Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

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

See /Smatprt. A topic ban from the topic of William Shakespeare has been proposed and has considerable support, and a mutual editing restriction on all parties is also under consideration.

Moved to subpage as it's rather big. --TS 22:31, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Datestamp of this comment is faked in an attempt to delay archiving of this pointer. --TS 22:31, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

One of the two editors (I am both the plaintiff and, in the thread, subsequently indicted)for whom a topic ban has been proposed, User:Smatprt, has noted on the page that he is experiencing problems with his computer, and will be travelling until the 18th, and thus cannot respond to the charges or issues raised concerning his editing behaviour. I suggest the page here retain this notice until at least that date.Nishidani (talk) 11:38, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I've decided to cut short this ridiculously long discussion by noting the administrative consensus for a topic ban on User:Smatprt from all articles related to William Shakespeare, broadly construed. Admins dissenting please note here before the end of the month or I'll just cut the link to the subpage and formally notify Smatprt of the topic ban. --TS 23:36, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Concur with the ban. DGG ( talk ) 19:14, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough

Unresolved

Entire thread has been moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough/October 2010 to centralize discussion and to save space on the ANI page. Please do not timestamp this until this has reached the top of the page. –MuZemike

Philip Baird Shearer Again

Unresolved

Moved to /Philip Baird Shearer to save space on this page. Please do not timestamp until this reaches the top of the page. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]}

Block of TreasuryTag

Entire section has been moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Block of TreasuryTag to centralize discussion and to save space on the ANI page. Please do not timestamp until this has reached the top of this page. –MuZemike

Closed; long past its use by date. 16:35, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Edit-warring and legal threats at Cyprus

Resolved

 – –MuZemike 17:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Andreas2009 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) keeps removing text and pictures of Cypriot mosques from the Cyprus article and has now issued a legal threat in their latest edit summary. Admin attention is required. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 15:14, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Blocked indef for the legal threat, even if it is a ridiculous threat.  Sandstein  15:52, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the legal threat is legally implausible. Still, despite the doubtful legal validity, such comments and any associated edit-warring cause disruption. Hopefully, since "indefinite" doesn't mean "infinite" this user may eventually get unblocked if they show that they understand the underlying issues. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 17:13, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump, Paul Siebert, Justus Maximus, Karl Marx, Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, …

AndyTheGrump and Paul Siebert

I note with disappointment and regret that recent developments are leaving me with no other choice but to draw attention to the behavior of the above editors.

The facts of the case are as follows.

(1) On 5 October 2010, at 12:57 (UTC), I included in the article “Communist terrorism” the following passage with a quote by Marx (that apparently no one here had been able to trace since 1996 when it was mentioned by Edvard Radzinsky), under the section “Views of Marxist theoreticians and leaders”:

“In his article, “The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna”, ‘’Neue Rheinische Zeitung’’, No. 136, 7 Nov. 1848, Karl Marx wrote: “… there is only one means to shorten, simplify and concentrate the murderous death throes of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new, only one means – revolutionary terrorism.””

To which I provided the following references:

“Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels – Werke, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, Vol. V, 1959, pp. 455-7. http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me05/me_05_455.htm; for English translation see http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/11/06.htm”

On 6 October, at 03:54 (UTC), AndyTheGrump (in his own words) “amended Marx to full version.”

On 6 October, at 03:56 (UTC), AndyTheGrump posted the following statement on the talk page:

“I have amended the passage to give the quote in full. As it stood, the replacement of the initial part by ellipsis, arguably distorted the intended meaning.”

What I felt to be particularly discourteous and offensive was the fact that AndyTheGrump made absolutely no attempt to provide any evidence as to (a) what the intended meaning was, (b) why the quote as initially provided by me was “distorting” that meaning, and (c) why he thought it had been my intention to “distort” anything.

(2) On 6 October, at 10:53 (UTC), I included the following passage in the above-mentioned article, under the same section:

“Thus, in his The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky (1918), Lenin wrote: “One cannot hide the fact that dictatorship presupposes and implies a “condition”, one so disagreeable to renegades [such as Kautsky], of revolutionary violence of one class against another … the “fundamental feature” of the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat is revolutionary violence.””

It was my intention at a later point, when I had the time to do so, to include an observation made by Robert Service in his work A History of Twentieth-Century Russia to the effect that Lenin in his The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky advocated dictatorship and terror, as well as provide the following quote from Engels’ On Authority (which Lenin uses to support his own position on dictatorship and revolutionary violence, including state terror):

““To make things clearer, we will quote Marx and Engels to show what they said on the subject of dictatorship …: “… if the victorious party” (in a revolution) “does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.””

It was (and still is) my sincere belief that the above quotes would have served to illustrate the views on the matter held by leading Marxists. Nor can there be any doubt that the quotes were relevant to the section entitled “Views of Marxist theoreticians and leaders.”

On 6 October, at 16:41 (UTC), Paul Siebert (in his own words) “Removed the quote form [sic] “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky””, adding that “Lenin does not use a word “terror” there at all.”

As I pointed out, Lenin must have used the word “terror” in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky at the very least in the Engels quote he is using in that work for the simple reason that (a) Engels’ original text (and English translation) has the word “terror” and (b) the English translation of The Proletarian Revolution and K. Kautsky itself has the word “terror”.

Paul Siebert unreasonably dismissed as “irrelevant” not only the Lenin quote I had included in the article and the Lenin quote I suggested on the talk page, but the entire The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky.

On 6 October, at 16:51 (UTC), without adducing any evidence to substantiate his statements, Paul Siebert posted the following on the talk page:

“This work is hardly relevant to this article, because Lenin tells nothing about terror there. The word “terror” is mentioned twice in the foot notes. Lenin does not use it”.

Without providing any explanation as to what the footnotes were about, Paul Siebert insisted that the Russian original which he is able to read does not have the word “terror” (except, as already stated, “in the footnotes”), but that it has the word strakh which means “fear” and cannot mean “terror.”

Apart from the fact that his own interpretation or translation of the Russian text clearly constitutes original research, Paul Siebert continues to insist that the word strakh does not mean terror despite the fact that it does so:

(a) as is evident from the context;

(b) as is evident from the Oxford Russian Dictionary;

(c) as is evident from the English translation (online version available at www.marxists.org: [1]);

and

(d) as any educated Russian speaker can confirm.

In addition, Lenin’s endorsement of terror has been confirmed by a number of respected historians, e.g., Robert Service in A History of Twentieth-Century Russia, p 108:

“Lenin, as he recovered from his wounds, wrote the booklet The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky, in which he advocated dictatorship and terror”

and Richard Pipes in Communism: A Brief History, p. 39:

“He [Lenin] was quite prepared to resort to unlimited terror to destroy his opponents and cow the rest of the population.”

It is evident from this that the words “This work is hardly relevant to this article, because Lenin tells nothing about terror there” constitute a false statement.

In light of the evidence, Paul Siebert must have been, or subsequently become, aware of the fact that his statement is false.

On 8 October, at 17:06 (UTC), Paul Siebert posted the following statement on the talk page:

“it is worth noting that Bolsheviks didn’t start terror immediately after coming to power, which can be demonstrated by the fact that death penalty was completely abolished by them in 1917.”

The fact is that the Bolshevik government did not abolish the death penalty. It confirmed the abolition thereof enacted on 12 March 1917 by Kerensky’s Provisional government. Lenin returned to Russia in April 1917 and had expressly ordered his followers not to support the Kerensky government (Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin, 1996, p. 15). In addition, after coming to power, the Bolshevik government actually restored the death penalty in respect of certain crimes (e.g., Fanny Kaplan was executed on 4 September, 1918) and the CHEKA (the secret police established by Lenin in December 1917, i.e., immediately after Bolshevik takeover of power) was granted discretionary death-penalty powers by Lenin 1921 (Figes, 1998; Volkogonov, 1994). Lenin himself declared that it was “not possible to make a revolution without executions”; ordered the Red Terror campaign in September 1918 (Pipes, p. 56); and “the transformation of the war [WWI] from a conflict between nations to one between classes had been a central plank in the Bolshevik platform long before 1917” (Richard Pipes, Communism, 2001, p. 41).

It follows that it is legitimate to question Paul Siebert’s good faith.

It also follows that it is legitimate to ask (a) why Paul Siebert is making false statements and (b) why he is using such statements as a pretext to exclude relevant material from the article and/or discussion.

It must be noted that both my initial contributions and subsequent observations were in response to the call to help improve the article; were relevant to the section under discussion; and were clearly made in good faith.

By contrast, not only have Paul Siebert and AndyTheGrump displayed discourteous and offensive behavior from the very start, but they have chosen to resort to illegitimate and unacceptable tactics such as making unsubstantiated, false, and misleading statements in order to promote a pro-Marxist (pro-terrorist) agenda, impose their own biased views on others, and preclude any balanced and objective discussion from taking place.

Paul Siebert and AndyTheGrump have repeatedly attempted to conceal or deny historical facts linking prominent Marxists with terrorism, such as, that Marx was known as “The Red Terror Doctor” on account of his endorsement of terror as a policy; that both Marx and his associate Engels made statements in support of terror/terrorism; that Marx wrote, “there is only one means to shorten, simplify and concentrate the murderous death throes of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new, only one means – revolutionary terrorism” (and that this quote in Kautsky’s Terrorism and Communism is annotated approvingly by Stalin); that Engels defines revolution in general “as rule imposed by means of the terror that the arms of the victorious party inspire in the reactionaries” (and that this definition is quoted with approval by Lenin in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky); that they were personally involved in armed insurrections (amounting to terrorism on account of their intention to establish a dictatorship based on terror); that they are discussed in scholarly publications on terrorism (e.g., Peter Calvert, “Theories of Terror in Urban Insurrections”, in the International Encyclopedia of Terrorism), etc.

In summation, it appears that the above-mentioned editors have effectively hijacked the article for their own purposes and are doing as they please with total impunity. Justus Maximus (talk) 15:18, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

PS I have requested the editor Snowded to advise me on the procedure for taking the matter to a higher authority but I received no reply. Being new to Wikipedia, I hope this is the correct place for lodging the above complaint. Justus Maximus (talk) 15:26, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I didn't see the request Justus, best to place on my talk page as your article talk pages are very very long and its easy to miss things. If I had seen it I would have advised you against the above--Snowded ^TALK 02:42, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

See this previous thread from ANI a week ago, where JM's editing was discussed. Mathsci (talk) 15:32, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I have left a message about this request on the user talk pages of AndyTheGrump and Paul Siebert. Mathsci (talk) 15:41, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Dear Mathsci, thank you for informing me about this discussion. To make it more productive, can we ask Justus Maximus to do the following:

1. To try to separate a content dispute between them and a number of other editors from behavioural issues, because the former is not supposed to be a subject of the current thread.
2. To provide at least one example when they tried to seriously comment on the quotes from the reliable scholarly sources provided by me. This sources contradicted to the edits proposed by them, however, they rejected them under a pretext that these sources were "Marxist apologist".
3. To answer if they consider themselves a novice or experienced editor. This answer is important, because, if they believe they've already became an experienced editors, they are supposed to be responsible for violations of civility norms on WP pages.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Justus Maximus yet again chooses to label me as 'pro-terrorist'. I consider this a baseless gross personal attack, and ask him to withdraw this immediately. Should he not do so, I intend to seek Wikipedia arbitration over the issue.AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:18, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Note:AndyTheGrump has been blocked indefinitely for making legal threats. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 16:30, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Please, correct me if I am wrong, but per WP:LEGAL the statement that someone makes "a fraudulent attempt to whitewash Marxist terrorism, in effect turning the discussion into an advertisement for terrorism;"[2] is a perceived legal threat, and even much more serious one, because propaganda of terrorism, by contrast to libel, is a felony. In connection to that, taking into account that both Andy and Justus can be both considered as new editors, I request Access Denied to re-consider their decision.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:57, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not an admin; I was only commenting. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 17:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I would not consider the comment you just quoted a legal threat. If they had said "I'm going to report you to law enforcement for spreading terrorist propaganda, maybe, but I see no real accusation of terrorist propaganda, let alone a threat of reporting it. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 17:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Repeated accusations in propaganda of terrorism are perceived legal threat per WP:LEGAL--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:33, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Justus Maximus comment, "...they have chosen to resort to illegitimate and unacceptable tactics such as making unsubstantiated, false, and misleading statements in order to promote a pro-Marxist (pro-terrorist) agenda...." is totally unacceptable and he should be blocked for incivility. Otherwise, his comments are long and rambling, and he does not clearly point out what his dispute is other than a content dispute. TFD (talk) 17:31, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

• Actually, "strakh" means a "state of fear" or just fear in general, though for the purposes of Marx and Lenin, it is quite clear that they were speaking and advocating a form of terrorism. In this, the original poster is correct. I just wanted to point that out. Silverseren^C 17:49, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Though, Justus, what Paul meant from this is that your quote “One cannot hide the fact that dictatorship presupposes and implies a “condition”, one so disagreeable to renegades [such as Kautsky], of revolutionary violence of one class against another … the “fundamental feature” of the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat is revolutionary violence” doesn't even have the word terror in it anywhere. And Snowded asked for you to be involved in the talk here. Other than those two edits, you have not been involved in directly editing the article, though I notice there is an expansive amount of discussion on the talk page. Is there really anything that has to do with ANI here? Silverseren^C 18:06, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Could someone tell User:Paul Siebert that forum shopping is frowned upon, he has posted here on this thread the Justus is making perceived legal threats (I`m guessing in the hope of getting the guy blocked) But he has also posted the same thing Here thinking Access Denied was an admin and he posted the same again Here on Toddst1 talk page. This strikes me as someone shopping around looking for the right result and Paul ought to be told to quit it mark (talk) 18:19, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I would have to say that, from what i've seen from the talk page of the article in question, all three, Justus Maximus, Paul Siebert, and AndyTheGrump, have all been editing in a manner that expresses POV editing and/or possessiveness of the article. In terms of this and what Mark has shown above, I believe something definitely needs to be done in terms of these three users together, as they have all exibited editing that is frowned upon or not allowed on Wikipedia. Silverseren^C 18:26, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Re: "I`m guessing in the hope of getting the guy blocked". Had I wanted him to get blocked, I would be able to report him many times, because his behaviour is highly insulting and violates many WP rules. Regarding possessiveness, I admit that the talk page is a mess and that it is hard for a newcomer to follow the course of the discussion, however, before throwing accusations in "possessiveness", one has to read the discussion in full. I proposed to discuss a way to reconcile what Justus' and my sources say, whereas he simply ignored my arguments calling my sources "Marxist apologist". My proposal to edit a dubious section on the talk page and to re-insert it into the article after a consensus is achieved, a tactics that worked fine for, e.g. WWII article, was simply ignored.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean the section were you were Bold and removed it, then yourself, Igny and snowed Snowed edit warred to keep it out? With all three of you hitting 3r along with a couple of ip`s which lead to the article being locked out? mark (talk) 20:27, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I mean the section which I temporarily moved to the talk page section to re-write and re-introduce into the article. Since this section contained obvious nonsense, it would be incorrect to let it to stay in the article during possibly endless dispute. In addition, I proposed some concrete way to reconcile both points of view and make it neutral. All of that has been ignored by the editors belonging to another party.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

My 2¢: that page is a mess. Large sections of it use the rhetorical style of FOX news pundits (illegitimate associations between unrelated ideas designed to promote a particular anti-communist viewpoint - effectively a form of right-wing Mad Libs), much of it is aimed at attacking Marxist theory by leveraging revolutionary practices, and the general behavior of all involved parties is (shall I say politely) less than optimal. If the page weren't locked I'd simply go after it with garden shears and a trowel; right now I'm just hoping that we can settle the issues with some straw polls. if you all want to go and drop your votes on the straw polls I opened, and if we can get a reasonable consensus that way, it might just put a stop (either way) to some of the shenanigans. --Ludwigs2 18:50, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump is a promising new editor who we would like to keep—funnily enough I was just admiring an edit of his (this one), which turned up on my watchlist. His "legal threat" was so vague as to be meaningless; plus he's a newbie, presumably not familiar with the labyrinthine ways of Wikipedia. I think it's appallingly bitey to immediately block him indefinitely for saying "I am aware that Wikipedia policy is to discourage recourse to legal measures, but given the grossly offensive nature of this statement, I see that I have little choice." If *I* said that, it would be appropriate to block me, but a newbie? Come on, what's wrong with having a word with him and explaining that talk about legal measures isn't merely discouraged on Wikipedia. Unless there is general objection, I'm going to unblock him in a while, and advise him to withdraw the offending statement. Toddst1, I'm aware that you have already advised him what to do, but I don't think starting with an indefinite block is a good way to get people to listen receptively. Bishonen | talk 20:32, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

• Please give your opinion below about my intention to unblock:

An undertaking to retract the legal threat is all that is required for a legal threat block to be lifted. I don't think that consensus is required, since it says that in WP:LEGAL. Get the undertaking first, then press the button. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:00, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, obviously, this legal threat was just an inadequate response of a newbie on continuous insults and perceived legal threats from Justus Maximus' side (repeated accusation in such a crime as propaganda of terrorism are the perceived legal threat). Obviously, the Andy's response was highly emotional, however, taking into account that both these editors are novices, and taking into account that Justus Maximus has been warned many time about his unacceptable behaviour, this reaction is understandable (although not excusable). In addition, we all are partially guilty in that, because we where too tolerant to a newbie Justus Maximus. I do not understand why another newbie has to suffer from that our mistake. In my opinion, the block can be lifted immediately after Andy will agree to retract this threat.

Secondly, I propose not to forget that this issue has only tangential relation to this thread, which has been initiated by Justus Maximus and it is de facto a renewal of this previous thread. Therefore, I propose to return to this topic, especially, taking into account that the norms of acceptable behaviour have been explained to Justus Maximus now, and the experienced editor who initially voluntarily decided to coach him/her through a collaborative approach by that moment gave up and does not see any value in continuation of a dialogue with him[3]--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:27, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

• OK, I'll leave Andy blocked for now, since he rather dances around a really unequivocal withdrawal of the offending statement.[4] I can't blame him for being a grumpy Grump just now, though, and I hope people are watching his page and are prepared to unblock if/when he does withdraw it properly, for instance in line with Toddst1's crisp post. It's late in my timezone, so I won't be watching. But as I said, it would be nice to keep this editor. Bishonen | talk 22:48, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

I think you should unblock. This is a good new editor and even experienced editors would be driven to distraction by the situation on that talk page. --Snowded ^TALK 02:42, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Andy should now be unblocked, as he has withdrawn his threat of legal action. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 02:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for handling that. Toddst1 (talk) 16:27, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Return to Justus Maximus

Shall we return to User:Justus Maximus and that wall of text again.He's still (as in last week's ANI) turning what is basically a dispute about the interpretation placed on historical events by later scholars, into what seems to be a personal crusade to expose Marx and Lenin as Communist terrorists. Justus must somehow be persuaded that people are allowed to disagree with him, and further that he must not accuse the people who disagree with him of being closet Marxist terrorists. Snowded has been very patient, but I don't think he's got anywhere, Andy has been blocked after an unwise remark about legal action, and is waiting to see what we do. Paul Seibert is I believe correct that in the US at least, advocating or publicising terrorism is a criminal offence, so JM's unreasonable accusation of Andy goes beyond your average ad hominem. I don't see him warned for it, and I think a forceful warning from someone who can follow up an 'if you do this again you will be blocked' threat is the very minimum that must be done. Elen of the Roads (talk) 23:34, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm almost tempted to say that accusing someone of being a terrorism advocate warrants a warning plus a short block, but given the time since the comment the block would end up being not so much preventative as punitive. So, I agree that a "final warning" of sorts where any further personal attacks or general incivility warrant a good 2-3 day block, especially if they are along the lines of accusing people of terrorism related things. I'll deliver a templated final warning, but anyone else should feel free to expand on it (or replace it) with their own composition. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 00:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Second Elen and Ks0stm on forceful warning. Accusing other editors of criminal activity is not acceptable. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps [5] from one of those already in this conversation is germane, using the clearly problematic assertion "Firstly, before we continue I expect you to retract your libellous statements and legal threats. Are you going to do that?" on 17 October. As you note, accusing others of criminal activity is not acceptable, and sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, no? Collect (talk) 00:27, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

*sigh...that's one of those cases where I choose to solidly assume good faith in his intent and assume low clue in his word choice. I'd go for advising a little less strong word choice/rhetoric with that comment. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 00:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

When I posted about this issue I noted that, since Justus Maximus is a newbie, the immediate sanctions against him are premature. I believed -Snowded ^TALK's voluntary mentorship would resolve the situation. However, our tolerance towards this newbie resulted in a block of another newbie (Andy), who faced the situation which, according to his limited WP experience, seemed unresolvable by him, and, as a result, resorted to legal threats.

However, the issue is not only in accusations in criminal activity. Justus Maximus seems to deeply misunderstand the policy: he believes that based solely on his vision of the subject he can accept of reject sources, which he arbitrarily calls "reliable" or "apologist"; he believes that based on the sources available for him he can reject what other sources say; he does not understand that commenting on a contributor is not acceptable; he does not understand that drawing own conclusion based on few quotes from historical documents taken out of historical contest is absolutely incorrect, etc. Someone, who is not considered by him as a personification of the devil (in other words, not I) should explain that to him. Any help is appreciated.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:09, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps JM would voluntarily go through a set of lessons (Mono's program comes to mind, but I believe it is still under construction, so perhaps one similar to it) with the objective of teaching him such core policies as Reliable Sources, No Original Research, No Personal Attacks, etc, to the point where he could explain what the fundamental meaning of these core policies are? At any rate, for the time being, he should be kept on a very short leash regarding personal attacks and civility (in line with the warning I posted on his talk page). Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 01:51, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It would really be very helpful if a few other editors would explain OR and SYNTH to Justus, he either does not understand or is not listening. --Snowded ^TALK 02:42, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd do that (I'm usually good at such explanations) except I don't think it would have any effect at this point in time. JM is smart enough to be very cagey intellectually and determined enough in his viewpoints that he is unlikely to willingly back down. Honestly, I think the best approach would be to warn him for disruptive editing, and if he keeps it up give him short block to get his attention. he needs to have a reason to settle down and listen, because he's (obviously) having a lot of fun spinning out arguments to support his position at the moment. --Ludwigs2 04:19, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

With regret I think you are right, it will take a block to get him to listen --Snowded ^TALK 12:30, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, I think some of the above comments do appear to confirm rather than negate the impression that there is a bias here.

In particular, what the comments appear to ignore is:

(1) that AndyTheGrump engaged in personal attacks on me long before I even addressed any of the editors involved in the discussion.

(2) that Paul Siebert has been employing false statements as a pretext to exclude relevant material from the article and/or discussion.

(3) that editors like Paul Siebert are habitually permitted to use original research in their arguments whereas I am being attacked on the rare occasions I happen to do so (and only when requested by other editors to explain why I believe something to be the case).

(4) that at no point has it been explained how personal attacks by editors such as AndyTheGrump differ/are less offensive than mine.

Until such time as issues like the above have been objectively addressed I cannot but regard such comments as a continuation of personal attacks on me started by AndyTheGrump Justus Maximus (talk) 10:37, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, if your statements like those regarding the word strakh, Lenin's endorsement of terror, and the Bolshevik abolition of the death-penalty are not intentionally fraudulent, then why won't you admit that they are false and retract them? Justus Maximus (talk) 10:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Incivility and original research are wrong no matter who does it. But it is no excuse for more incivility and more original research. You have certainly crossed the line with serious accusations against other editors and lengthy discourses at Talk:Communist terrorism. It appears you are unwilling to follow the policies that WP imposes. TFD (talk) 11:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It is evident from Justus Maximus's last statement that he has no intention of apologising for his grossly offensive personal comments, but instead chooses to continue his misrepresentations and insinuations. I am therefore going to seek a solution through the relevant Wikipedia channels. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AndyTheGrump (talk • contribs) 13:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Dear AndyTheGrump, of course I am prepared to apologize for any of my remarks (1) should it be established beyond reasonable doubt that they do indeed constitute "grossly offensive personal comments" and (2) if you retract, and apologize for, your own personal attacks that, after all, were made first, logically and chronologically speaking.

As a sign of good will, I hereby give you a chance to do so by explaining why you alleged that I had "distorted the meaning" of the Engels quote.

Justus Maximus (talk) 16:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Incivility and original research are wrong no matter who does it

Then please apply that principle impartially to all.Justus Maximus (talk) 16:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Justus Maximus, can you please provide a link to the supposed 'personal attack' of mine that was "first, logically and chronologically speaking". At that point, we can at least see what I said, and what preceded it.

As for "grossly offensive personal comments", if you are unable to accept that calling someone 'pro-terrorist' is grossly offensive, I can only conclude that you have a strange concept of what the words 'grossly offensive' mean. As has been pointed out several times already, it could reasonably be interpreted as implying illegality on my part. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:50, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Which 'Engels quote', JM?

Justus Maximus seems to have taken the opportunity here to repeat allegations about me, without providing any evidence. Can I ask how long I'm expected to wait for his response before citing it as further evidence of his non-compliance with Wikipedia standards? To ensure he has seen this, I'll post a further notification on his talk page, but I see no reason to wait indefinitely. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:50, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Justus Maximus, can you please provide a link to the supposed 'personal attack' of mine that was "first, logically and chronologically speaking". At that point, we can at least see what I said, and what preceded it

AndyTheGrump, I meant of course the Marx quote. You ought to know exactly which personal attack I'm referring to unless you didn't read my post, above. If that is the case, please read it first.

Meanwhile, I repeat your statement below:

"the replacement of the initial part by ellipsis arguably distorted the intended meaning" - AndyTheGrump, talk page, 03:56, 6 October 2010 (UTC). Surely, you recall your own statements don't you?

The way I see it the facts of the matter are as follows:

(1) You claimed on the talk page that Marx’s article containing the statement on revolutionary terrorism (“The Victory of Counter-Revolution in Vienna”) was obscure and you had not been aware of its existence. However, as I pointed out, it couldn’t have been obscure to students of Marx given that it was quoted by Marxists such as Kautsky. Moreover, Kautsky’s Terrorism and Communism is a Marxist classic. It follows that (a) as a historian specializing in Marxism you ought to have known where the quote was from, (b) as an editor participating in a discussion on Communist terrorism, you ought to have been familiar with a Marxist work on Terrorism and Communism, and as neither (a) nor (b) appears to be the case, (c) this raises very serious and legitimate doubts about your competence to participate in such a discussion.

(2) By claiming to know what Marx’s intended meaning was, you indulged in original research and took a pro-Marxist stand.

(3) The fact is that Marx is telling a lie in that article. The truth of the matter is that the number of demonstrators killed by the National Guard was between 6 and 18. Here’s what actually happened:

“When the National Guard tried to disperse the protesters, there were clashes, which escalated on 23 August. The Academic Legion, though refusing to join in the repression, was reluctant to side with the insurgents and stood back, a mere spectator to what followed. Lacking the support of the very people whom they regarded as their leaders, the workers stood no chance. Demonstrators were beaten with the flats of sabres, bayoneted and shot. Between 6 and 18 workers were killed, and between 36 and 152 seriously wounded (depending upon whether one believes government or radical counts). When the fighting was over, women from the more prosperous quarters of the city garlanded the National Guards’ bayonets with flowers … The Democratic Club shouted down Marx, who was then visiting Vienna, when he tried to argue that the violence was a class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. For Engels, 23 August was the moment when the middle class abandoned the cause of the people: ‘thus the unity and strength of the revolutionary force was broken; the class-struggle had come in Vienna, too, to a bloody outbreak, and the counter-revolutionary camarillasaw the day approaching on which it might strike its grand blow’. But Marx found that it was not only the middle class who were deserting the revolution; there was little sympathy for his ideas even when he addressed workers’ meetings. On 7 September, he left Vienna, grumbling at the stubborn refusal of the workers to see that they should be waging a class war against the bourgeoisie” (Mike Rapport, 1848:Year of Revolution, London: Little, Brown, 2008, pp. 230-1).

It follows from the above that Marx’s use of rhetorical flourishes like “massacres” and “cannibalism” was intended to deceive the readers and incite them to armed insurrection on false pretences. It is beyond dispute that the primary intention of the article was to incite to armed insurrection, as correctly observed by the authorities who closed down Marx’s paper on that very ground.

(4) The quote as initially provided by me illustrated Marx’s endorsement of terrorism and was relevant to the section “Views of Marxist theoreticians and leaders.” By contrast, the “intended meaning” as implied by your statement was irrelevant. It follows that your assertion “the replacement of the initial part by ellipsis, arguably distorted the intended meaning” is uncalled for and lends itself to being interpreted as deliberately offensive.

As already stated, I am prepared to retract any remarks of mine (1) should it be established beyond reasonable doubt that they do indeed constitute "grossly offensive personal comments" and (2) if you retract, and apologize for, your own personal attacks that, after all, were made first, logically and chronologically speaking.

So, if you are indeed interested in peaceful cooperation between editors, all you need to do is retract and apologize for your offensive remarks. It's very simple. Justus Maximus (talk) 12:22, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Hold up a second. JM, are you seriously saying that the "Marx quote" is the bit where it was stated your edit "arguably distorted" the meaning of the source? That's not a personal attack, by any stretch of the imagination. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 12:37, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

It looks that way, HandThatFeeds. It's worth noting that the (half)quote we were discussing was in the article even before JM got involved. He (usefully) provided a link to the original source, and correctly added the ellipsis to indicate it was part of a longer sentence. I provided the remainder of the sentence (though there are two different English translations available, and I think I used the wrong one - as I've noted on the article talk page). It is also worth noting that at the time I made this revision, JM made no suggestion that I was being offensive. This attempt of mine to make a perfectly reasonable edit to a contentious quote to provide some context has only later been identified by JM as part of a Marxist plot to censor him. He initially seems to have been unaware of the standards which apply to Wikipedia, and took any attempts to persuade him to conform to them as 'suppression' of his preferred sources. Almost from the start he was accusing others of 'falsehoods'. He has since argued that he doesn't agree with the need for reliable sources if they contradict his 'ethics'. He has chosen yet again to make a personal attack on me on the most ridiculous grounds. He writes that 'as a historian specializing in Marxism you ought to have known where the quote was from' which is surely an indication of his complete detachment from reality: I'm not a historian, and have never claimed to be. Neither have I actually claimed to be a 'specialist in Marxism'. I had merely earlier pointed out that the Marx quote wasn't in any of Marx's major works (it isn't), which is why I'd asked where it was from. Justus Maximus chooses to insinuate that I knew where it was from all along, and then uses this bogus assumption to 'prove' his ludicrous conspiracy theories. The man is clearly incapable of logical thought on issues he has any emotional involvement with, and thus cannot be anything but a liability as a Wikipedia editor. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:15, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The persistent refusal by Justus Maximus to conform to Wikipedia standards

As will be evident from the earlier section started by Justus Maximus here, he has consistently refused to conform to Wikipedia rules regarding civility. In particular, he has repeatedly described another contributor and myself as 'pro-terrorist' - a grossly offensive personal attack. He has also repeatedly been asked to withdraw such statements, and refused. He shows no interest in adhering to other Wikipedia norms either, and has instead argued that his 'ethics' override the need for reliable sources. On his own talk page he suggested that a "Marxist apologist brigade...controls the whole Wikipedia project" here, which seems a clear indication of his attitude towards Wikipedia, and should in itself be sufficient grounds for concluding that he can contribute nothing useful. I therefore suggest that he be banned from further editing until he withdraws his grossly offensive personal attacks and gives an assurance that he will conform to Wikipedia standards. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Dear AndyTheGrump, please see my response above. Justus Maximus (talk) 16:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Justus, you are just wasting everyone's time, most of all your own. Wikipedia is not the forum to present original ideas and interpretations. I suggest you voluntarily refrain from editing anything to do with communism for some time. Work on other articles and learn how cooperation on Wikipedia works. I you do not do this voluntarily I will have to propose, that a topic ban be placed on you. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 13:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Tendentious editing by JPMcGrath on Gun laws in the United States (by state)

This is an issue that has gone on for months, the most recent events are chronicled at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_(by_state)#Brady_scorecard.2C_maps:_saga_continues, where there are also links to previous threads on the same topic. The issue was decided by consensus months ago, and suddenly JPMcGrath appears again claiming "There has been no rebuttal; rather obfuscation, obstruction, and dissembling" to his arguments, despite being given links to more than 30,000 words of discussion, as Mudwater demonstrated. He has been warned, has been treated respectfully and politely by both myself and Digiphi, but continues to push this POV. His arguments have not changed, yet he continues to add this content against consensus. At this time his actions merit "disruptive editing", and I'm asking for a topic ban on this. Rapier (talk) 23:46, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I read through the talk page and had a good look at the article history. It is clear that JPMcGrath is trying to edit against local consensus. His language and approach might be a low level of tendentious editing, but it's mostly a content dispute. I will warn him to cease edit warring at the risk of being blocked. I saw no 3RR violations. Basket of Puppies 00:05, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

What I am seeing is tedentious editing on both sides of a "no consensus" poll on the talk page.

The response to a "no consensus" is not to go edit war over it on the article itself. It's to go back and try again to find an option that everyone agrees to.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:08, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Finding an option that everyone agrees on may not be possible in this case. The discussion has gone on for more than seven months and now exceeds 30,000 words (yes, really). Many of the editors who have participated in the discussion have agreed that adding the Brady Campaign State Scorecard map to this article would violate NPOV by pushing a particular political agenda and by providing a soapbox for an advocacy group. Some have also stated that the map does not accurately assess the restrictiveness of the different states' gun laws. Others have suggested that the map might be appropriate for a different article -- for example, Political arguments of gun politics in the United States, or Brady Campaign, which currently does include the map -- but not this article, which simply describes the gun laws of the 50 states in as neutral and unbiased a manner as possible. At this point somewhat more than half of the editors have agreed on this, with a sizable minority not agreeing and saying that adding the map would be okay. Still others have floated the idea of balancing the map by also including another map that supports an opposing view, but there does not appear to be such a balancing map. Anyway, the article without the maps has achieved a very neutral point of view by simply presenting the facts of the laws, which are the subject of this particular article, without adding opinions of any kind. As I said, many editors have agreed that not adding the map is the best course of action. But editor JPMcGrath has refused to accept this and keeps adding it back. This is indeed contentious editing, as it has the effect of disrupting the article for the apparent purpose of advocating a particular political point of view. Here are links to the various discussions that have already occurred:

• Archived discussions:
  • Talk:Gun laws in the United States (by state)/Archive 1#2009 Brady Campaign State Scorecard
  • Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard/Archive 12#Gun laws in the United States (by state)
  • Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive603#User:Niteshift36 disruption at Talk:Gun laws in the United States (by state)
  • Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Rejected/45#Gun laws in the United States (by state)
  • Talk:Gun laws in the United States (by state)/Archive 1#Brady and other maps
  • Talk:Gun laws in the United States (by state)/Archive 2#RfC: Should the Brady map be removed or retained?
• Discussions currently on the article talk page:
  • Talk:Gun laws in the United States (by state)#Proposed removal of all maps
  • Talk:Gun laws in the United States (by state)#Brady scorecard and other maps, continued
  • Talk:Gun laws in the United States (by state)#Brady scorecard, maps: saga continues

— Mudwater ^(Talk) 00:29, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, adding the "Brady scorecard" to a state would be analogous to adding the NRA scorecard on a candidate (or anyone else's scorecard, for that matter) to a candidate's Wikipedia article. Having said that, YESPOV is indeed part of NPOV. The main point, though, is that editors must work in good faith to pursue consensus on how to present contentious topics. Jclemens (talk) 02:26, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree completely. While this isn't the place to argue content, I'll simply clarify that buried in those arguments is the point made by myself and others that an NRA map would be just as inappropriate. We aren't trying to push one point of view or the other, we're trying to remove all point of view and simply list the laws in an encyclopedic manner. When third-party analysis of raw data get interjected that is when POV problems occur, and as Mudwater stated above, there are already articles discussing the political debate about gun laws. The maps are included there and continuing to add them here despite clear consensus is the problem. Rapier (talk) 03:32, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't see a new clear consensus on that point. What I see is several editors who were on one side of the July "Remove all maps or not?" discussion - which an apparently uninvolved admin closed as "No consensus" - continuing the discussion and asserting now that you have consensus, without the participation of most of the other side.

Nothing in the new discussions invalidates the July discussion. No effort was made to revisit it with another clear poll / RFC. It seems like some previously active editors are less active now, but that doesn't invalidate their participation in the last clear poll / RFC type discussion.

ANI is not a replacement for going back to the page and holding another RFC. If those other editors are gone and it's a new consensus that's fine. But this is not the place - and attacking the lead map proponent for disruption is not the right approach - to solve the no consensus problem. Do it right, on the article. Get a consensus. If it's still "No consensus" then accept that. If it goes your way this time, with whoever shows up to bother to participate, then he will need to accept that as well. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 09:32, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

We've had seven months and more than 30,000 words of discussion, including a Request For Comment, a posting on the Neutral Point of View Noticeboard, and a Request For Mediation. A majority of editors -- including myself -- feel very strongly that adding the Brady Scorecard map is an egregious violation of NPOV, and also distorts the facts, while other editors don't agree and think that adding the map would be okay. It seems to me that if many of the participants agree that the map would be a major NPOV violation, and pushes a one-sided political agenda, that trumps other editors saying that it would enhance the article slightly by providing an attractive graphic of summary information. Also, part of why JPMcGrath's editing is tendentious is that he keeps saying that editors such as myself have not explained why adding the map would violate NPOV, when in fact we've just spent the last seven months explaining it, over and over and from many different perspectives. There's a difference between "you've explained the reasoning behind your opinions at great length and in many different ways, but I still don't agree," and "you haven't explained the reasoning behind your opinions," but the difference seems to elude JPMcGrath. So, I find it hard to believe that prolonging the discussion any further would have much benefit at this point. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 11:37, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Good grief, that debate is still going on? As I recall, the main issue with that map is that it presupposes certain things and gives a value judgment as to each state's attitude toward gun control. The problem is whether that map presents an unbiased assessment. Since they themselves are its authors, obviously they are going to judge which parameters to be used. Now, if you had a similar map from the point of view of the NRA, those two maps would be interesting for the reader to compare, and see if they "agree" on each states' attitude toward gun control, even though the groups are obviously on opposite sides of the issue. That is, the NRA might consider a restrictive state to be a "bad" state, and the Brady bunch might consider it to be a "good" state - but it's possible they might rank the states the same way, just flip-flopped in order. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:48, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Again, this isn't the forum for content dispute, but to clarify the argument is that all maps offer up a POV that is inappropriate in an encyclopedic listing of state laws, not that the "Brady" map alone should be removed. Let's please be clear on the prime mover is, and not allow this to become an issue directed at a single point. Rapier (talk) 22:45, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Seems to me that a map like that could be useful, IF it were verifiable and not pushing a viewpoint. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:56, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

It may well be useful in the context that Bugs describes, but it's simply not acceptable to keep readding it as it's been done here. There needs to be the wider context that Bugs is talking about if there's any chance for this kind of advocacy ranking to be relevant in a general state article. Shadowjams (talk) 08:17, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I've un-archived this thread to allow for further discussion, per User talk:JPMcGrath#Warning. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 20:49, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I will post my response as soon as I can get it together. — JPMcGrath (talk) 10:04, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Editor translating an article to another Wikipedia

I noticed Rapsar (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (also tr:User:Rapsar) has translated WP's article La Massana into Turkish Wikipedia here and here. WP's policy on translations is Wikipedia:Translation#How_to_translate; it says editors who are doing translations of foreign-language articles into English Wikipedia must attribute their source by writing both an edit summary in the translated article on the destination Wikipedia as well as a talk page notice, saying where on the foreign-language Wikipedia they obtained their source material. I think the same principle applies between any wikis. At the moment, trwiki's La Massana has no such attribution in an edit summary on the article or on the talk page.

I asked User:Rapsar to remedy this oversight on Turkish Wikipedia. He replied, "I didn't just translate it. I found some extra sources to write the article. BTW, we don't have any policy like this in tr. Wiki. So, I can't do this."

Although User:Rapsar is one of the most active and experienced editors on Turkish Wikipedia, I think his position is out of line with WP's copyright licensing GFDL and CC-BY-SA. As for Wikimedia Foundation's policy, I think the terms of use require editors on all Wikipedias to acknowledge their sources when doing translations of articles from other Wikipedias. If it is correct that Turkish Wikipedia does not have any relevant policies about translations, it seems there is potential to encourage widespread copyright non-compliance. For all I know this may have been happening for some time in other articles on Turkish Wikipedia, not necessarily translated by User:Rapsar. It needs further research by somebody fluent in Turkish; I am not, so I cannot check. Apart from Turkish, what is the current position on other language Wikipedias?

Are there any administrators here who could provide policy-based advice to User:Rapsar, and are there any Turkish-English bilingual administrators here who may be in a position to help Turkish Wikipedia come into copyright compliance? I have informed User:Rapsar of this thread. I hope this is the right forum to raise this issue; please say if it is not. Thanks. 85.94.184.115 (talk) 16:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not so sure what the English Wikipedia can do about this other than advice the proper procedure...what goes on at the Turkish Wikipedia is outside our jurisdiction...however, I will admit in this case the lines are a bit blurrier since it involves cross-wiki activity. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 17:13, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok. So, are we essentially just toothless dogs who can bark but not bite? What's the point of having a copyright in Wikimedia Foundation's projects? 85.94.184.115 (talk) 17:24, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll let other people weigh in; I'm just not sure as to what to do. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 17:50, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

If you have concerns about the way other projects are dealing with copyright issues, in particular the attribution requirements for the CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL licenses, you should take it up with the wikimedia foundation or on meta. We at the English wikipedia are indeed toothless dogs. (Some people here may not be toothless, but that's something they got outside the English wikipedia.) Alternatively, I would suggest a good faith effort to communicate with the Turkish wikipedia (rather then one member if you believe the issue is widespread) in a first instance would be advisable. Most wikipedias do have embassies I believe (tr:Vikipedi:Büyükelçilik appears to be the Turkish one) and there is also Wikipedia:Translation which may help you find people who can help you comminicate if necessary. P.S. Well technically I guess English wikipedia contributors to the article in question may have grounds to sue people who have violated their license which is something they gained from here but that's obviously a dumb road to go down. Nil Einne (talk) 19:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Question might be better posed at Meta? Just a thought.    Thorncrag  19:27, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I left a note at the Turkish Wikipedia embassy pointing out this discussion and asking for someone who knows Turkish to bring it up for discussion at the appropriate place on that wiki. However, it wouldn't be a bad idea to also bring it up on Meta. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 20:43, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I will ask on Meta. Thanks Ks0stm, Nil Einne, Thorncrag for your thoughts. Meanwhile, since there are many admins on WP with experience of copyright issues, I'd appreciate hearing their thoughts too, although some of them tend not to edit much on Sundays. Please leave this thread open. I think it would be useful to have further input here once Meta have had a chance to consider the issue. 85.94.184.115 (talk) 21:00, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

This isn't really the place for a generic question on copyrights (I don't really know where to ask since it isn't really an issue for us per se but perhaps Wikipedia talk:Copyrights) but if your question is about the whether the Turkish wikipedia practice is okay, I would agree it's not. If they're using content from some under wikipedia with a CC-BY-SA license, even if they're adding additional info, they need to attribute the original source (which will have the edit history) in some way whether a link in the edit summary or in the talk page (precisely what is necessary I don't have enough experience to say). Even when copying within the English wikipedia, you are supposed to link to the original source article. Nil Einne (talk) 21:38, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I read you post at Meta page, so came here to ask a qustion. I edite in Russian WP generally, and I use the articles of English WP. please write, what you would like it be written, if the translation was made of English article to other language division of WP. Thank you in advance. Best wishes, --Zara-arush (talk) 12:10, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi, an attribution to show where the article came from in an edit summary and on the talk page would be fine. I don't think the wording is important, as long as it includes a cross-wiki link to the article in enwiki, e.g. [[:en:source_article]]. I suppose you could use a wording similar to Wikipedia:Translation#How_to_translate which says editors who are doing a translation of foreign-language article into English Wikipedia must attribute their source by writing both an edit summary in the translated article as well as a talk page notice, saying where on the foreign-language Wikipedia they obtained their source material? 85.94.184.115 (talk) 20:15, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

thread at Meta. 85.94.184.115 (talk) 20:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Request to block sockpuppets

Resolved

 – –MuZemike 17:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Sean Staunnery (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and Conor O'Stauner (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) are sockpuppets of banned editor Irvine22 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), see Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Irvine22 and the history of the Dave Snowden article and it will become very obvious very quickly. Thank you. O Fenian (talk) 21:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC)|

I've looked into and caught one other accounts as well. TNXMan 21:42, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Obvious quacking get the ban hammer out, you need to notify them both of this board still i think--Lerdthenerd (talk) 09:13, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Can the ability to create pages be removed from BLP violators?

I raised this at AIV, but was referred here, instead. Is this possible to do? Should this be the DEFAULT action to someone who creates 2 or 3 or "n" unreferenced BLPs? We are banging our heads against brick walls otherwise, with a BLPPROD the only available response, but that is a treatment, lets cure this at the source... we shouldn't allow unreferenced BLPs to ever be created, let alone one user making lots of them.The-Pope (talk) 23:30, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

• Ace16 sk (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Can the ability to create pages be removed from this user until he/she understands that BLPs require references? I think the talk page notices show that he/she has been warned enough times. The-Pope (talk) 23:20, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I think the consensus has been to block users outright as opposed to revoking their "confirmed" status. –MuZemike 23:33, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

And revoking their confirmed status wouldn't make any difference. Graham87 01:17, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

And you'd have to ask why not? Why use a sledgehammer when you can use a roadblock? The problem isn't their editting, it's their creating. Doesn't make sense to me.The-Pope (talk) 16:34, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Suicide notice

Resolved

Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 10:17, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Authorities contacted

Parasect (talk · contribs) posted on his user page that he is committing suicide today. What is the proper procedure for things like this? ~NerdyScienceDude 23:43, 24 October 2010 (UTC) WP:SUICIDE provides a guideline. Jarkeld (talk) 23:44, 24 October 2010 (UTC) I have requested that MuZemike (talk · contribs) run a CheckUser so we can contact the proper authorities. Access Denied [FATAL ERROR] 23:45, 24 October 2010 (UTC) Oh good, it looks like I found the right venue. Thanks. ~NerdyScienceDude 23:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC) We have user essays, but no official procedures. I for one think it's high-time we change that, post-haste.    Thorncrag  23:48, 24 October 2010 (UTC) Thank you guys. The Foundation is looking into it right now and will take responsibility to contact the local authorities Jalexander (talk) -WMF 23:49, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Suicide Reporting

Does anyone want to vote to change Wikipedia:Responding to threats of harm to official policy? I'm not sure where to post this, but it seems it is the consensus right now, so why not make it policy?--TalkToMe_c^intelati 23:56, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Don't see anything wrong with doing that. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 23:58, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

This is one of those areas that isn't/shouldn't be subject to community consensus; the policy needs to come down from the Foundation, though probably with community collaboration.    Thorncrag  00:00, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) I can't state how strongly I support this idea. Wonderful idea. I suspect Godwin will have something to say about it. He should be notified of this. However, there is nothing that states such a policy can only come from the foundation. Toddst1 (talk) 00:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

(ec x 8)No, it should not be policy, only a guideline. We cannot force people to carry out those actions, and we are certainly not going to sanction people for failing to do so. Further, it is ridiculously involved and sets out expectations that are unrealistic. Risker (talk) 00:04, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

We're discussing a threat protocol internally right now, and consulting with similar organizations. I think it's likely that we'll emerge with some sort of guidelines, but I'm not comfortable mandating a particular course of action. In the meantime, the FIRST thing that anyone does should probably be to email emergencywikimedia.org, which notifies us. Then, continue with the steps at WP:SUICIDE. That way, we can get involved as soon as we are notified. Thanks for your concern, everyone. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 00:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

If a person blocked for making a comment like this (for example Parasect, who is apparently a teenager, is now blocked from everywhere including his own talk page, and currently only has the standard ANI notification on his talk page) wishes to inform the WMF that there is no need to pursue discussions with the authorities further, what is the best way for that person to achieve that? And, should that be briefly explained on the person's talk page? Just thinking that, although we should assume suicide threats are genuine, we also should make it simple to avoid taking up more police time than strictly necessary. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

instructions have been updated per your above statement The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 00:15, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we should make it policy at this time. First, although the current threat appears to be serious (or at least, to be a sincere cry for help), the majority of such threats are from attention-seeking teens: an official policy requiring us to give them attention might lead to an increase in threats, which might cause us to miss the real ones. Second, we traditionally don't require action from users or admins. And third, because this is an area likely to lead to real-world moral and legal consequences, I think that any policies regarding it should only be made with ample help from Mr. Godwin and the Foundation. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 00:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

A policy that says report the incident to [emergency staff contact] should by no means be deemed controversial and it absolves users of any other obligations. It's then up to staff to decide what to do, as it should.    Thorncrag  00:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Strong agreement with Risker and FisherQueen. No to policy at this time; many of these "threats" are merely trolling -- an anon scribbling on your talk page, "I'm going to kill myself" is not anything anyone should be obligated to report to authorities. This particular case is different because it's an editor with a history here. Beware hasty actions that have the aroma of a moral panic, which this one does. Individuals may report these things in accordance with their individual judgement. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 00:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Likewise, I shall shortly be gone from here, for one reason or another. I'd prefer it if the fuss was minimised. Rodhullandemu 00:35, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Er... Rod, could you clarify whether you're planning to log off for the evening, to retire from Wikipedia, or to commit suicide? This comment is a bit unclear for me. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 01:14, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, let's report Rod. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 01:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmmmm let's see. A teenager and established editor who makes a suicide threat is almost immediately blocked (including from his own talk page), doesn't even receive the courtesy of the standard talk page template for such things, and is reported to the police. An admin and established editor makes a rather more vague threat but of a similar nature, and it's a subject for levity. If my name started with M, I'd make some cynical but pithy comments about this. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

*sigh* another Malleus reference? Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 01:58, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It was my first! Ever! I'll stick with "he who must not be named" in future, I suppose. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:00, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

If it would be appropriate, would someone from the foundation please let us know how this situation turned out in the end? I think it would help alleviate some editors concerns if we know what the end result is, as I think we're all hoping for this to be resolved for the better. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 02:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

As a side note, should we really drop an AN/I notice on possible suicide user talk? For one, as has been pointed out already, if the user is just a troll it would seem to only serve their jollies, and for two, I see no reason to risk mis-interpretation of the message that the user is in trouble, particularly if they really are in a suicidal mind frame.    Thorncrag  03:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

This was the appropriate place to raise it, although emergency@ might've been even better - which is now in the guidelines (it wasn't before). --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:33, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Is blocking him policy? And if so/not, is it appropriate? I for one would be more for him being able to talk on his page... even if it meant watching what responses are posted. As long as he is talking... (and sometimes, that's all people need - and it give the chance to point him in the right direction - on that note, from scanning his userpage and realizing he's in the US, I posted the NSPH number). Best, Rob ROBERTMFROMLI ^TALK/_CNTRB 05:14, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There is no policy saying to do so. There is an essay saying that it has sometimes been done. It's not an easy situation for anyone. I personally would also support allowing him to post on his own talk page. Yes I'm sure there are potential drawbacks. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Ks0stm, there are very few circumstances in which the police would report back the outcome to us, and even fewer under which I'd be free to share it here, unfortunately. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:42, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

As we are discussing this I will reiterate the same advice I have given in the past (both on and off WP). Whilst we in LE are always happy to recieve notification of suicide threats such as this please do not simply report it as an emergency by default. These will always be acted upon as an emergency, tying up policy time and effort and risking taking away from other emergencies. They will wake up the ISP's and get log records and dispatch a patrol car :) Factor in how often this happens on the internet and you will not be surprised how often such responses occur. One common fall out is the poster/troll can be in trouble for wasting police time etc. Obviously; if the message seems urgent and clear then the right response is to call the police ASAP. But if the message is ambiguous, unclear or contains no immediate urgency then please report it as a routine matter. I realise that is something of a difficult distinction to make here, especially as non-experts, and so we should always err on the side of caution. But many incidents look a lot like trolling, so a little discretion will always be appreciated. Ultimately: we are not, and should not be, responsible for the actions of others. EDIT: although, to clarify, in this case contacting as an emergency was the right response. I'm only saying the above because of the vastly more vague suicide threats I've seen reported in the last few days :) --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 12:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• Not meaning to rain on the parade, but it seems WP:TOV was once up for policy/guideline and was rejected by the community. Just FYI. Basket of Puppies 15:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It's been up for policy multiple times, and failed. The reason that it's an essay is that there were two prior attempts to do a "real policy" that failed horribly badly; I wrote the essay to cover what admins were doing in best practice, and then various people have fought over making it a policy on and off since then.

There isn't and probably never will be unanimous agreement on it. There really doesn't need to be; if some other person doesn't want to get involved and objects to this way of doing things, that's fine; anyone who sees the situation and choses to do what most admins (and the Foundation) feel is a best practice, here it is.

Responding up a bit to Errant / tmorton166; Your point is well taken, but keep in mind that Wikipedians (even administrators) have no special training in determining how credible threats of suicide are. We've been told unanimously by law enforcement and psychiatrists that if any individual person feels that it's credible at all, reporting it and having the LE and professionals figure it out is appropriate. When people report, they need to do so accurately conveying what was written, so that we don't cause a mistaken response. But we aren't experts.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

This point: When people report, they need to do so accurately conveying what was written is not, I think, currently mentioned in the essay, and is worth adding. There was a recent incident recently where someone had made an edit that to me seemed obviously just a lamentation about the problem of teen suicide and a past tense reference to a past victim; but it was reported to the authorities anyway. It may be appropriate to report such things because, as you say, we are not the experts in deciding what needs action and what doesn't. However, if that approach is taken, then it's essential that what is reported to authorities, is the exact text posted by the person, not an opinion about what we think it means. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:25, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

School project

Resolved

 – No admin action needed at this time. –MuZemike 17:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I was alerted to the existence of an ongoing school project by this unreferenced addition, including a fair amount of POV, to an article. (Admittedly, the article had no explicit references to begin with, but this isn't helping the situation.) Could someone inform Saurette (talk · contribs), the teacher, about the relevant guidelines and such, as I'm feeling too crabby to take care of it and I can't even recall where the WP-space page about such projects resides. I'll inform both JKeedwel and Saurette about the existence of this thread, though. Deor (talk) 01:39, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:School and university projects. Uncle G (talk) 02:29, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

possible Zsfgseg sock

Resolved

 – –MuZemike 17:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

71.249.61.177 (talk · contribs) was caught by the Zsfgseg filter. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 02:23, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Xanderlip / Alexander outrageous personal attack

Xanderliptak (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Alexander Liptak (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
173.24.117.126 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Xanderliptak

I can take a lot of grief from users, but I won't have my integrity questioned. Xander has now gone too far. On wikipedia, in the second part of his new comments shown here,[6] he accuses me of having stolen an image and uploaded it to commons. His statement is an absolute lie, and I want something done about it. I have notified him, on both wikipedia and commons, although he may have signed off for the night. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• Oh look, Xander's RfC/U was just certified. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:11, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
  • And, a mere 6 hours in, the meta-discussion on the RFC's talk page has already reached two levels of nesting, with people discussing the edits made to the discussion of the response to the RFC statement about the original dispute. Uncle G (talk) 03:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• I don't see a big problem here. You seem to be both engaging in bordeline uncivil and antagonistic behaviour. By stealing he obviously just means that there are possible copyright problems with the image - whether that is true or not should be easy to prove. I don't see grounds for a civilty issue here as you are both over the line. I also don't think there are grounds for a legal threat accusation. ·Maunus·ƛ· 03:14, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I didn't claim Xander made a legal threat, I claimed he made a bare-faced lie. Until 45 minutes ago, I had NEVER uploaded anything to commons, so it's unlikely that "a group of editors" would have said I did at some point in the past. In fact, there has never been any such claim. Furthermore, Xander made his comment an hour before I uploaded my very first image at commons. Xander made it up. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:17, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Oops, one correction. Nearly 3 years ago, when I got my commons account, I uploaded 1 file, as a test, that was a photo I had taken.[7] I got some friendly advice on how to label it properly, and dat was dat. If that's the basis of Xander's accusation, he should be banned for incompetency. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:26, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• What is the something that you'd like done? Uncle G (talk) 03:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I mixed him up with another user, he is taking this out of context. The other user already made it clear to him that it was a mix up on Commons, where he also took this issue. [talk] XANDERLIPTAK 03:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah... Just curious... you've apologized for making such an egrerious claim, or did you think that "the other user" making it clear was sufficient? ROBERTMFROMLI ^TALK/_CNTRB 05:31, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

He put his comment directly below mine, so it looked like he was accusing me. What would I like done? Well, it depends on whether he retracts his accusation or not. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Not only has he not retracted it, he has added more fuel.[8] So, is it perfectly OK for an editor to falsely accuse another editor of theft? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:48, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the lie. I see him admitting it was an error. "How many people have to tell you that it was a mix up? You two sound the same to me, I can't help mixing you guys up." Sounds like a mix up to me. Yes, I see his comment wasn't the nicest, adding fuel as you put is, but that's not calling you a liar. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (talk) 06:02, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, so what do I want done? I want Xander sent away until he retracts that lie. His claim that he can't tell me apart from Roux is absurd. He posted it right below my comment. So until he retracts it, it continues to be directed at me, and I won't stand for it. Anyone here who knows me knows that I don't gripe about personal attacks very often. But when it's as naked a lie as this one, something has to be done. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:56, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Bugs, I sympathize with your anger, but I doubt he will be "sent away". I'm certainly not planning to block him. I've asked him to strike the comment and/or your name within it. When he signs on, I hope he will do so. I am not seeing that this is a pattern. If it is, then the best thing to do is document it in the RFC. The best thing for you to do now is to disengage and de-escalate this. Go do something else for a few hours.--Chaser (talk) 06:07, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't get truly angry very often, but this was one of those times. And it's already in the RFC/U, i.e. it's on the talk page right where he posted it, unless he's deleted it since I was last here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• Uh, "Just word vomit about how you wish I was nicer to you both, with ROUX directing you like puppets on what to say, what not to say and where to sign." Accusing me of meatuppetry isn't okay. → ROUX ₪ 11:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• If it's OK I'm just going to link to the diff of that, so it's easier to verify and see the context: [9] —Soap— 14:00, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Daniel Colegrove

Resolved

 – Article sent to AfD. –MuZemike 17:41, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

At least one person who has discovered Wikipedia does not seem to appreciate one Daniel Colegrove, whose article I have sprotected for a short time. The venom may spread over the talk page too. This is a BLP and, as real life beckons, I can't babysit its talk page -- yet I am reluctant to sprotect merely in anticipation of some nastiness. More administrative eyeballs please. -- Hoary (talk) 05:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Non-admin outside perspective The username alone there was indicative of a problem... seems reasonable, given the BLP issues going on there. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the IP about one thing: I don't think he's notable. I'm nominating the article for deletion and watchlisting it.--Chaser (talk) 05:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The Irving Literary Society (Cornell University) - bit of a mess

Following User:Racepacket's recent move of The Irving Literary Society (Cornell University) to Cornell literary societies and subsequent editing, User:Cmagha has cut and pasted the original version of that article to The Irving Literary Society and in the process removed all the edit history as well as creating an unattributed content fork. Also, Talk:The Irving Literary Society (Cornell University)/Archive 1 was not moved when Talk: The Irving Literary Society (Cornell University) was moved to Talk:Cornell literary societies and is now stranded, although I've added a link to it at the newly titled talk page.

I then contacted Cirt because he was the administrator who handled the original restoration of the article after this deletion review, if nothing else to merge the page history of Cornell literary societies to the fork The Irving Literary Society. Although, that's only one aspect of this tangle. However, he suggested [10] that the issue should probably be dealt with here. I will notify User:Racepacket and User:Cmagha of this discussion as well as the talk pages of the relevant articles. Voceditenore (talk) 09:31, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that almost all of the sources deal with a group of four of the student literary societies that existed at Cornell from 1868 to 1888. The sources cited indicate that the Irving (a coeducational literary society that included members from a variety of fraternities) held its last known meeting on May 23, 1887. A current undergraduate fraternity claims (without sources) that the Irving was "absorbed" into that male-only fraternity and that its membership has continued over the years as being co-extensive with the fraternity. They have incorporated a link to The Irving Literary Society (Cornell University) into their website used for rushing and member recruitment. I cannot find any secondary sources to support this claim or the continuation of The Irving as a registered student organization.

To fix up the article to reflect what the sources say (e.g., a discussion of a number of co-equal literary societies) I moved it to Cornell literary societies and changed the phrases "The Iriving and its peers" to "the literary societies". I have also found a number of WP:SYN, WP:OR and mischaracterization of sources problems, which I am trying to fix. As for the latest step, which is User:Cmagha restarted the Irving-centered article at The Irving Literary Society, there are problem because WP:ORG provides "Individual chapters, divisions, departments, and other sub-units of notable organizations are only rarely notable enough to warrant a separate article." So, absent a sourced connection to the Irving, the present-day local fraternity would not justify a separate article. I suggest that we place a notice on WikiProject Cornell, and mobilize an effort to improve the Cornell literary societies article and perhaps start an AFD on the latest content fork. I only became aware of this problem yesterday, and was not aware of Talk:The Irving Literary Society (Cornell University)/Archive 1. A would appreciate any technical help in correcting any mistakes made in the move. Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 12:59, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• I heard from two of the other editors after the title was changed; was somewhat confusing. There is room for both concepts, Racepacket's idea of a general article, and one on the Irving. The Irving article has been through review twice, the original AfD and then the petition to restore under deletion review. What has been harder to understand is the perceived animosity (language such as 'outrageous') and the persistance of the opposition to the article, despite some excellent help along the way. As Racepacket indentifies questions re: factual citations, the editors will address.--Cmagha (talk) 13:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, this is a perfect example of how deletion review is not perfect. At a glance the article looks well crafted, and I think it was for this reason it passed an AFD review. The editors didn't actually take the time to read the sources for the article carefully and compare them with the wiki article. The article should never have been allowed to be recreated. It's chalk full of original research, misconstrued sources, peacockery, and inflated claims that have no supportig evidence. The main editor who contributed to the article has a clear conflict of interest and has repeatedly reverted and or ignored the advice of multiple experienced wikipedians who have tried to point out wiki policy regaurding original research, verifiabilty, etc. Those of us who supported deletion in the first two AFDs got tired of arguing and didn't participate in the deletion review process. If anything the re-created article is worse than the ones that got deleted before. Sigh.4meter4 (talk) 13:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• Ouch. I didn't learn how to revert until someone asked me to help with vandalism about a month ago, so that looks a little dubious, above. When compared to the original, this article does look spiffy, in part because of the great, if not somewhat tonal, coaching.--Cmagha (talk) 00:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
• I wouldn't blame the deletion review process per se. As poor as the "revised" article was (and still is in its current fork), it probably did have sufficient sources to minimally establish notability, at least for the mid-19th century Irving Literary Society at Cornell. Notability is the only remit of deletion discussions and reviews. They are not concerned with content and style issues unless there are BLP or copyright concerns. Content and style issues and COI concerns need to be addressed through ordinary editing. But whether there is eventually one article or two, the current title of the fork The Irving Literary Society is not suitable and should be moved back to The Irving Literary Society (Cornell University). As was pointed out at AfD: The Irving Literary Society, there are multiple distinct Irving Literary Societies in the US, several of which are more notable than this one, have a longer history, and are still in existence. Voceditenore (talk) 13:56, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• I have moved and relinked the article Talk:The Irving Literary Society (Cornell University)/Archive 1. I have tagged the article The Irving Literary Society. However, "don't bite the newbies" can only go so far. I am a bit troubled by the apparent meatpuppet relationship between Cmagha and at least Coldplay3332. Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 12:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Please stop this lunacy!

Resolved

 – article is getting attention, JJB has been made aware of the fact that he should avoid this style in mainspace, anything else should be an RFC/U --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 16:48, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There has been a long-standing discussion on the talk page of Gadsby:_Champion_of_Youth about whether to write the article as a lipogram or not. The book is only notable pretty-much for being a lipogram and the argument is "It would better communicate the 'spirit' of the book." The problem that I (and others) have noted is that the article would communicate little else. It is difficult to read and would not allow mention of the authors name or even the fact that this is a novel and introduces incomparable difficulties in communicating what the lipogram is. This has been discussed, the article has been locked (which just caused everyone to not edit for two weeks while they waited it out. No new discussion, they just waited out the lock). These edits are clearly meant to support the article as a lipogram which was defeated by consensus on the talk page months ago (and that defeat was accepted). Is there some way to stop this once and for all? We have had an admin weigh in and they were simply ignored. Now what? Can someone please take a look at this article and advise us on a way to move forward with this? Thanks. Padillah (talk) 13:13, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There's no question at all that writing the article in this form to be "in the spirit" is a completely ridiculous idea. It'd be like writing On the Road as a stream of consciousness narrative, or removing the capitalization and periods from the E. E. Cummings article. Tarc (talk) 13:30, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

(conflict: Tarc is mostly right but:) Virtually all of this diff was sitting at talk for 15 to 30 days and Padillah had many options to discuss phrasing in this past month. Padillah did not AFAIK formally affirm what is actually our longstanding WP:CON at talk (primarily Martin Hogbin's and my formulation, I grant), in which all contributions (lipogrammatic or not) should work only toward improving phrasing and quality. (This topic has a long and rich lipogrammatic history.) It is also invalid to say I wish to support cutting Wright or apropos information from this topic, as I did not fight any such inclusion in 2009 as various additional datapoints got built out. Padillah also, offhand, put back in a factual misquotation of linguistics journal Word Ways, indicating unfamiliarity with his topic. If this was a discussion about contributions not improving WP, okay; but it's not, and now I'm told about my "lunacy". Thank you for your thoughts. JJB 13:39, 25 Oct 2010 (UTC)

Well, in terms of writing the article as a Lipogram, any local consensus would be summarily overruled by the wider community consensus established in our manual of style guideline. Specifically the note about clarity of prose. Often we can establish exceptions at the article level; but in this case it is quite a divergence from the normal policy that it would need to be considered very widely. So the discussion is somewhat irrelevant; to write it as a lipogram would need full community agreement, and that is unlikely to happen (for the reason noted by Tarc) --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 13:48, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the dumbest idea i've heard on wikipedia in a week, which is saying something. No, you can't form a local consensus to write lipogramaticaly, or with pictograms, or in pig-latin. An escalating series of blocks is the best way to deal with this if it goes further. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bali ultimate (talk • contribs)

Agree with others above. We are an encyclopedia written in clear, readable, explanatory prose. There's no room there for style deviations this serious, and no way that a local consensus can override plain community norms like this. — Gavia immer (talk) 14:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Not a good idea. For an example of why, see John J. Bulten/JJB's post above; that mangled style of writing is what a lipogram looks like. This kind of stylistic wankery is not suitable for a Wikipedia article.  pablo 14:13, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There's something dodgy in general with that article. So many apparent sources, leading to so few places (most of them newspaper articles dressed up to look like book citations, to the work itself without page numbers, etc...) Will probably take a hard look at this myself.Bali ultimate (talk) 14:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Bali, I'll happily assist, but kindly discuss to avoid mistaking anything, thanks. JJB 14:45, 25 Oct 2010 (UTC)

To be fair I'm not very good at ref clean-up but this is a remnant of when (get this) some editors tried to make the entire text, refs and all, lipogrammatic. There was, at one point, an effort to remove 'e' from links and refs and everything. So everything turned into a Harvard ref and that led to the mess you see before you today. You are correct to assume that this particular novel is not very notable; and is only that notable for being a lipogram. Padillah (talk) 14:27, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

JJB should know that his using lipogram/mangled writing in articles or Wikipedia space is annoying and inappropriate, and the fact that he continues to do it here is disturbing as it has been brought up before, see [11]. Dougweller (talk) 14:28, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

(conflict) @All: Whoa! Piling on! And hard words from Pablo X. Can you all stop fighting with that strawman for a bit, if you don't mind? This is not about making this topic into a lipogram. A good paradigm was laid down in 2009 and I am still using it. Assuming good faith, Padillah is too. If you want to work on phrasing, go for it. But attacking is not apropos on this board, thanks. JJB 14:45, 25 Oct 2010 (UTC)

I have to say, I thought that the section header was over the top, but after reading this, I have to agree. The novel is an artistic exercise, while the article is, or should be, an attempt to inform about the subject. Now, this is a volunteer project, and if a volunteer chooses to style their writing in this way, fine. However, there should be no attempt to impose, or even prefer this manner of writing within the article. If even one wiki link that otherwise would be in the article is lost due to this foolishness, the cost is too high. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 14:41, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Xymmax for this nonlunacy. JJB 14:45, 25 Oct 2010 (UTC)

"October" contains an "e". Wright would not approve.--SPhilbrickT 15:31, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

This seems to being treated as an RfC rather than an admin issue. As far as I can see no allegations of wrongdoing have been raised about anyone, there is simply a disagreement about the style of the article. It would therefore be more sensible to have an RfC. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:42, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Agreed. Marking resolved with much the same advice. --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 16:48, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

User talk:Factomancer

Blocked user is launching personal attacks against a living person. I will not delve into the details as not give more work to oversighters. My removal of the attack was described as "vandalism" and reverted. More eyes needed. I would suggest full protection of the page.--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 13:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

What "personal attacks against a living person"? You not only removed 3+kB of other material that does not even mention a living person, you additionally restored a warning left by another user that Factomancer had removed. Your addition of that you "will not delve into the details" is incredibly dishonest and only meant to influence a reader into thinking there is material in there that is oversightable. There isnt, and the fact that you cant say what about the material you removed violates BLP is telling. nableezy - 13:56, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Factomancer said Jimbo Wales encourages pro-Israeli manipulation of wikipedia for money. She also implied that as an Objectivist, he hates Arabs like Ayn Rand did. Hope this helps. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 14:02, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The first part of that is true, the second is not. She does write that Jimbo has encouraged Israeli manipulation, but she does not imply that he "hates Arabs". But if those lines are a problem Brewcrewer could have removed those lines. He didnt, he erased everything and reinstated a warning the user had deleted. nableezy - 14:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

He reverted the edit that inserted the BLP violation, as you often do.

I think she does imply that Jimbo hates Arabs. Some more eyes on this should sort this out. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 15:02, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

This should address your concerns. nableezy - 15:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Not sure why you redacted the fact that Jimbo is an Objectivist (information that appears in his article) unless you were trying to blur the connection Factomancer is making with Ayn Rand and her alleged hatred of Arabs.

She also makes some personal attacks against other editors.

I think someone less involved than you should have a look at this. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 16:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I blanked that he is an "objectivist figurehead", if you would like to reinsert it feel free. But the purported reason that brewcrewer blanked and then requested indefinite full-protection was BLP violation. Is there anything on that page that qualifies as a BLP violation now or not? If not, whats the problem here? nableezy - 16:09, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Put me down for a big helping of moot. Factomancer says they have retired. If they have truly retired then why don't we just let sleeping dogs lie? This user has been associated with more than enough drama over the past year or so, let's let it end now if that is what they want. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Our BLP policy does not grant exception to retiring editors. Besides, Factomancer appears to be one of those serial "retirers". This is not the first time.--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 22:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Is there currently anything on that page that violates BLP? If so, what? And is calling a user a drama queen a personal attack? nableezy - 23:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

ONE WEEK FREEZE requested on deleting US election/candidate articles

It is a week and a day before the U.S. elections, and suddenly a lot of candidate articles are being deleted (examples: Scott M. Sipprelle and Douglas Herbert). This is not the time for this. The world will not end if we wait a week, but we will get lots of unwanted news coverage if this continues prior to the election, seriously harming the reputation of Wikipedia. I have no quarrel if someone deletes an article which was slapped together in the past week or so by a rabid partisan and has no non-partisan voter information links, etc. I do have a problem with articles which have been around for months, show quite a number of people spending time and effort, and weren't discussed for notability until now. I wish I had caught some of them earlier myself (such as the Herbert article), but I didn't, so for now I added some links and did some formatting - and will be more than happy to nominate it for merging after the election is over. But imo it wouldn't be right to rush to judgement now, and certainly not to nominate all the 'challenger' articles now just so I could delete them in a week, the day before the election, as seems to be the 'new plan'. Think of Wikipedia's reputation. Several of us have been marking articles for merging, we have participated in discussions, but some articles were missed, and some articles didn't reach a clear consensus so we're waiting until after the elections. 'We the serious workers' have been trying to assume good faith. I can't say the same for these "johnny-came-latelies". (And yes, partisanship can be seen in deleting likely-to-win candidate articles for one party, and only "no-real-hopers" from another. Thanks for asking.) Flatterworld (talk) 15:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Am I missing something? Douglas Herbert hasn't been deleted. It hasn't even been sent to AFD Nil Einne (talk) 15:14, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It had (very appropriately) been turned into a redirect to the article on the district, since this is a pretty pathetic excuse for a claim for notability; but another editor reverted the redirect. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:17, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes just noticed [12]. Sorry I missed that Nil Einne (talk) 15:19, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It should be simple: articles that meet the GNG and WP:POLITICIAN are kept, and articles that don't are removed. I think Tarc's approach on Douglas Herbert above was pretty good: redir for now, and if people happen to win the office then they would be notable and could have an article (which could just be retrieved from the history). How many articles on candidates for the UK Parliamentary Elections did we allow to persist earlier this year? An alternative to how Tarc was approaching it is that questionable notable candidates for offices can be put up for AFD, you know. I bet the questionably notable candidates for offices attempting to use Wikipedia to further their campaign would love that. Syrthiss (talk) 15:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. We've consistently treated such candidates in many elections for many nations, states, provinces and localities the same way. In this specific case, I am not seeing much notability, yet. Resolute 15:33, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

And at this point what is accomplished by sending one of these candidates to AFD when we don't know what the status will be when the AFD is over? Candidates sent over last week, no problem. If they are already at AFD, no problem. But let's hold off on any new noms because by the time the AFD is over the AFD will be over and we'll have a better sense of what is going on.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:43, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• (ec)Strong Support I agree. At this point in time, sending articles to AFD will be counterproductive. Whether the candidate currently meets N or not, all we are going to do is end up with a number of AFD's and long debates over notability---which in most cases will not really be determinable until next Tuesday anyway. EG An article gets nominated for AFD tomorrow. The AFD runs it's course. We have a lot of people checking out Doug's page at the last minute to find out who the candidate is. They see the AFD tag and join in the discussion. Suddenly we have a score of politically motivated individuals chiming in on a debate concerning notability. If the AFD ends in favor of keeping the candidate, but they fail to win what happens? Do we keep the failed candidate because we ran an AFD the week before the election and the people who joined in the conversation were interested in the debate? Or if the AFD ends in favor of deleting the candidate, but they do win the position, thus becoming notable---do we delete the article because the AFD said to delete? In other words, by the time the AFD comes to resolution, we will have a clearer picture of who really meets our notability guidelines. In the mean time, I agree with Flatterworld, if we send a lot of articles to AFD because they haven't won yet, we might get a lot of coverage. Any time debating these candidates right now would be wasted and would likely be riddled with people coming to the AFD pages from outside of WP. Let's just put a moritorium on them until after the election at which point we can better and more accurately assess who is worth keeping and who we have to get rid of. Plus, at this point in time, the person(s) who are likely to nominate these articles are going to be the ones who have interest in the elections---eg more motivated by politics than by WP policies/guidelines.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:41, 25 October 2010 (UTC) NOTEMoving ot Neutral I still think this is a good idea, but I just went through the last 3 days of current AFD's and 3 days worth of AFD's just prior to the 2008 election cycle. I was convinced that there would be some obvious examples showing how this had been abused, but I didn't see it being abused. Is it a concern? Yes. Am I willig to revisit it? Definitely, if you can show me how it was abused in 2008 and is being abused right now. So eventhough I can see the benefit of of the proposal, I'm not sure if I am convinced of the need.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:58, 25 October 2010 (UTC)NOTE 2: Moving back to support.Tarc has decided to make this into an issue and has decided to be pointy about these cases. In any AFD the guidance should be for the closing administrator. The closing administrator shuold not be acting to delete these cases until next Monday or Tuesday at the earliest---at which point, having this discussion becomes a moot point. Any guidance provided needs to be based upon the final resolution of the election. Any !vote taken prior to that is guesswork as to what the situation will be at that time.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 19:11, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. If it were, we would have a lot more articles on people's sister's cousin's friend's Myspace bands. Syrthiss (talk) 15:48, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

(ec)You are exactly right, Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, which is why we SHOULDN'T be deleting anything until after the election. At this point running an AFD is wasted time and energy. In the time that it takes us to run an AFD we will have a more conclusive answer as to whether or not somebody is or isn't notable.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:53, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• oppose I understand where the requester is coming from, but this is inherently non-workable. Does this mean, for example, that every city council candidate, every non-starter candidate (though I like that Rent is Too Damn High party guy!) can set up a page on wikipedia and not have it deleted until after next Tuesday? Obviously we don't want a flood of non-notable candidates setting up pages on wikipedia and being retained unexamined. Finally, if we do this for the US, why not for other countries? Elections in Burma are coming up as well with thousands of candidates, minor and major, who should be covered by this generalized one week exemption. To be brief, this is an unworkable bad idea. --RegentsPark (talk) 15:49, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I would go along with a caveat, that this would only apply to people who are running for positions that are generally deemed notable (Governor, US Congressmen, and US House of Rep.)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
    • That still lets in a host of minor candidates (like the Rent is Too Damn High party's Jimmy McMillan who is amongst seven candidates running for Governor of New York). Also, what about Burma?--RegentsPark (talk) 16:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
      • The fact that you can mention the Rent is too damn high party and people know what you are talking about clearly indicates Jimmy's notoriety and the fact that he's become an internet sensation. As for Burma, we are only talking about positions wherein notability would generally be perceived if they won (Congressmen,Governor,Representative.) If we are talking about a Burmese position that generally conveys notability, then fine... but I don't think the Burmese get as rabid about editing wikipedia.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
        • JM may or may not be notable but that's precisely what AfD is there for. Meanwhile there are four other candidates, and I saw them all on the debate, but even I can't remember their names. Bottom line, there are lots of countries and lots of elections with loads of minor candidates who are there just for the heck of it. I think this is a slippery slope that is best not ventured onto. --RegentsPark (talk) 16:56, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
          • RegentsPark, I was clear that I was talking about articles which have been around for months, NOT those recently created. Flatterworld (talk) 17:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support per Balloonman. We can do all the cleanup needed next week. Jclemens (talk) 15:49, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose Many don't even pass the requirements of WP:BLP. Wikipedia is WP:NOTWEBHOST, and being on Wikipedia should never be used as an attempt to actually gain some kind of notability. I still have a userspace draft around of someone who was notable on their own and then ran for city council, lost, and the article was deleted ... there are too many wannabe's. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 15:56, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• oppose subjects should pass notability. There are far too many no name, no chance of winning whatsoever articles out there. If they are notable they stay. If no they don't seems reasonable. We should not have a moratorium on removing fringe people who have no notability. The problem with most politician articles is noone cares until the week before the election so the only time to remove them without them having an unneeded article forever is now. -Tracer9999 (talk) 16:08, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose - Wikipedia is not a free web hosting service for every third-party write-in candidate for city dog catcher and similar elected offices. Candidates that meet Wikipedia's usual criteria for inclusion should be kept while those that fail these standards should not be saved just because they might someday become notable. --Allen3 ^talk 16:11, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support And ask that sudden spates of negative information be avoided in any such BLPs. The deadline on WP is long enough for this. Collect (talk) 16:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose, as redirector. - I'll explain my rationalization here. Following participation in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andy Barr (Kentucky) last week, I decided to sift through United States House of Representatives elections, 2010 – complete list to see what else was there. What I found was a lot of people with Wikipedia articles who do not meet the threshold of either WP:GNG or WP:POLITICIAN, so I redirected them to the appropriate district race article and section. I left alone anyone with a hint of notability...i.e. state senators, mayors, city council, leading businessman, etc... Everything I redirected was the article of a person who had done nothing else but be nominated by their party to run for office; Rep, Dem, and Green were unspared. Even some of those who were only candidates but seemed to have demonstrated sufficient notability (i.e. Stephene Moore I left alone. Purposefully leaving these notability failures in place for a week under some kind of silly "freeze" proposal is tantamount to free electioneering IMO. Non-notable is non-notable, whether a week or a year before an election. Nothing was deleted, so if any of these people actually win, that simply gets undone; nothing is lost. I'd rather not waste AfD time on certain redirect results, so the desired outcome her would be for Flatterworld (and InaMaka now that I look at some contribs here), two warring factions of an ideological debate if I ever saw some, to restore the redirects. Tarc (talk) 16:14, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
  • At the time the Stephene Moore article was created, she was considered the likely winner. I'm not part of some 'warring faction' here, and obviously you haven't checked out my contributions to figure that out. Flatterworld (talk) 16:33, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• (edit conflict × 2) Oppose per BWilkins: if the fact that they're running for a notable positions means they suddenly hit the news in a week, then an article can be written at that point. But any subject which does not meet our notability guidelines now can and should be deleted, and any article simply attempting to use wikipedia to gain notability or advertise their polical campaign should be speedily deleted as G11. Note that I have not looked at the articles specifically so I'm not making any specific recommendations for AfD or speedy deletion in any particular case, but I strongly oppose a blanket against-policy "freeze" of taking these articles to AfD; the articles should be assessed against policy in the same way as any other article. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 16:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose As per BWilkins and Giftiger wunsch - being a candidate no one ever heard of shouldn't guarantee an article, certainly shouldn't let people use us for publicity. Dougweller (talk) 16:23, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Strong Support and Clarification: I am talking about official candidates, on the general election ballot, for U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator. Many of these are involved in "Tossup" races, so our readers are indeed interested in learning about them - particularly in following the links to Project Vote Smart, Open Secrets, Follow the Money, the FEC, etc. Furthermore, I am talking about articles which have been around for months and no one was interested in deleting them. There are articles which were discussed/merged/deleted earlier, when tempers were a bit cooler. As I said earlier Douglas Herbert is an example of an article I wish I had caught earlier. Scott M. Sipprelle is another article I restored today, and I suggest you consider that. He's not a "no-hoper" (unlike Herbert), and there's definitely growing page views. Assuming we exist to provide information, and assuming there's some wisdom in crowds as to what they're interested in, I simply see no reason to delete all these articles right before the election.. Flatterworld (talk) 16:25, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

  Note the above comment is also by the nominator, so when/if it comes time to tally, don't double-count.

  It has nothing to do with no-hopers or shoe-ins, it has to do with the project's accepted standards for notability, and just being a candidate doesn't cut it on its own. An encyclopedia is not a campaign guide. Also, if you look at the complete list, the majority of challengers don't even have pages. I'd wager that the majority of what does exist for these non-notable figures were started by staffers or close-to-the-source partisans. Tarc (talk) 16:39, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

But a candidate as you mention in a toss-up race would qualify because of significant coverage, yes? JodyB _talk 16:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose WP:Politician does a fine job of handling these articles. Any candidate with significant coverage in reliable sources stays. No need to make some big change here. JodyB _talk 16:30, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Again, see [Scott M. Sipprelle]] which I restored today. Flatterworld (talk) 16:38, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Comment -- Here is another example: The next to last version of an article about Ed Potosnak, who is a Congressional candidate in the district next to that of Douglas Herbert. This article was turned into a redirect three days ago, but nobody has reverted it, so it's still a redirect, to United States House of Representatives elections in New Jersey, 2010#District 7. I agree with the originator of this thread that the week before an election is not the time to be disappearing and/or reappearing articles about candidates, especially major-party candidates for a national-level legislature. In fact, I would make it a longer period than that. So I am neither supporting nor opposing the "one week freeze" since I don't think it goes far enough. I would go for a retroactive freeze going back to (say) the beginning of October, which I assume would be even less popular with those who oppose the current proposal. Then I think there needs to be a discussion about WP:POLITICIAN and whether it is too restrictive, but that can wait until after the election. Neutron (talk) 16:34, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
  • No, it does a lousy job when there are hundreds of articles and only a week before the election. As I said, see Scott M. Sipprelle which I resotred today. Flatterworld (talk) 16:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

That article should stay because it has significant coverage in reliable sources. JodyB _talk 16:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Excellent example - you should have checked the discussion on it as there was clearly no consensus to delete and Tarc simply acted on his own. That's the partisanship I'm talking about, and why we need a freeze. Flatterworld (talk) 16:48, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

When in the linked example you start using phrases like 'it is an insult', and calling people partisan I start to think that you may be getting too heavily involved in this discussion. Syrthiss (talk) 16:52, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Syrthiss, you misread that. That was a separate comment about each District in the election article itself. I checked the official candidate list form the Secretary of State and found lots of candidate which weren't listed as candidates in the District section. Nothing to do with Potosnak. Please stop jumping to wild conclusions bsed on a quick skimming of a Talk page. Flatterworld (talk) 16:59, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I misread nothing. In the link you give discussion here (I agree with no connection to Potosnak), you say that to leave names out "is an insult". Syrthiss (talk) 17:08, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• • (ecx3)Until next week any discussion on these candidates is meaningless. Plus, if you are going strictly off of coverage, then any failed Senatorial/Governor/Representative from one of the major parties would be notable and this whole thing would be meaningless. Until next week, all people will argue is that there is a ton of coverage, but ignore the guidance about failed candidates.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:43, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• It might be too early to close right now, but this does seem like a discussion which won't go very far unless something changes in what it is that is being asked/proposed here.... Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:39, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. We should not be an election campaign notice-board. Let the normal rules apply. JohnCD (talk) 16:41, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Strong Support Per Flatterworld.--InaMaka (talk) 16:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support While I understand the concern that Wikipedia can be used for political promotion by non-notable candidates, a week out from an election the risk of ill-intentioned deleting outweighs it. Arbor832466 (talk) 17:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

So, we send the world a signal that Wikipedia is not for promotion except for a week before any election, when it is open house for candidates' campaign posters? JohnCD (talk) 17:15, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

See WP:SPEEDYKEEP. Any disruptive nomination will be speedily kept. You're not proposing watching out for disruptive nominations, however, you're proposing allowing non-notable individuals to use wikipedia to further their political campaign and make them immune from community discussion. That cannot be allowed. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 17:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: Does anyone else find it concerning that the last two support !votes have come from users who have been left a note by Flatterworld which isn't exactly neutral? "The deletes are being done by people I don't recognize being involved in any actual article work." [sic] GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 17:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

  Well, Flatterworld did also post that same message to OrangeMike who appears to oppose above (supporting the redirect) at the same time. Syrthiss (talk) 17:17, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

  I noticed that, but it doesn't alleviate my concerns that the message was campaigning, being a non-neutral message. It should have been a simple notification, not attempting to colour the discussion by suggesting that those in favour of deletion are somehow less entitled to their opinion. The user also should have informed those who proposed deletion or created the redirects, or it is also votestacking, addressing only those who the user feels may agree (the fact that Orangemike disagreed doesn't change that, I don't see Tarc being notified, for example). Actually Tarc was notified, but with an entirely different message (and a rather less civil one). GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 17:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

  Tarc was the first person of the four people notified. Granted neutrally worded is the preferred manner, but he did notify people on both sides of the spectrum and did so promptly and in limited scale.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:27, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

  Giftiger, I left messages for the only two Wikipedians who have been involved with lots of election and candidate articles on an ongoing basis this time around, including earlier discussions of when to delete, merge, etc. OrangeMike I remembered as being quite involved in 2008. You really should try viewing the contributions of each of us before you go into ooh!ooh! mode. (btw - I didn't appreciate Tarc's attitude, particularly after all the contributions I've made in this area. Anyone who calls me 'sport' in such a contemptuous fashion deserves whaevert they get, imo. 'Assume Good Faith' is not a suicide pact.) Flatterworld (talk) 18:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

  Well, I can't say that I cared much for unilateral reversion of the redirects without thought or comment, so "Touché, Pussy Cat!. :) Tarc (talk) 18:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. WP:GNG and WP:POLITICIAN exist for a reason. Notable candidates stay and non-notable candidates go (or get redirected to the appropriate election artic) per WP:Wikipedia is not a source for election candidate biographies. As I've stated quite a few times in related Afds, I interpret routine election coverage to fall under WP:NOTNEWS. If a non-notable candidate receives coverage in the context of the election, then per WP:BLP1E a redirect should be made to the election article. Location (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose, if we're putting in bolded stuff here. I fail to see how this is different from any other form of crystal ballery. If the candidate later becomes notable, we can always put the article back iff such a thing happens. If not, why give such articles special treatment? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:26, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose.' The candidates that people are actually interested in will be covered by the media and they're notable. The others, no great loss. That's the point of WP:GNG.  Sandstein  05:41, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't this raise a BLP concern?

I'm breaking this out into a separate area because I think Collect has made an extremely salient point that might get overlooked by people looking at this primarily from an AFD/Notability criteria. This is the final week before one of the most heated elections in American History. Venture onto any candidates page or issue and you'll see a ton of heated debates. I've been called to moderate a few over the past few weeks and it is never fun.

As the final week approaches us, we will be confronted with people nominating candidates for deletion based upon notability issues. This can be done in an attempt to discredit said individuals. As such, the nom itself would become a BLP concern. Even if the nom isn't, then there may be allegations/statements made on the candidates AFD pages that are not supported and cross the line becoming a BLP violation.

No we are not a campaign notice board, but there is no harm done to wikipedia in allowing these articles to exist for one week more (the length of time it would take to get an AFD through anyways) to find out who really does and does not meet the expectations of POLITICIAN. Any !vote now doesn't really matter, what happens in a week (when the AFD would end) will really play a huge role in whether or not an article is kept or deleted.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:56, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I of course agree, but some of those 'Merge' notices (including some I posted myself) were made with the consensus of the workers at the time that they wouldn't be acted upon until after the election. We deleted and merged the obvious ones (such as a no-hoper candidate/staff doing a quick cut and paste from their campaign site, no outside refs other than those quoting the campaign site) but the rest we decided to give the benefit of the doubt for the time being. My crystal ball is on the blink, unfortunately. ;-) Flatterworld (talk) 17:04, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

"No harm" ? Really? Also, I will note again that I paid zero attention to party affiliation. As far as I can recall, (R), (D), and even a (G) all met the ax. Tarc (talk) 17:02, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Er Tarc, you missed the entire point. Nominating them MAY DO harm, leaving them without an AFD tag avoids the BLP issue. And last time I checked noharm was an opinion on an essay, whereas no harm is one of our key policies. Guess which one wins?------Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Lemme get this straight. Your argument is that readers coming here to look up info on the candidate would be negatively prejudiced by a big "This article is subject to deletion" banner, therefore we should forgo the AfD process? Like "hey, this clown can't even keep a Wiki article? Hah, I'm not voting for him then!" To that I would say bullshit. And honestly, I question the basic voting competence of anyone who comes to an "anyone can edit" to find honest information on a political candidate. Tarc (talk) 17:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Nominating an article for deletion based on the fact that it doesn't meet our policies is not a WP:BLP problem, and claiming such is a horrendous failure to assume good faith. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 17:08, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Tarc, deleting a Republican 'contender' and a Democratic 'no hoper' is hardly the same thing. I restored both, and will now check the others. I also note you're not the only one doing these deletes, which is why I posted the freeze request. Flatterworld (talk) 17:11, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be nominated with the intent of causing harm. In some cases it will be, but the reality is that the effect might be.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, that's utter nonsense I'm afraid. Any article may be nominated for deletion if the subject does not meet our inclusion criteria, and it's not a BLP violation to nominate such an article. If you can demonstrate that specific articles meet our criteria, then they will be kept. If they don't meet the criteria, they'll be deleted. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 17:15, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't the fact the article exists pose another massive potential BLP problem. In that people could edit them negatively/positively. So for that reason we should summarily delete all of these articles to avoid any such problems. Ok, that was sarcasm, but I think there is strong rationale for imposing strong delete requirements on non-notable politicians in the run up to an election, it's easily the biggest example of "recentism" causing a groundswell of NN articles. --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 17:23, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, no. The software flags a lot of vandalism-type edits which are then corrected. Flatterworld (talk) 18:27, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't see the BLP concern here. As noted, our notability criteria is what it is. Either an individual meets it, or they don't. If they don't, their article can be put up at AFD, redirected, PRODed, etc. I see no value in changing our process because of what can only be characterized as highly speculatory fears of some kind of undefined harm resulting from us following our own policies. Resolute 19:07, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Who creates these?

Analysis;

• Scott M. Sipprelle > Demintz13 (talk · contribs)
• Douglas Herbert > Wikipeople101 (talk · contribs)
• Scott Eckersley > MO Ro mney (talk · contribs) (with a likely WP:COI from a Jeckersley (talk · contribs)
• Jim Meffert > Ribaldknave (talk · contribs) and contribs from Wildgopher47 (talk · contribs)
• John Flerlage > Crudblue (talk · contribs)

What we have here are one-and-dones using the project for political advocacy. Tarc (talk) 17:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and who is likely to nominate them for deletion? People using the project for political advocacy. And when it goes to AFD who is going to participate? AFD regulars? Wikipedia regulars? In many cases yes, but for the next week we are likely to get a strong dose of political advocacy intejected in there. It would be easier and clearer just to wait.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:03, 25 October 2010 (UTC) (NOTE:Redacted with italicized info added.)

Baloonman, I seriously suggest you start assuming good faith rather than accusing the entire community of acting upon political motivations, because such accusations simply make it clear that you have a conflict of interest here. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 17:11, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Besides the Tea Party article where I've been asked to moderate, you'll find that I haven't participated in any political articles/afds/etc---I find them tedious and laborious--especially at this point in time where we have tons of people crawling out of the wood work to participate on these articles. I think we would be much much better served waiting a week until we know who won and who lost. But I will concede that this comment might have been taken too broadly, as many people might not be motivated from that perspective.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:14, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The fact is, the only arguments which are worth anything in an AfD discussion are arguments which demonstrate that the article fails to meet wikipedia policy or guidelines, such as WP:GNG and the like. As always, any arguments to delete an article on a notable subject without a policy-based rationale, will simply be ignored. Disruptive nominations will be closed as speedy keep. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 17:28, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

So for the next week, we will get "Delete, candidate is only a candidate, has not won the position, therefore does not meet WP:POLITICIAN." Which, come next Tuesday is outdated because the candidate did win and is now the Representative/Senator/Governor of a state? Waiting a week, the time it would take the AFD to run anyways, will give everybody a much better picture of who really meets our Notability guidelines and who doesn't.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:41, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball; we can't predict whether they'll win their elections or not. At the moment, many of the candidates are not notable. That means at the moment, the articles should not exist. If they are elected and thus meet the notability criteria afterwards, the articles can be freely recreated. I would suggest that any of these articles which are deleted at AfD, should be userfied so that they may be easily updated and returned to mainspace if they do overcome the issues raised at AfD, otherwise they can be discarded. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 17:45, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It's because we can't predict that it is a waste of time to have these discussions. Any AFD started after tomorrow, the election will be over before the AFD is over. Any discussion that occurs BEFORE the election results is largely predicated upon the final outcome of said election. That being said, I did move to neutral above because I'm not convinced this is a problem needing an answer or an answer looking for a problem. In other words, I think sending articles to AFD this week is a waste of time, but I don't think we need to legislate not sending them to AFD.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:13, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

If they win, then the articles get un...wait for it...redirected. No history lost, and editing goes on. Tarc (talk) 17:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

While you snicker and smirk at our readers who were trying to find informationa bout the candidates BEFORE the election. Brilliant. Flatterworld (talk) 18:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to the actions of Tarc, ininstating support of the ban. It should be noted that anybody who !votes in one of his Pointy AFDs should do so from the perspective of not whether or not the article meets notability today, but rather will it when the time comes to delete it?---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 19:08, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but that is extremely misguided guidance you're providing, then. Anyone who weighs in on the discussion should do so with reasons that are grounded in actual editing policies and guidelines, not gazing into Professor Trelawney's crystal ball to predict election results. Tarc (talk) 19:14, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The earliest they can be deleted per policy is Monday night. The night before the elections. Any guidance provided re deletion/keeps will be premature/heated/and a waste of effort.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 19:26, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not Wikipedia's job to serve as a platform for non-notable candidates in an election. People looking for information can go to the websites of those candidates and local papers, advocacy sites, etc. As to AFD being a waste of time, if there are five candidates in one election, all of whom are presently NN, only one would become notable next week. Four of those articles would still be deleted or redirected, and in the case of the winner, any admin with half a brain would simply close their AfD as mooted, since every "delete - nn" argument would be obsolete. Resolute 19:11, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

And Resolute, what administrator with half a brain would delete an article the night before the election knowing that the candidate might win the next day? What kind of press would that garner wikipedia? I can see the headlines now: "Wikipedia Deleted the articles of 20 newly elected politicians due to notability the night before the election." At a certain point, common sense has to come into play. The only smart thing that an admin could do next Monday or Tuesday would be to relist the article.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 19:17, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

All 20 of which would be restored before the newspapers hit the stands. Of course, it is unlikely that anyone but The Register would care too much about that, and the obvious rebuttal is "they weren't any more notable than any other candidate before they were elected". Resolute 19:38, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Balloon, ca you pelase drop "they will be deleted" canard? They were, and hopefully will be again, R-E-D-I-R-E-C-T-E-D. That means that the casual reader that some are so terribly concerned for here will not meet a dead end, will not wind up in an "OMG WIKIPEDIA IS TEH SUXX0RZ!" press article on election night. As far as they are concerned, their "search" will simply take them to a congressional district section of their state's elections. Tarc (talk) 19:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Tarc, you know very well that as far as our readers are concerned, your version of a Merge (which has only been a redirect in the articles you've hit so far) means the material is deleted because they won't see it. Or are you telling us to believe that our typical reader will know enough to scroll up to the top of the election article (because the redirect is to the District section), click on the redirect, then click on History, then look for the earlier 'long' version of the article, then click on that, and finally read it for the information you're claiming has not been deleted - as opposed to our readers assuming there never was an article, just a redirect from the get-go. And of course that's not even possible if they're using the mobile version of Wikipedia. You seem to be rather delusional about our readers. As far as our readers are concerned, you deleted the article. And they will not be able to rely on Wikipedia to learn about the candidate before they vote. And you think that's hilarious. Flatterworld (talk) 20:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Whelp, that's that

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Douglas Herbert
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scott M. Sipprelle (2nd nomination)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Steve Raby

I take the above straw poll as non consensus leaning towards oppose, for a "freeze", so off we go with a few trial balloons. Tarc (talk) 18:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Dear Tarc: Flatterworld has made very good points and it is only a few days from the election. I noticed that you have taken it upon yourself--without any input from other editors or even rudimentary attempt to reach concensus--merge complete articles out of existence. Please see: Michel Faulkner. Under no circumstance does the discussion above give you the ability to be the judge, jury, and executioner of some of these candidate articles. The discussion process alone will take up the remainder of the time between now and Election Day. Please keep that in mind when you head out to release a "few trial balloons".--InaMaka (talk) 19:15, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, because inviting community discussion as to whether an article should be deleted, per long-established, regular process, is the same as being "judge, jury, and executioner". GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 19:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

And I would take this to be a case of being extremely WP:Pointy---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

No, it is a case of having to deal with several obstinate editors who wish to circumvent notability guidelines for the sake of an election, or (in Flatterworld's admission) for the sake of how the media may view the Wikipedia getting rid of candidate's articles before an election. I'd rather not take the time to create an AfD for every article that this crew has reversed a redirect on; I'd optimistically like to see a bit of snowfall on the two created so far, then come back here with that showing of consensus and handle the rest without the need of AfDs. Hence the "trial balloon" term. Tarc (talk) 19:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Anybody who snowball deletes them will be doing so against polcy. The earliest these can be deleted, will be Monday night the night before the election. If we have a mass deletion the evening before the election, then I too would be thinking about what the media might say. No admin in their right mind would delete one of these articles the night before. Thus, again, I call it pointy.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 19:24, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Invoking snow, where appropriate, is not against policy. If there are no valid keeps, I could see these wrapping up in a day or two. I have to think if I'd gotten on the ball with this a week or so ago then all this wouldn't have generated so much noise. But y'know, shit happens, and here we are on 10-25-10. I find the "but we're only 8 days away" argument to be quite poor. Tarc (talk) 19:37, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

sorry to but in but, the day we/you/I give a rat's azz what the media might say or write is a sorry one in deed, imho. Stick to policy/guidelines. Forget about the day before election business. There will always be something happening event/election wise....anyways, carry on :)...--Threeafterthree (talk) 20:08, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Invoking WP:SNOW is fine where the deletion is non-controversial. The discussion here should show that any such deletion, in this topic area and at this time, would be controversial, and thus SNOW does not apply. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 20:24, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

If anything it will snow keep... and you might as well pull Scott's nom now and concede that he is notable.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:25, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

COMMENT. Tarc has also requested an AfD for Steve Raby, so I added him to the list above. Flatterworld (talk) 21:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

This is a major problem

This poses a major problem, as several excellent points have already been raised. However, one point which I think is forgotten is that if we let every single candidate (official or otherwise) have an article we risk having articles for non-notable candidates (as in, no third-party coverage) which gives them undue weight, AND those articles are very exposed to BLP violations whereas they won't likely be watched well. It's a double-edged sword. The community really needs to decide how to handle this from a process standpoint and evenly enforce whatever process is adopted by consensus. This is very much like Schrödinger's cat: a candidate cannot be both notable and non-notable at the same time. I would argue that for several reasons, an candidate being on the ballot is not enough notability to warrant an article.    Thorncrag  20:39, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and define and distinguish why A7 wouldn't be invoked either.    Thorncrag  20:41, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

If you think A7 is an option, then you should probably review the CSD criteria. CSD is explicitly set for a lower threshold than N. All it requires is a credible claim to significance---anybody who is running for Senator/Representative/Governor clearly is making a credible claim to significance. So, even if an article clearly fails to meet N/POLITICIAN, that does not mean it is eligible for CSD.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

(ec)I would have no problem with limiting this proposal to the major parties for Senator/Representative/Governor. We've already had one person start AFD's to make a WP:POINT... if he had chosen to let somebody else do so (or even wait a few days) this would have probably blown over, but he made a conscious decision to do so and post that decision here (the epitome of POINT.)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. Whether running for office is a credible claim is a philosophical question, not a question of Wikipedia policy. Personally, I question if it is. But that's not up to me to decide (or you, respectfully).    Thorncrag  20:52, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Once again Balloon, it would be in your best interests to stop lying and misrepresenting my actions here. I have no "point" to make; I wish to see ANY article held up to our established notability guidelines. Whether it is a politician, a famous person's son, or a toy makes no difference to me; show that it is notable, otherwise it should be canned. Tarc (talk) 20:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thorncrag, your first point is NOT what we're arguing. The argument for the freeze is only for deleting articles this close to the election which have been around for quite awhile already. imo it shows serious disrespect and contempt for some volunteers here who, I presume, have been working on these articles in good faith. Now it looks for all the world as if some thought it would be hilarious to let them seek out all this third-party coverage, format footnotes, do all that work - just so someone like Tarc could pull the rug out from under them a week before the election. Jerking our volunteers around is not in the Wikipedia mission statement. The campaigns have been going on for over a year in some cases, and it's disengenous for anyone to now suddenly claim that hundreds of articles have to be 'justified' right this second. Or in Tarc's case, simply deleted and redirected and letting the rest of us' 'figure it out' if we happened to stumble across them. Normal people post a 'Request for Merge' on both the from and to articles, and wait until consensus is reached. Look at the history of these articles, and anyone could have requested a Merge months ago and had it properly discussed. As we did for many articles. As for the consensus on treatment in general, we have one: once someone wins a primary election (yes, that counts as an election!) they're 'notable enough' that we would wait until after the election to merge any article someone might create for them providing it otherwise met the standards for an article. If the article needed work, it would be tagged as such and improved. Most arguing is about candidates prior to the primaries, such as: "Joe Blow created a website, claiming he's running, but his only endorsement is his mother." And yes, those arguments are fairly short. That's not what we're talking about here.Flatterworld (talk) 21:08, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I was not advocating any of the points asserted in this dispute, only stating that I felt that notability for candidates is an issue that is worthy of discussion, even if it was brought to the forefront of our collective minds by less than straightforward means. I was trying to re-focus the discussion away from the dispute and more into discussion on this guideline or policy.    Thorncrag  21:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Flatter, I think you are confusing Thorncrag and Tarc.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 21:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• While I understand that this will all be more or less moot in a week, I don't believe we should have some sort of emergency injunction against AFDing these articles. Let's all just calm down and not do anything drastic in either direction, shall we? Some of these also-rans may still have received enough attention to be considered notable, and some of them not. Waiting a week to start parsing the wheat from the chaff seems reasonable, but there is no need to codify it. If there is a particular editor that is making numerous bad faith nominations we can revert and/or block them. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:28, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
  • (ec)Um, once again, there is no bad faith on my part, and you'd be hard-pressed to make such a charge stick, but hey, knock yourself out. I tried to take care of some of these by simple redirects, which were declined. Other editors before me tried PRODs, which were declined. Bringing these to AfD is simply the next logical step; what cannot be handled editorially now needs to be handled formally. I could have jumped straight to AfDs with these a week ago and avoided this "OMG ELECTIONS NEXT WEEK!!!" horseshit, but I assumed (incorrectly, given the caterwauling that has ensued) that redirecting and preserving the history in case the persons ever became notable would have been an uncontroversial middle step. Tarc (talk) 00:28, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Beeblebrox, I think you totally underestimate the amount of time it would take to check all the articles out every day.

• And now I've found a sort of 'reverse issue'. I just updated United States House of Representatives elections in South Carolina, 2010#District 5, wikifying Mick Mulvaney's name. So look at his article - as in, who worked on it after the article included that he was running for US Rep. User:Orangemike (see above). He made plenty of edits, but it never, ever occurred to him to link to the actual election article? Or include any of the usual non-partisan voter links (for which there's a handy-dandy template created years ago to save me the work of entering each separately)? Really? All we have here is the equivalent of 'spider food' - anyone googling the guy's name would go here, and only here. The links on the election page? They'd never find them. And User:Jerzeykydd worked on that article as well - he's blocked until after the election for reverting edits to add third-party candidates to election article infoboxes, but my argument with him was about his creation of tons of articles for Republican candidates, NONE of which had the usual non-partisan voter information, just a five-second cut-and-paste from the campaign website. (I fixed a lot of them, until I realized he could create them a lot faster than I could fix them.) He added the '2010 run for U.S. Congress' section in the body of the article about the election (it was already in the lede) and - how odd! - there's a blank line where the 'See also' link template would normally go. Circumstantial 'evidence' for sure, but he's another 'experienced Wikipedian' who's well aware of the election articles. Do we have people playing games here? Definitely. I'm just pointing them out. Flatterworld (talk) 00:24, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
  • It's kinda hard to follow this train of thought. Are you accusing Orangemike of being a sock of this Jerzeykydd? Tarc (talk) 12:45, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
    • No, I think he's accusing Orangemike of having political bias. Either way, it's a pretty strong assumption of bad faith, and Flatter really needs to reign it in. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 13:17, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Techwriter2B back and impersonating

Resolved

 – –MuZemike 17:37, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Permanently banned user Techwriter2B (with whom you are well familiar) appears to have returned after a several month absence this time having registered using MY real name. I have nothing to do with registering this account which needs to be closed IMMEDIATELY as it constitutes and continues his/her egregious wikistalking of me.Centpacrr (talk) 16:17, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Send to OTRS for discrete handling. "Impersonation" is a direct WP Terms violation. Collect (talk) 16:23, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There are thousands of Bruce Coopers in the world. Just check any online phonebook. MY name happens to be Bruce C. Cooper. If that's the same as yours, there's nothing I can do about it. Sorry. BruceCCooper (talk) 16:28, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

NOTE: The two edits made by this now banned sock (see below) were to references to me (User:Centpacrr), not another person with my name, and fit the longtime pattern of misconduct and impersonation of banned LTA Techwriter2B who has been wikistalking many other users for at least three years, and me personally (whom he/she was impersonating with this sock account) for almost a year. Those two edits were identical in character and content to previous disruptive wikistalking behavior of this LTA. Centpacrr (talk) 16:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Indef blocked as a sock of Techwriter2B. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 16:30, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Request for deletion of retired user's subpages

Resolved

 – All gone now. Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

User:Cymbelmineer, contributor of such valuable edits as this, has retired, leaving several subpages in their userspace. These are completely unreferenced article stubs about serial killers, 4chan-related topics, or holocaust denial. Had I read through this page while the editor was still active, I would have asked for its deletion immediately. Can someone please delete all of the subpages? Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:49, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Disruptive POV-tagging of article

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

---

User: Marknutley (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Article: Right-wing terrorism Article discussion Talk:Right-wing terrorism#POV

mark nutley tagged the article Right-wing terrorism as POV and tagged the first sentence as not supported by sources, saying, "Certain sections of this article are nowere near neutral, hence the tag. I`ll go through the sources used as the first one i checked did not support the statement it is used". I then presented a comparison of the text in the sentence and in the source and asked mark nutley not to restore the tags without explanation. He has restored them, referring to "a useful source" but providing no explanation of why he considers the tags are warranted.

Given this user's extensive history of disruption in political articles, he should receive a block for tagging articles without providing explanations.

TFD (talk) 20:38, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Do you always bring content disputes to ANI? Couple of things, i have commented on what i think is POV regarding one section and stated i was still looking through the rest, are you in a hurry? Your source failed verification because the source has it written as supposition, you have written it as fact. I would also like you to provide diffs for your accusation that i have an extensive history of disruption in political articles as i do not think that is accurate. I would also ask uninvolved readers to look through this thread [13] and perhaps get an idea of whom is disruptive here, it is not i mark (talk) 20:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I don;t think its a content dispute, its a behaviour one. Tagging this article was a means of continuing an ideological dispute that Mark has been a leader of in the communist terrorism article along with mass killings under communist regimes. --Snowded ^TALK 21:02, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

And your as bad as TFD, you do a drive by revert [14] and do not even bother to go to the talk page, care to explain why? mark (talk) 21:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

TFD's main activity on Wikipedia is to try to get people blocked. He doesn't seem to have any interest in collaborating or working out problems, no interest in that satisfying experience of turning a difficult relationship into a positive one. It's always vindictive, always about winning a personality war. Noloop (talk) 21:04, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I see no evidence at User talk:Marknutley that WP:DR has been attempted. I would suggest that those avenues be attempted if not exhausted before coming here. Unless that's occurred, I recommend closing this. Abuse of ANI should not be rewarded. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Calling for a block because of this is absurd. Somebody needs to mentor TFD. Noloop (talk) 21:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

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

User Triton Rocker

Could someone please deal with Triton Rocker (talk · contribs) who's third edit after coming off a one month ban was to make a personal attack on my editshere in direct validation of a civility ban that has been imposed on him at British Isles Probation Log. Just in-case Triton Rocker says he didn't understand the scope of the ban here is the actual words left at his talk page by Cailil (talk · contribs) You are being placed under a behavioral editing restriction. This account may be blocked if it is used to make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be uncivil,personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith. Thank you. Bjmullan (talk) 21:23, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Triton really doesn't like me so I'll leave this for another admin to decide, but the fact that this was their third edit after coming off a month long block combined with the rest of their block log leads me to favor an indefinite block. Maybe point them at the standard offer. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• IMHO, I saw Bjmullan request that TR retract his statement earlier. Having viewed the post and Bjmullan's own phrasing above: "...was to make a personal attack on my edits". Clearly, it's directed at the edits, not the editor, as per WP:CIVIL. Sure, TR was careful to put a paragraph spacing between his own statement regarding bad faith and the generic and non-directed "...It takes no degree of intelligence or integrity to surmise...". By Bjmullan's own statement, it was an attack on edits, not an editor. An over-reaction IMHO, and although a bit of warning is possibly due, there's nothing actionable here. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 21:50, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Triton Rocker was not only commenting on my edit at British Sky Broadcasting but accused me of provocative editing in general without producing any incident to back up his claim. A clear case of not assuming good faith. Bjmullan (talk) 22:07, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It would be sheer sophistry to argue that In my opinion, Mullan's edit to the BSkyB topic is a provocative and bad faith edit. I have experienced a number of similarly provocative and bad faith edits from him. is a comment on edits, not the editor. I am not a great fan of bureaucratic definitions of civility, but a direct accusation of bad faith is about as personal as it gets.Fainites ^barleyscribs 22:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Bjmullan's edit was to change "Britain" to "UK and the Republic of Ireland" in more than one place after another editor had chnage dthe infobox to "British Isles". One source uses "Britain" only. The other uses Britain pretty much except for page with map (hunted down) showing the location of it's offices in UK and the Republic of Ireland. Subsequently there was a bit of an edit war between named editors and IPs. Isn't this what WP:BISE was supposed to resolve? Fainites ^barleyscribs 23:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There's so much activity on his talk page and block log it's a bit of a maze, but I thought at some point there was an agreement that he would stay away from this whole "British Isles" conflict. In any event "I have experienced a number of similarly provocative and bad faith edits from him" certainly is an accusation directed at an editor. Any time a user accuses another of acting in bad faith they need to be damned sure that is what really is going on, and should always provide diffs to substantiate such a claim. Especially if they have a notice on their talk page proclaiming that there is "too much snooping and snitching on the Wikipedia" and a section header they added so that everything below it is identified as "harassment." We don't need this kind of battlefield mentality. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• Personally, I'm waiting to see what his fourth edit is. And btw, there's no way to read "provocative and bad faith edit" as something other than a comment on an editor -- especially since ABF was specifically called out in the notice of his civility probation.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 01:43, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I am writing this for individuals who are new to this dispute and unaware of the issues involved. For those individuals who are already up to speed, please excuse some repetition as I make my introduction.

"Good Faith" has been established at WT:BISE that none of the contestants enter into edit wars, adding or removing the term "British Isles", without first consulting the community.

Mr Mullan, a support of the contingent who have for some time been habitually seeking to replace the term "British Isles" with "Britain and Ireland" or "United Kingdom and Ireland", did so here; [15]

• The 'edit' was not in good faith. Why?

The topic is about satellite broadcasting to the British Isles. It was agreed by the community that the terms "Britain and Ireland" or "United Kingdom and Ireland" do not include the Isle of Man nor Channel Islands which exist in the geographic area British Isles. They do not. A simple Google search taking seconds shows that the company broadcasts to the the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. Common sense tell us that any signal going to the UK and Ireland would have to include at least the Isle of Man and more than often the Channel Islands. Therefore, Mr Mullan either knowingly or negligently introduced an error into the Wikipedia to support the ongoing campaign.

Mr Mullan is very aware of the issue of dispute and previous discussion. It is very difficult to read the editing introducing the error as but a provocation or a testing of the waters to see how far he can go. Courtesy would have been to brought it to WT:BISE but in this case there is no possible contention British Sky Broadcasting broadcasts to all of the British Isles.

* Why is our time being wasted there and here? It is just more LAME DRAMA.

My comment regarding my previous experience was not uncivil. It is either true or false. I could provide many example if anyone cares. Mr Mullan has an obsession with with me because of this British/Irish issue, follows my editing into other areas where he has had no interest, reverts my work and habitually reports me. This is just one more example.

I consider this a provocation where, e.g. the summaries are prejudicial and do not reflect the reality of my works. One such case would be the topic on Queen Elizabeth II, e.g. [16][17].

I would like to make it clear for newcomers to this dispute that I do not have a political or nationalistically motivated POV. My POV is that politics should be kept out of area which are not political and that the Wikipedia is not the place to decide international geonaming. --Triton Rocker (talk) 05:03, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Blocked

Well Sarek, now you've seen that fourth edit. I have imposed a one year block. There is not the slightest indication that this editor is ever going to get the picture. Looie496 (talk) 05:25, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I know that Triton Rocker has been given a block. However he accused me of following him around and used Elizabeth II as an example of where I followed him. For the record, I first edited at the article on 14 January 2010, Triton Rocker made his first edit nearly eight months later on 22 September 2010. His third edit at the article was to remove a large section of the last paragraph from the lede. Surely he must have realised that on such a high profile article that the lede would have been discussed and agreed on the talk page? Triton Rocker continued his usual MO of making edits without first getting consent, personal attacks and not assuming good faith. I quote him from the talk page: Miesianiacal, I appreciate the "Monarchy of Canada" is one of your things and you want to make a big issue of the Canadian-ness of Elizabeth II. Putting your personal interest aside,..., Considering the similarity of your interests to MIESIANIACAL, regarding the 'Monarchist League of Canada' et al [5], can I ask you both not to use this topic for your own political soapbox?. And finally here is the edit summary from DrKiernan (talk · contribs) after reverting one of Triton Rocker edits; unexplained, contentious, potentially misleading....Bjmullan (talk) 08:26, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Logged. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:04, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

A year's block? lmao, I see this "civility parole" has been taken to the extreme as was to be expected. Simply incredible. BritishWatcher (talk) 11:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

No, it's incredible that he couldn't restrain himself in the face of multiple warnings. Support 1-year block. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 12:14, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

No BW it's become quite clear that TR doesn't take Wikipedia's behavioural policy seriously. He can count himself lucky we're still using blocks of definite duraion. All TR needed to do was be civil and AGF. Endorse 1-year block--Cailil ^talk 12:51, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, good block.  Sandstein  13:26, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Well played Bjmullen. AGF: the gift that keeps on giving. Triton sounded like a sensible bloke actually, Bjmullen certainly never had anything substantive to counter on any content point of his, so in a way I'm happy he has been released from the depressing need to learn the game himself to be allowed to participate in such complex and debate worthy issues like, does a satellite signal obey geographic or political boundaries, and whether we need references for such daftness. Go and do something usefull with your life Triton, come back maybe when the Irish issue has had it's own arbcom case, and people are put under real civility restrictions, which enforce the whole policy, not just the easy bits that any old gamer can pick up and use so easily as a weapon, and which actually foster real mutual respect, not the fake kind, and allows real, relevant and clueful content argumentation to come first, not last, in these tedious face-offs. Still, what's next on the BISE agenda today. 'Does the British Isles have a coast?'. Well, that sounds like a perfectly normal question to ask, *AGF mode ON*..... MickMacNee (talk) 13:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Question

I don't have a problem with a one year block, considering he just doesn't get it despite repeated warnings and blocks. However surely a better solution would be to just ban him from the British Isles area entirely, and interaction bans for any editors he's been in conflict with over the issue? This would allow him to get back to other areas of editing where he's apparently been productive. 2 lines of K₃₀₃ 13:05, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Considering his campaign against "snitches", I suspect that he's going to have problems wherever he edits. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:17, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes but it's a good point. The reason I didn't propose a full topic ban last time was becuase TR already has Black Kite's limited ban (topic banned from editing) in place and I thought the civility parole would resolve his interaction issues - it clearly hasn't had that effect. That said TR did have a history of editing constructively at motor bike topics and I'd hope that when he comes back he returnes to constructive editing, thus banning him from what seems to be a hot-button topic for him might work - I'm open to discussing it anyway--Cailil ^talk 13:52, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Some attention to WP:AIV

Resolved

Slightly backlogged, but I have a user that continues to upload images without source and license, and the report at AIV is going unblocked. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipoobum

Reverted, Blocked, lets pretend he was Never here The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 01:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipoobum (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Created at 0128, has been inserting vapid, mindless statements of agreement on various talk pages. A bot? Who knows. Odd name, does it comply with the username policy? --TS 01:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC) Have you notified them of this discussion? It is required. That aside, clear troll, WP:RBI seems applicable here.— Dædαlus Contribs 01:45, 26 October 2010 (UTC) I'd no idea notification was required. I'll let him know. --TS 01:47, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Mass socking by Zsfgseg

See here. This guy seems to have access to at least a /13 range so blocking may be difficult. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 03:09, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Alos i just remembered something: a few days back i was on an igloo run and he was wreaking mass havoc on random archive indexes and i ignored it because I had no idea what was going on. Obviosly Zsfgseg now that i think about it. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 03:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

According to the list, only the current five are him. The others appear to be bots editing while logged out. HalfShadow 03:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

No those are within Zsfgfeg's immediate range. I think I'm gonna file a LTA. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 03:13, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Tirns out that was a bot, but, this user has been socking for 2 years so LTA filed. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 04:00, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Edits by User:Afactchecker

Resolved

 – 2010-10-26T01:38:33 User:Afactchecker blocked by User:Looie496 with an expiry time of 1 year (account creation blocked) ‎ (enforcement of community sanctions at WP:GS/BI). ROBERTMFROMLI ^TALK/_CNTRB 06:49, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

User:Afactchecker has been changing names and numbers on the Valencia Community College article (see this history), and then changes the edit back to the correct version. This pattern will go on multiple times during the day for a number of days in a row. The editor has been questioned about this use of Wikipedia on the user talk page but has not responded. Alanraywiki (talk) 03:28, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I have blocked indef. The edits are not terribly harmful but this is too weird to let it go on -- based on the last month, the editor could keep this up forever if nothing is done. I will remove the block if the editor gives any sort of reasonable response. Looie496 (talk) 05:00, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree w/block! I also rolled-back the edits on VCC & there were all of 2 changes (a middle initial & a removal of a ]) in that entire series of edits. Skier Dude (talk 05:33, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree as well. Toddst1 (talk) 05:56, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Request yes-no finding re disruptive editing

Is PiCo disruptive? And what to do if so?

• On 21 Sep, PiCo inserts one edit set to Joshua full of sourced assertions.
• I check and immediately identify via detailed edit summaries my position that every new sentence on Israel history misrepresented its source. Seems straightforward.
• I begin discussion, determine that all sentences were copied from an Israel history, and take discussion there.
• For over 1 month, PiCo does not permit even one full sentence of my initial edits, which I consider very basic WP:V fixes, to be added to the article, but permits only very minor sidecar changes. My only original changes PiCo accepted without continuing to undo (comparison) are to add 1 clause, change 1 clause, change 1 source (details).
• Simultaneously, PiCo makes sweeping changes (also visible in that diff) to everything from the Persian period on, without any discussion. I do not interest myself in those massive changes because discussing the first edit set has taken so long, but it indicates a double standard.
• PiCo is occasionally supported but usually alone in discussing with me. I try TALK, DISENGAGE, MEDCAB (no takers), WARN, ANEW for warring. PiCo is first recommended to take a month off the topic, then told if DR (RFC) is followed all is forgiven. RFC drags on with those clause concessions I mentioned, and it stalls with nobody else joining. I try 3O, no dice. I try NORN, no takers. So no third-party mediation is happening but no advance is being made. And this is omitting a lot.
• Specific evidence of disruption during this attempt to conform one edit set to its sources: Near-zero progress toward my improvements (comparison diff above). Border-skirting near-warring behavior (ANEW diff), which has not stopped but still skirts. Evasion by undoing later rather than immediately (same diff, second edit from top). Lack of collaboration passim. Not using "unsigned" and "interrupted" (search talk for those I added), and not flowing comments readably. Asking me to get his sources for him (e.g. search Finkelstein), breaking WP:BURDEN. And probably some things mentioned in my steam-blowing, such as ownership that tends to drive away editors per WP:DE.
• Evidence of bad faith: The near-zero progress with 200K recent talk (including mine, granted). Obliviousness and unhearingness (second-to-last graf). Repeatedly ignoring itemized issue lists and starting his own, which has the appearance of intending to divert discussion into a "handled" category (NORN diff). Undoing challenge tags as if that closes a discussion when he ought to know it didn't (third-to-last graf in prior diff, and passim). Repeated, apparently studied disregard of the same questions and explanations (also DE; too many diffs to list). These are just a start. On his first edit on this page, he forgets what he already said about his own sources elsewhere; then he dissembles later as if he hadn't.
• And that's not to mention the actual content dispute passim (that last diff is a good start), over why PiCo thinks WP is not misrepresenting the sources ("misrepresents reliable sources" is straight WP:DE); nor my question about what other damage PiCo has done assuming a disruption finding; nor several related issues not arising from PiCo's defending this one Sep 21 edit, such as PiCo's relevant block log.

Please help. JJB 08:05, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Dear everyone: JJB is a sincere editor who is genuinely puzzled and frustrated that his edits are not being accepted. Part of the problem - perhaps a lot of it - comes from the very small number of editors involved, which means that he's interacting mostly with me, and he has no confidence in my good faith. So coming here is undoubably a good idea.

Now, his points: John complains that this all started when I made a set of edits to the article on Joshua, replacing what was already there with a longer, better organised, and better sourced version. (JJ calls this an "edit set"). JJ checked the edits and decided that they weren't supported by the sources. He then crossed over to the History of ancient Israel and Judah article, which is where the text came from, and started reverting all these statements - because, he thinks, they're not supported by the sources. All 20 or so of them.

At this point the trouble starts. My own view is that the sources do support the statements in the article. So I revert John's deletions/edits. But John can't accept my explanations - he's still convinced that it's all lies, or misrepresentations, or whatever. And because we have very few active editors on this topic (it doesn't have a lot of sex appeal, I must admit), we have this impasse.

How to get out of it? John's most recent post on the article talk page says, "besides BRD, BURDEN, and NOR, I've now tried AGF, ABF, DISCUSSION, DISENGAGE, WARN, 3O, RFC, MEDCAB, ANEW, and NORN, and you maintain an air of circumspectness (usually) and nobody else shows up and nothing happens. I have never seen such a tremendous wall built to fortify such an inherently flawed single edit set. Now, what options remain?" Good question. He really has tried all the options. But let's try something: one of the forums he tried was NORN. It's meant to deal with original research, but I don't object to that. I think we can do there what John wants. He has about a dozen sentences that he wants a source-check on. I'm suggesting that we put them up on that thread on NORN, one at a time (12 at once is probably a bit of a turn-off) and invite other editors to judge whether they statements are or are not supported by the sources. (By the way, what exactly is "circumspectness"?). PiCo (talk) 09:03, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The above and PiCo's NORN interference demonstrate my points well as to disruption. *PiCo's air of circumspectness (e.g., professed innocence) is clearly expressed, but its actual effect is to deflect this board from my real request, a review of PiCo's editing for disruption, and to distract to another request, the NORN board, as if solving that one solves this one. (It doesn't: the following points are further examples of the disruption, not of the sourcing problems.) *Further, on NORN, he switches my question (detail) twice to avoid answering it as stated, behavior I anticipated by describing it above. This second deflection has the effect of further downgrading the NORN issue to distract from the OR concepts (listed elsewhere ad nauseam) that appear in his sentences but not provably in his sources. *Just a moment ago in the "Tagging" section of the article talk he was trying to do all my concerns at once (again), and now he is trying to do them one-by-one (again), which would have no rhyme or reason to the alternation except that it correlates neatly with whichever method might put off the consensus-building longer. (*While I have that diff up, I'll mention its repeated appeal to me to read a few pages back here, a chapter there, to find the needle that isn't in the haystack, contrary to WP:BURDEN; and not even defending Smith p. 27 but still insisting on keeping it, contrary to WP:V at large.)

*PiCo's (may I say) breeziness in both these edits appears to be friendly and enfolding toward me, but it is all the more difficult to accept in good faith due to the (constant) undercurrent of failure to answer questions, as stated above. *He acts as if we're just getting started (at NORN changing my point 7 to point 1) as if he has no responsibility for the stalling for the past 5 weeks in doing what he seems so blithe to do now. (*Even the clause concessions that he made came only immediately after my warring report and ceased shortly after.) *After changing my question to an obvious strawman, he pulls a clause of Lemche out of context as if the strawman question is answered, voila. *He then further directs the conversation with "Answers on a postcard" as if he hasn't provided at least 40% of the 200K talk. *He makes a finding above of "lies" or whatever, when the word I generally used was "verification failures", and I only recently also started using "misrepresentations"; he cannot diff me using the word "lies" in this sense.

If PiCo would quietly let NORN proceed, it might finally answer my concerns of five weeks ago. But my concern right now for this board is a finding of disruption, or not, and appropriate advice. JJB 09:49, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you John. Of course, some people might think that the editor who tags 20 consecutive sentences in a single paragraph and refuses to think that he might be mistaken about even one of them is the disruptive one.... PiCo (talk) 10:31, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I can see no merit in this request. I see a lot of wordiness and little substance; the only concrete problems I can see in the history of the last few days are on JJB's side: abusing mass tagging with baseless "failed verification" tags, and messing up the talk page by interjecting his own comments among those of others in rather confusing ways. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree, which is why I removed some of JJB's excessive tags. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 12:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Nor can I see any merit in this. Sorry, JJB, but I spent about an hour looking at this, and I also can see no disruption from PiCo. Your own conduct seemed problematic to me at several points through the conflict, however. I haven't touched any of the articles mentioned, nor commented on any of the related talk pages, btw.  – OhioStandard (talk) 13:18, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Ged UK abusing protection, lack of communication and rude attitude

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

---

Request for unprotection: [18]. Response by Ged UK: [19] I have no idea what "You know perfectly well there's an explanation, it's the same one you get every time you ask" means, I have never had any explanation from Ged UK before. 1) I find such behaviour incredibly rude, and unjustified. 2) I believe that Ged UK is abusing his position by declining an unprotect request - for he is the person who protected the article in the first place [20], he would hardly agree to unprotect the article. This represents a conflict of interest. The request should have been reviewed by someone impartial. 3) He also re-protected the article that was unprotected by SlimVirgin [21] with again no explanation [22] this is wheel-warring. 4) Finally he has completely refused to communicated with me, other than the "you know perfectly well" comment. I have twice tried to communicate on his talk page. He has replied to everyone else, except me. I think this shows a patronising attitude against IP users. 5) I have taken this up with Wikiquette, but nothing happened except a dismissal of my concerns by a close friend of Ged UK. I am bringing this up at AN/I, as I request that an uninvolved party look over the whole situation, and decide whether Ged UK is abusing his position as an administrator. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 09:18, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Forumshopping. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 09:25, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

yep from wikiquette alerts Theresa Knott | Hasten to trek 09:31, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Not quite; if they're not satisfied with the outcome at WQA, they're expected to escalate, and given this is a request to review admin actions, this would be the place to take a look. That said, it's worth questioning whether this request actually has merit. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:33, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The Wikiquette alert was only raised late yesterday, so escalation so quickly is at least impatient, and really does look like forum shopping to me. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:33, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and I'm not a "close friend" of GedUK - I've never met the guy or spoken to him outside of Wikipedia. Our connection is simply that I started investigating and working on the edit warring and mass vandalism on TV channel articles early in the year, and GedUK has helped by doing the necessary protections that I can't do because I'm not an admin. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:37, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

It is not "forumshopping", I made a mistake posting it to Wikiquette as it seems hardly used [23] compared to this page [24]. I also think that here is the most appropriate place, as this sort of behaviour from an administrator is too serious for Wikiquette. I would delete the original Wikiquette concern, but I think that may be against WP rules and guidelines. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 10:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• Anon, I don't see what it is you are wanting. An explanation was indeed provided why semi-protection is running across several similar pages. In any case, you need to notify Slimvirgin. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:39, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict)I think I see the problem. This IP filed a request on the 24th, which is what Ged UK responded to. The IP obviously missed this response and refiled on 25th (and again today) which was declined with the response he is complaining about. --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 09:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Ah ok, that makes sense. Waiting on GedUK and Slimvirgin to respond. Today's protection request has been closed so it can be reviewed here. Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:03, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
• I don't know what you want; it was unprotected, you made your edit (which was not reverted), then protection was re-instated. If it's really so important that you edit these specific articles, why not get an account? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 09:44, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Charitably, he is a new user who knew enough to use WP shorthand in his very first edit (which happens to have an edit summary). In short, I doubt the IP is a new user, and would be inclined to not grant the latitude I would extend thereto. Collect (talk) 10:32, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Seb az86556 and Collect, your attitudes seem rather patronising. Talk of "forumshopping" (which it isn't) and "get an account" is not helpful, and seems to be (like Ged UK) looking down on IP users as people with a lesser right. "WP shorthand" is not that difficult to decypher, since it's used by most other users, and there are explanations of what they mean throughout the site. Ncmvocalist, your reply is most useful. I had not seen that explanation from Ged UK - not surprising as it was almost immediately deleted for some reason - however it still doesn't address all the issues. For example, 1) why wasn't the explanation in the edit summary, or even in the talk page of TV Polonia? As of now, Ged UK has refused to do this 2) Why is TV Polonia protected, as it has nothing to do with the other pages which are vandalised. Ged UK doesn't even elaborate which pages they are, which would be useful. There is talk of "pre-emptively", but I think this does not justify a page protection (there are thousands of television stations in the world, and Ged UK talks of "about 6" pages being vandalised), unless Ged UK objects to IP users editing Wikipedia full stop. 3) Furthermore, why did he respond "You know perfectly well there's an explanation, it's the same one you get every time you ask" to me? - perhaps someone could explain. If Ged UK could explain it would be nice, as I have no idea what he means. I have never come across him before, or had any explanation before Ncmvocalist posted the link above. 4) Why did he not debate the issue before re-protecting the article and wheel warring? SlimVirgin seemed confused about why not. 5) As an administrator, I would expect Ged UK to have a civil attitude towards other users, rather than ignore them or be dismissive. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 10:41, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

In terms of #4, as he mentions on the RFPP page he was not aware of the RFPP request and mistakenly assumed the unprotection was a mistake relating to another admin action Slim was performing. This is fine, and not Wheel warring. Indeed, Slim then agreed that the action was fine: [25] Throwing such terms about it not helpful. The report was then removed a number of hours later as part of the usual page archiving, it was pretty clear he had replied though so you could have checked the page history. I'm not really going to enter an opinion on the TV article protection in general, other than to say Ged UK is a pretty experienced page protector so his actions have initial weight I am sure when he gets online he will be happy to make a full explanation. --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 10:50, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I now notice the response from SlimVirgin, so I take back my "wheel warring" accusation (by the way, I have informed SlimVirgin on her talk page), but I stand by my other concerns. I don't think it was "pretty clear he had replied", it was deleted very quickly afterwards. It would've been helpful for the discussion to be left on the page for a day or two. Not everyone can use Wikipedia round-the-clock, and spends all day delving through page histories. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 11:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, it could simply be a mistake, or an overstatement. He had informed you before, and the second re-submission may have led him to believe it was more than once (i.e. in the past). The reply was not archived for about 14 hours, He explicitly mentioned that he had replied there so it is not unreasonable, I feel, to be expected to check back through the archives. The RFPP page moves very quickly, so coming back after 24 hours (or more) requests will have almost certainly been archived. --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 11:14, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

If you consider this the original informing [26], however it seems more a response to SlimVirgin. Ged UK doesn't acknowledge my presence! Nor does he respond to my concern on his talk page. So, I cannot accept that he has responded to me even once. I take the point that things on RFPP get deleted every few hours, and that's beyond Ged UK's control, and there doesn't appear to be a way to access archives, except by trawling each edit. (The word "archive" doesn't even appear on the RFPP page - hopefully this is something that will be improved in future). As for "You know perfectly well there's an explanation, it's the same one you get every time you ask", it doesn't seem to explicitly mention that he replied in RFPP either. It just seems to be an impertinent response from an admin. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 11:33, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, you're being a bit tendentious now. The explanation there was clear. I can buy (and somewhat agree) that you were put off by his dismissal in the second RFPP request, and I am sure he will apologise for quite a clear mistake (in assuming, I think, you might be part of the ongoing issue). But you're making something of a mountain out of a molehill. Your note on his talk page makes clear you hadn't read the note he posted, and it came after the second RFPP entry. So it is a mistake that is at least understandable in how it was made. Let Ged UK respond with some form of explanation, we are not here to bash or invoke action on anyone, but to ensure a collegial atmosphere; fine, you're upset by this, but at least apply some common sense to the situation. --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 11:40, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

"We are not here to bash" and "collegial atmosphere"... If you can see the abusive language by the administrators below, I don't know if it will surprise you or not, but I am lost for words. I never thought my concerns would be considered so utterly worthless by the Wikipedia elite, and to receive abusive responses from people whom I don't know. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 11:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Furthermore, why did he respond "You know perfectly well there's an explanation, it's the same one you get every time you ask" to me? - perhaps someone could explain. What do you need explaining? Ged UK believe that you are a returning user with whom he has interacted before and already offered the explanation. This is so obvious I can only think the reason that you are asking is that you dislike it rather than don't understand it. Theresa Knott | Hasten to trek 10:52, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

What needs explaining? I have never "interacted" with Ged UK before and have no explanation from him. So why the response: "You know perfectly well there's an explanation, it's the same one you get every time you ask". Perhaps you could explain it clearly, showing me where Ged UK and myself have interacted before, and where he has provided the explanation previously too. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 10:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh for fucks sake. He clearly thought that you had interacted before. Whether you actually have or have not is not for me to decide. How could I? The point is, he obviously thought you had or else why would he have replied as though speaking to someone that he had spoken to before. Theresa Knott | Hasten to trek 11:27, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me? Do I know you? What gives you the right to use abusive language towards me? Maybe things are clearly known to the school teacher from London (I hope you don't use that language with your pupils), but not everyone is an expert in what other people could be thinking or not. We are not all native speakers of English either. I hope you will take back your obscene response to my above posting. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 11:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

For fucks sake, hold your breath and wait now. Come back in a few hours or so when the person you accused of being "abusive" can respond. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 11:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I guess this is an example of established Wikipedia users sticking together and dismissing the concerns of an IP using non-entity by using insulting language towards them. I will hope you to also take back your words quickly, but it would not surprise me if you didn't, as I fear that nothing will be done about my concerns. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 11:47, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I notice you are not just established users but administrators. Unbelievable, words fail me. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 11:48, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll take it back is you strike "abusing" from the header. The code is <s>...</s> around the word. [note: not admin]Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 11:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like blackmail, and I certainly don't submit to any requests from people who have used abusive language in such an unjustified way towards me. The least I would have expected was for the offensive words to be removed, and an unequivocal apology given, that also goes for Theresa Knott. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 12:00, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely not. There is no way on earth that I will apologise for saying "for fucks sake". It is not a term of abuse, I used it as a term of exasperation because the IP user was being deliberately dense. Theresa Knott | Hasten to trek 12:06, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Fair enough. Should I ever be near Skipton, I'll remember the local norms, as well as local definitions of blackmail. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 12:09, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Theresa Knott, maybe you should read [27] again. Also [28]. Your language is abusive, and the "deliberately dense" statement is offensive is uncalled for... it is basically an insult. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 12:27, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

...and a personal attack [29] 82.152.216.15 (talk) 12:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

My language was deliberate. Theresa Knott | Hasten to trek 12:33, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the point of starting to curse at people. Is this a banned user, and what is the series of articles this was protected as part of? Transparency would help, and if it's not possible for some reason, saying that would help too. Then we could close the issue. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 12:56, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Ged UK has already closed the issue by apologising for the remark, and explaining how it came about. What else is there to do? Theresa Knott | Hasten to trek 13:02, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, because I am only an IP user and don't count, therefore it is fine to use obscene language or personal insults towards me, as long as the person doing so is an admin... plus they don't have to apologise. At least that is how I understand it according to this thread. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 13:05, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• I unprotected TV Polonia after the anon made a request on RfPP, and I could see no reason in the history for long-term protection. GedUK subsequently explained that there was a background to the issue, and that it was part of a series of protections of similar articles. Two things I know about GedUK is that he's always willing to discuss things constructively and have issues reviewed by other admins, and he's careful not to use protection in a way that unfairly discriminates against IPs. So if he feels protection is necessary here I'm happy to trust him. To the IP, the best thing would be for you to create an account, so long as you're not editing under a ban or other restrictions. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 11:05, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

"GedUK is (...) always willing to discuss things constructively and have issues reviewed by other admins". This doesn't seem to be discussing things constructively: "You know perfectly well there's an explanation, it's the same one you get every time you ask". Neither is ignoring my concerns on his talk page. By declining my unprotect request for a page that he protected, it doesn't appear that he wants issues reviewed by other admins either, otherwise he would've explained the situation and let another admin decide whether to decline or unprotect. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 11:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Well let's see what he has to say once he is online. Theresa Knott | Hasten to trek 11:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Here’s my view of the sequence of events.

1. IP makes a requestat RfPP
2. Request is actioned by SlimVirgin (talk · contribs) immediately afterwards at 8.25am on 24th (Saturday).
3. I log in about 3.30pm and check my watchlist. I see that SV has unprotected. I think that this is an error and SV has simply changed the move protection and the article protection has changed in error. I ‘correct’ this perceived mistake.
4. SV notes at RfPP that I’ve restored the protection
5. I reply and explain
6. Allmightyduck (talk · contribs) clerked the request down to the fulfilled section (with the script) at 03.30 Sunday morning.
7. I then clerked away the request using the script at 07.19 Sunday morning (along with others) on Sunday morning before I started my regular RfPP work.
8. IP makes second request at RfPP.
9. I decline that request and make the remark that has offended the IP.
10. IP comments on my talk page indicating that they can’t find my (now clerked away) reply at RfPP. By this time I think I’d logged off.
11. When I logged back in in the evening, I missed their previous message, as a sockpuppet accusation had blown up on my talk page.
12. IP starts the Wikiquette complaint.
13. makes a third request at RfPP
14. IP starts this ANI complaint.

It’s unfortunate that the IP missed my explanation at RfPP (which raises the separate issue of properly archiving that page as has been discussed before), and that I missed their comment on my talk page due to talkpage noise from another IP throwing socking allegations around (in a vaguely related issue). I understand, in these circumstances, why the IP here took issue with the tone of my reply. I apologise if I have caused any offense.

However, it is equally unfortunate that the IP took it to Wikiquette and then here before I had had a chance to reply at WQ. GedUK  11:51, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Good. Resolved. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 12:30, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I have not had a chance to read Ged UK's response. Furthermore, you are the one who was using abusive language towards me, as well as being dismissive of my concerns at every step, I think it is unjustified for you to be closing this. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 12:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Would you kindly inform us for how much longer you would like to keep dragging this on? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 12:40, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Some questions for Ged UK: 1) explanation of "You know perfectly well there's an explanation, it's the same one you get every time you ask". Which explanation, and where "every time"? What is "you know perfectly well" supposed to refer to? 2) I believe that you are abusing your position by declining an unprotect request, as you protected the article in the first place. This represents a conflict of interest. The request should have been reviewed by someone impartial. Why not? 3) Why no explanation in edit summary or on TV Polonia talk page? 4) Where is the vandalism? Which tv station articles? It certainly isn't TV Polonia. Seb az86556, I will not be responding to you further, due to your offensive language. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 12:43, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Ged UK has apologised for his remark, the reason for which is clear (and has been explained a number of times). Discussion on the protection really needs to occur somewhere else; probably Ged UK's talk page or another noticeboard (a simple one doesn't spring to mind). Everyone stop sniping and piling on each other. No admin action is going to occur from this, the solution was an apology. Recommend taking this to the right places for discussion --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 12:48, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Look dude, this was clearly an accidental miscommunication, and what you should have done was started off by assuming good faith (see WP:AGF) rather than doing exactly the opposite, coming in here with your fighting head on, and slinging all sorts of accusations around without giving the accused the chance to explain things. He has now explained what it was all about, his reasons for thinking you had already seen his explanation, and his reason for missing your message on his Talk page. Further, you have had it explained to you why GedUK's actions regarding the protection were not an abuse of his position, and why the other admins involved deferred to his decision. All you are doing now is acting tendentiously, and trying to carry on a fight where there is none. It really is time to let this drop now, and move on with more important things. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:50, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

BSZ, I appreciate your patience is wearing, I also hope the matter is sorted soon, sorry for accusing you of being a "close friend" of Ged UK, I now understand it's not the case! Tmorton166, I take your point that discussion of the protection should go elsewhere, if a better place can be suggested. I do accept Ged's apology by the way, however I would appreciate his clarification of his remark. Perhaps it was all just a communication breakdown or a misunderstanding somewhere, and I can accept that. These things happen. However I note no comment from you or anyone else of the abusive language or personal attacks by Theresa Knott and Seb az86556. I am worried that these 2 admins think such behaviour is acceptable, as it is completely contrary to Wikipedia policies. Lack of comment on this matter shows that the behaviour is implicitly accepted. I presume this is due to these 2 editors status in Wikipedia. Had I behaved so, I would have expected to be blocked. Of course I do not use such offensive language, and I am personally very upset about it - however I assume they will not apologise, Theresa Knott especially has shown an intent not to do so. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 13:01, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree there was no need for swearing. --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 13:05, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Well I obviously disagree. Theresa Knott | Hasten to trek 13:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

[30] Right at the top: "Participate in a respectful and considerate way, and avoid profane and offensive language" also "Try to (...) avoid upsetting other editors whenever possible". Surely an admin should know these policies very well. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 13:15, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Theresa Knott has now posted offensive language on my talk page, which I reverted. There were also some other uncivil accusations, such as "terrible behaviour", "passive agression" and is telling me what I am handling all wrong or "pretending" to do; all rather talking down to me. [31] 82.152.216.15 (talk) 13:23, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

This is too funny. Theresa Knott | Hasten to trek 13:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

(ec::::(ec) Maybe you should read: [Not admin]. And whether admin or not doesn't matter. Theresa called you "dense"[misquoted Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:25, 26 October 2010 (UTC)] --- would "unreasonable" be in your vocabulary? Did you back off from accusations of "abuse" when I offered? Do you show any willingness to apologize for jumping the gun and not waiting for a suitable response form Ged UK? Did you drop the stick when it was time to do so? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:09, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually I said he was being "deliberately dense" which has a completely different meaning really. Theresa Knott | Hasten to trek 13:18, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

True. Noted. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:25, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Hey folks, there's lots of heat and little light being generated here now - perhaps it's time for us all to let it drop, to accept that maybe we have over-reacted a bit to some degree, and just move on? I'm convinced the problems here were down to simple mistakes rather than bad intentions. What do you all say? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:21, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I am still not happy that Theresa Knott and Seb az86556 think it acceptable to use offensive language and insults to another user, completely uncalled for, and I would never think of using such language to even my worst enemy. Bear in mind, they are admins (and should set an example), and I have never spoken to them before, so why the personal attacks and why no apologies? 82.152.216.15 (talk) 13:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Sure. I tried to close this half an hour ago, IP re-opened. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:25, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah yes, so you did. Ah well, I'm not interested in schoolyard fights, so I'm out of here -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:34, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

No problem, and I'm sorry if I initially reacted a bit too strongly to you over at WQA. It's just that GedUK and I have been involved in the long-running low-level edit warring and vandalism on those articles, and have recently been the subjects of attacks by the IP editors involved. And, as an IP yourself, your initial approach made you easy to confuse with the rest of them - and I regret and apologise for that confusion. If you'd like to discuss the protection of that specific article, I'd be happy to offer my input into why it has been protected - who know, it might be a good idea to unprotect it if you are planning to work on it, and you can keep an eye on it? Maybe start a discussion in the article's Talk page? I have it watched and I'll see it. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand what's going on here. To the admins dealing with this, if the IP is a banned user, please tell us. If it can't be explained on a public page, please say that too. And please link to the series of articles this was protected as part of. The strong feelings and the insults about one barely edited television page aren't making any sense otherwise. And to the IP, why not just create an account? SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 13:23, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not a banned user (I intend to create a user account after this issue is sorted), I don't understand the ill feeling towards me, and making me feel worthless. I wish I also knew the series of articles, if BSZ or Ged UK could elaborate on this. 82.152.216.15 (talk) 13:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

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

Continued tendentious editing by User:Communicat despite warnings and blocks

Communicat (talk · contribs) has a long history of tendentious editing which is forming a significant barrier to progressing articles. Admin User:Georgewilliamherbert has previously looked into this in August and gave Communicat a stern warning on 25 August for 'fringe POV-pushing' (see also Talk:World War II/Archive 41#Communicat and fringe-POV pushing and the subsequent discussion) which was followed by two blocks for uncivil comments over the next few weeks. In short, Communicat has a tendency to want to add information which is not correct in articles (even when the sources they provide demonstrate this to be wrong) and is pushing a fringe source which has repeatedly been found to be unreliable and is edit warring when other editors try to remove the dubious material they add. I will provide two recent examples that demonstrate that this behavior is continuing:

• Communicat has been seeking for some time to include a claim in the World War II article that the United States was in charge of the civil administration of North Korea in the years after World War II, despite the country being occupied by the Soviet Union. This began with a lengthy discussion on the article's talk page on 9 September (see Talk:World War II#Arbitrary break onwards) in which there was no support for including such a claim in the article. Despite this on 17 September they added material to the article which strongly implied that the US was administering all of Korea and added some further questionable claims about how the division of the country took place (diff) which I reverted. This lead to further discussion of the topic on the article talk page in which the sources Communicat was providing to support their view were eventually demonstrated to say exactly the opposite (Eg, they stated that the USSR did in fact administer North Korea after the war) - see the posts from 1 October onwards (particularly the posts by Hohum and myself on 3 October) and other sources which demonstrate that the USSR was administering North Korea were provided. On 10 October Communicat edited the article again but did not include this claim about Korea (diff) - I reverted this again as there was no consensus to include the changes and it contained several other dubious claims (this reversion was supported by the other editors active on the article's talk page).
• Despite this, on 24 October Communicat added what was pretty much the text on Korea which had been rejected in the World War II article to the Aftermath of World War II article (diffs), again implying that the US was administering all of Korea (along with lots of other changes). This was reverted by User:Edward321 (diffs), leading to an edit war between him and Communicat. The end result is that Communicat is still trying to include statement about the post-war administration of Korea which had no support from other editors and was proven to not be supported by the sources he or she was providing. I note that Communicat has a history of turning existing articles into POV forks (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Controversial command decisions, World War II.
• As the other example, Communicat has a long history of wanting to add dubious material sourced to someone named Stan Winer. Despite discussions at Talk:Strategic bombing during World War II#Industrial capacity and production, Talk:Strategic bombing during World War II#Link to www.truth-hertz.net, Talk:World War II/Archive 39#WW2 origins of Cold War, Talk:World War II/Archive 39#Link to www.truth-hertz.net, Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 45#User: Communicat and Talk:History of South Africa#new sub-section: extra-parliamentary activities (and in passing in several other locations) which concluded that this author is not a reliable source, Communicate is still adding material referenced to self published works by this author to the History of South Africa article (diff: [32] on 17 October) and edit warring to restore it after it was removed by Edward321 (diffs: [33] (20 October) and [34] (21 October). Once again, he or she is ignoring a consensus which has arisen from extensive discussions and repeatedly adding dubious material.

As such, it appears that Communicat has not learned from their previous warnings and blocks, and is continuing to push POV claims using sources which have either been found to be unreliable or to not support their position. Responding to this clearly disruptive editing is wasting a lot of other editors' time and I ask that they be blocked by an uninvolved administrator. Thanks, Nick-D (talk) 10:06, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I do not understand what this issue is doing on this "incidents" notice board. This is a content dispute.

Responses to some points presented above:

1. Quote: "forming a significant barrier to progressing articles". – The article Aftermath of World War II is or was unsourced crap. It was received absolutely no attention for many years. I have advised Communicat to work on that article instead of trying to tweak the limited space in the WW II article. I cannot see how Communicat's interest in the aftermath article could be a significant barrier to the article's progress!
2. If Communicat's "text on Korea" had been rejected in the World War II, it was mainly because of the space constraints in the "aftermath" section of the WW II main article. There has been extensive discussion on the relative importance of topics on the talk page. There seems to be a consensus that the section needs to be pruned down, but no consensus on what is important.
3. Stan Winer may not be a reliable source for WW II, but he is an respected South African journalist and a reliable source on the History of South Africa and apartheid.
4. The issue of the "civil administration of North Korea" has been blown beyond all proportions. The sources seem to support Communicat's wording, but I do not know if the interpretations people are trying to make of this are correct.
5. The last edit by Comminicat in the WW II article was on October 10 after extensive discussion and preparation on the talk page. This was blindly reverted by Nick-D two hours later. He made one edit in all of September with similar results. If any conclusions can be drawn from the edit history, it is more indicative of edit warring and stonewalling by Nick-D.

It seems that the content issues are mingled with some kind personal antipathy against Communicat. These dissenting editors are now extending the dispute to new articles they have never before been involved with. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 11:18, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Communicat has a record of making edits that are not supported or even contradicted by the sources he cites.[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48] Communicat's most recent attempt to argue against this was to dismiss the sources that contradicted him as the product of McCarthy Era censorship.[49] This is in spite of Communicat previously arguing that some of these sources were reliable [50][51] and ignores the actual publication dates of most of the sources.[52]

Communicat's most recent edits to Aftermath of World War II involved him deleting a large section of sourced material as well as adding material that is not supported by the source he lists.[53] The source does not mention Under-Secretary of State Joseph Grew [54] and does not say Churchill "virtually declared war" on the USSR in 1946.[55] Commincat's edits were also vague, so I clarified that Operation Dropshot was a contingency plan developed to counter of future attacks by the USSR if they occurred.[56] As the differences show, I clearly explained this in the edit summaries. Communicat blind reverted this and the rest of my edits.[57]

Communicat has also been trying against consensus to introduce a self-published fringe source, Stan Winer, into several articles for an extended period of time [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] [65] [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] [81] as well as repeatedly advocating Winer on several talk pages.[ [82] Communiucat is the only editor to think this source is reliable. That's not why I listed Communicat on the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. I listed Communicat because he posted a (now deleted) file claiming to be to be the copyright holder, Stan Winer. The picture has since been reposted without Communicat making that claim. (Information provided by Petri Krohn leaves me with strong doubts that Winer is the actual copyright holder for the picture.)[83]) Even after all of this, Communicat continues to try to use Winer as a source.[84][85]

Communicat is often less than civil.[86] He has been blocked twice for lack of civility [87] and the statement that earned him his first block is still there on his user page without any retraction or apology.[88] Edward321 (talk) 13:14, 26 October 2010 (UTC)