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DanaUllman

• Courtesy link to recent discussion: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive554#User:DanaUllman

DanaUllman (talk · contribs) is behaving exactly as he did before the arbcom ban. (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Homeopathy)

I think that one set of edits will suffice: it demonstrates his WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT behaviour very well, where he'll accept something one moment, then bring it up as if evidence hadn't been provided to refute it shortly thereafter.

On the 30th, another user - not Mr. Ullman - asked about whether a study was withdrawn. The withdrawal had been linked a couple times in the thread, but you had to scroll down a bit, so I thought it worth pointing out the relevant sections:

From http://mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD001957/pdf_fs.html [Edited slightly to restore lost formatting; Emphasis mine.]

“ Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum for preventing and treating influenza and influenza-like syndromes

Andrew Vickers1, Claire Smith2

1Integrative Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA. 2Weston Education Centre, King’s College, London, UK

Contact address: Andrew Vickers, Integrative Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Avenue, New York, NY, 10021, USA. vickersa@mskcc.org. (Editorial group: Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group.)

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 3, 2009 (Status in this issue: Withdrawn)

Copyright © 2009 The Cochrane Collaboration. Published by JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd.

DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001957.pub4

This version first published online: 8 July 2009 in Issue 3, 2009.

Last assessed as up-to-date: 19 May 2006. (Help document - Dates and Statuses explained)

This record should be cited as: Vickers A, Smith C. Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum for preventing and treating influenza and influenza-like syndromes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2009, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD001957. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001957.pub4.

The editorial group responsible for this previously published document have withdrawn it from publication.
REASON FOR WITHDRAWAL
This review was withdrawn from The Cochrane Library, Issue 3, 2009 as the authors are currently unable to update it.

”

It's withdrawn. It says as much, three times. Sure, it's a little odd of a reason for withdrawing it, but it still makes it pretty impossible to include it here, when other, non-withdrawn papers exist. That people agreed with its inclusion before it was withdrawn three weeks ago is irrelevant now. Shoemaker's Holiday ^{Over 183 FCs served} 19:41, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

While it was withdrawn, it has not been disproven, nor was it withdrawn because of an inability to reproduce the results, nor because another paper debunked it. It was withdrawn because it couldn't be modified as time went on. I see no reason why this is not still a perfectly legitimate study, aside from the fact that it doesn't go against homeopathy and any excuse is an excuse to exclude it. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 18:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

On the 31st, DanaUllman responds to this, and a few intermittent comments:

We all seem to be a tad confused on the meaning of this "withdrawal," though the review is still listed at their website Ultimately, the homeopathy article states that there are no replications to homeopathic research, and this is now clearly inaccurate. We can cite the Cochrane Report from 2006 or 2009 or reference the Lancet's News and Notes that mentioned that the results of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology were clinically relevant. Whig suggested a good compromise on wording, and although I'd prefer saying something else, I can live with his suggestion. DanaUllman^Talk 00:48, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

And then today he posts:

In due respect, the Oscillo research is still very much alive on the Cochrane site: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/homepages/106568753/CD001957_standard.pdf -- It seems to be the same body of information as in the 2006 article. I cannot find evidence at their website that it has been withdrawn. Can someone else? Further, if, by chance, someone finds such a reference, we need to understand what "withdrawn" means because there has not been any new research to disprove what their previous analysis provided. Unless someone provides this information, reversion to the original reference and description is in order. DanaUllman^Talk 17:47, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

The withdrawal - with the link to the Cochrane website - was posted, he responded to this posting, and then - in the same thread where the withdrawal is posted, he claims no evidence of the withdrawal exists.

DanaUllman was banned for a year for his tendentious editing and WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT. Further examples, perhaps requiring more quoting, can be found on Talk:Homeopathy, of him refusing to get a point, or trying to twist words into a concession that he can do whatever he wants.

Furthermore, this is exactly the same as behaviour that came up in the arbitration case, only worse: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Homeopathy/Evidence#1c:_Part_i is a discussion of Ullman insisting that the findings of a study weren't retracted, even though the authors wrote of said study in 1999:

"The evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis [7]. Since we completed our literature search in 1995, a considerable number of new homeopathy trials have been published. The fact that a number of the new high-quality trials (e.g. [14,15]) have negative results, and a recent update of our review for the most “original” subtype of homeopathy (classical or individualized homeopathy [16]), seem to confirm the finding that more rigorous trials have less-promising results. It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis [7] at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments."

Ullman claimed this wasn't a retraction as that word didn't appear. In this new situation, Ullman is claiming that the statement on the Cochrane site saying the paper is withdrawn three times doesn't mean that it's withdrawn by the Cochrane Collaboration.

Furthermore, in the middle of the Arbitration case, Ullman was topicbanned by Vassyana for insisting that Scientizzle agreed with him, despite Scientizzle telling Ullman he did not: [1].

Dana Ullman caused massive disruption for months with his tendentious editing last time. He has promptly returned to his past behaviour.

I would ask that he be community indef banned. Shoemaker's Holiday ^{Over 184 FCs served} 19:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

• I'm not an admin, but I've checked his contribtutions and I endorse an indef community ban. Behavior like this is totally unacceptable. --Tenant23 (talk) 19:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

• Endorse indef ban as one of the editors that has to untangle all the misrepresentations of sources, and who helped in getting the first ban. At least topic ban him from anything homepathy-related, because of his huge COI as a full-time homeopath who writes books and articles saying that homeopathy is scientifically proven. Notice that all Homeopathy-related articles are under probation, so please some uninvolved admin review Talk:Homeopathy and issue a topic ban so at least we can work in peace. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:28, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• Temporary action and note. Under the discretionary sanctions authorized by ArbCom, I am imposing a two-week ban from the homeopathy topic area across all namespaces, broadly construed, including userspace and user talk pages. This should not be construed to prohibit Dana Ullman from responding to conduct reports and complaints regarding him. Additionally, I have advised Shoemaker's Holiday about short-term repeated complaints about the same issue (the last ANI closed barely a week ago) and about his failure to inform Dana Ullman of either thread. The apparent battlefield mentality on both sides is highly disruptive to the project. The topic ban is meant to be a temporary measure, thus its short duration. If Dana Ullman cannot accept the problematic nature of his approach and/or is unwilling to focus on other areas where he does not get carried away, I regretfully endorse a community ban. I would consider this his last chance to reconsider and reflect on his conduct. I do not expect endless last chances to be extended, as we have seen so many other times (including for this editor). If necessary, I will utilize the discretionary sanctions to impose the maximum one year block in order to prevent further disruption to the wiki. --Vassyana (talk) 03:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• As far as my current understanding goes, this is a substantially different situation from the previous one involving the word "retraction". Take the following with a grain of salt because I am simply repeating what came out in the discussion on the homeopathy talk page and have not tried to confirm it independently (I'm a bit handicapped by traveling): The old case was about the authors of a study later saying that the study was probably wrong. Whether they used the word "retract" or not, that's clearly a valid reason not to use the study. The present case is about a study that appeared in the "Cochrane library". Apparently this is a repository for up-to-date, high-quality medical studies. If the authors are unable to publish a new version of their study every X years, then it is removed from the library. This is what happened here. The authors "withdrew" the study because they cannot keep up with the literature. This is something that would not have happened if the study had simply been published in a prestigious journal of the normal kind. Note the wording "Status in this issue: Withdrawn" etc.

The lead of Homeopathy currently claims that (not: almost all of) the few positive findings of effects beyond placebo have not been replicated. If I understand things correctly that's not technically true because the study from 2006 that was removed from the Cochrane libraryin 2009 for a purely technical reason indicates that one of the positive findings is replicable. In my opinion the relevant language in the lead is still OK. That's because I am generally fine with little white lies in the lead, so long as they are explained further down. But here Dana's opponents insist on both leaving the lead as it is and not even mentioning the caveat in the body. That's at least borderline disingenuous, and it seems odd to take Dana's ineffective attempts to get the situation changed as a reason for a ban.

If you want to ban Dana because he is an undiplomatic, ineffective advocate of homeopathy who, instead of causing the changes to the article that he desires, merely brings out the worst in his opponents, then by all means do so. But don't pretend it's for a different reason that makes no sense. Hans Adler 05:19, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• (ec)To be explicit, my imposition of the ban is simply based on recurring patterns. It is not based on any particular argument about content violations or related concerns. The plain fact of the matter is that DanaUllman's current mode of interaction, including misrepresentation and statements ignoring ignoring valid discussion points (popularly referred to as "IDIDNTHEARTHAT"), is the same scheme of conduct that lead to previous sanctions. I am saddened that he is returning to these old patterns, as his expertise and topic knowledge could be valuable. However, in order for that value to be realized, he needs to accept the impact of his conduct and make a serious course correction. --Vassyana (talk) 05:45, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• Maybe Vassyana could be more specific. Please tell us what we should avoid in the discussion - exactly. Which behavior is disruptive so we can avoid it. Give us 2 diffs. There is a content dispute in Homeopathy -Thanks.--JeanandJane (talk) 05:49, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• This appears to be straightforward advocacy which is discouraged by our basic conflict of interest and discussion rules. The following sections are similarly informative, with DanaUllman being obtuse (requiring another editor to puzzle out what exactly he was referring to) and appearing to represent his concerns misleadingly as a new point (the Cochrane Collaboration material has been discussed ad naseum and indeed prior to his ban DanaUlmman was involved in those discussions including about the very points he recently raised again). I know from observation that he is capable is expressing his points directly in a forthright fashion without such vague references and maquillage. Another sign that time has not changed the situation is his continual misuse of the phrase "NPOV" (such as referring to "NPOV sources"). If my point is unclear, there is no such thing as a "NPOV source". NPOV is an article measure based on the predominance of information in reliable sources, not some subjective/personal measure of objectivity or neutrality. With DanaUllman returning after such a harsh arbitration sanction, I would expect that he would take special care to familiarize himself with the expectations of our principles and practices, and especially to avoid the same patterns of conduct that lead to a ban from Wikipedia. Instead, he immediately soapboxed and engaged in tendentious debate. I hope this helps clarify why I have imposed the temporary topic ban while the community discusses how to move forward. --Vassyana (talk) 11:58, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
• Replying a bit more directly to the subject of your concern, it is not that difficult to avoid problematic behavior. Do not engage in general (forum-like) discussion and advocacy on Wikipedia. Do not misrepresent the content of reliable sources or the statements of other editors. Do not beat dead horses or mislead editors regarding the nature of discussions (such as whether they are novel or revisited). Be forthright in discussions and do not belabor discussion with vague points coupled with strong assertions of specific evidence. Follow these simple points and you will avoid the pitfalls that DanaUllman has experienced at this project. --Vassyana (talk) 11:58, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Vassyana: 1. The diff you gave shows that Dana referred to his point of view on BBC Horizon but very soon he moved to another subject and did not edit the article. Nothing else.I saw nothing else which could be problematic. Instead Ullman offered many reliable sources to discuss. 2. Lets give to Ullman some tiny credit.[[2]]

"The Cochrane Collaboration material has been discussed ad naseum" is incorrect. Just few days ago or so when Dana Ullman he was proposing to add a comment from the Lancet supporting the efficasy of OSCILL., the editors -they want him now banned, they were saying that the Cochrane review on OSC was a better source . Few hours later they discovered that it was withdrawn. That created confusion since it is still appearing in the Cochrane Library website.

You imposed the ban when we were discussing another issue : whether or not several papers and info from exceptional reliable sources (which express different views on the Homeopathy effectiveness and meta analyses) should be included in the article as you already have seen in the talk page.

Neutrality requires that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. It does not say to exclude the minority view especially in an article on the specific minority view (which according to the policy must be described in detail).4 editors dispute the neutrality of the article and you chose to ban Ullman ban upon request. The editors asked they same question : Is appropriate to exclude minority views on Homeopathy since they are published in many decent RS? Some editors say yes. You agree with this ? Is it appropriate to take a side in a content dispute and ban an editor? --JeanandJane (talk) 15:08, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I think we will have the agree to disagree on the impact and nature of DanaUllman's talk page contributions, as we obviously have very distinct perceptions of the circumstances. Moving on, if you review the history of talk page discussions in the homeopathy topic area, you will find that the Cochrane Collaboration material (including the findings in particular that DanaUllman is asserting) has been discussed on many occasions. Part of my concern is this is the same material DanaUllman was discussing (in the same tone and fashion) in the weeks leading up to the arbitration case where a full ban was imposed on him for homeopathy advocacy. Regardless, the topic ban of DanaUllman is short-term and considered a temporary measure. Discussion may lead to other uninvolved editors supporting stronger restrictions, a set of alternate editing restrictions, a full ban, or even no sanctions at all. Let us give a chance for other uninvolved admins to review the situation and comment. I'll gladly follow whatever consensus emerges. --Vassyana (talk) 20:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• I rightfully have said and still assert (and Shoemaker’s quote helps to verify!) that the findings of Linde 1997 study were NOT retracted. Shoemaker even quotes directly in Linde’s 1999 article that the new evidence “weakens” his previous findings, but he clearly doesn’t “retract” his results…he simply found that they were less strong. The quote that Shoemaker provides is: “The evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis.” The fact that Shoemaker asserts that this quote proves the Linde “retracted” his previous findings is evidence of poor scholarship or purposeful antagonism to the subject that clouds his normally rational mind.

Further evidence of Linde’s viewpoint on this subject was his strong critique of the Shang review of research.

Shoemaker is also upset that I did not see the link that he provided that “proved” that this article was withdrawn. http://mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD001957/pdf_fs.html -- However (!), to me, this article is not available without subscription. I could NOT make certain that this article was “withdrawn” with certainty, and further, I provided solid evidence that the 2006 article was still posted at the Cochrane site…and further, that this article was also posted in 2009, issue #2.

Since my return to wikipedia, I have not done a single “edit” of an article. I have only participated in Talk pages…and obviously, my bringing up studies in major medical journals and other RS sources is disconcerting to him. Although I know that we can all sympathize with him and his POV, we all need to make an effort toward NPOV.

The other people here who are recommending sanctions against me are the usual suspects…people who are extremely active on the homeopathy article who have a long history of blocking many even mildly positive facts or information on homeopathy. Then, there are some wiki editors who are claimly to be “uninvolved” but it just so happens that they are seemingly “new” wiki editors, despite many obvious editing contributions to complex wikipedia issues (is someone a sock here?): [[3]]

I have been shown to be a civilized editor. I have been shown to provide important contributions to this discussion; however, just because I seem to provide RS references and facts that differ from Shoemaker, he makes the above complaint.

I believe strongly that my recent “topic ban” has been unfairly bestowed upon me, and instead, I urge Admins to evaluate those editors in the homeopathy article who are showing clear antagonism and bias to the subject and are blocking NPOV information in it. DanaUllman^Talk 05:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• Endorse ban of any length, re-applied as needed. My recent experiences with him give me no confidence at all that he can be neutral about his pet subject. He'll go on indefinitely, wasting the time of other editors, if he's allowed to do so. Friday (talk) 14:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
• Endorse ban from Homeopathy and related pages. Homeopathy had stabilised and was improving, but Dana has turned it into a battlefield, promoting his own work, or trying to get wikipedia articles to agree with his published work. Doesn't seem to have learned anything from his block. Verbal chat 16:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
• endorse ban Clearly doesn't understand WP:BATTLE. Having him edit these pahes is detrimental to the construction of an encyclopedia. JoshuaZ (talk) 20:01, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Wow, all of this antimosity against me despite the fact that I have not edited a single article, have a history of being a civil editor, and have a history of referencing high-impact medical and scientific journals. I have no intent to have wikipedia repeat anything that I've written elsewhere, even various peer-review articles and book chapters. I only have a desire to submit information that seems accurate, reliable, and up-to-date. It seems that most of the above people who want me banned have content issues with me or are friends of those who do... It is not my intention to battle (at all). My intent is to collaborate...I hope that some admins look at my recent short contributions to the Talk pages and see for yourself (and please see context too). Humbly... DanaUllman^Talk 22:11, 3 August 2009 (UTC)22:08, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• Please do something. After a year's ban, Mr. Ullman started right back up with the identical issues (the efficacy of oscillococcinum and the 20/20 episode) that he left off with in 2008. He is unequivocally engaging in advocacy, for which he was blocked for a year by arbcom. It is clear by his statement directly above that he sees nothing at all wrong with this. Sources that he presents invariably have to be double and triple checked to be sure they say what he says they do, which they usually don't. Furthermore, dormant user (User:JeanandJane) and a new user (User:Dbrisinda), both pro-homeopathy SPAs, jumped in immediately to support Mr. Ullman and make his suggested edits to the main article. Edit warring, gross source misrepresentation, talk page filibustering, and IDIDNTHEARTHAT have ensued. The situation before his re-arrival was one of incremental and agreeable collaboration. The final straw, for me, is continuing to argue for the inclusion of a withdrawn paper, after it has been made clear that a withdrawn journal article is unusable. Topic ban him, indef him, whatever, just keep him far away from anything related to homeopathy, please. Skinwalker (talk) 00:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

  Oppose ban. He should be given another chance to stop has disrption, because he doesn't seem to be editing in total bad faith. -- 科学高爾夫迷(讨论|投稿) 13:31, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Endorse ban - this user has long since passed his use-by date. His pattern of disruptive and tendentious editing is well established. He's here to further a particular agenda, not the encyclopedia. It's time for the community to flush him once and for all. Crafty (talk) 13:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Endorse ban We are not here to give people chances, we are here to write an encyclopedia. Someone does not need to act in "total" bad faith to be disruptive. We don't need people who turn this place into a battleground. Chillum 13:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose indef community ban, in case it wasn't clear from my TLDR post above. This seems way out of proportion. Arguing with Dana is frustrating and his presence at the homeopathy talk page seems unlikely to improve the article. But as in the case of Dr.Jhingaadey (just look at the groundless agitation at User talk:Avathaar) some people are going nuclear because of a perceived danger from Dana that I simply can't see. I believe any perceived disruption comes from the reactions to Dana at least as much as from what he says. It's not unreasonable to ban such an editor per putting the encylopedia above everything else. I believe the German Wikipedia might do it like this. But here? I am not currently aware of any other topic than homeopathy where a community ban would even be considered for this behaviour. Hans Adler 07:22, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

• I think the problem here is limited to the subject of homoeopathy, and probably results from Dana's advocacy and his frequent COI issues there. His failure to acknowledge COI issues may also contribute to the problem. For example here, where I had drawn attention to the fact that advocating insertion of references to "Oscillococcinum" on homeopathy so that it supported an article he has written (and which had recently been republished in several places on the web) about swine flu gave him a clear COI. He responded "why does it matter what I've written off-wikipedia, and have I ever mentioned any such writings here or linked to them?" He just doesn't seem to understand the issue here. Note also that in the diff I've linked to he also implies that he hasn't cited or linked to his own articles ("have I ever mentioned any such writings here or linked to them?") despite having done so (albeit having acknowledged that it was his own website) only a week before on the same talk page; in the past he has at least once pasted material from his own site directly into an article (see this diff and this article - incidentally the reference cited in that diff appeared to mention neither William Court Gully nor George Woodyatt Hastings, despite having been cited to support a passage about their alleged antagonism). A topic ban may be appropriate. There's probably no reason for a Wikipedia-wide ban (I assume that's what is meant by "community ban"); however, since all (or almost all) of his edits have been in some way connected to homoeopathy a topic ban may amount to the same thing. Brunton (talk) 13:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, a topic ban on homeopathy would serve the same purpose of stopping the disruption (mind you, only under the same conditions as Vassayana's two-week topic ban above). --Enric Naval (talk) 18:11, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

• opposeIt is quite surprising that a well known writer who has served as an instructor in homeopathy at the University of California at San Francisco, and as member of the Advisory Council of the Alternative Medicine Center at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons as the chairperson for the National Center for Homeopathy's Annual Conference, and has been consulted by Harvard Medical School's Center to Assess Alternative Therapy for Chronic Illness, he is a regular speaker at universities, medical schools, pharmacy schools, and hospitals to be treated like that in this forum. This does not look good on wikipedia. Even if I understand all the editor's concerns about pseudoscience and I agree with them ( some times ) this animosity cannot be justified. Maybe his style is passionate, maybe he made some mistakes in terms of style in the past but I think skeptics and Wikipedia could use him to improve the Homeopathy article. I don't think we are enemies here even if we disagree some times. I m confident that a civilized solution will be found. --JeanandJane (talk) 02:46, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

• His credentials outside Wikipedia are irrelevant they would be relevant if he used his expertise to improve the articles in wikipedia according to policies and guidelines, which he is not doing. And they are relevant when evaluating if he is violating the WP:COI conflic of interest guideline which seems to be the case here. The reasons for the ban are his continued disruptive behaviour in-wiki, and his refusal to correct it. "He is an expert in Real Life" is not a reason for not issuing a ban unless ignoring this reason worsens the quality of articles. If he behaves in Wikipedia in unacceptable ways then he can fully expect to be banned from it. I remember that User:ScienceApologist was banned (temporaly) in spite of being an expert, and so was User:Peter Damian, and Dana was already banned by one year by Arbcom, and I'm sure that there are other examples. And I don't think that those bans made Wikipedia look bad at all, quite the contrary, it showed that we treat all users equaly. And please don't understate the disruption that he has caused in the talk pages of homeopathy-related articles. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:23, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Brunton writes about my “frequent” COI, where he correctly sited the ONE time I referenced my own site AND where he referenced my acknowledgement of this and my assertion that it is not RS, along with my note that this link was to a personal email from Professor Ennis that provided some direct insight into the veracity of a discussion at hand. Brunton also expressed concern that my Talk contributions sometimes included some of the same references to research in which I provided in articles that I have written. In due respect, I did not reference or link my articles. Is he actually suggesting that a wiki editor who writes about a subject in a non-wiki source creates a COI if he or she writes about this subject on wiki, even when he doesn’t reference his own work? It seems that someone is either extending the definition of COI or simply selectively enforcing it.

By the way, I originally chose to edit under my real name because I seek to maintain high ethics in my life and being transparent seems to be one important way to maintain this standard. While I could have easily used a fake name and thereby allowing myself a lot more ability to refer to my work, this is neither my style nor ethics. If I were really trying to be an “advocate,” I would have done this. Instead, I want to be a resource to people who are working on this article.

User:Verbal asserts that my references and discussions the Cochrane Report and to a Lancet “News and Notes” article are “advocacy.”[4]. User:Brunton then chose to question if the Lancet’s News and Notes was “peer-reviewed” [5], as though something written by their editors or editorial staff of this prestigious journal was suddenly not reliable because it had something positive to say about homeopathy.

What is remarkable is how offensive some editors can be to me personally and to my references to high quality research (as determined by reliable sources), and yet, no wiki editors or admins do any degree of admonishment of them. I can only imagine what would happen if I referred to an editor here as “delusional” as User:NRen2k5 did here [6] or what User:Friday did when he created a section entitled Talk:Homeopathy#It.27s_probably_best_to_ignore_Dana_Ullman.

Because so many antagonists to homeopathy edit the article on wikipedia, it is not surprising when normally recognized reliable sources of meta-analyses are ignored when these sources report positive results from homeopathic treatment. There are many examples to give, but the Cochrane Report on the homeopathic treatment of adverse effects from conventional cancer treatment is ignored in the article [7] My apologies for providing a “content” issue here, but my point here is that wikipedia needs more balance in many of its articles because they are dominated by just one side of the issue, while there needs to be a better effort at balance.

It is surprising how many editors who have sought to reference good research meta-analyses that have positive results for homeopathy have been sanctioned, banned, harassed, or simply overwhelmed by the larger number of antagonists to the field. I would hope that wikipedia would seek to protect some “experts” in order to create a real encyclopedia. DanaUllman^Talk 22:55, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Dana Ullman is known to misrepresent sources. Evidence of this appears on the arbitration page, but we can give

For instance, in Talk:Homeopathy#Proposed change on replication of trials, Ullman uses a note, which is not included on the journal's webpage or pubmed; a study's inclusion in a meta-analysis, and various other things to suggest that we throw out all large-scale metanalyses and work showing that homeopathy doesn't work, and replace it with his hand-picked set of studies, raising the weakest results to the status of "high-quality replicated studies". Shoemaker's Holiday Over 184 FCs served 00:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Shoemaker all the meta analysis are not definitive and are kind of controversial. Look at the talk page Linde's criticism to The Lancet about Shang meta analysis. Adler above says that the study from 2006 that was removed from the Cochrane libraryin 2009 for a purely technical reason indicates that one of the positive findings is replicable. Maybe he meant that? I don't know about the other papers. --JeanandJane (talk) 01:49, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

No. Dana has misrepresented sources, and also misrepresented the consensus of other editors at the talk pages, and he got that three-month topic ban when was caught red-handed misrepresenting the comment of another editor during the Homeopathy arbitration case, as seen here (at the end of the section). This is not a content problem but a behaviour problem. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:08, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

For recent (i.e. since his return from the 1 year ban) examples of this sort of thing, see for example this diff, in which he claims that when he cited his own website "several people defended this action": the "action" in question is in the section of the talk page headed "Rephrase please" - there is no sign there of anyone defending it. Or this diff, in which he writes "The wiki community thought that it was important to bring up the issue of replicability in this article, and I have simply provided references to RS and high-impact meta-analyses on the homeopathic treatment of specific ailments": scrolling back up the talk page to the relevant section (headed "Updating Info on Replication of studies") reveals that the issue was brought up not by "the wiki community" but by Dana Ullman himself. These may be comparatively trivial examples, but they would appear to indicate a continuing pattern of behaviour. Brunton (talk) 07:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Dana - What you are trying to do with Wikipedia is essentially to synthesize a secondary source here, from a number of primary sources. You have been constantly treading on the grey line dividing normal summarization and reporting and paraphrasing legitimate secondary and primary sources, and WP:SYNTH (and in the process, WP:BATTLE, and other related policies).

You are, for all intents and purposes, too close to the topic to be doing what you've been doing here.

If you go out and write overview secondary source / tertiary source articles in reliable publications, those can be cited in Wikipedia. Trying to write that material directly in here - what you've been striving to do (directly with pre-Arbcom-block, and indirectly with talk page discussion since) - is not acceptable behavior.

Fighting the secondary sources battle in Wikipedia is all about what WP:SYNTH and WP:BATTLE show is entirely what Wikipedia is not here for.

If you will not work to understand that, in good faith, then you need to leave the project. In this case, your being an expert (and as experts are, particularly opinionated) is leading to significant mis-use of the Wikipedia project. This type of debate is not what we're here for. Please accept that, or leave of your own accord. You will do your field much better work if you write these synthesizing opinions and reviews and overviews elsewhere and let others include those (presumably, as you're clearly an expert) reliable secondary sources here once you've published elsewere.

Thank you. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:05, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi there. Can you please clarify what do you mean? I agree though synthesis is not in our rules. For instance The lead which is not written by Dana Ullman says "Homeopathy 's efficacy is not supported by the collective weight of the scientific and clinical studies". Since meta analyses have been controversial and inconclusive with the results conflicting somehow each other ( according to our reliable sources ) this could be considered a synthesis and thus should be avoided? I m trying to understand what we should not do. Thanks --JeanandJane (talk) 04:05, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

In the case of controversial topics, we have to say something. WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE work to support WP:NPOV - we report the general community biggest consensus as our main focus, and present major alternative viewpoints commensurate with their weight in the field.

We can't avoid doing some judgement to determine what is the consensus neutral point, and how much weight, but in the case of Homeopathy (and many related fringe science/medicine topics) we have determined that the "mainstream view" is the consensus neutral point and that the proponents view, fairly reported, is the alternative. An article focused on alternatives like this should probably aim for something like 50:50 balance (the article topic is the fringe / alternative topic, after all) in terms of page space, though that will vary by topic greatly.

Dana Ullman's work, done in an external reliable venue, could then be presented neutrally and straightforwardly in the sections describing the pro-homeopathic research studies in more depth.

Done directly here, however, it's WP:OR, WP:SYNTH and bad for Wikipedia.

We are not denying that he's a major figure in the field - our point is, him being a major figure and being here does not shift the point of neutrality, even though he can both argue in more focused detail and depth than the average editor.

He can write synthetic overviews, in external reliable sources, and we can include them (he should not - WP:COI and WP:RS prohibit that - but others could). He can perhaps provide better, more balanced specific sources for the pro-homeopathy arguments. There are lots of things we can do here.

But what we and he can't do here is use Wikipedia as the venue to synthesize new material that's original research - whether that's new primary research or new secondary source overviews and reporting. You make secondary sources out there - in reliable venues which we can verifyably find and cite. And then, we can include them.

Synthesize here bad. Synthesize elsewhere in RS, then report on what RS said elsewhere, good. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:30, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. As an introduction : I was looking to determine if Homeopathy is a fringe belief and I could not find a reliable source which states it. In the contrary, I found a reliable source BBC which states "Homeopathy isn't some wacky, fringe belief." No skeptic argued against this during the conversation. If somebody has a major reliable source which states that Homeopathy is fringe - besides the skeptics organizations, please let me know.

Homeopathy is a highly controversial topic according to our reliable sources. The mainstream scientists have not reached a strong consensus about its efficacy, if we believe again in our reliable sources: World Health Organization is attacked by the Lancet for supporting Homeopathy 's efficacy. The American Medical Association states that "The efficacy of most homeopathic remedies has not been proven.". The early meta analyses are positive but not fully conclusive and definite, some others negative and positive and the recent Lancet meta analyses are negative but its results strongly criticized by other mainstream sources (with letters published in the Lancet and papers at the J Clin Epidemiol.

Meanwhile very notable Homeopaths have published their criticism for the latest meta analyses. Currently excluded from the article!

The main problem is that some of the sources have been excluded and the article reports that the mainstream consensus is that Homeopathy is unsupported by the collective weight ...... which is as you see above at least inaccurate according to the our RS.

I believe that Ullman tries to convince the other editors to use all the RS about Homeopathy's efficacy and not only the negative ones. And also to include the minority view in the article which is currently excluded for instance Fisher's article/J Clin Epidemiol.paper.

I did not see any synthesis from his part but maybe I have to look more for this. If you have seen something please provide a diff so I can also read it.--JeanandJane (talk) 05:23, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose ban of DanaUllman.

What I've found most frustrating about the editing process for this topic is the screening of allowable RS articles published in respected peer-review journals, and also prominent secondary sources. When a statement that requires support of an RS is advanced, and that source either contends to support the efficacy of homeopathy, or criticizes the results of other anti-homeopathy research, that RS itself is attacked on some obscure grounds, lessening its value by stating it's too old, or it's been detracted (not!), or it's results have been heavily criticized and put to rest, or newer sources invalidate them (as if seminal older RSs suddenly become impertinent). All in an attempt to keep fair and RS supported content at bay. This is not in the least neutral in my opinion. DanaUllman, unfortunately, has been caught in this whirlpool of bias and intransigence. From my perspective, attempting to disassemble it, it seems, has proved overwhelming, to the point where one person cannot be expected to respond to every accusation or criticism made towards him by a group of others (allusion to IDIDNTHEARTHAT). In the short time I've contributing to editing for this article, many criticisms of propositions and suggestions I and others have put forward to make the article more neutral, have been repeatedly attacked even after they have been explained very clearly as to why and the reasons. And counter-suggestions have rarely, if ever, been advanced by the anti-homeopathy quorum. It seems as though a strong case of viral IDIDNTHEARTHAT is sweeping the forum.

As far as misrepresentation of RSs goes -- virtually *everyone* on the homeopathy talk page that has attempted to say anything substantive, has misrepresented sources by selectively quoting from them, selectively summarizing them, or biasely paraphrasing them, and then failing to notice a statement in some other part of the article which puts this interpretation into serious question. If DanaUllman is guilty of this, he is in *very* good company. Even so, I don't really blame editors for this if it's occasional, as perhaps this is due to unintentional zeal of having found what appears to be clear evidence in support of one's POV, to the blind exclusion of all else.

I don't believe DanaUllman should be banned, as I've learned a great deal from his participation in the discussion. He provides a unique perspective that is refreshing in (what I perceive to be) an already highly anti-homeopathy-biased forum. I've addressed specifically in the talk page two of the areas I see as biased, and now I've noticed a third involving the citing of publication bias -- but only in one direction in support of anti-homeopathy views, when there are *many* examples of publication bias in the opposite direction as well (the talk page reference lists many of them). But I haven't yet gotten around to addressing this latest issue on the talk page.

If DanaUllman is ultimately banned (which I don't support or agree with), then I would at minimum suggest banning at least two or three editors from the anti-homeopathy side as well -- those who are especially culpable in creating repeated and consistent obstacles to constructive editing and more neutral improvements based on the merit of arguments advanced and RSs to support these arguments.

Dbrisinda (talk) 06:50, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

The suggestion that "editors from the anti-homeopathy side" should be banned in some kind of cold war style tit-for-tat seems needlessly confrontationalist. Brunton (talk) 09:28, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Disagree with banning

But Agree with Dbrisinda above. While I would support DanaUllman not being able to edit the actual homeopathy article because of a conflict of interests, I see an attempt at totally banning him as the anti-homeopaths just trying to lock away any and all resistance.

I have also said this before, and will say it again: If a homeopathic doctor can not be used for input, research, and statistics on their subject of expertise, then all physicians must be banned from editing medicine related articles, as it is a conflict of interest, regardless of how up in the air the subject matter is.

It's pretty clear that every editor that contributes to Homeopathy puts their opinions first. Anti-homeopathic editors will always search the Earth for any studies that disprove the efficacy, and shoot down anything otherwise, while pro-homeopathic editors will always search for studies that prove the efficacy while shooting down anything that disproves it. To be quite frank and honest, everyone (Including myself) needs to take a break from the subject and come back to it with an editors neutral point of view. - ʄɭoʏɗoiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:57, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose ban - I have had some concerns that I have pointed out to Dana and he has been very responsive and understanding. He is a COI editor and he acknowledges this, and he has not recently attempted to edit the Homeopathy article or any related article to my knowledge. What he has done is participate in Talk page conversations related to Homeopathy, a subject in which he has expertise other editors do not. I believe that those most strongly accusing him of bad behavior have engaged in similar actions, cherry picking and selectively representing sources in order to portray homeopathy in the most negative possible light. As far as the claim of synthesis, the policy applies mainly in article space, not to the same extent in Talk space, where editors of all sides frequently synthesize in the course of discussion. The article has been one sided for a long time and I very much appreciate the input of others who can explain the other point of view and help us to achieve a more balanced presentation. I believe that Dana would benefit very much from helping improve Wikipedia in other articles unrelated to homeopathy, but I do not think a topic ban is necessary, nor would it be fair to single him out. —Whig (talk) 03:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Article Ban - It's time to see if Dana can edit articles (articlespace) other than Homeopathy. I recommend (initially) a 1 month article ban from Homeopathy. If Dana edits nothing else in this time, it's extended to 3 months. If there are still no edits to any other aricles - then indefinite ban implemented. I'm thinking that Dana needs to give the overall Community confidence that he isn't a one-trick pony and is actually interested in the project, rather than just one article out of millions. Of course if he violates the ban, then blocks can be issued per the Pseudoscience ArbCom decision. Shot info (talk) 06:17, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Since Dana hasn't edited the Homeopathy article recently, and has expressed his intention not to do so, I don't think an article ban from Homeopathy is meaningful. —Whig (talk) 07:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Dana is testing the Communities (short) paitence with him. I congratulate you that you are trying to help him. I'm trying to help him too - I don't want to see him permabanned, so how can he be encouraged to help himself? How about he go an edit another article - or discuss another article? His singleminded focus on homeopathy isn't helpful for him as a Wikipedian. If he doesn't diversify, well what is the Community going to do? Shot info (talk) 08:09, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think Dana is trying to test anyone's patience, but I appreciate that some people are frustrated, and I do agree it would be good for Dana and the project if he would edit some other article. I'm not sure what more I can do to encourage him: I think it would increase both his understanding of the project and his respect from others involved in the project. I don't think a formal ban is necessary to encourage positive behavior, only to prevent negative behavior, but what mechanism can do this? I'm open to ideas too, because the goal all of us share should be improvement of the encyclopedia. —Whig (talk) 13:48, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Note and reminder

If anyone was in doubt the Homeopathy Wars are now in full blood again after a period of relative calm. Note also that the article remains under Arbcom sanction. If there are admins out there who have rhinoceros-thick hides and want to help sort things out, please do. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:03, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, please, we have even gotten back where people will place POV tags at the top of the article because their proposed changes were all shot down at the talk page because of not being in agreement with what the high-quality sources say. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:46, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Did you notice how many editors dispute the neutrality of the article? .--JeanandJane (talk) 18:55, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Which is moot because, once it was discussed thoroughly, they failed to show that the article didn't represent sources accurately. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:05, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Or they failed to convince the editors who added those sources that there was a neutrality issue. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 19:09, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

The NPOV dispute never ended, and I continue to believe that the article should be tagged, but I have not personally added the tag recently. —Whig (talk) 03:40, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

We're governed by WP:NPOV. WP:NPOV#Pseudoscience specifically deals with articles such as Homeopathy. That some editors disagree with it, and want a purely sympathetic view doesn't make the article a violation of NPOV. Shoemaker's Holiday ^{Over 184 FCs served} 07:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Nobody is arguing for a purely sympathetic view. Perhaps you would like a purely hostile view? —Whig (talk) 07:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The tag says in plain english that "The neutrality of this article is disputed" (By some editors). This is far from how some editors seem to think it reads: "A new topic disputing the neutrality of this article has appeared" or "This topic is not neutral". The tag simply states that some authors disagree with the stonewalling of the likes of User:Shoemaker's Holiday, User:Enric Naval, User: Verbal, and User:Brunton (And to a lesser extent by a few others to fill the gaps). The tag discussion, however, is for the talk page. If DanaUllman is causing chaos, its only because those 4 previously mentioned editors go absolutely haywire when someone disputes their studies (Which because they've been published later, somehow supercede the earlier studies... But haven't been around long enough for much peer review. Convenient, huh?). Dana has not (And has even privately said to me that he has no intention of doing so) edited the Homeopathy page, and has merely provided insight and discussion on the talk page. This is perfectly allowable. If you can't handle these comments, don't respond to them! - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 15:29, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Floydian, you've been here enough years to know what WP:PSCI says. You've been here enough years to know that, for any subject, no matter how wacky, a few ostensibly reliable sources exist supporting it. You ought to know that some articles are the subject of continual campaigns to push them to meet a non-scientific point of view. Homeopathy is akin to Creationism. If Ssomeone showed up to the Evolution article with books by various Intelligent design proponents, and was abusing the scientific literature to find random quotes that seemed, out of context, to support his point, but, when you looked them up, didn't, would you still be complaining that the pro-science side was stonewalling? Shoemaker's Holiday ^{Over 184 FCs served} 00:45, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of the policies regarding this, and I only believe that the term fringe belief needs to be changed, as the common person reads that as "Very few or next to no people on the planet believe in this." I am also aware of what history can teach us, and that's not to trust everything that is handed to you immediately. The merits of this medicine are not widely understood, and studies are bouncing back and forth every decade changing the opinion of it. I am aware of what money can do to the world and that things that aren't marketable are always at a disadvantage to the things that are. Just like at Wikipedia, consensus is not always achieved merely by numbers. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 03:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There was just a long discussion on the Talk page about this and it was pointed out that the article does not call Homeopathy a fringe belief. It remains that some editors continue to refer to it as fringe in comments and edit summaries, however. I don't think there is reliable sourcing for characterizing it as such, and evidence of prevalence to the contrary exists. —Whig (talk) 15:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

If I might get back to the original point... all of the above only reinforces that we really need some uninvolved admins to maintain order. Pretty please? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 19:04, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

This I will agree with. A neutral admin who has no opinion of the topic either way needs to stand as a mediator, and possibly an overseer of edits. Consensus should be declared by this admin as opposed to the passionate editors of the topic. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 03:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

This ANI shows that it is important, perhaps essential, for some non-involved admins to participate in the homeopathy article. The ANI is evidence of one group of editors, who have a strong POV on homeopathy, who want to mute someone who doesn’t have their POV. Even though I have not made a single edit (!) to the article and have provided references to RS, their solution is to mute me. I sincerely hope that non-involved admins consider policing these editors who may be abusing wiki policies.

As for specific assertions above, I take issues with Shoemaker’s statement where he asserts I am “known to misrepresent sources,” but his “evidence” is simply not there. I encourage people to read his link to the Talk pages and see for yourself.

For the record, homeopathy does not simply have “some” studies that show efficacy; there are meta-analyses on the treatment of specific conditions that show this, and there is evidence of replication of studies, and yet, the article at present says that there are no replications of trials with positive results. Ironically, the reference that presently exists of this statement is reference #12 that is dated 1995! Despite my and others efforts to change this misinformation, this outdated information still exists, as does the 1995 reference. DanaUllman^Talk 03:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggested resolution

• DanaUllman (talk · contribs) is strongly warned against general discussion of the topic, especially for specific issues where he is (or has been) directly involved or acting as an explicit advocate. Conduct contrary to this warning will be regarded as disruptive.
• DanaUllman is strongly advised to communicate in a direct, frank, and clear fashion. This requires avoiding vague references, misrepresenting the statements of others, misleading other editors regarding the nature of a discussion, selective omissions, and other actions that clearly cause misperceptions or obfuscate aspects of the discussion. Failure to communicate clearly and honestly will be treated as disruptive conduct.
• All editors in this topic area are explicitly warned against soapboxing and treating the area as a battleground.
• Editors in this topic area are strongly encouraged to utilize avenues of soliciting community feedback when there is an intractable disagreement or other impasse in discussion. This includes, but is not limited to, requests for comment and various content noticboards (such as for NPOV, reliable sourcing, original research, and fringe theories). All such requests should neutrally report the disagreement and solicit feedback.
  • Failure to seek out such community feedback or other forms of dispute resolution while persisting in edit warring and/or talk page arguments will be handled as disruptive conduct. Rejection of community feedback will be treated as disruptive behavior. Extremely biased or advocacy style requests on those noticeboards will also be treated as disruptive behavior.

This specifically addresses DanaUllman's conduct, while also addressing disruptive behavior by other editors. This should not be the basis for further (or practically endless) second chances. It should be regarded as a "final warning" and provides a clear basis for admins to act decisively. Thoughts? Comments? --Vassyana (talk) 09:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Does this do something that the arbitration case didn't already do? Any reasonable editor would have taken a year-long ban as a hint that a change in behavior is needed, right? Friday (talk) 14:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I still don't see how Dana Ullman has done anything wrong to deserve any warnings, let alone a final warning. He is not editing the article (And therefore is not engaging in vandalous advocacy), and the only "disruptions" are editors spazzing out at his comments on the talk page. All his comments are dedicated to improving the articles, none of them have to be carried out, or even taken into consideration if there is a general disagreement. Long arguments and discussion needn't be construed as a disruption, but rather as a means to some new resolution. My suggestions:

• Fully protect the article (Including from any admins involved with the article) so that only a neutral party can make the final edits to it. This way, nobody can accuse another of taking ownership of the article.
• Split the talk page into one dealing with style and one dealing with content. The content talk page should be labeled as a place where passions roar, and that comments should not be taken or delivered personally and should stick to improving the topic at hand.

The second is a bit unreasonable, but here is the alternative: Banning anyone that stands behind their opinions from editing Homeopathy or its talk page and related subjects. This isn't tribal warfare, I know we can be more democratic about this instead of being socialists crushing the rebellion. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 14:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

What he does wrong: He's wasting the time of editors on the talk page. He misrepresents sources, and has a severe tendency toward "I didn't heard that". I believe he's proven himself unable to be a useful contributor here. You want us to change our standard operating procedure to accommodate one guy? I believe there is a simpler, more common solution, already suggested above. Friday (talk) 14:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

1) Editors waste their own breath (... or strain their finger muscles) responding if they are unswayable in the first place.

2) He hasn't edited the article, so he hasn't misrepresented anything nor contributed to it. Its a talk page, and anything on a talk page is merely a suggestion or comment which is put forth to review by others.

3) I don't want to change operating procedures, but I don't want a communist wikipedia where editors go cry foul whenever somebody disagrees with them and the perpetrator gets a midnight visit from which they don't return. If he is misrepresenting sources, you say "You're misrepresenting sources there", and ignore it. You are suggesting we silence the only professional involved with the subject on wikipedia because you want things to just be silent and left alone, as is. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 15:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

No, misrepresenting sources should be an only warning the first time and a permanent disinvitation from editing the second time. It goes against the heart of WP:V to misrepresent a source. The fact that he is a professional here is rather the crux of the problem: he is promoting an inherently fringe view of a pseudoscience, something with no actual science (beyond the established efficacy of the placebo effect) to back it up. → ROUX ₪ 15:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure there is evidence of misrepresenting sources, perhaps he has selectively represented one side of the issue which offends other editors who selectively represent the other. In any case, I don't think that Floydian's split-talk proposal has much to recommend it, and the alternative is worse. We shouldn't be banning people based on POV. As far as fully protecting the article, since Dana has not edited the article recently and it is his conduct that is the issue here, there is no reason to consider that. I think that Dana is trying to help improve our coverage of homeopathy but lacks an appreciation of Wikipedia's wider community. I don't believe he has done anything to justify a ban, at this time, but a warning or friendly advice may be appropriate that Wikipedia depends on respect for the community and a difficult SPA runs the risk of exceeding the community's patience. —Whig (talk) 16:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I repied below in the evidence of misrepresenting sources. Dana has already had lots of warnings and advice, he had a mentorship by LaraLove, and he got banned for 1 year, and he still doing the same behaviour. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

(ec)But can one assume he is intentionally misrepresenting them and not simply misinterpreting them? The human mind is bound to create logical fallacies in order to satisfy the pattern it seeks. That is, someone looking through a study for something to back up homeopathy is very likely to only catch the parts that do just that (And miss the counterpoints made), but it doesn't mean they are intentionally fabricating their own results. I know my suggestions are extreme, but there should be a place for these discussions on wikipedia as they incite change as opposed to stagnation. Rules need to be lay down, not punishments - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:56, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Your point that one may misinterpret and not intentionally misrepresent sources is well taken. I don't believe there is evidence of bad faith on Dana's part. Nonetheless, I don't think rule changes are needed here. —Whig (talk) 17:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

See my comment and Brunton's comment. Dana was caught red-handed misquoting a comment to misrepresent it, the probation incidents page is packed full with complains and analysis of the misrepresentations, and the evidence page of the case is also full of that, Dana then got banned for 1 year for advocacy, and now he's back to misrepresenting again. We can't read his mind to know if he is doing it in good faith or not, but don't say that he didn't made misrepresentations because he has made a lot. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it is constructive to relitigate old battles from more than a year ago, and the evidence page you point to has been blanked, so there is nothing to look at or discuss. If you have a case to present to the ArbCom then as you know the article is under their supervision and you can bring violations to their attention. Here we are discussing recent conduct and I do not see evidence that intentional misrepresentation occurred. —Whig (talk) 20:18, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It is widely known that User:Enric Naval has a strong POV that is antagonistic to homeopathy, that he uses various wiki-lawyering strategies to keep potentially positive information about homeopathy out of the article, and has a tendency to take things out of context. He asserts that I have “misrepresented” sources, and he gives this as “evidence” [[8]], and he has the audacity to reference User:Brunton who is another of editor with a strong POV and who makes similarly unfounded assertions. They seem to think that if they and other editors with their similar POV gang-up and repeat the same accusations that others will think that they are real. Because many editors with a strong POV against homeopathy know that I provide references to high-impact journals that are widely recognized as RS, they seem to see me as a threat to their POV, even though I am simply trying to make the article more accurate and NPOV. Several editors have asserted that I have not done anything wrong and that I provide a real contribution to wikipedia.

Brunton and Enric assume that the issue of “replication of studies” is not important to this article, even though our article at present has a 1995 (!) reference to the lack of replication of studies that confirm efficacy of homeopathy in the treatment of specific diseases and even though I have provide RS evidence from the Cochrane Report that verifies that there has been replication of studies by independent sources. Further, I provided a reference to the Lancet showed that the result of one of these studies was clinically relevant. Brunton asserts that only I am interested in this subject of replicability, and yet, his own link shows that this is a highly debated subject with people voicing pros and cons [[9]].

My point here is that Enric and Brunton and select others make unfounded assertions primarily because I have a different POV than they do. The bottomline is that my new involvement on the homeopathy Talk pages is relatively short, and a non-involved admin can easily evaluate my contributions, see the many RS references, see my civilized efforts, see the many attacks (even personal attacks given by the NAME of a sub-heading [[10]], and see the persistent stonewalling of information that a group of editors with a strong POV against homeopathy.

It seems clear that the editors who want me muted should be more carefully evaluated for their actions.

I also want to address User:Vassyana: I am an “advocate” for accuracy. If THAT is a problem, please let me know. Please clarify what I have done wrong since my return to wikipedia. It seems that your recommendations are good recommendations for ALL wiki editors, not just me. Because you have chosen to address them only to me, I would benefit from knowing on what you are basing your recommendations only to me? DanaUllman^Talk 20:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)19:38, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I have not asserted that only you are interested in the issue of replicability of results: what I was trying to point out was that your statement that "The wiki community thought that it was important to bring up the issue of replicability in this article, and I have simply provided references to RS and high-impact meta-analyses on the homeopathic treatment of specific ailments" implied that the matter was raised by "the wiki community" and you just provided supporting info, and this isn't borne out by the evidence which shows that you brought it up yourself. If you had phrased it the other way round, stating that you had brought up the matter and provided references, and the community had considered it an important matter to discuss, that would have been fair enough, and would have reflected what had actually happened; but that isn't quite what you wrote. I provided diffs in the comment that Enric referenced so that others could judge the evidence and decide for themselves whether or not I'm mistaken here. For the record, I don't assume that the issue of replication of studies is not important, and I don't think I have posted anything that could be interpreted as meaning that - I was even one of the participants in the discussion that you cite as evidence that it is a highly debated subject. Brunton (talk) 22:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Dana, I don't want to answer for Vassanya, but the standard on Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. I'm sure you know that, but I just wanted to make it explicit. —Whig (talk) 20:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Whig...of course...and THAT is why I have a history of providing reliable sources to verify what is NPOV information, usually in high impact journals, and sometimes with secondary reliable sources that have reported on them...and THAT is why I seem to be so threatening to some editors here. I cannot help but find a bit of irony that some editors assert that I am "wasting editors time" by providing this information, and they seek to mute me (this is why I feel that admins should be investigating those editors here who have are pointing fingers at me). DanaUllman^Talk 21:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support Vassyana's proposal. There is far too much soapboxing on that talkpage. DU is certainly an instigator, but by no means the only one to wander off WP:TPG. As I believe I argued last year, knowingly and flagrantly misrepresenting a source should be grounds for immediate block. As a side note to the strong encouragement to seek input from the wider community, I would like to urge that such discussions when (not if) they occur not be overrun by the usual suspects. - 2/0 (cont.) 03:40, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

RetlawSnellac, Neftchi (formerly Baku87) and copyright issues

Locus of dispute, or action in dispute

User:RetlawSnellac

Involved parties and confirmation they have been notified of the discussion

• User:Neftchi
• User:RetlawSnellac

Description of the dispute and the main evidence

I don't contribute often on English Wikipedia, being mainly active in Armenian WP. While browsing through Commons categories I came across photos of new user RetlawSnellac who registered here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/RetlawSnellac and on commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:RetlawSnellac

He uploaded 4 pictures to commons claiming to be the author [11]. It caught my attention, because Retlaw Snellac is one of my Flickr contacts, and I do follow his photo stream [12]. Retlaw Snellac is the acronym of his true name, Walter Callens, spelled in reverse. Browsing his folder on Azerbaijan, I checked, and found that all 4 pictures were in fact taken by Retlaw Snellac I know from Flickr. I became curious, because I remember Walter publishes his photos on Flickr under standard, "strict" copyright, as once I checked his Flickr page, to see if I can import some of his photos to Commons. The other obvious reason was, that from lot of nice photos from different countries, only those 4, and only from Azerbaijan were uploaded. Even more, he suddenly shows special interest in discussions related to Azerbaijan.

I wrote him on Flickr, to see if it was really him to upload his photos to Commons and participate in some discussions/voting. His reply was:

Hello,

Thanks for the information.

Retlaw Snellac from Wikimedia is NOT me.

Kind regards,

Walter

The problem here is that the RetlawSnellac on Wikipedia claimed to be the real Walter Callens, uploading his own works, using the date of the real Walters visit to Azerbaijan from flickr to come up with this story, he even explicitly claims to be the real Retlaw, see here.

Upon the incident I contacted another member who too contacted him. I was advised to prepare something about this and report it here, as upon checking this user contribution there seem to be one obvious correlation between this suspicious account and user:Neftchi (formerly Baku87).

Here is the evidence I gathered so far:

Since June 26th, Neftchi edited daily, until July 3rd. Retlaw registered on the 4th and edited until the 7th, Baku87 never edited during that time period. He returned on the 11th and soon request a name change from Baku87 to Neftchi. [13]

• Ratlaw Snellac addeed this map, which has the same borders as this map uploaded by Neftchi. This was probably done to support the revert war on the ADR article initiated by Neftchi when he adding the map on Jan 2009 [14].

• Here he announces having uploaded new picture of petroglyphs of Qobustan. Note that the original uploader of those petroglyphs was Netchi(formerly Baku87)[15]. Neftchi then shows an interest in pictures, by switching the pictures[16].

• On Church of Kish, Retlaw reverts to Neftchi version. The article history indicates that there was an edit warring in process, this user, who registered one day ago, apparently knew the edit war was going on and reverted to Neftchi version.

• "All by sudden" continues the discussion started by Baku [17], [18], [19], [20], [21] (adds a website owned by a well-known Adil Baguirov)

• The article Azerbaijani Special Forces was created on June 18 by Neftchi, Fedayee requested a source for an element, which was provided by Retlaw here. Check the article history and see that in fact this user who only registered on July 4, only showed interest in Neftchi contributions.

• He edits the Azerbaijani Armed Forces article, in which Neftchi is the most active editor.

• On Nagorno-Karabakh War, Neftchi added an unreliable source [22] which was reverted twice. Retlaw re-added that source.

• Baku87 started a thread in August 2008 [23]. Almost a year later RatlawSnellac backs him up [24], [25].

• Retlaw voted for an AfD here in which Baku87 had already voted.

• Retlaw created this article which was copied from here, Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan.

• Both users show interest in documenting Chinese alleged crimes during the Urumqi riots. Neftchi provides a source in its talkpage. [26] [27] So did RetlawSnellac. [28]

• RetlawSnellac goes on to add dozens of individuals in the List of Azeris. [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34]. Neftchi was by far the most active contributor to that list for the last couple of months. [35]

• Neftchi adds a picture of a carpet manufacturing in Ganja and here RetlawSnellac adds one on the Carpet Museum.

• Here RetlawSnellac even leaves a message on the Neftchi talkpage inviting him to use his pictures. This leaves Neftchi to do what he wants with those pictures without having the trouble of using two accounts. Note that the real RetlawSnellac denied having anything to do with this account.

• Funny here, the fake RetlawSnellac even goes to attempt to have the picture of the so much loved by Neftchi petroglyphs of Qobustan to FA statues.

• Also see here, most of the edits in the last few months were done by Neftchi. And here, where he supports Neftchi out of nowhere to add the POV tag.

• Note also that Retlaw claims to be from Belgium/Netherlands. [36], prior to Neftchi name change, this was Baku87's personal page on Wikipedia, which read: Deze gebruiker spreekt Nederlands als moedertaal.

The pattern between both users, as if he switched from one account to the other, and while one user was contributing the other never was.

I do not know Neftchi and never interacted with him, so nothing personal, but impersonation, and compromising whole project by thief of IP and abuse of freedom and trust, is something that in my opinion, can not and should not be tolerated. --Aleksey Chalabyan a.k.a. Xelgen (talk) 21:22, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I have tagged one of his images at commons (File:Carpet Museum in Baku.jpg) with {{subst:npd}}, since I have found it on the flickr website. I'm out of time, I'm afraid, to contribute more now, but these are serious allegations which do need careful investigation. If he is truly who he says he is, he should be able to verify permission at the flickr site or through e-mail. If it should prove that this individual is deliberately misrepresenting himself to commit intentional copyright fraud, then I think it would be appropriate to immediately indefinitely block any and all accounts that may be involved. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:38, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I just received a message in my talk about alleged sockpuppetry, impersonation and IP thief suspicion related to me and RetlawSnellac. I certainly hope this has got nothing to do with me being ethnic Azerbaijani and Aleksey Chalabyan a.k.a. Xelgen being Armenian as we both work on articles with in which we have strong opposing perspectives. I noticed that the only users who have ever accused me in Wikipedia were ethnic Armenian. For example I was accused of having a sockpuppet account called Baki66 thats why I changed my name from Baku87 to Neftchi to prevent confusion. I want to make it clear that I dont know who RetlawSnellac is and its certainly not me, he posted a message in my talk see here and I never replied back to it. I have not talked or had any contact with that user I do have encountered him several times in wikipedia in articles in which I was active, I think he is just checking out my contributions list and works from there. Also notice how all his edits are done after me. This kind of approach is often done by anon-users. So just going through my huge contributions-list and finding any connections with RetlawSnellac is easy work but in no way is that evidence or proof. With this kind of approach I could probably link you to sockpuppetry aswell. I have been a member in wikipedia for a long time and I have never engaged in this kind of forgery so under what motive and reason would I suddenly start now. RetlawSnellac said in my talk page that I was welcome to upload any photo of his Photoalbum in Flickr and gave me this link and also note that the username in Flickr matches the one in wikipedia (that is retlaw snellac), why not approach him instead of me and ask him to verify his identity on both Flickr aswell as in Wikipedia. Neftchi (talk) 22:32, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

He has been approached in addition to you as both of you have been mentioned in this thread. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:40, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello. First of all, the main "hero" here, is owner of fake account RetlawSnellac, who did several serious violations and for whom I can not think of any excuse, for that. About you, no believe me you being azeri and me being armenian doesn't really mean anything for me. I had lot of contacts, and worked/lived together with azeris and turks. I'm soo far from being nationalistic or xenophobic in any other way. Also I'm in WP, since late 2006, but in en:wp 99% of my contribs are interwikis to hy:wp. So "we both work on articles with in which we have strong opposing perspectives" isn't correct, we really haven't meet, neither we worked on same articles. I'm not much into history or politics, and I do avoid Armenian-Azerbaijan related topics, as I find edit wars, one of the biggest and stupidest problems of wikis in general. I'm much into photography and I'm much for Free Software and Free Content, because I do really respect IP rights. Add because I've been following authors works for some period, I felt myself much more obliged, to report this. So If I noticed similar incident done by Armenian, my reaction would be the same. I'm probably most copyright-paranoid in hy:wp. I Hope my motivation is pretty clear now, and no one goes to look for ethnic problems here, and we can come back to incidents. Let me sum it up again, I'm sure RetlawSnellac on wikimedia, is impersonator and thief, as I got reply from author, I'm almost sure RetlawSnellac here is puppet (my expereince of moderating several forums tells me so), what comes to you, you're account has most correlations with RetlawSnellac's contirbs. But I don't think I have any moral right to accuse you in anything, until check is done, by admins. And if it proves you have nothing to do with all this, I'll ask your pardon, for my suspicion. --Aleksey Chalabyan a.k.a. Xelgen (talk) 00:55, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm back. I've also located several others and tagged them for verification of permission. If there were a contact address for the flickr account owner, I would happily contact him through OTRS so that we could quickly resolve this. If you are in communication with him, can you perchance ask him to get in touch with info-en-c@wikimedia.org, explaining that there is an individual on Commons impersonating him and uploading his images without permission? If his e-mail address can be clearly connected to the point of publication, this could resolve matters very quickly, at least as far as the copyright problems are concerned. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:39, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Just because this alleged imposter (RetlawSnellac) is going through my contributions list should not make me a suspect of sockpuppetry, impersonation and IP thief suspicion, these are serious accusations. Just think about it, what motive would I have for all this? I upload my own photos, edits my own articles and I have been doing this succesfully for several years now. Perhaps I am a bit overreacting, Im just taken by surprise by all of this. I would like to see RetlawSnellac's explanation to all of this aswell. Neftchi (talk) 17:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmmmm.... fascinating. And well researched and presented evidence, Xelgen. At the very least, RetlawSnellac seems to have been engaging in activities that not only break Wikipedia rules but which are quite clearly illegal. He has been pretending to be someone he isn't (Walter Callens), has been claiming that he owns the copyright of images which he does not own, has been uploading some of those images to Wikipedia, and has been inviting Neftchi to upload even more of those images to Wikipedia, thus breaking copyright laws. Whether RetlawSnellac and Neftchi are one and the same might be provable using CU evidence - but if they are the same person, the evidence suggesting he has been carefully avoiding being online using two accounts at the same time-period means that he has probably also been using two completely different ISPs. Similarity in editing styles, the identical use of particular words or phrases, might be another way of proving they are the same person (or proving that they are not). Meowy 21:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

There's smth wrong with my ISP, as it's second day I can't access Flickr. So using proxy, I've got to real RetlawSnellac profile on flickr. There is an email address, at the bottom of the page. Guess you can try it, to contact him. And I've just wrote a FlickrMail to him, leaving link to this report, and your instructions to info-en-c@wikimedia.org and describe the situation. --Aleksey Chalabyan a.k.a. Xelgen (talk) 23:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

After reading Neftchi’s reply, I feel it is important to clarify few things.

• Neftchi told, that RetlawSnellac was editing only after him, as do some annonims do. But there are cases, when Neftchi showed interest in some articles only after Retlaw contributed in them. One example is Neftchi's renewed interest in the petroglyphs like here and this clearly after RetlawSnellac. Also, if we dig a bit deeper into RetlawSnellac's contributions, we see controversial edits in articles which Neftchi did not edit (which seems to apparently discredit his claim of a plot against Neftchi). A few more examples: [37], [38], he also created Shirvan Domes. Also check his edits on Saingilo – the disputed region between Azerbaijan and Georgia, this image is in commons too.

• On the diagram we see how Neftchi takes a break twice, both for about exactly a week. RetlawSnellac posts right after him at both times, and most importantly, only at times. Such "perfect timing" makes plot against Neftchi quite unlikely (untill someone knew he will be on brake).

I'd like to mention, that some of the pictures uploaded by Neftchi, rise some questions to me, as well.

• Compare this with this.

• Uploaded to skyscrapercity.com on June 30, 2008 - Source Flickr vs. Uploaded to wikipedia by Baku87 October 25, 2008

Note that Neftchi again claims to be the author.

I have more in mind, but I'd like to re-check them tomorrow with fresher mind, cause after few hours spent digging contrib. history, I'm afraid to become a suspicious paranoic. --Aleksey Chalabyan a.k.a. Xelgen (talk) 00:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's some pretty hefty evidence of copyright infringement, unless Neftchi is a woman named Erica who lives in Maine. Both of those images clearly predate our usage here. I'll see if I can get an admin who works more routinely with sock puppetry to weigh in on the sock question. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Have you noticed its summer? Thats why I was on a break, what else could I be doing during this time. If I was changing accounts then wouldnt my IP remain the same? So check for IP between mine and that of RetlawSnellac's. Unless you have that it means nothing. And what do those photos have to do with this case, that has got to do with copyright and my previous website - euro-caspian.com (which is offline now). The fact that your out of topic makes it seem more like a crusade against me. Also note how fellow Armenian Wikipedian collague Meowy suddenly enters the talks, this at least raises the bar of suspicion of your accusations against me. Especcially taking into account Meowy's offensive language against Azerbaijanis, such as in this example, in which I qoute:

We also have to consider the plight of the population of Azerbaijan. They have a medical condition that's rather like a severe nut allergy. At the sight of a map showing the borders of Nagorno Karabakh their necks start to swell up, then they begin to involuntarily jump up and down as if possessed, arms swinging about wildly. If the situation is not quickly relieved by removing the map, their heads will quite literally explode! Many medical papers have been written about this unfortunate condition, but a yet no definitive cure has been found. The ingestion of a very large dose of democracy is known to alleviate the symptoms, but this is something the afflicted are reluctant to undergo because of cultural reasons.

So I would like to know whether this is a anti-Azerbaijani case due to my opposing perspectives regarding both our countries and politics. It could also very well be that you are RetlawSnellac and whilest I was on a break you made edits based on my contributions list and collected so-called-evidence for a case against me; considering you know my history of contributions very well. Anyway as I said before, I could probably find connections with you and some other user aswell and accuse you of socketpuppetry, because this is what kinda evidence you present. What you want you will find.Neftchi (talk) 14:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for inserting some off-topic humour into the thread - and, unlike your uploading of images, at least you are acknowledging the real creator of that satiric piece! However, I think you should be responding to the issues and the questions about your uploading of images that appear to be the work of others. Meowy 16:38, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

BTW, I think what Neftchi is trying to say in his "and what do those photos have to do with this case, that has got to do with copyright and my previous website - euro-caspian.com" comment is that the photo on the blog by a woman named Erica has actualy been stolen by Erica rather than the other way around. That seems possible. Looking at all the photos in her album there is no evidence she has actually been to Azerbaijan, and the photos show dancers in many locations around the world. So, unless she is extremely well-travelled, it would be common-sense to assume that almost all of the photos in that album have been taken from other sources. Meowy 17:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd certainly agree with you that Erica is unlikely to be the photographer of a lot of those images and may not be this one. I'm not entirely sure if Neftchi is either, though. I have confirmed that File:Kara Karayev.jpg was hosted, for instance, on the now defunct website, but I can't confirm that it was hosted there prior to its uploading here by another contributor, and copyright seems questionable, given that the photograph must be, what, 30 or 40 years old? Also, is he the copyright owner of the schoolbook from which this was scanned? Questions like this are worth some clarification. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I had hosted a website called euro-caspian.com funded by Heydar Aliyev Foundation, but the website was not required anymore and thus I closed it down, its offline now. The photos of Gara Garayev for example is from the database of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. If your interested in learning more about the Heydar Aliyev Foundation I suggest you visit their official website here. The schoolbook picture is a scan of a schoolbook in Azerbaijan for 4th grade about Azerbaijani history. I wasnt aware that it was not allowed to scan book covers and upload them, I thought since the picture depicted Babek a heroic figure in both Iranian aswell as Azerbaijani cultures it would contribute to the related articles. I would also like to note that we stay on subject as I cannot represent myself while being confronted on several different subjects. I suggest we deal with the current case that is regarding the socketpuppetry and then later move on to copyrights regarding me, otherwise it would simply be unfair for me to represent myself. Neftchi (talk) 20:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

No, you cannot claim copyright to a picture you scan from a schoolbook and license it under GFDL and CC-BY-SA. I see that you've used fair use rationales before; unless you can verify that this picture is public domain, you can only use it if it meets the non-free content criteria and you provide a proper fair use rationale. With respect to the others, I see that you were advised in 2006, here, to obtain a letter from Heydar Aliyev Foundation to verify your authorization to release their materials. Did you ever obtain this? I don't see a copy of a letter from them in the OTRS system related to this (though there is one letter from them on an unrelated matter, which agents can see at Ticket:2008101710030661). You should add your comments to the PUF listing, which is linked at your talk page, as that listing will run its course within two weeks' time. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I can imagine, one doesn't understand the IP right laws, standards and the different licenses and cases. But I think every child understands, that writing "This work was done entirely by me", under work created by another person, is something "bad" and "wrong". I still, do assume good faith: for example - I can imagine being lazy, to properly provide all the necessary license/rights information. But it's not acceptable, in many ways. Project could be simply sued by real authors - seriously harming project, communities, and idea of Free Content in general. So can you please, look through all your uploads, mark for clean up all the images, you didn't have rights to upload, and provide info on images you really created by yourself, or had rights to upload. So this question never rises again in the future, and doesn't rise mistrust? --Aleksey Chalabyan a.k.a. Xelgen (talk) 01:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Dear Neftchi, it's second time you try to present this as personal and/or ethnic-biased. First time I ignored that, taking in account we had no contact before, and that you might be surprised by this situation. After all my explanation, and time I've spent trying to be as correct and accurate in facts/evidence rising suspicion to you, I find it quite insulting. If I by any chance would have any personal/national problems with you, I would contact you directly. I do understand, that this is not pleasant for you. Neither it's pleasant/interesting/fun for me. Noitce, that I didn't even put any of your words under doubt, without providing verifiable facts. You already did it several times. And constantly looking for ethnic background, you try to accuse me in nationalism. So I demand for mutual respect and civility.

About Meowy, as I can see you recently had a clash on her talkpage, I think it's natural she was quite interested in your edits at ANI.

I hope we'll finish with personalizing now, and deal with incident and actions, not persons.

Have, you really checked evidences? At both times RetlawSnellac posted really early the days you started to take brakes, check it, that person knew then you would be on vacation if not you. Please let's stick to what is presented, and solve this out fast. --Aleksey Chalabyan a.k.a. Xelgen (talk) 00:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

 Inconclusive based solely on technical evidence, it can not be ruled out nor proven solely on technical evidence.  Likely based on behavior and edit patterns that they are the same. I'd support indef blocks of the socks and a short block of the master. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Update; still unresolved, more feedback requested

I have listed several images by Neftchi at WP:PUF for clarification of their copyright status. The listing is here. Meanwhile, I have spoken to several admins who work sock puppetry or checkuser, and based on behavioral evidence and regional base of both registered accounts, the concerns are plausible. (see here and here. I have sought feedback from another CU as per suggestion, but would more than welcome other admin opinion here. :) Sock puppetry is not my neighborhood. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

After looking this over once again, I have issued RetlawSnellac (talk · contribs) an indefinite block, and Neftchi (talk · contribs) a one week block (bearing in mind that the image issue is still, as far as I know, unresolved). Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 11:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Plagiarism?

It says here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Plagiarism "If you find that an editor persists in plagiarising others' work after being notified of this guideline, report him, or her, at the administrators' noticeboard so that an administrator can respond to the issue."

There are some texts at the Asmahan article that are almost exact copys from the sources and very little changed from them. Here is the source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI20Ak04.html

Texts from the source: "She escaped by night on horseback" "She disguised herself as a male horseman and rode all the way to the Syrian-Palestinian border." "she returned to Damascus where she paraded through the streets with her husband Hasan" "The Free French reneged on their promise of independence and a disgruntled Asmahan shifted her allegiance to the Nazis in revenge. She boarded a train and headed to Ankara, where she wanted to meet Franz von Papen, Hitler's ambassador to Turkey and master of Nazi espionage in the Middle East. British officials at the border refused to let her pass, and she was deported to Beirut"

I tried to change a couple words, and rewrite some sections to try to avoid plagiarism, but they have been reverted several times by user Arab Cowboy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Asmahan&diff=306840098&oldid=306838133

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Asmahan&diff=306843722&oldid=306841694

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Asmahan&diff=307028837&oldid=307025361

He also added the exact same comment from the author in the middle of a quote, exactly as in the book: "(although she was in reality a third cousin, twice removed)" Page 37 http://books.google.com/books?id=Eca2pXOX-F8C&pg=PA37&dq=%22why+I+am+the+daughter+of%22#v=onepage&q=%22why%20I%20am%20the%20daughter%20of%22&f=false

I notified him twice, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AArab_Cowboy&diff=307015009&oldid=306114934 and here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Asmahan&diff=306841694&oldid=306840348

Dont know what more to do from here. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 20:52, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Why hasn't anyone answered to this?--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 06:03, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the copyright violations board is more appropriate, see Wikipedia:Copyright_problems. Cheers 70.49.2.18 (talk) 06:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Er, perhaps because we're volunteers and this looks like stepping into a mine field? Sarah 15:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

User Supreme Deliciousness is again abusing the system! He's crying plagiarism and is selectively removing or modifying text only to promote his own agenda. This, too, will not fly, SD! --Arab Cowboy (talk) 09:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know anything about that but it would be much better to address the concerns raised than personalising it. Please try to Assume Good Faith. Wikipedia takes plagiarism and copyright infringement very seriously and if the Wikipedia article is plagiarising a source text or using someone else's ideas or words without appropriate attribution, it needs to be fixed very quickly. No one should be restoring text flagged as problematic without addressing the concerns raised. The article Supreme Deliciousness claims is being plagiarised is copyright and isn't licensed under a free license but even if it was under a free license, we still shouldn't be copying unique phrases or sentences or generally using someone else's ideas without appropriate attribution. Sarah 15:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

user:Jclemens

Orly Taitz was nominated for deletion on July 31; when it was closed prematurely by user:Blueboy96 on July 31st, it was taken to deletion review (see Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 July 31). There was no consensus to overturn at DRV; on August 8th, the closing admin at DRV, user:King of Hearts, considered the other two possibilities (endorse or relist), concluding that consensus supported relisting rather than endorse.

King of Hearts reopened and relisted the AFD, but it was closed again mere hours later by user:Jclemens. When this was brought to his attention on his takl page, Clemens claimed that he didn't realize that he was closing a relisting that resulted from a DRV consensus to do so. But he refused to correct the error by reopening the AFD, and when pushed on the point, claimed that WP:SNOW supports his action. Clearly not: both myself and user:King of Hearts have made clear that Clemens' "early closure was highly inappropriate" and that the AFD "should not have been closed and should have run the 7 days" ([39]), and Clemens himself has admitted that he "made an oversight in the process." That takes SNOW off the table, since it underlines that "[i]f an issue is 'snowballed', and somebody later raises a reasonable objection, then it probably was not a good candidate for the snowball clause."

What's more, Clemens has admitted to a COI: he concedes that the early close was inappropriate, and that he closed the AFD early with a keep that reflects his personal opinion as to the notability question at issue. This is hard to square with WP:Administrators' warning against admins using their position to advance the side of a debate they support. He was not a "reasonably neutral party," in the argot of that policy, reviewing the debate impartially, but a participant. In effect, he attempted to unilaterally transform the DRV result from relist to overturn, using his position as an admin to close a debate as keep because he was persuaded that the keep position was correct.

As I said above, Clemens refused to accept DRV's relist mandate, so I have enforced that mandate by manually renominating the article. The immediate problem has therefore been dealt with, but we're still left with Clemens' acknowledgment of error but refusal to correct it. (To be clear, it is the refusal to correct an error brought to his attention that I wish to focus attention on, not his mistake in closing the AFD prematurely.) I wasn't sure where to bring this, but KofH suggested ANI, and WP:GBU says the same. We are told that administrators are accountable: what can be done?- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 23:01, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to look at the discussion and filter Simon Dodd's shrill accusations through a large grain of salt. He has repeatedly made accusations of bad faith, and failed to articulate any argument that the outcome was wrong--even when informed that a "reasonable objection" required objection to the outcome, rather than the process. My transparency in that process has been twisted and used against me. My detailed rationale for closing has been falsely construed as a COI. I think an appropriate admonishment for Dodd is in order, for treating Wikipedia as a WP:BATTLEGROUND and WP:BURO.

As far as the deletion discussion itself goes, more reliable sources publish articles about Taitz as a person every day, such as this one. Jclemens (talk) 23:32, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

That's two lies in one sentence. First, I have repeatedly explained to you why the outcome was wrong: that you disagree with those arguments don't mean that they weren't offered. Second, I accused you of acting in bad faith once (not repeatedly), and did so after a lengthy discussion in which you repeatedly acknowledged that you had made a mistake and yet refused to correct it. That is not a violation of WP:AGF, see User:KillerChihuahua. The bottom line here is that you made a mistake (I take you at your word that it was accidentally and in good faith, and that's fair enough - mistakes happen), failed to correct that mistake when it was brought to your attention (which was inappropriate), and then refused to correct it when asked (which was wholly inappropriate, and has led to unnecessary chaos, see [40]). Finally, your clami that Taitz becomes more notable by the day makes your refusal to let the AFD run per the DRV conensus all the more baffling: if you are correct, the case to keep will be stronger in seven days than it is now! - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 23:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I see no point in responding to any post that accuses me of lying. If you'd like to refactor your post and be civil about it, feel free. Jclemens (talk) 23:51, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I took a quick look (having no opinion on the article subject), and it seems a pretty sure bet this article is going to be kept. Jclemens appears to have called this one correctly, even if a rigid adherence to procedure would have allowed Jclemens to step back and allow a pointless AfD to take place. IronDuke 00:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I strongly recommend leaving the current nomination open and not speedy anythinging it. Jclemsens' action was clearly inappropriate, but I'm not convinced that any corrective remedy is needed there. The better option is to just let this AFD proceed and for the closing admin to discount any "procedural" !votes in his or her closure. --B (talk) 01:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Iron, "it seems a pretty sure bet this article is going to be kept. Jclemens appears to have called this one correctly, even if a rigid adherence to procedure would have allowed Jclemens to step back and allow a pointless AfD to take place" cheers. Ikip (talk) 04:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• A snow close is appropriate where an admin (or a non-admin, occasionally) has reason to believe that extending the AfD will have 0 chance of impacting the outcome. In order for us to come down hard on jclemens for closing this AfD we first have to say with a straight face that the AfD would have been closed as delete had it been left open. I'm not sure where the 'reasonable objection' clause for a snow close comes in. I'm sure plenty of people reasonably hold the believe that wikipedia's inclusion criteria would allow us to delete (or merge/smerge) Orly Taitz's article. I'm among them. But I'm in a tiny minority. We have seen this movie before with Joe the Plumber and a dozen other flash in the pan political celebrities. By the time we decide that BLP1E applies (and some argument can be made either way), there is so much news coverage on the subject that it seems absurd to delete the article. Short circuiting a pointless debate on the topic is not something that should be punished. Protonk (talk) 06:18, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • There's an opposite side to this coin, however. And this is an example of it in action yet again. Speedy closures of good faith discussions usually make situations worse, not better. There are also plenty of examples of "flash in the pan celebrities" where we have in the end concluded that a biographical article is not warranted. It is not a good idea to adopt, as you appear to be implying, a general principle of "celebrity right now ⇒ early close as keep", because it's simply not the case.

    Haste is often a fault, not a virtue, in these cases. Look what we have now: A whole load of disgruntled editors (comprising those disgruntled by the early closure and those disgruntled by having to re-open discussion yet again), three AFD discussions, a DRV discussion, lengthy threads on two administrators' user talk pages, and two AN/I discussions (this one and that one). Most of that was avoidable by (a) not closing the discussion the first time after 5 days instead of 7, and (b) not re-closing the post-Deletion Review re-opening of the discussion after less than 1 day. The original AFD discussion, left to run its full course properly, and even allowing for a whole second week's re-listing (following new information), would have been over, with nowhere near as much ill-feeling generated, by now.

    There is a proverb, "more haste, less speed". There is wisdom to be gained from it. Uncle G (talk) 07:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    • Is there any good faith assertion that this was one of those closes? I acknowledge the possibility in the abstract, but this critique, like others, I made the call that it was not a reasonable outcome. To this point, I've yet to see anyone disagree with me, even User:Simon Dodd, whose complaints continue to ignore WP:BURO by focusing on process rather than outcome. No one has come to me and said "Hey, that was going to be a keep" (or even a no consensus) aside from your close. The landslide !voting in the 3rd AfD demonstrates the correctness of the outcome. Jclemens (talk) 15:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That is another demonstrable lie. For you to claim that "[n]o one has come to [you] and said 'Hey, that was going to be a keep' (or even a no consensus) aside from your close" is utterly false. I have repeatedly "come to [you]" and said that this could be a no consensus close: You were told twice told on your talk page yesterday (see [41][42]), I explicitly stated in my renomination that we had yet to determine if this would be a keep or a no consensus close (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Orly Taitz (3rd nomination)), and I've made the same argument right here in this ANI thread (see dif, or infra at 13:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)). Are you really going to claim that you missed all those comments where someone came to you to say that this could be a no-consensus close, despite the fact that you replied to all but the last one? Really? - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 16:58, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Please refactor your personal attack, and I'll subsequently respond appropriately to the substance of your comment. Jclemens (talk) 17:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Protonk, I find it puzzling that both you and Clemens seem to believe that the only two outcomes available for an AFD are delete or keep. It is not true that "In order for us to come down hard on jclemens for closing this AfD we first have to say with a straight face that the AfD would have been closed as delete had it been left open"; we have only to recognize that there is a reasonable possibility that a no consensus close would have resulted. That was certainly possible, and was in fact the most likely outcome. There is a big difference between that and a keep decision, and that's why this is still a live issue.

In any event, it's the early close and then refusal to remedy the mistake that needs to be looked at, rather than the close itself (as I've said, I assume that the initial; mistake was just that: a good-faith mistake). As Uncle G explains with great force, heat melts snow; a snow close is clearly inappropriate for a contentious AFD, and this was an especially contentious AFD. All this disruption could have been avoided if not for two plainly inappropriate early closes, and the failure of the admins involved in the latter to recognize and correct his error. I resent benig put into a position by an admin where I have to take heat at the AFD for fixing his goof. This seems to be a pattern for Clemens (see the comments from other users about other incidents that you hatted below), and it's clear that he believes that he has acted appropriately. Accordingly, sanctions aganist him from the community are appropriate to disabuse him of that impression, and avoid his causing future disruption (cf. WP:BLOCK ("Blocks are intended to reduce the likelihood of future problems, by ... encouraging change in[] a source of disruption")).- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 13:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It's not really puzzling. I have a different philosophy regarding snow closes than Uncle G. for snow closes I feel strongly that the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. It is a necessary condition that we feel the chosen snow outcome was wrong before we can begin to speak seriously about disruption and malfeasance stemming from the snow close. Uncle G's point that snow closes engender conflict is both correct and well taken. In many cases snow closes present as proximate causes for DRVs or AN/I posts like this one. So we may see this thread as evidence that the snow close was rash (maybe) or premature, but that is not the same as saying that it represented an abuse of the tools or a serious lapse of judgment. Because as sage as Uncle G's point is, all it really says is that there may be folks who would disagree with a snow close. And that's not indicative of admin abuse or malfeasance. Protonk (talk) 18:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Even if it is "a necessary condition that we feel the chosen snow outcome was wrong before we can begin to speak seriously about disruption and malfeasance stemming from the snow close," that has been shown. We do not know whether the AFD would have resulted in a keep or a no consensus close had it been allowed to rnu the full seven days. Calling it either way is thus necessarily erroneous.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 23:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• I think it's also worth noting that the large number of people expressing frustration that the article has been renominated yet again demonstrates the disruptive effect of Clemens' premature close. If he had left the 2d nomination open as a relist, as KofH and DRV concluded it should be, or reopened it once his error was brought to his attention, this confusion and carnage would have be avoided. We should seek to avoid it recurrnig by sending two clear messages: SNOW closes are inappropriate in contentious AFDs, and when a mistake is made that will have disruptive consequences, the user should revert the mistake - or make appropriate amends - when the mistake is brought to their attention. - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 14:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Rather, that your relisting, (as opposed to taking my close to DRV, as you were informed was the next step, yet explicitly declined) was a disruptive action that demonstrates that my close accurately judged consensus. Jclemens (talk) 15:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • It may have accurately evaluated consensus as it then stood, but it was very inappropriate for you to make that evaluation and close the AfD when a DRV had just determined that it should be kept open the full length. Opening yet another DRV on it is not at all a good idea.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I've agreed that I was in error in closing it. I have yet to see anyone try to convince me the outcome would have ever become a keep if the discussion continued. So why are we here, again? Because one highly motivated editor thinks the remote possibility of a "no consensus" close is worth an ANI thread? Jclemens (talk) 17:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I cannot understand why you keep repeating variations on this clami that no one has tried to show that the outcome would have been something other than keep when that claim has been repeatedly debunked. It was repeatedly explained to you that the AFD could result in either a keep or a no consensus close; the fact that you disagree with that view (or perhaps that you fail to grasp the significance of that distinction) is quite different to your claim that no one has explained that view to you, as you keep claiming.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 22:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for actually posing this question in a civil manner. As you yourself have repeatedly said a "no consensus" outcome is acceptable, you have personally and specifically endorsed my closure... with the exception of the name. Various deletion policies and guidelines make it abundantly clear that "no consensus" is a subset of a "keep" outcome, not a separate outcome.

• Wikipedia:Deletion_process#Process "If the decision is KEEP (including any variant such as NO CONSENSUS, REDIRECT, or MERGE)"
• Wikipedia:Guide_to_deletion#Closure "An AFD decision is either to "keep" or "delete" the article. AFD discussions which fail to reach rough consensus default to "keep"."
• Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Deletion_discussion "If there is no rough consensus and the page is not a BLP describing a relatively unknown person, the page is kept and is again subject to normal editing, merging or redirecting as appropriate."

The WP:NOCONSENSUS essay likewise categorizes no consensus deletion debates as keeps. A "no consensus" outcome doesn't permit an earlier re-nomination or convey any difference in status whatsoever. Thus, despite all the storm and fury, not one Wikipedian has advocated reversing my close, merely disputed the "no consensus" sub-category of "keep" is more appropriate than the general category. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 03:07, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It is, once again, a lie that I have "personally and specifically endorsed my closure." As you well know, I have done no such thing. As a figleaf, you offer your own theory - a theory I have repeatedly rejected here and elsewhere - that there is no difference between a no consensus close and a keep decision. In fact, they are plenty different; that a no consensus close defaults to keeping the article because no consensus has been established to delete it doesn't vitiate the force of this point in the slightest. One is a positive decision to keep, deservnig due deference, one is a failure to decide. A no consensus keep close leaves the door open for a future nomination; a vote to keep gives a future nomination a steep hill to climb. And even if you could in good faith argue to the contrary, that is my view, you know that that is my view, and for you to claim that I have accepted your view is therefore a lie.

Also a lie - and worth mentioning separately - is your claim that "not one Wikipedian has advocated reversing [your] close...." To prove that this claim is a lie, I must show two things: that one or more wikipedians have advocated reversing your close, and that you knew about it. (If I could prove only the latter, that would only prove that your claim was wrong. Proving that your claim is a lie requires that I prove that you know that your statement is wrong.) I can do both. I advocated reversing your close on your talk page, here, here, and impliedly here. That proves your claim is wrong. You replied to all three of those comments, so unless we are seriously being asked to believe that you replied without reading those comments, that proves that you know your claim is wrong, and accordingly that you lied in making that claim.

It strikes me that if you're tired of being called a liar (as you claim to be at your separate attempt to get me sanctioned in another place, an effort that you failed to notify me of - I'll deal with that later), the way to achieve that is to quit telling lies that can easily be shown to be lies with a few diffs. Some friendly advice: you're in a hole. Quit digging.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 04:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Again, please be civil. You managed to post a direct question to me without being incivil. That's commendable behavior and should be encouraged. As to the rest of your arguments... "A no consensus keep close leaves the door open for a future nomination; a vote to keep gives a future nomination a steep hill to climb" may well be your notion, but begs two questions: 1) Where is this in policy, guideline... or even an essay? I don't see it at WP:OUTCOMES. 2) Do you honestly believe a future AfD will result in her article being deleted? In case you haven't been keeping up with the ongoing reliable sourcing TIME just published a bio on her. Lastly, I find it mildly amusing that I'm supposedly the one in the hole, when another administrator closed this discussion, and you had to reopen it yourself to post. Jclemens (talk) 05:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

A few more comments: "seek first to understand"--in case what I said above wasn't obvious enough, not one Wikipedian has said that the AfD at the point where I closed it had a possibility of resulting in the deletion of the article. Changing a "keep" to a "no consensus" is only a semantic change, not a reversal. Likewise, reopening an AfD is not a reversal, but a reopening. Jclemens (talk) 05:25, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

When the community has decided through an AFD to keep an article, that decision has force - or at least inertia. Although no policy that I know says it explicitly, the underlying community judgment that previous decisions to keep merit deference is glimpsed through many policies and practice. For example, WP:BEGIN tells us that before nominating an article for deletion, an editor should see "if there was a previous nomination, [and] check that your objections haven't already been dealt with." Similarly, an article can't be PROD'ed if it has been kept through AFD. And WP:NOTAGAIN tells us the rule through making an exception: "An article that was kept in a past deletion discussion may still be deleted if deletion is supported by strong reasons that were not adequately addressed in the previous deletion discussion...." None of these restrictions make sense unless they are understood to reflect the understanding mentioned above. We saw that in action in, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of Bill O'Reilly (political commentator) (3rd nomination), where many editors argued that the previous nominations should be conclusive. Although I argued that the previous nominations of O'Reilly lacked force because they did not address (as NOTAGAIN envisions) the merits of the nomination, but rather were closed on the basis that the nomination was in bad faith, there are many deletion discussions where I have expressly deferred to previous consensus to keep despite personal misgivings. See, e.g., Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allie DiMeco (2nd nomination); Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-globalization and antisemitism (4th nomination).- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 13:56, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

<-- To reiterate Uncle G's point: Patience is a virtue. Very little is ever gained by summarily shutting down a discussion or process early. It leaves participants feeling belittled and dismissed. A good and desirable outcome from a deletion discussion includes more than the correct choice between "keep" or "delete." A close that leads unnecessarily to multiple heated discussions on various forums is, self-evidently, not an appropriate close. Sometimes follow-on drama is unavoidable, but the pointless agita generated by this sort of peremptory action is not irrelevant, it is harmful, and it is easily avoidable. Nathan ^T 19:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Other issues This is not a general venue for bitching about Jclemens. Protonk (talk) 05:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)}}

• My experience with Jclemens is that he throws his weight around when confronted about his flouting of the rules. His behavior is consistent with a new user, not an admin. Experienced users should be even more civil than the average user, since their power to intimidate others is enhanced by their knowledge of just how far they can push the envelope and get away with it. Abductive (reasoning) 00:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

  If that's the best example of "flouting the rules" where I "throw [my] weight around" and am not "more civil than the average user", then... wow. I appreciate the honesty, but that looks like me explaining rather civilly where my interpretation of a particular nuance (whether a prod decliner had to give a rationale, it was) differed from yours. Jclemens (talk) 02:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

  The problem with Jclemens' behavior is that he takes shortcuts where the outcome is going to be the same no matter what, makes it unpleasant for others involved, then gets his back up when people question him. "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up". Abductive (reasoning) 03:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

  So my crime is... ignoring process when the outcome is already obvious? I plead guilty! What cover up, though? It's not something I've ever denied. Jclemens (talk) 04:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• back in may, Jclemens speedy deleted LMFAO (band). I asked him for a deletion review [[43]] because the band was seemingly notable, and not a candidate for speedy deletion, and the most Jclemens offered was to userfy it, which he never did. Another user eventually recreated the article from scratch. After he was told he made a mistake, he should have fixed the mistake by undoing the delete. Instead, he just obstructed the reacreation of an article that should have never been speedied Theserialcomma (talk) 00:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

  And where, precisely, did you actually ask for it to be userified? Looks to me like I offered, and you never took me up on it. Jclemens (talk) 00:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

  i assume you made a mistake and forgot to actually check your own talk page history before posting this (diff: [[44]] Theserialcomma (talk) 01:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

  That link looks irrelevant. Want to update it? Jclemens (talk) 02:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

  oops. i apologize for posting the wrong diff. here is the real one (updated the old posting too) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jclemens&diff=prev&oldid=288878633

  At that point, which was almost five days after the original discussion, I replied to you indicating that it had already been done. What, exactly, should I have done differently at that point? Jclemens (talk) 04:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• at that point, there was nothing for you to do because it was too late. but what you should have done was prevented the situation from getting to that point by recreating the article as it was, once it was proven to you that it was not a candidate for speedy deletion. this is what happened: you speedied a notable band, i told you why they were notable, and showed you more media coverage and why it was not a candidate for speedy deletion. you told me you'd usefy it, and then someone recreated it at some point before i responded. the point is, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. you incorrectly speedied it, so you should have recreated it. an admin who misuses his tools, and refuses to correct the error, or even admit something went wrong, is not my idea of a good admin. Theserialcomma (talk) 20:30, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Separate report

Please note that Jclemens has filed a report over at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation/Requests for enforcement#User:Simon Dodd regarding alleged incivility and hounding of Jclemens by Simon Dodd. As a strictly procedural note, perhaps that discussion should be brought over here or vice-versa. I don't know the substance of the dispute and I hesitate to involve myself, but on the surface of it the disputing parties may simply want to take a chill pill and be done with it.

As an aside, if any administrators are interested in helping out with the Obama articles, they may want to watch-list the "requests for enforcement" page I reference above, which has not been used much to date, and encourage editors to take Obama-related disputes there instead of here. That could reduce the traffic load and the heat here on this already overburdened page. - Wikidemon (talk) 20:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I thought that it was a community norm that if you try to get someone into hot water, you should notify that person. Clemens has demanded that I be sanctioned at the link Wikidemon gave, but he hasn't notified me that he is trying to do so. I would have had no idea - and no opportunity to respond - had Wikidemon not posted this notice. If Clemens had posted his motion (preposterous though it is: this has nothing to do with Obama-related articles) at AN or ANI, that failure to notify would have been in defiance of the mandate to "inform other users and editors if they are mentioned in a posting, or if their actions are being discussed" or are even "the subject of a discussion." If he had posted it at WP:WQA, he would have failed to heed the mandate to "[n]otify the reported user(s)." The warnings just quoted are not a series of isolated, unrelated provisions applicable only to the pages containing them. Rather, they are manifestations of a broader judgment by the community that both sides of a dispute should he heard. It speaks volumes that Clemens failed to notify.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 04:47, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Given your rather acrimonious reaction to my prior good faith efforts, I expected an uninvolved administrator to review the evidence and chat with you about it. Far from an attempt at getting you in "hot water", my preferred remedy is that you simply refactor the personal attacks and incivility and apologize for your behavior. A topic ban would only be appropriate if a neutral party both found your conduct egregious and it continued past a warning, as has been pointed out on that page. Jclemens (talk) 05:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

it appears to me as if Jclemens is trying to seek punitive punishment against you for complaining about him. I don't see any evidence of actionable incivility, just what appears to be a counter attack from Jclemens. Just my opinion. Theserialcomma (talk) 05:33, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to move forward

(outdent for emphasis) If I changed the 2nd AfD to "no consensus", would you accede to that cataloguing and allow the third AfD to be closed as a snow keep without contesting it or requesting a DRV? Jclemens (talk) 05:25, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It's astonishing to me that after all this, after all these editors explaining it to you (including but not limited to user:King_of_Hearts, user:Uncle_G, user:B, user:SarekOfVulcan, and user:Nathan), that you still don't understand that snow closes are grossly inappropriate for contentious AFDs. In proposing yet again to prematurely close the AFD, you admit that you have yet to absorb one of the two lessons that I brought this to ANI to help you understand. As to the other one, nor do I see any kind of recognition that having made an honest error in closing the AFD prematurely, you acted inappropriately by refusing to undo that mistake, or that your actions have led to utter chaos that now can't be undone. Because you give us no reason to believe that you've learned your lesson, you give us every reason to believe that you'll do the same sort of thing in the future (indeed, you're already champing at the bit to do it again: you are still trying to close the AFD prematurely!), which underlines the appropriateness of a formal warning or sanctions (see WP:BLOCK ("Blocks are intended to reduce the likelihood of future problems, by either removing, or encouraging change in, a source of disruption" (emphasis added))).- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 14:22, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Umm ... how many times do I need to say the closure was inappropriate? What is it I don't understand? --B (talk) 17:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

There is technically no such thing as a "snow keep". There's a "speedy keep", which this definitely doesn't meet the criteria for. JClemens, this was a _very_ bad suggestion. Might I suggest backing away from this article and its related discussions until the drama settles? You're not helping here. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I want to underline that I strongly endorse your proposal at AfD#3 that the closing admin there take AfD#2 and AfD#3 as one discussion in determining the result. Doing that would remove a lot of the sting from Clemens' error (I had thought that the harm was irreversible, but your proposal ingeniously undoes it), and I would appreciate any kind of input on how we can get the closing admin to do that.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 15:14, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I think that's only necessary if AfD#3 is closed early, and consensus seems to be against that solution at the moment. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:48, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

So, you'd be OK if AfD2 (both parts) and 3 were considered as one unified AfD? Would you then be OK with closing #3 in ~12 hours--as the three have run just about 156 hours between them? Jclemens (talk) 16:52, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't matter what I think -- when I suggested it on AfD#3, I got jumped all over. The community doesn't like that idea. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, that question was to User:Simon Dodd. I expect if the two of us can come to a reasonable agreement to amicably end the dispute the rest of Wikipedia would--well, mostly not care, but certainly not object. :-) Jclemens (talk) 17:32, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I have a better idea -- let's wait 5 days and not find out. :-) --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you do not seem to grasp that AfDs are about making decisions: outcome, not process. No decision on Taitz' article remains to be made--the community has been heard from, and each successive renomination has resulted in a smaller proportion of !votes to delete. Various uninvolved editors and AfD participants have pointed out WP:DEADHORSE (implicitly or explicitly), but in assuming good faith, I present you one, simple question: Under what circumstances do you see Orly Taitz being deleted from Wikipedia? Jclemens (talk) 16:33, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I have a simpler question: Under what circumstances do you see this AfD closed early without creating more drama than it solves? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll answer your question after User:Simon Dodd answers mine. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 16:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

In other words, you're in it for the drama. Got it. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:54, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

You might have asked my motivation before presuming it. I'm in it for WP:BURO--the drama is a regrettable side effect of the community simply not taking WP:BURO seriously enough to shut down WP:POINT actions like this. Jclemens (talk) 17:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, I'd say just put this baby to bed. I pissed in the wind and tossed in a token delete, but the outcome of AfD #3 here is a done deal. Tarc (talk) 17:15, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Wildhartlivie's ownership of article John Dillinger

Originally filed for mediation, but User Wildhartlivie has made it clear he is not interested in resolving this via mediation. Apologies if this is in the wrong place.

Article John Dillinger

Who is involved?

Just a list of the users involved. For example:

• User:Wildhartlivie
• User:Little Professor

What is the dispute?

Wildhartlivie claiming ownership of article John Dillinger, as evidenced by frequent reversions to his own version of the article (6 reverts to his own version in the last 6 days alone:)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Dillinger&diff=306923038&oldid=306915019

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Dillinger&diff=306346351&oldid=306345023

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Dillinger&diff=306332470&oldid=306327208

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Dillinger&diff=306270579&oldid=306265823

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Dillinger&diff=306222634&oldid=306200431

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Dillinger&diff=305995100&oldid=305992902

and inappropriate use of comments within the article [45] to discourage editors from interfering with his proposed version of the page[[46]], without any consensus being established or even discussed on the article's talk page. Using unhelpful incivil language to new editors when his hidden comment instructions are not complied with - ([47]).

Also incivility towards other editors when he has been cautioned on the above matters [48]

What would you like to change about this?

Offer education to user Wildhartlivie regarding WP:OWN, inappropriate use of hidden comments within the article to maintain his proposed version of the article rather than discussion on the talk page, and reminder of WP:CIVIL

It's not clear from the diffs provided that this is an ownership issue. Wildhartlivie is maintaining the article by asking that sources be used to justify content changes. This is not unreasonable. If you want to make the changes to the article, provide reliable sources--particularly if they counter what has been printed in existing sources. When you do and your edits continue to be reverted and you are given spurious excuses, then it might be time to look at ownership issues. --Moni3 (talk) 23:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. Would be grateful for your views on the use of inline hidden comments viz "THERE IS NO PLACE FOR IT. THE ONLY THINGS BEING INCLUDED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE DIRECT DEPICTIONS OF DILLINGER IN FILMS OR TV. HE WROTE NO SONGS, SONG REFERENCES IN TODAY'S MUSIC MARKET OR ON SOUTH PARK ARE NOT RELEVANT." My understanding was that, given the availability of the use of the talk page to discuss the issue and obtain consensus, and wikipedia guidance at WP:TRIVIA, such inline comments would be both redundant and discouraged.

In addition, the user appears to have taken ownership of other articles including Scarlett Johannson and Johnny Depp, the latter also resulting in multiple reversions with no edit summary, with associated self-confessed incivility, as per 1 and 2. Nevertheless, would be happy to leave this issue alone if needs be. Regards, Little Professor (talk) 14:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I saw the hidden note, and perhaps it is necessary given the film that is coming out. Trivia sections are discouraged and the note I imagine is to ward off multiple additions to the article in said South Park and Family Guy references. The hidden note is one way. I would have laden the article down with so many citations that that would discourage many users from placing trivial items in it. Both ways work and neither necessarily denotes ownership. Neither does bragging. I've seen Wildhartlivie around, so I am sure she is aware of the policy on ownership. I have written 14 featured articles and I own none of them. Saying that I wrote all of an article does not imply or mean that I own it. Reverting additions to the article that reference reliable sources, saying that such additions are unnecessary because I wrote the article and it is complete and intact the way I wrote it is ownership. Telling other editors to back off from tinkering with the article is definitely ownership. But removing problematic and unsourced edits is not. If you want to improve the John Dillinger article, you are welcome to do it. You should check out every book on Dillinger written, read all of them, then summarize what they say about his life. --Moni3 (talk) 15:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Moni. I was writing a response when you posted this. I've tried to explain this or discuss monitoring of this article with this editor but rather than respond or discuss, he reverted my messages to his talk page under the guise of "rv rant" and "rm rant #2". An administrator, Garion96 reverted his removal of the hidden note on John Dillinger, calling it a "helpful hidden comment". When I responded to his template today, and admittedly had lost patience with this issue, I still tried to explain the rationale behind the edits here, only to have it reverted "per WP:CIVIL" and a personal attack template left on my talk page here. I would really like this editor to stop leaving unwarranted templates on my talk page, as he has done here, here, here, and here. He notified me that he had filed an AN/I complaint here, when in fact it was for mediation and did not notify me of this posting. None of this helps sort out any issues, especially when he refuses to respond to talk page requests to discuss it. It is bordering on harassment. Wildhartlivie (talk) 00:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• What would I like to change about this? Apart from the undue formalism, the realisation that Wildhartlivie is not a "he" would be a step forward. Due diligence, you know. Rodhullandemu 01:03, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

[Insert big grin here] Thanks. Wildhartlivie (talk) 01:10, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

In what way would it be a step forward? I'm not sure how the gender of the editor affects the disputes in question? Little Professor (talk) 14:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The fact that Little Professor left templates that are meant for new users, shows that Little Professor did not prudently look at Wildhartlivies contributions and history on Wikipedia. If Little Professor is a new user, perhaps a template explaining "harassment" should be left on his/her talk page. Wildhartlivie deals fairly with others and she only reacts after reasonable measures have been exhausted. Little Professor's complaints and warring appear to be frivolous and meant to agitate and harass, rather than mediate any legitimate complaints he/she may have, if any.--Victor9876 (talk) 04:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Have checked WP:TM and WP:UW, but have yet to find any guidance stating that templates are 'meant for new users'. My understanding was that all contributors are expected to follow Wikipedia guidelines, regardless of their history or previous contributions. I would welcome clarification on this matter if I am wrong. Little Professor (talk) 14:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

May be referring to this: WP:DTTR. --Moni3 (talk) 15:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Racist user

Tajik (talk · contribs), a very racist, controversial and disruptive editor with long history of blocks, is still vandalizings pages of groups of people he doesn't like [49], he's edit-warring, he uses sockpuppets and annon IPs to curse, abuse, attack, insult, and offend people of other races. Here he is cursing at other editors and also adding in the article that the mother of a politician in Afghanistan was raped by ethnic Tajiks He did the recent vandalisms on Kabul, Afghan (name), Abdullah Abdullah (politician), Talk:Jamal-al-Din_Afghani, Sher Shah Suri, and others. He is constantly editing articles pertaining to Afghanistan and its people with very negative view. By trying to evade from admins, he first edits with his usual user name and then vandalizeand edit-war with a set of IP # but all appear to be in the same location in Germany where he lives. He and the IPs share the same view, always refusing to accept Afghanistan's existance in the 18th century [50], [51], giving Tajiks a good name and the people that he hates (the Pashtuns) a very negative image almost every page he visits. He is trying to change Afghanistan into Iran and remove the Pashto language from every article, which is the one of the official languages of the country. I'm pretty sure he is using those IPs and socks, he is trying to change his writings when he uses IPs to fool admins.119.73.1.41 (talk) 00:45, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

While I appreciate your input and research into this, the evidence you present isn't quite strong enough. Millions of people feel very strongly about issues like this, and Germany has a pretty large population. Just because they originate from the same region and share similar views does not mean they are the same user. I'll look into this further, of course. Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :D} 01:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Notified user that they are the subject of this conversation. Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :D} 01:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

You didn't get my point. I'm saying Tajik (an Afghan) is in the same location (city or town) in Germany as the IPs (each city in a country uses different ISP with different IP #s), Tajik and the IPs edit the same articles on Wikipedia at same timing, with same view, and they even attack other editors in a very same way, they also speak the Afghan Persian language. I don't think there is a single German who constantly edit Afghan articles except this one Afghan. Anyway, Before defending himself against his actions.. Tajik always first speaks about the people who report him, so that way admins focus on them instead of him. Look at the bottom, both Inuit18 (sockpuppet) and Tajik did just that. Tajik is not allowed to revert more than once, so obviously he uses IPs and sockpuppets that are usually not detected or reported. Interestingly, sometimes he even uses annon IP to talk to himself on talk pages [52], which is another way to try to fool us. Tajik is not one of those who will leave and allow others to edit Afghanistan related articles, he wants to be in full control and keep all the negative things he added in them. Tajik is also on Youtube and a number of other sites where he is spreading so much racism against the Pashtun people. His favorite ID is ParsistaniTajik, the following is a link to one of his Youtube ID. http://www.youtube.com/user/ParsistaniTajik --119.73.7.144 (talk) 15:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

talk has reported a very important issue. If we look at Tajik (talk · contribs) contributions, we can clearly see that majority of his/her edits are focused on giving a negative image to Pashtuns in wikipedia or removing Pashto related content in wikipedia. He/She is playing a double standard role here in wikipedia. If an article is about a Tajik warlord the user avoids adding anything negative about the personality, however if it is about a Pashtun warlord, the user tries its best to give him/her a negative image. The same goes for political parties. These are some of the topics which he has vandalised - POV:

Karim Khoram, Afghan Social Democratic Party (Afghan Mellat), Kabul, Maidan Shar, Murghab District, Jawid Sharif and many more.

The user does not keep a neutral point of view when editing an article. (Ketabtoon (talk) 06:18, 10 August 2009 (UTC))

Not only that but he is a very racist person filled with so much hate. Follow this carefully,,,,, here he is using the Germany IP (94.219.214.232) cursing at you with very bad words that only ghetto people use. Now compare that writing of his with his Youtube account ID writing here,,,, (read his comment at the very bottom) so now this should confirm that he is the same racist person, he uses the same exact curse words, spellings, etc., (example: Pigtun) --119.73.2.19 (talk) 23:22, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Both of these users are vandals and sockpupptets.--Inuit18 (talk) 08:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

This is just a waste of time. The IP - who, b.t.w. is the IP-sockpuppet of either banned User:NisarKand or banned User:Khampalak (see checkuser; 119.30.78.26 and 119.30.72.64 are confirmed IPs of banned User:NisarKand) - is himself vandalizing various articles, deleting sourced material etc. Ketabtoon (talk · contribs) has just been reported to an admin because of his destructive behaviour. I have no problems with a checkuser file, comparing my IP to others. But I also would like to ask admins to compare the IPs of these two users with the banned users mentioned above. Thank you. Tajik (talk) 08:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The admins are very welcome to do a checkuser on me and go through my edits. (Ketabtoon (talk) 14:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC))

I worked on this issue a lot in 2008. I don't have time this morning to delve deeply into this thread, but later this evening I will set aside some time (about 12 hours from now). Kingturtle (talk) 11:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Ratel warring? vandalizing? bad faith?

User Ratel is trying to archive an active discussion in Aktion T4. This User Ratel is clearly involved in the discussion.

• First attempt to archive the active discussion
• Second attempt to archive the active discussion
• Third attempt to archive the active discussion
• Fourth attemot to archive the active discussion

• First warning
• Second warning

comment made by 190.25.101.144 (talk) 03:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The code will only archive conversation without inactivity for four days. I agree with what the user who started this thread: Talk:Action T4#Talk page etiquette. This particular thread you're talking about also seems to diverge somewhat into forum-like territory. –xeno^talk 05:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Ratel? I remember that name. Wasn't that this guy who was here just a few days ago, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive556#Harassment? 70.49.2.18 (talk) 06:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Please note that I am not the issue here. The IP above, 190.25.101.144, has totally wrecked the Talk page at Aktion T4 with ravings that filled the page and chased all other users away. Now he is resisting any attempt to archive old conversations. I suggest you have a look at what transpired on that Talk page before making any further comments. Note that this IP has also reverted the page about 7 times in the last 24hrs. ► RATEL ◄ 07:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I have commented there and closed the discussion there. Everything useful has been said,and a good deal more . DGG (talk) 08:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• In the discussion it was asked for a "reliable" (according to Wikipedia Policies) source, supporting that Aktion T4 was euthanasia and any euthanasia is not unlike Aktion T4, because the current article claims the contrary in this section: Aktion_T4#T4_and_euthanasia.
• There are a lot of sources, but at least one "reliable" source was provided in this post:Talk:Action_T4#propaganda_pro_euthanasia_.3D_crime_apology. This source (Alexander Leo, Medical science under dictatorship, New England Journal of Medicine, No.241, pages 39-47) states that Aktion T4 was euthanasia and any euthanasia is not unlike Aktion T4
• User:Ratel claims euthanasia has nothing to do with Aktion T4 and he is involved in the mentioned dicussion.
• Therefore: why is he allowed to archive exactly all the discussion including the post providing the demanded source?
• Note that User:Ratel posted his first attempt to autoarchive the discussion some hours after the post providing the demanded source.

comment made by 190.27.99.91 (talk) 17:38, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

IP-based pedophilia activism

Based on [53] and [54], would it be possible to stop further editing from 71.253.11.98 for an appropriate period of time? Erik9 (talk) 04:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

this is one of the cases where the proper time is indefinite. I've done the block. DGG (talk) 05:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Endorse the block, but not the length. Reset to 90 days (it's a dynamic IP). –xeno^talk 05:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

OK. didn't realise it was dynamic. DGG (talk) 07:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the two diffs, they appear to be run of the mill vandalism. --Farix (Talk) 19:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Catterick

I have just put an indefinite block on this account on the ground that he is um 'really eccentric'. He has been here for years but has used sockpuppets to avoid banning (IMO). My reasoning for the indefinite is that I'm not sure how long the block should be but my thinking at the moment is that he is incompetent at actual editing (evidence in a minute) and that he is disruptive on talk pages so is very much a net negative to the project. However, as I said, I have only looked at his recent edits. perhaps he has been helpful at some time in the past? If not then I think we should go for community ban. Theresa Knott | token threats 08:22, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Evidence for disruption: See my talk page

Evidence for incompetence here Note that I am not saying that we should ban him because he can't edit articles, but that when coupled with constantly stirring up trouble for the sake of it means that we can cut him no slack. Theresa Knott | token threats 09:01, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There was previous discussion of his actions here - and (unverified but checkable) evidence of sockpuppetry here. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Having just come across this person on the Richmondshire article and trying to work with them to get the information they supplied sourced so that it could be verified. I find that they appear more interested in long discussions on the talk page (which was moved to talk:Richmondshire from my talk page by the user), to attacking other users and complaining at my request for in-line citations. If an indefinite ban is not maintained then there needs to be some form of mentoring and guidance for the editor to enable them to work collaboratively with others. Keith D (talk) 11:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

With the best will in the world, I don't think mentoring would work - I've just discovered this and this, going back to 2003. Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

IMO Catterick is quite knowledgeable on British history and his opposition to the manipulation of various Wikipedia articles by myth making disinformation campaigns, carried out by various regionalist, separatist and post-Troskyite interest groups is a welcome addition. However he must approach this in a far more cool headed manner and also when writing articles, learn how to use references like in the Richmondshire article above. I've only become aware of the user in the last couple of days, but if he managed to calm it down a lot (and I do mean a lot) his contribution could be a positive one to the project. Perhaps the mentoring thing which Keith suggested is worth giving ago? As a last chance saloon sort of thing. - Yorkshirian (talk) 16:03, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I promised him that if he wanted to comment here I'd copy it over. However he has had a lot to say so it would be best if interested parties went to his talk page. Theresa Knott | token threats 17:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if that is workable. I just had a look at his Talk page & he has made quite a hash of it, cut-n-pasting the same few paragraph over & over to it until it weighs in at 2 million kbytes. I'd blank & protect his talk page, except that the last few times I pressed my Admin button no one was happy with the result. -- llywrch (talk) 19:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the need to blank the talk page unless it gets bigger substantially. But I'm also not seeing strong evidence that he should ever be unblocked. Protonk (talk) 19:56, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Well it needs doing but as the one who put an indefinite block on an established user's account I think it should be another admin rather than me. Theresa Knott | token threats 22:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Looking at Ghmyrtle's evidence above this is a long term abusive editor who has been here since 2003 and had been banned by the AC in 2004 for 1 year. He is pretty fond of using socks and we should probably try to identify as many as possible and block them all. Theresa Knott | token threats 22:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Sock-chasing is not my strong point but I agree. I can see very little evidence that he is anything other than a disruptive troll and an open-ended block seems over-due to me. Ben MacDui 07:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I suspect he's probably capable of interesting original research. But that's of no value on this site, especially when coupled with his inability to present his conclusions in a way which is comprehensible to readers; or to take account of other people's different conclusions and recognise the difference between fringe theories and consensus; or to engage in a civil manner with other editors and avoid becoming fixated on perceived slights; or to restrain himself from abuse and threats. Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:40, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Jeffrey_D._Gordon

• Note that this still requires action.   bsmithme  08:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

This article needs administrator attention. There are two editors who continue to remove content from this article which I have reviewed to be properly sourced content and verifiable by a reliable sources (I could be mistaken, though). And while I may be mistaken, the editors continue to apparently ignore the talk page to discuss the issue.   bsmithme  21:13, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Could you provide diffs and identify the editors who are having a problem. The format below may help you organize your presentation. Jehochman ^Talk 22:27, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Locus of dispute, or action in dispute

Disagreement over WP:BLP on Jeffrey_D._Gordon. The two editors believe that a section added by user Geo_Swan is libelous and should be removed.

Involved parties and confirmation they have been notified of the discussion

• Antoniomarg8
• Robclement
• Geo_Swan
• Mohamsaed

Description of the dispute and the main evidence

1. I found that the article had had a substantial portion removed by Robclement so I initiated an investigation.
   1. Robclement did use an edit summary describing the action.
   2. Robclement did blank the talk page replacing it with what I think is an except from WP:BLP.
   3. Robclement did make an entry on the article's talk page after blanking.
2. After reviewing the quotes, statements, and facts asserted for the section in question, I found that they were both referenced and that the references were reliable. Substantiated by this source (Miami Herald) and this source (Washington Post).
3. I undid the revision by Robclement then added a reply to the article's talk page and asked that further changes be discussed there.
4. My revert was then undone by user Antoniomarg8 without edit summary or talk page discussion.
5. I assumed good faith and undid user Antoniomarg8 edit.
6. My edit was again reverted by user Antoniomarg8 again without talk page discussion.

• Furthermore. After further investigation I found that user Antoniomarg8 subsequently vandalized user page of Geo_Swan multiple times. 1 2 3 INV:5   bsmithme  23:40, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
• Further note. The talk page was blanked and I am not sure the best way to restore it.   bsmithme  23:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments by other involved parties (Please include diffs to substantiate your claims)

• I've restored Talk:Jeffrey D. Gordon. Geo Swan (talk) 02:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• Mohamsaed, another contributor with just a single edit, also made a large excision.
• I do my best to make sure my contributions comply with policy. I have made close to 45,000 edits. I don't expect to have succeeded every single time. I've left notes for the contributors who made these excisions to return to article's talk page to explain the reasoning behind their excisions. Geo Swan (talk) 02:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments by uninvolved editors

I think the source may support the addition of this content. Editors need to discuss whether the biography is balances, or gives undue weight to these controversial matters. The two accounts who have been removing the content appear to be single purpose, and may very well be controlled by the same editor. We should not overlook the possibility that one of the real life people involved in this matter may be trying to influence the content of Wikipedia. I think it may help to leave messages for the two new editors welcoming them, and asking them not to remove sourced content, not to edit war, and not to use more than one account. We should also advise them how to address concerns about the content in a productive way. Should those steps fail, a block might then be necessary to prevent further problems, but I think we need to try the lesser steps first. Jehochman ^Talk 02:37, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I think those suggestions should be executed by someone else. I will not be taking action on this matter in order to prevent appearing bias and disingenuous.   bsmithme  03:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Remarks by closing editor

Block Review:

Resolved

 – Since it was reduced yesterday, there's nothing left to review I'd say. Tarc (talk) 13:57, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Tarc (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was blocked for violating the 3RR policy [55] after being reported by William S. Saturn (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). I noticed that after looking at the diffs that each one is a different piece of text as if William S. Saturn was tendentiously trying to add a bit of text against consensus with Tarc reverting them. I also noted that one of the diff's provided was of a completely unrelated revert. I also question this warning [56] as it could be construed as questionable in intent. Could someone please review this block. Brothejr (talk) 10:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with this block. He made 4 reverts within 24 hours. The fact that it was a different piece of text doesn't matter. I also don't see how the warning was questionable. Saturn's behavior is irrelevant to the block. If Tarc wants to argue the block, I'm sure he can do it himself.--Atlan (talk) 10:18, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a standard block. Reverts do not have to be to the same material and there are four here in 24 hours. From my point of view William S. Saturn may have been trying to find compromise wording since the talk page shows an ongoing discussion of how to handle the caption. Shell ^babelfish 10:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• It should be recorded to Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation/Log of sanctions since the article is under the WP:ARBCOM probation The user in question, Tarc is well enough to know it because he has been listed as a guilty party of the ArbCom case.--Caspian blue 11:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The fly in the ointment here is that Tarc was acting to try to keep the article more neutral, to remove pointy comments and questionable sources. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 12:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, nobody ever thinks that they're the bad guy.--Caspian blue 13:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The edits speak for themselves. Tarc's edits were good, i.e. neutral. The edits he removed were not. For example, he removed a link to WND. WND is not a valid source. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Unforetunately, the reasons for violating 3RR don't include sound editing... Soxwon (talk) 13:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

BINGO .... ladies and gentlemen, hold your cards - we have a winner! — Ched :  ?  13:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The argument is being made that the complainant in the case should also be blocked for violating the 3-revert rule. Regardless, this does elevate the visibility of this pages' problems so that previously-dormant editors might get re-involved. 0:) Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 14:51, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

that doesnt really hold up. Wikipedia is a place of collegial editing, and Tarcs behavior on the Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories article has crossed the line set forth by the article probator guarantys. [[User:Smith Jones] 15:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Which simply means that others will have to monitor the article and be sure Saturn doesn't try to slip that junk into it again. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 16:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I think that this 3RR rule doesn't make any sense if it leads to automatic banning. What should happen is that a 3RR violation could lead to someone being reported and then one can look into the matter. If you violate 3RR in order to revert changes that bring the article very far from any accpeted consensus of the regular editors on the talki page, then one should look at the editing behavior of the other editor, even though he/she may not have violated 3RR (as the first edit does not count).

So, if on the Global Warming page a comes around and he makes edits that are technically not vandalism, I still have the right to revert an unlimited number of times without me being blocked. That may be necessary if the other regular editors aren't around for some reason (as I suspect happened yesterday).

Also, I made a pre-emtive report here in which I claim to have the right to violate the 3RR rule on the entropy page for a good reason. Count Iblis (talk) 16:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Edit warring the entropy page... There's a joke in there somewhere. Wikidemon (talk) 16:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

WP:3RR exists to rpotect pages from being the battlegrounds of an edit war. by reverting over and over instead of using the talkpage to review debates, you are seesneitally circumventing the usual dispute resolutin processses and simply using your force of time to control how articles go. thats not fair to either the readers or to the other editors, which is why people like Tarc need to be following the rules instead of going vigilante just because they think that someoen else has allegedly violated the rules. User:Smith Jones 16:45, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It won't kill Tarc to sit out a few more hours. However, if I had been handling the block review, I would have reduced the block.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

(ecx2):The 3RR rule is fine the way it is. I think a 3RR exemption for reverting to the consensus version is a really bad idea and could possibly give a great deal of leverage to editors owning articles. Anyway, this is not the place to discuss policy changes.--Atlan (talk) 16:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that is a really bad idea, the assumption and guarding on grounds of consensus is nothing more than a way to control an article. Regarding Tarcs block, the guy that brought the case even talked to him first and then after explaining it to him then offered not to report him if he reverted his last edit, I should be so lucky to get so many chances. Looking at the comments he has put in his unblock request he still hasn't got the point. (Off2riorob (talk) 16:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC))

• There are several things going on at the same time. First, guarding against disruptive edits and fringe opinions is a fine thing to do. Editors who wish to change the content on a page are welcome within reason and within guidelines to present their proposal and try to gain consensus for a change, but talk of article ownership, abuse, etc., is not very helpful - it's really an unfounded accusation of bad faith and it's not going to go anywhere. Second, Saturn's edits to promote fringe birther theories and generally disparage Obama in the past few weeks have been problematic, and go to the very reason for Obama article probation in the first place. An incident Saturn started landed on this page a couple days ago and indirectly resulted in a couple blocks that are now before Arbcom. Sooner or later Saturn is going to have to tone it way down on edit wars and civility. Third, Tarc indeed violated 3RR and should not have done so even to oppose what Tarc thought of as (and which I agree is) poorly sourced POV editing. On the technicalities, Saturn was within his rights to file the 3RR report, gave Tarc the courtesy of a notice and opportunity to self-revert, and only filed the report when Tarc refused. Tarc made the common mistake of thinking that reversions of different pieces of text do not count towards 3RR. However, I don't see any reason to keep the block if Tarc says it won't happen again - blocks are preventive, not punishment. Fourth and finally, it is too bad whenever someone gets blocked for good faith efforts to maintain the article when they're right on the content. Not because it's okay to edit war - no matter what the content is, as long as it's not vandalism, copyvios, or gross BLP violations, it's always best to avoid editing confrontations. The problem is that most good editors who stay on the topic area long enough will end up with bruises and blemishes from scrapes with problematic editors. We've had some terribly manipulative editors on the Obama pages, the worst being some extensive sock farms run by puppetmaster(s?) that got better and better at wikigaming. They point to the block histories as a vindication. It would have been far better for an administrator to warn Tarc away. Anyway, the take home is that Tarc ought to be unblocked upon promising not to further edit war, and we should encourage Saturn to try to get along.Wikidemon (talk) 17:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

This edit [57] tells you all you need to know about the POV-pushing shenanigans that Saturn is up to. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 17:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Are you calling shenanigans? I agree that this statement suggests a particular opinion about the birther movement, namely that it makes a legitimate claim questioning Obama's citizenship, birth, eligibility, etc. The opinion that this is a respectable question can lead to some disagreement about how the material should be presented. However, everyone is entitled to an opinion, nothing wrong with that. As long as you can edit collaboratively with others, you can believe whatever you want. If you're not editing in a collegial way, sometimes it's best to leave it at that and not look too deeply for what's in someone's heart of hearts. Wikidemon (talk) 18:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I was a bit severe in my assesment. It is his first block after almost 6000 edits. If he wrote an unblock request understanding and accepting why he was blocked I could support the unblock, not that my opinion carries weight. I also appreciate wikidemons added insights. (Off2riorob (talk) 18:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC))

Based on discussion here, and my own experience with Tarc (we don't always agree, but he has clue), I've reduced the length of the block and he should be unblocked about right now.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I've got a problem with the initial block. 2 of the 4 'reverts' listed in the 3RR report weren't actually substantive, repeated reverts of content. The first 'revert' was never repeated (the bit about Pat Boone) and the second and third reverts are two different portions of a sentence. the fourth revert is an honest to god revert to the third (though additional content has been added in between). I know that 3RR isn't an entitlement, but this seems to have been a case where we treated 3RR like a tripwire and automatically blocked Tarc without looking at the totality of the situation. I'm sure the blocking admin disagrees, but I feel the initial block didn't reflect the content of the posted diffs to 3rr. IMO, there was no vio. Protonk (talk) 19:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That's the angle I went with the initial unblock request, I'd always thought that different material didn't stack like that, and certainly #1 shouldn't have counted at all as it was effectively a plain edit, and in a different section of the article entirely. There goes my clean block log, though. Its like a sharpnel wound rather than a direct hit, so I'll wear it like one of John Kerry's purple hearts. ;) Tarc (talk) 19:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes welcome back Tarc, a small lesson learnt, take care not to get into too much trouble as they get bigger, regards Off2riorob (talk) 19:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

On another note, can an admin evaluate the entry in Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation/Log of sanctions? IMO this was a straight 3RR and really had nothing to do with article probation, but beyond that I don't think it is a great idea to let the complainants put their own spin on the text. I removed the entry with a summary that if an admin wishes to re-add then so be it, but hell, the page hadn't even refreshed and it was already reverted by Saturn. Do we have a stalking issue to deal with now? Cliffsnotes; 1) was this all a part of article probation, and 2) do non-admins get to add block/ban notices? Tarc (talk) 19:40, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• I've reverted the addition. Whether or not the blocking admin feels that it belongs there is up to him/her. Protonk (talk) 19:45, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • The page itself was created by a "non-admin" and has a long list of "non-admins" warning to other non-admins or colleague editors. Besides, editors who did not violate 3RR, have been listed there for disruption and the article talk page says it is under the Obama case probation. Even if some people do not consider the first one is a revert, he made one more revert that the report did not list[58], so Tarc clearly violated 3RR anyway. Unless he is removing vandalism or BLP, well, there is no excuse for 3RR violation in general. The blocking admin just abides the rule. However, it is certainly not a bright idea that William S. Saturn added the log as well as Tarc reverted it as soon as his block was lifted. Given that William S. Saturn first edited the page, the stalking accusation is really dubious. Any third party or blocking admin can add the name, but well, I can see "involved people" added some logs there.--Caspian blue 19:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure if that was a response to me, but here goes. It's fine if a non-admin adds folks to the sanctions page. It's not fine if a party to a dispute adds another party. Nothing will come of that but drama. Protonk (talk) 20:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • • Not specifically directed to you nor Tarc. I said what the page has that edit history.--Caspian blue 20:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I think I'm the "non-admin" in question, and I agree with Caspian Blue that we shouldn't read too much into this list. I created the page when I divided the old Obama probation page into several sub-pages and moved them from article talk space to wikipedia space under the general sanctions page. I'm one of several editors who have regularly added reports to the log of sanctions, and I've been fairly haphazard in deciding what to add. There are plenty of blocks and bans that were for things like sockpuppetry and 3RR that did not follow the Obama probation path. But also there have been sanctions that nobody bothered to record. As it stands the log is mainly useful for keeping a record of Obama-related article problems and gauging the level of trouble over time. I've tried to separate out simple vandalism, trolling, and sockpuppetry because those sanctions aren't controversial and don't have much to do with article probation. If we want it to be more of an official log we should start a new section that's reserved only for actions where the administrator in question issues the sanction with reference to article probation. Wikidemon (talk) 20:16, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
        • Done[59] - going forward we shouldn't have any question about official versus unofficial logs. It still makes sense to compile in one place the the disruption issues on Obama pages, but at the same time adding someone's name to the list should not be used as a mean to shame them (except in the case of trolls / socks / vandals, where it is helpful to be able to quickly identify past offenders who have returned). Wikidemon (talk) 20:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
          • Edit was reverted. A bit about logging first.
          • The purpose of the log is to allow others to (re)view any actions taken under Obama probation, usually within a reasonable time of them being taken. Please note that the requirement is that such "sanctions be logged"; it was deliberately worded in this way. Although the imposing admin is responsible for ensuring that it is logged within a reasonable time, they are not required to log it themselves - any user may do so (provided that they are uninvolved obviously). This is especially useful if an administrator has forgotten, or is running low on time, or some other reason.
          • Per the purpose of the log, if a user finds a sanction unjustified, and said sanction cannot fall under general sanctions (due to lack of community discussion), then they bring attention to the issue, usually by exhausting the appeal avenues. Another example is where an uninvolved user reviews a sanction and finds it should fall under general sanctions rather than Obama probation, then it should not be logged under Obama probation, although the effect of the sanction will not change.
          • In this way, the need for separating out these logging of actions is not necessary (or reserving a certain section for official vs non-official). Practically, perhaps not everyone is going to look at the log as much as they can, should or ought to - however, each action that was logged should have been reviewed in terms of appropriateness (within a reasonable time of it being taken). If they did not stay there (see for example [60]), then they did not fall under Obama probation. If they did, then it's presumed to be accepted.
          • In this case, although the edit was reverted for the reasons above, Wikidemon was correct in noting that a name should not be added to the list for the purpose of shaming anyone - it is, after all, just a means to review actions taken under the provision, or even non-probation actions in that area. Given the dispute, and the fact that the review was called for much earlier here (more as a typical block) rather than Obama probation, there's no need to log this block (and block-reduction) there. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Nobody is addressing the fact that the Obama articles are under special probation due to repeated contentious edits. The edits by Saturn should have led to his being blocked. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• Or maybe start with a warning? I'm not sure that an authoritative neutral administrator has ever asked him to chill out. Wikidemon (talk) 20:16, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• • • Er, a solitary edit on the sanction page is not "edit warring", caspian. Also, that last edit you linked was many hours after the fact, as well as being a reversion of clearly problematic material ,if not plain vandalism. You did look at what that edit actually, y'know, edited, didn't you? It can be more clearly seen here that I removed the labeling of the Obama's opponents as "lunatic fringe activists", as well as the removal of some original research-ish editorializing casting aspersions on McCain's "is he or isn't he natural-born?" case. Tarc (talk) 20:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I modified to the phrase "edit war" to "revert" per you request.--Caspian blue 20:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
        • That doesn't address your questionable calling out of a separate edit. Would it have been better to leave text in that described a group of people as lunatics? Tarc (talk) 00:32, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
          • When you were blocked again for the autoblock, the thread remained "peaceful". :-) I hope you learn the lesson with the experience.Caspian blue 00:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
            • I don't think the question I posed to you was non-peaceful, and I notice you are yet again ducking it. You still can't get over my support of blocks of your buddy ChildofMidnight, which is the real reason you're here trying to connect unconnected edits into a longer 3RR report, and so on. So yea caspian; with your involvement, I have learned a great deal. :) Tarc (talk) 00:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
              • Hmmm, no. Tarc, I have independent opinions on what are wrong and inappropriate. I wish you learn a lesson that you can not freely escape from your own behaviors. That's what I've observed from your 3RR block. I wish you behave more civilly and assume good faith just like what ArbCom firmly warned you. Tarc. If you want to continue the pointless spinoff, then move to you talk page. I may or may not freely accept your invitation, though. :)--Caspian blue 00:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
              • Ya know Tarc, maybe if you concentrated a little more on the quality of your own edits, and a little less on what others are doing, you might face a little less opposition here. And no - the irony of this post is not lost on me. — Ched :  ?  04:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
                • The quality of my edits are just fine, bud. When someone makes a spurious "this other edit was bad too!" accusation, then I will defend myself. And if said person continues to duck and dodge that defends, I will call them out. Tarc (talk) 13:07, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Saturn is now the subject of a complaint at WQA. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 09:48, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

As I had pointed out in my citation earlier, Saturn is engaged in promoting the birther movement. Wikipedia is not about promoting political movements and fringe theories. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 12:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yet another editor pretending to be an administrator

Resolved

 – Warned for disruptive behaviour and Twinkle access removed. Nja²⁴⁷ 22:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

44 sweet (talk · contribs) has added him/her self to the Administrators' category and the Administrators willing to make difficult blocks category. I'm not sure what action is appropriate here. They've also been removing the blocked template from User:Bigen182, Dougweller (talk) 10:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Eh. If he keeps readding it then we would have cause for concern, but I'd say to keep an eye out, considering this gem of an edit. \ Backslash Forwardslash / {talk} 11:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

lulz .. well, I left a note - hopefully he'll "get it". — Ched :  ?  11:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Or doling out page move warnings for a user that hasn't moved a page since June. Looks like a POS account. seicer | talk | contribs 11:51, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Do we need Category:Non-administrators willing to make difficult unblocks? Hans Adler 12:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

As supreme ruler of wikipedia, I'll be happy to deal with this. --Cameron Scott (talk) 12:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Your Majesty -- Deville (Talk) 14:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I see he has Twinkle - I'd take it away if I knew how and wasn't scared that the supreme ruler would get cross or I'd start another 'adminz be bad guyz and abuse me' thread. Dougweller (talk) 15:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

 Note: Twinkle revoked. Nja²⁴⁷ 22:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, somebody is going to have to tell Jimbo that he's been replaced, when he gets back from vacation. "All hail the new king" — Ched :  ?  16:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Where are the Rouge Admins when you need one? Edison (talk) 19:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, wasn't paying attention. You need Jimbo blocked again, or is the main page thing again?--Wehwalt (talk) 20:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

←Sorry, I meant to post this last night, but I removed the two categories and left him a note on his talk, followed by a longer (and nicer, I might add) note from Ched. I agree with \ /, if he continues to act this way, then further sanctions would ensue. Otherwise, I think it's settled for now. →javért ^stargaze 22:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I do always have my handy-dandy User:Bwilkins/notanadmin template...you're all welcome to use it (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 23:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

User:PProctor

Articles related to organic metals are potentially highly visible since this area was recognized with a Nobel Prize a few years ago. This article and some related ones are closely policed by User:Pproctor. PProctor is apparently the embittered student of a John McGinness (one-time nominee for deletion for non-notability, authored by PProctor). McGinness is not mentioned in the Nobel presentations. Proctor also emphasizes other minor contributions in an apparent ploy to detract from the contributions from the Nobel Prize winners. I have tried to edit in this space, but I dont really have the time and few other editors have expertise in this topic, much less the stamina to duel with the skillful and persistent PProctor. PProctor is something of a conspiracy theorist in his other edits. The situation has prevailed for many years, which is unfortunate because again, as the Nobel committee tried to communicate, the area is an important one in the scientific community. My recommendation: that PProctor be banned from editing on topics related to organic metals. The justification for the ban would be conflict of interest. Thanks,--Smokefoot (talk) 13:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There does seem to be some evidence of WP:OWNing going on there. This reversion looks like the editor has positioned him/herself as a gatekeeper. This looks like a pretty messy situation around specific technical material. Toddst1 (talk) 14:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The material is pretty technical and "simple" efforts to rectify the situation be reverting various of PProctor's edits will be unsatisfactory. PProctor has owned these articles for so many years that his strange views are woven deeply into the fabric of this and related articles. The phase of having skillful, non-technical editors swooping into this space is long passed and such admins will be foiled by PProctor's well-honed tactics and scientific jargonology. The problem is intractable. Sorry for the bad news.--Smokefoot (talk) 14:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok. You'll need to prepare a pretty detailed case then if you want the editor restricted. Toddst1 (talk) 15:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I lack the time to "prepare a pretty detailed case" required to rectify this situation, which is exactly what this troll is counting on. It is unfortunate that scientifically oriented articles are unable to attract the level of administrative attention that social issues garner, but the predicament is understandable. Thanks,--Smokefoot (talk) 23:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

troll is too strong a word, but it does look like ownership, as can easily happen here in relatively isolated areas. Disputes over scientific priority can be as long-lasting as any on politics or religion. Sometimes one side is unambiguously right, but the development of a concept can easily leave many different people thinking the key step was theirs. There are quite a number of people here capable of understanding the science--even among the admins.--but I think editing, not admin action is what is required. I think we simply need more eyes on the articles rather than restriction. DGG (talk) 00:45, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Anybody that knows about this issue is welcome to comment on it, subject to the customary constraints of NOR, etc.. "Not have time" seems to be a pretty weak excuse for violating NOR and presentng what appears to be mere personal opinion. Then he comes over here when I ask for some documentation. The history here is the history. I carefully document everything and give external references to articles on the history of conductive polymers, etc.. E.g., one book chapter bears the telling title "Nothing new under the sun" with reference to conductive polymers.

And no, I am not "embittered". For one thing, I left this field for a much more rewarding one decades ago. Most particularly, we were at best only the third people to report a highly-conductive organic polymer and this was 14 years too late. So any "priorty dispute" issue is moot. My present interest is the history of discovery. As I note, experts are welcome here, subject to NOR, etc. This is because we are reasonably-assumed to know the literature.

Also, the changes I reverted were fairly extensive and made without discussion. I reverted with a "this needs to be discussed" note and then discussed them on the discussion page. so far, the anonymous poster has not returned.

BTW, my role model is Carl Correns, who rediscovered Gregor Mendel's laws of heredity and, rather than take credit for them, went out of his way to ensure that Mendel was given proper credit.Pproctor (talk) 03:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Forgot to mention: The reference to Balto et al, the first discoverers of highly-conductive organic polymers, was provided by an anonymous poster using an IP number tracing back to the University of Woolongong, a hotbed of research in this area. Much of what I have been doing is defending this reference. True, not to be outdone, i went out and found an additional report. Far from being self-serving or a conflict of interest, this dropped us one more step down the priority chain. The history is the history.Pproctor (talk) 03:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Advice please

Resolved

Following the handy guide at the top of the submission page here - kudos on that BTW - I filed Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts#Help with personal attack which is now being recommended to being sent here. Should it be and if so how should it happen? -- Banjeboi 14:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Looked very quickly - one more comment like that should earn the editor an "indef" vacation. Full Stop. — Ched :  ?  15:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

So ... does anything need to be done? Should the WQA be deferred to here or this thread to there or ? -- Banjeboi 21:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

No edits from that account since you posted the Wqa and he was warned. I would think, let an admin know if it happens again and cite both the Wqa and this thread. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, will do. -- Banjeboi 23:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Is Crowley-Gates an Obama related page?

I hope this is the right venue for this question. (Please advise!)

I have a request for clarification with regard to Obama article probation and the Gatesgate/"beer summit" article (more properly the Henry Louis Gates arrest incident); for example, specifically, Are discussions about the White House get together with officer Gates, Obama's friend Professor Gates and the president subject to its strictures? (We are also in the midst of a discussing of this matter on our talkpage here: Talk:Henry Louis Gates arrest incident#Note: Features of "Obama article probation" that pertain to this page.)

Note that I'd especially be interested in hearing input from admins and editors with experience with Obama article probation issues, however anyone's opinion will be appreciated. Thanks. (Oh and furthermore there very recently was a thread on ani/3r concerning the incessant edit warring that has been going on on the page with regard to what phrase to use to refer to the White House meeting between Gates, Crowly, and the president; this edit warring has spilled over into the article's talkpage, filling it up somewhat with discussions of editor conduct rather than strictly concerning issues about article content.) ↜Just M E here , now 14:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Is someone seriously questioning whether the article on the meeting between Obama's friend, Obama, and a cop Obama insulted, related to Obama? I'm gonna have to go with "YES". I would think it was painfully obvious that meetings involving a person were involving that person, but maybe I'm wrong. Padillah (talk) 14:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There was a ruling on it recently, and the answer was, "Yes, it is Obama-related," and hence it falls under the arbcom decisions on Obama-related pages. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 14:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Correction - That was ca. July 28th, and there was no definitive ruling. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 08:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment I think the question is badly phrased. Justmeheremow placed the article on Article Probation, and was reversed. I would imagine that if the outcome of this discussion is to say the article is Obama-related, he will do so again. That is the wrong question. The question is, should this article be placed on article probation? That should be faced squarely, not gotten in through the back door. Not all Obama related articles are on article probation, you know--Wehwalt (talk) 14:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll rephrase the question. Thanks, Wehwalt. ↜Just M E here , now 14:56, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggest that you do it under a new heading and close this topic to avoid confusion.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

OK. ^{:^)} ↜Just M E here , now 15:00, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I think hiding it and continuing in place is better. –xeno^talk 15:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thread poster objected, so unhidden and split. –xeno^talk 15:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Should Henry Louis Gates arrest incident be on article probation?

With regard Obama article probation and the Gatesgate/"beer summit" article (more properly the Henry Louis Gates arrest incident) -- for example, Shouldn't discussions about the White House get together with officer Gates, Obama's friend Professor Gates and the president subject to its strictures? We are in the midst of a discussing of this matter on our talkpage here: Talk:Henry Louis Gates arrest incident#Note: Features of "Obama article probation" that pertain to this page.

Note that I'd especially be interested in hearing input from admins and editors with experience with Obama article probation issues, however anyone's opinion will be appreciated. Thanks. (Also there very recently was a thread on ani/3r concerning the incessant edit warring that has been going on on the page with regard to what phrase to use to refer to the White House meeting between Gates, Crowly, and the president; this edit warring has spilled over into the article's talkpage, filling it up somewhat with discussions of editor conduct rather than strictly concerning issues about article content.) ↜Just M E here , now 15:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

FYI, I removed the probation tag because it was placed by a non-administrator. A probation tag should be placed by someone willing to enforce it, imo. I'm not too familiar with this though, so no prejudice to someone putting it back if that is faulty reasoning and/or an administrator steps forward to oversee the page. –xeno^talk 14:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The probation is for Obama-related articles "broadly construed". The only reason anyone cares about this incident is because President Obama spoke about it at his press conference. So I would say yes, the probation should definitely apply. (This is without looking at the talk page to see what the particular issue is.) But in general, it should apply. --B (talk) 15:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

What? This was big news before Obama stuck his oar in.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It was on the news, but it wasn't a full media circus. The Q&A at the press conference took it from being an "oh and by the way" news item to the lead item on every broadcast. Obama is an integral part of the story. --B (talk) 15:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose I've monitored the page since near the beginning and weighed in now and then. I don't think there's anything on the page that normal measures can't handle.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

As B points out and as noted here, under the terms of the community-imposed measures to deal with Obama articles, "Pages related to Barack Obama (broadly construed) are subject to the following terms of article probation." In my view at least this is not particularly up to debate—the Gates affair is clearly Obama-related if we construe that phrase broadly, even though it would still have been a major issue had Obama not become so directly involved.

Ultimately putting this article on probation is not that big of a deal. It simply allows admins more latitude to deal with problems if they come up, and forces editors there to be more careful about civility and edit warring, which is not a bad thing and could actually prevent problems. If there are no real problems on the page right now (I have not checked), then admin enforcement won't really be needed, and the fact that the article is "on probation" won't really matter. If problems arise then it will be easier to deal with them. To my mind at least, it's best to avoid picking and choosing what articles are on probation or not and simply take "broadly construed" at face value. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 15:22, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The probation puts editors in some pretty tight handcuffs. What about applying it only to the (so-called) "beer summit" section? –xeno^talk 15:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC) Striking portion. I thought this was one of those tighter restrictions with 1RR across the board and the like. The handcuffs aren't that tight. –xeno^talk 15:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd be worried about that causing too much wikilawyering. It really needs to be all or nothing. --B (talk) 15:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, anything is up for discussion. The fact that the community has placed all Obama-related articles on probation can be revisited at any time. But under the current rule, as it exists, the article is on probation and it's not really an arguable point. If the community wants to make an exception for it or change the rule, that, of course, is an option. Also, Xeno makes a very good point that unless one or more admins care about it enough to enforce the probation (which I can't commit to regularly monitoring), it's rather moot. --B (talk) 15:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Well I don't think we're revisiting the topic of Obama article probation here, though of course we could. And obviously we need admins to do the enforcing should that become necessary. But whether an admin is watching the page now is not really relevant. If the article is on probation, and I think it should be obviously, and then if problems come up and no admin is there helping out, an editor working on the page could post a note here on ANI saying, "trouble at Henry Louis Gates arrest incident, could an admin come over and help enforce Obama article probation." I think we're making this a bit more difficult than we need to. I don't think being on probation is that big of a deal (I would disagree that it "puts editors in some pretty tight handcuffs"—if you don't edit war or behave in an uncivil fashion, which you should not be doing anyway, you have no problems, and anyway you would always be warned first if there was a problem) or that it will hurt article work in some way. If it's not needed, great, but if a mess erupts over there it's clear at the outset that administrators can handle the problems under the terms of the Obama probation, and the very fact that the rules are a bit tighter could help prevent problems before they arise. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 15:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, by that logic, it would be cool to apply the terms project wide.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm game! ^{:^)} (seriously) ↜Just M E here , now 20:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• Commment - there is no requirement for prior consensus, or administrator approval, before adding Obama article probation notices to pages. I disagree that there are any "handcuffs" associated with being on probation - it just requires good behavior of the sort that editors should be showing anywhere. However, if there is a consensus against a page being on probation, or if the probation just doesn't fit the page, it shouldn't apply. Despite the "broadly construed" language, Obama probation has so far been applied only to specific pages that are mainly about Obama (or his administration, family, career, books by or about him, etc) - it has not been applied to articles about other people and things that happen to contain sections and topics relating to Obama. That would argue against applying probation to the Gates page. We may want to consider that because the problems (the same editors and the same problems) tend to go from one page to another, so it might make more sense as a topic probation than article probation. I would favor that but I think it's something we ought to discuss first. Wikidemon (talk) 15:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Are there any other articles that are analogous to this one in terms of Obama's relationship to the subject that are not considered to be on probation? --B (talk) 15:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • As far as I know, no. The probation tag has only been applied to half a dozen articles or so, and they were all directly related to Obama. There are probably some other pages generally assumed to fall under probation but without a tag - again, very closely related. Wikidemon (talk) 15:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I think there are any number of articles which probably could/should be considered Obama-related but are not tagged. I'm guessing the only articles tagged are the most obvious ones, like Presidency of Barack Obama, and perhaps some where particular problems have cropped up. I don't think we need to go through and systematically tag every Obama-related article (and obviously an article is not officially "under probation" until it is tagged), but if someone, as is happening here, thinks an article should be under probation and if on the face it is Obama-related, then let's go ahead and put it on probation. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 15:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

In a sort of procedural question, Shouldn't we try to discuss whether the article is already on probation in the 1st part of this discussion, only concentrating on whether it should be, in this secondary part? Unless both issues will likely become intermingled in any case. In fact -- Never mind....

Come to think of it, the whole question is resolved, since BigTimePeace is the premiere admin with concern Obama related pages' probation and obviously doesn't mind if this page is added. Anyone agree with my assessment that therefore this is a done deal, or are there related issues, ramifications, procedural issues and whatnot and so on that will still need to be worked out? In other words, should I put the notice back up on the article's talkpage or not?

• From what I understand the operation of the probation, there's really nothing officially much different than normal, it's just that editing behavioral guidelines are simply watched more stringently, am I right? For example, with regard to edit warring, taunting, etc., we'd tend to template a drive-by contributor who threadjacks with a personal comment or does a 2nd revert (which is already assuming bad faith or edit warring, technically, but can now be stringently enforced on such a page) with an extremely polite warning telling them there's zero bad behavoir allowed on the page, under probation (with no indulgences granted to long-time editors believing themselves "just protecting the page," so as not to allow unfairness issues to arise). And instead of clogging up the page with inter-editor issues, these can be relegated to user talkpages or to "Obama articles probation" subpages, right? ↜Just M E here , now 16:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• I don't see any necessity to probation the article, there is nothing going on there that shows me that it needs extra control. Off2riorob (talk) 16:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• For me, the compelling evidence about what gets covered by the Obama restrictions are the actions of the editors at those articles. Once an article starts to receive the same sorts of wacky conspiracy theorists and revisionists that led to the restrictions in the first place, that's when the restrictions appear. Insofar as the articles in question have not become targets, then I see no reason to extend the probabtion. However, the sorts of editors who the probation targets have a long history of testing the boundaries of the probation by finding new and increasingly esoteric articles in which to push their agenda. Insofar as these articles have not become a target, then they are not covered by the probation. However, this is not a permanent state; the probation extends to any article which displays the sort of problems that led to the probation as soon as the problems arise. --Jayron32 19:00, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • That sounds like a very reasonable answer/policy. --B (talk) 20:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Jayron has hit it square on the head. Editors who are restricted in some way from editing certain specific articles may try to get around it by slipping POV-pushing material into articles that are not technically on that list. Behavior is the issue, not necessarily a chiseled list of specific articles. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 05:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• Note: Gwen Gale gave me her permission to move her thoughts (below) from her talkpage to here.

  Hey. I don't think my input's needed in that thread, it's ok to put the Gates arrest topic under that probation though, since even if most of the sources on that messy tale are indeed flawed or worse, edit warring and gnashing of teeth won't help readers nearly so much as letting the sources stumble on their own. As for slow edit warring, anyone doing it should be warned (and blocked if they don't stop, quick), 3rr is only a bright line, not the rule. Is there a lone editor in a back and forth with a small flock holding another PoV? They're all edit warring, which isn't allowed, even if the flock thinks they're "a helpful content patrol." Is the lone editor breaking any other policies? Is that editor single purpose or experienced in many topics? Are the sources independent and verifiable? Readers aren't helped by political articles which snuff out published PoVs on a topic and moreover, editors should be wary about giving the narrative voice to published PoVs of any kind in a political article. Gwen Gale (talk) 01:48, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

  ↜Just M E here , now 02:51, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Gates Mug shot and arrest pictures, in or out.

There has been a lot of discussion over these pictures in or out, an editor has started a head count of opinions at the [Gates talkpage] This is an important decision for the Wikipedia, please come there and leave your opinion. Off2riorob (talk) 1:35 am, Today (UTC+1)

I don't know about the mugshot, but the photo of him exiting his house is a blatant copyright violation. 64.252.32.149 (talk) 14:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia vandalism from User:Euclidthegreek

Euclidthegreek (talk · contribs)

This user is repeatedly attempting to import uncyclopedia nonsense. He has attempted to make "Euclidthegreek/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA..." and "User:Euclidthegreek/There is no article here"; both copy pastings of Uncyclopedia pages. He has also attempted to vandalize mainspace as seen here [61] and created vandalism pages at Jimbo II of Wikipedia and Tiny Cube. After a final warning for vandalism, he created the redirect "WP:ONWHEELS". There is a fine line between being funny and being blatantly unconstructive. Triplestop x3 15:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm having a tough time imagining this user being very productive. Does anyone have enough of a math background to know whether his dodecahedron-related changed are correct or are they rubbish? --B (talk) 15:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

User(s) blocked: 31 hours (talk · contribs).. Since the editor had only received a single warning, I opted to AGF and give them a final chance before being blocked indefinitely. — Kralizec! (talk) 15:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The user claims to be[62] this disruptive IP I reported[63] a few days ago. Celestra (talk) 15:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Part of it's correct, part of it's nonsense. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Israel Project

There seems to be an organized effort to remove criticism at Israel Project. (See previous Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive556#Anon_self-identifies_as_involved_editor.2C_deletes_material_embarassing_to_The_Israel_Project) Edits are coming either from anons or from new single-purpose accounts.

• 94.188.130.146 (talk · contribs) - self identifies as "I am in charge of the web department at The Israel Project." Section blanking.[64]
• 84.228.211.216 (talk · contribs) - edit comments read "I am the Web director at the Israel Project. Please stop accepting hate edits abour our group." Section blanking.[65]
• 66.208.24.163 (talk · contribs) - section blanking of same section as above. [66]
• Freebloggers (talk · contribs) - currently edit warring, 3RR problem. See [67]. --John Nagle (talk) 15:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Request 48 hours of semi-protection to quiet down the changes by anons. --John Nagle (talk) 16:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

A checkuser for these would result in "probably" (and confirmed for the latter 2). --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 20:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Block of Antihijacker

Resolved

I have indefinitely blocked Antihijacker (talk · contribs) for harassing Jorfer (talk · contribs). I'm reasonably sure that Antihijacker is the anon IP who was repeatedly vandalizing Jorfer's home page yesterday. As Antihijacker's edits, taken out of context, might appear innocent to some observers, I am bringing the block here for review. -- Donald Albury 16:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

He has also vandalized others, if this is the same person. - Denimadept (talk) 17:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Endorse block. Toddst1 (talk) 18:45, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Any idea who User:Gregor8159 is, who removed this thread and a related one at User talk:Jorfer?--Atlan (talk) 19:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

He's blocked, that's who he is, as a sock of none other than Antihijacker. -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Tear him for his bad verses!)} 20:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I suspecy Kinkyplays (talk · contribs) is another sock. --bonadea contributions talk 20:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I now have also seen User:Beardedmanners who may be involved with this. - Denimadept (talk) 20:30, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Blocked all, range blocked temporarily. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 20:38, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Legal threat

[68]. And take a look at that editor's edits. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Fairly civil, he didn't threaten to break the other guy's legs with a lead pipe.Goodmorningworld (talk) 21:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, most legal threats don't involve leg breaking. I fail to see your point. Anyway, this was a pretty veiled threat, if it even was one. I don't know if any action is required.--Atlan (talk) 22:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

How veiled is I won't see to it that you are indic[a]ted for Obstruction of Justice? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 22:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

(ec) It's also a few days old. Looking at the IP's edits, I'm guessing he has a fair amount of tinfoil on the grocery bill, so perhaps best ignored for the moment? Tony Fox (arf!) 22:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The threat is a few days old, but the user continues to edit up to and including today, and has not retracted the threat. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 22:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Seems loony tunes and harmless. If you really want the ip blocked for a while, then I guess we can, but I would just as soon not do anything. Protonk (talk) 22:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I agree that single sentence is not veiled at all, but in context I thought it was pretty meaningless, based on assumptions like Tommy being employed by the government. Whatever the case, I just can't really take this seriously.--Atlan (talk) 22:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

← (edit conflict) Public encyclopedia? Somebody better set this IP's mind straight and fast. MuZemike 22:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The IP seems to be the same as Ivangrimm (talk · contribs) FYI. <>Multi-Xfer<> (talk) 01:14, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

This person does not seem to be here to build an encyclopedia. We have in the past used admin discretion with moderately disruptive users who are here for other purposes, and indef'ed them.

If anyone feels that he may be able to contribute the the encyclopedia I am open to moderation, but I don't see any sign of productive contributions. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 01:45, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

CSD-G4

Resolved

Is Atticus: ...Dragging the Lake, Vol. 4 a significant match to the one that was deleted in AFD yesterday? Joe Chill (talk) 23:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Identical. Deleted and salted. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Heqwm2

Having reviewed this user's contributions, it became immediately clear s/he has ignored the heavy amount of warnings and the block. At this point, we're getting brilliantly unneutral additions like [69]. I am pretty sure a warning from a non-administrator would do nothing at this point, given the 10 or so on the talk page. Would an administrator be willing to step in with a remedy? Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:18, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Nobody's written on her Talk page since November. Plus a notice of this discussion should be put there. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 23:30, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The timing should not be relevant when someone has showed a propopensity, over years, to ignore comments. Warnings do not get invalidated after a set amount of time, IPs being the exception because they may be multiple people. Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:58, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

But without current warnings, nobody knows that the editor is still carrying out the edits. You need to start again here. Elen of the Roads (talk) 12:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

24.229.244.235 (talk · contribs)

Various articles edited by IP 24.229.244.235

24.229.244.235 (talk · contribs)

We've been dealing with gross contentiousness, 3RR, editing while blocked, vandalism, you name it, from this editor. In realizing this was a young person, I tried to be helpful while the IP was blocked, even after discovering a username had been registered in order to violated a block placed on July 21. Block log is here When I was looking at issues related to edits made today after the IP returned, I discovered that another IP, 24.229.233.239, traceroutes to the same location and had been blocked, finally for 3 months, on June 21 [70]. In just looking at the posting style and patterns, as well as the articles edited, this is unquestionably the same editor, avoiding a fairly long term block, again. See User talk:24.229.244.235 and User talk:24.229.233.239. To expand upon WP:DUCK, when it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and calls itself Donald, it's the same duck. Could this be dealt with here please? Wildhartlivie (talk) 00:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Second Mexican Empire

There is a user, User:TownDown, who is writing in a non-encyclopedic style and is erasing and replacing ALL other information in the article. This user is not working with others, even after others extending a hand. He is also accusing others of sock-puppetry. We need a mediator. C.Kent87 (talk) 00:54, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The user C.Kent87 is being investigated by sockpuppet [71] because his possible sockpuppet 71.204.157.119 and C.Kent87 blanked the article twice [72] [73] removing flags in svg format and important information. --TownDown^{How's going?} 01:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• Gave notice to TownDown, and informed him that mass-inserting POV statements and performing entire-article changes really requires consensus on the talk page. No such consensus exists. In addition, he has performed over four wholesale revisions, although if he agrees to stop edit warring and agrees to mediation and talk page consensus, then they will not be reported for such violation. seicer | talk | contribs 01:02, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know who are you seicer, but the administrators must check these reports of C.Kent87 [74] [75]. --TownDown^{How's going?} 01:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Former administrator who can spot a disruptive user a mile away. seicer | talk | contribs 01:51, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

That's a personal attack, you know it?. --TownDown^{How's going?} 01:54, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

No. And your disruptive AN3 and SPI filings are becoming pointless, considering that you have conducted four wholesale reverts. seicer | talk | contribs 01:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Did you say four individual reverts?, or three individual editions [76] [77] [78] and 1 reverted [79]?.--TownDown^{How's going?} 02:03, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• Fifth wholesale revert, with a misleading edit summary (actually, none at all) by TownDown (talk · contribs). seicer | talk | contribs 02:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Blocked for 6RR on Second Mexican Empire, 48 hrs.

TownDown - edit warring and reverting an article more than 3 times in 24 hrs are strictly prohibited on Wikipedia. When your block expires you need to engage in good faith discussions on article talk pages and not restart this type of behavior again. Further abuse will lead to more blocks. You need to talk to people and try to achieve consensus rather than beat articles back and forth like that. We expect you to edit in a civil and constructive manner and avoid making personal attacks in editing.

Wikipedia's community expects that all editors will edit in a constructive and adult manner, and try to cooperate with each other. I hope and expect that you can do better in the future. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Improper block by Georgewilliamherbert (the sequel)

I don't have much hope of seeing anything done about this, but I want to voice my protest. There have been recent disputes at three of the "LaRouche" articles, the main disputants being Will Beback, Coleacanth and Maybellyne. Will had been agitating to delete references to LaRouche's economics theories and proposals. Colecanth and Maybellyne found substantial sources in the Russian and Chinese press. Will resisted their use, but the consensus at WP:RS/N supported their use.

Then tensions escalated. The LaRouche arbcom cases say don't use Wikipedia to promote LaRouche, and don't violate BLP at LaRouche articles. Coleacanth and Maybellyne were pushing the limits on the promotion side, and Will was pushing them on the BLP violation side. I had filed a request with the Mediation Cabal (Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2009-08-06/LaRouche movement) on August 8, which I think might have had a beneficial effect, as both sides of the conflict have been responsive to outside input.

However, toward the end of last week Will went into a whirlwind of activity, making an enormous volume of controversial edits, and civility went out the window on both sides. I blame all parties, but Will more, because he's an "old hand," an admin, and my sense was that he was deliberately goading his opponents in order to create the pretext for having them banned (as in Wikipedia:Gaming the system#Abuse of process.) And sure enough, I discover this week that once again, Georgewilliamherbert has stepped in to do the job. Collaborating behind the scenes to impose a permanent ban based on the "duck test" diff is just a little bit too convenient, particularly because both admins are involved and share a POV; last time around, George was talking about the need to make sure the articles "are not a whitewash." As I said then, actions of this sort should be taken only by uninvolved admins, but I think that my request is falling on deaf ears. This smacks of an "old boys club" at Wikipedia where the club members get to dodge the constraints of policies such as NPOV, BLP, WP:CONSENSUS and WP:OWN, simply by making their opponents disappear with the thinnest of pretexts. --Leatherstocking (talk) 00:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• Any diffs to speak of besides the one? Protonk (talk) 01:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

All three accounts which I indefinitely blocked have been checkuser-confirmed (by others, I'm not a CU) to be sockpuppets of indefinitely banned Herschelkrustofsky (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), who has been a prolific sockpuppeteer and (if you note the talk page strikeouts Will did at Talk:Views of Lyndon LaRouche ) were directly reinforcing each other in a discussion to create false sense of consensus, a direct violation of WP:SOCK, much less the prior user ban.

There is no thin pretext here - Hersch is permanently banned from Wikipedia, and to the extent that it takes us time to notice new sockpuppets arriving, only gets away with brief stints of editing here.

See also Wikipedia:Long_term_abuse/Herschelkrustofsky for more details...

Leatherstocking, I understand you're sensitive about people stomping up and down on legitimate discussion and viewpoints there, particularly with our history there. But this is a long-standing abuse case ( 5 years, 59 plus accounts or IPs used by now ), in which the user is banned from editing. If this appears to be unfair to others participating in discussion - I'm sorry, but we can't allow him to continue editing once he's detected. He should not be there in the first place, and he knows that. He's banned, really completely utterly banned, and we do not want him back. That he's still at it 5 years later and still using multiple IP addresses at the same time should tell you something about the magnitude of the problem.

I am not involved in article content - I have refrained from doing so since I had to full-protect the article for a year a couple of years ago (and I believe I didn't do so beforehand), though I would have to review to see if I did any of the article talk page consensus changes that followed the protection.

We do have to have administrators with longstanding experience around to deal with ongoing abuse cases - knowing the signature of these users over a period of years makes a big difference in efficiency of enforcement of bans. As noted - I found usage patterns which made me extremely suspicious, I saw other information from other sources (wikichecker etc) which lined up and confirmed it, and after I made the blocks a checkuser was performed and verified that the users were in fact Herschelkrustovsky. So my pattern matching was a correct analysis.

I did not rush to judgement here - I had been watching the patterns for a few weeks before I acted, and others were also watching for some time (I hadn't run the original wikichecker reports).

I'm sorry if you feel that this has a chilling effect. I have no intent to do so on your account. I have no reason think or suspect you're doing anything wrong at the moment, and actions against this user should not be interpreted as any reflection of suspicion on you or anyone else. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:10, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Several things puzzle me here. You say a CU confirms sockpuppetry, and at the same time you say Herschelkrustovsky is using multiple IP addresses. Did the original Herschelkrustovsky account use multiple IP addresses? I ask because I too have watched this business of account after account being banned as socks of this person, and I get the impression that many of them are simply users with similar POV, at which point someone says "close enough," bans them, announces that their IP addresses are Herschelkrustovsky, and by the time the smoke clears there are umpteen different ISPs or IP ranges which are all alleged to be his, so it becomes very easy to accuse someone of being him. The latest two banned accounts actually did a lot of useful work, and the other thing which troubles me is that Will Beback edits very aggressively with a rather pronounced POV and seems to have a free pass to do so. --Leatherstocking (talk) 06:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I can't answer in detail, because A) I'm not a checkuser and didn't see the actual results, and B) our user privacy policy prohibits checkusers from sharing those details (only results are released, not the underlying privacy-relevant data). However, what we have been told generally by CUs previously is that Hersh uses a consistent set of IP ranges and other identifying information. I am told that the correspondence is identical again - the same IP blocks, the same IPs, other characteristics the same.

With 60-odd total accounts in the history, there's plenty of evidence there. The CUs are good at this by now.

A banned user can at times come in with a new account and do some good work. But that doesn't mean they're not banned. If we find them, they are blocked again. That's what banning means.

In this case, what they were slightly more subtly working on was the same topic area where Hersh's abuse caused his banning - LaRouche related topics. A banned user who appears to be editing constructively with a new account in the area they were banned for affecting is often (though not surely) subtly trying to twist things to their personal bias or viewpoint again. In this case, as there were 3 accounts reinforcing each other, they were making it look like more people were involved in the discussion than there really were - essentially, a lot of that page comes to Will and Hersh's sockpuppets talking. And the sockpuppets talking to each other. And a bit of your comments. Having two or more accounts talking to each other, and reinforcing each other, is one of the prime reasons we have WP:SOCKPUPPET - it's entirely a cheat on our consensus rules, by making an artificial consensus out of one person's opinion, presented with the various socks.

I believe Will is working to seek NPOV on the article and good article contents in compliance with other policy. However, if you want a wider review of that, you can feel free to discuss it here. As I have said, I am not making article content decisions in general there as I am so involved in the enforcement issue over time. I don't think I'm grossly biased, but it deserves independent review. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 07:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• First, I received no notification of this thread. It's only polite and reasonable to notify a user when initiating a thread about them on ANI.
• Second, User:Herschelkrustofsky is well-known as a puppet master. He has used literally dozens of socks, usually a few at a time.
• Third, I had no prior discussion with user:Georgewilliamherbert about this matter. He acted on his own, and then I mentioned the other accounts later.
• Fourth, after I'd supplied Georgewilliamherbert with information about the users, and after he'd confirmed the violation, I then requested an investigation from a user with CU privileges. He confirmed that the three acounts were all using the same IPs, etc. He also indirectly confirmed that the users where the same as used by user:Number OneNineEight. As a result of the CU check, a number of acounts were blocked. BFD.   Will Beback  talk  10:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

This looks like "prior discussion." If the banned accounts were "indirectly confirmed" as the same IPs as User:Number OneNineEight, why is the assertion being made that they are "confirmed" as User:Herschelkrustofsky, when User:Number OneNineEight is listed as a "suspected sockpuppet" of Herschelkrustofsky? I also distinctly recall that there was one group of accounts, including I believe User:Bill Chadwell, that you insisted were Herschelkrustofsky, and they turned out to be User:Gnetwerker. And by this time there must be so many IPs involved that I cannot help but suspect that some guesswork is being presented as scientific certainty, and that some users are simply being banned for holding the wrong POV. And meanwhile, all this banning certainly serves the interests of anyone who might have an agenda of moving the LaRouche articles a little off-kilter with respect to NPOV. --Leatherstocking (talk) 15:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Those are all checkuser confirmed socks. Whether they're socks of Gnetwerker or Herschelkrustofsky is irrelevant. I wonder why you keep arguing that their blocks are improper, citing dodgy evidence, while you yourself, and indeed the blocking admin, can't even view the evidence.--Atlan (talk) 15:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Boyhere continuing to upload unfree images with no fair use rationales

Despite the warnings on his talk page and a ton of templated requests to do so, he has not complied and has even removed the missing rationale template from one image. His user page also seems to run afoul of WP:USER, and his signature is on iffy grounds with the non-standard formatting and excessive asterisks. GraYoshi2x►^talk 01:43, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Deepmath

Deepmath (talk · contribs) seems to have nothing but troublesome edits. His userpage, since deleted, had 50+ kilobytes of long, strange rambling, including attacks and blatant misinformation (something about Cyanide making gays straight or somesuch). Other than that, he created Stock trading terms, a very poorly written and redundant article which has an informal tone ("Stock trading terms can be a little confusing.") and even admits "some of these [references] may be a little sketchy". He has also been adding unsourced OR to Gambling and information theory with a buttload of reverts. Not one of his edits is in good faith, and his user talk page is almost as bad as his userpage was. I think this user is easily blockable. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 01:48, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Not one of his edits is in good faith? It looks like he wrote the entire Hirschman uncertainty article. Is that one bad? Wknight94 ^talk 02:33, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

That one is decent, but the rest are dodgy; like I said, the POV pushing and original research, as well as the blatant nonsense, are concerning. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 02:34, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

There are other entire article contributions at Regular conditional probability and Conditional mutual information, recent unreverted edits at Adherent point, Beta function, Gambling and information theory (also includes some reverted edits), Isolated point, Limit point, etc. Yes, the user and user talk pages are/were a bit odd, some of the edit summaries are more biting than need be, and there are/were a few warnings for some pretty serious infractions, but I think it could be handled with some guidance and mentoring. I notice some Swedish on his talk page - perhaps there is a bit of a language hurdle? Regardless, worth looking into more deeply. Wknight94 ^talk 03:25, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Outing by BullRangifer

In a recent sockpuppet investigation, BullRangifer posted what he believes to be the city in which I live in an effort to link me to an IP address block which had been edit warring. Before he made his post, I made this post where I stated "if the investigating admin ... would like any information about my actual location or permanent IP address, please feel free to contact me via email." I think it is quite evident from my post that I didn't want my location discussed and/or revealed publicly in this forum.

Further, BullRangifer made his own post at the SPI where he warned editors against posting his actual location on Wikipedia because of "serious security issues". Unfortunately, BullRangifer didn't extend me the same courtesy.

In BullRangifer's defense, he claims that my location was well-known already by those at Wikipedia because of the one time two years ago that I accidentally edited while logged out. I don't think this is a valid excuse because while that one edit did reveal my location at the time I made that one particular edit, no one made a big deal about it and to the best of my knowledge no one on Wikipedia has ever discussed my location based on that edit. This presumed location of mine was not well-known until BullRangifer posted it on SPI.

By stating the location which he presumes I live, BullRangifer has violated WP:OUTING. I ask for the proper reprocussions and for my privacy to be reinstated by Oversight. Thank you. -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 02:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The WP:Requests for oversight policy contains instructions for requesting oversight, to wit: E-mail the mailing list for such requests, oversight-l at lists.wikimedia.org. Posting private information, or potentially private information, to a widely trafficked public noticeboard is not necessarily a recipe for keeping that information under wraps. Nathan ^T 02:52, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I already sent an email to the mailing list and effectively was told that the cat is out of the bag now, so what do you want us to do about it? Remove the entire SPI case?

If it is generally known by the other participants in this dispute that you live in LA, Oversight can not put that cat back in its bag.

I was baffled by this response. And it was not generally presumed by anyone that I live in L.A. before BullRangifer made this post. So here I am. The cat is out of the bag indeed (whether or not it is the correct cat) and WP:OUTING makes it pretty clear what is in order now in terms of reprocussions. -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 03:03, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to be a dick, but you have probably made this location and its possible attachment to you much more prominent by posting on this page. email oversight if you want the diffs removed. Protonk (talk) 03:54, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

In future if there's something you want oversighted, you're much better off handling it privately rather than posting about here on ANI which really defeats the purpose and just brings more attention to the incident. I understand you requested oversight but you really should have continued to discuss with the oversighters privately or even contacted an admin and asked them to do a selective deletion rather than coming here. Now that you've voluntarily reposted the location here yourself, I don't think there's any point in pursuing this further. Sarah 04:34, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I have been emailing oversight and just emailed them again at Protonk's behest. They didn't respond to my previous request. What am I supposed to do? -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 04:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It's courtesy blanked for now. Whenever oversight responds I'll figure out if I want to delete the revisions the old fashioned way. Protonk (talk) 05:57, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

That's a start. Thanks, Protonk. I want to make it clear that this violation of WP:OUTING wasn't accidental or non-malicious. BullRangifer is an editor with a long-standing grudge against me who was falsely accusing me of sockpuppeteering. He clearly knew it was wrong yet went ahead and "outed" me anyhow by revealing what he believes to be my location. He even went so far as asking another editor who contributed to the SPI to change his "inaccurate" location information so that the archives will contain the information about my location which BullRangifer assumes to be correct. That editor heeded BullRangifer's assumption about my location and changed his post in a further violation of WP:OUTING. -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 07:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I understood from your previous comment that Oversight had responded but didn't agree oversight was warranted, which (of course) is very different to not responding at all. If they told you they didn't think it was warranted and you disagreed and still felt it was warranted under policy, you should have continued discussing it with them and even asked another oversighter to give a second opinion if you felt strongly about it. In future, if you email the oversight mailing list and don't get a response or don't get a favourable response, you could email someone with oversight directly or you could email an admin you trust and ask them to at least do a selective deletion and, if necessary, block the user. If you don't know any admins personally that you could ask, you could look through the admin list. I haven't looked extensively at this and don't know much about the background, but I must admit that I'm not overly convinced by that evidence. The user seems to have identified an instance where you resigned an IP comment with your account and then done an IP lookup (which is something we facilitate by providing various links to whois, geolocate and traceroute services on each IP talk page). SPI walks a very fine line, trying to balance the project's interests with individual's personal interests, and it would often be much better if we could somehow present that kind of information in a way that can't be read by Joe Blow passing by, but when investigating suspected disruptive editing, we can't just ignore evidence where someone has mistakenly edited while logged out and then come along and resigned their comments. Admis can do selective deletions. A long time ago I did a selective deletion for a then non-admin (who is now an arbitrator) who was mistakenly logged out when posting a comment obviously from him and I'm sure if you asked nicely and it was possible (some page histories are just too messy) someone would have helped you and then you could have redone your post logged in, but you really need to do that straight away and without drawing public attention to it, otherwise it defeats the purpose. Also note that WP:OUTING doesn't apply if you voluntarily provide the information yourself. Note that I've just deleted the past history of your userpage because it contained a set of five links to what I can only assume is your real world identity, your real world website and real world work. Based on what I've seen at those links, I would concur with the oversighter who advised you that it was too late to put the cat back in the bag. From what you've been saying above about privacy and outing etc, I'm assuming you'd like those revisions deleted for personal reasons and am deleting before posting this here because no doubt once I post this people will try to look, but it needs to be noted that you appear to have provided considerable real world identifying information about yourself voluntarily and have made no effort to have it removed from this website, so I honestly don't think you have been WP:OUTed by the SPI. I have restored the last version of your userpage. If you didn't really want the history deleted and would like me to restore the whole thing or would like other versions restored, please email me and I will do so for you. Sarah 09:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Really, I don't see how posting an educated guess at someone's city of residence violates WP:OUTING. It's a stretch to consider "LA" to be contact information for you. If I take a stab and say someone is from the United Kingdom, is that a violation of WP:OUTING? The policy states that posting personal information is prohibited. I'm not convinced that your living in LA is "personal information". Wikipedia policy does not - and can not - guarantee complete anonymity. This policy - which is part of WP:HA - protects you against harassment, not against people taking a guess at what city you live in based on IP addresses. Tan | 39 15:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, that does it! By filing this absurd thread, Levine2112 forces me to file a full SPI against him. I have refrained from doing so for several years, and he should have known I could have done it and was being merciful, but this is too much. Why "absurd thread"? Because geolocation is an essential part of an SPI, and it's absurd for the one suspected of abusive socking to be allowed to have the evidence disturbed or deleted. Please stop all oversighting now before more evidence is disturbed. There is nothing urgent about this, nor is his security threatened. Los Angeles is a huge area! His userpage history contains evidence of gross deceptiveness and it is needed. I am traveling now and won't be able to file the SPI report for possibly a week, but it's coming and will show instances of socking, votestacking, etc.. Levine2112's silence during the current SPI has been telling, and it would have been wise for him to continue to lay low, but he made the mistake of pressing my hand, and even more of the cat will be out of the bag. This is an editor who has great potential, but who has abused the system, and the time has come for documenting his deceptiveness. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:40, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, we've all been grateful for your "mercy" of late, but I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we can't wait for your tell-all SPI report. I'm sure Levine will regret "pressing your hand". Tan | 39 15:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Just two quick comments: 1) I had no idea where Levine is editing from; I don't think this was general knowledge. If it was, then I think I have quite a few things to say about BullRangifer that are also general knowledge. 2) I am not getting the impression that Levine is particularly serious about keeping the information private. Hans Adler 15:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

BullRangifer, like Tan I too look forward to your report. I am worried not because I am or was ever guilty of sockpuppeting or meatpuppeting, but because of the way that you twist information into the "truth" which you want to disseminate to the masses. I am worried because this is what you do both on and off Wiki and have been pretty effective at selling your version of the Truth^TM to the masses. You provide selective information and conjecture to create misinformation and then pass if off as the truth. This is exactly what you did in this SPI with the information which clearly violated WP:OUTING. And though the report proved to be inconclusive, somehow your "evidence" was enough for an involved admin to mete out a six month topic ban. This is what I worry about. You are very convincing even when the evidence is not on your side.

Tan, BullRangifer was not providing a "educated guess". Educated guesses would be fine provided that it is clear that they are guesses. Rather, BullRangifer made a declarative statement about my location (Levine lives here).

It is ridiculous to blame me for publicizing the cat which BullRangifer had let out of the bag so I'll go now and leave you with this. Check my block log. I was once blocked for outing BullRangifer by provided an external link which contained one piece of personal information about BullRangifer. This personal information was something which BullRangifer had already shared with Wikipedia on his user page through the various external links he provided to his personal blog, web rings and chat boards. Yet, I still got blocked for violating OUTING. Now here we are, BullRangifer declares one piece of my personal information and his defense is that this information is already well-known. Is it wrong for me to expect the same punishment for him?

My question to BullRangifer is this: How do you know my location is well-known when no one on Wikipedia has ever discussed it aside from you? Are you discussing my location with editors off of Wikipedia? I know that over the years you have actively recruited editors to Wikipedia from other sources to come take up arms against me and "my kind", but are you now telling us that you keep in touch with these editors off Wikipedia and discuss my personal information? I don't want to sound too much like Abd (for fear that BullRangifer will now accuse me of being his sockpuppet), but there certainly does seem to be an cabal! :-)

BullRangifer's edit history shows that he came to Wikipedia with an agenda to disseminate mis-information. However, when his POV pushing efforts were repeatedly thwarted by yours truly, he marked me as a target who needs to be eliminated. Are these sockpuppet accusations just his latest attempt to extract this thorn in his side? I wonder. BullRangifer, have a safe journey and I look forward to your return when you can continue your now four-year mission to rid Wikipedia of me (simply because I don't let you push your POV). -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 17:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Without responding to all that, two notes: I take no responsibility, nor accept any precedent from, any administrator who blocked you earlier. Secondly, expecting "punishment" is moot; blocks are not punitive. Using this as a tit-for-tat is simply using up Wikipedia resources and admin time without reason. Tan | 39 17:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Ashley Greene

Pictures of Ms. Greene without clothing apparently found their way to the Internet. A reasonably large number of mostly logged-out Wikipedians are adding that information to her article, often phrased, shall we say, informally. I think the page needs more eyeballs, and maybe encouraging people to discuss, in a rational way, how to discuss the existence of the pictures (if it's necessary to include in the article at all). As it stands, some of the revisions that briefly made it in raise BLP issues approaching the level of libel. -- Pakaran 02:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It was just added with a reliable source and a neutral tone. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 02:38, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I have BLP concerns and some of the edits were very problematic. I have 24 hr full protected the article - if consensus on the article talk page and here is that inclusion is OK any administrator can unprotect and add it, but please do not do so without consensus. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

So what? The point of of Wikipedia is that anyone can continuously improve the information. Elitists like you are ruining Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.97.240.85 (talk) 08:11, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Only in American would so much be made of something so unimportant. No wonder Europeans think Americans are idiots. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 08:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

That's completely uncalled for, Bugs. It's an insult to a huge number of our readers and editors. Dougweller (talk) 09:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm an American, ya silly. I wear the red white and blue proudly. But our obsession with stupid stuff like this makes us look... stupid. Puritanical. Whatever term you want to use. In reference to this article, unless this trivial revelation turns out to have some kind of career impact, its inclusion in the article is way undue weight. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 09:19, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

As a European, I take issue with such a generalizing comment. I don't see how being an American makes it okay to say Europeans think Americans are stupid.--Atlan (talk) 10:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm going by what some of my European colleagues have said. Maybe they are not representative. :) Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 12:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, there's no such thing as "European" when it comes to opinions.--Atlan (talk) 13:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

B-but, you're unionized and everything! — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:11, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

3RR board blanking

Are editors allowed to blank notices on this board [80]? I may have overstepped by using rollback to revert, and if so I apologize. Thanks Tiderolls 05:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

If they want the report against them attended to faster, then yes. -- tariqabjotu 05:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks like standard vandalism from the user blanking it. Good use of rollback, good call. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 05:46, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

That being the case I'll stay out of the way next time and let nature take its course. Thanks Tiderolls 05:47, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, Homer. I didn't see your post while typing the above. Tiderolls 05:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Not a problem :) Just a note, the editor who was doing the blanking on 3RR was blocked for 36 hours for 3RR violations. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 05:51, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Somehow, 33 hours would have a better ring to it. :) Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 08:56, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Or maybe 3.3 fortnights? -- Deville (Talk) 14:14, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I have 3.3 fortnights, am I bid 3 months? Going once, going twice...yes, that's right, going 3 times... KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 17:29, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Spamming on a User's talk page

User_talk:NawlinWiki got linked to from 4chan with a request that users replace all text on the page with "hello." Many users are doing so. 70.152.141.62 (talk) 09:40, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Can someone please quickly semi-protect User talk:NawlinWiki... someone's getting creative with their IP hopping. I posted at RPP, but thought I'd poke here. Thanks    7   ^{talk | Δ |}   09:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• Semiprotected for a few hours. ➲ REDVERS ^{It sucks to be me} 09:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Irrito

• Irrito (talk · contribs)
• 68.126.61.224 (talk · contribs)
• 67.94.16.18 (talk · contribs)

Hi. The above user (also working through IPs) has been edit warring on the Steorn article, refusing to enter into sensible discussions, hassling other editors and making bad faith accusations of CoI. I am requesting a permanent block of the account and a temporary one of the IPs.

Potted history:

• [81] First of several edits suggesting that "Ian MacDonald", one of a jury of scientists chosen by Steorn, was a family doctor. Quickly reverted by User:McGeddon as OR and reverted again by User:Ianmacm as personal commentary.
• [82] posted on McGeddon's talk page saying that "their research" had revealed important facts. McGeddon gave a clear reply and had what I think is a patient discussion.
• [83] Starting to try to get Ian MacDonald to out himself. Reverted as vandalism by User:ZooFari
• [84] Found someone called Ian MacDonald on the Internet who was a dentist and suggested on the article that this was the same Ian MacDonald as mentioned in a news article. Reverted as OR by McGeddon and further explained on user's talk page,
• Opened the Irrito account and first two edits were hassling Ianmacm demanding that they confirm that they are "Ian MacDonald" and insulting McGeddon. Later accused McGeddon of a CoI, and of being mad and illogical when McGeddon was continuing his attempts to explain.
• Irrito then made a series of unconstructive edits which I reverted, and was re-reverted with the accusation that I was attempting to mislead and had an interest in Steorn.
• At this point, I posted a strongly worded warning to Irrito (perhaps too strong) along with a full explanation of my reverts. Irrito has not responded but has continued edit warring and hassling.
• Latest reversion at 10.27 this morning led me to come here with a block request.

Thanks for listening. GDallimore (Talk) 10:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Just dropped by and saw this, I've protected the article for a week, maybe someone else can look at the editor, I don't think I have time right now. Dougweller (talk) 14:02, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Please could you undo that as it's not at all the result that I think will help. This is not a content dispute. At least four editors other than me have been reverting this one disruptive editor and protecting it to prevent anyone from improving the article is just further disruption. My call for him to be blocked is not for the edit-warring but for the personal attacks, insults and hassling that have gone with it when people have tried to explain why his edits are not appropriate. GDallimore (Talk) 14:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

One final thing I've just noticed: User:Irrito broke 3RR, although one of the edits was by IP. [85] [86] [87] and [88] between 15.47 on the 10th and 10.27 on the 11th. A block should be enforced just for that, irrespective of the rest of this user's behaviour. GDallimore (Talk) 16:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Blocking is preventative, not punitive. As the article is protected at the moment, there's nothing to protect (unless he goes elsewhere) and no reason to block. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

But that's wrong. The protection of the article prevents legit editors from contributing to the article, while the person who's disrupting goes blithely on his way. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 17:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The {{editprotected}} template is a wonderful thing. :-)--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

User:HeadphoneBOT

Resolved

 – account indeffed Ironholds (talk) 12:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• HeadphoneBOT (talk · contribs)

A recent vandal with a misleading Bot-like name. Delete ? Materialscientist (talk) 11:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Account has been indeffed. Ironholds (talk) 12:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Adding songs to dab pages

79.167.116.223 is adding a lot of songs without pages belonging to albums with pages to a lot of disambig pages. I don't know if this is OK, I'm not about to intervene without some guidance. I can't figure out what policy is on this. Pseudomonas_(talk) 12:47, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

ETA: on their talk page, looks like they plan to add all songs from all albums. That's quite a lot of clutter. Pseudomonas_(talk) 13:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It's a weird project, but it is standard to include songs on disambig pages, and to link to the album if there's no article for the song itself. At a glance at some of the recent edits it looks like the user is correctly formatting the entries in accordance with the MOS, so I'm not sure there's any problem. Propaniac (talk) 13:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Doubtful if any of these would ever become articles, as most non-single songs are non-notable, but I suppose if one heard a song called "Twilight" somewhere but not the band name, they would search here and wind up at Twilight_(disambiguation)#Music. Tarc (talk) 13:33, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I figure it'll wind up totalling maybe 500k-1M additions to disambig pages, mainly those for common words. Pseudomonas_(talk) 13:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

At that size, with an ambitious 1,000 edits per day this is a several-year project. I doubt anyone has that kind of patience, and automated tools could be a problem if that were the method. A half-finished project to add all the songs would definitely be clunky. I'm not sure this is an "incident" requiring administrative attention, but perhaps a questionable idea requiring discussion. Disambiguation pages are supposed to be useful navigational features leading readers to the information they seek, not an index to all knowledge. I don't think this one[89] (a song that hit #24 on the R&B charts in 1987) is a helpful addition. Clutter is bad here. On the other hand, there is a lot of good that could be done if a project like this is undertaken carefully. Is there a good place to get community consensus on the matter, perhaps a wikiproject? Wikidemon (talk) 13:45, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I guess the Village pump might be a plan; I didn't know whether it's OK to put someone else's proposal there. Pseudomonas_(talk) 13:51, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

WP:MOSDAB is a better place. Taemyr (talk) 13:52, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

(EC) A few things: 1. I don't think the user actually is intending to add every song on every album; if that were the intent, I agree it would be extremely unlikely to achieve such. 2. If the user were trying to do so, but stopped halfway through, I don't think it would be that "clunky"; it's very common for disambig pages to list one or more songs (based on whichever ones a user has gotten around to listing there), so I think the effect would be that a lot of those pages would list some more songs than they did previously, and that's it. It's not as if there are only a hundred possible song titles and each one is now going to become a dab page with seven thousand songs listed on it. 3. As I said above, as long as I've been working on dab pages, it's been standard to include non-notable songs, linking to the album or artist article as appropriate. Banning non-notable songs from dab pages would be a major change (and one that I don't see the need for). There is a WikiProject at Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation that may be the best place to discuss such a proposal (dab discussion also takes place at the Talk pages for MOS:DP and WP:DAB.) Propaniac (talk) 13:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

One of the latter pages is probably better than the WikiProject; it's a longtime inconvenience that dab discussion inevitably gets spread out over all three pages. Propaniac (talk) 14:03, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I was thinking that if the project were abandoned halfway through we would have very good navigation for songs beginning with A through N, or every song until 1988 :). Sometimes mass edits create their own systemic problems that aren't always apparent by looking at the permissibility of the edits if done one at a time. Think of the geo-coding, the place name bots, the Country1-Country2 international relations article discussions... Non-notable songs might be such a case. Wikidemon (talk) 14:10, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

True; I simply don't foresee that happening here, especially since I think this user is working manually and not with a bot. (Also, I think they're picking albums in no apparent order and doing all the songs on that album, so I don't think it would create an obvious "imbalance" issue on the dab pages.) Still, if further discussion of how to handle songs on dab pages is necessary, the Talk page for one of the dab guidelines linked above would probably be the best venue. Propaniac (talk) 14:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, everyone and thank you, Propaniac, for making me aware of this discussion. I would like to point out the following (as I already have to Pseudomonas): (A) I haven't created independent articles for any of these songs, which is a specifically "not-to-do" point; (B) I have been redirecting songs that don't appear as individual entries to other relevant articles; (C) This is not a "project" of any kind, I just thought these additions would be useful to usera. I certainly don't intend to add "all songs" and I would be glad to produce a list of songs I haven't been adding; (D) In my humble opinion, an encyclopaedia is, above all, a reference work, I think it goes without saying that it needs to include every possible cross-reference between articles, for reasons of user-friendliness (an example of this was kindly provided above by Tarc); (D) Despite all these, these, no clear-cut criteria really exist on which work of music is more important than which; (E) As far as albums are concerned, I have certainly not included any demos, mixtapes, bootlegs, promo-only, and unreleased albums, as advised. I sincerely hope that the Wikipedia community can see the relevance on such additions. Thank you all for your time and comments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.167.116.223 (talk) 17:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Kilkock

User has consistently made unconstructive edits to various articles (primarily Chile) and refuses to participate in discussion. Furthermore, upon my last request, Anonymous IP filled my talk page with obscenities claiming he had made a single constructive edit and therefore couldn't be blocked? I don't know how to link to my talk page history. Thanks. Also, I'm not sure how checkuser works, but alot of the edits/vandalism on Chile seem to be similar... Cmiych (talk) 14:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I deleted the revision with the obscenities in the edit summary on Cmiych's talk page, but didn't review for further action. Anyone else?--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:13, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

This is an older account with few edits...and all the edits show the same proclivity toward very subtle changes in fact. No original contribs, no talk page messages, just random fact changes. I've blocked him for a week to get his attention. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 15:18, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

User:76.177.224.98, 76.177.225.49

I seem to have a problem as does User:Ohnoitsjamie. This user was originally blocked a few days ago as a possible "Willy on Wheels" vandal, but he insists the name "Willyonwheels1969" is legit; he claims his name is William, was born in 1969 and his nickname as a child was "Willy on Wheels." I'm now getting messages on my talk page from Road Runner Cable IPs in Georgetown, Kentucky with this user demanding apologies, threatening "action," etc. I have tried to reason with this individual to no avail. He wants to edit with this username or variation thereof and both I and Jamie have basically (and politely) told him sorry, ain't happening and here's why. If he's legit, I regret his less than friendly reception. However, one of his first edits was to Jimbo's talk page; he's familiar with this system, claiming he'd mostly edited anonymously before establishing an account. To his credit, he hasn't done any WoW vandalism. No page moves, nothing. Otherwise, I'd dismiss him as just another Willy wannabe. I can't get through to the guy as to the myriad reasons he can't edit under that username. He seems more interested in the username than anything else. Any suggestions? --PMDrive1061 (talk) 14:52, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe that we as a community can state what is and what is not a disruptive username, and that naming yourself after a particular vandal is disruptive no matter if you have good faith intentions. If the user really really realllllllly wants to contribute to the encyclopedia, they're welcome to change their username. If the user is a WoW clone, they'd continue in the manner that they appear to be pursuing. In other words, demands and threats will justify blocks of the ip. Syrthiss (talk) 14:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Works for me; that's the conclusion I drew, but I wanted to weigh in here. I'll let you all know what he says in response to my last message. If he insists on going down this particular route, I'll request a rangeblock. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 15:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Trolls of Anti-Americanism

Trying to edit this article is like walking down an alley in Bogota at 2 AM....Talk:Anti-Americanism

Cast of Characters

Abce2|Aww nuts!Wribbit!(Sign here)

• Stalking

• Follows me to Islamaphobia, sole action is to revert me (same reversion as Munci). [90] Obviously trying to draw me into an edit war.
• Follows me elsewhere to snipe and pester, e.g., [91], [92] (there is more).

• Trolling. His only edit to the article is to revert me [93]. Abce2's interaction with me is based entirely on personal remarks. Most of his comments on the Talk page of Anti-Americanism are scolding. He made a marginally polite offer of "peace" [94]. All his comments on the related ANI's are sniping and pestering directed at me. He seems to have no actual interest in the topic, having never discussed any aspect of it.

User talk:Munci

• Stalking. Follows me to Anti-Americanism from Islamophobia, sole action is to revert me (same reversion as Abce2). The text being restored was added without discussion or consensus by an erased account. Obviously trying to draw me into an edit war.
• Trolling. His edit comments distort his edit. Part of the issue is a near-spam of multiple warning templates, which nobody has explained in Talk. They want to plaster the article with templates, without specifying what needs to be improved.

User talk:Gasta220 The text Munci and Abce2 are reverting to was added by this anonymous, hit&run account that doesn't even have a Talk page. (How do you delete your own Talk page? I tried and couldn't.)

WebHamster

• Warring, incivility. I won't beat the dead horse here. Blocked twice for warring on Anti-Americanism, and numerous personal attacks.
• Stalking.

• Followed me to First Amendment to the United States Constitution, sole edit was to revert me [95]
• Single-purppose IP reverted my edit to Tehran. [96] The IP geolocates to Manchester England. WebHamster's User page states he is from Manchester, England.

• Trolling. Just tells everybody to "fuck off" like it was his daily multivitamin.

User talk:Blippy

• A Third Opinion who doesn't stay neutral. Doesn't withdraw after reason for request no longer applies. I solicited a 3rd Opinion to help in my dispute with Webhamster, since it is specifically for disputes between two editors. Blippy ignored everything I said, proposed edits no different from WebHamster's, reverted one of my edits, inserted edits I opposed and generally acted like WebHamster's lawyer. After the dispute with WebHamster was resolved, Blippy continues to propose content changes that ignored everything I said. He is inserting changes he knows I oppose [97]. What kind of Third Opinion is this?
• Similar pattern on Roald Dahl, where he showed up as an uniinvovled editor in an RFC. The similarity extends to supporting IP/Pantherskin's edits in the same way as on Anti-Americanism.
• Recent accusation of socking involving IP/Pantherskin on Roald Dahl and Anti-Americanism, and two sockpuppet investigations in the last two months.

IP/Pantherskin (the IP was self-identified as Pantherskin's during the sock investigation)

• Constant distortion of everything that is said; constant framing of every dispute as personal attack. Targets contentious issues, articles for deletion. Starts friviolous ANI's [98]
• 3RR violation on an AfD, deleting my comment that he might be a sock [99], [100], [101], [102]. 3RR violation on Talk:Anti-Americanism: [103], [104], [105], [106]. These are discussions where he is removing my comments.
• Stalking. Followed me from Anti-Americanism to Animal liberation movement, sole activity was to revert me. [107]

Slatersteven (talk

• Trolling. His Talk page is a littany of warnings about disruptive edits, answered with wide-eyed innocence, such as one which "caused a mass deletion of active threads that took a couple of admins, Haemo and Slp1, some fussing to fix" [108]. There are several dialogs of this sort, in which SlaterSteven basically says "Ooops." In Anti-Americanism, the feigned incomprehension takes the form of using Google search hits as sources. Repeatedly on the Talk page, he proposes text using a Google page of search hits as sources, I say "that's not a valid source", and he adds more pages of Google search hits as sources. He's been editing over two years, hard to believe he really thinks Google page of search results is a valid source. His other MO is to make barely readable comments because of a childlike use of spelling, punctuation, etc.

No I have not used google search hits a sources, I would susgest you provide the link in question. I would also susgest that you refrain from commenting on users literacy.

• Stalking: SlaterSteven has followed me to more articles than anyone else. He doesn't generally revert my edits, just buzzes about and often opposes. There are a million mild examples, but he has really followed me to about 5 different articles in the last month. A few examples: [109], [110], [111], [112], [113]. There are more. None of these is indivudally problematic, but the overall effect of being followed everywhere is like dealing that a bug that just won't go away.

A million, I suspect you exagerate, but in at leat one case [114] there is correlation between what you awere asking and our discusion on anti-american. [115] involved Blippy, who I was in some debate with over anti-american, so I saw the report on his talk page. As to Books on Arthur, does it look like I did not know my subject, odd then I included a book not on the page, as well as mentioning a few more (I am still wating on comments about that). Moreover I have not visited bitch , Islamaphobia, prostitutuion in fact you have editied far more pages then I have visited. As to the user talk page, that is not stalking I informed you of an ani against you, sorry if that offended you, I shall not repeat the offence.

And what about User:Noloop?

• Stalking. I've followed once. After the sock case, I looked at Pantherskin's contribs and clicked on a deletion discussion [116] page, because it interested me. I attempted to clean up the article and make constructive observations about the case, e.g. [117], and [118]. I mentioned Pantherskin's sock case because socking matters when there's a vote. There are also two suspicious accounts on the deletion discussion, Kingcredibility as single-puprose new account, and an anon. IP.
• Trolling. I don't think so, but others have said so. This article has produced so much abuse and general irritation that I've lost my cool a few times. I don't believe any look at my behavior that considers what I've been putting up with will result in a conclusion of trolling, but I can't deny being curt more than once.

Other than WebHamster, all these editors are new to the article. They weren't there before my dispute with WebHamster. They've done little but snipe about behavior, and propose changes they know I oppose. They've followed me to (literally) a dozen other articles, where they either revert me or throw peanuts. There are no other active editors. There can't be. The article is uneditable. No newbie in his right mind would stay.

Are they all socks and trolls? Does the article just bring out the worst in well-meaning people? Am I paranoid delusional? I don't know, but the article is uneditable. Personally, I'd like to see a massive "relational" IP-lookup for everyone involved. The article needs the mother of all flea bombs. Noloop (talk) 16:01, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

meatpuppetry/sockpuppetry/COI on Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Alan_Roger_Currie

could someone look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Alan_Roger_Currie and tell me what is going on. there are multiple SPAs that came out of nowhere to not vote. Theserialcomma (talk) 17:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)