or admonishing will get him to stop. Unfortunately I have to agree that a community ban may indeed be in order. Shereth 15:11, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
• I think this is probably a case of Wikipedia is not therapy. Everything that can be tried, has been - he and Wikipedia just aren't a good fit. Shell ^babelfish 16:04, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
• Concur. I wish Potw well in his endeavors - elsewhere. KillerChihuahua^?!? 16:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
• As noted, he's been through two year long bans, if Neil wants to try and work with him, I believe he should be allowed to do so. But not with SirFozzie edit warring and blocking him... —Locke Cole • t • c 01:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry, if he hasn't given in cross two year long bans, he's not going to, period. The consensus here shows that I was right to act as I have. Also, before you posted, I unprotected his page and offered to unblock him if he will agree not to post that section anymore. I have the feeling, he will just seize the chance to insert the section once more. It's worth a shot at extending the olive branch at least once more.. SirFozzie (talk) 03:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
    • You should unblock entirely and defer to an uninvolved admin. Looking at the edit history of his userpage makes it clear that this is something you're too close to be objective with. I won't touch the comment about consensus, since there's really only a handful of people involved in this discussion (certainly not a quorum for an indef ban). —Locke Cole • t • c 03:46, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
      • Nonsense. PigsAndy's got so many admins on the 'prior conflicts' list that your suggestion is not that feasible. Either we get a new, uninvolved admin to review PigsAndy's history every time, costing any admin sucker enough to try it so much of their volunteer time that PigsAndy can claim stale report by the time adjudication arrives, or we rely on the numerous editors and admins who've been through all this and know the situation to deal with it. And PigsAndy will use up all the uninvolved admins fast if you insist on that approach, leaving us with no one to adjudicate, because everyone will be 'contaiminated'. I hate that idiotic meme that everyone here deserves a totally neutral viewpoint which can only be found in those who don't know the situation, it's naive in the extreme. Ban PigsAndy now. ThuranX (talk) 04:08, 12 September 2008 (UTC)Sicne he objects to being called by the name he set himself up with, I've struck the nickname, but that all the more shows what kind of editor and person he is. He sets up an obvious, non-insulting shortening of his own username, then objects, claiming it's so insulting. He surely knew it to begin with, so he shouldn't complain, but has. so whatever. ThuranX (talk) 04:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
        • Fantastic, could you please make your comments without resorting to personal attacks ("Pigs") next time? It'll make it easier to take you seriously. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
          • That's part of the name he chose. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 06:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
            • And anyone looking at anything he's written in talk space sees he signs his name as "Andy", not "Pigs". —Locke Cole • t • c 07:45, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
              • If he has an issue with his user ID being shortened to "Pigs", then he can bring it to someone's attention. Calling someone by a short version of their chosen user ID is not a personal attack, nor does he need someone playing "nanny" for him. If he has an issue with it, he can post it on his talk page, and I don't see anything there about that. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 08:01, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
              • Locke it is part of his username, and therefore not a personal attack. If he wishes to be called something else, I'm sure he can let it be known. Ignore that - he does object to the use of that shortening (though why I'm not sure) See the first arb case. Viridae^Talk 11:22, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
                • Yes, he logged an objection. But by choosing such a name, he sets himself up for it. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 13:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
                  • I struck it out. Locke cole should be checkusered as a sock. Such a bizarrely trivial point becomes the means to dismiss my entire comment in the same trolling style ANDY, aka Pigsonthewing, is known for. It is clear to me that he couldn't debate my point on the facts, so sought to discredit via trvial distractions. ThuranX (talk) 04:16, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
• If Andy is to stay around, something's got to change, and given that two ArbCom bans don't seem to have changed anything, I've no idea what would cause the needed change. I don't like getting rid of productive editors, mind you, so if we can think of another solution, we should, but I have no good ideas. Mentorship is the closest I can come up with, but I struggle to believe Andy would accept the idea in the first place and, even if he did, heed his mentor's warnings. So basically you've got me. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 05:35, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Mentorship seems reasonable, but indef blocking and edit warring with him (by someone who was previously involved prior to his last ban) is hardly the way to start. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• My first thought was that maybe he was some high school kid. But he claims to be a professional writer. How about blocking him for another year and see if he improves a year from now. If not, block him again for another year. Even the most stubborn mule (or pig) has a chance of getting the hint eventually. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 06:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• OK, I should start here by declaring that I have "known" Andy for rather more years than most people here. It must be about 10 years ago that we were both usenet regulars. As such, I suppose that I have had longer than most to understand how Andy ticks! I've also had the experience of meeting him once in person (in a pub in Birmingham). I've had just about no contact with him since we both drifted away from usenet, and by the time I started editing Wikipedia in earnest, Andy was already in the throes of Arbcom troubles. So, whilst we are by no means hand-in-glove, I believe that I can understand better than most where the issues are, and I'm happy to volunteer to mentor Andy (if he'll have me). I would oppose a community ban at the present time. Mayalld (talk) 07:29, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
  • What is your honest opinion on the likelyhood of him serious changing his ways? Viridae^Talk 07:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
    • My honest opinion is that it is very easy to not see the wood for the trees, and to get into a bunker mentality (I've done so on usenet in the past), and to get into a self-destructive loop over it. It is bloody hard to break that loop, but it invariably involves somebody that isn't part of "the opposition" saying something. I can't guarantee to work miracles, but if I'm prepared to put the effort in, I hope the community will support me by backing my efforts to get Andy back where he should be, adding content. Mayalld (talk) 08:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
      • Well my suggestion is that you start talking to him before he digs the hole any deeper. Getting to honestly admit he has done the wrong thing and to give an assurance that he will drop the grudge would be a start. Viridae^Talk 11:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
        • I fired off an e-mail to hikm at the same time as I made my original offer. Let us see what transpires Mayalld (talk) 12:20, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• I would oppose a community ban on the basis that he is a good faith user, and the broad majority of his editing improves the encyclopaedia. This was not the case at the time of his last ArbCom one-year ban, but is now. The latest matter relates to a three-year-old dispute with a single user, and very little seems to be being done in furtherance of it outside the user's own userspace. I think someone like Mayalld may be able to help here. Orderinchaos 07:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• I oppose a ban at this time. It seems to me that anyone in his position would look at this discussion and be nervous enough to cease the problematic editing. Granted, he might be exceptionally stubborn, but I'd rather treat this as a warning. He's a productive, good faith editor, and coming back to us after two year-long bans demonstrates remarkable dedication. I don't think what we've seen so far is severe enough to outweigh all that. Everyking (talk) 07:57, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
  • What it demonstrates is stubbornness to an obsessive degree. But if it's just one particular user he has a problem with, maybe a compromise could be worked out to somehow keep them away from each other - to not edit the same articles, for example. That's called a "topic ban", and he could edit other topics freely. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 08:16, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• Comment - I am trying to engage with Andy (see his User talk:Pigsonthewing on the matter) - he has shown a willingness to listen to me in the past (nb - just changed my username from Neil!). I would like to try and see if I can bring about a change in his unfortunate proclivity for picking at old, old feuds through discussion, as he is an excellent contributor for the most part (including being the founder of Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats). I would prefer not to see any community block enacted until I have had a chance to try and bring about an amicable solution. Thanks. fish&karate 11:44, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

  Also, please do not refer to him as "Pigs". He - understandably - doesn't like it, and some of you may not be aware this was actually a point of contention in his original Arbcom case (see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pigsonthewing#Use of the epithet "Pigs".) fish&karate 11:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

  OK, slightly off-topic, but... why does he keep using the name "Pigsonthewing" if he always just signs as "Andy Mabbett" and hates the fact that people abbreviate his username to "Pigs"? Surely a name change would fix that problem and alleviate the frequent confusion about his name. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 12:08, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

  Perhaps it would, and I will suggest that to Andy, but we cannot force a user to change their name if it meets our current guidelines. fish&karate 12:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

  If he continues to use that name, he has little room for complaint if someone abbreviates it. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 13:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

  No, but now you at least, Baseball Bugs, are clearly aware it's upsetting; if you use it again, I'll consider it deliberate baiting. fish&karate 13:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

  If you look closely, you'll see that I haven't called him anything yet. If I were to call him anything, it would probably be "Mabbett", since I don't know him well enough to call him by his first name. And here's a guy who's had a lengthy history of being belligerent, with incredibly long blocks, and you're worried about upsetting him? Why? Are you afraid he's going to get madder? Why are you still messing with this character? Ban him and be done with it. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 13:50, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

  Besides, its only polite... SirFozzie (talk) 13:44, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Support ban – there is User_talk:Pigsonthewing#Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration.2FPigsonthewing_2 on his talk page which encapsulates his views, and repeats the references to Mig from 2005; and there are his continuing reactions today on his talk page remorselessly repeating the same refrain. The guy is incorrigible. Occuli (talk) 11:56, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• (ec) Neil Fish and karate (err...interesting name choice :) should be allowed to try and bring about a change. Making Fish and karate his mentor for a few months might also work. Should either measure fail, then I think the community ban should be enacted (but not without trying either of those measures first). Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
  • "Fish and chops"? :) Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 13:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
    • Or "Fish and punch"? :D Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:02, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Progress

See User_talk:Pigsonthewing#Another_opinion - I believe progress is being made, and Andy is about to agree not to restore the material again. Again, I don't want to see the editor who made things like this possible being indef-blocked over a silly grudge. fish&karate 12:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Huh? Please explain to me what Andy's role was in what I believe is a project by User:Para. --Dschwen 00:25, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Fish&Karate (re:Neil) is working on a solution, that if Andy refrains from adding the information again, unless Leonig returns and harasses HIM first, he will be unblocked. I have given Neil my full support on this. Basically, as was stated above.. if he adds it or anything similar to it again, he will be re-blocked. (bah! He beat me to it ;) ) SirFozzie (talk) 12:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

HaHA! :) fish&karate 12:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

In that case, I see no reason to keep the community ban proposal open - seems to be a moot point. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:27, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

well, don't do it yet. POTW's response is less promising then I would like. [[14]] SirFozzie (talk) 12:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't plan on doing it, for this one anyway. :) But I do think that given he's blocked, and Neil is trying to discuss it with him, it's a bit of a moot point - expecting the desired outcome to result from those discussions within a few hours is like a complete miracle for a user who was banned for 2 years. It probably needs a few days. If there is no change in 2 weeks (maximum), then I think reopening the community ban discussion would be more productive. My thoughts anyway. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:48, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

As he's already indefinitely blocked, unless an administrator is willing to unblock him, he is de facto community blocked. At the moment the only administrator even considerig unblocking him seems to be me, and his response (as Fozzie mentions) wasn't promising. Andy's forthcoming answer to the short question I just posted on his talk page may decide whether I feel up to continuing to engage with him. fish&karate 13:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I've been staying out of this for reasons similar to those expressed by Locke Cole above... better to let people who haven't been as contentiously involved in the past take the lead here. Fish and karate is doing a very good job in that regard.

Andy's like alot of old Usenet regulars I've known... for him this is a matter of principles. Ordering and/or blocking him will never ever get him to do things your way. It'd be 'wrong' to sacrifice principle and 'bow to authority' that way. You need to convince him of the benefits of your position. If you don't have the patience for that... let someone else do it. Would it be nice if everyone just did what they were told? Maybe, for the people giving the orders, but that just isn't the way the world works. So we can have patience with the occasional non-conformist... or stomp them into paste. In my experience stomping is the usual solution, but patience generally yields the better results. --CBD 13:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

"Would it be nice if everyone just did what they were told? Maybe, for the people giving the orders, but that just isn't the way the world works." Good quote to use about people refusing to obey his order not to shorten his chosen user ID. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 13:33, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Andy is someone that has been "problematic" for a long time - see, for example, User_talk:CBDunkerson/Archive4#Andy_Mabbet - and I am still trying. Being an old Usenet regular does not mean my patience is infinite, nor is the community's (obviously). What he wants (to be allowed to continue to rake up a three-year old feud) is not going to happen, and if he won't back down on that, he will remain unable to edit outside his talk page. fish&karate 13:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Andy is now attempting to endrun around building a compromise with fish&karate with an unblock request. He's now claiming that since he's offered a "compromise" (which is nothing of the sort), that he should be unblocked. Discouraging... SirFozzie (talk) 20:34, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I do have to say that I'm losing confidence too. To be frank, I doubt this is something that can change overnight and will need long term mentoring (in terms of weeks/months rather than hours). If no one is willing to mentor him, I think the next few days might turn out in a way that won't be too pleasant. Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:40, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

It's amusing to see a user, coming off a year-long block, dictating terms under which wikipedia will allowed to be graced by his presence. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 09:16, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• Mm, having looked things over myself, I have a couple thoughts, however non-warm and cuddly they be. First off, someone who's had two year-long Arbcom bans has to know he's going to be under the microscope forever, and really has to keep his nose clean forever. Someone who loses no time to fly off the handle yet again has demonstrated that he has learned nothing and that no sanction possible is likely get his attention. Secondly, I don't give a rat's patootie what kind of editing or article-building skills he might have. Wikipedia doesn't need him. Wikipedia doesn't need anybody. The project does not stand and fall on his putative skills, and what benefit is there to coddle pervasive and unrepentent offenders except to demonstrate that we coddle pervasive and unrepentant offenders? Seriously, think about it: what is the upside to removing the block?  RGTraynor  22:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

What you might not realise...

Is that Andy Mabbett has been trolling Usenet for ages. He's not an old usenet regular, he's an old usenet troll with the stubbornness levels of a moody ox. Google Andy+Mabbett+troll, or just "Andy Mabbett". It's usually microformats and technological stuff, occasionally birdwatching. His negative reputation is clearly quite something. We're not going to change this guy, we really aren't...Moreschi (talk) 16:39, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you. But if this effort fails, and convinces those who are not supporting the ban then it will be eaiser next time it gets brought up. Viridae^Talk 22:49, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Viridae. I tend to be a sucker for giving people too many chances, but Pigsonthewing has a good chain of contributions, broken as it is by ArbCom bans. I think another one wouldn't go astray.

Some of the discussion on this thread is regrettable and people should remember that even though Pigsonthewing may have broken WP:NPA and WP:CIV, that doesn't give others carte blanche to do the same. Stifle (talk) 18:05, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

While I'm in this train of thought, don't forget that a user is only considered community banned if no admin is willing to unblock him. Stifle (talk) 18:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

"Another one" in my above message means "another chance", in case it wasn't obvious. Stifle (talk) 19:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Disruption of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)

A poll (that multiple editors have already stated does not have options available that encapsulate their actual views to begin with) has started at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Date format resolution attempt. This poll (initially launched in terms of "voting"; I have adjusted the language) was already further undermined by (since-reverted) inclusion of a "the vote so far" summary embedded in the middle of the poll (a strong biasing tactic). Now, one participant invested in this debate has launched a second, "run-off" poll to "vote" (that editor's words, not mine) on which of two options from the original poll to choose between, before the first poll has concluded (it's only been running for a few hours), and despite both criticism of the original poll and criticism of the use of outright voting as a substitute for consensus-building. I have tried to get the point across both at that page and the talk page of the user in question, Greg L, who reverted removal of the pre-emptive second poll). I believe the second poll to be genuinely disruptive and a massive PoV-pushing exercise. Disclaimer: I have added a !vote to the poll, but I do not have a particularly vested interest in the outcome of it, which is actually so far going pretty much the way I would like, and is a tempest in a teapot anyway. This ANI report is about an editing behavior issue, not a topical viewpoint. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Update: Greg L added a second, redundant heading to the talk page in an attempt to direct more editors to his railroading second poll. I think this constitutes evidence of WP:DE (and WP:CANVAS, in that there is no consensus for a second poll at all, and registered opposition to the idea already). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:05, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Update: WP:NPA violation [15] (accused me of vandalism). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:15, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Unrelated to the interpersonal bits, that kinda-RFC seems needlessly complicated. Protonk (talk) 00:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's been raised as well, but isn't why I'm here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:23, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I know. Protonk (talk) 00:42, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Update: [16] More canvassing for disputed second poll, including declaration of what the two "run-off" winners are, despite no consensus that poll is closed. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Time to bring the hammer down, Rubber Duck. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 00:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• To the admins. Tony asked me to post a poll (which I did) and then he put this notice regarding that poll on the Village pump so many editors could participate. The position of SMcCandlish is clear with his 4-0-0-0 vote. He participated in a poll, and then he declared that he thinks all polls to be evil. Clearly, a lot of editors want to participate in this because very many have participated in it and also engaged in well behaved debate and discussion. SMcCandlish is out of step with the rest of us. We’re trying to see if we can develop a consensus here and his obstructionist moves are getting in the way of that objective. Greg L (talk) 00:33, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Well. Just because someone participates in a poll doesn't require them to like it. I vote, I am not therefore required to like the US system of elections. My suggestion is that you guys carve out a new talk page section and discuss changes to this like they did over at Wikipedia_talk:Notability/RFC:compromise. There we had a few editors adding and removing proposals and we spent some time to hash it out before moving on. Nothing is really going to permanently damage this discussion, so I would cool down on the crisis mode. Protonk (talk) 00:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• I agree. Why the crisis? I am astonished SMcCandlish’s effort to ratchet up the tenor here; everything had been going very smoothly on WT:MOSNUM and all the editors (with one notable exception) have been very civil and constructive. Note the total lack of rancor here at the vote comments. May I suggest we let Tony, who sort of serves as a moderator of sorts on MOSNUM, weigh in over there after he wakes up? Australian time you see. I don’t perceive an imperative to move the polls off of Talk:MOSNUM since discussing dates is just about the only thing that is done over there as of late; that’s what the venue is for after all. Greg L (talk) 00:59, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Indeed (in response to Protonk). Wanting to participate in a poll is not sign at all on other editors' part that they want someone to control the poll in a highly manipulative way. In response to Greg L: You're the one in WP:PANIC mode, closing polls prematurely, announcing "run-off votes" before the original has closed, declaring poll results after only a matter of a few hours, reflexively reverting well-explained opposition to these moves, and launching into blatant personal attacks (accusations of "vandalism" and "censorship"). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC) Also, I did not declare polls to be evil; please do not mischaracterize what I wrote. I said that they are rarely actually helpful. If you want to call me "obstructionist" with regard to not letting a single party railroad a consensus discussion, then fine. I'm certainly not obstructionist with regard to actually coming to a genuine consensus on the issue, a process this poll is not helping with by polarizing the debate and forcing editors to literally vote (Greg L's wording) on options they don't actually even agree with. That the debate has been civil is not a point in favor of Greg L's view (nor against it); it is simply normal - Wikipedians are supposed to be civil. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Update: WP:3RR reached (not yet breached): *[17] reverted (in different wording) [18]. (which was a revert on my part)

• [19] reverted [20] (which was a revert on my part)
• [21] reverted [22] and a previous version (addition by someone else).
• Technically there actually was a fourth one, but it was a housekeeping removal of some junk code that was accidentally re-inserted, so I don't count that one, nor stuff in the nature of an alteration rather than reversion. Warning in order? I think all of the above clearly establishes as pattern of WP:OWN over this "vote", as well as all the other problems already raised. The fact that someone "asked him" to start a poll doesn't mean it gets to go his personal way by fiat. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• To clarify, my comment was an admonishment to both editors. Stop reverting over the format and nature of the poll. Figure out between the two of you what you can agree on at the talk page. Slow down. If the whole thing weren't so durn complicated, I would make a direct suggestion, but as it stands all I can do is make general suggestions. If you both keep up this reverting and escalating business (and greg, it's you too), neither will be happy with the results. Protonk (talk) 01:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I won't revert anything further there. That's why I came here - I find revert wars to be completely pointless. The damage has already been done. What could have been a possibly informative poll has turned into an invalid farce, and I don't think that can be undone. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Someone needs to update WP:LAME. That is by far, the most asinine poll/vote/not vote/thread I've ever seen. Keeper ǀ 76 01:11, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I dunno, I think that posting here was one of the more creative (albeit possibly inappropriate) ways to drum up interest in a discussion, than I've seen lately : ) - jc37 01:19, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, someone needs to read Arrow's impossibility theorem. Protonk (talk) 01:15, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• P.S. WP:Canvas “is sending messages to multiple Wikipedians with the intent to inform them about a community discussion.” I have done none of that. And the only disruptive editor over on WT:MOSNUM were caused by SMcCandlish. Everything was peaceable and without rancor until SMcCandlish charged into the middle of the event, claimed that all polls are evil, and deleted an entire poll. I ask that SMcCandlish be required to post evidence of my canvasing, and (when he is unable to demonstrate as much), that he be sanctioned for coming here to sling bucket-fulls of muck on the wall in hopes that something would stick. I ask that he be sanctioned for bringing false charges. Greg L (talk) 01:13, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• Two personal attacks don't make a civil comment. You weren't canvassing, per se, but neither is candish railing on about the evils of voting or 'charging in', or doing things with buckets and muck. Protonk (talk) 01:15, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) Greg L: Again, please stop falsifying my statements. I did not "delete an entire poll", I deleted your attempt to create an empty new poll that undermined the first one's (already questionable) results. The discussion was actually quite lively; your implication that all was quiet on the front is false (as already noted, the fact that no one has been flaming and attacking - other than you - is neither here nor there). As for canvassing, read it more closely. It is not limited to posting individual notes on individual's talk pages. Your two attempts in a row to direct all editorial attention at that page to your pre-emptive second poll when the legitimacy of that poll itself and even its existence on the page are the subject of editorial dispute is very clearly canvassing. I close by noting that I've not asked for any sanctions against you at all, other than being warned to chill out (which Protonk has done, and I don't mind being warned myself in the process), because I've been assuming good faith even if complaining of misguided action. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• The record is clear as to what happened. I don’t need to characterize or mischaracterize anything you did or didn’t do. I’ll let the admins deal with you. And no, everything I did was entirely out in the open right on the talk page of MOSNUM. Your charges are without foundation and everything you wrote above was nothing but salacious false fabrications. Did you see anyone else on WT:MOSNUM complaining about my job of moderating the voting? I count just one editor: YOU. And why would that be the case? Your “4-0-0-0” vote betrays your extreme bias. You should be sanctioned for what you’ve done. Goodbye. I’m too pissed off with this stunt of yours at the moment to further deal with you here. Greg L (talk) 01:37, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• Mischaracterization: Protonk noted that you were mischaracterizing me even before I did. Admins: I haven't done anything worthy of admin attention. In the open: Of course it was in the open; everything, including your revertwarring, is in the open on a Wiki. That doesn't make everything that happens on a Wiki a good idea. Fabrications: I've linked to diffs. You can't really fabricate anything on a wiki. Complaints: Yes, there are others. Several respondents to the poll noted that its options were too limited, and below on this page another echoes my concerns about your closing it prematurely and selecting two options from it for a "run-off", while both there and here editors have commented that it is too complicated (and "lame" according to one). Furthermore, Wikipedia is not a popularity contest. Flagging inappropriate behavior does not require a vote, and a lack of 100 people flagging it as inappropriate doesn't make it appropriate. Extreme bias: I think this really, really gets to the core of the matter: You are clearly not interested in valid poll results, but in getting your way and mischaracterizing others as extremists if you set up a (skewed) 4-option poll and then actually publicly castigate people for selecting one of the options! And (not that it's important) I clearly explained my rationale. I have no particular bias at all; I see A and B as identical, C as a minor variant of it, and D as irrelevant, and explained clearly that whatever the outcome, WP:MOSNUM and WP:ENGVAR should not conflict with each other. I'd say that's a completely rational and calm position. Sanctioned: For what? I've used WP:ANI for what it is for: flagging revertwarring, personal attacks and other disruptive editing. You on the other hand, with this post above, have just now personally attacked me for the fourth time in fewer hours. Pissed off: WP:TEA, WP:MASTADON. If you have become too emotionally involved in an editing dispute and can't control your temper with regard to it, then it is time to back off. I don't really have anything else to say on these matters and will return to WP:MOSNUM with a proposal for non-voting discussion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• A lot of people would see me as anything but a moderator at MOSNUM; rather, a partisan activist. However, on this matter, the reason I havn't indicated my preferences on the table (better word than vote) is that I can't decide between two of the options. I regard both Greg L and SMcCandlish as allies (not on all issues, but certainly in general); this puts me in a difficult situation. All I really wanted in suggesting the tabular idea was to bring us closer to a decision on this important matter. I haven't ventured onto MOSNUM talk yet, but will later today. Tony (talk) 02:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. As I have tried to make clear, this is a procedural matter, not one about which option in the poll is "better". We cannot launch polls, characterized as outright votes, and then manipulate them the entire time they a running until until we personally like the results, and then exclude the ones we don't like. And, yes, I am most often in agreement with Greg L, but the over-control of this poll has really been a nasty surprise. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

As a keenly interested participant, I'd like to say that I think that good will is running pretty high on this. It's more of a misunderstanding than anything else. To begin with, it's just a poll, and while it will aid in consensus-building over what has been a spirited discussion, it's not going to have any binding result. Tony and Greg have done well to get a poll going in such an excellent format, where results and trends are immediately clear. I've advised all participants in the previous discussion, and one or two other places, such as VPP about the poll, and I think it needs time, maybe a week from first being put up, for everyone to have an input. While a run-off is a good idea, I'd like votes in the original poll to trickle out before starting a new one. I also think that wording of the two options could be tweaked a bit to tersen them up a bit. One of the two run-off options contains a bit more electioneering than is strictly necessary, and the other has grown more verbose than needful. If Greg could perhaps be persuaded to withdraw the run-off for a few days, at least until editors have stopped voting in the original poll? --Pete (talk) 02:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

"While a run-off is a good idea, I'd like votes in the original poll to trickle out before starting a new one...until editors have stopped voting in the original poll." Yes, indeed. That's what brought me here, Greg L's pre-emptive closing of the poll after only hours and launching a new poll with his chosen two options, and blanket reverting opposition to this inexplicable move, twice in a row. I've never claimed that there was no good-will toward the original poll, only that several have expressed concerns about its neutrality. If someone else wants to deal with this, that's up to them. I've already stated above that I'm not going to revert these moves again. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

All of those pages suffer from WP:TLDR; there's some relationship between verbosity and editors attracted to MoS (Tony seems to be an exception). I don't have time to read all of that, so I won't enter the "vote". Seriously, everyone who participates in MoS discussions needs to work on keeping commentary in digestibly sized chunks. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:27, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• There. I listened to my “Relax” playlist on iTunes last night and slept on it. And now I know exactly what pissed me off about the knee-jerk reaction of SMcCandlish in coming to ANI to post a complaint. One word: censorship. Anytime someone posts a contentious guideline to WP:MOSNUM that is contrary to the consensus view and/or wasn’t properly discussed, such text can be reverted by another editor. But Talk:MOSNUM is an entirely different venue: it is a special forum where editors discuss, debate, and share thoughts.

  If SMcCandlish thinks all polls are evil, he can say so—and he did. If he thinks the first poll was called too early, he should state as much… there on Talk:MOSNUM. Notwithstanding the ridiculous picture SMcCandlish would like to paint of the nature of the goings-on over on Talk:MOSNUM, no single editor can hijack Talk:MOSNUM and make it go—for very long anyway—in a direction that the main body of editors doesn’t want it to go. Talk:MOSNUM has plenty of experienced editors with fine-tuned brain filters for inappropriate procedures and B.S. Everything was quite peaceable over there last night. As anyone can see, the current run-off poll (which I restored after SMcCandlish deleted it and he then came here to make a federal case out of it) is receiving plenty of participation and many editors are showing how they feel on the options and are sharing thoughts and engaging in civilized debate.

  And since I “closed” the earlier poll, more editors have voted and have updated and maintained my summary statistics on the voting—none of which has changed the outcome as to which two options were the leading candidates. If anything, the additional voting has further gone against his views. I was too distracted by this ANI to really focus on what really ticked me off about SMcCandlish’s move: in a forum for discussion and debate and the sharing of ideas (not MOSNUM itself where it is appropriate to delete improperly posted text), he so objected to what was being done, he elected not to make a case and rally other editors to his way of thinking. Instead, he simply deleted an entire swath of Talk:MOSNUM, declaring that he didn’t like it so damned much, that he was going to decide for everyone else what was permissible for them to participate in and when they may do so.

  To SMcCandlish: If you have something to say, say it. If you think all polling is evil, say it. If you want to participate in a vote and then say all polling is evil, do so (you did). If you think the poll was improperly called, state as much and rally others to declare it foul and boycott it. If you want to start your own poll, do so. If I write something that you think is wrong, point out the shortcomings of my argument. But get this much clear: in a freewheeling discussion and debate forum where editors are being civil and aren’t engaging in personal attacks, the proper response to bad speech is better speech. Don’t ever again act as a unilateral censor in a debate and discussion forum and presume to decide for others what issues they may participate in and discuss with others. Greg L (talk) 17:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

RfC on the topic

Someone should mention that the two creators of this poll have simultaneously created an RfC to continue their pursuit of Tony1 here. As you can see here the users wish to move on to the next forum when consensus does not support them. These two are becoming very disruptive very quickly. Ottava Rima (talk) 13:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

It is a sign of the complexity here that these are different editors, who disagree with Tony over a different issue. They are concerned with the linking and autoformatting of dates; SMcCandlish is talking about which format (September 11, 2008 or 11 September 2008) dates are in, without autoformatting, and whether linked or not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:21, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

It deals with linking. There is no difference between linking dates for autoformatting or for wikilinks, and they are united in being delinked. The one appears to be a subset of the other. You can see from this comment "Sapphic. Yes, your vote statement (“Autoformatting makes this entire poll irrelevant”) is true" (Greg L (talk) 01:50, 10 September 2008 (UTC)) as evidence of it. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:27, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Not irrelevant, no; two arguments on the same page at the same time are unlikely to be absolutely unrelated to each other. But Sapphic is (as Greg says) neutral on this issue, which is about the format of dates in edit space, whether linked or not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:42, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• Ottava Rima: Really, you’ve got all your facts thoroughly screwed up. There is only one creator of the poll (me). And I have nothing whatsoever to do with any RfCs against Tony; he and I see eye-to-eye on many (not all) issues regarding dates. And as PMAnderson has correctly pointed out, the editors who have done the RfC against Tony (I just now discovered it), have a problem with how Tony is championing the deprecation of autoformatting of dates (the special tools that make *pretty* dates for we editors but often mucks things up for 99.9% of our readership). The polling issue has nothing whatsoever to do with autoformatting; it has everything to do with how editors should go about determining which format of date editors should use when writing out fixed-text dates in articles. And the above ANI really doesn’t have anything to do with that; it has everything to do with someone trying to act like someone died and made him God, with the powers to decide for others what debate and thought is permissible to be discussed in a talk forum. Greg L (talk) 18:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry Greg, when I put the "this poll" I ment to put a link up there and direct it to the second poll. I just noticed the error and put it in its place. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:22, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Ahh… I see. That makes sense now. Like Gilda Radner used to say: *never mind*.  Thanks. Greg L (talk) 02:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• I hope everything makes sense now. I was going to leave it in its own note, but I didn't want the above to be seen as a continuation per se, but a spin off from the topic (i.e. the MoS Date Page). The one user in that RfC that established it mentioned going to AN/I. Since this was here, I wanted to give the slight heads up so that this doesn't degenerate out of control as it possibly could. I want to make it clear to everyone again that I'm not commenting on Greg's posts, or any of the above comment, but only introducing a similar topic from the same area that might need eyes on. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:06, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Phew. We have Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Greg L, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tony1, and an RfC on the mos page. Clearly there are some pretty long term problems here.. Wizardman 17:49, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Some RfCs have merit. Some don’t. The devil is in the details. Greg L (talk) 18:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Lovely. Who knows who's on first anymore, or what the issues are. And as if we need more evidence of the excessive verbosity of the proponents, at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Greg L we find consistent inability of editors to stay within the instructions of RfC regarding not editing other editors' sections. Several did exactly that, rendering yet another page undecipherable. The intent of RfC is to keep arguments within sections so that others can sort: can anyone sort that mess ? We need a community sanction that anyone participating at MoS needs to limit all posts to x number of words; that would solve a lot of the problems (and Tony1 could keep doing what he's always done, since he doesn't suffer from this excess verbosity). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• And how does your 125-word rant help to sort out whether this ANI is warranted? Or whether there is a problem with the above-mentioned RfC against Tony? We’re wasting our time here. The ANI by SMcCandlish isn’t getting much sympathy from moderate-minded editors and clearly shouldn’t have been filed. Greg L (talk) 22:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• • Perhaps my goals are different than your goals; I want MoS to be a workable set of pages, and everyone already knows the quality of Tony's work, so that RfC doesn't matter. In the meantime, I'll call attention to the verbosity that prevents any improvement from occurring in MoS discussions. I sometimes wonder if it's a deliberate strategy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:39, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Reversions by user JBSupreme

I understand that unsourced material can be removed, but that does not mean that it necessarily should be. User:JBsupreme consistently takes long, in-depth article and reduces them to sentences because they are not sourced. In this case, a list of rappers of southern origin does not need to be sourced. A person is from where they are from, that is all. The same goes for much of the rest of the article's removed information. What he had done recently to Southern hip hop is my most recent example. He removed 20 thousand bytes of relevant, factually correct information. I know many of you will say that it is unsourced, but it is practically unnecessary. Do I really need to source the sentence which says that Miami bass music genre is from Miami? He is purposefully ruining articles so that they are later deleted. He has done this with 5 Elementz, Detroit hip hop and other articles, slowly, covertly chipping away sentences until all that remains is a worthless sentence, as in Southern hip hop. He must be stopped. I reported this under edit warring but I believe it is more likely vandalism.Cosprings (talk) 14:32, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a content dispute and you are forum shopping it, without even notifying User:JBsupreme. I see zero talk page edits of your last 50 edits, which gives me the impression you aren't trying very hard to resolve this matter with him. I suggest you try that first.--Atlan (talk) 15:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I've tried that of course and there is just no convincing him in the error of his ways. Someone reverted the southern hip hop article yet again, and he has yet again removed 20k bytes of information. Cosprings (talk) 16:55, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

No need to inform me, I see the forum shopping that Cosprings is doing. He is welcome to provide reliable sources for the information he keeps trying to reintroduce. I have zero objection to that. JBsupreme (talk) 16:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

a list of rappers of southern origin does not need to be sourced - um, no, everything should be sourced, and if someone requests a source and none is provided, removal of the unsourced material is not correct, it's required. Corvus cornix_talk 19:49, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Wrong. Not everything has to be sourced. We have fact tags, we don't delete non-contentious material just because it doesn't have a source, and we don't require a source for common knowledge. And while Cosprings should have gone to JB's talk page first, any look at the page and its history reveals that JB does not respond to such inquiries. He merely reverts them or ignores them and blanks them later. He also reverts warnings and ignores them, all while counseling other editors not to remove warnings from their talk pages, reverting and edit warring with them on their own talk pages. His edits over the past few weeks show him repeatedly removing biographical sections, discographies, birth dates and locations. This is not information that should be removed per BLP. Fact tags. His edit summary usage is atrocious as well. These are all things I warned him about on his talk page earlier today. It was one of, I believe, three five warnings on his talk page today, at least two three from admins. Jennavecia ^(Talk) 00:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Another admin warning was just placed on his talk page. Jennavecia ^(Talk) 01:50, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, I put a fact tag on something. I look for evidence and find none. How long does the fact tag stay there till I finally am allowed to remove the contested information? If somebody claims that some rapper is "of southern origin", it's up to them to prove it. Corvus cornix_talk 22:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that JBsupreme does decent work in the mainspace, if overzealous. He certainly needs to read AfD guidelines more closely; he's been notified several times of malformatted entries or insufficient research before initiation. However, I would like to strongly endorse Jennavecia's statement about JBsupreme's rather hypocritical habit of blanking any and all negative messages from his talk page, while reverting any removal of messages from others' talk pages. As Jennavecia mentioned, several admins have left him messages today, myself included. JBsupreme needs to be strongly cautioned that his continued hostility towards other users is not fostering the atmosphere that Wikipedia thrives on and will not be tolerated. GlassCobra 05:59, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It's true that Cosprings is overzealous in growing articles and needs to learn to cite better (an endangered WikiDragon perhaps?), however, he is not forum shopping. He posted to 3RR by mistake, unaware that this was the right place to post. I noticed his report there and had a look at Southern hip hop. The page was poorly cited, but didn't deserve to be repeatedly blanked. I unblanked it and left a message asking for discussion before further blankings. Unfortunatly JBsupreme does not like to engage in article discussions. He seems to boldly remove unreferenced statements without tagging, waiting and discussing. This is not polite, and does not help improve wikipedia. lk (talk) 16:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Barton Foley notability tags

Could someone please take a look at the large number of notability tags being placed by this editor, including to major novels by science fiction writer William Gibson, and to films which seen clearly notable? I can't tell if this is just a massive one-man cleanup effort or if there's something WP:POINTy about it. Thanks. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 21:17, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Please note that the editor made his first edit on 25 August 2008. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 21:20, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

A random sampling of the user's contributions to film-related articles reveals the addition of prod tags to many that aren't notable, so we're OK on that score. But there does seem to be little or no checking for notability on his part before he adds the tags. Just because an article doesn't currently cite reliable secondary sources, that doesn't necessarily mean that its topic is not notable. It may just lack a citation that can easily be found with a twenty-second Google search (indeed, this has been the case for a couple of inappropriately tagged articles). So I guess his use of the tag isn't wholly appropriate in this case, without those cursory checks for notability. I left a note on his talk page to this effect after a concern was raised at WP:FILM, and before it was raised here; I suggest waiting for a response to my and other editors' concerns before further action is taken. All the best, Steve ^{T • C} 21:27, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

That's fine, but I do want to point out that the editor created The Forlorn Hope, an article about a science fiction novel by David Drake, and another editor tagged it with a notability tag. The tagging editor chided Barton Foley, and Foley answered:

Given the standing of David Drake in the science fiction community and his well regarded body of work, sumaries on his individual books, particularly those that have been re-issued due to their popularity should meet the notability threashold, despite the guidelines of notability. There exists many books on Wikipedia that do not meet the guidelines for notability, but are still granted entries due to their otehr notable qualities, outside the realm of movie adpatations and awards. (Emphasis added)

It was only after this that Barton Foley went on a tear tagging for notability. I'm afraid that seems pretty WP:POINTy to me. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 02:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, my response was as written above. In retrospect, my point about David Drake may be correct, but it does not automatically grant notability to his novels. Without providing the needed notability, the deletion of and redirection, I believe, was/is correct. If I disagree, it is my responsibility as the author of the article to provide the needed information. Further direction by User:Goochelaar and User:Collectonian as to notability, as well as the talk and discussion for both Douglas Hill and the David Weber novel Off Armageddon Reef I believe has given me some direction. The movies being tagged are in alphabetical order of the list of horror films of 2000. If one follows that list, there are several that I did not tag, as they met the notability guidelines. I also tried not to tag those films that were from a foreign market, such as Thai or South Korean films. However, the ones that were tagged are not notable per the guidelines. Originally, I was going to redirect these items back to the list, but after wandering and observing other editors actions, the prod tag seemed to be the most appropriate action. As I am not the author of these articles, I do not think it is my responsibility to Google or otherwise provide the notability credits to meet the guidelines. If the author(s) of the article believe the tag is incorrect, if my understanding of the procedure is correct, can remove the tag and state why I am wrong to apply the tag to the article. If I disagree, then I can AFD the article. Unless my understanding is incorrect as to this process, I do not think I did anything wrong. Also, unless I misunderstand again, the prod tag for notability is for how the article currently exists, not how it might exist or might prove its notability in the future or might exist in a Google search. Now, if the admins decide I did or was misguided, I will take any advice they have to offer on future edits.

I would state that I plan on moving to the Chick Lit book list next with my notability (and other) tags in tow. And as per User:Steve T • C I will provide more then a single word justification for my tags.Barton Foley (talk) 03:22, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

And the more I think about it, let us say I was trying to make a WP:POINT. Why would I do so in the horror film list of the 2000s in a group of articles written by people who would have no idea of the WP:POINT I was trying to make? If I was trying to make a WP:POINT, I wouldn't expend energy on people who would have no clue of my purpose, I would track the contributions of the editor whom I was trying to make a WP:POINT to and tag his/her articles with notability tags and prods. That would be making a point. Tagging Anaconda 2 as not notable is not, IMHO. Barton Foley (talk) 11:44, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

True, if the purpose of the POINTy behavior was to get to the editor who tagged you. On the other hand, people have been known to do stuff in order to make a general POINT to the commnity, and it's not unknown for people to do pointy things because they're pissed off and want to strike back.

I'm not accusing you of any of that, but I do think that your attitude that it's not your responsibility to do a quick check for evidence of real-world notability is mistaken. We're all here, presumably, to help the encyclopedia. If that's the case, than your failure to check for evidence of notability outside the existing article could wind up with some notable books or movies being deleted, and that doesn't really help the project in any way. If you're putting a notability tag on something, it should be because you are truly convinced that it's not notable, not simply because the editor(s) who wrote the article didn't do a good job of it.

I would suggest that it is prudent, and responsible, to do some due diligence and, at the very least, perform a Google search to see what you come up with before tagging an article. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 12:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

You're right, in the sense that that is what the PROD policy says. You're wrong in that mass PRODing articles without even a tiny bit of good faith research (a simple Rotten Tomatoes search for films, for example) is disruptive and disruption is very much not allowed. Also, it took me less than 10 seconds to determine that Anaconda 2 does meet our notability guideline [23]. -Chunky Rice (talk) 16:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Your switch to posting the boilerplate messages on your next round of Horror films is NOT any better and at the speed you are putting them up, its obvious you aren't actually checking anything.[24][25][26][27][28]. You are just copy/pasting from article to article, even demanding prod tags on articles that have already been prodded (and therefore can not be prodded again). It also shows that you continue to completely ignore the actual notability policies in place, particular for films which is at Wikipedia:Notability (films). Many of the films you tagged with your message or prodded meet the film notability guidelines.

At this point, I think an admin needs to revert all of these prods and boilerplate messages as an attempt at a pointy disruption, and perhaps a short term block until this editor fully understands what he is doing wrong and why, and really stops rather than make false noises about "understanding." From his own talk page message, he thinks "Wiki...started to look like a series of intellectual fiefdoms run by the topics fanboys/girls, whose only yardstick for notability was the work in question simply existed" and is now on a "mission" to remove all of them from the encyclopedia, despite it being obvious that he isn't really checking any of these.-- [[::User:Collectonian|Collectonian]] ([[::User talk:Collectonian|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Collectonian|contribs]]) 18:01, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, you don't need to be an admin to remove a PROD, and besides, most of this latest batch look okay to me. The assertion that a cursory search turns up no reviews of note seems to be accurate. -Chunky Rice (talk) 18:28, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

To remove the prods, no, someone can just rollback all those, but the boilerplate messages on articles his prods have already been removed from, yes, and it would be better if an admin removes them. And since he has declared he is going on a massive PROD spree to make a point about his ideas of notability and is basically announcing his intentions to be disruptive, I think something should be done. -- [[::User:Collectonian|Collectonian]] ([[::User talk:Collectonian|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Collectonian|contribs]]) 19:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I do not see your point. Attaching notability tags does not seem disruptive to me. I added the "boilerplate" (and quite frankly, the ones with that language added really do not meet any of the 10-12 items listed) to only those articles that survived the first round of prod rollbacks. It was pointed out to me that just saying "notability" is not enough information for the admins and others to determine whether it is or not. Now, I have *not* placed *any* new prod tags after being taken to task. I did place one AfD, but other then that, not a single new prod tag has been placed by me. My only contributions today are either the "boilerplate" to those prod tags that survived the rollbacks from yesterday or adding notability tags to those that had prod tags removed *if* after reading all the above I still honestly thought it was not a notable film. And I have not stated I am going on a prod spree, or on a mission to remove articles. If I honestly believe that an entry is not notable based upon the guidelines, then I can place a notability tag and notify the author. The author can then state their reasons why I am wrong. Then other editors and admins can make a determination which one of us makes the better case. Barton Foley (talk) 22:20, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I just pinged [[::User:Collectonian|Collectonian]] ([[::User talk:Collectonian|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Collectonian|contribs]])contributions, and suddenly it is clear why she is so angry with me. I said I wasn't going anywhere near the anime articles. I have already been to Chick Lit about two weeks ago and tagged some books with notability, no one seems to have said "boo" about that. Those folks who disagreed with my prods or notability tags pointed why they thought I was wrong, made the corrections and went on. Notice, I did not go back and replace the tags or add "boilerplate." And in fact, some of them other editors agreed with my prods. However, none of them accused me of disruption and asked I be blocked.Barton Foley (talk) 22:29, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

One of the problems is that not every article on Wikipedia is watchlisted by extremely active editors, and if you tag one of the for notability, and no one responds in time, the article could be deleted, all because you didn't take a moment to check its real-world notability (as opposed to its article-text notability). We're supposed to be here to make an encyclopedia, and having articles about notable things be removed from the encyclopedia because of an unwillingness to take a reasonable step is counter to what is supposed to be our cooperative and collegial way of operating. This is not a competition between you and article editors to see who will prevail, your goal should not be to tag as many articles as possible, it should be to help the project by culling out truly non-notable articles, which is why its partly your responsibility to make sure that those you tag really are non-notable. Any other course of behavior could easily be seen as willfully disruptive, I would think. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 23:05, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Um, Ed, an article is never going to be deleted purely because it has a notability tag on it. It's still going to have to go through process, whether that's PROD or AfD. Black Kite 23:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Of course, but Barton keeps talking about the responsibility of "the editors of the article", as if every article has people ready to jump to fix and/or advocate for the articles they work on. That's certainly the case for some articles, but many, especially stubs or starter articles, don't necessarily have that degree of monitoring, and could easily pass through the process. Since the tagger starts the whole thing going, tagging should be done with care and responsibly, and not in a rushed and slapdash manner. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 23:48, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Look, I am not sure what is going to make people happy here. I followed your advice, for example All the Boys Love Mandy Lane as I was going down the list. Notable did not touch. Aquanoids. Google search, RT search, links followed from IMDB. I truly believe that film is not notable. It does not meet the criteria. Tagged. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon? Notable after following the links and a Google search. So, really, what more can I do? One tag per day? I am following the advice given, stating the reason I believe it is not notable, I am doing the searches to double check before I tag, following IMDB tags, checking for actual reviews. SO really. What else am I missing? Barton Foley (talk) 23:23, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I think you're doing fine. You're looking at each article on a case-by-case basis, making a good faith effort to check for references and acting appropriately. As long as you're not acting indiscriminately (which, to be fair, is how it seems you started), I don't think there's much to find fault with here. -Chunky Rice (talk) 00:02, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Um, no, your comment about anime articles didn't bother me that much, though I found it rather snobbish and elitist and made me suspect you are attacking this articles not because they fail notability guidelines but because you think they are "beneath" other films. Trust me, you'd have gotten no where trying to claim those are unnotable as they all meet relevant guidelines. I'm annoyed at your false claims of "research" showing the films fail the notability guidelines. You prodded Anaconda 2 and stuck that boilerplate notice on it, despite the article already having at least FOUR reliable, third-party sources and a simple web search showing an obvious wealth of sources. You did the same to the third movie in the series, despite it being a major film series with a fourth film in production. Your AfDed article has already had an insane number of reliable sources showing that it is a well discussed made for DVD film. You are not actually checking anything, and seem to just be indiscriminately attacking almost every made-for-DVD film. I'd like to see some limit placed where Barton can NOT prod or AfD any article without leaving a notability tag for at least a month on the article and his actually writing individual messages on the talk page showing that he has really searched to ensure it fails the film notability guidelines, not just copy/pasting a false message on every page.-- [[::User:Collectonian|Collectonian]] ([[::User talk:Collectonian|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Collectonian|contribs]]) 01:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Look at that! My tag resulted in editors providing multiple sources, cleaning up the article and otherwise improving it. Looks as if rather than wrecking the entire basis for the project my tag resulted in a positive contribution and improvement to the project. Imagine that. At this point, I do not believe there is anything else I can say, it appears that no matter what someone is going to annoyed with *any* action I take or do not take. So, Admins, do what you do. Barton Foley (talk) 03:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

No... at least in the case of Believers (film) and its AfD. There, it wasn't your tag... but your speedy move to AFD within mere hours of an editor beginning to improve the article based upon the tag you yourself just placed. Wasn't that the desired result or expectation form the tag? Improvement? After myself spending some 3 minutes finding a few dozen sources, I did add the perhaps more correct tags of rescue and cleanup. But why act like we're in some sort of hurry? We have all the time we need to do it right... as long as it is not removed before it can be gotten to. And as for that long "list of possible sins" you added to the talk page (and at the AfD).....? Why not a clean note saying something like "Why doesn't somebody source this thing already?" Why not tag for sources and cites? Why not tag for cleanup? It pretty much stands to reason that if these other tags are used, notability is usually a wonderful by-product. Your incredible list makes it almost seem like the job of improvement is destined to fail... and many newcomers would not even try. Why chase away any possible help? Indeed, when I first saw it myself, I almost decided that it was pointless to continue trying. If getting an article improved was your entire (secret) agenda... then shame, shame, shame. You could do a whole lot better by spending that time encouraging improvement than frightening it away. If someone does begin to improve an article, and it is immediately rushed to AfD in spite of efforts to improve... and by that same editor who asked for improvements... what kind of message does that send? Don't you think there could be a more productive way to enlist improvements? Of course... this is just one newbie's opinion. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 03:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Review of the unblock of Dark Tea

Dark Tea (talk · contribs) was today blocked for three months by Moreschi (talk · contribs) with the following reason: "Incredible amounts of disruption: this user has basically fouled up our entire "race" topic area". This was Dark Tea's first block.

Dark Tea subsequently requested to be unblocked. Upon my review of his request, it became apparent that Moreschi had been engaged in a content dispute on Caucasian race with Dark Tea, as shown here and confirmed in the block notification. This means that the block patently violated the blocking policy, which states: "Administrators must not block users with whom they are engaged in a content dispute".

I have therefore lifted the block without consultation with the blocking admin, but I am reporting my action here for community review. I'm also notifying Moreschi of this thread. (I have not reviewed the underlying content dispute, whose subject matter does not interest me, which means that I have no opinion about the merits of either side's arguments).  Sandstein  22:34, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, come Sandstein. You knew better than just unblock without at least making an attempt at talking with Moreschi. I agree the block might be iffy, and should probably have been lifted, but doing it that way is a call for drama. Wheel wars start like that. — Coren ^(talk) 22:39, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll dually agree with that. There is no rush to unblock, given the incredible messes Dark Tea has created. At least, we could have gotten some dialogue from the blocking administrator before performing an unblock -- to which you know the only end result would be disdain towards the unblocking administrator (you) and possible wheel warring. There were many other ways you could have handled this better. seicer | talk | contribs 22:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I would normally have contacted Moreschi first. However, WP:APB allows for unilateral overrides of clearly unjustifiable blocks. My lifting of the block allows Dark Tea to participate in the present discussion. If consensus develops here that the block was indeed justified, or that another sanction (such as a topic ban) is needed, I will not oppose it and indeed help enforce it.  Sandstein  22:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I think in the interest of all parties involved, we should gain new consensus on whether a block of three months (+/-) is required. seicer | talk | contribs 22:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

There is pretty much never ever a need for an involved admin to block. Taking it here first would have been the way to avoid drama. IronDuke 22:48, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• As I say below, involved how? If I actually thought ANI would get a profitable result and had much faith in my fellow admins to recognise the problem, I would indeed have come here. To seicer: thank you. A block will not be needed if we can agree to a topic-ban from race articles. Moreschi (talk) 22:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• I appreciate your efforts in trying to maintain the quality of our articles about this obviously difficult topic, but as soon as you removed content by Dark Tea on the basis of its (perceived lack of) encyclopedic merit, you became involved in a content dispute with him, and ought not to have blocked him. You might, however, have asked another admin to do it, or you might have suggested a topic ban in an appropriate forum.  Sandstein  22:57, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Well, per the diff Sandstein cites. I see that there is much you reverted. How much was nonsense by Dark Tea, I have not checked deeply enought to see, but I don't think it all was (not even saying, BTW, that I disagree with your reversion). But saying you don't have faith in your fellow admins means that you are essentially out of step with policy consensus. Is your way better than this consensus? Quite possibly. But most admins -- most editors -- feel that way as well. If they all acted on it, this place would simply shut down. IronDuke 23:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• As I say: Number 46 - this barely qualifies as a "content dispute" at all. Moreschi (talk) 23:02, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I find you quoting yourself persuasive here, nor does it answer why it is that you won't use a community aproved forum to double-check your actions. I also see (correct me, please, if I'm wrong) that you never even warned him -- your block was the first communication on his talk page. IronDuke 23:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Arguably he was warned at the FTN thread. He chose to ignore that, and the fact that consensus found his edits unacceptable, and started reverting. Moreschi (talk) 23:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I see no warning there. IronDuke 23:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Admin agnosticism

I'm getting increasingly frustrated. Here we have one user - Dark Tea (talk · contribs) who, over three years of editing on obscure racial and UFO articles, has managed to mess a huge amount of them up. Take a look at at this - the bits in italics and the lengthy quotations are usually all him - [29] (admin only this, the rest aren't) [30], [31], [32], [33] not to mention Stereotypes of white people, Afro-Asian, and Mongoloid race as they stand. You don't need to know anything about race to see that Dark Tea is creating havoc here. So, I have a go at cleaning some of this hopeless junk up, and he starts reverting. I block him for 3 months for his 3 years of disruption: Sandstein promptly unblocks, citing the miserable blocking policy. I'm sorry, but this may just be one instance where the encyclopedia trumps procedure. I don't mind Dark Tea getting unblocked per se, but if so, I desperately need some help cleaning up his various messes. Moreschi (talk) 22:38, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Have you considered bringing this editor to the attention of another admin, then? While I very much disagree with Sandstein's unilateral unblock, I am forced to agree that a three month block from an admin who has had content disputes with the blockee was an iffy move. You were under no obligaton to effect a block yourself, and it's understandable that another admin might think you were too involved to act impartially. — Coren ^(talk) 22:44, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

What content dispute? There's a difference between a bona fide genuine dispute and me trying to remove this useless crap and him trying to retain it. This is classic Number 46, again. This is ordinary maintenance/disruption prevention: no rational person could possibly think that any valid content was under dispute here. Moreschi (talk) 22:46, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, please. This is a perfect case to WP:IAR. That guy is worthless and will probably end up blocked again, and again, and again, until he gets indefed. Jtrainor (talk) 22:48, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Moreschi may well be right with his assessment of the value of Dark Tea's contributions, but may I please strongly suggest that we do not call other people "worthless"?  Sandstein  22:54, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• Oh, no, Dark Tea is certainly not worthless. AGF is perfectly valid here: he's quite sincere. Unfortunately, his bizarre mix of racialist and non-racialist theories make it bloody hard to work out what's going on: his writing style is unbelievably unencyclopedic, and his contribution quality is generally awful - it's quotefarm after quotefarm, occasionally POV-pushing, with no attempt to establish context. What's worse, he has a terrible habit of uncritically reporting the very worst of archaic (centuries-old) sources, and then claiming they're somehow reliable and thus sacred. And the UFO stuff was so left-field I'm still recovering from the shock. Wikipedia:Competence is required applies here, I think. Moreschi (talk) 22:57, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

1. Was the original block appropriate? Probably not, but irrelevant since it has already been undone.
2. Was the unblock appropriate? Probably not, since there was no discussion about the suitability of the original block.
3. Is a block for disruption appropriate. Discuss. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 22:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

A new block seems appropriate. Verbal chat 23:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

The block was improper, and I don't believe it would be correct to go straight to a block at this time even if Moreschi's analysis is entirely correct. First, let's determine whether there is a problem; then, if the editing is found to be problematic, let's hope that Dark Tea will take the right lessons from that. A block might be appropriate down the line, depending on how things go, but not now. Everyking (talk) 23:39, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Topic-ban from race articles

I have submitted the necessary evidence above. Please look carefully through all my links (also worth noting that Dark Tea is a classic SPA. Discuss. Moreschi (talk) 23:04, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I think there's room for at least one warning before any topic ban, no? IronDuke 23:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

He's already been told at WP:FTN#Caucasian race that his editing is not on. He just ignored that with a snarky comment and started reverting. Also, this is not a newbie: he's been doing this since August 2005. Concerns must have been raised before. Moreschi (talk) 23:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

There was no warning there that I could see. IronDuke 23:15, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

well, arguably, two people saying "this article you wrote is horrible - and your style is horrible too" counts as a warning that you need to rethink your approach. And it's reasonable to assume that he read the thread, which contained lots of warnings, before he started reverting today. Moreschi (talk) 23:18, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I read the thread as full of complaints -- most likely quite well justified -- but a complaint is not a warning. "Dark Tea, knock it off or you will get blocked" is a warning. IronDuke 23:21, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and that's exactly the sort of warning we don't need for a topic-ban. He's already been told his editing is horrible and sanctionable: judging by his reverts today he won't change it. Furthermore, someone who has messed up an entire topic-area can surely be topic-banned without warnings (which he got): and after 3 years, too. What more do you need? Moreschi (talk) 23:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think a topic ban is out of line. The diffs are damning, and there does appear to be a long-term pattern of doing poor edits with little or no discussion, no care for consensus, and quite a bit of dismissive attitude. There might not have been any explicitly worded warnings, but that does not mean that the editor wasn't very well aware that his behavior was unacceptable. (Which is, after all, the point of a warning: not as a ceremonial "rule of engagement" or as a Miranda warning, but as a genuine concern that the editor might actually not know his behavior is out of line— something which is not an issue here). — Coren ^(talk) 23:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

No, the point of a warning is that it carries an "or else." That's what makes it different from "user is not listening." It isn't ceremonial, it's how WP works. IronDuke 00:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

No, it is not. It is a courtesy borne out of assumed good faith and a presumption of ignorance, rather than avoidance, of the rules. Someone who has been here for years either knows the rules he choses to break, or they are beyond his understanding. In either case, an "or else" will only delay the inevitable sanction and cause more damage to repair: he either already chose not to behave or is incapable of doing so. — Coren ^(talk) 00:44, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Most "or else's" do delay the inevitable. Nevertheless, people who contribute here for three years are entitled to at least one warning. That's just common sense. IronDuke 00:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, that's entirely backwards. Vested contributors are one of Wikipedia's biggest problems; and someone who's been contributing for years definitely should know better already. A warning is neither useful nor required. — Coren ^(talk) 01:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

That link didn't work for me. I believe it is you who have it backwards. The warning may not prove useful, but it is absolutely required in situations such as these. IronDuke 01:28, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree and disagree with different thoughts here: First, I agree that Moreschi made a bad block. I see no attempt by Moreschi to post a caution to Dark Tea's talkpage, or indeed, any communication there whatsoever. Instead, Moreschi jumped straight to a 90-day block, with a clearly emotional block message.[34] However, I also agree that Sandstein should have posted a note to Moreschi's talkpage first, before overturning the block. Then again, this was a block that pretty clearly needed to be overturned. I disagree (with respect) with Coren, who says that a warning is not necessary to a vested contributor. In my opinion, we should always try to issue warnings, especially to vested contributors. Only with anons and obvious vandalism-only accounts should we block without notice. See also WP:BLOCK#Education and warnings. --Elonka 01:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

That's pretty much my point, Elonka. The point of warnings is to educate, and they are pointless one someone who unarguably already knows what you'd warn them about. — Coren ^(talk) 01:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking at recent history, it seems most people have talked about him, not to him. Would it kill us all to start there and see what comes of it? AFAICT, this user is making decent contributions (possibly in tandem with rather not-so-decent ones). I think he's owed a tiny bit of leeway, considering how we give obvious trolls chance after chance after chance. IronDuke 02:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Coren, the "unarguably" is the problematic part there. Moreschi says that Dark Tea has "messed up" race-related articles for three years. Well okay, where's the paper trail? An editor causing that many problems would normally have multiple warnings on their talkpage, a swath of blocks, complaints, ANI threads, RfCs, mediations (or attempts), and so forth. A few of which Moreschi could have diffed to Dark Tea's talkpage. Instead, there's one very vague message from Moreschi, which makes it look like Moreschi has just decided all by his lonesome to block a longstanding contributor for three months, without warning, from a topic area where Moreschi is active. This is a very very bad idea. What if all admins did that, made unilateral decisions to block long-standing contributors without warning? No, WP:AGF requires that we assume people are acting in the best interests of the project. If someone's behavior is veering off the road, then they deserve at least a warning shot across the bow, to let them know that there's a problem. We shouldn't just assume, "Well gee, they should've known it was coming." --Elonka 02:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

That's not an unreasonable position, although I'm a more than a little sceptical that it is, in practice, more than an extraordinarily rare occurrence. At any rate, I agree that in the present case a warning would have been a Good Thing; and that Moreschi has probably jumped the gun in frustration. I'm disputing that there is a sine qua non requirement that a warning be explicitly given, especially to longstanding editors. — Coren ^(talk) 02:11, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Look, of course there's not going to be a paper trail of ANI threads. Dark Tea hasn't been editing Barack Obama: he has been editing very, very obscure articles, populated by nutters, which sane people, even if they do know something about the odder quirks of 18th, 19th, and early 20th century thought, are naturally going to avoid because they fear a nest of flamewars. Quite rightly, too. Ultimately I don't care what you guys do this chap, so long as he stays out of my way as I waste my valuable time (which really should be spent sorting out Afrocentrism topics, which is what I'm supposed to be doing at the moment) clearing up the crap he's left behind over the last 3 years. I do not have the time for revert-wars over this. If he starts trying to interfere, I will be furious - not with him, but with you. He's not a troll, just a rather clueless obsessive: you lot should know better than to give him any credence. Moreschi (talk) 13:20, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Conclusion

After reading through pretty much all of the diffs here I have concluded that a topic ban from race-related articles is completely justified here, and I have placed a note to that effect on the editor's talkpage. Black Kite 23:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

The matter hasn't been discussed in depth, and I don't see consensus for a topic ban at this point. I'd much prefer to see this user given some suggestions on how to improve, with a caution that the existing editing problems could not be allowed to continue. There is no need to risk frustrating or alienating anyone at this stage. Everyking (talk) 00:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Not only has it not been discussed in depth, the user in question has not had a chance to reply. Yeesh. I find myself getting frustrated when problem users are given ten "final" warnings before getting booted -- but this user is given none, and no chance to explain/apologize/promise to mend ways. IronDuke 00:05, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, have a look at the contribs. He's broken so many articles with his mish-mash of pseudo-scientific claptrap that it's untrue. If this user really wants to contribute to the encyclopedia, he can prove that he can do it on other articles first. Having said that, if an uninvolved admin wants to try a different tack, feel free to remove my topic ban and mentor him (or similar) - I'd be fine with that. Black Kite 00:14, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I took a quick look, found this, which looks like a pretty good edit, this edit looks fine to me – I could be missing something. And this?. Again, I’m just skimming, but is that a bad edit? Bad faith? Removed this uncited statement, which is fine by me. I’m sure there must be examples of nonsense, people are probably not getting fed up for no reason, but again, a 3-year contributor gets the benefit of our process. IronDuke 00:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I've been here over a couple years. How many good contribs do I have to trade in to insult you? How about if I want to edit war to put some far left-wing sources in to the George Bush article? Sorry but that kind of logic is just absurd. This mentality of "he or she has been here awhile, let them run all over the project" has to stop. The fact that they've been here this long should mean they'd be held to a higher standard than the guy who just showed up. If we'd string up a "newbie" than we should certainly be stringing up someone who has been here for 3 years. I'm all for a topic ban.--Crossmr (talk) 04:28, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I know you meant that facetiously, but time served on WP = slack being cut for you. It may be that we should change that culture, but that is our culture and has been ever since I've been here. I don't think we should be stringing up newbies either, and indeed, if this were a newbie, I'd still be arguing that at least one warning should be given before getting all draconian on him. I can't see why that's controversial. IronDuke 15:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Because the amount of time this editor has been here takes an extreme stretch of good faith to believe he's not familiar with the relevant policies.--Crossmr (talk) 22:45, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

He may well be familiar with them, but if he's never been told specifically, "You must comply, or else," then you can't blame him for thinking they don't apply. Many editors here would ignore policy if they could get away with it; being told that you can't get away with it is the first step to understanding that. Apparently, no one told Dark Tea he could be blocked or topic banned for his behavior (and I still think those are both extreme measures, from what I looked at). IronDuke 17:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• I have informed the editor in question of this thread. It seemed the polite thing to do. DuncanHill (talk) 01:30, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I also see no consensus for a topic ban. Black Kite, the only times that an admin can place a topic ban on one admin's say-so, are when dealing with areas that are in an ArbCom enforcement area. To my knowledge, race-related articles do not qualify for any ArbCom sanctions. And even if they did, every such case that I know about, requires that the editor be formally warned beforehand with a specific message to their talkpage. For example, see WP:ARBPIA#Discretionary sanctions. The ban would also need to be logged at the appropriate case page. Barring that, a topic ban could be instituted if there were community consensus, but you would have to provide a link to that consensus. A ban would also have to be instituted with certain parameters, such as stating how long it was supposed to be in effect. But just going to a random editor's talkpage and stating that you've decided to topic ban them?[35] No, that's not how it works. --Elonka 03:59, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Pseudoscience, broadly considered? Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:23, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) This has been discussed by several editors and administrators following the posting on WP:FTN. Procedural details are necessarily not the foremost priority when the concern is over content fairly well typified by the surreal paragraph below from Mongoloid race, made up entirely of a meaningless patchwork of quotes. This should ring alarm bells for any wikipedian. It is disingenuous to call DarkTea a "random editor". Please see WP:FTN and try to take into account the extraordinary method used for adding content. Wikipedia is not a jigsaw puzzle for randomly chosen quotes, it is a scholarly encyclopedia.

"Native Americans are clearly derived from an Asian population with affinities to the Mongoloids.^[1] However, Native Americans retain certain non-Mongoloid features.^[1] These might represent the genetic legacy of a pre-Mongoloid, Australoid-Caucasoid population, swamped by a later Mongoloid immigration;^{1] more likely, they reflect the broad range of physical variation found in early northern Asian populations, before Mongoloid traits became predominant." ^[2] "When we compare Native Americans with the other living races of mankind, we find them to be most similar to the Mongoloid peoples of Asia.^[1] Among the visible physical characteristics that these groups share are coarse straight black hair, relatively hairless faces and bodies, light brown skin, brown eyes, epicanthic folds (only occasionally present in American populations), high cheekbones, and a high frequency of shovel-shaped incisor teeth^[1] ... The distribution of patterns of invisible genetically determined traits offer less clear-cut evidence of relationship."^[1]

Mathsci (talk) 09:27, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I entirely agree with Elonka, and more, with Sandstein's action. This was not an iffy block, but a bad one. Process, particularly standard and successful process, is important, particularly when an editor has been treated in an unusual manner up til then. As she says, We shouldn't just assume, "Well gee, they should've known it was coming." - why should DT have known? In this rare situation, DarkTea has formally adhered to content rules, but has successfully introduced eccentric positions and edits into many articles - for years. People naturally judge what is acceptable and practical by their own experience, and DarkTea's SPA experience has been quite unusual - there just hasn't been the opposition one would expect. One can't just say without proof that there must have been warnings, and apparently there were none. Talking to, not just about, as IronDuke points out, is essential and obligatory. Did "the consensus" find his edits unacceptable to the point of actually reverting them, of backing up Moreschi - apparently not, although it surely would have in a little while. Note Moreschi's statement, when he says that he doesn't mind the unblock but desperately needs aid in cleaning up. Rushing to block, using quick but ultimately weak administrative powers rather than the superficially slower but infinitely stronger exercise of consensus backed up by the 3RR if need be, is a pointless procedure and a bad precedent.John Z (talk) 11:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Support Topic Ban - we should act as if we were real researchers and educated people "The scientific support for terms such as Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid used widely in these earlier theories has fallen steadily. ... the Negroid/Caucasoid/Mongoloid paradigm has fallen into near-total disfavour." (That's actually one of the pieces of text reverted back in by Dark Tea!). We should stop tolerating the kind of demeaning ethnic labelling going on here: "added racial ancestry of Xxxxxx Xxxxx because it was pertinenet to the citation about him being Asian with white blood rather than white with Asian blood". I can't go far into these diffs without feeling physically sick, we're seeing a dangerous and unpleasant obsession at work. And we've no longer any excuse, we do know where it leads. PR^talk 13:26, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support only if the behavior continues; I think that a minimalist approach will yield the best results here. I looked into DarkTea's contributions to the area when the matter was posted to FT/N before getting distracted by useless gits. If someone is willing to mentor them in NPOV to the extent that fair and proportionately weighted edits start emerging, we might get another quality editor out of this debacle. Now that experienced eyes are monitoring the problem, bad edits can be swiftly reverted and warnings supplied. - Eldereft (cont.) 17:39, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• Comment Elonka has, technically, a point. But as I said, the alternatives are a block or some form of mentorship. This editor can't be allowed to continue on his/her merry way. Black Kite 19:45, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support - I've said above, but I'll say here. I support a topic ban. This editor shouldn't be editing these kinds of articles at all.--Crossmr (talk) 22:45, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• Further Elonka has taken it upon herself to revoke the topic ban. That's fine. As I've said on her talk page, she is now responsible for monitoring this editor's work. I will say this, though - if the tendentious editing continues, I'll have no problem in restoring Moreschi's block. Further illuminating reading here - User_talk:Elonka#User:Dark_Tea. Black Kite 23:02, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• Elonka seems once more to be out of her depth. When will she learn? Her experiments so far have shown that she has no intellectual grasp of serious content problems. Some day she might realise what this encyclopedia is all about. It is hard not to see this as some kind of vendetta for criticisms by Moreschi. Will MastCell be her next victim? Mathsci (talk) 23:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
• Comment. I'm still not seeing any justification for a topic ban, let alone a block. What exactly did Dark Tea do? I've looked at all the diffs here, and I'm not seeing the problem. Instead, I'm seeing an editor who is extremely careful to provide sources for any addition, and to remove unsourced information. There may be some WP:UNDUE issues, but (so far) I'm not seeing any solid proof of that either. Instead, I've seen a colossally bad block by Moreschi. He made a massive change to an article, where he deleted many citations to what appear to be reliable sources.[36] An hour later, he was reverted one time by Dark Tea,[37] then a half-hour later Moreschi reverted,[38] and one minute later, Moreschi blocked Dark Tea, a longtime contributor, for three months,[39] without so much as a single warning to Dark Tea's talkpage. If Dark Tea was as disruptive as Moreschi claims, I'd really like to see some diffs, either of actual policy violations, or of proof that Dark Tea was disregarding talkpage consensus or RfCs. --Elonka 00:54, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
• I agree that the block was really bad and Moreschi should have got someone else to do it, but I also agree that this user is damaging articles and needs to be stopped. Last night I looked through her previous account, User:Dark_Tichondrias, and between the two accounts I feel she has had warnings and admins and editors have raised concerns about her edits, such as misrepresenting sources and continuing to do so even after it's been pointed out to her [40] [41], original research, which apparently includes adding self-portraits to articles [42], inventing neologisms [43] [] and "hover[ing] over virtually all race related pages and constantly reshape them to suit [her] point of view", garbling sources [44] and synthesis [45]. I'm not sure if there's also an image problem but dozens of notices have been posted to the former account. There were warnings on the previous account, albeit apparently not recently and not directly related to the current issue, but saying this user has never previously had a warning is not correct. [46], [47], NPA warning. I support a topic ban for this user. Sarah 01:23, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Sarah, with all due respect, nearly all your diffs there are from 2006 and 2007. What current activity in 2008 would justify a topic ban to protect the project? --Elonka 01:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

My diffs all relate to the prior account, abandoned in February last year, which is why they're old. I haven't had a chance to properly go through the history of the new account yet but I think it shows that there is a sustained and long term problem with this user's edits, that there have been warnings and discussions going back over quite a long period of time, but that they still haven't "got it". Sarah 01:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• Right, Elonka, you just got yourself placed in my clueless category. You clearly cannot understand that sources are not all equal, and superficially sourced content can still be utter crap. I've seen you push this all-sources-are-equal agenda before: no, no, and no. In other news, you are not a one-woman AMA. With an editor with such a confused racialist agenda as Dark Tea, education in Wikipedia ways - which after three years she should know already - is fruitless. Unless you're willing to correct her confused views on race, which is the real problem here. BTW, Sarah is correct: Dark Tea wrote a huge of amount of White Canadian/Australian/X articles, all of which got killed at AFD. And she's done much the same sort of stuff this year at Mongoloid race and Caucasian race. If you can't see the problem here, after all of that - shrug. Moreschi (talk) 19:23, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
• As I've said on Dark Tea's talkpage, Elonka clearly appears to have only poked her nose into this item because of her previous interactions with Moreschi, with whom she clearly has a dispute. This is made even worse by the the fact that she is clearly incompetent in this editing area, as proved by the fact that she could not identify any problematic areas of Dark Tea's editing. It is probably time for yet another examination of Elonka's administrator credentials. Black Kite 23:58, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Lol, I have no problem with Elonka following me around ANI. Go to it, and good luck. What I DO have a problem with is the fact that Elonka cannot see that we actually have a major problem here with Dark Tea's editing. I do not want Elonka mentoring Dark Tea, something for which she is patently incompetent. Jagz, anyone? Zero g? You remember these guys? Moreschi (talk) 00:06, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

What next?

There seems to be widespread agreement that Dark Tea has caused serious problems. What is actually being done to prevent further problems? -- ChrisO (talk) 22:59, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• I am keeping an eye on their edits, and despite the problems caused by Elonka's unwelcome interference, as soon as the editor starts editing disruptively again, I will block them. It's as simple as that. Black Kite 00:00, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Stymied by large article history delete

I've been going through and cleaning a trail of edit summary vandalism. When I requested deletion of California, I see:

This page has a large edit history, over 5,000 revisions.

Deletion of such pages has been restricted to prevent accidental disruption of Wikipedia.

So, what do I do? —EncMstr (talk) 05:10, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe only developers have the means to delete pages with that many revisions. Alternatively, if the edit summaries cause serious concern (i.e. outing an editor), I prescribe a shot of revision hiding. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Ed, a cafe facade!)} 07:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Oversight is the best bet here. I think stewards have the bigdelete permission, but they are probably not too keen to start cleaning articles here. If I remember correctly, there is also an open bugzilla enhancement request, which would allow admins to delete single revisions without doing the whole delete/undelete-routine. I cannot give you the bugzilla number for that, though, as I have never been able to find anything there :) – Sadalmelik ☎ 08:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd say that most of the time, if the vandalism is not worth bugging oversight then it's not worth killing the database by performing a big delete/restore anyway :). I couldn't find the revisions so I guess oversight acted upon it? -- lucasbfr ^talk 12:22, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Deleting pages to remove edit summary vandalism should not be done without gaining community consensus. Such mass deletions affect all of us, including potential new editors who try to edit for the first time and are met with the server lock message. Most of these summaries aren't even worth the trouble. It's in the history, not on the page. If it doesn't qualify for oversight, locking the server down to remove it only serves the vandal in extending the negative impact their edits have had on the project. Jennavecia ^(Talk) 12:34, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Really? I cannot say I have ever heard that before ... --Kralizec! (talk) 13:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The 5000 revisions limit has been enforced to prevent admins from deleting the sandbox again :p (last time, the db was locked for an hour as a result) -- lucasbfr ^talk 14:49, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Several weeks ago, when I was still learning about such things, I removed a vandalism revision from axe that someone was asking people on /b/ to save. That worked pretty well, since the page has less than 1000 revisions. Then the same thing happened to Antarctica, (which has/had more than 4000 revisions). Like a blind fool I deleted it. That locked the servers for 7 minutes. And, of course, afterwards I had to restore it, which locked the servers for another four or five minutes. I think that's why the devs don't want us deleting big page - n00b admins do stupid things. (As do experienced ones, but that is beside the point ;-) J.delanoy^gabs_adds 00:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Adding the Lindsay Lohan article into the LGBT project

Resolved

 – No action:content dispute--Tznkai (talk) 17:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems two users are attempting to add this article into the LGBT article due to the suspicion that she may be marrying another woman. So far this has only been reported in tabloid press and in Newsday her representative was quoted denying the claim. I have repeated reverted the addition of the project tag due to WP:BLP but the other user keeps reverting back. --Ave Caesar (talk) 12:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I think these are just rumors and have been denied by Linday's official rep's. Unless the fact is verified, the article shouldn't be added to the LGBT project. --Superflewis (talk) 12:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm one of those other users. The project inclusion has been there for a while. The issue isn't whether reliable sources have said Lohan is gay ... they haven't, and neither the article nor the talk page makes that claim. Reliable news sources have discussed her relationship with Ronson, and the discussion of that relationship with Ronson has generated discussion about modern tolerance of homosexual and bisexual celebrities. There isn't a BLP issue here.Kww (talk) 12:42, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I also don't see why this would be an AN/I or BLP issue - is being associated of interest to LGBT supposed to be defamatory? Other sources include the San Francisco Chronicle,[48] the Telegraph,[49] ABC News,[50] and probably hundreds more. Wikidemon (talk) 12:56, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikiprojects are behind the veil, BLP violations exist in the article. This is just standard wikipedian in fighting, and should be settled by talking it through. Also, 3RR counts on talk pages too kids. Play nice.--Tznkai (talk) 12:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Along with Kww, I am the other of those other users. The question to be asked when adding the LGBT project template is not "Is Lindasy Lohan gay?" but "Is the Lindsay Lohan media story that she's engaged to another woman of relevance to the LGBT WikiProject?". To which of course the answer is yes. Tagging someone under our remit is not a violation of BLP. Dev920, who misses Jeffpw. 13:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Once more, WP:LGBT is associated with imposing its views upon an article simply by placing its Wikiproject template on the talk page. Either I'm just becoming aware of the frequency of these disputes, or they are rising in number. Either way, it's really draining to have to explain in multiple articles that members of WP:LGBT are just as interested in accuracy of detail than any other Wikipedian. Regardless is Lohan is or isn't gay, her article needs to reflect what has been published by reliable sources; that is the reason why that template is there. We do rumor control just like anyone else who watches the article. --Moni3 (talk) 13:11, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The idea that gay people "impose" their views just by having them is always a little suspect. If LGBT designates something a subject of interest that isn't a disparagement is it? Wikidemon (talk) 13:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I hope you understood my comment to mean that others are assuming we're imposing our hope or view that Lohan is gay simply by placing the Wikiproject template on the talk page. That is not what it means, nor is it why it's there. --Moni3 (talk) 13:35, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Just because a BLP has the LGBT project tag on does not mean that the person in question is gay. Such blinkered thinking/assumptions are unfortunate. The rumours around Lohan mean that if anything it is more important that the LGBT project is involved to help ensure that only accurately and reliably sourced info is included, because the project has more experience at dealing with scandal-led reporting of certain newspages/papers. This really shouldn't be an issue for ANI. --Ged UK (talk) 13:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Given how widely Lohan is being discussed in GLBT media, inclusion in the WikiProject seems reasonable. Being listed by the project just means a person is of interest to people interested in this subject; Fred Phelps is also listed under this WikiProject, and I'm 85% sure that he isn't gay. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 13:28, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree. There has been substantial newscoverage of the relationship including lots of sources that certainly pass WP:RS (a few of them are quoted above in Wikidemon's post, but there are lots more[51]) and the relationship has been routinely characterized as romantic by these sources. In view of this I don't see a problem with adding the LGBT project template to the page. Nsk92 (talk) 13:43, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Even if mere rumors were spread by questionable sources such as Perez Hilton or TMZ, the fact that WP:LGBT must get other editors to agree and confirm that an article is within its scope is bizarre and unnecessary. Why are its own members not the best judges to make that determination? I must confess that I find this a source of continuing frustration. --Moni3 (talk) 13:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It is kind of a moot point in this particular case, but I feel that any edit to a particular article or a wikiproject template edit to a talk page of a particular article is ultimately subject to consensus of the editors interested in that article and that the article's talk page is the correct place for working out such consensus. Nsk92 (talk) 15:06, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree completely with Moni and Ged UK (among others). A WikiProject, any Wikiproject, should not have to "explain itself", should not be subjected to repeated accusations of disparagement, and should not have to justify its taggings, for a talkpage of an article of itnerest. This debate is old, and it is not 1957. Keeper ǀ 76 13:59, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I notice no one seems worried about whether we might be implying that Lohan is transsexual. Why is that? I think it's because it is obviously ridiculous to make that conclusion, simply based on the presence of a Wikiproject tag on a Talk page. I think the same argument applies equally well to the letters L, G and B. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 14:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Brilliant point.Dev920, who misses Jeffpw. 14:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I've seen her in Herbie the Love Bug ... she couldn't even act in that, let alone "act" as someone of another gender. (Please note, I'm using "act" in a loose sense to make a point and not saying transgenders are in any way "acting" or in an insulting manner towards LGBT persons)BMW(drive) 17:10, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

She has not denied her relationship in recent months as far as I know, indeed her lady friend has been asked to comment for articles which have been on the BBC site, for instance when Lohan's father was being outspoken. Sticky Parkin 17:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, it makes no odds whether she denies it, if WP:RS say it. Sticky Parkin 17:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a content dispute. Take it onto the article talk page.--Tznkai (talk) 17:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the inclusion of the LGBT project template on this article is not at all an issue worthy of AN/I. (It's obviously unproblematic, given the widespread discussion of Lohan's relationship with Ronson in reliable sources.) There's no BLP issue here. If parties have been edit warring, Wikipedia:Dispute resolution and WP:AN3 are thataway. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with those who do not see a BLP issue regarding inclusion in LGBT project as long as that is not a springboard for then adding statements in the Lohan article about the Lohan-Ronson relationship that have not been solidly confirmed by Lohan or Ronson. Whatever is going on between Lohan and Ronson has certainly stirred up an interest in LGBT issues. Ward3001 (talk) 04:58, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Egregious violation of WP:AGF

Resolved

 – No admin action required or possible. ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ has nothing to declare except his jeans 13:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Guettarda just made an egregious violation of WP:AGF [52] by construing something completely offensive and untrue. It's an obvious violation of WP:5 and I believe his recent edits to Relationship between religion and science don't improve wikipedia in part because of the violation and in part that logically they don't make sense. For his or her next actions seem done to provoke an edit war. His or her removal of material that was never questioned by any other editor before. In fact another editor put it in its prominent location. what can be done about this? --Firefly322 (talk) 13:18, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

This is not the Wikipedia complaints department. Please follow the dispute resolution processes rather than telling tales here when you are in a content dispute. ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ has nothing to declare except his jeans 13:23, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any egregious anything, obvious content dispute. Pete.Hurd (talk) 13:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

How is someone assuming that I somehow meant screw you not an egregious violation of WP:5? If you said that in a workplace you could easily loose your job. --Firefly322 (talk) 13:48, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Which part of "this is not the Wikipedia complaints department" did you not understand? Content disputes go to dispute resolution. Admins are not your mummy and will not give another user a telling off for you when you are having a content dispute with them. ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ has nothing to declare except his jeans 13:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Someone assuming something bad about another editor is not a content dispute. Wikipedia should not allow obvious unWP:CIVIL and non-WP:AGF actions/comments to go unchecked, especially ones that can easily accumulate and help to cultivate a hostile work environment. ЯEDVERS as someone who states that they are gay on their talk page, I would think that you may know something about a hostile work environment. Wikipedia has WP:5 and includes WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF, there's nothing about don't ask don't tell, because this isn't the U.S. military. It's supposed to be welcoming to gays, straights, religious and non-religious persons alike. --Firefly322 (talk) 14:05, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Um, not really... it's a bit rude, I would venture, but in my job (which is working in a hardware store) anyone who said that to me would be proffered a box of screws. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

What a load of rubbish. Would you like an example of an egregious violation of WP:AGF? Here's one for you. Your AN/I thread on Hrafn succeeded in driving him into retirement when all your previous harassment of him had failed to do so. Having discovered the magical power of AN/I, you're eager to try it out against a new opponent. Hesperian 14:16, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Me harrassing Hrafn? Check the diffs. With all due respect, think you've got it backwards. --Firefly322 (talk) 14:20, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Is that all the response I get? Aren't you going to take me to AN/I or RFC or ArbCom or something? Or do you prefer to save your frivolous complaints for people who scrutinize your contributions? Hesperian 14:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Redvers, your response to the original poster falls woefully short of the behaviour expected from an openly gay Wikipedian. To act in such a willfully individualistic manner is doubly cruel when dealing with someone who clearly has issues when other editors comment on the contributor and not the content. Have you no decency? SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 18:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. I wasn't nearly bitchy enough. I'll have to try harder, I really will. It's just that sometimes I run out of bile and find myself reduced to just "plain speaking". It's a failing of mine. ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ has nothing to declare except his jeans 09:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• • Um, what? Why should an openly gay Wikipedian behave differently from any other Wikipedian? I'm not an openly gay Wikipedian, and I can say without reseveration that Firefly's repeated running to ANI should be stopped. Can we get a page ban for Firefly? Corvus cornix_talk 22:33, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe that SheffieldSteel is being sarcastic - check where their expected wikilink actually links. No comment on your pageban proposal as I may or may not be involved in some sort of dispute with Firefly322 at the moment. - Eldereft (cont.) 04:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Pageban per friends of gays should not be allowed to edit articles! Right now! Bishonen | talk 16:59, 13 September 2008 (UTC).

Banned editor engaging in edit warring and block evasion

Banned user User:Ovlem (also previously operating as User:Wikipéire and multiple other socks) is engaged in block evasion, 3RR evasion and disruptive editing under IPs of: 78.16.164.111, 78.16.173.227 and 194.125.71.23.

Evidence of link to previously banned editor can be seen in pattern of editing (user is a WP:SPA bent on piping every instance of Republic of Ireland - even where this impacts clarity), IP Address, overlap between edits (see own talk history), etc. Guliolopez (talk) 15:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Could someone investigate? This fiasco with serial sockpuppets is a wiki-scandal! Djegan (talk) 16:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Please file a request at WP:Requests for checkuser. If abuse of muliple accounts is confirmed, all will be blocked. — Satori Son 17:10, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I think this ip may also be a vandal. In any case their is a coordinated attempt at vandalism here. Please dont stand back and quote "policy", a good 20 articles are been changed here against the consensus of others by ip jumpers! Djegan (talk) 17:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

As much as I'd happily open a checkuser, I'm not sure there is much value. A checkuser was already opened on this puppet master only a few days ago. See: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Ovlem. And now he's just hoping from IP to IP evading both the previously imposed blocks which arose from THAT checkuser, and the previously imposed blocks from his previous puppet master account. When strict policy is followed to address this disruptive editting, he either makes a mockery of it (like for example opening dozens of appeals), or just comes back when the temporary IP blocks expire. Personally I'm not sure what to do, as reasoning with him doesn't help either. But another checkuser puts too much weight on the editors who are trying to be reasonable and measured in their approach. I'm not advocating banning him without review. Just that a quick review will show what we're saying - without having the overhead of a checkuser across. (Especially given that a checkuser will just show that he's jumping IPs anyway). Sigh. Guliolopez (talk) 17:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

(DEINDENT) Can an admin please have a look at the editing history of this editor, and his 3 or 4 associated socks 194.125.21.43, 213.202.164.162, 78.16.164.111. And either consider protecting the pages that this behaviour is being measured upon, or by blocking these IPs for block evasion, 3RR evasion and related nonsense? It is very frustrating when one is constrained by the 3RR guidelines, and a brazenly disruptive editor can evade blocks, bans, and censure under 3RR. In particular when a quick look at the history of the pages in question or the IPs contributions list shows how obvious the abuse has been. (In particular when we went through all the hoop-lah of a checkuser and related "multi account abuse" procedures only a few days ago. And it proved no deterrent what so ever). Guliolopez (talk) 18:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi guys. Is anyone actually going to help us deal with this nonsense? I don't know how many different ways to advise this editor that this behaviour isn't appropriate. I don't think protecting the pages is appropriate (because it will lock out measured and reasonable anon or new editors for dozens of pages). So unless someone can actually block this little sock farm for a while, and force this editwarring, socking, disruptive, ban evading, spa into the consensus building approach he claims to be espousing, then this will continue until productive/measured editors lose all faith. As any admin will quickly see, this puppet farm claims to be making edits based on some notional consensus, but hasn't ONCE opened a talk thread to build this CON, nor has he responded to any requests to agree a compromise. As noted above, I remain a little annoyed that this warring can continue (because he jumps from IP to IP) and yet I am constrained by 3RR. This may not be direct vandalism, but is certainly vandal-like behaviour in spirit and needs to be dealt with. Guliolopez (talk) 15:54, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

User:WLU

Some time ago, a project was started to create subpages to Chronic fatigue syndrome since the article had grown too long. Unanimously, it was decided by all the regular contributors to use the compound term ME/CFS in these subarticles, to avoid the need to create a double amount of them. The project also contained the intention to resurrect the Myalgic encephalomyelitis article. ME and CFS are related diagnoses, with of the two only ME in the WHO classification.

Now, User:WLU, who is not a regular editor to Chronic fatigue syndrome and related articles, unilaterally decided that the diagnosis ME needs to be removed from all the subarticle titles and carried this out immediately without consulting the regulars and despite protests. As a result, titles and contents no longer match, and disputes have arisen at most of them as well as on the main CFS article. Several times, dispute templates were removed.

In my opinion this is disruptive editing behaviour. We have tried to reason with him, but he acts as if he is the owner of these articles, and claims that WHO classification, CDC and expert statements to the effect that ME and CFS are different entities are completely irrelevant. WLU has also started to edit the content of the articles to match his view, causing additional upheaval.

I am prepared to seek dispute resolution along normal channels, rather than reverting everything and restore consensus titles immediately, but only if this steamrolling stops.

Users Bricker and Tekaphor quoting the CDC: Various terms are incorrectly used interchangeably with CFS. CFS has an internationally accepted case definition that is used in research and clinical settings. ... The name myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) was coined in the 1950s to clarify well-documented outbreaks of disease; however, ME is accompanied by neurologic and muscular signs and has a case definition distinct from that of CFS.[53]

• The main CFS article
• The ME project

Guido den Broeder (talk, visit) 15:59, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• You might actually want to try dispute resolution here. AN/I isn't a part of that process. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:09, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

WLU's actions have quite a lot of support from other editors on Talk:Alternative names for chronic fatigue syndrome. Guido is basically on his own although ME-flavoured editor Tekaphor has now come to his aid. This is a content dispute, and dispute resolution is needed. Mediation may be the way forward. JFW | T@lk 18:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, content dispute. AN/I is not the place. This can, and should, be settled with sources. WLU (t) (c) ^{(rules - simple rules)} 18:22, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The reason for this report was that you didn't wait for that. If you can indicate that in retrospect you agree that you may have acted too boldly, and that you are willing to slow down, this incident can be closed. Guido den Broeder (talk, visit) 18:27, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Guido, since you were only unblocked two days ago, with several admins expressing doubts about the wisdom of doing so, it is quite discouraging to see how much trouble you have already stirred up. I'm not an admin and don't have a crystal ball, but it's pretty easy to see that the next block is likely to come soon and unlikely to ever be removed. Looie496 (talk) 18:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Is that really helpful? There is an insiduous form of WP:BITE whereby editors who get off on the wrong foot here find it very hard to recover. People assume bad faith due to the initial block or incident, and things spiral downwards from there. Admittedly, Guido could behave better, but not all users twig straightaway to how Wikipedia works, or the right way to conduct themselves. At some point, if an editor does show potential, some encouragement has to be given as well. Carcharoth (talk) 00:22, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Your latest remarks, WLU, are however not very promising, so for the moment this report stands. Your reaction to someone asking you for sources is to have that person topic-banned and calling him a single-purpose account. Guido den Broeder (talk, visit) 19:08, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I have no fundamental allegiance to "myalgic encephalomyelitis"; however, quoting the CDC's brief glossary entry to demonstrate equivalency of the two terms, without considering what the CDC have actually discussed at length elsewhere on the issue, seemed unbalanced. Mangojuice does a good job at explaining: [54] - Tekaphor (TALK) 05:40, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I am extremely disturbed by this comment by WLU which is not only a vicious personal attack, but also a breach of privacy. Guido den Broeder (talk, visit) 10:39, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

How is that a breach of privacy? He stated you have two active hours per day, an obvious assumption based on viewing your contributions. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 11:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I was reading over previous discussions - the 2 hours per day was posted by Guido, here. The SPA is actually erroneous, Guido is very focussed on his contributions to areas he thinks himself an expert, but is not a single topic area. I'm not sure where vicious is coming from, but whatever. My good name has been defended, I don't see much reason to post here anymore. WLU (t) (c) ^{(rules - simple rules)} 17:57, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Describing that comment as a "breach of privacy" is patently absurd. Tim Vickers (talk) 00:12, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, WLU, for disclosing the same private information here further. Guido den Broeder (talk, visit) 00:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Guido_den_Broeder

This user has been blocked 5 times for edit warring and general uncivil behaviour, and another few times for legal threats, and he is causing more problems.

Yesterday he posted a false and malicious complaint against me, accusing me of adding "false information" and hurting patients, neither of which I did.

If you have a look at his edits you'll see that I actually just neglected to put in some references for some changes I made to the psychosomatic article (as I thought they weren't needed). When asked by a few people to add them I did so, but Guido still refuses to allow my changes. At the request of mangojuice I have refrained from removing guido's pov tag in the article, but as Guido refuses to discuss things reasonably there is nothing that I can do. Also see here.

He has also just made a complaint against WLU for something that is just a content dispute and shouldn't be listed here. WLU hasn't done anything wrong.

It is impossible to work with Guido, as he [refuses to talk reasonably with other editors, instead pushing his own pov, making spurious complaints when he doesn't get his way, insulting editors, etc. His past history suggests that he isn't going to change. It would be better for everyone if he was permanently banned. He can then work on his wikisage project and everyone will be happy. --Sciencewatcher (talk) 16:26, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Guido recently tagged this as a minor edit when it clearly isn't. I asked him on the talk page, but he didn't respond. It may have been an oversight rather than deception, but if so why didn't he apologise? --Sciencewatcher (talk) 16:35, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea what y'all are fighting over, but as an aside, there is a setting in preferences that checks the "minor" box as the default. Sometimes people forget to uncheck it. -- Avi (talk) 16:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

And here is another example of his uncivil behaviour, refusing to discuss what he had changed and instead just telling me I didn't understand diff. --Sciencewatcher (talk) 16:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

This might be worth discussing - Guido is a problematic user who doesn't really understand or like the consensus-building process. I don't know if there's a topic ban warranted, but he keeps skating on thinner and thinner ice in my opinion. WLU (t) (c) ^{(rules - simple rules)} 18:45, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It looks like a content dispute to me. I'm not 100% sure that Guido is the best person to be editing some of these medical articles, but I'm uneasy that some people seem to have Guido marked out as "problematic". Once you get a reputation like that, whether justified or not, it is very hard to get rid of it. There are problems, I admit, but no more than we see with others. My experience of Guido on chess articles is that he can edit calmly and productively, and the options should be either to encourage him to edit that way on all articles, or to explore a temporary topic ban. But if others are editing poorly on the other side of this dispute, then they should face temporary topic bans as well. Carcharoth (talk) 19:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Sciencewatcher, would you consider taking a closer look at Guido's block log? The first edit warring block was back in December 2007. The next four block log entries culminate in a "not edit warring" verdict. Then we have two edit warring blocks. The "legal threats" blocks are complicated and should be considered separately from the edit warring blocks (not everyone agreed with the second "legal threats" block). Personally, when someone points to someone's block log as evidence of anything, I always look at the log entries in detail, and would suggest taking what is said there with a pinch of salt - it is not always an adequate summary of what happened in each incident. As I've said above, the current incident looks like a content dispute. It would be better to concentrate on resolving that by dispute resolution, instead of requesting someone on the other side of a content dispute from you be banned. Carcharoth (talk) 20:06, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I had another look at his block log. As far as I can see he has indeed been blocked 5 times for edit warring and being disruptive. He was only unblocked once (by mangojuice) with a comment of "not edit warring", but apparently the other admins thought he was edit warring. --Sciencewatcher (talk) 21:14, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Then you need to learn how to interpret block logs. Seriously, no offence intended, but the logs are quite clear:

• 16:45, 16 January 2008 - blocked by Tariqabjotu for 40 hours - Edit warring: on Chronic fatigue syndrome
• 16:46, 16 January 2008 - unblocked by Tariqabjotu - lengthening...
• 16:46, 16 January 2008 - blocked by Tariqabjotu for 48 hours - Edit warring: on Chronic fatigue syndrome
• 18:52, 16 January 2008 - unblocked by Mangojuice - not edit warring

On the surface at least (no way to be certain without digging up the original discussions and block notices and editing history), that looks like a rather pointless unblock to lengthen a block by 8 hours to, presumably the "full tariff" of 48 hours, followed by an unblock around 2 hours later with what looks like a complete exoneration. The fact that you characterise the unblock and reblock as one of the "5 blocks" you mention, and didn't even point out that there appears to be an exonerating unblock, demonstrates that you are not taking the block log entries into account, and are waving around a number of blocks (5) as if that means something. If you are going to point to a user's past history as justification for a block, the least you can do is actually do the work to find the original incident that led to the blocks and unblocks on 16 January 2008, and provide diffs. Unless you do that, you are just, as LessHeard vanU has said, block shopping. I'm not normally as blunt as this, but that really is what it looks like to me. Both you and Guido need to work together on this article you both want to edit, not fight each other. Carcharoth (talk) 00:09, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I looked more carefully and it seems there were 4 separate blocks for edit warring and related stuff - I didn't realise one was just an extension: 14 Dec 2007, 16 Jan 2008, 1 May 2008, 29 May 2008. The number of blocks certainly does mean something...if a user has been causing trouble this many times in the past, it is unlikely they will change. Sometimes it's better just to do a permanent ban. And I'm not sure why you say I didn't mention about his unblocking, as it is in my last comment (above). --Sciencewatcher (talk) 00:37, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

OK. I missed your comment as well. I would still say three not four, as it is rare for an uncontested unblock after 2 hours, of a 48 hour block, to mean that the original block was justified. I would also discount the first block, as many people only learn how things work around here when they are blocked for the first time. I don't think two block after the first one, in nearly a year, indicates an unrepentant edit warrior. In response to your "Sometimes it's better just to do a permanent ban." I would say: sometimes it's better just to try and work with people and try and understand what they are saying. Try phrasing things a different way if you feel your point is not getting across, and ask those you disagree with to do the same. Carcharoth (talk) 09:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• Why is this being brought here, when the original discussion would have been the the appropriate venue? I note both that the previous discussion has not been archived, and that you are not bringing any new focus of complaint (let alone new edits to complain of). I simply do not see why you need another venue to pursue this matter. I am also surprised that Guido den Broeder has not yet responded... unless you have neglected to advise them of this conversation. I am not saying that there is no basis of complaint - but I am saying that I don't really care to get involved in trying to resolve it when one or other of the two of you go forum (or, as apparently in this case, block) shopping. I feel that, in this instance, it is you that is stretching the good faith of the community in widening your campaign against the other party. Please stop. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The previous complaints were about me and WLU. This complaint is against Guido. It's up to you and the other admins to judge who is at fault. Have a look at Guido's talk page and you'll see I notified him about this complaint, and he has said there that he will not respond to it. --Sciencewatcher (talk) 21:14, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I, personally, don't do the fault thing; I attempt the "limit the disruption" thing. I repeat, there is no need for a separate thread - open a subsection in the existing discussion (since the respondents there are already familiar with the situation). I would also apologise for inferring that you had not advised GdB. That's my lot in this matter. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

If you or someone else wants to merge the 3 topics, feel free. I'm not sure what's best. I agree it's best to limit the disruption, but sometimes that is not possible. --Sciencewatcher (talk) 21:27, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem is getting worse. Have a look here and here. It is not a content dispute. The problem is simply that Guido will not work with other editors. I have been very patient and reasonable, and made many attempts to discuss disputed content with him, but instead of discussing anything he simply resorts to snide comments, false accusations and 3RR skirting (his current tactic is to keep putting in pov tags rather than reverting, but it amounts to the same thing). Any further edits from me are simply going to provoke an edit war with Guido, so I'm just going to stop all editing of these articles until this situation is resolved. --Sciencewatcher (talk) 23:37, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Second opinion please on edits by User:Yartett

Yartett (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is using Wikipedia to network those sharing his political agenda by adding external links pointing to non Wikipedia sites. Originally posted to the deleted version of Talk:Bristol palin. Post on User talk pages. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. Posted to article talk pages here. And here. And here. And here. And here. I have reverted some of his edits. Have explained that this is not appropriate on his talk page--User talk:Yartett.But he feels that my concerns are not well founded and that I'm being unreasonable. Dlohcierekim 17:26, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict):

I started to post the following here but Dlohcierekim beat me to it:

Yartett (talk • contribs • count) is a new user with a lot of energy and has been drawn to Wikipedia by the Sarah Palin phenomenon. He took the initiative to created these 4 now-deleted pages:

• List of Wikipedia articles of Barack Obama in other languages
• List of Wikipedia articles of Joe Biden in other languages
• List of Wikipedia articles of Sarah Palin in other languages
• List of Wikipedia articles of John McCain in other languages

unaware we have interwiki links in the left column (heck, it took me a month or two to figure this out when I first started editing). Perhaps further frustrated by the protection on the Palin-related redirects here, he created some pages off Wikipedia. He then started leaving notes on article and user talk pages inviting folks to both his sites and some others. (examples:[55][56]). I left a note for him explaining WP:NOT; others and I reverted his edits. He continued with his talk page messages so Dlohcierekim and I then left him additional cautions. In retrospect, I may have been a bit heavy-handed and some of these cautions were redundant if you look at Yartett's edit history. Now Yartett is pretty bitter and saying he's leaving.

I think it would help if some others got involved and perhaps helped Yartett -- I sense he has a lot to contribute but may need someone to run interference for him and help him with our rules.

I'd also like a review of my actions.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:40, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

In particular, I'm concerned about screwing up "Please do not bite the newcomers" with this one; others' diplomatic skills might help here. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I'm Yartett, the editor in question.

The language thing was quickly corrected,
though I might add that I was intending,
in my list,
to add the sizes of such articles and include other Wikimedia parallels..

The issue for me is that seeing that the articles in question have been either locked or redirected,
if I could post links to parallel articles,
to other sites using MediaWiki software,
so others can contribute in those sites,
instead of being frustrated with whatever appeals processes,
or arguments,
in trying to get articles like Sarah Palin or others in the election unlocked, or un-re-directed;
or filling up discussion pages.

As to the politics,
while Libertarian Wiki has the word "Libertarian"

---and yes I'm a Libertarian and 'tis the season,
there is the thing that because Libertarian Wiki
---a Media Wiki software site
---and perhaps other sites seem to have so few editors,
that it would serve as fertile grounds for those Wikipedia editors who are frustrated,
or indeed have an ideological axe to grind
---one imagines Conservapedia or its reaction Rational Wiki.

Keep in mind,
that my recent postings were not in the actual articles,
though granted,
such articles were locked;
and a few days ago,
I gave up posting them on the article discussion pages,
save perhaps those of the pages of articles now re-directed,
and in the discussion pages of User pages I selected,
because they seemed that they might be sympathetic enough as not to consider such spam.

Keep in mind, that none of those Users complained.

Thank you for your attention.

Yartett (talk) 18:40, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Did you just reply to an ANI thread in verse? That is extremely awesome. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 19:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

There's more to verse than hitting return at every punctuation mark. Looie496 (talk) 19:59, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It's his way. :) Cheers, Dlohcierekim 20:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I hope that it makes it easier to read, at least aloud. ;-) Yartett (talk) 21:50, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Awesome, but please use Haiku in future. --Rodhullandemu 23:43, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

  I make a motion that, henceforth, only complaints in haiku or limerick shall be addressed! — Coren ^(talk) 01:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

  There once was a hermet wikipedian named Dave... Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 17:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

SUPERPOWER the Movie

Could someone saneful have a look at the edit history on this article? The content (a press release) is taken from http://superpowerthemovie.com/, which quite clearly isn't using a license we can import from (it's got a no-modification-without-permission clause). Apparently the author of the site is willing to work with us on this, but that doesn't change the present state of the copyright status. I've tagged it as a blatant ad anyway. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• As it happens, user:SuperpowerTheMovie appears to be Christy Johnson or a representative of such, and this no-modification-without-permission license applies there too. If the user needs schooled on our licensing rules, it should ideally happen from a position where we are not technically violating any copyrights at that point in time. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't Christy Johnson be prodded or AFDed as non-notable? Oh, and check the article. She also put that "no changes allowed" clause at the end of it. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 19:34, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, probably. Is it likely that someone good at directly contacting users to work with them on these things would be able to help out if this went on the copyvio board? Seems a bit of a shame to lose an editor who is acting in good faith even if the edits themselves aren't acceptable. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:42, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, check this diff [57] She put a phone number in an edit summary. Kosher? --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 19:43, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

People in the real world use phone numbers to communicate. I don't see it as anything other than failure to adapt to the norms of the medium. Indeed, providing contact information is a positive thing when there's an obvious communication issue. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:56, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting she be sanctioned for posting the phone number, just wondered if it should be there or oversighted somehow, but it looks like it's the number of a business, not someone's personal number. Also, I left a message on her talk page trying to explain what the problems are. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 20:23, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Oversight isn't for all phone numbers. Leaving the business number of the copyright holder to an image in lieu of other contact details seems perfectly cromulent to me, if not a norm for the community. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree, now that I know it's a business number. Quite cromulent indeed. But it seemed a trifle brillig before I realized that and I thought the slithy toves should have a look at it just to verify. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 22:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• As an update, the site now has a boilerplate GFDL-with-attribution license in the footer, so I suppose it's now acceptable. I suppose we can wait and see whether either of the deleted articles return in some form. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:22, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Christy Johnson is back and AFDed. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 00:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

User:12.210.198.245

This ip is spending a lot of time talking to the community that she appears to believe is listening. She wants us all to know that she and the other people in her apartment complex have been much maligned and harmed by hackers, who have made it appear that they are sockpuppets, when they're just a group of people who all use the same ip, have virtually identical names, and work together to edit the same subjects as a team. She has faith that our investigation will clear the good names of herself and her neighbors. Um... does anybody here care at all? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 18:37, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I care....oh, no, wait. Sorry, I thought you said something else. _Gb^T/c 18:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I took a look. That's 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back. I give it an "A" for tenacity, but an "F" for plausibility, and a "D" for coherency. All in all, I suggest keeping them blocked, at least until they think up a better story. --barneca (talk) 18:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

This sockfarm has been doing similar stuff (placing {{helpme}} requests, making new sockpuppets to post on admin's talk pages etc), always with ridiculous reasoning. Been going on for a month or so. See Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Undercovergals. I'd just ignore it until they start making sense. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 19:16, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I get the impression that might mean ignoring it for a good, long time. Fortunately, I have a book to read. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 19:23, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

By citing WP:BITE in their own defence, that person (or group) has just become the first example for my new essay. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 21:29, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to know what was wrong with their edits, were they using accounts to edit war, were they vandalizing, were they deceptively seeking to increase the appearance of support for certain positions etc. The answer to all of those questions seems to be no. Most of their edits seem to be immediately after each other. They just seem to be a bit clueless, a bit strange, and a bit unhelpful as far as accurate article writing goes. Perhaps they're quite young, or one kid with a lot of imaginary friends. I think it's more an issue of competence than anything nefarious. 86.44.27.188 (talk) 22:40, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

In addition to multiple account abuse, User:Undercovergals was blocked for making legal threats, according to the block log. I don't know what else, but the contribs are a matter of public record. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 00:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm not very up on policy, so abuse how? And yes, the block came and the editor said s/he was going to sue for being blocked or some such silliness. 86.44.16.146 (talk) 01:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

It's a new variation on "exhausting the communities patience" called "boring the community to tears." OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 01:24, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Just not keen on concentrating on post-block wig-outs rather than the block that precipitates them, generally. 86.44.16.146 (talk) 04:39, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Debate disguised as a Question

Please will someone else look at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#Follow-up question?

I don't know the intent of the OP but I think it is the start of a debate, not a question. Wanderer57 (talk) 19:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Uhm, what administrator action are you asking for here? Black Kite 20:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I was asking that someone else take a look at the situation I linked to and support or differ from my opinion. I did receive some feedback. Thank you. Wanderer57 (talk) 21:48, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it was not really an administrator issue, but I just don't get why so many people are so quick to delete questions on the reference desk. People have questions, why not let people answer them? --Tex (talk) Vote Bishzilla for Arbcom!! 00:58, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I saw it as an attempt to start a political debate on the Reference Desk page, not as a real question. Another editor concurred. Maybe I goofed. Other feedback would be appreciated. Wanderer57 (talk) 01:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Nangparbat, round three

Once again, I'm having some issues with User:Nangparbat and am requesting reviews of my actions. For those unfamiliar with the story so far, Nangparbat is a POV warrior with a chip on his shoulder who likes to make biased edits to Pakistan-India related articles; accuse just about everyone who doesn't agree with him of being biased, anti-Indian, Islamophobic, or just outright racist depending on how irritated he is at the time; and hop IP addresses as soon as he realizes he's been blocked. He has been on over 100 IP addresses within the past month or so. A full list of those we are aware of can be found at User:Hersfold/Vandal watch#Nangparbat. Roughly every other day for the past week or so I've gotten a new section on my talk page about this guy and I'm frankly sick of it. We can't rangeblock him because he's on BT Internet and we'd end up blocking half of Great Britain to no useful effect. I've filed an abuse report at Wikipedia:Abuse reports/81.15x.x.x and 86.1x.x.x ranges, but as seems typical of that project, nothing's being done.

Today's Nangparbat message was from Cityvalyu (talk · contribs) complaining of abuse from these IPs on his talk page. I reverted all the recent abusive comments and blocked the IP. I also semi-protected Cityvalyu's talk page for two weeks at his request. Shortly thereafter, two more IP addresses showed up in succession, both being abusive. I consider this user to be banned (which is partly why I'm opening this, more in a moment), so I reverted all edits from both IPs and blocked them for two weeks. To stop further abuse, I have also semi-protected the articles K2, Srinagar, and Pakistan-administered Kashmir for one week. As I've been typing this, he has come up with another IP address. I have not blocked this, as Nichalp (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) has become involved and wishes to try to discuss with Nangparbat (something I and other users have tried and failed at). I have informed Nangparbat that I will not revert any edits under that IP to Nichalp's talk page or his own, but will be reverting any edits of his I see elsewhere. I will also permit him to comment here, provided he does not get abusive.

Summary

• Blocked for two weeks:

• 81.151.101.146 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 86.153.129.194 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 86.163.154.165 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

• On strict editing limitation for duration of discussion:

• 86.154.151.176 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

• Semi-protected:

• User talk:Cityvalyu (edit | user page | history | links | watch | logs) (2 weeks)
• K2 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (1 week)
• Srinagar (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (1 week)
• Pakistan-administered Kashmir (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (1 week)
• Northern Areas (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (1 week, added 20:42, 12 September 2008 (UTC))

I am requesting review of all of these actions, as well as calling for official recognition of a community siteban against User:Nangparbat. The {{banned}} template is currently on his userpage - I have placed that there based on the "no admin willing to unblock" guideline, but I would appreciate an actual consensus on this. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 20:40, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

If administraters (besides hersfol) look at my edits there is nothing abusive about them im only correcting a few sentences and challenging nichalp who only adds the administered tag to pakistans portion of kashmir page when i do the same to srinagar he reverts without offering a explanation hersfold is also not helping the situation by deleting and blocking me even after i told him several weeks before my ip is dynamic he is not prepared to listen to i keep on have to restart my pc to get my message across talk pages so please look at the edits on K2 and PAK which clearly shows im just adding fixing comments not abusive ones which hersfold claims i am also cityvalu also called me a racist and gave a sly comment comparing me with terrorists i dont beleive this trivial issue made big by some editors like hersfold deserves your time as im only reverting a couple lines not whole article like nichalp who keeps on adding the tag of administered to pakistan and reverting them when they are placed on India so a nationalist editor must not get his POV across cheers 86.154.151.176 (talk) 20:56, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Edit summaries like these aren't abusive? [58], [59], [60], [61], [62]. Those are just from today. I can look further if you want. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 21:06, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• All I see is a long term pattern of abuse. No argument from me. — Coren ^(talk) 15:13, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

There's no point blocking all those IPs. He will evade them. Semi-protect his favourite articles instead. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:39, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

HersFold

to hersfold those edit summaries are not abusive firstly the second edit summary was a response to your chum citvalyu the other edits dont even include abuse unless your trying again to put false claims on me 86.151.127.43 (talk) 09:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC) P.S look at the battle of chawinda pakistan won that however hersfold seems to think india did i beleive he has a underlying hatred towards Pakistan or me to looie what have i dont wrong please state i only get abusive when people either call me "terrorist or Paki" of hersfold doesnt agree with me defending my self i dont really give a dam i have the right to as for hersfold i would appreciate if you actually were more neutral or atleast but out of my business and stop blocking for sending message on talk pages im not canvassing for votes like kashmir cloud who you famously let of the hook 86.151.127.43 (talk) 09:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I definitely don't want to condone these practices, but a complicating factor is that the changes Nangparbat is trying to make are valid ones. Referring to the part of Kashmir that belongs to Pakistan as "Pakistani-administered Kashmir" is quite provocative, sort of like referring to New Mexico as "American-administered Mexico", or, perhaps a bit better analogy, like referring to Northern Ireland as "British-administered Ireland". Looie496 (talk) 21:34, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The territory of Kashmir is disputed. The other alternative is Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. This title as been derived after consensus among several editors from both sides, and is also the term used by the United Nations and BBC. Should you wish to wade in the quagmire of India-Pakistan disputes, please check Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pakistan occupied Kashmir :) =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

If the territory is disputed WHY DO YOU ONLY PICK on the Pakistani side of kashmir and when someone does the same to lets say srinagar or jammu you revert the edits and then you have the nerve to claim that kashmir is disputed. Answer this isnt Srinagar disputed your happy to add the disputed tag to all pakistani kashmir articles like northern areas but purposely ignore the indian ones i tell you the reason your Nationalist and in some way or another your going to be biased this bias will not go down well with anyone well maybe cityvalu and kashmir cloud who are after all abusive users themselves which HERSFOLD COMPLETELY IGNORES 86.151.127.43 (talk) 09:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)This shows clear bias and favouritism to india while he claims all kashmir is disputed he fails to include this is srinagar while editing like mad on pakistans side that little srinagar sentence is pathetic it should include the sub heading indian administered kashmir below the main title like it does in northern areas courtesy of ip 11786.151.127.43 (talk) 09:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Hersfold sanity: check. To nichalp for wading into a heavily-charged ethnic conflict: kudos and good luck. From what I've seen of the Talk pages, this editor simply isn't interested in good faith discussion. I support a ban on India/Pakistan articles. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 21:44, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Sanity check is partially why I'm here. If you feel any thing I've done is out-of-line, please let me know and I'll undo it. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 22:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Nanga Parbat: To answer your questions:

• I reverted your *all* your edits, including the Srinagar page. [63]
• On retrospective, I should have checked what edits you were trying to make. I notice you were trying to make it more neutral. I apologize for the revert on the Srinagar. I have tried to address the issue, please take a look.
• Do feel free to neutralise more such areas in India, while keeping the grammar in place. Indian-administered state might not fit in correctly at all places.
• Looking forward to seeing you make constructive edits.

=Nichalp «Talk»= 07:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Nichalp please read this clearly the reason i am editing Pak is because it states "also known as POK" it makes it out as the whole world calls it POK but in fact only India does please get this into your head pakistan also refers is at IOK however its been explained that ONLY Pakistan does please wake up. SECONDLY you seem to be adding the disputed tags to northern areas while removing them from indian administered territory doesnt this show clear discrimination and bias towards Pakistan while defending india you vandalise pakistani article however when i do the same to indian articles you completely loose the plot and revert like mad P.S srinagar is not good enough it should clearly state that its administered territory like it does on Northern Areas having a large amounts of disputed tags on the pakistani side and only 1 tag on the india side is totally unacceptable im not being abusive so hersfold can rant all he wants i will continue to make indian and pakistani article neutral and weed out propaganda86.151.127.43 (talk) 09:33, 13 September 2008 (UTC) Im not adding indian administered state im adding indian administered kashmir please stop making excuses i also challenge you to be more neutral and less anti pakistan 86.151.127.43 (talk) 09:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

NangaParbat, I have no idea if you have trouble in comprehending my above post. This is your problem:

1. I have replied to specific point of yours, yet you drag your reply for articles that I have not explicitly commented on. Am I supposed to know that your grudge on the PaK page regarding POK applies to me reverting your above edits?
2. You are quick to assume bad faith on my part without even discussing the matter with me in a logical matter and seeking clarifications. I am certainly open to making the Srinagar page more NPOV and have taken cognisance of your post to come up with this version.
3. You refuse to take an apology seriously with the use words such as "stop making excuses", "get this in your head". If you cannot be WP:CIVIL, I shall not bother to talk to you.
4. In your bid to NPOV stuff, you leave gaping grammatical errors. Read this if it makes grammatical sense
5. Drag an off-topic region such as Arunachal Pradesh into the Kashmir dispute [64]. That was hilarious!
6. With regards to the usage of Indian-administered Kashmir vs Jammu and Kashmir for the Indian state, you need to open an RFC somewhere to discuss the usage of the term, not revert as we use the proper administrative noun. If your case holds true, we would have to knock off Azad Kashmir too. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:28, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Is an attack page in User Talk a Speedy Deletion Candidate?

Could I get some advice please, I wasn't sure where to post this. Is User talk:Romaioi an attack page and a suitable candidate for speedy deletion?

The background to this is that User:Noclador and I were investigating a sockpuppet circus generated by User:Generalmesse, this Romaioi's edits fitted the pattern of the sock puppets but he was cleared by a checkuser. Unfortunately posts by another sockpuppeteer seemed to implicate him again but again he was cleared. It has been to WP:WQA (here and here and WP:AN here. I've tried to explain to this guy that it was nothing personal and to move past this but only been accused of shit stirring for my troubles.

For info, there is much more on the Talk Page but it is hidden as comments. To be honest I'm not sure what to do about this, it would appear that any action I take is only going to inflame matters. Advice would be welcome. Justin talk 20:44, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Any attack page in any namespace can go under G10, but given it looks like a complex page with attack and non-attack and semi-attack parts, I'd recommend going to WP:MFD for the best result. MBisanz ^talk 20:48, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I would follow M's advice above. MfD is usually the best course of action for complicated, non-mainspace issues like this. (Comment given on quick flick through page and read through explanation above). Caulde 20:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Or, you could just ignore it, let him blow off a little righteously indignant steam, avoid the drama, and comfort yuorself in the knowledge that no one is ever going to read that. --barneca (talk) 20:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I have somewhat of a dilemma, do something and there will be more drama, ignore it and it'll continue to fester. I'll sleep on it I think. Justin talk 21:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, I wonder why so many people get worked up about pages in userspace. I think we should give users a lot of room to do what they like in userspace. Once it gets outside of userspace, however, then we need to act. Just my opinion. --Tex (talk) Vote Bishzilla for Arbcom!! 00:55, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Thats why I came here first before acting, the problem is that User:Romaioi wants to edit the same article space as User:Noclador. I have a feeling it will end it tears unless its nipped in the bud. Its been through WP:WQA and WP:AN already. Justin talk 20:05, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Well as of now, userspace is as googlable as any article, so anything bad showing up in the userspace would also show up in google searches on the subject. MBisanz ^talk 01:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

If I've read this correctly, this can now be changed. Is there any good reason that all User pages shouldn't be shielded from indexing? Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 05:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

It is possible now, but given how poor our internal search engine is, there is some debate as to whether or not it is a good idea to disable external search engines. You may want to look at the debate at Wikipedia talk:NOINDEX of noticeboards. MBisanz ^talk 19:56, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

admin abuse: block on wikitionary

This is Wikipedia, not Wiktionary. Wrong venue. Stifle (talk) 18:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Alexf mass-deleting dates

I know there is still an ongoing discussion concerning the MOS decision to stop linking dates, but is there a decision that currently linked dates should be delinked? See Alexf (talk · contribs), who is mass-removing links to dates. This isn't an appropriate activity, as far as I can see. Corvus cornix_talk 01:36, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

OK. I get your point. I stopped as soon as Corvus informed me in my page about this notice. Let's discuss then. -- Alexf⁴² 01:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Anon editor adding spam

Resolved

An anon seems to be editing solely for the purposes of adding spam to Wikipedia articles about coffee. Details are here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/67.86.174.25

The web site the spammer promotes is:

http://cerinicoffee.com/Espresso_machine_service.asp

All edits from this IP number have been to add this link to coffee articles, and the user has been warned a number of times. --Michael Johnson (talk) 02:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Such reports should be made to WP:AIV. However, the editor has stopped and is probably heeding the warnings. —EncMstr (talk) 02:19, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Tanoli.afghanistan duck test sock of User:Pakhtun Tanoli ?

Sanity check: Duck test on Tanoli.afghanistan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) as sockpuppet of Pakhtun Tanoli (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) ( Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Pakhtun Tanoli and Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Pakhtun Tanoli )? I intend to indef Tanoli.afghanistan but wanted someone else's eyes on it. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:16, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Zaphraud (talk · contribs) recent edits

This user seems to be making some pointy edits. His talk page shows a history of some potentially disruptive edits and plenty of warnings. Not only is he changing Digital rights management to digital restrictions management creating links to a redirect, they're rather point of view and soapboxy. Some here [65], [66], [67], [68], [69], etc etc. He's even gone and created a category called Category:Digital restrictions management which he created as a redirect to the category on digital rights management, yet put articles in it as well, seemingly to attempt to hide what category articles found themselves in, honestly it makes little sense. There is an obvious problem here, and with the apparent history of contentious editing, I felt it should be brought here.--Crossmr (talk) 05:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

The purpose for the redirect is to avoid breaking anything until all the editing is complete, a task which could take a very long time even as others join in fixing the existing problem, as it stands to reason that if this error has already been repeated this many times (calling it digital rights management is illogical and misleading), it will continue to be repeated for quite some time into the future.

Also, it should be noted that I have attempted to avoid changing the names of trademarked services and companies that incorporate the misnomer "digital rights management" into the name of their product or company. This is why a simple, automated correction procedure is not possible, as changing company names or trademarks, or company-named descriptions would then give the product the wrong name. For example, the sentence "Examplecom Digital Rights Management Server is an example of Digital Rights Management (DRM)" should be corrected to read "Examplecom Digital Rights Management Server is an example of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)"; only one of the two misnomers should be altered. If I have erred in any of the articles in this manner (changing named things), I did not intend to do so - only to correct the inaccurate descriptions. Zaphraud (talk) 05:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

And where do you get your consensus for these changes? All reliable sources I've seen mainstream press, etc refer to it as digital rights management, not digital restrictions management. The companies themselves would refer to it as digital rights management as well. Digital Restrictions management is just a clever name to take a dig at a scheme that some people disagree with.--Crossmr (talk) 05:24, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Even though I do agree that Digital Restrictions Management is a better term in practice, it is still called Digital Rights Management as that is what the products were ostensibly designed to do. Zaphraud, not only are you being pointy, but your edits are fundamentally biased. If you want to rant about DRM, do what everyone else is doing and go to amazon.com. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Ed, a cafe facade!)} 05:36, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Even after being told this he continued on making this edit [70]. A google search only reveals one instance of the term used in regards to silverlight and upon visiting the page I can't find the reference (and the cache doesn't exist).--Crossmr (talk) 07:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

The phrase "DRM Enforcement" was never a contested point in the above section, which was why I restored it without restoring the use of the word "restrictions". Furthermore, you should be aware that the industry does describe its own product using the term "DRM enforcement" in applications for US patents and internationally as well (WIPO) - so its not like the term violates NPOV either - the concept of "DRM enforcement" is one that is accepted by all sides, but does not carry the highly offensive message that "DRM support" does - I can't think of a *single* instance where the end-user of a product has felt *supported* by the presence of DRM, and as a purchaser of digital content myself, I am very familiar with the frustrations of both DVDs that can't be fast forward/rewinded, unskippable ads and warnings, as well as games that have to be reinstalled completely, sometimes several times, due to compatibility problems resulting from bad DRM implementations. Support is *definitely* wrong here, but even the pro-DRM industry uses the term enforcement Zaphraud (talk) 22:30, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

If people used that term, it should show up on a google search. It does not. Compare this: [71] with [72].--Crossmr (talk) 01:11, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

As well compare these [73], [74], [75], [76] which show that drm support is the more common phrase at about 87000->2000. Support in this case had nothing to do with the end user, I read it to mean that DRM was supported in that edition of Silverlight in that the developer could chose to use it.--Crossmr (talk) 01:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Anthonygar

This one is perplexing to me slightly simply because I do not remember the exact details, but I do remember that I nominated Skins (compression)‎ for deletion. This report/request is mainly about this article, which is a blatant advertisement. What concerns me is that I had previously nominated this article for speedy deletion, and an actual user had created it(at least that's what I think I remember.

The page was soon deleted as a blatant advertisement.

Today, the user Anthonygar creates his account at 00:13, then, re-creates the page Skins (compression). I suspect some form of sockpuppetry, but because I cannot access the histories of deleted material, I cannot provide you diffs, or really confirm or deny anything I just said. Hopefully the admins reviewing this notice shall be able to do that. I hope this was worth peoples' time.— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 05:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I just took a look at both articles, and they're sufficiently different enough to make me think this was just a coincidence. The first article, by User:De Mattia, was moderately well written for not having any actual content, and the second one by User:Anthonygar was just a long advertising/endorsement rant. Don't think there's anything to worry about. :-) Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 06:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your time.— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 06:28, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

user: Anpersonalaccount

I have recently been troubled and have had my edits undone by a user who neither had the source he produced, nor had read it, nor was able to explain what a source on literature was doing in surgery related articles.

My various encounters with the user, and his incivility, are given in the list below:

• Why are you begging him to remove the sentence?
• the very Indian article
• You are clearly begging on him
• What a prick, don't act mature when you have neither the guts nor inteligent to speak up.
• I did it because you're annoying
• I did it because you're annoying, that's why not because I wanna cover up my ass. There is nothing to hide.
• Oh and next time, I hope that you won't bother to tell me that your boss had fired you because you engaged an editing war with some new user over the Wikipedia.
• Strikes out a text by me.

All my work has been stalled thanks to his blatant edit warring. While notifying an admin who had dealt with him before I wrote: Would a fully sourced rewrite of these two articles using proper sources take care of the present situation so no outside intervention is necessary? The editor is new after all, and bound to make a few mistakes initially. Should I try and attempt a sourced rewrite (the article can benefit from some improvement) first and see if the pattern persists ?.

I rewrote the article using sources from Cambridge University Press, National Informatics Centre (Government of India), Encyclopedia Britannica, and Oxford University Press in a hope that a fully sourced explanation of the facts would help in this case but he reverted and said: Doesn't matter, it doesn't change a thing, I provide another scholar source. He's simply lying. He has reverted four times to the exact same content the he has been pushing all along. No new sources, scholars or text. He neither has the source, nor has he read it, and neither does his source deal in any manner with surgery—on which he likes to edit and push POV.

Kindly take appropriate action. The editor has a history of disruption. I have tried to talk to him on user talk:Nishkid64 and talk:Sushruta but to no avail. Gross incivility and falsifying sources discourage editors who bother to look for respectable sources.

JSR (talk) 06:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Taken care of. Thanks. JSR (talk) 07:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Request for community ban

• Boondocks37 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

This user, after asserting a removal of an autoblock (apparently blocked for POV pushing), disappears for a over a year, then returns for more of the same.

The posting to User talk:Raul654 (diff), really would seem to make it clear that this user does not have Wikipedia's best interests at heart.

I am looking for a community ban rather than just a block (indefinite or otherwise) due to the long time "missing", combined with the concern about the autoblock. I think that this user may have been (and be) using IPs and possibly other socks to continue more of the same.

As an aside, when looking over their contributions, I noted that their other edit seems odd based on the reference provided (and because it replaced other text), and have reverted. I did this both because I disagree with how the article is being construed in the article, but also because (in this case, anyway), I won't be the one to block the individual. (I wish to be "just-another-editor" in this.)

Anyway, I welcome others' thoughts/opinion on all of this (including if you think I'm "way off base" on this). - jc37 08:19, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

A years absence shows that time isn't going to fix this. That doesn't exactly leave us with many choices.--Crossmr (talk) 09:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Lost AfD

Resolved

 – Closed as keep per major re-write since deletes cast. Caulde 09:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ashanthi, from 6th September, is still open because it wasn't submitted properly and Mathbot obviously lost track of it. The AFDList page for 6th September has been archived from WP:AFD, so could someone close it, please? I can't because I contributed to the debate. Thanks, Black Kite 09:28, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• Um, I see that it's been re-listed on the September 12 page. It's still been open for 11 days, though. Black Kite 09:30, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

User:MickMacNee and persistent incivility

I encountered this editor when the sordid little video game Muslim Massacre was nominated for deletion. For full disclosure, I was for speedy keep while MickMacNee was for deletion, and the discussion ended in a classy non-admin snowball keep. Much of the AfD consists of responses by and to MickMacNee, and to my eyes he comes across as hostile, confrontational and belligerent.

In the AfD, Mick calls for the deletion of the article on the basis of his blunt, unwavering interpretation of some policies, mainly WP:NOTNEWS. His arguments do not gather support. Fine so far, but it's not all he does. Let's start with the borderline or open incivilities...

• "And lastly to humour the other stuff argument..."
• "That is a completely simplistic and quite naive interpretation of the principle of the no self promotion policy."
• "The game is crap,"
• "its [the game is] as lame as they come,"
• "I suggest if the people voting based on notability here realy know what they are arguing for..."
• "What nonsense. ... You frankly do not know what an encyclopoedia is, that is the be all and end all of the issue. I am sad that you don't even understand this basic concept, and even more sad that you honestly seem to need a specific policy regarding video games to be written for you before you will even begin to understand it. But if you think you are right, which you sadly do... Somehow, I doubt you will, because I think you and I know, in the grand scheme of things, you are defending a steaming pile of shite of an article that does not belong here."
• "There is an essay here somewhere that says if a hundred people talk absolute shite and one doesn't, then per policy, it's still shite. Well, that's what is happening here, although its only about 5 users who are peddling the shite. I can't stop you all if you think wikipedia is Google news, but I will try."
• "amateur pile of crap ... Please, just try to add this as a paragraph in video game controversy, be a man about it, put your "notability" where your mouth is, rather than coming up with the same tiresome other stuff exists arguments, which don't apply as you haven't even been smart enough to compare like for like."
• "If you think that co-operation is accepting that this as a worthy article based on numerous flawed and uneducated arguments then by all means consider me highly uncooperative. I will not ever accept that an empty infobox is a valid addition to a 2 paragraph stub. Such nonsense should be stamped out immediately."
• "Do you honestly think that..."

MickMacNee links other editors to WP:NOTE, WP:V and such like and tells them to educate themselves. He accuses the article creator of spamming, and when I tell him to lay off, he claims the right to accuse people of spamming to uphold policy and adds an inexicable "I don't need clearance from you as to whether to make that point or not in an Afd." (I reply; That's the extent of our interaction.) RGTraynor reminds him of civility and asks him to "dial the venom down a good bit." RGTraynor also notes that "there is no need to link believing this subject meets WP:V/WP:N with a desire to shut Wikinews down" and asks him to calm down because "It isn't merely that the consensus is running heavily to keep, and it isn't that we don't understand: we just don't agree with you". (Mick responds to the latter with the abovementioned quote about the majority "talking absolute shite.")

Then Mick accuses User:Geni of having a hidden agenda to bring down WP:N...

• "So let's just ignore it and let little bits of crap exist, because you can't get consensus for a proper list to exist. I think this fits your tactic perfectly. Junk additions, little by little, chipping away at the notability guideline until it means nothing at all, bar "Google news rules"" (unsigned)

These are from a single AfD and as far as I can tell happen without provocation - without the people arguing with MickMacNee insulting him or treating him uncivilly. User:A_Link_to_the_Past and Mick trade words for a long time, in the AfD and on their talk pages, and Link ends up stepping over the line, so I have not included the statements Mick has made after that time. (02:11 September 13th as both MickMacNee and Link timestamp their messages, 05:11 September 13th server time.)

A look at Mick's contributions list reveals that he does plenty of valid edits, and can act civilly with people he agrees with, but...

• "Do you even have a clue as to whether this strawman you serve up is even a remotely similar comparison?"
• "This whole "article" is creating duplication of pre-existing content, through people's belief that they think they are properly playing the interactive game called wikipedia by copy pasting text. ... What absolute amateurish rubbish."
• "Leaving it to the asylum ... I can't compete with this kind of ridiculous opinion."

Mick has been blocked twelve times since he registered in October 2007, stated reasons being edit warring, disruption, harassment, incivility and personal attacks. The stated reason for the ninth block is that he "doesn't seem to get that his actions are detrimental to a collaborative project." I agree. Mick's behaviour in the AfD is a problem. It is not just being blunt, it has very little to do with cooperation, common politeness, and how people are supposed to act in a collaborative project if they want it to get anywhere. His diff'd comments elsewhere and his block log suggests a persistent tendency. Please contribute your more experienced and/or more numerous opinions on what we should do about this. --Kizor 11:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't have much to add to Kizor's comprehensive evidence, but there's part of a response to me he did leave off: "Hey, who ever said consensus was right?" Well, WP:CON does, actually. Twelve blocks in less than a year suggests that Mick either doesn't get or doesn't care how Wikipedia works, though, and I'm pessimistic that even a severe block would get his attention.  RGTraynor  12:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm aware that I stepped over the line, and I should have taken my own advice and stepped back and took a deep breath. But as for that statement, while it is definitely stepping over the line, he makes many more statements like that about peoples' motives (accuses Geni of trying to "take down WP:N, me of not knowing any better because I only edit video game articles). I don't want to say that it's entirely my fault that I resorted to making that accusation. - A Link to the Past (talk) 16:37, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the exact purpose is of Kizor's very elaborate post about MickMacNee. Is it to try to get Mick a civility block..? RGTraynor—him/herself part of the angry AfD dialogue referred to—suggests that "even a severe block" would probably fail to get [Mick's] attention--are you seriously proposing an indefinite ban for the edits quoted, RGT? That's absurd. Rhetoric does tend to run rather high on WP:AfD altogether, and the whole dialogue on this particular AfD is pretty "hostile, confrontational and belligerent". It doesn't look to me like Mick's comments "happen without provocation." Few of the phrases Kizor quotes from Mick are even a little uncivil, and those that are should be seen in context, not in fragments. Note also that A Link to the Past is a lot more confrontational than anybody else on the page. Furthermore, I'm a little surprised to see yet another editor, MuZemike, taking the very same AfD to Wikipedia:Third opinion, while simultaneously threatening MickMacNee with an RFC "if this does not work" (work..?). That's a lot of forums for one AfD. I strongly suggest "no action" here. Bishonen | talk 18:33, 13 September 2008 (UTC).

Actually, I "threatened" both Mick and LttP. I admit my wording was a tad harsh, but I didn't intend to try to come off as threatening. (In the future, I will exercise more caution in not throwing the "RFC" acronym around when I tell users that I am sending situations to WP:3O.) I was trying to achieve closure on the matter. MuZemike (talk) 20:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

With that said, I am not sure why this discussion is here and not at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct, as there are multiple users who tried and failed to resolve this, and plenty of diff evidence is present; my guess is that it's the number of blocks this user has received. In regards with this discussion, I agree with Bishonen and recommend no action be taken. MuZemike (talk) 20:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Disruptive edits from User:Goethean

I would like to report the disruptive, tendentious edits, and uncivic, personal attacks of User:Goethean. I have recently noticed this (past 1 month or so) when editing the articles : Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Ramakrishna, Kali's Child. Before mentioning my views, I would like to cite other editors and warnings on the talk page of Goethean.

Warnings on his talk page

• User_talk:Goethean#Assuming_good_faith
• User_talk:Goethean#Careful...
• User_talk:Goethean#Word_of_Warning this is what the editor User:LoveMonkey says -

His edit warring, personal attacks, frustrating conduct and article squatting is nothing new, but defending him is taking wikipedia to a whole new level of hypocrisy.

• User_talk:Goethean#Obama_.2708

Sir, Your characterization of my edit was less than civil in the edit summary and bordered on an attack. If you want to revert, then let us talk on the talk page. Very cordially,--Die4Dixie

• User_talk:Goethean#That_wasn.27t_vandalism

Now I will briefly describe my own observations:

Ramakrishna aticle

Goethean's POV can be understood from his own edit, as follows :

Two editors have decided that the scholarship of the last 40 years should be rejected in favor of one hundred year-old sources that the Ramakrishna religious organization finds more amenable.

The point I am trying to put forth is that there is difference between improving an article and preventing it from becoming amenable to the Ramakrishna Religious organization. Improving the article may make it amenable or unamenable to someone. But here the POV is to make it unamenable against the guidelines of wikipedia... no matter if there are other scholarly works. I would like to mention that I am in no way affiliated to the Ramakrishna Religious organization, but this anti-religious organization POV prevails in majority of goethean's edits! Note: Above its 40 years.

To push this POV, it is interesting to note that guidelines of wikipedia have been breached. For ex: There is no guideline in WP:BIO which tells that the century old books are unreliable. But Goethean does exactly this here, also pls note the edit summary - "+{{totally-disputed}}. you have essentially destroyed the section by filling it with religious propaganda from the Mission. Sources from 1898 and 1929 are not reliable sources in the year 2008.". It is interesting to note that the books from 1898 and 1929 are from Max Muller a renowned indologist and Romain Rolland (who holds a nobel prize), who are no way associated with Ramakrishna mission and are notable third parties! but just because adding these books gives a +ve dimension, their inclusion was attacked as religious propoganda. This is clearly tendentious. A totally disputed tag was added just because the above scholarly works were referenced in the article! This is clearly disruptive. And moreover my additions were termed as - "What a mess. The new additions by Nvineeth are disasterous. It is comical that he thinks that..."[77]

Further its very important to note that when at a later point of time, other editors started contributing to the article, other books by Christopher Isherwood (1965) was being cited., And moreover there are majority of references from the journals, books from the recent time period ( there is no wikipedia guideline related to this though). Despite this, Goethean adds a totally disputed tag again with with edit summary - This tag stays on until you start using Ramakrishna scholarship from the past 30 years. Its interesting to note that what was 40 years above now has become 30 years, because the Christopher Isherwood (1965) falls in the range of 40 years! And moreover, a quick glance at the Ramakrishna#Notes makes the above claim untenable. Well this is not a place to discuss the reliability of source, so I will cut short here and talk further in the corresponding article.

I would also like mention the crude personal attacks made on the editors and the Ramakrishna Religious organization :

• Not an evil empire, just a bunch of liars. - [78]
• Ah, the work of those industrious swamis again, with their "nobility of character, dedication to truth and honesty, and other fine character traits"[79]

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna article

The personal attacks , POV pushing continues here,

• A well referenced article was termed as Deceptive editing.
• Here it is interesting to note that the same references which were used by Goethean before were termed as unreliable by Goethean himself, because it supported the relevant article in a positive manner. For example in this edit on 14:57, 3 May 2008, goethean added a reference from Neeval 1976, but when the same reference was used in the The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna article, its reliability was questioned because it came from 1976 - "Quotations from 1976, and two from 1943? You really expect editors to accept this as a neutral summary of the relevant scholarship pertaining to the subject? These tactics won't get far in any Wikipedia article."[80]. Why this hypocrisy?

• Personal attack alleging my religious POV.
• Another personal attack, and an edit which is not present in any of the wikipedia guidelines, and calling "pure mindless bhakti, you should be very suspicious of anything coming from the Ramakrishna Mission. "[81]

Kali's Child

The same story continues here, additions were termed as religious prosyletizing. How can adding academic content be termed like this? I honestly agree, there were POV in my edits, but this is no civic to attack a editor.

I have just touched upon just three articles, probably other editors from other articles can throw more light on this. Hope to see a fair investigation from admins. Pls indicate my mistakes if any. I am sure that wikipedia has very good admins, without bias towards religion, country etc., who can investigate this.

Thanks. -- vineeth (talk) 11:55, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

the content in question in Kali's Child was not neutral & did not in my opinion represent appropriate weight. A NPOV tag on that article in its present form seems highly appropriate, though the edit summary was unduly provocative. I haven't yet examined the other articles. DGG (talk) 18:15, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

All additions to that article include Reliably Sourced references that discuss the book's scholarship (positive and negative). At the time, the book was controversial, and drew an extraordinary amount of well-aimed criticism by scholars (religious, psychological, and language). It's been almost 3 weeks since Goethean put the NPOV tag on the article. The specific problems he mentioned on the talk page were addressed long ago. Most of his 'discussion' consists of inflammatory edit summaries while adding tags, with no attempt to discuss on the talk page. This is also his recent pattern on the other articles. ~ priyanath ^talk 20:57, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Tohd8BohaithuGh1 (talk · contribs) recent edits

I guess it is my day to stumble across completely bizarre edits. I just spotted the above user making an edit to an article in which he cleaned up the cites but the edit was labeled just edited page (well obviously?) [82]. That in itself while strange isn't bad... however I decided to check the rest of his contribs to see if this was a habit and I should leave him a message or what. I found something truly bizarre. He's got plenty of warnings regarding deletions, userfying things, etc. He appears to be using an automated tool of some sort, but whats most bizarre are some of the other edits he's doing. Like reverting a new user in the sandbox [83], creating this truly bizarre redirect [84] and other things. I'm not sure it needs admin attention, but I see a lot of communication coming at him about some of his behaviour and nothing coming back from him through a few page search of his contribs. He's does have a tendency though to mark a lot of his edits minor with an edit summary of "edited the page" which isn't particularly helpful. Many of his edits do appear helpful, just some seem out of place or strange.--Crossmr (talk) 13:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I've undone the edits to user sandboxes; Tohd8BohaithuGh1 cleared several user sandboxes and replaced them with Wikipedia Sandbox templates, and there was no evidence the sandboxes were inappropriate or that there had been any discussion with the users. --Snigbrook ^(talk) 14:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

He's continuing to make bizarre edits -- creating a new page Astrick as a redirect to Asterisk, creating Talk pages for users telling them that they are blocked or putting welcome templates on which thank them for their contributions in "Wikipedia:changing username" etc. This new business with talk pages looks worrying.Doug Weller (talk) 16:32, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I have left a note telling the user his edits are being discussed here. DGG (talk) 17:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

apparently this had already been done, but I sure would like to hear from the editor. DGG (talk) 01:30, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

He edited the section below, yet hasn't responded here. From my skimming of his contribs, he doesn't seem to engage in 2 way conversation. As I said there is a lot of talk coming at him, but not going the other way. This edit is a little weird [85]. He's tagged the vandal from below as temporarily blocked, but he was blocked as a sock. Perhaps someone wants to put the right template there.--Crossmr (talk) 01:40, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Should we be making these kinds of redirects? [86] article space to wikispace? I was under the impression, no.--Crossmr (talk) 01:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

His creation of Astrick was seemingly to link this page [87]. With the excuse he was doing it to avoid the redirect... yet he redirected Astrick to Asterisk.--Crossmr (talk) 02:15, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism on Hutong page

Resolved

 – Admin, Zzuuzz deleted the vandalism by M00t is a fgt (talk · contribs) who is indefinitely blocked accordingly.--Caspian blue (talk) 14:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Could admin knowledgeable of coding fix a serious problem on Hutong, one of Chinese architecture pages? Some weird colorful images dominates the page. Given the praise, Got Grawp? I believe some vandal inserted inappropriate codes on the page. --Caspian blue (talk) 14:24, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

To bypass the inappropriate image, use this edit link. Tohd8BohaithuGh1 (talk) 14:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

no, it's template vandalism to something used by 'convert' [88] as it occurs if you try to view thattemplate. haven't worked out what tho (it isn't template:convert cos that's protected & hasn't been edited)--Bsnowball (talk) 14:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I've tried looking at the various templates convert uses and haven't found anything yet. almost everything linked to it is protected--Crossmr (talk) 14:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem is resolved by admin, Zzuuzz.[89] I believe the vandal who did such thing is M00t is a fgt (talk · contribs). Thank you for the help. --Caspian blue (talk) 14:50, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. User:Bsrboy for a change. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:54, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Edit War at Now Museum, Now You Don't & Request for review of actions

Following a report at AN3 [90] I have blocked A Man in Black for edit warring. Because his opponent has few edits and was not previously warned I have settled on a final warning and protecting the article. In view of the long standing nature of AMIB's contribution to the project and possible clains of unequal treatment I am listing my admin action here for review. I'm happy for any admin to alter the outcome of the 3RR report without reference to me if there is a consensus that my actions were incorrect. Spartaz ^Humbug! 15:05, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... is there a reason to keep AMIB blocked if the article is protected? Heimstern Läufer (talk) 15:16, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I realise that blocking and protecting is unorthdox. That's why I felt inviting early review was advisable. However, 3RR is a bright line that users must not cross and AMIB has an enormous block log for edit warring and should know better. If you feel that protecting the article is wrong of course, you are welcome to alter the protection level. Spartaz ^Humbug! 15:23, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the article should be about one eighth the current length merged to a list, and that blocking AMiB is not especially productive. But that's just my opinion. Either way, if there is going to be blocking then BigGator5 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) should also be blocked as he appears to e the catalyst here, persistently reverting the removal of bloated "popular culture" cruft from articles about popular culture cruft, e.g. [91]. I urge other admins to look at this series of articles, I didn't find any form Series 3 that had any independent sources at all and I'm guessing the others are similar - someone seems to have mistaken us for a fan-wiki and a venue for original analysis of the programmes. Guy (Help!) 15:25, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

yes but the blocking policy tells us to warn new editors instead of blocking them and this user has less then 100 edits and was not warned about edit warring before this. I otherwise would have blocked them for their part in this. I see there is not universal support for the block. I'll hang on for a bit more feedback but I'm not averse to a different outcome and I can see which way the wind is blowing here. Spartaz ^Humbug! 15:34, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

3RR is a bright line that requires foreknowledge (warnings). You cross it, you invite a block on yourself. And commenting on the content ramifications of BigGator5's actions is pointless: this is a conduct, not a content problem, and content disputes are dealt with through the wiki process, not who we block. --Tznkai (talk) 15:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer we discussed the merits of my actions rather then criticising others for making good faith contributions to the discussion. Spartaz ^Humbug! 16:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Biting and edit-warring with newbies is not a good look either and needs to be discouraged. Problem is my view is not neutral, but neither is JzG's...never mind, part of life's rich pageant. :) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

within administrative discretion. AMAB should know better by now. As the removal was a section on cultural references, the persistent removal was considerably pointy. Not relevant to the block, but the section that does need editing is the overlong plot description. DGG (talk) 17:22, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

We'll get a better encyclopedia with A Man in Black editing, and BigGator5 blocked. Tom Harrison ^Talk 18:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

It's a fair block. The quality of the contributions doesn't matter when it comes to 3RR. Considering the block history, 24 hours is light. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department} 20:30, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Tip of the icebege...

For the record, there is more history of this at [92] and [93] (4 reverts each), which resulted in AMIB blocking Flatbland. Clearly a new user and an SPA but is it ok to block someone like this one is in an edit war with? I am just not impressed with the strongarm tactics really. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I've taken a look at these, and I find them totally inappropriate. Regardless of the intrinsic merits of the block, and the nature of the editor, this is one of the principal things an admin is not supposed to do. I would remove that block except that I tend to have a position on this content exactly opposite to AMIB, and I am not going to behave as wrongly as he has been doing. DGG (talk) 01:05, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Exactly, me too. I ain't impartial either, so other opinions are more than welcome. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:15, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Ahmansoor and Midtown comics AFD

After nominating an article for deletion, I thought I noticed that IP User:202.59.80.153 had !voted twice in the afd. I assumed good faith that it was a genuine mistake and removed the keep and indented to indicate it was merely a comment from the same IP address. Now I look back it was in fact User:Ahmansoor commenting, then returning to comment further as 202.59.80.153. I assumed that it was a mistake and adjusted the indent (incorrectly having looking over the history) so that it flowed as one statement.

However recently I noticed that User:Ahmansoor had also voted a third time [94]. After being reverted by User:Wisdom89, User:Ahmansoor has put back his third !vote. I believe that it is clear User:202.59.80.153 and User:Ahmansoor are sock/meatpuppets since the IP voted to keep on the users own article at AFD as well. Although I am more than happy for the article to be kept through consensus, I feel there are minor issues with this user, I feel that given the user self proclaimed COI regarding search engine optamisation on his user page, it is clearly an issue with this user creating articles on people and organisations given the likely COI. Even if what i have mentioned are simple mistakes, I believe the COI cannot be ignored. I am after some comments on what other peoples views are on this. Seddσn ^{talk Editor Review} 17:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I've struck out the duplicate "vote". Reverting it wasn't a very good idea, striking is better. Stifle (talk) 18:09, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Snoopen is usual I see

Resolved

Snoopen is usual I see (talk · contribs) is an SPA whose only edits are too randomly vandalize the user page of another banned user. My guess: it's just a sock of that user. In any case, a vandal with a confusing user name. NJGW (talk) 18:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

At the moment, his only visible edits are to his own page, and he is not blocked. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 18:56, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

That's because Kurykh (talk · contribs) just deleted the other user page in question. NJGW (talk) 19:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Kudos. I just wonder why he's still not blocked. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 19:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

An admin his since blocked the account. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 20:05, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Michael Lucas (director)

The banned “Gay Pornography vandal” (ban date: March 6, 2008) is back on Wikipedia on a different IP range. The it is the same range that has been vandalizing Lucas photos with MAJOR BLP violations on Commons. Can someone please softprotect that article (Michael Lucas (director)) for a month. There is a long, voluminous, and threat-laden history to this page and its talk page. I suggest the longer soft-protect, the better. He is banned, yet he is editing and creating BLP violations. He is also editing warring[95],[96], [97]. --David Shankbone 19:33, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• It is now over 3RR with another editor. --David Shankbone 19:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
• J jackson (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has now involved himself in the edit war post-protect, and reverted to the Gay Pornography vandal's version of the article. Can an admin please block User:J jackson, at least until a checkuser is run, for clearly editing against consensus, and also a likely sockpuppet of the Gay Pornography vandal. He hasn't edited in two years, and now every edit has to do with me. --David Shankbone 00:37, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
  • I have blocked this user based on their behaviour, which has been disruptive and narrowly focused on harassing two other editors. WJBscribe (talk) 00:50, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Revert Wars on List X-Americans

About a year ago, there were numerous nominations for List of X-Americans. Several ended in no consensus, a few in delete (but were then overturned in deletion review). The general result for keep was done under the conditions that the lists be cleaned up. A year has passed and nobody has made an attempt. Several days ago, I posted the following notice on Wikiproject:Ethnic Groups (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups). I was ignored, and so proceeded to remove improperly sourced (or completely unsourced) material on List of Danish Americans, List of Norwegian Americans, List of Russian Americans etc and redirect the smaller lists to a revised list I had made on a few mainpages (Danish Americans, for example). I was met by a barrage of vandalism accusaions from User:Badagnani (who has held a grudge against me for a while now). See: User_talk:Bulldog123/Archive1#Harassment_by_Badagnani_section. A few others (notably, the previous deletion review participants) had joined Badagnani, conducting revert wars with edit summareis such as "revert vandalism" or "Please discuss in talk" (when I do edit talk, there's never a response, such as here: Talk:List_of_Swiss_Americans) - so most of these seem to be blanket excuses with no real meaning. When I try to contact a user with the intent to discuss, they blanked their userpage (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Termer&diff=238053922&oldid=238052944). This complete lack of communication and an utter disregard of the verification problems on these lists is totally unacceptable (especially given the year that has passed). It would seem nothing was done because these users have WP:OWN issues. Admin intervention is necessary to prevent continued readdition of unsourced or incorrectly sourced material. Bulldog123 (talk) 20:01, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

The solution to this is very simple: do not delete entire articles (as here, here, etc.) and do not blank huge areas of sourced text without first using "Discussion" to propose removals of individuals from such articles, whom one or more editors may believe is not of the heritage purported, developing consensus for such removals. For additional background, see Wikipedia:Editor_assistance/Requests#blanking_list_articles.3B_replacing_with_directs_to_categories.

This editor (User:Bulldog123) had formerly proposed many dozens of such articles for deletion (s/he seems to have an antipathy for any article showing intersections of ethnic or national identity), and when those pages were voted on as "keep," s/he decided to simply be "bold" and delete huge areas of mostly sourced text without prior discussion, or to delete the articles entirely via (again undiscussed) redirects. In a recent edit, s/he stated that because the AFDs hadn't gone his/her way, s/he had been "forced" into such "unorthodox" deletion (see edit summary here). Whatever the case, it's highly disruptive, as all other editors have been asking is for prior discussion and consensus in the case of such huge deletions. Badagnani (talk) 20:09, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

First, User:Badagnani's intentionally misrepresented my edit summary and intentions in order to peg me as a vandal. The summary "I've tried the ulterior method" refers to me leaving messages in talk (ie. Talk:List of Russian Americans (and other lists like it)) and on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ethnic_groups#Proposal_to_Remove_List_of_X-American_lists that Badagnani ignored. Interestingly, I have never nominated these lists for deletion, despite User:Badagnani's claim. He seems to be mistaking me for User:Noroton (Here) and User:Richfife (Here). I have only relisted per request on those AfDs. Anyway, it doesn't matter what users believe. We don't edit based on that. You need the appropriate sources in order to add people to these lists, which you have not provided in your reverts. This method of sourcing has been discussed before on these pages by User:Jack O'Lantern. It is nothing novel and there is no "consensus" concerning a person's heritage. Should also be noted that User:Badagnani has had rage issues concerning the deletion of these lists, once suggesting an admin be banned for closing an AfD opposite to his liking.

The problem here is that Badagnani appears to think wikipedia editors have the power to reach a "consensus" on the inclusion of who is Danish/Dutch/Finnish instead of finding the appropriate source that identify them as such. Bulldog123 (talk) 20:30, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

The discussion mentioned above is here. Most of the content removed by User:Bulldog123 was, indeed, properly sourced. Again, all that is being requested is prior considered discussion regarding individuals whom one or more editors may wish to remove from a given article. In nearly all cases, sources already provided, or the individuals' own WP articles, clearly stated their heritage. Badagnani (talk) 20:32, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• Again, User:Badagnani either hasn't read what I wrote or still doesn't understand. The sources were "not" proper because they described parents, grandparents as of that background, not the given personage. Read Talk:List_of_Danish_Americans#Sources, made by a previous user. Bulldog123 (talk) 21:10, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
• Again, all that is being requested is prior considered discussion regarding individuals whom one or more editors may wish to remove from a given article

• And yet again I say to Badagnani "we, as editors, cannot decide who is or isn't X". It should be also noted that attempts to intiate discussions have been completely ignored by Badagnani. These are attempts at filibustering a status quo instead of truly engaging in a clean-up. Bulldog123 (talk) 21:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with Badagnani, Bulldog123's edits have been incredibly disruptive. Rather than blank entire pages and delete huge amounts of sourced content, the civil thing to do would be to place in-line {{cite}} tags and discuss major changes on relevant talk pages when it becomes clear there is no consensus for the change. This hasn't occurred, Bulldog123 has edit warred his changes without seeking consensus. He needs to be blocked for 24 hours to make him understand he has to work more cooperatively with other editors. Martintg (talk) 21:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Inline cite tags stay to infinity. It's been a year of this; it's time to move on. Should be noted User:Martintg is an associate of User:Termer, possibly canvassed to help User:Termer avoid resourcing List of Estonians (Dare say, this, could suggest Martintg is an alternate account of Termer [98]). Again, there is no "consensus" concerning who should be on the list and who shouldn't, because we can't rely on our own research (WP:NOR). Bulldog123 (talk) 21:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

See what I mean? Bulldog123's combative attitude and assumptions of bad faith indicates he has no understanding of how to collaborate or cooperate with other editors. Martintg (talk) 22:01, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Do you deny being an associate of Termer then? Have you seen your contrib intersections? Is this just a coincidence? Bulldog123 (talk) 22:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

No, tags really weren't added. Let's do that if it seems necessary, then improve the articles if it seems necessary to do so, one by one. All along the way, discussion and consensus should be utilized. Badagnani (talk) 21:55, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Tags have been added BEFORE in the history of the articles, and adding them again just brings us back in a circle. You can also see most of the articles have a "Sources" talk page message, requesting the same thing be done that I've been saying. One reason so many people wanted these lists deleted was because of the endless revert wars with the WP:OWN users and the "please find a consensus" arguments (which have no applicability to sourcing). This appears to continue to this day. Bulldog123 (talk) 22:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

This doesn't belong here. File an RfC on the articles. DGG (talk) 01:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Checkuser

Because we are having checkuser finding:"Brzica milos etc (talk · contribs) is located in the same large metropolitan area as 71.252.106.166, which is also where Velebit edited from, and they are both at least  Likely based on behavior to be Velebit." (Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Brzica milos etc) I am asking banning of this 2 accounts--Rjecina (talk) 20:22, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• What behavior? The large metropolitan area where I am from - has several million people - larger than Croatia or Ireland. This man is not doing anything else except baselessly accusing people as being the ones that were already banned. Just go through his Requests for checkuser and Suspected sock puppets cases. Also he got some warnings from administrators related to this uncivil behavior.

See [99] and

You, however, Rjecina, are very clearly engaging in a campaign of harassment in order to get as many opposing editors blocked as possible. You're apparently even keeping a list of trophies ([2]). I'll wait for comments from others here, but I'm seriously considering handing out some fresh sanction under WP:ARBMAC against you at this point. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

--71.252.106.166 (talk) 02:19, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

User:I'm not schizophrenic and neither am I

Although I'm not schizophrenic and neither am I (talk · contribs)'s edits seem correct, this edit summary makes it clear that they are not here for valid purposes. Corvus cornix_talk 21:53, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Talk to the user on his talk page first, no need taking preemptive action. Erik the Red 2 (AVE·CAESAR) 22:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

It's ridiculous, but I left them a question for explanation on their Talk page. I don't expect anything good to come from them, though. Corvus cornix_talk 22:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I posted this at WP:AIV. We'll see who takes action first. :) Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 22:15, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Admin issued a 12-hour block to cool that character's jets for now. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 22:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Either this is a massive co-incidence or this user was watching the same film i am right now(What About Bob?) where they made a joke with that username as the punchline minutes ago--Jac16888 (talk) 22:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Funny film. I vaguely recall that line. Can you tell us more details? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 22:37, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Or the ubiquitous ads for My Own Worst Enemy (TV series). Corvus cornix_talk 22:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

When the doc commits bob, he ends up making friends with the entire staff, he tells them a rhyme, something like "roses are red, violets are blue, i'm not a schizophrenic, and neither am i" was funnier than it sounds--Jac16888 (talk) 22:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, yes. A variant on the Oscar Levant quote. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 00:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Ban/block - whatever.

Resolved

 – sure looks like the same guy and no constructive edits. Anonblocked two weeks --Rodhullandemu 22:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Can someone please ban this tiresome twit [100] thank you. Giano (talk) 22:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

The user has only vandalized once after his last block, don't block until after final warning. BTW, WP:AIV is a more appropriate place for this. Erik the Red 2 (AVE·CAESAR) 22:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Poeticbent and Skin Hunters

I'm concerned by Poeticbent's actions during a content dispute on the Skin Hunter's Article. Background to this dispute can be found:

• On the article's talk page
• The AfD which it survived.
• Poeticbent's talk page: [101], [102], [103], [104], [105]
• My talk page.

My concerns are two fold:

• Poeticbent is not entering into any constructive discussion about his changes and is constantly restoring the article to his prefered state. Myself and another editor, Malick78, have reverted these edits a few times and I'm afraid this is becominga bit of an edit war. Both myself and Malick78 have stated our reasoning on the talk page, at the AfD and in my case direct to Poeticbent but he does not seem to want to answer our points instead just quoting wikipedia policies at us despite us saying we didn't think they applied. As such his edit's, IMO, are beocming disruptive due to his failure to properly discuss them.
• Poeticbent's edits seemed designed so his POV wins and possibly also to avoid WP:3RR. He waits to quite some time has passed before making changes to the article, presumbly hoping we've lost interest. I also fear that this may be to avoid 3RR.

I ask for an administrator to reviews the actions of all editors of this article (including myself - I'll take and criticism as a learning experience) and do as they see fit. I am aware that this is not the place to raise the dispute over the content itself and am looking for a review of user actions rather than content. Thank you, Dpmuk (talk) 23:33, 13 September 2008 (UTC).