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Request discussion closure

Requesting an uninvolved admin to close discussions at WT:Articles for deletion#Merging during live AfD:

• Merging during live AfD: close without a conclusion, but with reference to additional discussion immediately below at [[#Revisiting Merging during live AfD]]
• Revisiting Merging during live AfD: close according to consensus
• A deleted article has useful text, so...? and Alternate attribution: leave open

Let me know if these directions are unclear. Thanks. I read the editnotice and went to AN/I first, but my request there was archived without comment or action. Flatscan (talk) 03:51, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Anyone? The discussions are fairly long, but (in my opinion) consensus is clear. Flatscan (talk) 03:30, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, there was no input on this thread either. Ncmvocalist (talk) 04:29, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Hello Flatscan. I see you're the editor who opened the thread at Revisiting Merging during live AfD. I think you posed the question in a properly neutral way, and your question did receive a lot of responses. You've stated (above) that consensus is now clear. If that's the case, why not draft up a 'Proposed closing summary' which is as neutral as possible, and add it below all the other discussions on that page. Then we'll see if there is a admin who can step in and give an official closing opinion. That admin might use your summary as input for his decision. EdJohnston (talk) 17:44, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

EdJohnston, thanks for your reply and suggestion, but I think that would not be optimal. (longer response as separate bullet below) Flatscan (talk) 06:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

It would probably be better if someone more neutral drafted such a statement. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 17:45, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, I invite User:A Nobody to also make a Proposed Closing Summary which is as neutral as possible. Let both statements be available for review by the closing admin. Make an effort to accurately summarize what was said in the discussion. EdJohnston (talk) 17:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay: "All good faith participants in the discussion who are here to build a paperless encyclopedia recognize that overly strict adherence to process, in this case Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, does not trump the more important goal of our project to provide the world with a free catalogging of human knowledge. As such, consensus per WP:BEFORE and WP:PRESERVE favors (in the case of the latter) the preservation of content and its use whereever possible rather than outright deletion and (in the case of the former) exhaustive attempts being made to make use of content in as many ways possible before considering outright deletion, i.e. redlinking rather than redirecting and retaining edit history. With that said, the GFDL should not be used as an excuse to retain damaging content. Content should not be merged from a hoax, copyright violation, or libelous article during a deletion discussion to force preservation of this damaging content. In instances in which there is no overwhelming consensus to delete and the article under discussion is not a hoax, libel, or copyright violation, a merge may take place during a discussion if it benefits other articles per WP:IAR ("If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it."). In other instances when a valid merge location is brought up in the discussion, but the numerical participation in the discussion favors deletion, a closing admin can still and should allow for the merge of the content and a redirect with edit history intact after the close. A handful of editors, usually those who nominate for deletion, frown upon just about any efforts to stop an article they nominated for deletion from being deleted, especially merging during the discussions. But it is clear that no reasonable editor would favor outright redlinking at the expense of improving other content not under consideration for deletion. A fair read of this debate may be that a majority of participants in the particular discourage merging during an AfD and would prefer that merges occur after the AfD ends, but that nothing outright forbids it occuring during the discussion with of course the exception of when it is an effort preserve legally damaging content." Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 18:14, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

to long of statment, and this statment should be on WT:AFD not here. Ikip (talk) 22:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe that A Nobody's statement (diff) is not an accurate summary of the discussion. Flatscan (talk) 06:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not even close. Doctorfluffy (robe and wizard hat) 16:21, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

• I think this should be closed by someone uninvolved who did not comment at the discussion. Seraphim♥ 00:45, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
• I agree with A Nobody and Seraphim that the closer should ideally be uninvolved, which is why I brought the request here. Draft closing statements would reduce the closer's required effort – making it more likely that someone would respond – but they might encourage a simple rubber-stamping of a potentially biased statement. I believe that my evaluation is objectively correct, but there is the possibility that I am unfairly discounting arguments. Flatscan (talk) 06:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
• Would it be appropriate to try {{adminhelp}} at the discussion? Flatscan (talk) 03:25, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
• I propose that A Nobody and I construct a list of mutually-acceptable admins to ask directly, one at a time, until the request is fulfilled. Flatscan (talk) 03:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I am planning to offer my own close of this discussion. (It's been going slowly). Any other uninvolved admin is welcome to jump in at this point and take over the task. When I have a draft conclusion, I will open it up for comments on whether I have properly summarized the discussion thread. EdJohnston (talk) 03:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Request of permanent ban of two IP addresses

I am requesting the permanent ban of the following IP addresses: 192.111.152.212 and 66.219.119.129. The first IP address is the outside address for a content filter that is used by many schools in my area. The second IP address is the outside address for my school. Permanently banning these addresses from editing will stem quite a bit of vandalism and pointless editing done by the students at these schools. --Douglas Freed (talk) 14:09, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

No edits from the first IP, not much from the second. No need to block at this time. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:14, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Oops. I typed the wrong IP for the first one. The right IP is 198.111.152.212. This IP is currently blocked for a period of three months. --Douglas Freed (talk) 14:05, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Note: IP addresses are generally not blocked indefinitely. Please see the blocking policy for more information.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 14:38, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Nice, a template that provides incorrect information. Indef blocking IP's is not forbidden by policy, not is it technically impossible. It should be a rare exception though, for truly static, individual IP adresses with a long pattern of problematic behaviour. I have only done it once, I know that there are quite a few of these around. Remember that, also for IP's, indefinite is not the same as infinite. Fram (talk) 08:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The "speedy" in "speedy deletion"

I don't know if this is the right place to start this thread, but it gets enough attention that someone will soon correct me if it's not.

From my work on new page patrolling, I've noticed that there are some pages that are sitting in the category "candidates for speedy deletion" for a considerable length of time before they are, eventually, deleted. My concern is that if there were an attack page or some other kind of page that was greatly detrimental to WP, it could remain in situe for several hours before its removal- in which time it could easily have spread to mirror sites and being viewed by many people potentially exposing the WMF to legal liability but, frankly, more importantly, tarnishing the reputation of Wikipedia. Not being an admin myself, I cannot trawl through deleted edits to find examples and i am not aware of this occurring with any seriously detrimental pages, but unless more admins patrol C:SD, I fear we may not have to wait long before there is an example. HJMitchell You rang? 23:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

In general, attack pages are deleted fairly quickly once they are tagged as such - those and copyvio are "high priority". A7, etc, can afford to be left standing for a while, and the C:SD backlog mostly comes from those. If there's ever a backlog in Category:Attack pages for speedy deletion, then that would be a concern; but I haven't seen that previously. In addition, when tagging an attack page, you are supposed to blank it, which also prevents it from being picked up by search engines. Tim Song (talk) 00:00, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Granted, A7 is not the highest priority- it doesn't matter too much if a 13 year old has a few hours of fame and I have noticed myself that attack pages tend to be dealt with quite swiftly. However (and I know I didn't mention this above) I also have concerns over G3s (hoaxes and vandalism)- which can be damaging to the encyclopaedia, but I have seen some that I tagged myself sitting in C:SD for periods of three or four hours before deletion. My point, I suppose, is that with a few more admins checking C:SD a little more regularly, pages that can be harmful could be removed much quicker. HJMitchell You rang? 00:14, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

"Speedy" is subjective - it may be hours before an admin agrees that it meets the criteria and deletes it, but what is hours to the alternative of WP:PROD (7 days, if uncontested) or AfD (several lifetimes, if it gets nasty)? Sometimes, there is some slack in the system as one continents admins go to sleep/work/education and anothers are not yet up/home. Usually, though, these things progress. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:26, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

"Speedy" may be a misleading term; "peremptory" or "obvious" might be a tad closer to the truth. Certainly we should protect against attacks and copyvios, which take precedence, but otherwise, I have never considered "speedy" to relate solely to the response time. Rodhullandemu 00:33, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, it just means "the quickest process to delete an article" not "instantaneous". Given that a small fraction of admins regularly patrol CAT:CSD, if there is a truly problematic article that must be dealt with quickly, tag the article for deletion, and then drop a note here. If its a nasty attack page, or something like that, it doesn't hurt to say "I know this is supposed to sit at CAT:CSD, but it would be better if someone got this now". WP:AN and WP:ANI get a LOT more eyes, and if it MUST be deleted NOW (rather than "at the earliest convenience") then just drop a note here. --Jayron32 02:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

It can actually work better than applying a CSD; occasionally, I've encountered new pages in the midst of vandalistic sprees that are undeniably attack or nonsense pages, and have deleted them without a CSD. That's what we're here for. Rodhullandemu 02:49, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

• Given that the number of active admins has dropped off quite sharply as of late, it's not surprising we're seeing more threads like this. Moreschi (talk) 02:55, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems that we are in between "generations" of administrators...several current ones becoming inactive, and hopefuls like me not quite to RfA passing level. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 03:08, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

• Just to Illustrate my point, I tagged Fawt as a G3 (vandalism) at 2203 UTC and it sat in C:SD for over 5 and a half hours until User:Explicit deleted it at 03:43 UTC. This particular page was far from the worst I've seen, but it seems a very long time for pure vandalism to sit there. If it had been a vandal edit, rather than a creation, it would have gone in seconds. HJMitchell You rang? 04:27, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Some of those hoax markings are not at all obvious and require several minutes of research to confirm. Also the A7's that look slightly important may be check out by a few admins before it is deleted or declined. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:59, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Could we generically define the "speedy" part as "speedy for the admin"? It should be the responsibility of the patrol that marks it to explain what makes it a CSD candidate if it's at all ambiguous or complicated. The admin working through the actual deletions should preferably be left to no more than a few minutes confirmation with evidence on complicated cases handed out already. ...My opinion, at least. Given I spent 3 hours digging up an explanation how to why something was a ridiculously complicated hoax article last week (yes, seriously, and yes, I refused to let it go since it started as an A7 tag that I thought was notable), I left a very, very long note in a {{notice}} under the CSD note, starting with Note to admin:. We need an easy way to add comments onto CSD-marked pages or at very least a CSD equivalent to {{prod2}}, since it'd limit admin time verification of evidence instead of all-out research. That, or policy officially to put it on talk page, but if the article survives check then it's out of place, and I'd want actual confirmation from admins that it was read or I'd feel really foolish spending so much time on them.

I also agree that it's an "admin cycling" thing. From everything I ever see, application rates keep dropping and dropping as the process is more and more stressful and oppose votes come from extremely trivial manners or vague generalizations of editors-- stereotypes. Many editors who do CSD or PROD work do so instead of articles, and with a number of admins who will automatically oppose those without a lot of work on articles? Well obviously you'll get less admins doing deletions eventually. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 06:12, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The good kind of proxy editing

A Wikipedian in good standing who currently resides in a country with a not-so-free regime has asked for advice and assistance in locating a suitable proxy server so that he can edit. Direct access to this site is blocked from his country. If you have a solution to his dilemma, please email me. Durova³⁶⁹ 07:07, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject on closed proxies --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:02, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much. :) Durova³⁶⁹ 22:12, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd also consider an ipblock exemption. MER-C 08:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee Elections: last calls for candidates, comments on process

This is a reminder that the nominations phase of the December 2009 elections to select new members of the Arbitration Committee, as well as the Request for Comment|Request for Comment on the conditions for the elections and the 2010 Committee, will close on November 24, in one day's time.

If you have been considering running as a candidate in this year's election to the Committee, now is the time to make the decision. It's worth noting that there are twenty-two candidates at the time of writing, six fewer than last year, and so with eight seats available the field is not as competitive as might have been expected. All editors who had made 1,000 mainspace edits by November 10, 2009, are over 18 years of age and of the age of majority in their nation of residence, and are willing to identify themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation are eligible to stand as candidates. You can declare your candidacy by following the instructions at the candidate statements page.

The Request for Comment on the Arbitration Committee covers the conditions for the elections and the Committee in 2010. Specific issues under debate include term lengths, number of seats, election methods, ballot transparency, the tranche system, threshold for successful candidacies and voter eligibility. If you want to participate in the discussion on any of these issues, you have less than a day to have your voice heard. For the coordinators,  Skomorokh, barbarian  01:35, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Duplicate articles

Resolved

Two articles refer to same topic (in this case a suburb of Hyderabad). One of them has to be deleted. Administrator may review both these articles and delete one of them. These are Moula-Ali and Moulali. Both the articles need lot of improvement. Sarvagyana guru (talk) 06:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Tagged to be merged. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:33, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism on article Maya civilization

If you can't see vandalism on Maya civilization then please log out, delete cookies, give google search to access this article. Also see talk page of article. How this vandalism went unnoticed for such a long time? 117.98.81.127 (talk) 16:13, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Google will generally retrieve a older, cached version. I don't see any obvious vandalism. If you wish, we can further discuss on my talk page as this really doesn't require admin attention. --NeilN ^{talk ♦ contribs} 16:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/userfication

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/userfication has been open 3 days shy of a month. When the time is up, could an uninvolved admin please say whether there is sufficient support for the "compromise" option to go ahead with it? Thanks. Rd232 ^talk 16:29, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I am requesting a revision to my topic ban.

I am requesting a revision to my topic ban.

Specifically, I am asking that one of the two following things be done:

1) Please answer the seven questions below, which I had repeatedly asked during the discussion of my proposed topic ban, but which were never answered.

or

2) Repeal my topic ban.

I would like this request to be addressed by uninvolved editors, i.e., editors who have neither edited Presidency of Barack Obama, nor have participated in the original discussion of my proposed topic ban.

Here are my seven questions, all of which concern Presidency of Barack Obama:

1) There was talk page consensus to have a single sentence about Van Jones resigning after it was revealed that he was a self described "communist" who blamed the 9-11 attacks on the U.S. government. Why should I be punished for adding that info to the article?

2) Please explain why you think the article should mention Obama's actions against offshore drilling, but not his actions in favor of offshore drilling.

3) Also please explain why you think citing Obama's actions against offshore drilling, without simultaneously citing his actions in favor of offshore drilling, does not violate NPOV, which states, "All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles and all editors."

4) How is it not noteworthy that Obama's choice to head the "Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools" has an extensive history of illegal drug use?

5) If there's going to be a section on Obama's claims of transparency, why shouldn't the section mention cases where Obama was heavily non-transparent?

6) How is Obama's nationalization of General Motors, and firing of its CEO, not notable to the section on Obama's economic policy?

7) How is the questioning of the constitutionality of Obama's czars by two different Senators from Obama's own party, not relevant to the section on those czars?

Grundle2600 (talk) 01:33, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

What is the traditional gift for the 1-month mark of an indef ban? Cardboard? Paper mache? But seriously, are you really trotting out the infamous 7 questions, seen and answered in several places in the past, such as here, here, among others? Tarc (talk) 01:53, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

No and No. Viridae^Talk 01:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Grundle, how many times have you forum-shopped these seven questions and when people do respond, you always say something like "that is not the answer to my questions"? Seriously, given your history, you deserve such a ban. It's a miracle your behaviour hasn't resulted in you being kicked out of WP altogether. I've never edited on any Obama-related article, but I agree with the other editors - you've lost the capability to make NPOV edits and you always whine when your edits have been reverted. Why can't you let it go? If you can't hack it here, go down RTV lane, it's better for all of us. One less disruptive editor to worry about. --Eaglestorm (talk) 05:21, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead an indef blocked Grundle for continued frivolous and disruptive editing. MBisanz ^talk 05:57, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Good call from my POV. The argumentation continues on his talk page, I note. Tony Fox (arf!) 17:08, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a good call. Based on the ongoing repetition of his argument on his talk page, this doesn't look like someone who's ready to engage meaningfully with the Wikipedia community. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee 2 is now Closed

I have closed this Request for Comment. My detailed review of the issues and the results of that discussion may be found here. To summarize, I found that consensus exists as follows:

• The Arbitration Committee shall consist of 18 Members elected to 2 Year Terms.
• Arbitrators will be elected by Secret Ballot using the Securepoll extension.
• Ballots will invite editors to Support or Oppose candidates.
• Voters must have 150 mainspace edits before the election cycle to vote (Status Quo)

Questions or comments may be posted at The RFC's Talk Page. Thank you to all who participated. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 16:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:AIV

Is getting backlogged. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 16:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

 Done. :) Cirt (talk) 16:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

how to properly fork an article?

Resolved

 – Mission accomplished. Abecedare (talk) 19:43, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure this is explained somewhere, but I don't know where. Following discussion on the talk page, I would like to fork the article Hunger into two articles, Hunger and Hunger (motivational state) -- but I'd like to do it in a way that preserves the history for both versions, and I'm not sure of the proper way to accomplish that. Shall I just do it by copy+paste and then request a history merge, or is there a more systematic approach? Looie496 (talk) 17:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

• Start the new article (hunger motivational state) and in the edit summary at creation (or whenever you add content from the old article), follow the instructions at WP:SMERGE. I suspect that Hunger won't get deleted, but you can add a {{Merged-to}} notice on the hunger talk page. No need for elaborate history mergers. Protonk (talk) 18:02, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I prefer chopsticks myself. - <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 19:19, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia:SPLIT, which outlines the recommended procedure. Abecedare (talk) 19:19, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, well, the moment I tried it, I got a template copyvio warning from CorenSearchBot (which is okay), and an editor instantly turned the new article into a redirect to the old article. But I'll see if I can work it out. Looie496 (talk) 19:33, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I see that it is resolved now. Wikipedia lives in a state of organized chaos, and as long as the organized part is a wee bit ahead, we are doing fine. Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 19:43, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

FAC backlog

The US holidays have traditionally been a time when nominations at WP:FAC increase, as some editors are home for the holidays, while reviews decrease, as others are away for the holidays. The page is backlogged, with numerous FACs getting little feedback, particularly in the areas of prose, comprehensiveness, and verifiability (images, sources, MOS and other technical issues are well covered). A list of the FACs most in need of review is given here (transcluding that template to editor talk pages is helpful). Some general reviewing instructions are in this Signpost Dispatch. Every little bit helps, if anyone has time to review a few. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Comment: I think seeing "All of them" at User:Deckiller/FAC urgents might be discouraging to some potential reviewers. Perhaps simply listing individual articles needing attention, without the text "All of them", would be a better way to encourage comments. Cirt (talk) 19:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

My apologies - I don't think Sandy knew I had changed that. A partial list has been included there, although all of the FACs do need attention. Karanacs (talk) 19:51, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Where is Frank Schulenburg?

Frank Schulenburg is a very important person in Wikipedia and is developing something, codename Bookshelf. This is not secret information but reported in the Wall Street Journal Europe. How do we contact him? Does he have a username? I may consider helping with this Bookshelf project.

For those who do not know about this project, this is a quote:

Much of the task of making Wikipedia more welcoming to newcomers falls to Frank Schulenburg, the foundation's head of public outreach. An academic, he began contributing to articles about French philosophers on the German Wikipedia in 2005.

"The community has created its own language, and that is certainly a barrier to new participants," he says.

One of Mr. Schulenburg's first projects, called the "bookshelf," is an effort to gather the basic rules for contributing to Wikipedia in one place for newcomers.

Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 21:42, 24 November 2009 (UTC)