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)
Start a new discussion

User talk:Ludwigs2 on Talk:Muhammad/images

Discussion

A little background: Talk:Muhammad/images is a special talk page created to deal with the large number of editors who come to complain about showing depictions of Muhammad on the Muhammad article, due mostly to religious considerations. Consensus has been decided on multiple occasions that images of Muhammad are acceptable on the page, this has been truly exhaustively discussed in the past as you can tell by the large disclaimer on the top of the talk page, and by reading the archives. This does not mean that consensus cannot change, but it's unlikely and doesn't seem to be happening now. Furthermore, WP:NOTCENSORED is unambiguous when it states "Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations." User talk:Ludwigs2 has made it goal recently to strip the article of images of Muhammad on the basis that it offends Muslims. It is true that some sects of Islam consider it unethical to depict Muhammad as I'm sure most people here know. It has been explained ad nauseum to Ludwig that policy does not allow us to consider religious beliefs when writing this encyclopedia and his response is that we should invoke WP:IAR. I explained to him that IAR still needs to be determined by a consensus and that he cannot unilaterally invoke it to force a POV into the article. His response was that other editors are abusing the rules by enforcing them and if we stop abusing the rules then he will stop IAR. This conversation has been going back and forth with the same points being explained by several editors many times, and it has now crossed the WP:TE line - the entire page is one large WP:BATTLEGROUND at this point, with several WP:IDHT, WP:NPA and WP:AGF issues such as accusing all the other editors opposing removal (which as far as I can tell is all other editors, though there are editors who would like less images for various reasons) of WP:OWN and expressing disbelief that the people he's dealing with can think the way they do and still be normal adults. I'm asking that an uninvolved admin assess the situation and determine if Lugwigs2 requires some kind of a warning or if I'm being overly dramatic, and I thank you in advance for reading the talk page thread because it is a bit long. The relevant thread is here. I'm not posting diffs because the entire thread demonstrates the points I am attempting to illustrate, as it's not a single comment that is at issue here. There are other threads involved in this discussion, but this is the most recent and best highlights my complaint. Noformation Talk 01:11, 3 November 2011 (UTC) This was bound to hit the AN/I fan sooner or later, just one massive Facepalm. If I may offer a pre-rebuttal to what Ludwigs2 is like about to touch on here, neither I nor IMO anyone else asserts ownership of the Muhammad article. I have said "images will not be removed this article" as a simple acknowledgement of the slim-to-none chance that it would ever actually happen. It's like saying "Ron Paul will never be President" or "the Bills will never win the Super Bowl". One is not staking out an aggressive posture against either scenario taking place, but is rather acknowledging the likelihood of occurrence, or lack thereof. It has also been endlessly frustrating to deal with a user who demands existing policy be bent in an absolutely wrong direction to accommodate someone's religious beliefs. And not even a specific someone, all of this is in defense of nebulous "some people out there don't like this article" sensibilities. Tarc (talk) 01:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I have said similar and have elaborated in the same way. The article can certainly change if a consensus to do so is formed, but it will not be done based on religious considerations and the chances of the article being depiction free are slim. This is not asserting ownership. Noformation Talk 01:37, 3 November 2011 (UTC) (edit conflict) I believe the term you're looking for is "Slim to none, and Slim left town". - The Bushranger One ping only 01:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC) A very very tiny portion of the diffs of behavior related to this can be found here[1] (this was for an AN/I or RfC/U I planned on filing but am still working on organizing and moving the diffs over from an offline copy). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 01:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Just noting that I am aware of this thread, and to clarify some misperceptions in Nofo's presentation. beyond that I will allow administrtors to review the material before commenting further. comments on Nofo's summary: I am not trying to "strip the article of images of Muhammad on the basis that it offends Muslims." As I have said repeatedly on the talk page, I want to undertake a frank evaluation of the value of these images to the article to see if keeping them is worth all the immense amounts of trouble that they cause. as Nofo noted, there is a special subpage (with 16 archives) all focused on these images; one would expect the images to be of vital importance to the page for all of that conflict, yet as far as I can tell they are at best decorative illustrations. That struck me as nonsensical - why cause this much trouble over eye-candy? Nofo and Tarc have (understandably) downplayed the extent of wp:page ownership. I have had at least four editors (including one admin) tell me bald-face that the images will not be removed under any circumstances, and that any discussion of the matter is unacceptable (two most reacent examples [2],[3], though there are dozens) I have consequently been forced to turn to wp:IAR simply to get any sort of discussion going. The IAR justification, incidentally, is over the misuse of NOTCENSORED: the policy is being used to retain images that have no particular value to the article but are highly controversial - effectively offending a significant population of our readers and damaging the project's reputation without any overriding encyclopedic reason. please review the talk page at your leisure; happy to answer any questions. Hopefully this can be resolved without further drama on the page. --Ludwigs2 01:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC) P.s. this has been cast as being about me, but there are at least two other editors in the discussion making similar arguments to mine who have not been notified. I will leave notices in their talk (I don't want to involve them unless they choose to participate here). --Ludwigs2 01:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC) That is so very not true, and I can provide faaaar more diffs to prove it's not than the tiny handful in the link I posted above. Shall I? ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 01:49, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I very clearly said "without a consensus for your position, these images will not be removed" in that diff, I seriously doubt anyone will read that as ownership. Noformation Talk 01:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Wikipedia editors insist on calling the Bible stories fairy tales, without concern for offense to Jewish and Christian believers. What's so special about Muslims, that they should be catered to? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:50, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Fairy tales? In mainspace? Do we? --FormerIP (talk) 01:55, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Yes. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Example? I rather think we tolerate highly biased articles making out that Jesus' existence is uncontested historical fact and stuff like that. Not that this supports Ludwigs2's case. --FormerIP (talk) 02:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Bugs: when it comes right down to it, I don't really care who gets offended, so long as the project has a valid, encyclopedic reason to do the offending. If we need controversial material, we use controversial material, but do we really want to be throwing controversial material in our readers' faces for no reason whatsoever? see the recent foundation resolution on controversial content. --Ludwigs2 02:00, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Wow, at AN/I, you actually decided to make such a claim, even though diffs to prove your true motivations and feelings on this matter are right here for all to see? (to everyone else) This is why I think nothing short of a topic ban is going to stop the tendentiousness, disruptiveness and editing in bad faith (not to mention erroneous claims of being attacked while attacking others). In my opinion, that entire comment shows a bad faith response as can be noted from over a dozen diffs showing (in his own words) it is not his true motivations. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 05:47, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Considering that depictions of Muhammed are usually verboten, their mere presence is of major educational benefit here. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC) That's a ridiculous argument, Bugs. Here's a gratuitous and excessive counterexample of something that is offensive but we have no educational mission to include. The concept that we should include offensive material just because no one else will host it is jaw-droppingly silly. SDY (talk) 03:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC) And that's a ridiculously, jaw-droppingly silly, and thoroughly bogus comparison. Unless you're aware of some American law restricting depictions of Muhammed. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:10, 3 November 2011 (UTC) In other words, you think we should include kiddie porn if the laws of Florida didn't say no? Maybe we should include the goatse.cx image for its "educational value"? Including gratuitous offensive images is tasteless and crude: if they have clear educational value that should be easy to defend. Including them for the sake of some twisted sense of entitlement about freedom from censorship is not writing an encyclopedia. SDY (talk) 03:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC) For quite some time we did include the goatse.cx image, first the image itself, and then a screenshot of the website with the image clearly visible. The arguments for the inclusion of that image were much better than those for the Muhammad images, and it didn't get finally removed before Jimbo got involved. Hans Adler 07:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC) If there's an alternate universe where kiddie porn isn't universally condemned as wrong and depraved, and is instead accepted, and if there's a wikipedia in that universe, they'd probably have kiddie porn in their article. The comparison is way too weak because of all the fundamentally unique issues that apply to child pornography that don't apply to almost anything else. Interestingly, I don't particularily think that a category exists whose members are "child porn, goatse.cx and the religious prophet Muhammad". Noformation Talk 03:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Images that might be taken as extremely offensive, perhaps? The complete cultural blindness of this site is shocking sometimes. We have very different ideas about encyclopedias. Regardless, this isn't the place for this conversation. SDY (talk) 03:31, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Re: "cultural blindess" - good thing too, if it weren't culturally blind, it would be a very shitty encyclopedia, especially with all the various interests that have tried subverting article after article. My time here at RC has proven that to me. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 05:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Comment. There's no way I'm reading through all the material here, major case of tl;dr, but I would suggest to Ludwig that his reasoning is dubious when he argues that a possibly valid reason to remove images from said article is simply because they are causing more trouble than they are worth, when it is he who is causing most of the trouble. I agree with the original poster that an uninvolved admin might perhaps need to have a chat with Ludwig and possibly issue a warning. This discussion has truly been done to death at a variety of locations on wikipedia, and I really think it's time for Ludwig to let this issue go. Basalisk inspect damage⁄berate 02:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I had a read through of the entire section myself to get to grips with the situation. Wrt to the point raised re ownership, I didn't see any particular signs of it. I read the various "these pictures will never be removed" comments as "these pictures will never be removed based on the position you are taking". Frankly speaking, all I read was the same argument repeated over and over again until it was escalated into heel digging and declarations of applying IAR ad nauseam until the pictures were removed for the sake of the sensibilities of religious hysterics. --Blackmane (talk) 02:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I cannot believe this was brought here. Ludwigs2 is not just repeating the same arguments over and over again. The most recent round of discussion was kicked off by the resolution recently passed by the WMF on controversial content. Raising the issue here on Wikipedia with what are very easily our most "controversial images" was fully acceptable. In response, Ludwigs has been met with abuse and vitriol. Ludwigs eventually decided to pursue an RfC (supported by myself, Anthonyhcole, and others); a number of regular editors (Tarc is the worst, but also Robertmfromli) have made strong attempts to stop the RfC. When a group of editors attempt to assert that their understanding of policy is so obviously correct and their opponents are so obviously wrong that we shouldn't even ask for the community's input, that is the very definition of ownership. Now, I will admit that Ludwigs2 is on the extreme end, and the chances of his preferred outcome (i.e., no pictorial images whatsoever) is essentially a no-go, but Anthonyhcole has done a very good job of pointing out that there is a middle ground here that needs to be considered (i.e., that by including so many images from a very narrow time period and fairly narrow interpretation of Islam we are in fact violating WP:UNDUE). WP:CENSORSHIP is fine, but it is being used as a bludgeon on that page, as if its very existence means that anyone who even considers removal of any images there is nothing other than a Sunni apologist. My opinion is, once we settle on a wording, we need to let the RfC run. If it turns out (as is likely) to support the extremist "all images are good position", then fine--of course, Ludwigs2 and any other editor must be free to pursue further dispute resolution. That has really been my position all along: that a group of editors are essentially trying to prevent dispute resolution due to their sense of their own unerring interpretation of policy. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:35, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Qwyrxian: Me? I tried stopping the RfC? Are you truly serious? I kindly ask you to review the page history. I was willing to give up[4][5] because of Ludwigs2's actions, but I *NEVER* tried stopping it. The exact opposite is true. *I* restarted it THREE times[6][7][8] and *I* made the only proposal that had any chance at getting any images removed (other than you tacking virtually the same proposal onto proposal #5). So, would you like to retract that claim that I tried stopping the RfC? And apologies for the bolded text, but your claim is so vastly different than what really happened. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 06:05, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Qwyrxian: Apologies for any tone you may read into that. That page is a massive mess, and I am sure you simply missed the things I pointed out above. I am upset about such a claim being made against me, but I know (from seeing you around for a long time) that it's nothing more than not having gotten a handle on that massive walls-o-text talk page. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 06:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC) This AN/I is about Ludwig's behavior, not the content discussion. There may be a middle ground and that's fine but in the meantime Ludwig has made personal attacks, assigned motives to other editors and yes, has repeated the same argument regarding offending Muslims over and over again to the point of WP:TE. He is yet to make a policy based argument against WP:NOTCENSORED, which specifically rules out using religious belief as a valid criteria of building the pedia. Instead he invokes IAR, which he would not need to do if policy was on his side. Yes there have been edits by editors who share my view on the images that made me cringe, I didn't find their behavior bad enough to take to AN/I, but if you do then by all means open up a case. However, in what you wrote above all you did was point to the behavior of others and not that of Ludwigs. Please see some of the diffs below. Noformation Talk 04:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Just to add to this, I have absolutely no problem with an RFC nor do I oppose changes to the way images in the article are handled, and I don't think other editors do either. The problem people have is that we cannot make a case based on Ludwig's reasoning that it offends religious beliefs. Other arguments are fine. I brought this thread here so that an uninvolved admin can step in and calm the waters - not to stifle discussion or stop DR. Noformation Talk 04:49, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I find Ludwigs2's arguments quite sensible, and am more inclined to the view that there are a number of editors opposing Ludwigs2 who are overinvolved on that page, and who are turning this into a battleground over principle. I am still trying to get up to speed with the subject matter, but as far as I can make out, pictorial representations of Muhammad have never been as common and widespread in Muslim traditions as pictorial representations of Christ in the Christian tradition, for example; so the basic situation is a completely different one. We should focus on the most common types of representation (calligraphy etc.), just as we focus on the most typical depictions of Jesus in his article. Even among such pictorial depictions of Muhammad as did exist, the majority showed him as a flame, or veiled; yet most of the pictures we feature are those of the rarer naturalistic type – so they are both unrepresentative and more likely to cause offence. If we keep in mind that we should balance educational value and potential offence, the only reasonable conclusion is that we have far too many naturalistic images of Muhammad in the article. Perhaps one veiled one, and one showing him as a flame, might be reasonable, because these are the common styles. It might also make sense to look at how other encyclopaedias are handling this; Britannica for example does not include any images of Muhammad at all, as far as I can see; neither in the Micropaedia and Macropaedia articles on Muhammad, nor in the Macropaedia article on Islamic art (which is mostly non-pictorial). We'll probably need an RfC on the content issue at some point, and that should be well-prepared, and underpinned by serious research. --JN466 05:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC) There are many arguments to be made on the article's talk page, but one of them is not that it's against Islamic tradition. And again, this is about Ludwig's behavior, not the content dispute. Noformation Talk 05:13, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Well, as someone who has only happened on this page this past week, I see lots of "I didn't hear that" and aspersions from the other side as well, rather than an effort to seek compromise and consensus. I think everybody on that page needs a cooling-off period. (By the way, note WP:NAUSEUM.) And to address the point of tradition, I think we can agree that naturalistic depictions of Muhammad are rare, and nowhere near representative of how Muhammad is represented in Islamic tradition. --JN466 05:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC) A small portion of Ludwigs2 behavior and comments Engages community in attempt to remove images based on Foundation resolution[9] Very next post, claims (in edit summary) "the astonishment is general, not a function or religion"[10] yet the only known objection is religious beliefs. One justification repeatedly trumped out is "[...]and since none of the images of the prophet presented on the page are factual[...]"[11] (one of many diffs) - yet refuses to believe that such would apply to pictures of Euro-Jesus - while admitting it is because people aren't (religiously) offended by such.[12] thus indicating (again and again) the real issue is one of religious offense and not whether the images are "factual". Earlier admits his motivations are religious in nature[13] - continues to do so, such as[14] VERY early on, starts accusing those who he disagrees with of having a prejudicial tone[15] - they cite policy and it's uniform use, he calls their tone "prejudicial" He suggests an RfC[16], which gets given actual attention and yet two days later tries end runs around an RfC that obviously won't remove every image of Muhammad by attempting to remove one editor using WQA[17], and an attempted an end run at ArbCom hinting at our behavior (with diffs) while claiming that isn't part of it[18] (diff to final post on proposed ArbCom case so entire thread can be viewed). During this ArbCom end run attempt, he tries pointing out a "deep ideological divide in the community" by pointing out a Village Pump proposal that shows the exact opposite.[19] (Also) DURING the attempt to formulate an RfC to address such concerns, those with opposing viewpoints and vastly different understanding of policy than him are labeled (by him) as showing or having a bias, not AGF, incivility, anti-Muslim sentiments, personal attacks (against him), etc,[20][21][22] Advises he will continue[23] to bring up what amounts to policy changes in the wrong venue. Advised he should go to the right venue[24]. Obviously refuses by actions (see talk page) and again repeats (after being told by multiple editors that it's getting tendentious (and disruptive))[25][26][27](and plenty more) that he will continue to do so anyway, even after acknowledging the correct venue (and even responding with "tenacious" once in response to claims of his "tendentious"ness) [28][29] Added by ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 01:51, 3 November 2011 (UTC) We need to limit this discussion to Ludwigs2's behavior. We *really* don't want to hash out the image controversy here as it's one that will never achieve consensus anyway. Rklawton (talk) 02:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC) It achieved consensus long ago (that a few images stay) and has had it ever since. What it will never achieve is universal agreement, but that's not the same thing. Johnbod (talk) 04:25, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Agreed, I was just about to post the same thing. Noformation Talk 02:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Agreed as well, but in fairness to Ludwigs, we need to limit it to everyone's behaviour, even if I echo others in believing that he himself is responsible for nearly all of the conflict. Now, onto the point, I won't repeat everything RobertM has said, but I have a collection of links myself that echos those. The one I will leave is typical of his behaviour on that talk page: "...the extravagant effort I see dumped into defending these trivial images is only explainable by deep-seated anti-Islamic prejudice." This was from last weekend, but he has made several similar accusations of bigotry and racism, the most recent of which I saw was from yesterday. That is pretty much his MO. We need to remove images of "the prophet" because some Muslims are offended, and therefore anyone who does not support his goal of censoring the article must be a bigot. He has been tendentious in the extreme and routinely makes bad-faith arguments against his opponents. Resolute 03:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Cannot but agree that Ludwigs has been speculating on the motives of editors at that page and he should stop. Ludwigs2 is by no means the only offender. I would very much appreciate it if all the editors on that page would apply WP:TALK. It is extremely tedious trying to engage in rational argument when every fifth paragraph seems to be about editor behaviour or speculations about motive, from every direction. It draws out the process and just makes people dig in their heels. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I agree. The whole recent discussion on that page seems to have degenerated into battleground mode. I would not want to lay the responsibility for that at any one individual editor's doorstep. --JN466 05:22, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I believe we are on our 5th attempt at an RfC (which ironically he proposed and tried to circumvent). I even proposed an RfC that actually had a chance of getting an image or three removed (the "all or none" ones we know wouldn't change anything, and Ludwigs' written or implied as "none or none" ones weren't going to happen). If that's not a compromise, I don't know what is. Worse yet, there isn't anything else that can be compromised on in that venue. The rest require policy changes or policy addendums - where, on well over a dozen occasions, Ludwigs2 was suggested to go. We can't change nor ignore WP:CENSOR. At least 4 times, a viable compromise in the form of an RfC that may have removed some images was proposed. And finally, the rest of us don't really need to cool off. We just don't need tendentiousness and every RfC attempt turned into a circus of repeated IAR claims and repeated claims of (grossly paraphrased) "ooh, you attacked me again!" I disagree with various of your points, yet you and I are going back and forth in good faith with points and counter-points and listening to each other. Same with other editors. Yes, it's been difficult for us to ignore Ludwigs2, and I think all of us have tried, and most of us have failed... but ignoring him doesn't work either. And I've got pages of history in the talk page archives - plus the current page - to prove that. Simply responding to each other (as you and I have been doing) results in walls of the "Policy Whack A Mole" game, accusations towards other editors, single purpose IAR rants, and so on. I'll gladly do no more than provide a link to the Village Pump each time from now on, so the rest of us can discuss... but, at this point, the number of accusations and attacks on editors from him has gotten ridiculous, as has the tendentiousness and disruptiveness. I personally think he's long overdue for a topic ban. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 05:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Rob, this is a complex issue. It will take time for calm rational discussion to arrive at an idea of the best way forward, if indeed anything needs to be done. There is no hurry. The only problem I see at that page is a tendency for many editors, of every persuasion, to allow themselves to be sidetracked into ad hominem. You can ignore ad hominem. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Anthony, you are correct. And my apologies, if my frustrations at others ever got misplaced and misdirected at you or anyone else. Best, Rob ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 06:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC) My OPINION: Summary of this whole event This was intended to be part of the AN/I I held off filing and was to go with the diffs I provided above and below. It has been modified to note the two locations of the diffs, as I never finished moving them from off-Wiki to my userspace) (diffs representative of most or all of this are already posted here) When it comes to removal of the images, whether one or all or something inbetween, there are two camps involved: One camp which wishes to discuss the merit (historic, educational and artistic value to the article) of each image (or the images as a whole). One editor (Ludwigs2) who wishes to see them all removed based on religious objections to them. It seems that if those in "Camp #1" make what he perceives are compelling arguments, he tries that road for a short period of time. Everyone else starts discussing such with them in good faith, but as soon as it looks like there is pressure against any part of any such proposal, he tends to revert to various policy Whack A Mole type arguments based on religious objections to the images for summary removal of all of them, including suggesting an RfC that asked or implied (paraphrased) "remove all for this reason, or remove all for this reason". It is at that point where things continue to spiral out of control. Multiple attempts have been made to restart discussions, but the end result is always the same. I can provide diffs to various such conversations where those at odds with Ludwigs2's actions were working in good faith with those in "Camp #1" - and where he sidetracked things for his single minded objective. Due to his preliminary support of some of these (before he reverts to his true objective), a person only giving the page a quick read may come to a grossly wrong conclusion about his objectives as he himself (diff below in response to Anthony, many more available) had admitted is his goal. This is just my perceptions of the matter, with diffs in the section above I created, as well as below to support my interpretation. Your's may vary (or not). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 08:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC) My take on this whole thing is that Ludwigs2 wants a clear interpretation of the ArbCom resolution reflected in Wikipedia's existing policies. As a precisionist Wikipedian myself, this is something I agree with. The problem is that Ludwigs2 picked the wrong venue, perhaps to use as a test case, but nevertheless it's the wrong place to build a consensus regarding fundamental interpretations of policy. At this point, after the same arguments have been stated over and over again, I would agree that Ludwigs2's persistence in the wrong venue has crossed the line into tendentiousness. ~Amatulić (talk) 14:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I took the fact that the resolution was already incorporated into WP:CENSOR with the religious censorship section left intact as the community's interpretation. I'd gladly see through such an endeavor for clarity, if you believe such is really needed. On the other side of the coin though, Ludwigs2 (I have the diffs, and can provide them later if you would like) started out at that article by removing images, caused drawn out debates about removing images, tried policy Whack-A-Mole to remove images, tried RfC attempts to remove images, tried a Village Pump proposal to remove images (was that one another end run attempt at an ongoing RfC?), and when pushed, repeatedly admits it's religious based objections at the core of his argument - hence my interpretation of his motives is different. Even with the very very unamibguous wording that was left in WP:CENSOR, it seemed more Policy-Whack-A-Mole time again. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 15:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC) After re-reading much of the discussion (there's a good chunk of my life I'll sadly never get back), I have to concur with RobertMfromLI's summary--Ludwigs2 does keep reverting back to the same argument over and over. If Ludwigs2 wants to use that argument in the upcoming RfC, that is fine; however, there's no point in continuing to bring it up over and over again when xe knows that the current local consensus is opposed to that position. Right now, Ludwigs2 should be focused only on helping phrase the RfC itself, then xe can add whatever additional points xe wants to it. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Quick question (sorry it is my first AN/I) should we continue to report any behavioral problems or should we let the matter lie while people look things up? Since I have noticed several times since we started this that personal attacks are continuing. Tivanir2 (talk) 22:26, 7 November 2011 (UTC) Topic Ban Proposal Topic ban? Ludwigs2 seems to be behaving no differently on this article than he has on astrology, pregnancy and acupuncture. (On Men's rights, it seems that his presence provides a useful counterfoil to some of the newly arrived editor-activists.) Almost all his contributions to the discussion on the image subpage appear to be outside wikipedia policy; and he still has not succeeded in finding a way to engage with other users who do not share his opinions, without causing offense. In this case, he has been shifting between several different lines of argument in a way which makes it very hard to see whether he has any coherent objections beyond WP:IDONTLIKETHAT. My suggestion is that, since he seems intent on producing more heat than light and at the same time causing offense, his presence on that talk page is purely disruptive and not a net positive for the project. Perhaps the best way foward is for Ludwigs2 to be topic banned from all discussions of images on wikipedia for a preliminary period of six months. (On astrology, he was topic-banned for six months.) Mathsci (talk) 06:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Sadly, Support VERY VERY STRONG SUPPORT I tried avoiding going to this forum for quite some time (hence I never even finished adding diffs to the report I started in my userspace), but I think we are at the point this is the only viable option. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 06:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC) After a bad faith RfC just created today,[30] I am now inclined to change my "Sadly, Support" to "VERY STRONG SUPPORT" - as pointed out by another editor, the RfC is biased to the point it is worded similar to "When did you stop beating your wife?" This needs to stop. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 03:40, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Oppose. Ludwigs2 is needed to balance the POV of that article. It is striking how the illustrations of our article on Jesus are fully consistent with and celebratory of Christian tradition, while the illustrations in our article on Muhammad are not only inconsistent with Islamic tradition, but actually offensive to many muslim readers. That should give anyone just a moment's pause for thought about the neutrality that this project aspires to, and the extent to which we have achieved that lofty aim. --JN466 06:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC) As a brief aside, I've paused for a moment, and come to the conclusion that we're not necessarily hearing from a representative portion of the Muslim community, since we tend not to hear from Muslims who actually like the images there; kind of a "planes that crash" problem. I won't try to bring the discussion at Talk:Muhammad/images here, but to briefly state; I know many Muslims personally who feel it's a personal choice whether or not to be offended by pictures of Muhammad, and that a secular encyclopedia should show depictions of him because that will lend itself to better understanding of the subject. To the topic at hand here, I'm not making a decision on whether I want to see an editor topic banned at 3 in the morning, so I'll weigh in later on. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 07:01, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Blade, the point is that we should pick typical, traditional representations of Muhammad, that a muslim would recognise as typical representations, just as we do in the article on Jesus. We simply don't do that. Ludwigs2 is aware of that, but he is being stonewalled, and unreasonably so. --JN466 07:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Jayden, Ludwig wants to remove all images of Muhammad because some Muslims find them offensive. He doesn't want some, or one, he wants none. I don't think a single other editor is opposed to removing or changes images in general, it's just that we're not willing to have no images. Noformation Talk 07:37, 3 November 2011 (UTC) (edit conflict)Actually, Ludwigs has repeatedly stated his true intent is to get all the images removed - that is why various of us are working in good faith with those discussing what you are talking about above - they don't want summary removal. Big difference. Does he make a few good points? Yes, and I've given him credit for them. But he then returns each conversation to efforts to simply summarily remove all images. Would you like diffs? If so, how many? Five? A dozen? That page is a convoluted mess, but you'll see (if you spend an hour or four reading it) that the rest of us are discussing every such issue in good faith, whether for or against the images. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 07:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Actually, he has signed up to this No one would object to pictures of Muhammad illustrating Muhammad#Depictions of Muhammad (if it ever gets written) No one objects to pictures of Muhammad illustrating Depictions of Muhammad We believe the artists' impressions of historical events in this article have no educational value for the topic of this article - or, if they do, not enough to justify the space they take up. so he's happy to have images that add real educational value. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Sorry, Anthony, that is not a true representation of events. He himself admits "as I have said several times, I currently believe all images should be removed"[31] - but then follows that with "but I'm open minded[...]". Though he proposes things to be discussed that have some merit, he keeps returning the conversation to one of removing ALL images (how many diffs would you like?) - and then admits he will continue to push the issue until it happens (buncha diffs above). That's editing in bad faith. One cannot say they are open minded (and even get off to a good start on some topics) then try to turn it back to that singular motivation. That is what numerous of us are upset about. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 08:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I think he agrees with me and many others that none of the images of Muhammad presently adorning the article are appropriate, due to their lack of relevant educational value, so they should all go, but is OK with images of Muhammad in a (yet-to-be-created) section on images of Muhammad. That's my reading. I know you and others read his position differently. I've been assuming you're misunderstanding his position. Time will tell. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC) No Anthony, here is his reasons: religious offense[32], religious offense[33], religious offense[34], religious offense[35]... (pretend I posted about 10 more - or I simply can if you like). Every time he is pushed for justifications, he reverts to the religious offense argument - with a massive dab of WP:IAR thrown on top to ignore WP:CENSOR's section on religious beliefs. You've had to have seen those arguments. That is when things fall apart again. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 08:49, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Oh yes. He believes since they're offensive to many readers, we should withhold our usual tolerance for educationally valueless images in this case. We tolerate images that breach WP:IUP like that on articles like Jesus because they're pretty, but, if I understand him correctly, he argues that images that add nothing to the readers' understanding and offend many people should go. But he's open to using images of Muhammad where they have some didactic purpose. It's not contradictory to argue against gratuitous offensiveness but go along with offensiveness when it's the inevitable byproduct of a greater good. The doctrine of double effect applies here. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC) This is not really the place to discuss content. The concern here is about conduct. An ArbCom case on images, proposed by Ludwigs2, was recently rejected by arbitrators. Ludwigs2 does not appear to have dropped the idea. [36][37] [38] Mathsci (talk) 07:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC) It was rejected as a content rather than conduct issue, but I recall that several arbitrators went out of their way to state that a wider community discussion about the general topic of controversial content was necessary. --JN466 07:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC) (correct venue) Suggested and ignored numerous times. Some of the diffs above, 10-15 more if you like. I'd even help with it. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 07:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Oppose I haven't followed Ludwigs' behaviour at Astrology so can't speak to that. We are in different camps on Acupuncture, and his argument there could be better focused, but we certainly don't need to be protected from him there. At Pregnancy, he is arguing for a view that, the last time I looked, was in the ascendancy. At Muhammad, his behaviour would be fine if he could just learn to not speculate about others' motives or respond to ad hominem. You're right, Mathsci, he does have several lines of argument, and one of them is that we should not use controversial images in an article when (a) they have little real educational value or (b) an uncontroversial picture would do just as well. I agree with this line, and believe that (a) applies in this case, but believe it represents a novel position, and is something that should win community approval elsewhere before it can sway a content decision. But he also argues that the images lack educational value, and so violate WP:IUP, and, on various grounds, that they violate WP:DUE. On these last two points of policy, there are many others, including me, who agree with him. His failure to observe WP:TALK has been well and truly matched by many others who oppose him on that page. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:56, 3 November 2011 (UTC) If uninvolved editors who have reviewed the WP:NOT RfC and recent threads at Talk:Muhammad/images decide on sanctions for all parties involved in ad hominem discussion, I'll change my vote. Banning only one editor in this situation would be highly unbalanced. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:35, 7 November 2011 (UTC) Support with reservation Outside of controversial pages Ludwigs is a great contributor, but he doesn't play nice with others and cannot accept when consensus is not in his favor. He acted this way on Astrology and was topic banned for six months so I don't know why it would be any different here. But long term what's the solution? Drama seems to follow him where he goes and simply topic banning every time he gets to this point is inefficient. Perhaps a third solution, such as mentorship, would be beneficial here. I don't want him topic banned, I just want him to accept that policy as written is not in his favor and to stop acting as though IAR will function without consensus, but if he is unwilling to stop then I reluctantly support he be topic banned from the Muhammad article in regards to images. I've seen other instances of him invoking IAR when consensus and interpretation of policy didn't agree with him and frankly it's annoying and unproductive. Honestly I jumped the gun in supporting a topic ban. Ludwigs' is a good editor and generally makes great contributes and it's not fair for me to condemn him so strongly. I think think admin intervention is necessary but this goes too far for the time being. Noformation Talk 06:59, 3 November 2011 (UTC) (to Noformation) Eh, it's only a topic ban (not a site ban). He can continue to be a great editor elsewhere. It's preventative (not punitive) in order to end the disruption to what are probably attempts at good faith proposals to review the images (and their value) one more time. I'm not sure what other administrator intervention is possible other than a topic ban? ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 19:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I just think it goes too far. If this AN/I was focused on behavior and not on content then I think Ludwigs behavior would have been more strongly rebuked and that he would back off from the WP:BATTLEGROUND and be willing to adjust. Unfortunately all the content is distracting from the issue. When I filed the report I made the mistake of asking people to read over the thread rather than providing diffs of specific NPA, AGF, etc, violations, which had the effect of getting people to take sides in the debate. I'm not sure where to go from here tbch. Noformation Talk 19:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I don't particularly want to see a topic ban either, if it can be avoided (which is why I started and never completed my filing). But, perhaps like you, I cannot think of any remedy other than one. And rebukes don't seem to work well - I'm dealing with such an issue on two other articles, and multiple admins have stopped in with rebukes which end things for a few hours to maybe a day - then edit/revert warring begins anew. I think each article has passed six such edit/revert wars. Until it's made abundantly clear that such rebukes are serious by stopping one dead in its tracks with a temporary block, they are going to continue. I suspect the same will happen here. One of those editors (in my other "situation") is also involved in this article, btw. Though admirably not engaging in such behavior on it. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 20:01, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I imagine this will take a couple days to settle out and when it does I reserve the right to change back to support. I'm hoping that now that uninvolved editors are weighing in that it will be a bit of a wake up call. We'll see if anything changes on the talk page. Noformation Talk 22:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Oppose. Ludwigs2 has done the right thing on that page, and has been behaving far better than most of his opponents. While Noformation's behaviour on the page is definitely not the worst, it's bad enough (especially the ridiculous interpretation of boiler-plate language in WP:CENSOR as a strict rule that we may not ever consider religious offence internally for editorial decisions except to prevent legal action against Wikipedia), and it's mind-boggling that this editor has the extremely poor sense of reporting Ludwigs2. Hans Adler 08:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Watch where you point your finger. I have done my very best to be civil and follow talk page guidelines. If I have done something outside of policy please provide a diff or don't label me as "not the worst." NOTCENSORED is unambiguous in regards to religious considerations, it clearly states that Wikipedia is not part of any religious groups and thus we do not follow their customs - that's about as boiler plate as it gets. Noformation Talk 08:18, 3 November 2011 (UTC) This is an absurd misreading of WP:CENSOR, and it can only be explained with your desire to insult or a severe reading comprehension problem. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a playground for fighting your cultural war against Islam, or religion in general, or whatever it is. Hans Adler 09:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Please provide a diff where it's demonstrated that I was uncivil or violated any policy. You have painted my conduct in a negative light, so back it up or strike your comments please. You are now ascribing motives to me when you have zero idea what I believe about Islam. I have done nothing to deserve such accusation aside from disagree with you. Expressing my interpretation of policy and my take on an issue is not a behavioral issue and is not against any policy. And again, not considering religious belief is not the same as deliberately insulting religion. All gay people offend a portion of Christians by virtue of being gay, that does not mean that they are obligated to hide their sexuality. In the same way, we are not obligated to consider people's personal beliefs and that is why not censored specifically says "Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations." and "Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images will always be acceptable to all readers, or that they will adhere to general social or religious norms." Noformation Talk 09:11, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Hans Adler's statements seem to be at odds with the history of Islamic art, as presented for example on the website of the Islamic collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even in Vienna, Hans Adler had the opportunity to see the al-Sabah collection from Kuwait in the Kunsthistorisches Museum this year including a page from the manuscript of Nizami’s “Khamsa” depicting the Prophet Mohammed’s night journey to Jerusalem.[39] Mathsci (talk) 23:09, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Thanks for the that. I have found it odd that this has become such an issue when there hasn't exactly been a huge backlash against WP by the Muslim community - to me it seems like a solution in search of a problem. Personal experience wise, about half of my dad's side of the family is Muslim (the other half Hindu) and this subject never came up for me when I was growing up. I know the edict exists, but as far as I know it is not in the holy book, but it's rather a modern movement. In my personal opinion, I think that people in the mideast who flipped out about this a few years ago wrt the Danish cartoons were manipulated into doing so for political reasons. I also find that people in the west tend to misunderstand life in the East - I guarantee that this is a bigger deal to people on this talk page than it is to the majority of Muslims in my fatherland, but I suppose it's anecdotal and I could be wrong. Noformation Talk 23:21, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Filling a page with undue weight images just because some Muslims are offended by them and you know you can get away with it is the really offensive thing here. This is what angers even the most liberal Muslims, who would not normally mind naturalistic depictions of Muhammad. In fact, it angers even me as an atheist living in a traditionally Christian country with many (mostly liberal) Muslims. It's absolutely despicable behaviour. Hans Adler 12:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC) So now I'm not only anti-islamic but I also am the one who filled the page with images. Please provide diffs of me adding images to the article and please provide diffs substantiating your previous characterization of me as an editor - any WP:TALK, WP:NPA or WP:CIVIL diff will do. Never have I expressed a desire to offend anyone, I have only said that religious considerations should not be relevant, this is not the same thing and not everyone who disagrees with you is a bigot. Please stop attributing motives to me and strike your comments - you clearly do not have the diffs to back them up otherwise you would have posted them already. Your credibility goes down the drain when you make claims you cannot back and when you're unwilling to correct incorrect statements. Noformation Talk 22:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Fully agree with Noformation. He's done nothing to warrant such claims. And I can provide over 4 dozen more diffs to show Ludwigs2's behavior that you think is "the right thing". Yes, I know you think my behavior is the worst (or is it Tarc's? someone else? who won?), but again.... dozens of diffs. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 08:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I haven't decided between you, Tarc and Kww. Hans Adler 09:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Hans, at no time has my behaviour been inappropriate or problematic. We disagree on things, but that doesn't provide reason for you to disparage my behaviour (or to refer to me as unethical and autistic, either). I don't bring up WP:NPA often, but you are getting there.—Kww(talk) 11:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Your massive IDHT behaviour and refusal to accept that there is a valid dispute has certainly been very inappropriate and problematic. Not sure if or when I referred to you personally as autistic, although there have been situations in this dispute where autism spectrum conditions are the only remaining explanation of an editor's behaviour that is compatible with good faith. Hans Adler 12:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Hans, you're as bad as he is with this repetitive IDHT quoting. I hear you both just fine, I just disagree. Strongly. The established consensus is that images of Mohammad are of encyclopedic value to the article, and that religious concerns cannot be taken into account when deciding to remove or retain images. Sooner or later, those who agitate for change again and again in the face of considerable opposition wind up like this. Ludwigs is heading down into ChildOfMidnight/Grundle2600 territory. Tarc (talk) 13:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I hear you, Hans. You believe that religious sensitivities should be taken into account in our editorial decisions. You are wrong, and no amount of listening to you will make you right. That doesn't mean that I don't hear you, it simply means that I believe that you are fundamentally and unalterably wrong. I assume that you can accept that someone can in good faith believe that you are wrong.—Kww(talk) 13:40, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Can I suggest that we, those of us involved on Muhammad, stop adding to this thread for a while. If we want uninvolved editors to offer their advice about this situation, the least we can do is cut down the amount of tangental reading. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:24, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Support topic ban. A cursory glance at the scores or hundreds of posts by Ludwig on the image talk page indicates obsession with maintaining a minority position based upon IDONTLIKEITSOIGNOREALLRULES. This is a secular encyclopedia and we should not set the precedent of putting content into a fundamentalist religious straightjacket, as the majority have consistently argued. ArbCom has refused to hear the debate as a content dispute and at this point the disruption needs to be terminated. Ludwig on his User Talk page indicates he sees a ban as inevitable and thinks it's some sort of game. [It's on some other User talk page, factually correct but sourced wrong, nevermind.] Time to end the distraction with a rapid topic ban. Carrite (talk) 18:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Support, as there comes a time when you gotta stop beating the dead horse. PS- This goes for all the editors who continue this 'delete images' campaign. GoodDay (talk) 19:18, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Support topic ban from Muhammad and and all Islam-related image discussions. I see no alternative. The user keeps advocating a position incompatible with the mission of Wikipedia. We're not talking about removing some gory or porn-y pics here. He advocates removal of all human-like images Muhammad and replacing them with a flame [40]. (Note the bold font and all caps in the post, plus self-admittance that he's saying the same thing for about the 30th time.) ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:51, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Support - If Ludwigs is never going to drop the stick (and I don't see any sign that he is), someone will have to take it away from him. His continuous declarations of the majority view as invalid or not reasonably argued by his personal standard are hallmarks of the most disruptive kind of tendentious editing. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 22:39, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Support - L2's continuing his behavior pattern after multiple discussions that have pointed out its disruptiveness, and his POV-oriented editing in general, justifies a topic ban. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:08, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Support - Overall, this is a perennial topic that has never garnered wise support to change the status quo. Ludwigs2 tried and failed in March of this year, then came back to try again. Same result. He has said many many times that he will not stop bringing this up until he gets what he wants, so administrative action is necessary to do for Ludwigs what he is unable or unwilling to do for himself. Tarc (talk) 03:26, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Support, sort of. A topic ban on article talk pages only might work best. I believe Ludwigs2 should be free to propose clarifications or changes to Wikipedia policy in more appropriate places such as the Village Pump. ~Amatulić (talk) 04:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Support - from what I can see, his editing on the subject is tendentious. - The Bushranger One ping only 05:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Guys, you need to appreciate that our present article fails to show the typical representations of Muhammad, while showing six examples of a very rare type of illustration that also happens to be offensive to many who have grown up in the Islamic tradition. Muhammad is normally portrayed abstractly, and there is a very rich tradition of calligraphy, symbols and pictograms to do that – which we don't show. Examples: [41] [42] The effect of our present article is not unlike the effect the Jesus article would have on the reader if you showed them just one cathedral painting, plus 6 shock images of Christ like Piss Christ and Jesus on the electric chair (also shown in a cathedral, but hardly representative). You could argue NOTCENSORED there, but no one would go for it, because editors would realise that it would just be completely undue to focus on such exceptional images, while neglecting the mainstream depictions of Christ. The problem with Islam, unfortunately, is that our editorship is generally less familiar with it and doesn't pick up on such subtleties. [43] So I don't think Ludwigs2 is being tendentious here; it's his opponents who are, probably unwittingly so. --JN466 07:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Oppose in the strongest possible way. As Anthony has pointed out at Talk:Pregnancy Ludwigs POV is increasingly gaining ground, and he was explicitly asking for compromise which seems to be happening now at last, despite the ideological absolutism of one or two editors. This Muhammad depiction issue is also astounding. I've known about it for some time but purposefully kept a distance. What I'm now reading is a sorry collection of some of the most ignorant arguments I've ever seen on Wikipedia. This is an area that could use some expert commentary because I see a lot of very confused arguments for keeping these images in the Muhammad article as general illustrations. You will find plenty Muslims in today's day and age who are not offended by these images, and plenty others who are. What you wont find are Muslims who find them normative in any way. You wont find Muslims with depictions like this hanging on their walls, filling pages of books in their libraries or hanging at their place of worship. Why? Because depictions of Muhammad are fringe within Islamic history. That's a very basic fact. Sure there are traditions within which he has been visually depicted, and we have an entire article to cover that fact Depictions of Muhammad. But in the main Muhammad entry these images are completely UNDUE and nonrepresentational of the mainstream tradition today and throughout history and across the globe. Outside of the offense issue this whole matter can be resolved by applying WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 12:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Expert commentary that has been provided disagrees with your assertions above. See the comments from Johnbod, for example, in the current debate as well as the one from last March, concerning the prevalence of such images throughout history. ~Amatulić (talk) 14:38, 4 November 2011 (UTC) What exactly is Johnbod an expert in? I'm a scholar of religion and I have taught Western Religion courses. My assertions are based on that. Also, please do not confuse assertions about the art history of the Depictions of Muhammad with the history of Islam. For instance all the "scholarly" evidence I've seen Mathsci produce has been 100% irrelevant to this question. Relevant to the depictions entry yes, or to Islamic art but we are not talking about those entries. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 17:18, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Your argument above seems entirely based on judgements of an art historical nature to do with the uses to which art is and historically has been put. I suggest you read the Gruber pdf below, where you will find much contrary evidence to your anecdotal OR. You obviously don't know the right Muslims, though I'd suggest some of them turn up now & then on your tv screen. Johnbod (talk) 19:00, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Maybe that is where the divide stems from? This is not an article on religion. It is a biography on a person. Why are we treating it like it's a religious article? We don't treat the Edison article like it's an article on lightbulbs. Related to the religion he started, yes. Included in that category because it is relevant to that religion, yes. About that religion, no. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 17:31, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Robert you couldn't be more wrong. I assume you also think that Jesus and Abraham are not religious topics, they are just biographies? The primary sources we have on Muhammad are religious. The secondary and tertiary sources the article is based on are written by, scholars of religion. I wont deny that there is biography here, but clearly it is religious biography, and clearly it is much more than that. This topic falls within the field of religion and history of religion, and history of Islam most specifically and most importantly. I'm perfectly willing to believe you made that assertion out of a genuine confusion of some kind, but if so please understand that you are sorely out of your depth here, and seem to completely misunderstand how the academic study of this topic is organized. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 18:18, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Not at all out of my depth. It is a biography, albeit about a religious figure. It is not an article about Islam that happens to mention a person. Of course, since his major notability is Islam, it will broadly cover those, including using sources of the appropriate nature. But it is still a biography. It is not Islam which is how it is being treated. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 18:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC) I stand by my last statement. Religious traditions include all kinds of things, like founding figures. They are part of that tradition, and when what we know about them comes from the tradition, when what people have cared to know about them is related to that tradition, and when scholars who study them are scholars of that religious tradition what we have is, above all, a religious subject. Saying you are not out of your depth only makes your comments seem that much more ignorant. Sorry.Griswaldo (talk) 18:37, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Griswaldo, stop harassing people who disagree with you. We do not treat religious figures with undue reverence in the Wikipedia. We write biographies, not hagiographies. If you don't know the difference between the two, then perhaps we should be talking about the depth of your understanding of the subject matter, or lack thereof. Tarc (talk) 00:47, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Griswaldo, stop harassing people who disagree with you. That's a very odd thing to say to someone responding to people who challenged his own comment. I explain why I oppose this and people challenge me on it and when I respond to them that's "harassment?" Tarc next time you mean to post something look over the conversation enough not to say something inane. As to the difference between a biography and a hagiography I'm well aware of it, but I'm not sure if you mean hagiography in a technical sense or in the now more common sense. I'm certainly not promoting an uncritical view of Muhammad (common sense) though I do recognize that the "biographical" source materials for Muhammad are mostly compiled by followers of his who, if this is the correct term to apply to Muhammad even, considered him a holy person (more technical sense). That said I quite clearly understand that he's not a Christian saint, and that we're not writing about him based on an actual tradition of hagiography (most technical sense). If you believe that historians of religion only tackle biography in terms of hagiography, or as Johnbod appears to believe only in terms of theology, then you're sadly mistaken. I'll point out to you once again that this entry is written from sources that are almost entirely historians of religion (specifically Islam). Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 12:37, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Absolutely oppose... and I don't even want to repeat the reasons. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 13:09, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Oppose The fact that Ludwig's position may be in the minority doesn't mean he shouldn't be allowed to it and wikipedia operates by consensus rather then majority rules anyway. The Muhammad image issue is clearly far from a simple one with plenty of people repeating themselves. (I took part in a long ago RFC and I think I said then as others have said now on both sides that the parallels with other figures isn't simply since unlike with many other figures like Jesus, Buddha, in the modern era even people familiar with the subject will often have seen few depictions and not really have much of any preconceived idea about depictions of the person. As I grew up as a Christian in Malaysia, I can definitely attest to that. Therefore the issue of undue weight, historic vs current practice, readers expectations, making sure our use of images is sufficiently educational rather then simply offensive form a complicated mix and simply yelling 'notcensored' doesn't go anywhere particularly since most people including Ludwings aren't arguing for removing the images completely from wikipedia but how many and where they should be in Muhammad as opposed to other articles like depictions of Muhammad.) Having looked at the discussion, I agree with Seb, Griswaldo and others, cutting out Ludwigs will harm the discussion by removing an important counter-POV and I do not believe Ludwigs is being tendentious. Nil Einne (talk) 14:00, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Please do not assign gross mischaracterizations to our motives as you appear to have (probably unintentionally) done in your first sentence. No one is asking for the removal of Wiqi55, Jayen, Anthonyhcole, Hans (yet), or various others who have similar views. It is the attacks against other editors, the bad faith proposals, the end runs around RfC attempts, the tendentiousness and disruptiveness (which he personally admits to continuing) and such that has dragged him here. A tiny handful of diffs are already included to support this. It would thus be greatly appreciated if you would correct or clarify your mischaracterization. Best, Rob ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 17:20, 4 November 2011 (UTC) No I'm not changing my comment. As I've said, the issue of something being in a minority or majority is not particularly relevant since we operate by consensus yet it was brought up several times in this discussion as have related issues like how he continues to maintain a POV that all images should be removed or stuff about how editors advocating the deletion of images need to stop, this being a secular encyclopaedia, his view being incompatibile with wikipedia's mission etc. As I already said in my first comment, I've look at the discussion and I see no evidence he is being tendentious much more so then other people on all sides. He is not automatically tendentious because he continues to support a view that is in the 'minority' or mentions that view when relevant. I don't see any evidence he's operating in bad faith either. The fact that he retains a certain POV and continues to express it when relevant doesn't mean he isn't open minded, it may simply be arguments he's seen so far haven't sufficiently convinced him. As you yourself have acknowledged, he is willing to support and discuss alternative options even if they aren't his preference and he retains his preference. Ultimately there are plenty of areas on wikipedia where there is always going to be strong differing views and where any option is going to be opposed by a fair number of people and therefore the issue will keep coming up again and again. Achieving consensus may mean a compromise, but it doesn't mean people can't maintain or should never bring up their primary preference where relevant. As a case in point, I recently participated in a discussion on the move for Burma to Myanmar. I don't believe a consensus is going to be reached for the move, but either way, I don't expect this issue to be resolved any time soon (although I do think there will eventually be some resolution, at some stage the government is going to be accepted enough that whatever name they choose, most will follow and eventually only a few will try to argue for something else, like with Mumbai/Bombay for example). As for the RFC, it seems premature as there was existing, recent discussion which should have been used to guide an RFC, and it's obviously far better to work towards an agreed wording, so I agree it was a bad idea. That doesn't mean it was in bad faith. Nil Einne (talk) 15:10, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Support; mind you, it's not the fact that we fall on opposite sides of this argument that leads me to do this, nor is it the comments by the really involved editors in this dispute. However, I have a problem with being told I have some sort of prejudice against Islam by someone who's never met me based on one comment (it's in one of the numerous diffs above, I can bring it down if necessary; incidentally, people who know me know I've read Avicenna, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Taymiyya, and Malcolm X, to name just a few), which shows a serious lack of perspective on the issue (the fact that I don't agree on this issue doesn't make me anti-Muslim). Nor do I take kindly to the constant repetition of arguments that RobertMfromLI described a section above. And if anyone wants to get on me, I have PDD-NOS, so I stand guilty as charged of being on the spectrum; however, I don't see how that's germane to this particular topic. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:05, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Support I am (as far as I can tell) totally uninvolved with this dispute, but after reading the associated talk pages, the horrendously worded RFC, and seeing the number of times this user has brought the same, somewhat disingenuous arguments about this issue, this seems like the appropriate step. Not to mention that, as gets pointed out repeatedly on the images talk page but has gone mostly unnoticed in the discussion of the images here: these images were created by Muslims, so the argument that these images are forbidden is on incredibly shaky ground. To keep using this argument warrants a suggestion that Ludwig drop the WP:STICK. eldamorie (talk) 16:10, 4 November 2011 (UTC) The fact that these images were created by muslims to illustrate a certain type of book 500 or 800 years ago does not make them useful or obligatory illustrations in the Muhammad article. The fact is that if you want to show how Muhammad is portrayed in Islamic religious art, you need to be aware that "For practical purposes, representations are not found in [Islamic] religious art ... Instead there occurred very soon a replacement of imagery with calligraphy and the concomitant transformation of calligraphy into a major artistic medium." (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Islamic Arts, Macropaedia, Vol. 22, p. 76.) We are showing typical religious art in the article on Jesus, but you seem to be unaware of how untypical our illustrations in the article on Muhammad are. --JN466 17:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC) or 800 years ago, 300, 200, etc and still today. While there is certainly far far less figurative art in Islamic art, there is a continuous tradition, including from the 13th century representations of Muhammad, though far less in the Arabic-speaking world than for example Persia and Turkey. There are better sources here than the EB (who anyway appear to be talking about the first centuries of Islam), for example this handy PDF from the leading specialist today, in the leading journal. Johnbod (talk) 18:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC) John this line of reasoning wholly misses the point. The argument is not that depictions of Muhammad weren't being created continuously. The argument is that they have not been common within the Islamic tradition as a whole and throughout it's history, and indeed have been explicitly frowned upon more often than naught. Above Robert accuses me of confusing this entry with Islam, but I think that his accusation is backwards. It is you who are confusing this entry with Depictions of Muhammad or even Islamic art, both valuable entries in which depictions of Muhammad have their educational value. But again, the question isn't about banning these images completely from the encyclopedia it is with the use of them in the main entry on Islam's founding prophet, a figure who has been known 99% of the time without visual representation. I don't mean to make this into a turf war, but the fact that art historians work in this area is meaningless to the over arching issue. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 19:00, 4 November 2011 (UTC) And how are questions about the commonness of a particular form of art not a question of art history? The history of religion may tell you what theologians said people ought to do or not do, but art history will tell you what they actually did, or do, something general religious historians are not qualified to pronounce on. Johnbod (talk) 19:41, 4 November 2011 (UTC) You do not understand what the history of religions covers apparently and that is quite unfortunate. It includes the history of ideas (which doesn't mean only theology btw) but it also covers social history. Your art history sources merely attest to the fact that the traditions of depiction existed and that within realm of Islamic art more generally they were more or less common in certain periods. The fact is that depictions of Muhammad have a negligible influence on the perception of Muhammad that has formed historically inside and outside the Muslim world. This is where the difference between Muhammad and say Jesus or Buddha is immensely significant. The historical perception of those figures has been significantly influenced by physical depictions, which, again unlike with Muhammad, abound historically and cross-culturally. Now mainstream sources in the history of Islam, which are the main sources for this entry and for information about Muhammad are true to this fact. The way we present information about Muhammad should follow these sources, and should not be unduely weighted towards information that is of virtually fringe stature when it comes to the perception of this figure. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 21:13, 4 November 2011 (UTC) I'm sorry, I was not aware that depictions of historic events, even made years after the fact, were against some policy or guideline. I guess we have a lot of articles to fix. Wanna give me a hand? As you noted, this is not about the depictions of Muhammad. As I noted, it is about Muhammad - which is a place where one (free from religious beliefs) would expect to find depictions of Muhammad, both singular subject (ie: just him) and event based (ie: in a historic setting). Or are you trying to state that since this image largely touches on Islam it should adhere to religious beliefs and religious actions (on types of depictions)? Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 19:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC) It should simply show the most common and representative depictions, and they are abstract, not figurative. --JN466 21:51, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Johnbod, I assure you the EB is talking about the defining characteristics of Islamic Art generally, and about the lasting impact Islam had on the artistic traditions of the peoples that embraced Islam. I really don't think the wording could be more emphatic: "For practical purposes, representations are not found in Islamic religious art". The images that do exist are appropriate in a curiosity cabinet like the dedicated article we have on them. --JN466 19:43, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Well then, here as elsewhere, EB is not the best source. It is a strange statement, as very many of the best-known Persian manuscripts contain at least one Mi'raj miniature. Johnbod (talk) 19:47, 4 November 2011 (UTC) You can find the same sorts of statements all over the place. [44][45]. It's not like the Encyclopaedia Britannica is at variance here with the rest of the literature by stating a well-known fact about Islamic religious art. Yes, there have been limited traditions of depictions of Muhammad, especially in Persia about 800 years ago, but that is all it is. However interesting it may be, I am sure you don't wish to argue that it is anywhere close to being the mainstream form of artistic expression with respect to Muhammad in the overall body of Islamic art. That's calligraphy, hilyes etc. --JN466 21:39, 4 November 2011 (UTC) I gave you Muqarnas (below) & you respond with "well-known facts" from Islam for Dummies!!! Puuurleeease! The idea behind "especially in Persia about 800 years ago" for example, is nonsense. The various depictions of M from the few remains of that period receive a lot of academic attention, as from the founding period of the Islamic period, but there were probably more depictions in Persia from 600-400 years ago, or Turkey in the same period (certainly far more survive), and there are definately way more in Iran today. Johnbod (talk) 23:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC) It's not going to work, Johnbod. I also gave you Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Encyclopaedia of Islam and the Muslim World. And just for reference, Islam for Dummies is published by John Wiley & Sons, and written by a professor of religion. There is academic interest in the depictions of Muhammad, but it is a small specialist academic niche compared to the general field. Here is a bit more on the difference between Islam's and Christianity's approaches: [46], [47]. --JN466 01:46, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Please stop - I wrote most of Aniconism in Islam. Your comments are still misleading, and have only a highly tangential bearing on the issue here. If you think you have some "well-known facts" to share with the wiki-world, take it to the appropriate pages. Johnbod (talk) 02:45, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Strange indeed that Aniconism in Islam did not contain any aniconic art, but only exceptions to the rule. --JN466 20:08, 5 November 2011 (UTC) John, the article appears to be filled with original research or otherwise unreferenced text. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 21:03, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Also, your statement (I wrote most of Aniconism in Islam) appears to be false unless you edited under a different name formerly. The edit history shows you merely significantly expanding one or two sections while making other copy and style edits. I did find it an odd claim given how unsourced much of the entry is, though those sections appear to have been in place before you started editing to your credit.Griswaldo (talk) 21:25, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Support - this is the same atrocious behaviour from Ludwigs that he exhibited at Talk:Pregnancy. Enough is enough. → ROUX ₪ 19:53, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Support. The biased wording of Ludwigs' RfC on the matter is the tipping point. As I note above, I clearly feel that he is a disruptive force on this topic, but I wanted to give him a chance to participate in an RfC on the matter when it was created. However, he can't even manage to maintain NPOV when formulating an RfC question, which coupled with numerous other examples of problematic behaviour strongly argues that he is not capable of discussing this matter in a non-disruptive fashion. Resolute 22:42, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Support. I don't particularly care about the content arguments, nor have I edited anything Islam-related. However, this is the same behavior that L2 displayed at Astrology, Pregnancy, and a multitude of fringe science articles. The general pattern is that he stakes out a ostensibly reasonable but unpopular policy position and proceeds to accuse those who disagree of ignorance and/or unsophistication and/or bad faith and/or cabalism and/or POV-pushing (list is not exhaustive). Ad hominem rhetoric and textbook IDHT follows. Just yesterday he insinuated that an editor whom he disagreed with was a sociopath.[48] He's been topic banned from astrology.[49] He was warned numerous times for his behavior at Talk:Pregnancy.[50][51][52][53] He was even cautioned by Arbcom to "avoid drama-creating rhetoric" in a recent case.[54] This needs to stop. This is a problem of poor behavior, not content. Skinwalker (talk) 20:45, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Oppose Unconvincing, a user is topic banned for serious disruption or to avoid an indef. I see none of that here, the user holds a minority opinion and engaged in legitimate procedures (talk, RFC) as opposed to other illegitimate alternatives. Nobody can be blamed for that; the proposal reads like "This user is shouting to loud and it annoys us" Well calmly engage in discussion or ignore. Tachfin (talk) 23:03, 5 November 2011 (UTC) I'm sorry, but I must ask, even by your rationale, may I ask you how many personal attacks and racial/religious type slurs/attacks is the quota that was needed? Lemme know, and I'll change my !vote. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 00:19, 6 November 2011 (UTC) Support The only time I have had interactions with this editor was when he was complaining that no one was listening to him. When I pointed out that all of his concerns had been listened to, and had subsequently been rejected, he went on to attack me by calling my comment unintelligent. I gave up after that, thinking that there was absolutely nothing anyone could say to this guy, to get him to stop. He will never stop unless he is topic banned, plain and simple.--JOJ Hutton 20:45, 8 November 2011 (UTC) Support While editing may be a bonus from all users the constant regressions into personal attacks and policy whack a mole do not lead to constructive editing. Even when called out on personal attacks he makes no attempt to either apologize to the target or refrains from doing so again. In one case he even called out someone else as using a personal attack and then soundly proceeded to do the same within the same post. Since that point he continues with the attacks. If someone needs diffs I will learn that piece and post them to show the multitude of attacks I have seen but I don't think that is necessary. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC) Support ban. It looks like he bounces from one article to the next causing disruption wherever he goes. Raul654 (talk) 20:48, 8 November 2011 (UTC) Support ban - dead horse. I'd also support an indef block for causing more trouble than he's worth. Rklawton (talk) 03:20, 10 November 2011 (UTC) Oppose ban All you idiots need to go away and stop waving "OMG NOTCENSORED" in everyone's faces. Thank you. --cc 11:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC) The user casting the above !vote was indef blocked today. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:22, 11 November 2011 (UTC) support ban. Ludwigs has been extremely disruptive and never quotes wikipedia policy and wastes valuable time. Pass a Method talk 19:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Oppose ban. From what I have read, Ludwigs has a decent case to make, which is not so much about censorship, but about questioning what, if any, positive reason there is to have these images on that page. I've yet to see anyone answering that question in a satisfactory way; most of those who have been responding to Ludwig2 haven't even tried. Given this, it seems to me that his behavior has also been relatively restrained. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:05, 11 November 2011 (UTC) I am not quite sure what you mean. The 2009 book by the Islamic scholar Omid Safi Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters is copiously illustrated by historical images of the Prophet Muhammad. (Safi is chair of the Study of Islam in the American Academy of Religion.) In none of the many reviews of this book has any objection been made to the images. But the point here is Ludwigs2's conduct, which appears to have very little to do with the particular subject matter involved (pseudoscience, astrology, pregnancy, etc). Mathsci (talk) 00:32, 12 November 2011 (UTC) Hi. I mean what I say I mean: which is, first, that Ludwigs point is that those who are arguing for the inclusion of these images on the page need to come up with rather better reasons for their inclusion than they have hitherto. Whether or not some other publication (in this case, Safi's book) includes them is wholly beside the point, unless your argument is "they do it, so we should too." Which is not much of an argument. And then, second, given the fact that (as you are illustrating here) so many people refuse to see the point, and prefer rather to jump up and down shouting "censorship" at him, Ludwigs's conduct seems to me to be very restrained indeed. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 01:20, 12 November 2011 (UTC) We will never come up with sufficient reasons for Ludwigs, because he has shown a habit of moving the goalposts every time his arguments get refuted. That being said, reverse the question. Consensus coming in was that the images belonged. It is actually on Ludwigs to generate a new consensus that supports his view, and thus far his arguments have been centred entirely around the argument that some people find them offensive. He keeps getting beat over the head by NOTCENSORED because his only argument is to censor the article to suit a specific religious viewpoint. Also, I suspect his conduct is only restrained right now because he is teetering on the edge of a topic ban. He was very liberal in accusing anyone he disagreed with of bigotry, among other personal attacks, for a considerable period of this debate. At present, he continues to try and argue editors in circles until they give up in frustration. Resolute 01:46, 12 November 2011 (UTC) "We will never come up with sufficient reasons for Ludwigs." This sounds like a violation of WP:AGF. And for what it's worth, I think that talk of censorship is completely beside the point. So far as I can see, ludwigs is not arguing that images of Mohammed should not appear on Wikipedia; rather he is saying that they should not appear in *this* article. And that the onus is on those who think that they do belong in this article to prove their case. And, especially in that those who disagree with him seem to refuse to engage his argument, I think he has a pretty good point. And he's making it remarkably civilly given the amount of grief he's getting, of which your refusal to assume good faith is merely one (further) small instance. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 02:44, 12 November 2011 (UTC) As I mentioned on Jimbo's talk, Safi has also pointed out that most muslims have refrained from making such images, that there are no such images in mosques and public places of worship, that in place of pictorial representations, there is a rich tradition of calligraphy, arabesques and natural designs in Islam, and that when muslims friends come to his house, where he has an image of Muhammad, he thinks twice before telling them that it is, in fact, an image of Muhammad, as some react badly to it. And I would add that Ludwigs2 has been and is being subjected to an unseemly barrage of personal comments by editors on Jimbo's talk page. --JN466 01:30, 12 November 2011 (UTC) oppose ban per conviction and I do endorse the reasons given by JN466. -- ClaudioSantos¿? 02:01, 12 November 2011 (UTC) Support the guy causes more issues then he solves. Put down the stick already --Guerillero | My Talk 23:42, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Oppose Too complex, controversial for mob justice. Submit to dispute resolution, WP:RFC/U and WP:ARBCOM. causa sui (talk) 19:17, 14 November 2011 (UTC) (moved vote to appropriate section) --Tachfin (talk) 16:21, 15 November 2011 (UTC) Re: "shouting to loud and it annoys us" This user was topic banned from astrology for poisoning-the-well comments, including comparing people who disagree with him with the KKK. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive99#Ludwigs2. On the Muhammad issue, we see a repeat of the same behavior, albeit with minor reduction in intensity. Besides the overuse of caps lock and bold in his posts (see diff above for that): He writes about someone disagreeing with him that "people (like you) keep talking crap about me" He writes that until people agree with him (to remove depictions of Muhammad) Wikipedia is a Jerry Springer show [55]. He writes in a edit summary "except, Robert, no other policies matter to you" Writes about another user "You are not using ethical reasoning - that is a demonstrable fact" He writes about someone who disagreed with him "what you just said was patently idiotic nonsense. I swear..." He tells the same user: "keep your grubby little fingers out of my psyche" He even admits, after redacting another passage (not one of the above), that "I just can't control my tongue." These are just the examples that struck me, there are probably more. There are other editors who agree with Ludwigs2 on the subject matter, including Jayen466 and Griswaldo, but these guys seem able to disagree without being so disagreeable. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 15:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC) Please close the topic-ban subthread Can an uninvolved admin please close this subthread now? The only people who have commented here, myself included, have strongly held opinions about the content dispute(s) that precipitated the thread. Almost all, if not all the people who want him topic banned, for instance, have diametrically opposed POVs to his. Clearly we are not about to enact a topic ban based on those voices. So have we had enough of this? Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 13:15, 5 November 2011 (UTC) This has nothing to do with his views. It has to do with DOZENS of personal attacks and tendentiously using the incorrect venue to try to implement policy change to remove the secular mandate in the last paragraph of WP:CENSOR. Your implication, as I perceive it, that this is about the content dispute may hold true to your !vote, but I can assure you, there are numerous others of us that it does not apply to - including the numerous editors who !voted (on either side of this) who were not engaged in this situation at all. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 15:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC) I see no reason to close this subtread, when !votes and comments are still being posted, with policy-based supports (14) and opposes (6). Let the process play out, please. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:00, 5 November 2011 (UTC) The supports and opposes are not policy-based, they are based on subjective evaluations of Ludwigs2's behaviour on the page in question. Almost all these subjective evaluations happen to be aligned with editors' attitudes to the underlying conflict. This makes them essentially worthless. Hans Adler 20:15, 5 November 2011 (UTC) I wonder whether at this time of year Hans Adler's usually impeccable logic might not be a little clouded by premature doses of Martinigansl please don't click here if you are a vegetarian. Mathsci (talk) 22:09, 5 November 2011 (UTC) @Hans Adler: Whether the !votes are policy-based are not is something for the closing admin to evaluate. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:21, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Therein may lie the objections from some to keeping things open until an uninvolved admin does such. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 20:46, 6 November 2011 (UTC) 18/7/1 (on just count)... soon may be the time to end this? ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 08:56, 9 November 2011 (UTC) Perhaps a reasonable compromise? All the participants in the talk page discussion have come here and are basically continuing the same sorts and styles of arguments, it's all just looping. Perhaps I might suggest a compromising position. Someone start an RFC and contact, neutrally mind you, some of the relevant wikiprojects to participate. To prevent a rehash of the talk page, the opposing sides in this debate should state their positions and refrain from substantially trying to sway other participants. Having re-read the discussion, and being totally uninvolved, I can see the arguments of both sides. Run the RCC< don't just talk about it. --Blackmane (talk) 09:39, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Ludwigs has been asked, many times, to follow the dispute resolution process if he thinks he has a case to make. This user tried out this argument that WP:NOTCENSORED does not protect the image usage in the article, a view that received little support in March of this year. Now he's back again, twisting a foundation resolution that has no applicability to the situation, an incessant 3-week drumbeat. Those editors who support hosting a Wikipedia article free of religious censorship have no need to initiate an RfC, as the status quo is just fine. Ludwigs will get no relief and will make no headway in regurgitating the same arguments over and over at the article talk page. The ball is squarely in his court to follow dispute resolution if he will not accept the consensus at the article talk. Tarc (talk) 13:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Therein lies the rub. There is no consensus, nor will there ever be. There are two camps each with a large number of adherents. One camp favors no censorship, the other favors censorship as a special case. We hear from new members of the latter group almost daily on the main article's talk page generally representing Muslims around the world. Rklawton (talk) 13:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Oh, but there is consensus. Yes, we see periodic posts that inform us Islam forbids such images. Someone replies with the argument that we are not an Islamic project, often linking to the methods by which individuals can respect their own beliefs by hiding the images for themselves, and they move on. But the "remove all images" camp has no policy backed argument, only the complaint that "I am offended". Simple numbers do not create a no-consensus situation. Otherwise, there would be no consensus on the argument that many athletes are "gay" because fans of rival teams often edit to say so. Resolute 13:55, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Agreed. If you look at the overall commentary on the talk page, the status quo is generally favoured. There is one single regular editor there (Ludwigs2) who supports censorship on religious grounds, and another (Anthonyhcole) who has attempted in good faith to formulate an RfC proposal. Then there is Hans Adler, who shows up from time to time, accuses editors he disagrees with of bad faith (as he has above in this very discussion) then disappears. Pretty much everyone else supports the current situation. Ludwigs has been advised it is up to him to initiate DR, because the rest of us don't see a need. Instead, he chooses to waste a great deal of time for numerous editors by forcing discussion back into circular arguments. Granted, the rest of us keep responding, though I have tried to step back involvement overall. I won't vote on the topic ban proposal, but I will say this: the problem would disappear if Ludwigs were to be placed under one. The "dispute" is that one-sided. Resolute 13:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC) No there are other editors, such as Wiki55. Unfortunately all these named editors persist in making grossly inaccurate statements about the images actually in the article, such as (above here) "..."that by including so many images from a very narrow time period and fairly narrow interpretation of Islam we are in fact violating WP:UNDUE)." by Qwyrxian. For the record (and yet again) the 5 Islamic images come from a period of over 500 years (and we don't have a contemporary one available), include at least 2 Sunni ones (possibly all 5 are actually Sunni) and come from Persia (2), Turkey (2), and Kashmir. A very similar spread, if not wider, to the sort of (almost always Catholic) old master painters we use to illustrate Jesus and other Christian articles, ignoring the many Protestants who still regard these as idolatrous. Some editors have been putting time in over a long period pushing the line that all the images are Persian and Shia, and by implication can therefore be dismissed. There is a considerable intra-Islamic component to this dispute, & its a pity that people who ought to know better, like Hans Adler and Anthonyhcole have accepted this line without much examination. Johnbod (talk) 14:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Just for the record, would you please link to an instance of me making grossly inaccurate statements about the images actually in the article? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:33, 7 November 2011 (UTC) Blackmane: I'd agree that an RfC would be a good starting point, but even trying to determine the proper language for an RfC becomes a major point of strife. For instance, every RfC approach I've suggested starts from my perception of the problem - that the images have no appreciable value which justifies the offense they cause to our readers - but any such wording is instantly nixed by Tarc, Robert, and Resolute as being against NOTCENSORED. I could start an RfC on my own (and I will if that's what you suggest), but the RfC will most likely devolve into more of the same dispute as the editors opposed to change dispute its validity (in fact, at least a couple of threads currently on the page show exactly that devolution as we've tried to discuss proper wording for the RfC). As far as I can see, the page is locked down in such a way that any discussion about removing the images is declared to be against policy. I don't know how to get past that obstruction except to keep trying to talk through it. --Ludwigs2 14:45, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I have posted what I am coming to believe is the only reasonable thing, which will show good faith on the parts of those who wish the images removed and properly adhere to policy uniformly instead of (yet again) special case for this article only. It's on the article's talk page in a new section.[56] Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 14:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC) The first item is the "gotcha", i.e. that there's no valid encyclopedic reason to remove the artists' conceptions of Muhammed if you're going to retain artists' conceptions of Jesus, etc. The second item is the "yeh, but" option, which opens a huge can of worms that would abolish the "I don't like it" barrier and turn wikipedia into even more of a free-for-all. So why does anyone think Muslim readers deserve special treatment, while Christian readers can go "freak" themselves? Well, there's no logical reason, so it must be driven by fear. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:03, 3 November 2011 (UTC) In the current circumstances, I'm not sure that the recent extensive rewriting of WP:CONSENSUS by Ludwigs2 was timely.[57] It now reads a bit like a personal essay. (Off-topic for ANI) In 2002 Yale University Press published the book "Peerless Images: Persian Painting and its Sources" by Eleanor Sims, Boris Marshak and Ernst Grube, academics who have curated the Islamic art collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Hermitage, St Petersburg. It contains several images of the Prophet Muhammad. Looking at the book and its detailed commentary, it is hard to understand how images of this sort could be considered uninformative or without educational value. As the New York Times has reported just recently,[58] the Metropolitan Museum of Art has just reopened its Islamic collection after 8 years of remodeling. On display are Persian illuminated manuscripts, including images of the Prophet Muhammad, visible in the NYT link and here on the Museum's own website [59] (the short NYT audio link for "illuminated manuscripts" is interesting). It is also on commons here and has been used several times on fa.wikipedia.org. Mathsci (talk) 15:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC) (edit conflict) (to Bugs) Bingo. I treat EVERY article the same, regardless of my personal beliefs or feelings of offense. And there is not a single mainstream religion or irreligion or spirituality that is not on my WatchList (along with hundreds of sub topic articles). Thus, all I ask is the same from everyone else - judge every article and article content equally. No more, no less. Which seems to fit with those weird things we have here called policies, guidelines and editing in good faith. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 15:26, 3 November 2011 (UTC) The importance of the Muhammed depictions is actually the same as the importance of the many Jesus images. Whether they look like their subject is not the issue, that's a red herring. What's important is that it reflects how the followers of those faiths saw their spiritual leader. It provides a window on styles of artistic portrayals in various times and places. If that ain't educational, I don't know what is. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Bugs: re your "What's important is that it reflects how the followers of those faiths saw their spiritual leader". This is precisely the problem: The followers of Islam do not generally depict their spiritual leader, and when they do it's usually symbolically, as a flame or a veiled figure. full-face images of muhammad are a rarity, mostly restricted to a couple of historical periods. I absolutely agree with your statement, but your statement implies we should remove images of the prophet and use the symbolic forms that Muslims themselves use. --Ludwigs2 15:58, 3 November 2011 (UTC) "Saw", as in past tense. You're describing the present. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I'm not just describing the present, but the most prevalent view, historically and currently. Full-face depictions are not common. It's funny: I even offered a compromise on the talk page where we would create a section specifically about the historical depiction of Muhammad in which to put images of this sort (they would be appropriate there, in a section that discusses the controversy of depictions of the prophet), but that got shot down for some reason I never understood. If we go by standards of common usage, full face images are excluded as a distinct minority style; if we go by conventional ethics full-face images are excluded because they offend people for no gain to the encyclopedia. There's no reason I can think of to keep the images (though I'm open to suggestions), so why are they on the article in the first place? Remember, these are simply works of art - there are no known depictions of what Muhammad actually looked like.--Ludwigs2 16:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Actually, that proposal flies in the face of what has deemed to be the standard (per policy and guideline interpretation) on every other such article on Wikipedia. Thus, what you proposed is not a compromise, but a special case exception. Biographies have images or depictions of their subject (and their subject in historical event settings) prominently placed throughout the article. This article already is chock full of special case exceptions that are not warranted, such as (on the talk pages) the massive disclaimers, the FAQ, the instructions on how not to view the images, the removal of all images of Muhammad in the top 1/3 of the article, the explanations of policy on the talk page and so on. I am against adding one more special case exception. Doing so will eventually lead (as you desire) to there being no images of Muhammad on this or any other article. I would bet good money that if (by some remote chance) all images were removed from this article, that you would move on to the other articles next. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 17:00, 3 November 2011 (UTC) (Besides the fact that each time you claim you are willing to travel this road, you still end up on your "remove all, they offend" road instead). ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 17:10, 3 November 2011 (UTC) So you keep saying, but (again) I question this reasoning. It all comes back to the simple problem that Wikipedia is offending millions of people for no real reason. As I keep saying, If you show these images have non-trivial value to justify the problems they cause, then obviously they would be protected. However, every time I say that, you decline to show that they have value and instead asset that it's a violation of policy to consider that. The arguments you've given in your post above break down as follows: my proposal - that we use the most common imagery used by muslims - "flies in the face of" policy (not true; that is actually exactly what NPOV asks of us) that other articles show images (irrelevant, since other articles do not have to consider a well-known religious proscription) that the ability for individuals to censor the images themselves justifies Wikipedia using the images (patently ridiculous) that removing images from this article will lead to removal of all images everywhere (hyperbolic and nonsensical) that I somehow personally desire the removal of all images everywhere (hyperbolic, nonsensical, contrary to what I've said in talk, and a bad-faith personal attack to boot) Really, please… --Ludwigs2 17:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC) The claim that "Wikipedia is offending millions of people for no real reason" is your personally-held opinion that you repeatedly put there as some sort of immutable fact that us dumb heathens cannot understand. This is really the heart of your problem Ludwigs, and the reason why many are beginning to dismiss your actions as tendentious and disruptive. Tarc (talk) 17:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Uh… Tarc: it's a proscription in a faith with something like a billion followers. even if we only restrict ourselves to the most fundamentalist groups (the ones most likely to take offense) that's still millions or tens of millions of people There are 16 archives of heated debate solely over this issue on the article - really, you made a subpage just to handle the volume of complaints, and that subpage has 16 archives That's a whoooole lot of evidence, Tarc: How do you justify calling this my 'personally held opinion'? --Ludwigs2 17:57, 3 November 2011 (UTC) "it's a proscription in a faith with something like a billion followers". No it is not. You don't help your case by typing in false statements. It may be that a few current adherents of the religion believe there is such a proscription, but even if there is, it applies to the adherents, not to us. I think a fair number of people have been mislead into thinking there is a broad proscription, and I think they are wrong, but it is not useful to debate how many people (correctly or incorrectly) believe in the proscription, it is only relevant to ask whether a proscription of a religious group has any force on non members of the group. If you answer yes, please explain why, as that conclusion leads to madness.--SPhilbrickT 22:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Oh gosh, we're back to the "religious offense - must honor religious beliefs" rationale. That means WP:IAR is probably soon to follow. :-/ ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 18:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC) (edit conflict)Ludwigs, another claim I attacked you? And then another false claim about my actions? I've posted, numerous times, multiple reasons the images have value. Here is a tiny sampling of diffs to prove it.[60][61][62][63][64][65] It is not I who is ignoring anything. And this is exactly the type of thing you do on the article's image talk page. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 18:03, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Also I would like to point out that the neutral point of view doesn't argue your claim. "Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources" would be useful if you were also trying to include modern (what you describe as common) images of muhammad but isn't a basis to remove current pictures because they were a significant view of what the islamic community was allowed to do. And since the minority of the religion still believes its acceptable to view pictures (you know that 15% of the billion which also falls into millions and millions of people) it would be purposefully ignoring that POV as well. Tivanir2 (talk) 18:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Ludwigs, let's look at the phrase again, this time with crystal-clear highlighting; "Wikipedia is offending millions of people for no real reason" THAT part is your opinion, opinion you keep trying to pass off as fact. That a group of people are offended is fact, yes. That we are including the images in the article "for no real reason" is opinion. Are we settled now? Tarc (talk) 18:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC) The 'for no real reason' part is something that is open for discussion - as I keep saying, if you can demonstrate that the images have a reasonable value to offset the problems they cause, then the images can stay. However, using policy to prevent wp:Consensus discussion on this issue is the troubling point. --Ludwigs2 19:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC) That's the point; it was open for discussion, and your position was rejected. We don't need to demonstrate what you are asking for. End of story. Tarc (talk) 19:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC) "if you can demonstrate that the images have a reasonable value to offset the problems they cause, then the images can stay." This isn't the appropriate metric. Do the images cause some problems? Absolutely, they do, as a lot of ill-informed people request removal, and it is a problem dealing with them. But I'm not interested in assessing the value of the images to the encyclopedia and comparing it to the problems caused, I'm interested in the damage that would be caused to the encyclopedia if we sent a message that raising a ruckus is a good way to impose your will. Neither you nor anyone else has demonstrated why Wikipedia should pervert its own guideless simply because they are in conflict with someone else's desires. If claiming offense works here, what is to stop a temperance group from insisting that WP not have any articles about alcohol, or a child decency group from insisting that pictures of nudes should be removed. There are all kinds of groups who request removal of blocks of material. We politely decline all such requests (except when the material might be in violation of law). If we grant one groups request, we have to grant all group's request, or you have to explain why this request is unique. I don't think it is unique. SPhilbrickT 18:54, 4 November 2011 (UTC) To Ludwigs2: did I need to provide more diffs to my own postings of reasons? Should I have included the numerous times other editors have posited reasons as well? You keep acting like we haven't stated reasons (reasons considered valid all across Wikipedia) - but we have. While perhaps seemingly numerous, the number of diffs above is probably in the 15-20% range of what I could provide to prove we have made such points. C'mon... the page is linked to in this AN/I, you know others are bound to figure out that you are incorrect in repeating your claims that we haven't done such. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 20:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC) This argument belongs elswhere, not at ANI. GoodDay (talk) 19:37, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Oh, how we've tried so many times to point that out to the one who has the biggest issue with this. Even some of those who support some level of image removal have suggested or leaned towards such. :-/ ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 19:51, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Small note: I've struck RobertMfromLI's name from my earlier post. Only one time did Robert ever imply an RfC wasn't necessary, and he did in fact try to restart the RfC several times. I don't know what made me think that he was one of the people trying to derail process in this case; my apologies. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Brass tacks straw poll This poll is not an administrator issue. Feel free to move this to a more appropriate venue, but this page is already becoming cluttered with irrelevent issues. Please keep the discussions on this page relevent to issues which need administrators to protect articles/delete articles/block a user. Admin noticeboards are not for general discussions of either policy or content issues. Let me suggest WP:VPP. --Jayron32 16:59, 3 November 2011 (UTC) The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. I think we should take this opportunity and address the core issue that is gumming up the works here. Dispense with the following question it will likely end this dispute (one way or another); either it will obviate my grounds for wanting to remove the images or it will obviate the sole argument used to retain the images. The question: Granting that NOTCENSORED necessarily protects controversial content which makes an unambiguous contribution to an article, does NOTCENSORED also protect images that have trivial value to the article? In other words, NOTCENSORED clearly protects images of penises or vaginas on their namesake pages, or the cartoons of Muhammad on Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy); does it also protect page decorations, artistic illustrations, unneeded explications, or other material of negligible content value to the article? I will bracket the above question as a policy RfC a bit later, unless someone suggests that's innapropriate. --Ludwigs2 15:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC) This is again a biased question (just like your similar RfC proposal). You imply as fact that the images have trivial (even emphasized by you) value (and then go into detail about how trivial they are), thus pushing the conversation to summary deletion of all the images. Once again, in my opinion, this is a proposal in bad faith as it directs only one answer since you already established as "fact" that the images are trivial. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 16:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC) The argument hasn't been about protection of trivial images. It has been about images marked trivial. Also this is the incorrect forum for this question since it should be addressed at the village pump. The actual argument that the images are trivial should be occurring at the muhammad page not here. Effectively this is derailing the entire purpose behind this AN/I. Tivanir2 (talk) 16:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Comment. (edit conflict) I don't think this covers the issue, Ludwigs2. NOTCENSORED does not protect trivial material from deletion, but I don't believe the material in question counts as trivial. The amount of fuss over it certainly indicates that some editors believe it to be non-trivial. --FormerIP (talk) 16:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC) FormerIP: if we clear up this issue, then we can actually sit down on the talk page and discuss whether or not the images have trivial value. Right now we cannot even have that discussion, because every time I suggest evaluating the worth of the images with respect to the offense they cause, two or three editors tell me that any such evaluation is against policy. NOTCENSORED is the One Ring on that page; until we clear up this issue the page is stuck. --Ludwigs2 16:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC) NOTCENSORED does not protect trivial material Support: Allowing NOTCENSORED to cover trivial material creates up an difficult-to-resolve opportunity for violating NPOV: controversial images can be put on a page merely to attack a perspective non-verbally, and held there by using NOTCENSORED to squelch discussion. This sets up the editing environment as a long-term BATTLEGROUND, where multiple editors try to address the issue and run into an endless wall of bureaucratic policy assertions. Wikipedia should not offend its readers with non-contributive controversial material (see wmf:Resolution:Controversial content). We offend where we have to, because we have to, not merely because we want to use that material. --Ludwigs2 15:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Support. Wikipedia does not seek to include as much offensive material as possible merely because offensive material is permitted in appropriate contexts. Especially with respect to images, editors frequently need to choose between alternatives with varying degrees of potential offensiveness. When multiple options are equally effective at portraying a concept, Wikipedia does not retain the most offensive options merely to "show off" its ability to include possibly offensive materials. Images containing offensive material that is extraneous, unnecessary, irrelevant, or gratuitous are not protected in the name of opposing censorship. --JN466 16:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC) NOTCENSORED does protects trivial material Support, but this doesn't shield against other arguments. All NOTCENSORED requires is that arguments for deletion be framed in formats relevant to an encyclopedia, and religious arguments are not relevant to encyclopedias. We don't keep images because they offend religious groups, but we don't delete them because they do. Images have to be examined from a purely secular perspective.—Kww(talk) 16:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Irrelevant to this discussion due to bias ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 16:50, 3 November 2011 (UTC) This poll is excessively and unduly biased by stating opinions (trivial worth) as fact wrt images on Muhammad) I posit that this poll, as it is specifically directed at this issue (or grossly in the wrong venue) is biased by implying opinion as fact to imply the only answer is to remove the images at Muhammad as all being (implied as fact above) trivial. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 16:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Support - one should not bias such polls (or RfCs) by using their opinion as fact to ensure one specific POV outcome. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 16:47, 3 November 2011 (UTC) For anyone who wants a discussion of NOTCENSORED, I've just started one at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#What WP:NOTCENSORED is not. Robofish (talk) 18:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC) * Notice: I've decided I'm going to copy this RfC over to wp:NOT, and wait for a result to be reached there before re-entering the discussion at talk:Muhammad/Images. that should end the discussion there for for a while (at least as far as I'm concerned). It also likely resolves this thread, though I'll leave that up to you. I'll post the link to the RfC here after I've made it. --Ludwigs2 00:11, 4 November 2011 (UTC) This thread is not resolved as long as there is an open question of a possible topic ban for Ludwigs2. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:12, 4 November 2011 (UTC) suit yourself - If you want to spend your time trying to find a punishment in a non-current situation, that's your business. Here's the link to the RfC. --Ludwigs2 01:20, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Ludwigs has said on his talk page that for the time being he will stay away from the page, I think this is a good faith proposition and would say that we should give him a chance to make his case in the correct venue before topic banning him. Noformation Talk 01:43, 4 November 2011 (UTC) I wasn't aware of his comment. Still, this is not his first time on the merry-go-round, when this blows over it's likely he'll exhibit the same behavior elsewhere. AGF is often in conflict with common sense. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:46, 4 November 2011 (UTC) What he said and what he is doing are counter to each other. He has proposed a very biased RfC that basically states the images are worthless, so shouldn't we remove them? He's simply using another venue to get the images removed and ignore countless consensus. Let's see now. RfC last Spring - runs to Village Pump: both RfC and end run fail (him). Proposes RfC this time around, not going the way he wants (removal of ALL images), tries end runs to WQA and ArbCom, disrupts attempts to create an UNBIASED RfC, gets dragged here and uses the distraction to file a BIASED RfC even in light of the fact that the rest of us were trying (through HIS disruptions) to create an unbiased one. (IMHO) This needs to stop. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 03:59, 4 November 2011 (UTC) ArbCom declined the case because it was formulated as a request to rule on content (policies). Perhaps a new case request focused on the behavior of the editors involved would be more appropriate? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 13:09, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Not too sure about that. I'm at over a hundred diffs and counting of bad faith, disruption and more (and I'm not even really trying). Ludwigs cannot come even remotely close, even combining diffs of such stuff for every editor "opposed" to him. Virtually all of the rest of us, on any side of the fence (or even sitting on it) want a resolution to this. Most of us are tired of the dead-horse-ad-infinitum-ad-nauseum responses with a bunch of accusations thrown on top. I'd rather see this resolved than a topic ban. But every good faith effort results in disruption or an end run attempt. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 19:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Comments on ongoing conduct of Ludwigs2 Despite having given assurances that he has reformed, Ludwigs2 has recently continued to ridicule and belittle those editors disagreeing with him. One of the difficulties is that he is being extremely slippery about why he is objecting to the images of Muhammad. It would appear that he believes, for whatever reason, that the courtly images of the Prophet Muhammad produced in illuminated manuscripts of the Ottoman Empire, Persia and elsewhere cause offense to some parts of the international Muslim community for religious reasons. However, when pressed on the subject by Kww, he has accused those repeating this statement of "making up cheap lies". In a conversation on his user talk page with Kww he wrote: [66] "They are cheap lies. maybe you believe them (in which case they are cheap lies you are telling yourself, rather than cheap lies you're telling to others), but from my perspective there's not a whole lot of difference. keep your grubby little fingers out of my psyche, and deal with what I am saying to you as I say it (not filtered through the twists and turns of your own perspective)." It is an example of Ludwigs2 deliberately misunderstanding other users and switching from one argument to another. Already on User talk:Jimbo wales, he wrote of thise disagreeing with him:[67] "What's happened here is that some editors have recognized a particular and real threat against the project - censorship by religious groups trying to enforce their particular worldview - and reacted to it in an extreme and uncompromising manner. They are insisting that these images remain on the article solely and precisely because they are offensive - not because they want to offend, mind you, but because they are engrossed in battling censorship and have lost the ability to discriminate censorship from normal editing. Nor is this problem restricted to this article (you can see it play out in multiple areas of the project: fringe articles, political articles, cult-related articles). It's depressing." These statements are not accurate and are indeed a highly inflammatory way of describing other editors. It creates an impasse for any future discussion. (I personally have not voted in any image discussions but have located commentaries in WP:RS on the historical use of images of the Prophet, written by Islamic scholars from the East and the West.) On the same user talk page, Ludwigs2 later made this personal attack on Tarc, [68] "Yes, Tarc, and I've been reading this kind of post from you for the same amount of time, and I have to say it hasn't been particularly pleasant. It's just as I said above: all you need is a willing flamingo and a few hedgehogs to fill out your role as the Queen of Hearts. " These remarks were later redacted by Ludwigs2 after Short Brigade Harvester Boris criticized them. Ludwigs2's conduct has not reformed and these personal attacks seem completely counterproductive at this stage. Mathsci (talk) 07:03, 7 November 2011 (UTC) I am, obviously, fed up with the ad hominem these discussions are steeped in. They make reasonable discussion very difficult. But I would urge editors unfamiliar with this situation to not just rely on spoon-fed quotes in forming a view. The current negative tone of these discussions is set by more than one editor. If you feel like chiming in, at least read through the latest threads at Talk:Muhammad/images. That will give you a good feel for the general behaviour of the Dramatis personæ. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:04, 7 November 2011 (UTC) I hope that Ludwigs2 will get the message sooner rather than later.[69] Mathsci (talk) 17:40, 7 November 2011 (UTC) Nothing is improving. [70] [71] Mathsci (talk) 13:59, 8 November 2011 (UTC) Not sure, but he seems a wee bit more moderate than in the examples from the past week. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 15:23, 8 November 2011 (UTC) Ludwigs2 has not stopped.[72] "We can have a decent discussion over whether Wikipedia needs/wants to offend the religious beliefs of all these people, but please stop trying to make the fact that we are offending their religious beliefs 'go away'. That kind of intellectual dishonesty gets in the way of a reasonable discussion." As usual these personal attacks ("intellectual dishonesty") are embedded in a longer discursive screed. Even if Ludwigs2 turned out to be a so-far unidentified world expert on the history of Islamic art (all signs are very much to the contrary), his conduct at the moment seems to be little more than flame-warring. Mathsci (talk) 20:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC) Ludwigs2 has the uncanny ability to phrase personal attacks in a way that skirts the direct wording of our WP:NPA policy. The basic construct is: "If you disagree with me (and I know you do, but don't say it in this sentence), then you are part of a despicable group, such as: the KKK / the intellectually dishonest / the Jerry Springer audience / those not using ethical reasoning / those uttering patently idiotic nonsense / etc." ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:19, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Barely days after his last failed proposal for a case, Ludwigs2 is yet again suggesting an ArbCom case on roughly the same topic.[73] There is nothing ArbCom can do except for topic banning or banning users for disruptive conduct. Mathsci (talk) 15:06, 12 November 2011 (UTC) Wait again? Well we will see if that comes up again. Since ArbCom doesn't deal with content it's a waste but we will see. Tivanir2 (talk) 15:25, 12 November 2011 (UTC) What should be taken to Arbcom is the case of Ludwigs2 conduct. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 00:18, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Ludwigs2 still seems unaware that he is creating problems by making inflammatory statements.[74] "Honestly, I see this whole extended kerfluffle as a 'teaching moment' for the project, one where (maybe, with luck) we can all get past the kind of pugnacious adolescent snobbery that defines certain controversial articles and develop a more mature, responsible attitude towards the encyclopedia. so far it's rough going, but still" That is not "engaging in discussion". It is a personal attack on other editors that don't happen to agree with him. Mathsci (talk) 00:42, 13 November 2011 (UTC) For goodness sake, in no way is that a "personal attack." Egads. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 01:09, 13 November 2011 (UTC) I find it quite hard to interpret the words "pugnacious adolescent snobbery" as anything other than derogatory. Mathsci (talk) 01:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC) And I find it hard to see what there is that's either "personal" or "attack[ing]" in ludwigs2's comment. Which surely is the point about a would-be "personal attack." You folk are grasping at straws here. Instead of all this fuss, why not deal with the arguments? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 02:04, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Comments by Chzz Sheesh, that's long. Forgive me collapsing it. The arguments on what is/is not 'appropriate' re. certain images on certain pages will go on forever. There's some non-collegiate behaviour on the part of several editors, but that'd be better handled via an RFC/U or whatever. I can't see any admin action as appropriate at this time. If I'm wrong, can someone cut out the tl;dr and just say "X should be blocked for Y and Z". Otherwise, feel free to continue the eternal arguments on the article talks. ANI is not the right place to discuss content/consensus. Nor is it the right place to discuss vague ongoing concerns with user conduct; if you can present a WP:DIFF/diffs, showing "XE did THIS which was WRONG according to THIS policy, please do so. Thanks,  Chzz  ►  01:25, 10 November 2011 (UTC) I have uncollapsed it following discussion on Chzz's talk page. This thread contains a proposal for a topic ban in an area not covered by discretionary sanctions, thus the topic ban requires community consensus, and cannot be enacted by a single admin. Also, conduct diffs have been provided in the discussion above, e.g. in this subsection. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 03:08, 10 November 2011 (UTC) OK, so: This page is for reporting and discussing incidents on the English Wikipedia that require the intervention of administrators [...] Please include diffs to help us find the problem you are reporting. - thanks.  Chzz  ►  04:16, 10 November 2011 (UTC) What is contained here and here should be enough to judge whether a sanction is warranted or not, IMO. Tarc (talk) 04:22, 10 November 2011 (UTC) I see no evidence that the conduct by Ludwigs2 breaches any policies or guidelines - that's the key point here. The discussions re those images will no doubt go on forever, and of course anyone disrespecting prior consensus might present problems; however here/now, I see no evidence of that.  Chzz  ►  06:13, 10 November 2011 (UTC) Have you ever heard of WP:CIVIL? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:48, 10 November 2011 (UTC) Chzz, per Tarc above. I stopped at 142 diffs (and only posted a tiny portion of them). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 20:05, 10 November 2011 (UTC) Community Topic bans should indeed be discussed at WP:AN, not at ANI (here), according to the letter of the policy on community bans. But it wasn't me who started it here. If an admin deems it necessary, I have no objection to the thread being moved to WP:AN. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 01:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC) The general practice has been that if a topic ban discussion arises from an ANI thread, it's left on ANI, but one started here from scratch should be moved to AN, where topic ban discussions are generally held. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Query Is it reasonable to say Discussion of images should be posted to the subpage Talk:Muhammad/images. Removal of pictures without discussion will be reverted. An then on the sub page: If you have come here to protest against the presence of images depicting Muhammad, please don't post here. Such objections have been raised before, and been given our consideration. If you have come here to protest against how people are trying to remove images of Muhammad from Wikipedia, please don't post here. That is not new either. I understand that people don't wish to rehash the same arguments again and again, however consensus does change (See GNAA AfDs for example), and singling out this issue as one that shall never be discussed seems both counter to Wiki-philosophy and likely to be effective only in stopping more thoughtful folk from discussing the issues. Rich Farmbrough, 11:43, 10 November 2011 (UTC). I fully empathise with the sentiment motivating those diktats but also have deep qualms about the way it's expressed. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:27, 10 November 2011 (UTC) Rich, I never saw local consensus on this particular issue to matter in even the slightest. CENSOR has been very clear on this for quite some time. No "should not" adhere to religious... - a specific "will not". Thus, it's a matter of incorrect venue. No local consensus is going to suddenly change things to "hey, other than on the article of Muhammad, we act secularly". Thus, if you note, in that same infobox, it is noted where the proper place is to propose policy changes. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 22:28, 10 November 2011 (UTC) Side note, I think that box was hashed out during a few other non-secular concessions that never should have happened (till policy was changed to allow such - which it still hasn't been). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 22:30, 10 November 2011 (UTC) There is no contradiction. 1) directs image discussions to the sub-page as it tends to overwhelm discussion on the main talk page. 2) seeks to weed out the insipid "remove the images they offend me!!!" messages from IPs and WP:SPAs. Summation "Bring image-related discussions to the sub-page but don't waste our time with rote removal demands, come here with something intelligent to say". Tarc (talk) 22:45, 10 November 2011 (UTC) Well spotted :)) Of course it's not reasonable to say that. Basically, we are telling people, If you want to post about this, don't do it here, but "over there", and "over there" we say, If you want to post about this, don't do it here. This reminds me of certain customer service phone conversations I've had the pleasure of having, where each department says their hands are tied, and swears it's the other department that's responsible for fixing the problem. --JN466 10:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Jayen, that is so very not true. Though a particular editor DID make such a claim, that claim was a boldface lie. That editor did use the correct venue (Village Pump), made the proposal, it was deemed the proper place, it was !voted on, and simply put, he lost and then made up that ridiculous claim. Village Pump, or RfC then (with enough support) Village Pump. Worked before, working now. But not the article's talk page, where we cannot change policy. Don't believe everything you read - I didnt, and thus checked it out to find that the correct venues (as noted in the warning box on that talk page) do indeed work properly. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 16:34, 11 November 2011 (UTC) The only comment i have read on this issue is what Rich wrote above, and the wordings he quotes are correct. I had never really registered them, until he pointed it out. It seems quite extraordinary to me. There is even a STOP! sign in Arabic (and a "Don't feed the trolls" message assigning everyone wishing to complain to that category). --JN466 17:31, 11 November 2011 (UTC) (edit conflict)Yes, but it is out of context, as it does not include the rest of the message that follows with instructions on where to address such concerns: "Suggestions for an adaptation of standing guidelines are offtopic on this page and belong on Wikipedia talk:No disclaimers in articles or Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)." (both are linked on original). Thus, it is all covered with the proper way to deal with things. Let's say we wanted to blatantly ignore copyvio for the article on John Doe - would we (a) simply do so (or demand it done) or (b) suggest a policy change? What would be the correct venue for dealing with the needed policy change? (a) the article's talk page, or (b) Village Pump? While the snippet above doesn't accurately portray the whole meaning of that box, I'd posit that going to that page and reading it will indeed show that the box does address everything, including pointing people to the correct venue, where such issues (including for that article) have been properly addressed in the past, all sans "no, go back there" as a response. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 17:39, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Tarc has it right. The message isn't intended to stop all discussion (the MB of text we've spent on it over the last few weeks should make that patently obvious), but to point out that messages like "Please remove the images, they offend me" will not be given much consideration. To the present day, even after all of these discussions on at least a half dozen forums, I would suggest that that remains the consensus view. Resolute 16:55, 11 November 2011 (UTC) The key word here is "protest". If someone wants to mount a reasoned argument that amounts to something more than a slogan rooted, then there would be grounds for discussion. But if it is mere "protest", then it's fine to let people know that it's not likely to go anywhere. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:52, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Nomoskedasticity: that's a nice rationalization, but in practice that's not the way it works. Every discussion, no matter how reasonable or reasoned, is designated as an unjustified protest and dismissed/attacked on those grounds. Look at what happened to me: I'm an intelligent, reasonable individual, with a decent policy argument to make, and all I got for my efforts was endless endless amounts of circular reasoning and a bunch of editors hounding me through ANI like a dog. Anyone without my (formidable) intellectual resources could not have endured the page at all, so a claim that 'reasoned arguments' might be successful is pure fantasy. --Ludwigs2 00:11, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Wow. Just...wow. Tarc (talk) 00:50, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Tarc, if nothing else your snide edit summary rather confirms what Ludwigs2 is saying. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 01:07, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Er, no, it confirms nothing of the sort. This entire mess was precipitated by and is continued by one tendentious, disruptive editor; Ludwigs. I am simply amazed that someone has the balls to come to ANI and write shit like "thank goodness I'm such a genius or these wiki-bullies (his POV, not reality) would've done in a mere mortal long ago". It is beyond ludicrous. Tarc (talk) 01:33, 13 November 2011 (UTC) And now I'm called the "fan club" in another snide edit summary, while Robert's also trying a similar tack. My goodness, you guys are, well, "smug" to pick a word you've invoked recently. Ugh. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 02:09, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Don't worry Tarc, one day our intellectual resources will be as formidable. ;-) ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 01:57, 13 November 2011 (UTC) @ jbmurray: I heartily agree with your edit summary: "enough of the snideness and smugness, please". However, we might not agree about who is being snide and/or smug. Bielle (talk) 02:14, 13 November 2011 (UTC) We might indeed. Look, I don't have a dog in this fight. I've never previously (to my knowledge) interacted with any of these editors. I've never commented on any of the articles at issue. And I'm not part of the dog's breakfasts that are the thread on the subpage of the Mohammed page and the thread on Jimmy Wales's talk page. All I do is I make a couple of brief comments on ANI and then on the RFC, and first I find myself frankly badgered on my talk page, and now I discover I'm labelled the "fan club." Please. This is extraordinarily unbecoming conduct, and directed against someone who's barely involved--indeed, who's about as uninvolved as could be, short of sitting in a cave somewhere. It's all extraordinarily unseemly. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 02:23, 13 November 2011 (UTC) jb - it was my mistake for posting anything here. I just happened to notice the comment and responded to it thoughtlessly. sorry for the fallout; I'll leave now. --Ludwigs2 02:38, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Ah yes jbmurray, sorry that because you thought I was asking questions in bad faith (though the recent uninteruppted discussions on that images talk page would speak otherwise) that I was badgering you - especially because your initial and continued belief I am acting in bad faith created a situation where you ignored my most important question. While I didn't expect you to have a high opinion of me, I also didnt expect you to jump to an opinion about someone you hadn't interacted with. Some of the barnstars here[75] are exactly because I will go well above and beyond to help someone present their opinion as best as possible, no matter how much I disagree with them. As this would have (before I deleted it when he was blocked - but surely you can check it and his talk pages out yourself).[76] Or my efforts with Bad edits r dumb. Or changing things on Homophobia that I know are correct (to something more "watered down"), but are not supportable by the sources available in a way that matches Wikipedia's standards. I wanted honest opinions - you wanted to find fault in me asking. Is that my fault? Or is it yours for, without knowing me (or the depth of this situation), deciding what you thought of me and my reasons for asking? I suspect it is not my fault. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 02:54, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Robert, you are being disingenuous. I answered any questions you had. It's not my fault you didn't like the answers. My conclusion that you have not been arguing in good faith is based on my own interactions with you, and your reports to me of interactions with others. You may well have earned barnstars and gone marvellous things for the project in other areas, I have no doubt. May you continue to do so. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 03:04, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Please bury this dead horse in a deep, dark hole At this point it is just being used by Ludwigs to troll...yes, troll, in the fullest "intentionally posting to provoke a reaction" sense of the word. Sorry if that rubs someone the wrong way, but there's no other explanation for "anyone without my (formidable) intellectual resources.... Chzz looked into it all earlier but didn't find anything actionable at the time, perhaps that'll change after this, perhaps not. Others have weighed in that topic bans need to go to WP:AN. We've long passed the point where this is going to reach anything meaningful here, so a call to the proverbial "uninvolved admin" to make the next call. Thank you. Tarc (talk) 02:50, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Most fully support - with a note to the uninvolved admin that much of the earlier conversations that precipitated this are now in the Muhammad/Images talk page archive. Reading that page (not the archive) now will not show the entire story from beginning to end. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 02:56, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Agreed, agreed. Those who brought this to ANI clearly haven't found the agreement they had hoped. There is no consensus on a topic ban. Time to close this down. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 03:05, 13 November 2011 (UTC) How about we leave determination of consensus to the admin who's masochistic enough to try and take this on? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:20, 13 November 2011 (UTC) I removed murray's archive, as he has made himself quite involved at this point. Tarc (talk) 05:35, 13 November 2011 (UTC) It's just an observation, but in almost 6 1/2 years of contributing to Wikipedia, I've noticed that editors who provoke strong feelings from other editors – pro and con – generating multiple threads of this size and polarity on the noticeboards, tend to, eventually, be indef blocked or even community banned. That's not a recommendation or a desire, simply a statement of probability based on empirical observation. Ludwigs2 might want to take that into account and moderate his behavior if he wishes to avoid that end result. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:14, 13 November 2011 (UTC) This needs to run until resolved one way or another. If this behavior is considered acceptable then I will more than happily loosen up my own strict interpretations to the rules. I tend to go through everything I edit at least once to ensure that it meets the letter and intent of policies so that would make it much easier for me. Tivanir2 (talk) 06:24, 13 November 2011 (UTC) As far as I know, I'm uninvolved in this. I will wait at least 24 hours for any objections, but if there are no serious objections, i will read and close this sometime after 24 hours from now. Gimmetoo (talk) 17:22, 13 November 2011 (UTC) I'd prefer, as preventative measures are on the table, that an uninvolved admin does the final evaluation and close - whatever the results are. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 17:57, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Not relevant in this case. Gimmetoo (talk) 22:32, 15 November 2011 (UTC) Epilogue: Light in our darkness Changing the subject of the thread to something more positive, on User talk:Jimbo Wales I noticed that Jayen466, Anthonyhcole and I have agreed that it would be a good idea to use an image of the Night Journey in the section of Muhammad devoted to his depiction, with an improved text to accompany it. I would be quite happy to help creating that improved text (multiple good sources are already available) and to help selecting which of the images is appropriate. As I said there and on Talk:Muhammad/Images, I don't see any reason to keep the same number of images. The statements of Jayen466 and Anthonyhcole were short and direct: I was happy when I found them. Mathsci (talk) 03:58, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Unarchiving

The previous discussion was not closed by an administrator, so I have restored the lengthy thread. (Partly this was due to Ludwigs2 resuming his activities on-wiki regarding images and related policy, after a brief lull.) Please could an uninvolved administrator reassess the voting on the topic ban (in case of doubt, I voted for a topic ban). If the discussion was inconclusive and there is truly no consensus, so be it. Mathsci (talk) 21:52, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2 has pointed out that Gimmetoo (talk · contribs) (not identified as an admin [77]) is an alternative account of Gimmetrow (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), In view of the renewed activity of Ludwigs2 after a two day lull, a review might still be in order. Mathsci (talk) 22:22, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Aren't you afraid of food poisoning? Hans Adler 22:27, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

??? Mathsci (talk) 22:32, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

What he means, Mathsci, is that trying to reopen a closed thread simply because I have entered a discussion (as is my right, until there's a consensus I shouldn't) looks more like a personal issue than anything else. I'll note also that this is maybe the fourth or fifth time over the last year or so that you've tried to get administrative sanctions against me, usually on topics with which you were not previously involved…

If there is a personal issue that you and I need to discuss we can do that in talk, unless you really want to do it here. But as Hans points out this horse is kinda dead. let's all just get back to editing. --Ludwigs2 23:36, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• Discussion has been reviewed and closed by an uninvolved admin. Tachfin (talk) 14:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
• Bold doesn't make your opinion seem more official and it fails to note the resumption of behavior once the AN/I thread was closed. Not sure why you're only commenting on the portion of the unarchive that's already been covered above. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 19:32, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Oh, great, let's have a meta-discussion party to insure that the prejudicial anti-Ludwigs2 headings that didn't get support stay at the top of ANI and burn themselves into everybody's mind. Hans Adler 13:58, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
    • Robert, when something is wrong from the premise it raises red flags. Mathsci unarchived the discussion and removed Gimmetrow closing comment assuming he's not an admin (see the edit summary); well undoing another admin's work based on wrong assumptions is uncourteous and unhelpful. If you do not agree with how the closing went, that is another issue and was not addressed here as far as I can see. If you think Ludwig is doing something wrong there are alternatives for addressing it properly but dragging it over weeks in ANI, when it proved ineffective, is frankly not the best option. P.S: I've notified Gimmetoo of this, since it hasn't been done before. Tachfin (talk) 15:57, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
      • I'm sorry, you missed this part " (Partly this was due to Ludwigs2 resuming his activities on-wiki regarding images and related policy, after a brief lull.)" which I did not write. And apologies, but what other venue would you suggest? Also at almost 70% support for a topic ban, it's not quite nearly the indecisive results people claim. If one removes the (grossly paraphrased) "it's ok for him to attack others to make his voice heard" opposes, it raises to well over 80%. Again, this wasn't about a content dispute or his opinions on the matter - it was about his conduct, including disruptiveness, tendentiousness and many many personal attacks. Best, Rob ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 19:45, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
        • As far as I can tell, only involved opponents of Ludwigs2 and some of his long-standing enemies found anything in his behaviour that could have justified singling him out. I think the closing admin also saw it that way. The mere fact that Ludwigs2 became more active in the discussion again, with no claims that he did anything wrong, is an obvious bad-faith argument ridiculous as a reason for reviving this discussion. The fact that it was Mathsci who did this doesn't make it better, either. Besides, I find it interesting that you are bold enough repeat your unfounded accusations against Ludwigs2 here. I noticed that in the time since I made clear to you what I think about your behaviour in this discussion, others have done the same. Hans Adler 19:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
          • If the problem is as serious as you believe then WP:RFC/U is your friend. As someone noted, "this is too complex for mob justice". There were no convincing diffs and it's difficult to read through the wall of posts above let alone come to a sane unbiased conclusion.--Tachfin (talk) 20:23, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
            • Hans, stop being contrary. I made no accusations in this re-open. I simply pointed out that the issue presented by someone else was a two parter - the close and the continued behavior. You twisting such gets tiring. I actually made no commentary on my opinion on the matter. I simply pointed out there was a second part that was not addressed.
            • Tachfin: yes, it became a nightmare here - and on that talk page. Thus, your point is noted and probably very representative of the situation. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 22:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
              • So "it was about his conduct, including disruptiveness, tendentiousness and many many personal attacks" wasn't your opinion on Ludwigs2 but a neutral description of Ludwigs2's behaviour? Perfectly ridiculous. Ludwigs2 was the target of a neverending stream of personal attacks by disruptive, tendentious editors including you. (See below for a few examples.)
                And Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. A suspicion that the closer of a discussion who claimed to be an admin is not actually an admin is a very poor excuse to reopen it without discussion if otherwise there was nothing wrong with the close. The fact that Mathsci's suspicion was also wrong doesn't make it better.
                Examples of attacks by RobertMfromLI against Ludwigs2:
                • And IAR is NOT a magic wand you can use to get your way, which is all you want. Nearing completion of an RfC of my own, which such BAD FAITH efforts above may soon require.
                • this brings me back to my RfC proposal above, which (other than simply removing all images because Ludwigs2 wants such ... or (Ludwig2's) "remove all for this reason or remove all for this reason")
                • As for getting you banned/topic banned/whatever, I hope you've noticed, if you make a good faith effort, my interaction is quite different. When you propose an RfC (such as in the last couple days) with biased questions that ask or imply "delete for this reason or delete for this reason?" then my interaction is different and I do lean towards requesting some sort of action (no, not necessarily a ban, topic or otherwise).
                • Every time we start getting someplace on an RfC that won't summarily remove all the images, are you planning on returning to your "ethics"/"morals"/"offensive"/"IAR" arguments to sidetrack it? Every time we start getting someplace, are you going to keep trying to use this venue for things that we cannot address here (such as changing policies to support your position) - or are you going to instead move such stuff to the proper venue?
                • you've handily ignored the questions in your lengthy response. Are you willing to abide by the consensus without repeating your same justifications ad-nasuem? Are you willing to stop addressing your dislike of policy on this very inappropriate forum? Policies will NOT be changed here - address your issues with policy elsewhere. Will you once again avoid the questions I know you fully understood?
              • At this point I decided to stop with the list. I don't know if it went on for weeks or if RobertMfromLI got a bit tamer at some point. All of this is practically standard behaviour in really heated discussions and normally I would not have brought it up. But behaving like this and then attacking Ludwigs2 for behaving almost as bad as that takes a lot of chutzpah and should not be tolerated. Hans Adler 01:23, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, first, I reiterated what that behavior was - read the whole thing in context - I made no accusations of what his current behavior is. Next, I don't see any personal attacks from me there. On the first, he admitted such was his reasons - diff above in my summary diff list. On the second, virtually everyone thought his RfC proposal was biased - it states as fact that the images have no value - which leaves no options in the choices except delete - it is not his place to determine what the COMMUNITY finds as value in the image - he created a bias that was incorrect. On the third: same answer. On the fourth: did you miss is personal attacks calling us anti-islamic (bigots)? And more? Or that the policy change he wanted should be taken to the CORRECT venue? On the fifth: really? You've been here more than long enough to know a talk page for an article is not the place to change policy. So, what's wrong with that suggestion from me? The tone? It was what... the 10th time? And again, I see no attack. I didn't call him prejudiced, anti-islamic or a plethora of other things. Here's the funny thing, as I told him (and everyone else who bothered to read it), I think (err... KNOW) blocks are preventative, not punitive. Thus, at this time, I'd be against a block or other sanction. Regardless, in not one instance above, have you shown me to have uttered a single personal attack against him the editor. And in all, I've provided a sampling of diffs to support each. So, it's funny, you're "attacking" (not as in personal attack, but as in opposing) someone who is not supportive of blocking him at this time. I wish you'd change that seemingly singular mindset, but regardless, it won't affect my current oppose of a block or sanctions against him. At this time, I cannot support such. Again, it's not his opinions I was ever at odds with - it was his actions, which seem far from the same at this moment in time. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 03:11, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

(Just replying generally.) FWIW as someone who is not supportive of action against Ludwigs2 (check the above discussion) I'm reluctant to criticise Mathsci for originally reopening it when they believe Gimmetoo wasn't an admin. I myself felt it was the right thing, if anything it would at least reduce the feelings of it being improperly closed. And I don't see any reason to believe this wasn't simply a good faith error and IMO a fairly easy one to make. As people can see from Gimmetoo's talk page I myself made the mistake after seeing Mathsci's comments. I checked their user rights (both the current rights and user right change log) after this came to light and also had very quick glance at their talk page to see if there was anything I was missing (if you search for 'admin' there are messages which mention the alternative account but I was more looking to see if there had been any recent status change). I can't remember if I checked their user page but if I did I missed the alternative account bit. Gimmetoo changing their remark that they are an admin when they closed of course further confused me.

As people had specifically asked for an admin to make the close (and it's also the norm) and Gimmetoo had said they were an admin, it was fair to say Gimmetoo was acting in the capacity as an admin but not using the tools (if they were this wouldn't be an issue since they would have had to use Gimmetrow). So I don't think it's unresonable that Mathsci checked this. Many people will not have heard of either Gimmetoo or Gimmetrow before so will be unaware of the history, and the most obvious step to check is the user rights of Gimmetoo the one who made all the actions here. Checking the user page to see if it's a disclosed alternative account isn't going to be something that occurs to some except when it's likely from the name (meaning something like Gimmetrow-alt account or Gimmetrow-away). In other words, while Gimmetoo does disclose it on their user page, it does seem to me it would have been helpful if they had specifically mentioned being an alternative account when they made close oredit(after below):and perhaps also earlier when they had said they are an admin. Of course now that this has happened, hopefully Mathsci and me will remember to properly check the user page to see if it's a disclosed alternative account as well.

But regardless of what mistakes have been made, now that it's been clarified, I do feel it should just be re-closed. The bit about Ludwigs2's renewed activity seems irrelevant, the close was based on the perception there was no community consensus for any action not the lack of activity from Ludwigs2. It's clear the community has no desire to re-discuss this issue, so it's not like the renewed activity is changing that. And in any case most of the discussion happened long before the 2 day lull. Of course I can't guarantee that the fact that I don't disagree with the outcome isn't influencing my opinion.

Nil Einne (talk) 03:23, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, even if your opinion is influenced by the outcome, I honestly cannot see anything contrary to it in my opinion either (and under current circumstances, can't see how it would be influenced). As I noted to Hans above, I'll make official below, just in case this remains open:

• Oppose sanctions/blocks/whatever at this time. The fact that I was at odds with Ludwigs2 was never the reason I supported sanctions. Those reasons are above in the diffs. Sanctions are preventative, and I see nothing to prevent at this time. So, while we are probably (or definitely) at odds with our opinions on this subject, I cannot support a block at this time, as his interactions do not (IMO) warrant such. I would support re-closing this, but will not cast that as a suggestion, as that is something others in the community should decide based on how they perceive his current interactions. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 03:32, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Verifiability

Discussion moved to /WP:V RFC. Timestamp changed to future until the discussion is over. Alexandria (talk) 15:50, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Well, this move was made just after I made a comment that I intended to be on ANI. I hope, at least, that those who are paying attention will continue to watch the new page. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:58, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Closing the RfC at WP:V (a preemptive request)

OK... we are now at 30 days (remember, October had 31 days)... we don't have to close yet, but we could close today if we want to. I could close it myself (as the initiator of the RfC), except that I have certainly been heavily involved (far more than Sarek was) and I don't want give anyone (on either side of the debate) grounds to object to the closure when it happens and cause more unneeded drama. Given the tensions and general bad faith that has permeated the discussion recently, I think we need the closer to be someone who not only is neutral, but also has the appearance of neutrality. That means someone who has not commented at all. So... I thought I would ask...who is going to close it? I would like to announce who it will be, so we don't get a drama fest of closures and unclosures and counter closures when it happens. Blueboar (talk) 01:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• Looks messy! 115.64.182.73 (talk) 08:28, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
• You need 3 closers to reach an agreed outcome to avoid further drama. Not me.. :-) Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

  Valid idea... although I don't think anyone involved would insist on 3 closers. The point is, a) the closer(s) should be someone who has not yet commented, b) have the clout that comes with admin status so the decision (what ever it may be) is accepted, and c) we need to inform those who have commented who the closer(s) will be (along with a polite request that those involved not add to the drama by closing it themselves). So... could we get some volunteers please. Blueboar (talk) 12:59, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

  I assume you didn't read ANI recently, as we have an ANI subpage devoted to this now. Over there at least 3 admins have volunteered to close it: User:HJ Mitchell, User:Newyorkbrad and User:Black Kite. I personally think a triumvirate closure, like recently on the China RFC is a good idea, but I will leave it to the admins in question to work this out amongst themselfs. I am curious where you got the idea that the an iniator of an RFC should close it? The iniator is by definition heavily involved, so that is always a bad idea. Yoenit (talk) 15:41, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Yoenit. That is all I needed to know (I too am happy to leave the rest up to the admins in question). I got the idea that an initiator could close from reading the instructions at WP:RFC. Perhaps I have misunderstood. Doesn't really matter since I was not planning on doing so in any case. Blueboar (talk) 15:53, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Disruptive editing by User:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz

This user has been consistantly editing entries I have made on a number of pages and has made no attempt to engage with me directly to address any concerns he may have about the fact based information I am adding. I believe a disturbing pattern of behaviour has emerged here and indeed his talk page provides examples of other complaints against his disruptive behaviour. Here are examples of his disruptive edits: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Criticism_of_the_Food_and_Drug_Administration&diff=prev&oldid=461335026 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Irish_Blood_Transfusion_Service&diff=prev&oldid=461125594 I request that this user be investigated. Many Thanks.

• This must be a request by or on behalf of PinkPolitico80 (talk · contribs). If was stuck in here properly it's from around 17 November 2011 and hasn't gained any traction. BTW, I do understand the editor's impatience, waiting for Hullaballoo to explain themselves on the talk page of Criticism of the Food and Drug Administration--but that's not really a matter for administrators right now. Drmies (talk) 03:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Deletions by involved editor under claim of "close paraphrases"; Mkativerata

A colleague, Mkativerata, who is an involved administrator in respect of the Israel-Palestinian conflict as defined by WP:ARBPIA, has today deleted variations of 2 sentences in an ARBPIA bio of Ilan Berman (3 times in half an hour).[78][79][80] Claiming that they are "close paraphrases". The 2 sentences were edited three times to seek to address his claims, and additional refs added.

Whether or not he may have been correct initially, certainly by his most recent deletion IMHO there was no merit to his claim. I'm concerned with the aggressiveness of his deletions, without talkpage discussion, especially given the ARBPIA aspect of this. I've myself opened up discussion of the issue on the article's talkpage, but not received any response there.

Perhaps an admin can keep an eye on this matter? I'm concerned that it is spiraling. I'm not asking for any other action as to Mkat. Full disclosure: In the past I've communicated concern to this editor about his behavior, and have felt that he responded aggressively and sought to exact retribution inappropriately for my having having voiced my view, so I am hoping that this is not a continuation of that, and that I will not suffer from retribution from him. Many thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:59, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Epeefleche is the subject of a long-running CCI that has uncovered a long history of copyright violations. I'm working through the CCI and I'm not going to be distracted by obstructionism. Working on a CCI requires the deletion of substantive amounts of a contributor's work. And I'm not going to be bullied out of it. And nor am I going to let the fact that I have declared myself "not uninvolved" in respect of ARBPIA stop me from removing copyright violations, being a non-POV matter. CCI needs whatever help it can get. --Mkativerata (talk) 21:06, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

My noting that you are "an involved administrator in respect of the Israel-Palestinian conflict" as defined by WP:ARBPIA is simply a reflection of what you have yourself indicated. Given the sensitivities in that area, and your being an involved editor, when you delete material such as the above under the claim that it is a copyright violation, and the claim appears baseless, that raises a concern that your "involvement" is an issue.

I agree of course that copyright violations should be addressed. Your most recent deletion, certainly, was nothing of the sort. You also failed to discuss the matter on the talkpage, despite making 3 deletions in half an hour. When unwarranted deletions are made by involved editors, that can perhaps be a problem. Involved editors can always alert other editors when they believe there is a problem, especially if it is not a clear-cut matter--I find it hard to believe that you felt that your last deletion, for example, was a clear-cut copyright violation. I'm not asking that action be taken against you. I'm simply asking for more admin eyes, as I feel you reacted with aggressive retribution in the past. Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:23, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If it's possibly a copyright violation, it should be removed immediately pending peer review. There is no suggestion being made that Mkati is using copyright policy to game the system, which would be a problem. This would also be a problem if Mkati were ignoring some discussion that had already taken place, but the petitioner doesn't suggest that is happening. According to the complaint itself there is nothing here requiring administrative action. causa sui (talk) 21:28, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Involved editors can of course delete blatant vandalism. And I would extend that to blatant copyright violations. Mkat's most recent deletion was certainly nothing of the sort, however -- not a copyvio at all, and certainly not a blatant copyvio.

As with involved editors in wp:admin, by analogy, "administrators may have, or may be seen as having, a conflict of interest in disputes they have been a party to or have strong feelings about. Involvement is generally construed very broadly by the community, to include current or past conflicts with an editor ... and disputes on topics". As WP:ADMIN indicates, it is best practice in cases where an administrator may be seen to be involved to pass the matter to another administrator via the relevant noticeboards.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:38, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a stretch. Involvement is construed broadly so that we can discourage administrators from gaming the system to enforce their own positions in content disputes. According to your own account there isn't any reason to believe that that is what he is doing, and I don't understand you to be implying that either. If I'm reading you correctly, your argument is strictly procedural. Since it is a much bigger danger to include a copyvio than to remove a non-copyvio, it would be better to convince the interested parties that the edits aren't actually copyvios. Then we could move on. causa sui (talk) 22:15, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Not a stretch at all. WP:ADMIN clearly indicates the concern: "involved administrators may have, or may be seen as having, a conflict of interest in disputes they have been a party to or have strong feelings about." Such is the case here. Repeated deletions, at an article in the ARBPIA content area, by an admittedly involved sysop. No credible claim of copyvio. Zero talk page discussion, while making the deletions. That this is being done in the highly sensitive ARBPIA area heightens concern as to the approach. There's no need to throw around an accusation such as "gaming the system to enforce their own positions", however apt it might be. Hopefully, the eyes of admins on this will help us avoid future problems.--Epeefleche (talk) 22:51, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you get it. You violated copyright policies for years. Our policies now allow the "indiscriminate removal" of the information you added during that period. You are fortunate that I am not taking "indiscriminate removal" to the full extent to which it is allowed. Any editor can remove your information -- it has nothing to do with being an administrator, I am not acting as one, but even if I was, I will not hesitate to block you if you continue to disrupt the resolution of your CCI. --Mkativerata (talk) 01:56, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Indiscriminate removal should mean being fairly liberal in removing copyvios that are discovered from Epeefleche's edits, it does not mean removing information Epeefleche wrote just for the sake that he wrote it. That is disruptive. Silverseren^C 16:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it does mean that. Policy is that "If contributors have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation, it may be assumed without further evidence that all of their major contributions are copyright violations, and they may be removed indiscriminately. See Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations." --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:01, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Basically, once things reach the point of a CCI, all contributions by an editor are to be assumed copyvio unless proven otherwise. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 21:02, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

That seems like it could be very disruptive though, especially when you're considering articles that other users have likely worked on and expanded afterwards as well. Silverseren^C 21:26, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

This isn't a matter of "assuming copyvios". We are talking about Mkat's deletions yesterday -- years (and 50-80,000 edits?) after I wasn't familiar with our copyvio rules. And the material Mkat deleted here was by no means a copyvio. His assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. Mkat wasn't "assuming" anything. He looked at the language and the source and made a completely unfounded assertion, without tp discussion, in his COI area.--Epeefleche (talk) 07:48, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

In that case, uploading copyvios is what is disruptive. That subsequent editors then rework the copyrighted content (making the Wikimedia Foundation a distributor of an unlicensed derivative work) that then has to be removed is disruption caused by the person who uploaded the copyvio, not the person who removed it. A lot of thought has gone into this and the legal implications of unlicensed derivatives combined with the high ratio of (effort to detect copyvios:effort to add copyvios) make wholesale removal of legally dubious content a cost of doing business around here. causa sui (talk) 21:41, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

The issue here, above, involved Mkat hiding behind the dubious assertion of copyvio. I doubt an objective editor would find this -- his most recent deletion -- to be a copyvio. When an editor deletes material under such a dubious claim of copyvio, that could easily be seen as disruptive if it is part of a problem. He also failed to use the talkpage for discussion -- or even respond to discussion opened on the talkpage. That is also not good practice where one is deleting material three times in an hour. This is compounded by the fact that this matter is in the ARBPIA area, where sensitivities are heightened. And, of course, it is further compounded where (as here) the sysop is without question an involved editor. I've no problem at all with real copyvios being struck. But that's not what was at issue here at all, as you can see if you look at the diff provided.--Epeefleche (talk) 07:39, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

My initial concern was prompted by the fact that Mkat: a) deleted material 3 times in half an hour; b) with a wholly dubious claim of copyvio (see his most recent deletion), c) failed to communicate via talkpage; d) in the sensitive ARBPIA area; e) where Mkat is an involved editor; f) without modeling best behavior as called for by wp:admin. I raised the issue here so others could keep an eye on this, and ensure that it does not inflate, as I've felt he has lashed out in the past when I've disagreed with him. I agree with Silver that Mkat's edits here were leaning towards the disruptive.

Mkat today appears to be reacting to my having disagreed with him, by seeking retribution. As background, when I first started at wikipedia -- many years ago -- I followed what I saw as wp practice; practice that was not in compliance with our rules. Not knowing our rules in this area, I did indeed make errors at that time, and years ago added some material that should properly be cited, revised, or redacted. I have years of editing since then, with tens of thousands of edits, and now that I have read our rules I've complied carefully with them.

But Mkat -- directly after I disagreed with him yesterday -- has now undertaken to delete in toto some articles I've worked on. Articles of Olympic athletes. As in this deletion of the Yves Dreyfus article today. And this deletion of the Vivian Joseph article today I can't see what he deleted, so I don't know whether some level of deletion is appropriate ; it may be. But certainly, I can't imagine that there is a need to delete such articles of Olympic athletes in toto. This is just this sort of retribution by Mkat that I was afraid of.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:24, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Epeefleche, this is what happens to serial copyright violators. I had to do it to User:Gavin.Collins. If it makes you feel any better, I'll do the next batch of content removal. If you could provide a list of all your copyright violations...but given the volume, I doubt you'd remember. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:59, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a very transparent modus operandi: file an ANI report and then claim that any subsequent action is "retribution". Then canvas (for which you've been blocked before) your mates who tried to prevent a CCI being opened ([81], [82]) under the guise of being neutral (soliciting the uninvolved Yoenit as well [83]). --Mkativerata (talk) 22:10, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Ugh. causa sui (talk) 22:13, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Mkat -- you've not addressed the concerns I raised above about your recent deletions. Instead, you seem to be seeking to deflect the discussion. Weren't you an involved editor, deleting material multiple times, the last time (at least) clearly not a copyvio (though you claimed it was), who despite being an involved editor failed both to engage in talkpage discussion and to -- given your being an involved editors -- post the issue elsewhere so it could be addressed? Rather than seeking to engage in character assassination, over what happened years ago (and I don't have clear recollections as to edits from five years ago), and many tens of thousands of edits ago, when I did not know our rules -- let's focus on what you did the past two days. As to your accusation of canvassing -- are you serious? Take a look at wp:CANVASS -- that is an absurd and unwarranted accusation -- it does little for the conversation when editors make baseless assertions. That's not canvassing -- quite the opposite, it is what wp:CANVASS indicates is not canvassing. As to "M.O." -- let's be clear. You are the involved editor who under the baseless (certainly, as to the most recent edit) guise of copyvio deleted material in an area you are involved in, refused to use or respond on the talkpage. And now in retribution, immediately after I disagree with you at a wholly unrelated article, you delete in toto bios of Olympic athletes. I've no problem as I've indicated with copyvios being redacted. But the fact that your reaction to someone disagreeing with you is to do this is problematic -- surely, the entire articles are not copyvios, and surely, the fact that athlete x, from country y, won medal z in the Olympics of xxxx is not a copyvio ... yet you delete even that.--Epeefleche (talk) 07:39, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Mkativerata began working on your CCI in January 2011. It's pretty obvious looking at the history of the CCI that what brought him to the article in question was resuming work on your CCI. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations/Epeefleche&action=history>) He had never touched that article before. It isn't wholly unrelated; it is in fact intrinsically linked to the copyright work -- midway down this section, and he had moved to the next article in that list before you ever disagreed at the other article. Given that Mkativerata's approach to the CCI now is the same as it was in January, it's hard to see this as retribution.

I have in one capacity or another worked on most or perhaps all of the CCIs we've completed. Your CCI has not had much progress yet, so you may not know, but blanking articles listed at CCI where any copying is found is common. This flags that concerns have been located. Reviewers are not expected to rewrite content, although of course they can. They've done a service simply by confirming the problem. Once the article is blanked, you have a week at minimum to work on it. (Anyone else may work on a rewrite, too.) If a rewrite that fixes the problem is not proposed, the article may be stubbed or deleted if the content added by the subject of the CCI is extensive. This is standard operating procedure for CCIs. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Moon -- I think its pretty obvious that, in this edit that kicked off this discussion, Mkat was not doing "CCI work", looking at old edits. But -- hiding behind an unsupportable and baseless assertion of "close paraphrasing", deleting material written that same day, that was nothing of the sort. Moon -- tell me honestly: Would you have deleted taht language under the assertion of close paraphrasing yourself? There have been attempts by some to ignore this issue. There have been attempts by some to ignore that he was doing this in a COI area, that he was making repeated reverts without any talkpage discussion whatsover (and not even responding to talkpage discussion), and that he was doing this in the sensitive ARBPIA area. It is perhaps telling that some editors who have commented here in his support have completely ignored these facts, and ignored how this diverges from the strictures of wp:admin as to how an admin should behave.--Epeefleche (talk) 07:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to answer this below, since in substance it ties into your last note. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:45, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Come-on people; let’s cease with wikislogans like If it's possibly a copyright violation, it should be removed immediately pending peer review. Even Wikipedia sometimes uses *real evidence* here at ANIs. “Close paraphrases” are not copyright violations by any stretch of the imagination nor do they constitute plagiarism if it they are merely a “close paraphrase”; the litmus test is stricter than that. Anyone who editwars under such pretense has no leg to stand on. Given that Mkativerata is an involved editor, he must abide by the 3RR and edit warring restrictions everyone else are expected to abide by.

  I note Mkativerata’s fine posturing like how he won’t be “distracted by obstructionism,” but there are only so many ways short pithy English-langauge sentences that are grammatically correct can be constructed. The proper test for whether close paraphrasing must also be accompanied by an in-line citation is paraphrasing very closely. It is irrelevant whether a collaboration between Zeus and Oprah “uncovered a long history of copyright violations” and this caused Mkativerata to role his eyes *extra-extra* far into his forehead, nor does it matter if these two editors hate each others guts, nor does it matter if Mkativerata postures with Great Determination®™© and speaks of overcoming obstructionism; the only relevant issue here in this ANI is whether Mkativerata’s serial reverting has a proper foundation. And that means the basis must pass the “Reasonable Man” test: Let’s see hard evidence one way or another as to whether the deleted text is a paraphrasing “very closely” and is deserving of having an in-line citation.

  It might also be interesting to see if we have an 800-pound gorilla in the room no one is talking about. Is this about a pro-Israeli editor and an anti-Israeli editor bashing each other, trying to make substantial changes to the message point of the articles, and are trying to justify their actions by hiding behind the apron strings of misapplied policies? Who is *really* doing what, and why? Is there *really* “very close” paraphrasing? If that’s the case (and I see no evidence yet that it is) are Mkativerata’s remedies (wholesale deletion of text along with accompanying citations) best serving the project(?) or is are his edits just POV-pushing under a pretense that can’t be buttressed with real evidence? Greg L (talk) 23:22, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

A close paraphrase of a copyrighted work is indeed a copyright violation as an unauthorized derivative work. T. Canens (talk) 23:54, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Can be, but not always. Paraphrasing a single sentence is out of a long article is generally fair use and thus not a copyright violation. A cited statement that is reworded from a single sentence of a source is, AFAIK, generally acceptable in any setting as long as it is cited. Academics do this all the time (summarizing someone's work by using a close paraphrase of a sentence or two of an abstract is extremely common). Hobit (talk) 00:06, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The blanking Epeefleche describes is typical procedure in copyvio situations, and you need merely to look in the history to find what has been blanked. As to what has been covered over, let's take the Vivian Joseph article. The major source says:

They finished in fourth place, but in 1966, the silver medal-winning German team of Hans-Jurgen Baumler and Marika Kilius were stripped of their medals after they were alleged to have signed a professional contract prior to the 1964 Olympics. The Josephs were then moved to third place and awarded bronze medals. In 1987, however, the German duo was officially reinstated by the IOC and the original results were restored; the Josephs, who had held the bronze for over 20 years, were moved back to fourth place and the USOC does not officially recognize them as medalists.

This is what Epeefleche placed in the article

They finished in 4th place. But in 1966 the silver medal-winning team of Hans-Jurgen Baumler and Marika Kilius of Germany were stripped of their medals, after they were alleged to have signed a professional contract prior to the 1964 Olympics. The Josephs were then moved up to 3rd place, and awarded bronze medals. In 1987, however, the Germans were officially reinstated by the IOC, and the original results were restored. The Josephs, who had held the bronze medal for over 20 years, were moved back to 4th place. The USOC does not recognize them as medalists.

The rest of the Joseph article contains similar copy-and-paste-with-a-few-words-changed blatant copyright violations and its blanking was both utterly necessary and required. If Epeefleche does not want this to happen, then the best course of action would be to actually work with the CCI to correct the problems that s/he admits exists, before they get blanked. A much more productive course of action. --Slp1 (talk) 23:40, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

As I said above, "I can't see what he deleted, so I don't know whether some level of deletion is appropriate; it may be. But certainly, I can't imagine that there is a need to delete such articles of Olympic athletes in toto. This is just this sort of retribution by Mkat that I was afraid of. BTW -- can you tell us what date that edit was added? Also, Mkat -- directly after I disagreed with him yesterday -- has now undertaken to delete completely some articles I've worked on on Olympic athletes. It stretches the assumption of good faith past the breaking point to think that the timing of his deletions is not accidental, but rather direct retribution. And it is hard to believe that there is not material capable of saving--without any risk of copvio whatsoever--along the lines of "Joe T is an American boxer who won a gold glove in boxing as a heavyweight at the 1976 Summer Olympics".--Epeefleche (talk) 08:01, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I'll try again. Mkativerata has deleted nothing. He has blanked an obvious copyright problem, and the complete history, including when you added the information is still in the history. Mkativerata has posted it on the WP:CP board where other editors and administrators will, in 5-7 days, process the listing, checking Mkativerata's claim of copyvio and acting upon it or not as they find appropriate. At any point, you could rewrite the articles to avoid deletion or stubbing. This was explained to you by Moonriddengirl in January, and it is clearly written clearly on the page blanking the articles. Please stop these disruptive claims of "retribution". You added massive copyright violations, and have done nothing to participate in the clean up. Somebody else obviously has to do it for you, and you don't get to obstruct the process by attacking the cleaners. --Slp1 (talk) 13:21, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

• Very good. Thank you for providing the much-needed, hard evidence, Slp1. Indeed, that is not merely the “close paraphrase” that Mkativerata cited for his deletions but passes the “reasonable man” test for being what plagiarism states as requiring an in-line citation (very close paraphrasing). So why doesn’t someone (Epeefleche?) just add in-line citations to the paragraph? This seems to be an edit dispute where the content and thrust of the article is being changed by the deletion. If Epeefleche objects to that, why not add a citation? Greg L (talk) 00:09, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

You appear to have a very serious misunderstanding of copyright issues. In-line citations will not solve this issue in any way. This is neither close paraphrasing nor plagiarism. It is a very clear cut copyright infringement. May I suggest that you read WP's policies on this matter? WP:COPYVIO.--Slp1 (talk) 00:25, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

What I actually understand and what you think I understand are two different things. I’m done with you today, too. Adios. Greg L (talk) 00:47, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Plagiarism is pretty clear that adding an in-line citation to closely paraphrased content taken from non-free sources is not a solution; of "works under copyright that are not available under a compatible free license", it says "They cannot be closely paraphrased for copyright concerns, but must be substantially rewritten in original language." --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:14, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

But ... the edit that Mkat most recently deleted, under the dubious guise of copyvio, wasn't copyvio at all. The fact that he failed to engage in talkpage discussion, and did it in a sensitive area in which he has a conflict of interest, merely compounds the matter -- if there were even a gray area of concern as to copyvio, and for some reason he was opposed to talk page discussion, he could simply have posted his concern on the appropriate noticeboard so that an uninvolved editor could address it. But the main point is -- Mkat seems to be asserting copyvio where there is none, in an eare where he has a conflict of interest.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:07, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

It is your opinion, not an objective truth, that there were not copyright problems with that revision. Your judgement on copyright matters have to be taken with a pinch of salt, frankly, given your history. --Slp1 (talk) 13:21, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

If Greg L thinks close paraphrasing is "not copyright violations by any stretch of the imagination" and indisputably not plagiarism then Greg L's opinion on this matter is to be actively mistrusted. In fact, given the precedent of long-standing editors turning up at ANI and making such statements, it'd be good if someone took a fine-toothed comb to Greg L's longer contributions to confirm that this wasn't indicative of additional copyvio problems. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:52, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

If you can’t understand what others write, then you ought not spout off as you just did Thumperward. I now know I can ignore the nonsense you write here. Greg L (talk) 00:03, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

An ad hominem response to a serious copyright situation is not helpful. Actively suspicious, in fact. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 00:07, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Now you are just trying to bait me. Try looking in the mirror next time when it comes to ad hominem responses. You started it with your “actively mistrusted” bit and then jump up and down and cry foul when someone gives you a dose of your own medicine. Then you further tried to bait me by writing it'd be good if someone took a fine-toothed comb to Greg L's longer contributions to confirm that this wasn't indicative of additional copyvio problems, which is straight out of 6th grade. How the hell old are you?? Stop acting childish and attacking others and try reading what they actually write before spouting off with something half-baked; the operative point in my above point was the adjective “very”; that point was obviously lost on you. I’m done responding to you today since I’ve got your number now, fella, and it’s obvious you enjoy personal attacks and baiting (I’d sorta bother with an ANI of my own for that hogwash, but that would be lowering myself to your level). Why not find another venue at which you can be an ornery, miserable cuss? There is ample electronic white space to get the last word. Happy editing and goodbye. Greg L (talk) 00:14, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I've little interest in being drawn into some interminable flame war, especially not with you. My comments were directed at that wider part of the community whose concern with copyright both in the hard legal sense of "we are liable to be sued here" and in the broader sense of "Wikipedia is best avoiding a reputation for a lax attitude to potential copyright issues". Your comment in defense of presented diffs showing at least the latter was troublesome. My experience in this area on WP strongly indicates that editors who make statements defending such things are more likely than average to have made such considerations regarding their own edits in the past. Your response to this was "I now know I can ignore the nonsense you write here", which as a rebuttal is seriously lacking. Forgive me for also not taking you at your word that you're disinterested in having the last word here when my current edit conflict indicates you spent at least five minutes editing this response in order to add the "ornery, miserable cuss" comment, a readaibly blockable personal attack only overlooked because there are bigger issues here (serious allegations of copyvio). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 00:28, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Didn't we just topic ban someone for refusing to work on their own CCI? Why isn't the same thing done here, especially since this CCI has now been around for about a year and Epeefleche has yet to help clean up the mess he created? T. Canens (talk) 23:54, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

For the record, here are the two sentences in question (AFICT)

Source

In the new book "Tehran Rising," author Ilan Berman notes that the U.S. war on terrorism has inadvertently removed two of the major brakes on Iranian power in the region: Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq and the Islamist Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.

Wikipedia

He wrote in his 2005 book Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States that in displacing Saddam Hussein, in Iraq, and the Taliban, in Afghanistan, the United States had unintentionally taken away two significant checks on the power of Iran in the Middle East.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&action=edit&section=36

I think that the "inadvertently" is arguable a WP:OR problem (though common sense probably applies). I think that there are only so many ways to communicate the idea of the sentence and this one would seem reasonable to me. But others, more versed in copyright issues, should probably comment. Hobit (talk) 23:58, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Even if you think that this version is adequate, it is worth noting what Mkativerata first removed as a paraphrase.

What mkativerata removed

In his 2005 book Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States], Berman noted that the U.S. had inadvertently removed two major brakes on Iranian regional power: Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan

which is much, much too close to the original source. Epeefleche made incremental changes[84] [85] all of which which Mkativerata stated, I think legitimately, remained too close to the source, before arriving at this current. --Slp1 (talk) 00:16, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Does making incremental changes to a copyvio until the wording is sufficiently different from the original make it no longer a derivative? INAL but my sources say "no". causa sui (talk) 00:19, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I certainly hope so. Otherwise we should just delete, rather than fix, any detected copyright violations. Plus, a quote that short in a non-profit (yes it matters) is almost certainly fair use so the issue is fairly moot. I personally think the first version is highly problematic, the last was fine and shouldn't have been deleted. Hobit (talk) 01:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry you don't overcome close paraphrasing with a thesaurus. --Mkativerata (talk) 02:01, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, I don't have anything better. Could you provide a way to say that same thing without being a close paraphrase? Or is it the attempt to say the same thing, in a single sentence, that was in the original, as a single sentence, that is a problem? (Sorry that sentence sucked, did I mention I don't write well?) Hobit (talk) 02:10, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

If an editor lacks the skills to do it (and I don't mean that perjoratively), in-text attribution is a safe way around the problem. And does the sentence need to be in the article in the first place? If the sentence derives from one sentence in one source, it's probably not important. So yes, it can be the very attempt to say the same thing, in a single sentence, that was in the original, as a single sentence, that is a problem --Mkativerata (talk) 02:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe I understand your points, but I will disagree. There are times that a single sentence can and should be paraphrased from a source. Ignoring if this is such a case, I think that the (final) paraphrasing used is about as far from the source as it could be while still making the same point. Would "In his 2005 book Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States], Berman claims that by displacing Saddam Hussein and the Taliban from the Middle East, the United States left room for Iran to fill the vacuum they left." be any better? Eh. Like I said, I think the final version was acceptable, but I agree the first was certainly not. YMMV. Hobit (talk) 03:00, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

• I agree w/Hobit. And my focus is, as well, on the third deletion that Mkat made (in half an hour, without talkpage discussion). I don't think that unwarranted assertions of copyvio should be used by a sysop, who is bound by wp:admin, and who is without question an involved editor, to delete material he doesn't like. Copyvio is a serious and important concern. But simply saying "I assert it is a copyvio" does not entitle Mkat to bludgeon other editors, where there is no copyvio.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with most of what hobit says but would make the further point that we are dealing with here may not even be a close paraphrase of the source stated - that is if the source "Tehran Rising," by Ilan Berman contains a sentence reading

the U.S. war on terrorism has inadvertently removed two of the major brakes on Iranian power in the region: Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq and the Islamist Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.

then the first version is a correctly attributed quote. From memory epeefleche's CCI was mostly filled with examples like this where one secondary source correctly attributes a piece of information to another secondary source and this attribution has been closely paraphrased to wikipedia. The material being paraphrased in these cases does not begin to approach the threshold of originality required by law to assert a copyvio. That said in these cases our concern should be one of sourcing we should endeavour to cite the claim in the book rather than citing an article discussing the book as the latter is more likely to appear to be a copyvio even if it isn't. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 10:37, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

This issue involves an article that has not received attention for most of a year, but appears to be being investigated as part of a CCI investigation.  However, the current dispute does not involve copyright violation, because we would not allow a copyright violation to be retained in the edit history of the article.  Instead, this is an editorial dispute over non-copyright-violating "close paraphrasing" by the target of the CCI investigation.  Regarding the initial recent edit to the article, the target of the CCI investigation does not dispute the concern of "close paraphrasing", and does not dispute the initial revert of the material, but instead seeks to restore the work product of the encyclopedia without the concern.  This is where the dispute begins, because the subject of this ANI review refuses to allow improvements to the encyclopedia, refuses to engage in talk page discussion, and on this ANI page escalates by threatening to use administrative tools.  This discussion can be resolved by reminding Mkativerata to discuss editorial disputes on the talk page.  Unscintillating (talk) 17:22, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

That's not really an accurate understanding of how we handle copyright problems. We allow them to be retained in the edit history of articles routinely. User:Flatscan and I have just been talking about how that should be addressed. But even I only revdelete extensive issues. (And Mkativerata is more conservative there than I am: [86]) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Unscintillating--Actually, there is nothing in Mkat's immediately prior edits to suggest that Mkat was looking at Ilan Berman as part of a CCI investigation. Nor did Mkat assert it. BTW, though Berman had not been edited in a year as you point out, Berman had just before Mkat's edits written a NYT article that brought him onto the radar screen. Second, I appreciate your bringing the focus back to the facts here. Finally, it was only after I differed with Mkat that he began deleting articles just now ... before I questioned his approach, he had not touched any articles that were part of the CCI investigation for many months. Immediately after I questioned him, he began vigorously deleting articles of Olympic medal winning athletes in total, not even leaving a stub.--Epeefleche (talk) 11:36, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

This is in response to this note and this one, as if I answer them separately I'm going to be doing a lot of repeating myself. :)

Mkativerata picked up working on your CCI (which is much appreciated, since nobody else has been doing it and your CCI was cited at AN a week or two ago as specific evidence that nobody cares about copyright problems) at 19:07 on 17 November. Before you edited that article, he had documented his change and moved on to the next article in line at 19:12 before you first "differed" with these two edits (at 19:16 and 19:18). I watch articles I clean for copyright problems routinely (although not always long enough, as yesterday I cleaned the same pasted content out of an article I cleaned up in 2008). If I disagreed with your rewrite, I would have left you a note at your user talk page explaining why after I reverted you, but, then, if I disagreed with admins actions related to my work, I would have left them a note at their talk page explaining why. I would not have opened an ANI without this step. I haven't looked at the text in question; I've been pretty much unavailable for CCI work myself for months. But the point isn't that Mkativerata may or may not have been wrong in his action. Sometimes there are good faith disagreements about what constitutes a close paraphrase. It happens. The point is that you are assuming a bad faith motive on Mkativerata's part (an agenda), and I do not see any evidence to support that. While Mkativerata had not done work on your CCI lately, Mkativerata has been a CCI regular in the past - this is why he is listed as a CCI Clerk. (Which just shows how out of date we are, since admins don't need to be...and that I really need to get User:MER-C some help here.) He's also been doing some much needed work at WP:CP. Sure, we can look at this in such a way as to suggest that he's been doing all this as some kind of smoke screen to allow him to press an agenda, but not without squinting really hard. :) WP:AGF says if we do any squinting, we should be squinting in the direction of assuming that people mean well.

In terms of avoiding distress, I'll offer you an idea: if you are unhappy with the way other people are cleaning up the CCI, why don't you do it before they get there? While you should not mark an article as resolved on your CCI, there is absolutely no reason that you can't put a note underneath the article title that you believe you have fixed it. Other CCI subjects have done this, and it can work well. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:45, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Moonriddengirl. Her remedy (get in there preemptively to fix things) is more of a challenge than it is a solution I think Epeefleche will avail himself of. I think the best way for Epeefleche to handle Mkativerata’s deletions of his content is—rather than revert Mkativerata—to just revise the deleted text so it no longer appears as a “very close” (or merely “close”) paraphrasing of the original cited work. Thus, if Epeefleche perceives that the deletions had a POV-pushing effect, he can easily fix that problem by taking the time to address the plagiarism concerns. Mkativerata, for his part, can just make sure to leave pithy but accurate edit summaries so that Epeefleche clearly understands the true basis for the edits. Greg L (talk) 22:17, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

So if Epee is altering the text repeatedly to ameliorate the copyright violation, that's a good thing right? I'd imagine Mkativerata would, on reflection, agree that even limited cooperation from CCI subjects is better than no cooperation. Since the text has been adjusted significantly to the point that it no longer appears to be a copyright violation (demonstrating, by the by, how easy it is to avoid such a violation in the first place), and Mkat hasn't reverted it again, we're done here with this issue, yes?

And now the next issue: let's discuss (as with Richard Arthur Norton) if Epeefleche's activities should be restricted by topic ban to working with the CCI until his/her contributions have been fully cleaned. Nathan ^T 23:37, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Let’s be clear about something, Nathan. Epeefleche is a mature and highly educated editor; he’s not some sort of 16-year-old kid out to make trouble. Notwithstanding his education, he dicked up with some colossal plagiarism and he’s admitted that he screwed up. But part of why he keeps finding himself embroiled here at ANI is because he works in a controversial area: terrorist-related articles. That sort of area intrinsically brings editors with a pro-Israeli bias into conflict with those who have an pro-Islam bias (known, using the standard wiki-quoloqialism, as “POV-pushing where the respective parties have a hard time comprehending other’s worldview”). So…

I have a better idea. Rather than give a productive and mature editor the equivalent of an atomic wedgie (with a splendid public-humiliation tar & feathering aspect to it), we just sit back and watch how Epeefleche and Mkativerata collaborate on Targeted killing; Mkativerata just got through blanking the article for copyright violations. I propose we keep a keen eye for the sort of behavior that these two editors accuse each other of: Epeefleche’s alleged failure to revise very close paraphrasing, and Mkativerata’s alleged use of copyright violations as a pretense to POV-push. Let the sunshine of public inspection reveal the truth of the matter. Greg L (talk) 00:49, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Greg L's first two sentences. I don't think there's a need for any editing restriction. Fact: Everything I've seen Epeefleche create since the CCI started is copyvio-free. It's irritating in a way that the CCI remains on foot while Epeefleche enjoys full editing privileges, but irritation isn't a ground for an editing restriction. All I ask is that Epeefleche stays out of the way of editors trying to clean up the copyright violations. --Mkativerata (talk) 01:29, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Vituzzu vs Spam

Hello,

I would like to bring to your attention a problem with an Italian Administator, Vituzzu : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Vituzzu

He is keeping deleting all posts made by a group of sport fans who contact sport fanatics asking them if they are interested in an international forum about Olympic sports (completely non profit and totally free) that is absolutely not a Wikipedia's competitor.

He considers it spam and we don't, anyway even if whole Wikipedia considers it too, this doesn't justify what he started doing for some days.

As you can see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Biodin#Vietnam he started telling users that they will be FORCED to SPAM the forum on wikipedia.

That's absolutely false and that's a heavy damage against the forum.

Contact single users asking them if they would be interested in the forum could be considered spam (at least for Vituzzu) but that's a defamation and we really hope some decisions will be taken about that to stop him with his actions to damage Totallympics reputation.

Hope to receive good news.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.161.224.5 (talk) 00:08, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

He's right. You're wrong. Stop. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:13, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Third opinion, just as you were informed here User talk:Smartse#Problem with an Administrator, please dont spam unsolicited material about your forum on Wikipedia. Heiro 00:16, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

You have been told countless times, by numerous different editors, that your contributions are spam and unwanted, yet you keep coming back under different account names and different IP addresses attempting to evade your various blocks. You know that sockpuppets aren't permitted on Wikipedia. Please desist. - David Biddulph (talk) 00:40, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

He considers it spam because it is spam. Spam is generally defined as the mass sending of unsolicited messages. Here's an idea: if you don't want your forum to be associated with spam on Wikipedia and among its editors, stop sending it out in unsolicited messages to masses of Wikipedia editors. WilliamH (talk) 01:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

• I have blacklisted the domain on the English Wikipedia per the long term abuse. WilliamH (talk) 01:36, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

And the boomerang spins on round and round...I see the D-word (defamation) in that OP too. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:20, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, these domains were blacklisted globally a few months ago. It's still a WP:BOOMERANG as these posts will be used as reasons to summarily reject any future delisting requests. MER-C 10:40, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm trying to find out why the fact that he's an admin on the Italian Wikipedia makes it into the OP's rationale ... "welcome to the English Wikipedia". (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:43, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

"Logic and reason, m'boy...logic and reason." I forget where I first saw that used in this ironic context...but it fits so well...in unfortunatly far too many places. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 11:31, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Here my rectification according Italian and international Law, by forcing I meant asking them regardless of anything, it was just a clear fault of me.--Vituzzu (talk) 12:33, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

FYI plus a lot of emails sent via Wikipedia and some legal threats to me and childish trolling... is getting quite boring...--Vituzzu (talk) 12:33, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't expect that they would follow my advice and come here. If there's anyone around who can set up edit filters, can you create one to stop totallympics being added? AFAIK it's the only way to deal with spam once people stop posting it as actual links. (I'll post a request here too in a moment.) SmartSE (talk) 13:01, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually I can create a filter but this will probably bring our spammers to change target, to me we need a radical solution. --Vituzzu (talk) 14:06, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

You can do whatever you want as I'm not even the owner of the site, but you have already threaten to lock someone's email and internet connection and I'm still waiting for that. It was also interesting to see how these messages just disappeared few hours later. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.33.125.137 (talk) 15:53, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Writing from a different provider? ROTFL. Tempo al tempo trolluzzo mio :D --Vituzzu (talk) 18:48, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

So should I be scared that my mail, provider and the forum will be closed as you promised ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.156.178.11 (talk) 20:07, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with "C"...oh, it's a WP:COMPETENCE issue. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:40, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit-warring as "method" for pushing article changes

The Chetniks article has recently seen two separate attempts to introduce changes to the article through coordinated edit-warring, in spite of active opposition on the talkpage. I cannot emphasize enough that the lede version being altered, and the section that was removed, are sourced thoroughly with numerous sources and stood in the article for literally several years. The changes also include POV blanking of sourced facts personally disagreeable to two users, and the misquoting of sources previously listed in the article. In other words, information was replaced with an opposed new draft, and the references that supported the (long-standing) previous version were simply moved to another piece of text they have little to do with (i.e. they were blatantly misquoted). The new draft proposal being introduced via edit-warring is actively opposed on the talkpage on the basis of bias through omission, as it ignores several sources (that were brought-up), and generally sports a pronounced POV.

Specifically: 1) an opposed draft of the lede has been introduced, with sourced text deleted, and 2) all long-standing (and fully sourced) mention of ethnic cleansing has been deleted through WP:SECTION BLANKING of the relevant article section. The two users edit-warring in concert to push these changes are User:Nuujinn (who writes the changes) and User:FkpCascais (who is acting as a sort of "enforcer").

• 1. edit war to introduce opposed lede changes
  • Nuujinn [87][88] [89] [90][91][92]
  • FkpCascais [93][94][95] (final edit - lede altered)
• 2. edit war to blank the Ethnic cleansing section
  • Nuujinn [96] (original blanking) [97]
  • FkpCascais [98] [99] [100] (final edit - section removed)

It is important to note that the users, since they are in fact gaming the 3RR system, are no doubt hoping to have the article protected - with their version on top. I will also point out that while I also did revert the users, I was restoring the status quo version, and refrained from violations of WP:3RR at all times. I had been attempting to establish WP:BRD, and have no intention whatsoever of reverting them at all in the future.

This is, of course, a classic method of pushing new opposed edits that exploits Wikipedia's own guidelines. Note the numerous benefits: two users keep restoring their new changes; if they are reverted then the user that reverted them can expect to be sanctioned also ("it takes two to edit-war") and will thus avoid reporting them, but if reported, their version is likely to get protected for good ("there is no wrong version") in spite of any sanctions (if any). If they are not reverted, then they're not really edit-warring to push their edits in the first place. Either way, the new changes find their way into the article, are there to stay, and they've successfully WP:GAMED THE SYSTEM. In my experience, it works almost every time. I am requesting that the edit be reverted, and the users be warned with regard to WP:BRD, in order to facilitate talkpage discussion. In the alternative, there is no point to any continuation of discussion when the users have twice now shown that they can basically do whatever they like. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 07:12, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it is really time for admin intervention against DIREKTOR who made an incredible number of exactly 80 reverts (check by yourselfs) on Chetniks article since the day he inserted the highly controversial disputed text with manipulated and descontextualised sources. I restored the text that User:Nuujinn a neutral editor with much experiance has created in order to archive balance but DIREKTOR reverted. Then I removed the exagerated unsourced claim and left with what is sourced, but DIREKTOR reverts that as well. We are in front of a highly biased editor who is doing his best to manipulate the article in a way one side POV is represented and boicoting all attempts many other users are doing to archive balance in this article. DIREKTOR already had his version changed during the mediation at Draža Mihailović article, and now is doing all the efforts to keep his highly biased version on this other related article. Btw, DIREKTOR has using highly uncivil behaviour at discussions including numerous ethnically motivated accusations to a number of editors. FkpCascais (talk) 07:50, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

The lede is perfectly accurate and the statement you dispute is more thoroughly sourced than most on Wikipedia. The fact that it insults the "national honour" of a large number of right-wing-leaning Serbian users is another matter entirely. It stood for 3 years, and the fact that this was in spite of strong nationalism-inspired opposition, on an obscure Serbian history article, is if anything a testament to its accuracy and sourcing. Even if the utterly nonsensical "80 reverts" claim was anything more than your "estimate", taken as it is over a period three years it has absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand. User:Nuujinn is a "neutral" editor only as far as you yourself are concerned. He is in fact part of your own pro-Chetnik group, and that is actually quite an easily demonstrable fact. His proposal is opposed on good grounds, but he is content to have the edit-warrior notified and has beem avoiding discussion for days npw.

It looks like this gang-edit-war might not receive the appropriate attention from the community. That would, without question, constitute a vindication of edit-warring as the appropriate tool for proposing new edits on the article at question. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 10:23, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Direktor, I often have some degree of sympathy for your position. The above statement just destroyed it. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:36, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

(Sigh). I'm pretty well tied up right now finishing up house consolidation/improvement in RL right now, but any criticism of my actions or how they might have been better done is certainly welcome, either here or on my talk page. I'll have some time later today to catch up on what's happened in the last few days since I've been off line here. --Nuujinn (talk) 11:43, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

@Bwilkins. Well yes, I'm sorry Bwilkins, but are you aware how many issues like this which, in my most sincerest opinion, warrant at least some kind of mild intervention are simply ignored? If a group of editors can change the long-standing lede of an article without consensus, against opposition, and contrary to four or five cited sources, simply by edit-warring - then inaction on the part of the community is indeed vindication of their methods (in that article at least). What am I supposed to do? Real discussion isn't taking place, and cannot take place, because the users already have gotten their way and can simply dismiss objections from a position of strength. If I oppose their lede change, what other course of action is there other than to edit-war? And please do not say DR since we've long since established the value of that course in these obscure Balkans issues, or lack thereof.

The only thing that is required here, the only necessary measure, is a condemnation of edit-warring as a means of pushing new, opposed edits (WP:BRD). Its not even a matter of looking into the validity of said changes. I really am only trying to preserve discussion as a course of action on these articles. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 03:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree that edit-warring should be sanctioned, as 80 counted reverts of DIREKTOR in one article is really a serious issue, specially having in mind that the same pattern of behavior is found in several other related articles. Discussion is taking place, and detailed discussions took place on the mediation. Some conclusions were archived, and related articles are being worked out.

The problem is that DIREKTOR is seing his highly biased version that he defended by all means in all these articles being replaced by correct interpretations of sources, thus all the panic now. A way to demonstrate this highly biased aproach by him can be confirmed by his insistent way of describing the issue purpously as "obscure". After all we are dealing with a major resistance movement in the entire region, that, yes, did had its difficulties troughout the war. But DIREKTOR seems unable to separate his personal feelings here... and that is a BIG problem, joined by his highly manipulative and rude manner of discussing these sensitive issues. A clear disruption in my view, but unfortunatelly and amazingly, DIREKTOR has been forgiven allways because of some strange reasons... FkpCascais (talk) 06:38, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposals by User:Shakinglord

A couple of weeks back, immediately prior to being blocked, this user placed merger proposal tags on the month articles relating to 1962, eg January 1962. There appears to be no interest in debating this nor any consensus to merge. Please would someone remove the tags? I could be said to have a conflict of interest as some of these articles were created by me. Deb (talk) 17:50, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Despite Shakinglord having suggested it, a merger doesn't appear to be a bad idea. More precisely, it seems like 1962 ought to simply transclude January 1962, February 1962, etc., instead of having that information duplicated in two pages. (In other words, leave the month articles alone but overhaul 1962). Bottom line, I'd suggest leaving the merger tags up... if no one else expresses an interest in a merger, they can be removed in due course. 28bytes (talk) 22:46, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

You mean, make the year article unmanageably long? I don't see how that's a good idea. When is "in due course"? Isn't it now? Deb (talk) 09:41, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Help:Merging#Closing instructions states "If there is clear agreement with the proposal by consensus, or if there is silence [cite_note-1: The debate should be open for at least two weeks.], proceed with the merger." Using the magic of logic, if no proposal was ever made within the same 2 weeks, then remove the merge templates and consider it an abandoned proposal. If 28bytes would like to initiate a fresh merge proposal, s/he can always re-add the templates and start a discussion on the talk page (unlike Shakinglord who failed to follow through on the proposal discussion). Rgrds. --64.85.220.244 (talk) 12:38, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

90.196.241.238

Does 90.196.241.238 (talk · contribs) look familiar to anyone? They seem to me to be a returning nationalist POV warrior who's familiar with Vintagekits; they've been altering nationalities on British-related bios and have made the extraordinary claim that they're fighting a kind of war, and so are justified in edit-warring. They seem to believe that sufficient bluster will be a smokescreen for their activities. See my talkpage for a sample: [101], [102] and [103]. I've blocked them for a week for edit-warring with intent on Amir Khan. Full disclosure: I did revert once there, but self-reverted. Acroterion (talk) 19:08, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/PowerSane/Archive. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:27, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I was pretty sure they were no stranger to SPI. Acroterion (talk) 04:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

User:JaMikePA

JaMikePA (talk · contribs)

I don't think I'm putting this at the right place, AN confuses me. Anyway, JaMikePA, refuses to build consensus and would rather revert repeatedly. Recently, the Miami Marlins and and Toronto Blue Jays had a makeover of their logos and uniforms. As such the article for the two was updated. I updated the the colors using a graphic design industry trusted blog. Determined he was right he's revert me at least 20 times of the past 6 days saying blogs cannot be reliable sources and citing this failed proposal. As the blog is reliable, I and other have reverted him every time and asked him a couple times to stop and if disputes the reliability to start a discussion on the talk page. He hasn't, instead he's continued to revert and redo the colors. I would like someone to either tell him to stop or block him for disruptive edit warring. Thanks. CRRaysHead90 | ^{We Believe!} 20:05, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, you can try WP:AN3 - and be prepared with diffs of the revert war/3RR/edit war. Also be sure it is recent, and I'd suggest ensuring you did not engage in edit warring as well (ya know, the whole WP:BOOMERANG effect) - I haven't dug too deeply, but I haven't found a revert war in a very quick perusal. Regardless, AN3 may be the way to go if you have tried and cannot resolve this on the article's talk page(s). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 01:53, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Concerning the Toronto Blue Jays article, why do the colours even need to be cited with that blog? It seems entirely superfluous; as far as I see, that data is already appropriately sourced. WilliamH (talk) 03:23, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

CRRays, perhaps you should follow WP's rules by not using blogs as sources. I have every right to revert something b/c you fail to follow the rules. Stop using blogs! JaMikePA (talk) 19:49, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the rules for WP:REVERT might not say exactly what you suggest. Yes, blogs are not WP:RS, but reversion is for vandalism (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 19:54, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I think he's using the term "revert" Colloquially, and not in the terms that you and I have come to know as regular editors on wikipedia.--JOJ ^Hutton 20:26, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Both editors are rather gaming the system and working to avoid violating 3RR. I've fully protected both pages and I remind them that page protection is not an endorsement of the current version, and that the onus on them to include their changes is establishing mutual agreement among editors. Since both pages are protected, blocking at this stage would only be punitive - the sooner consensus is established the better, and blocks would only delay this. WilliamH (talk) 23:04, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• I'm gonna ask now that those pages be unprotected. The full protection is disruptive to Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball and there are many league and team changes that need to be made to not just these, but all MLB pages, due to the winter league meetings and free agency.--JOJ ^Hutton 23:29, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'm not willing to withdraw full protection for an edit war incase it hinders constructive edits. Preemptiveness is no part of page protection, that's also why we do not protect pages for fear of unconstructive edits. Feel free to request uncontroversial changes via the established means. WilliamH (talk) 01:12, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Is full protection necessary for an edit war involving just two users? {{uw-ew}} both of them, then start handing out blocks if they prefer to continue a battle rather than hash it out on the talk pages. Resolute 01:44, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

No, this is overkill. See no reason to fully protect these pages. And there is no time table as well, since the protection is indefinite.--JOJ ^Hutton 02:32, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I've lifted the protection per the two points raised here, remember that it can be lifted at any time, irrespective of how long it is set for. I would implore the two parties to not revert until they have discussed their proposed changes fully, because that'll probably cost them their editing rights the next time they do. My first inclination has been and always will be to see stuff upheld by consensus, not blocks. WilliamH (talk) 03:25, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Personal attack by Udibi

The user Udibi made a personal attack against me, and indirectly against all the users in discussion with him, by calling me "profoundly insane, misogynistic, revisionist, sick-fantasy" on Talk:Rape during the occupation of Germany. He also did the same on his talk page. Anonyma Madel 22:27, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

No, he said "You have the audacity to make such profoundly insane, misogynistic, revisionist, sick-fantasy statements". It's a bit uncivil, but certainly not a WP:NPA. Have you discussed this at WP:WQA? (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 22:33, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

...and will you be notifying him of this thread, as required? (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 22:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

No, I did not discuss there. Yes, I did notify him. He was trying to imply that I am a Communist revisonist. --Anonyma Madel 22:37, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't find Udibi's comments much worse than yours. If you make comments as you did on his talk page along the lines of "your Feminist approach to the subject is inappropriate and can only serve to bring many Neo Nazi editors to Wikipedia" I think you should expect a robust response. My advice is for you to disengage from one another. 28bytes (talk) 22:50, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

My intent was not to imply that he knew he was doing anything to cause that. --Anonyma Madel 23:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

If you go back and read my posts, I said that the article was problematic because it offers voice after voice of direct quotes justifying/diminishing the rapes (all from Men, save one from a Russian woman that contextualizes the rapes), yet does not offer one syllable of a single word from a single woman who had been subjected to rape. I then suggested one way in which the article could be improved by giving a more dry account of the issue initially, followed by the ample contextualization already provided in the article, and at some point including some women's/victim's voices. In its current form the article is all contextualization. I'm sorry, but that is simply not a valid, balanced, or academically acceptable way to handle rape. The response by "Anonymiss Madchen" was to accuse me of abetting Neo-Nazis and, later, to directly state directly that the women were, likely, willing participants in their rape. I don't see how my possibly implying that he might be a Communist Revisionist can hold a candle to that in terms of civility or anything else. I made valid, scholarly criticisms, to which I got a response that IS frankly off-the-handle and then this user has the gall to report me for civility. If the two of us were to debate this on any university campus, he would be eaten alive for implying that my insistence that rape victims should have a voice abets Neo-Nazis and for his direct statement that rape victims were willing participants in their rape. "Anonymiss Madchen" is fortunate that I am not as versed in the ways of Wikipedia as he - If I didn't have other real-world concerns I would have reported him. If the Wikipedia community thinks that my position that women should be allowed a voice is somehow indefensible and/or that justifying rape is a valid and civil stance, then there really is no hope for this site ever to be taken seriously by academia. If the Wikipedia community feels that saying the statement that rape victims "wanted it" is "profoundly insane, misogynistic, revisionist, sick-fantasy" is somehow out of line, then the Wikipedia community has completely lost its moral compass. If you'll note, I even stated that I felt "Anonymiss Madchen" was trying to behave as troll and egg me on. This also means directly that I did not believe and was not calling the user himself any of those negative things (insane, misogynistic....). It means that his completely unjustifiable position that women wanted to be raped is so over-the-top that I did not believe he himself could be sincere in making such a statement. Many issues in this world are up for debate, however some simply are not. Rape is never ok, never justifiable and defending/justifying rape and blaming the rape victim is most certainly never something that can reasonably be viewed as civil or rational. It is absurd that I am now the one having to defend my position, civility, and my discussion posts against THAT. Udibi (talk) 00:46, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I did not say anywhere that women were willing particpants in their rape, which would be completely absurd. What I said was, which I am explaining for the third time, is that we should consider the fact that there were likely German women who had consentual sex with Russians and who would have reported being raped to the Nazis or their families because it was completely forbidden for them to interact with people who were considered subhuman. I also told you, which is also stated by reliable sources cited in the article, that the Feminist approach is a-historical and incorrect for this issue.

There were millions of women who were raped by the Russians, and that is worth studying, remembering, and is certainly bad, however, the rape of German and Nazi women should absolutly not be seperated from the fact that they started a war against the Russians with the intent of exterminating them. This is also supported by sources in the article and by other editors.

I also consider your incorrect pronoun use to be a personal attack, just as your claim that I am trolling you. I absolutly do not think that women should be raped, as you claim above. "that his completely unjustifiable position that women wanted to be raped" That is blatan libel (personal attack) and I also wish to report it.

--Anonyma Madel 01:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

"That is blatan[t] libel and I also wish to report it." - You might want to take a read of WP:NLT. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:21, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Psst... Anonyma Madel... I believe The Bushranger is subtly (or not so subtly) suggesting you redact and refactor the above comment, as making legal threats is a blockable offense until redacted. You can do so by using the strikeout tags (<strike>some text</strike>) around the text (since this is AN/I and you shouldn't remove comments after they have been responded to), then rewording it without the legal wording (such as libel). If not intended as such, it's still a good idea, as generally using such words will create such an interpretation. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 01:41, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Escuse me, but you wrote "I think we also need to consider whether this is not just a case of hundreds of thousands of German women getting lucky with their liberators". Getting Lucky??? Liberators??? Your accusation of libel is, again, over-the-top and litigious. On my talk page you threaten me that if I do not offer you an apology, you will report me. Report me? Sorry, but this unnecessary drama is simply too much. My interpretation is hardly libel and it would be more productive if you were to lay off trying to report anybody and everybody who takes a moment to call you on your striking statements. I find it fascinating that you are obviously well-versed in Wikipedia, yet your account is relatively new. A quick look at the history of your talk page shows that the entire history of your account is full of arguments and similar discussions to ours over these same issues. You have a history of reporting and complaining about people who disagree with you - it's there in black and white.

Giving women a voice - ANY voice - is hardly in itself feminist! You are so eager to contextualize-away mass rape in Germany, but somehow you also have had arguments about the same issue with Red Army rapes in Poland. Interesting...Then you come up with a claim to be an ethnically German woman living in America - as if that (true or not) were to give you some license to spread positions that are academically indefensible and report those who would dare say anything against your statements.Udibi (talk) 01:39, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, both participants of the dispute are too emotional to carefully read and understand each other's posts. I suggest to move this content dispute back to the article's talk page, although I don't think resorting to such terms as "insane", "libel" or "troll" is justified here. Please, avoid using the emotionally loaded words, because that is just a demonstration of the lack of arguments. @ Udibi's "I then suggested one way in which the article could be improved by giving a more dry account of the issue initially, followed by the ample contextualization already provided in the article...", we can discuss it on the talk page. However, before we started, could you please read the sources cited in the article, especially such reliable secondary sources as Grossman's, Heinemann's and Bos' articles?--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:38, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate your move to bring more civility to the discussion. However, the words "just a case of hundreds of thousands of German women getting lucky with their liberators" speak for themselves and can and must be condemned. If I made it too personal, it is merely because of my shock, not because of my intent. If I crossed that line, I am sorry. I do not know Anonymiss Madchen and cannot have anything against him/her personally, many of his/her statements, however, do warrant strong commentary.Udibi (talk) 01:51, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I've just blocked Anonymiss Madchen (talk · contribs) for one week for trolling, POV pushing and personal attacks - I've included example diffs on their talk page, and this report seems to be another example of their trolling. I've also reviewed Udibi (talk · contribs)'s conduct in that discussion and it seems OK - while several other editors don't agree with the comments Udibi is making, they're being made reasonably civilly. I would suggest to Udibi though that you should either ignore or report trolling rather than respond to it in the future as it leads to heated and fairly unproductive discussions. Nick-D (talk) 02:16, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Good block. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

This editor has a long history of disruption but has evaded censure by concentrating on articles which attract very little attention. Much of this has been directed against User:Paul Siebert who has not contributed to this discussion. I hope that this block will persuade her to behave better in future. TFD (talk) 03:13, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I had the same hope last time. I thought they had given up on this project as a soapbox. Drmies (talk) 03:49, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Ha, this was the time before last time. Drmies (talk) 03:52, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

As I noted at User talk:Anonymiss Madchen, I came close to applying an indefinite block here and it's likely that any further misbehaviour will lead to such a block. I've watchlisted their talk page. Nick-D (talk) 07:06, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

@Nick-D - I am still learning Wikipedia etiquette and procedures. I have a feeing, for example, that there is a way I am supposed to tag you with this question. God forbid I should be in such a situation again, but just in case, how do I report trolling? Thank you for your suggestions and insight.Udibi (talk) 03:28, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Mass of notablity violations in progress

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

No further administrative attention seems necessary at this point. The editor in question is taking a wikibreak. There is an RFC open about the notability issue. Any cleanup of the created articles is better discussed on other pages. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:35, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

---

Two days ago, (202084) 2004 SE56, an unnamed speck among untold thousands way out in space, was a redirect to a chart of thousands and thousands of such rocks. Today, along with thousands more, it has been made into an article. This mocks notablity guidelines and if allowed to stand will may be forever pointed to as proof that Wikipedia has no effective notablity standards. Every minute that goes by, the creator of this astroidette article creates more and more, yet no one has yet acted to stop him. He has no consensus to do this even from the astrology community, let alone the community at large. Please act now. Chrisrus (talk) 23:54, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

As an uninvolved administrator I have notified the user of this question and asked them to pause while the matter is discussed [104]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:18, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

In summary, the issue seems to be whether articles such as (101223)_1998_SW62 satisfy the notability criterion. I have asked the Astronomy WikiProject to comment, as it seems they have been discussing this very issue very recently. There is even a proposed notability standard at Wikipedia:Notability (astronomical objects). As an administrator, the first question in my mind is whether these articles would meet that proposed standard - opinions from editors familiar with that area would help.

There was a previous ANI thread at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive228#Merovingian_mass_creation which did not seem to come to a clear outcome. In particular, there is a policy issue with this task and WP:MASSCREATION. I estimate that over 500 of these articles have been created in November, which certainly passes the limit beyond which prior approval is needed. But the main question for deciding that is going to be whether the topics are notable, so notability is the most productive issue for us to address. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:25, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Pretty sure that would fail the proposed notability standard so hard it would leave a crater. (Pun not necessarily intended.) But yes, the Astronomy WikiProject is aware of this and that's why our notability guideline is in the works. Also, please don't confuse astronomy with astrology. Thanks. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:22, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

As a participant at WikiProject Astronomy, it is my hope that the notability criteria up for review will reach some sort of accord on the matter. I agree that most of the minor planet articles do not satisfy WP:GNG and have little prospect of doing so any time soon. But I'm not sure that the creation of such articles is intended to mock said guidelines. The objects just seem to be a particular interest of a couple of editors. Regards, RJH (talk) 01:24, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

This editor has been creating thousands of these stubs for several years, and has been met with questions and opposition many times. WP:OUTCOMES only says that these objects can be included in list articles. The proposed notability guideline would clarify that. The consensus at WP:ASTRONOMY is that objects such as these are not notable enough for stand-alone articles, but also should not be deleted. Rather, their names should be redirected to the appropriate list. Right now the notability guideline is at RfC to be promoted to guideline. In terms of support, it has more than 2 to 1 support, with much of the objection over semantic quibbles. Some of the objectors do think that there should be articles for every object in the Universe, but that is not the consensus of the astronomy editors at WP:ASTRONOMY. I do not think this editor is creating these stubs as a way to make a point or to mock anybody. I think it is just a hobby for them. However, the editor has contradicted themselves a few times; in a conversation with me, he admitted that these objects were not notable, but justified their creation due to the lack of consensus to that point about notability. He is wrong to say that there is a consensus to keep them. With the creation of the notability guideline, a hard-work effort by the WP:ASTRONOMY community, it is better argued now that the consensus is that unless significant coverage (beyond a parameter listing in the JPL database) can be established, minor planets don't warrant a stand-alone article. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 02:32, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

What does the OP want administrators to do at this point? What are we supposed to delete, protect, or block? --Jayron32 02:45, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, as an administrator I have already asked the person in question to pause. The next step is to let people comment here so that I can see if there is a consensus about the articles. Administrator tasks include more than just blocking, protecting, and deleting, we can also head things off before they get that far. So far there the opinion seems to be that the editor who has been creating the articles needs to stop and get consensus. But there is time to let more people comment before we worry about what the final administrative action will be. It will probably be some sort of admonition, but the content depends on what the outcome of the discussion is. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:02, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you on one point: Any editor has the power to "head things off before they get that far." Admins do not have special powers to force editors to stop doing things beyond the use of their tools, and their admonitions should not carry extra weight. If established editors have already told him to stop, then the words of an administrator in this regard do not carry extra weight. Admins are not empowered to be supereditors, and the things we administrators say do not mean anything more to any conflict than the things that any editor of sufficient experience and good standing do. That's why other dispute resolution processes exist, and that's why this board has giant bold letters at the top telling users to use those processes. --Jayron32 03:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

A priori, we don't know whether other people have told him to stop, or whether the complaint is entirely frivolous. That's what I am looking to determine. It appears, so far, that the outcome might be an admonition to the editor to stop creating these articles (per WP:MASSCREATION) until a consensus in favor of them is obtained, at the risk of being blocked. That sort of warning is hard for a non-admin to give because they cannot actually perform the block. But the only way to tell whether that admonition is warranted is to ask others to comment. That sort of admonition does not address any underlying dispute about WP:N, and it does not prejudge the outcome, it just makes it possible for the matter to be addressed elsewhere. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:20, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Admins should not also unilaterally block for something like this; if an admin had a problem with behavior of this nature it should be discussed and decided by the community before blocking or otherwise using their tools. --Jayron32 03:45, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean by "unilateral". If someone is violating a community norm, like WP:MASSCREATION, and they are warned, then blocks are appropriate. But the first step is to find out whether the edits already have consensus. Again, the goal is not to decide the eventual outcome – it's just to get everyone to stop making disputed edits before a consensus is reached. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:35, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems like I have to constantly justify myself about these articles to keep from getting run out of this place feeling like some kind of a bad person. I don't think all minor planets are notable. I do think they require articles nonetheless. I would be saying the exact same thing of railway stations, uninhabited islands, semi-professional soccer players, etc. I have always been a proponent of inclusion of articles, because I value verifiability, neutrality, and fact over notability standards. I believe that many notability standards are arbitrary to the point of harming this project. --Merovingian (T, C, L) 04:09, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

That sounds a lot like you're saying that you know the article creations are not in accoradance with policy (which requires notability), but that you personally disagree with policy and therefore will keep making them. If this is the case I think you are clearly engaged in WP:POINT disruption. If you have a problem with having to justify your actions then stop making those actions. I'll make it easy for you: Stop creating articles about topics you know are non-notable, or I will have to apply sanctions. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information it is also not a Directory. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:13, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Are (202084) 2004 SE56 and the rest of these things notable enough to have an article? Absolutely not. They are rocks in the middle of nowhere. That’s all.

Please have a look at this picture:

. They are in the process with no consensus of creating an article for each of these bits of dust. And that won’t be all. Even though it is theoretically possible that these will be the end of them, reason dictates that for each of these there must be many more smaller ones that remain to be discovered, and, if these editors, this editor, has his way, all of them will have articles. They will be a large percentage of all the articles of all the articles on Wikipedia.

What then will be said of Wikipedia’s Notability standards? If this is allowed, anyone can say “Oh, my uncle George doesn’t meet notability guidelines? (202084) 2004 SE56 has an article. Uncle George is much more notable than (202084) 2004 SE56. Or whatever. Anything is more notable than 202084) 2004 SE56. What could be less notable than (202084) 2004 SE56? My left sock is more notable than 202084) 2004 SE56. The existence of the article (202084) 2004 SE56 mocks notability guidelines. I don’t think it’s reasonable to put the onus on me to prove that this meaningless speck of nothing in the middle of nowhere that has nothing to do with anything is not notable. Instead, I would like to ask that someone prove it is. What’s notable about it? What could possibly be less notable? If I tried to start an article about my little elementary school, it would not be allowed on notability grounds. Yet my elementary school was very important in the lives of thousands of people. (202084) 2004 SE56 has not and will never be significant in the life of anyone, will it now. Well maybe, but it’s highly unlikely. And if it does happen, we can always start an article then. Thousands of people would actually be interested in reading an article about my elementary school. No one will ever want to read almost any of these articles, it’s reasonable to assume. Please put forward an imaginable scenario in which someone will benefit from the existence of the article (202084) 2004 SE56. Finally, what is the point in making these articles? What ever for? No one cares, no one will read them. I can only speculate as to why they are being created. I just edited out my speculation. It doesn’t matter. The existence of these articles are so blatantly violated notability standards that investigating why they are being created is not necessary. I’m trying to anticipate arguments against my position, but I honestly can’t. That they are in orbit about the sun? So are many kajillion specks of dust. What other argument could there be? Their existence does no harm? We are being hit up for cash on the grounds that we need more servers, in part. We don’t need to waste it on a bunch of dust. More importantly, how could we ever reject an article on notability grounds with these articles standing as proof that we have no effective notability standards? The existence of these articles threatens the existence of notability standards on Wikipedia, that’s the harm. If these dust mote articles are allowed to stand, we will owe an apology to everyone who’s ever had an article deleted on notability grounds, because I can’t imagine any of them could have been less notable than (202084) 2004 SE56. Name me something which could possibly be less notable than (202084) 2004 SE56. Name one thing that someone has in good faith tried to add to Wikipedia that was rejected on notability grounds alone that was not more notable than (202084) 2004 SE56. Actually don’t bother. Don’t even argue; give it up, speedily agree and let’s move on. It’s absurd to argue that they meet notability standards. Instead, let’s talk about what we should do next. Actually, I'll leave that to you. Over and out. Chrisrus (talk) 04:28, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree, if we allow this the next is someone entering in the phone directory. Likelihood is that there would be a greater percentage of actual notable articles there.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:34, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Chrisrus - please, take a glass of tea and a deep breath. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

It's too bad he quit because he was a productive, dedicated editor. It's very sad that he was not stopped long ago when he wouldn't have wasted so much effort. Unfinished business includes a forensic investigation into possible failure of the notablity check system for new articles: if I didn't happen to have one of the redirect talk pages on my watchlist I never would have noticed, either; and it's a bit late and sad once someone has created a thousand new articles to notice that they are a bunch of rocks in the middle of nowhere. Is there some way this could be prevented in the future?

Having said that, however, I should apologize for my last edit, written to end all discussion of whether these things pass notablity guidelines. I had not noticed or anticipated that he would have a split second earlier actually admited in so many words that the referents of all those articles were not notable, rendering my work unnecessary. If I had seen and read that post he snuck in before mine, I needn't have bothered. Chrisrus (talk) 06:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

You needn't have written a truly nasty screed? No, you really needn't. Nice job running off a good faith editor. LadyofShalott 07:14, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Please just study, just glance at Special:Contributions/Merovingian. Turn it on to "500", the max, and scroll back ten, fifteen, until you get some idea of what he refused time and again to stop doing. This is what I have finally brought to an end, you're welcome. While you're paging back through thousands of pages of shredding of Wikipedia's integrity, realize that it turns out he knew what he was doing and thumbing his nose at us all. He refused time and time again to listen to reason or to do anything but stonewall. This was no good faith editor. I've done my part to save Wikipedia from him, and am proud of it, and am finished here. If you want to help, join the discussion below as to how to clean up his massive mess. Good luck with that. Chrisrus (talk) 07:37, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with LadyofShalott on this, Chrisrus. It seems like you've lost a little perspective on this issue. No offense intended, but you might want to take a little break yourself. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:32, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• It seems to me that all of these minor planet "articles" should be deleted. They are (tiny) stubs and will never become anything more than that. On the other hand we can't merge them into a list since such a list exists (it is the one Merovingian is using to write the "articles" from) - and merging them into a list would likely reproduce the entirety of that book and hence constitute a copyright violation. I do think it is a shame to have to undue someone's hard work like this - but I honestly think that they have noone but themselves to blame - having knowingly flouted our policies on article creation. They are wasting their own and the community's time, apparently mostly in order to make an ideological point. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:29, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Deleted? No, absolutely not. Redirected to the list? Yes, absolutely. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

But how can we make a list without it being a copyright infringement of the actual published list, that Merovingian has presumably been working from?·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:12, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

A simple list of "minor planets by designation, discovery date, and diameter" shoudn't be a problem, I'd think - and, in fact, one already exists. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:59, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Note that the information about minor planets is freely available from JPL and the IAU's minor planet center. I'm not clear that there is any sort of copyright dispute. A concern for me is not that the data is being replicated, but that it is not being maintained on the Wikipedia side. Any updates at the JPL site may not be reflected on the Wikipedia article, so it is likely that we have a bunch of obsolete data. Regards, RJH (talk) 06:21, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen it and am not a lawyer, but the "actual published list" probably doesn't have enough creative content to be protected by copyright, any more than the main part of a phone directory or a table of pipe dimensions (yes, that came up in a UK copyright case once). WP:Public_domain#Non-creative_works discusses. NebY (talk) 12:00, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Agree with redirecting. I see little value in a standalone article unless the object has been sufficiently studied to allow writing more encyclopedic things about it than can comfortably fit in a five column table. Kilopi (talk) 08:26, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

@Chrisrus - Was that previous histrionic diatribe really necessary? Sure, Merovingian may have flouted policy in a rather pointy way, but your rant basically rode the line of incivility. Your failure to assume good faith is reprehensible. --Blackmane (talk) 09:35, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Sneeky! Why have you gone back and inserted this at this point? If you'd put it at the bottom, it would have been very clear that, below, he was angry not at me but at being accused of POINT disruption, flouting policies, and mostly the fact that he saw that thousands of hours of his work were about to be reverted and he had no one but himself to blame. Good faith was assumed on my part publically until after he'd quit, and by all until he admitted he knew that he was in gross violation of our standards and procedures but didn't think other people's opinions mattered so long as there was some way to stretch out debate forever. Good faith and was only questioned quite rightly by Maunus, below, who pointedly asked how we could assume good faith given these facts. Even if I'd said nothing, the two posts below which crushed him would have caused him to leave. If someone had put it as I did long ago he wouldn't have wasted a chunk of his life. Read on: Chrisrus (talk) 13:15, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I am "clearly engaged in WP:POINT disruption"? I have "knowingly flouted [...] policies"? This is ridiculous. What happened to assumption of good faith? I have been patiently editing and trying to improve Wikipedia's coverage on minor planets for years. This did not just start. In the last few months the flak I have received for these edits has become unfair and unbearable. Why is there such a demand to limit what Wikipedia should be, instead of grow it? This is a public flogging and I will not accept it. I quit. --Merovingian (T, C, L) 04:51, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

You are saying that you agree that these rocks are not notable yet you have created hundreds of articles about them because you disagree with the notability policy. If this is not a flouting of policy, and a classica case of WP:POINT, then please explain what it is? How can I assume good faith when you yourself state that you made a decision to violate policy? ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:02, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

"I don't think all minor planets are notable. I do think they require articles nonetheless." Since notability is a requirement for something to have a Wikipedia article, then you have defeated your own argument, and I have to believe you're competent enough to realise that. So what else are we supposed to assume? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Topic Shift

I do not know User:Chrisrus's level of understanding of English, but if I were User talk:Merovingian, I'd have trouble understanding and comprehending an edit summary like this: "Plea no undo until repl on talk re why redirect just now returned to article again despite previous astronomical editor's consensus to chart". I get some of what he's trying to say, but not much.--v/r - TP 05:32, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

It was enough for him to understand given his awareness of context.

This is what it meant:

"This is another plea from Chrisrus. Do not undo this edit (it was a revert to a redirect toward a list of minor planets) until you reply on the discussion page of the article (202084) 2004 SE56, (which was where the edit summary was made). Explain why te redirect has just now been returned (by him) back to a full article despite the existence there on Talk:(202084) 2004 SE56 a long-standing conversation in which a person calling himself "an astronomical editor" declared that there had been a consensus to convert all of such articles to reverts to the chart."

This all in the space alloted by the editsummary box.Chrisrus (talk) 06:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

The summary box is limited for a reason - it is not meant to be an exhaustive explanation of the reasoning behind edits, that's what a talkpage is for. GiantSnowman 16:40, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know. He was ignoring it. You'll see I said the same thing on the talk page. He was just reverting redirect to article without addressing the points. Chrisrus (talk) 16:49, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Close thread?

If Merovingian has decided to take a wikibreak in response to this thread then it seems like no admin action will be needed, and we can close the thread. There is an RFC at Wikipedia:Notability (astronomical objects) where the notability questions can be discussed, and editors at the Astronomy WikiProject can take care of redirecting these articles if there is consensus to do so.

Separately, I feel somewhat sad that this thread became so heated. I don't have any doubt that Merovingian was editing in good faith, although the article creations appear, at least based on the comments here, to be at odds with community ideals. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:35, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Forgive me if I am overstepping my bounds, but does the fact that Merovingian is an admin not concern anyone else? Purposely flaunting the rules seems rather unbecoming. Rgrds. --64.85.220.244 (talk) 14:41, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Close it if you want, but open another to finish talking about how to clean up the mess. Chrisrus (talk) 15:08, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

If he's an Admin his time would have been better spent helping out on notice boards. I've had an article unprotect request waiting for 20 hours, presumably due to a lack of admin. resource. FWIW, I didn't read your earlier remarks other than a straightforward statement of concern and fully justified criticism. Leaky Caldron 16:43, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

No, the fact he was an admin isn't a major concern. Admins, when creating content, are the same as everybody else, and there was zero abuse of the tools regardless of one's opinion on the articles he created, so his adminship or not is utterly irrelevant here. And there is no need whatsoever to open another discussion to "talk about how to clean up the mess" - that's already been discussed and generally agreed, those that fail ASTRO's new notability guideline will be redirected to the appropriate list. Request close please. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 17:34, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but before we close, but what will be done about all these articles: Special:Contributions/Merovingian? There was some talk that the astronomy editors would take that over, has that been agreed? What is the simplest way to undo them all? There are thousands. Chrisrus (talk) 19:05, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

As I say, this isn't the place to discuss that, but the obvious answer would be to redirect them to the list articles. If there are thousands, you may be able to find someone who can do that automatically at WP:BOTREQ. Black Kite (t) 19:20, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok, then, it'll be WP:BOTREQ then, not the astonomy group. Given the context, it might be better if someone else started the thread there. Would you like to do the honors? Just explain to them what we've decided here and make sure they understand, please. Chrisrus (talk) 20:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

It would be nice if we could get a ruling from the astronomy group before approaching the bot group, don't you think? And please, this closure was a tad premature. All we've done is stopped it getting worse. We haven't put things right yet. What about the Notablity noticeboard? Please either remove the closure marks or allow me to do so. Chrisrus (talk) 02:40, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

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

Crystal Cathedral

Resolved

 – 72Dino (talk) 15:36, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Reviewing the history of the Crystal Cathedral article for the past 24 hours (see here), there have been several brand new accounts editing this article. One generally does not see this kind of activity unless they are sockpuppets or meatpuppets, but it could be coincidental because of some recent activity involving the sale of the article's subject. I would request an admin to review this history to determine if the article should be semi-protected or if there is any connection among these new editors. Thanks, 72Dino (talk) 03:54, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I didn't look at it, but does any of it look like vandalism or non constructive editing to you. JOJ ^Hutton 04:03, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Nothing I would call vandalism, but there was a lot of changes to content that was settled upon on the talk page. The editing pattern just appeared odd and I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something with these editors. 72Dino (talk) 04:06, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I've gone through a bunch of the diffs and I don't see any vandalism or seriously tendentious editing. You are right that these seem to be new accounts and all, but if this brings new editors to the project then that's fine with me. Anyway, it is a good idea to keep your eye on it, of course. Good luck, Drmies (talk) 04:08, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I wanted to get a second set of experienced eyes on the activity. I will continue to monitor the account but you can consider this resolved. 72Dino (talk) 04:12, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Topic ban review

I've been under an indefinite topic ban on Indian history since April 8, 2011. While I never thought that this community imposed ban was appropriate and hold the same belief today, I've tried to stick to the conditions of the ban as I have understood them. If and when I inadvertently violated the terms of the ban while fighting vandalism or while editing a topic that sometimes strayed in to "ban territory", I (or others) have reported it to the relevant admin. I was told AN/I and RFC/U were possible relevant avenues to get the ban lifted. I chose AN/I because it is simpler and less time consuming.

• Subpage that made the ban formal
• ANI that led to my topic ban
• Subsection of the ANI that discussed the ban
• Other relevant diffs available from here

I am requesting the Wikipedia community to consider a review of the ban. Zuggernaut (talk) 04:18, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• I think it would be appropriate for some explanation to be provided. For example, was the original topic ban totally wrong, or was it at least partially justified? What has changed to warrant a change in the topic ban? I am involved, as I supported the March 2011 topic ban. Johnuniq (talk) 07:41, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Although related to current affairs in India rather than history, the POV apparent in the wording of the first edit to a new article, and then the subsequent reinstatement of it later does not bode well. There have been other problems recently, at other articles, eg: see Talk:Kunbi#Shudra and Talk:Kunbi#Kunbis_are_not_non-elite (in fact, all over that particular article, there were insertions/removals of stuff that were of of clear POV-pushing nature). I know that Zuggernaut can do good things but the hang-ups about the British Raj and the promotion of a modern-day "nationalist" agenda still seem to be issues.

I do find the interaction ban with User:Fowler&fowler to be a little strange and perhaps that needs to be revisited. If nothing else, it is one-sided & has proved to be next to impossible reasonably to enforce.Was not involved in the original ban discussion but have had dealings since.. - Sitush (talk) 10:24, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

The non-neutral canvassing was wrong and I've used neutral wording since then. There are no other changes, i.e:

1. I would definitely support the Ganges to Ganga move and help those who initiate it
2. I plan on initiating a move from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to Mahatama Gandhi once every year as new sources are generated
3. The lead of the India article is highly POV and unbalanced. By jumping from the Indus Valley Civilization to the East India Company, it skips one vital line capturing the period in Indian history that has shaped Indian culture, the Indian mind and the Indian character, i.e, the period when concepts of the Atma (or also their Buddhist and Jain equivalents) and the Brahman, the unity of the two and various other philosophies were developed. I will work towards building consensus on the inclusion of this one line if the ban is lifted.
4. No new material on famines and Churchill has emerged so I will not edit anything in that regard for now. As soon as a new source other than Mukherjee and Amartya Sen (whose views have repeatedly been rubbished by POV warriors), I will attempt to update relevant articles.
5. I have little interest in the lists of inventions.

I have updated my original post to include a link to ArbCom where most of the relevant diffs can be seen. Zuggernaut (talk) 03:47, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

legal threat

WP:LEGAL violation in this edit. Is he/she telling the truth? Wasbeer 04:59, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• IP blocked for 1 year per WP:NLT and the try-not-to-indef-IPs guideline. Up to others to determine the validity of the threat. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:01, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
• Given that some of the content they claim was "stolen from a legit website" is referenced, to multiple sources, I'm inclined to think it's likely not truthful (plus "legit website" is a somewhat...odd phrasing.) - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:04, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Thank you. Wasbeer 05:19, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

IP hopper:Edit warring and refusal to cite edits

Not sure if this is where to bring this. On several music pages, including U2 and Bon Jovi, a number of IPs all geolocated to the Sao Paolo, Brazil area have repeatedly inserted uncited number changes as well as other material going on for well over a year now. Recently 187.101.19.219, 187.56.44.155, and 187.56.45.152 are the latest batch. They have never once replied to a talkpage communication or left an edit summary. Would it be possible to get semi-protections for the pages and possibly a range block for this IP range? According to this, the page has been semi-ed before because of this issue. I started this here earlier Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:187.56.44.155 reported by User:Heironymous Rowe (Result: ), but no action has been taken and anyway they have now moved on to another IP. I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask for this, the other noticeboards in the menu at the top didnt seem applicable either. If there is a specific place to ask for this, point me there. Heiro 07:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

They are still at it here [105] and [106]. Heiro 09:10, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Both articles semi-d for now, guess this is fixed for now. Heiro 11:45, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Sabeeel43

Sabeeel43 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been adding multiple pictures which he claims to be own work, and what looks like a lot of BLP violations to articles. There are a lot of edits in a short time, so I have placed a shortish block (72 hours) to check what's going on and to repair the damage. Some help in sorting this out would be appreciated, as it's a lot to go through. 09:32, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

At least one of the images is an obvious copyright violation [107] and I've marked it for speedy deletion on commons. I strongly suspect the rest are too, but they're hard to track down, especially ones of Justin Bieber (there are just so many...). I'm pretty sure the information he is adding to articles, especially where he claims to be the manager of various artists including Bieber, is false. They are certainly unsourced and thus violate WP:BLP. Sparthorse (talk) 09:36, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree. He also adds his phone number in most of the edits where he claims to be the manager. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 09:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

On a second look, the quantity is not so bad, just a few articles. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:47, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I think that all of the controversial edits have been reverted. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 09:51, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not very good with Commons. Could someone who is a little more apt there go over his contributions? I susspect all of them are copyvios. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:59, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm working through them on commons but its slow going. Every one I've checked so far has been a copyright violation, I suspect they all are. Any help would be appreciated. Sparthorse (talk) 10:03, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I am not familiar with the administrative noticeboards at Commons but I think this user needs to be reported at the equivalent of Commons ANI. I think he will be uploading more of these files if left unchecked. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 10:22, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I've put up a notice on the commons admin noticeboard here. Thanks for the suggestion, Sparthorse (talk) 10:29, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for following up. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 10:39, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

(←) I upped the block here to indef. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a good idea. Thank you. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 10:39, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposed community ban of User:Shakinglord

(rescued from IncidentArchive727 at 12:43, 20 November 2011 (UTC))

Per this user's continued sockpuppet abuse and constant denial of it, I'm hereby proposing an indefinite ban. Calabe1992 03:32, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support per proposal. —Scheinwerfermann ^T·_C05:26, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support. It's better to make this official because that makes it easier for other editors to revert them and deny them attention. Hans Adler 18:55, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support Nothing really productive (e.g. article creation > vandalism-reversion) has ever came out of him. HurricaneFan25 18:57, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
• Reluctant support - but the frankly bizzare behavior of this editor leads to the conclusion he's WP:NOTHERE and that Wikipedia is better off without him. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 20:12, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support. Claims not to be a sock, but then admits. Curious statement about sharing a sock account with another user. Nothing sounds right here. Glrx (talk) 02:57, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support; they seem to be a net negative to wikipedia. bobrayner (talk) 11:30, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support: the less attention we give these individuals the better it is for everyone, including them. --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 04:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
• A little hasty methinks. Shakinglord only seems to have discovered the joy of drama relatively recently (pretty much a month ago today he started hanging around ANI), and up until then basically behaved himself. Leave it at indef and explain exactly what Shakinglord needs to do to get back into the community. As an aside, some of the above comments are pretty nasty, and people should remember that just because an editor is blocked that doesn't make him fair game for abuse. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:38, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree on the comments comment, but an editor who creates socks or allows "friends" to create accounts indistinguishible from socks - for the sole purpose of harassing himself, then claims he has no knowledge of them at AN/I and SPI, is somebody who is WP:NOTHERE. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 17:36, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support Strong Support -- This user has exhausted our patience. Mohamed Aden Ighe (talk) 15:52, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Personal attack by Sswonk

• Sswonk (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Evertype (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) [for completeness only]
• User talk:Sswonk (edit | [[Talk:user talk:Sswonk|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), User talk:Sarah777 (edit | [[Talk:user talk:Sarah777|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), User talk:Thryduulf (edit | [[Talk:user talk:Thryduulf|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

At user talk:Sarah777 SSwonk made a statement that I considered to be highly inappropriate [108], so I gave a "formal warning" explaining why I felt that way [109] (copied also to Sswonk's talk page). Perhaps this was over the top, and certainly Everclear has disagreed with my assessment. I disagree that it was, and would normally just continue to discuss it civilly so we could reach an agreement. If I had been presudaded that it was inappropriate, then I would have redacted and/or altered all or part of my statement. However, Sswonk's response to me [110] (also at mine and his talk) was full of personal attacks, "I formally reject your authority, because you use it to stifle critics, prop up your ego and spread fantastic, poisonous lies about other editors", leaving me disinclined to reconsider my original statement.

I would like independent validation that Sswonk's comments were personal attacks, that they are and were inappropriate and either a civility block of Sswonk, or a statement noting that a block was considered but rejected that explains why it was rejected (this is not saying that I cannot see any justification for not blocking, quite the opposite, but if a block is not considered appropriate I feel it would benefit all parties to understand why). Additionally, I would like independent eyes on my original "formal warning" and feedback on it's appropriateness or otherwise. Thryduulf (talk) 14:57, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I posted the above at WP:WQA, where it was suggested that WP:AN/I would be the better venue, so here I am. I'll notify people about the venue change with my next edits. Thryduulf (talk) 15:27, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

(As the request includes a ban request, I asked Thryduulf to move the post here from WQA but he has requested my feedback).

Sswonk's comments are undoubtedly incivil but do not rise to the level requiring intervention. It is my understanding Sarah7777 is under arbcom ban and showed wisdom in passing on comment. I do think Sswonk's request to quote her was ill-advised but not "seriously inappropriate," and did not warrant a harshly worded "formal warning." Simply leaving it at "Sarah is to be commended for her actions in voluntarily consulting with her mentor and then taking his advice" would have been sufficient. I generally don't consider single posts to talk page "hounding." While I commend Thryduulf for being willing to speak up in the situation, the best response to inflammatory replies is to ignore them and move on. Gerardw (talk) 15:55, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Comment. Congratulations to Sarah for dodging a potential missile and behaving perfectly. Kittybrewster ☎ 15:55, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, well done to Sarah. Perhaps we could use this apparent storm in a teacup opportunity to relax her topic ban conditions as suggested on her talkpage by her mentor User:John. Off2riorob (talk) 15:57, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I can't imagine why someone at WQA said to bring it here ... blocks will not be handed out, based on what I see ... (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 16:00, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Imagination is not required as the discussion at WQA is available for review. Gerardw (talk) 16:09, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I am Evertype not Everclear, and I think it is ridiculous that Thryduulf has escalated this to an Administrators "Incident". I think he overreacted in the first place, and that he owes Sswonk an apology twice over now. -- Evertype·✆ 16:43, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Recommend both editors 'forgive & forget'. GoodDay (talk) 16:51, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• First I just want to echo Kitty above, I've been a critic of Sarah777's for a long while so kudos to her for doing the right thing in the midst of this.
  That siad I sympathize with Thryduulf - Sswonk is and has been using Sarah777's page as a forum for a while - sometimes to do the right thing (ie talk to Sarah and try to help her see another perspective) but obviously this time not to. A warning for that outburst was appropriate (maybe not a 'formal final warning' though) and a reminder that his reply is not acceptable either wouldn't go a miss either. This instance may not warrant a block this time, but this kind of behaviour is close to that territory--Cailil ^talk 16:55, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

As yet another party to the discussion that's been the cause of this discussion, let me say that I think everyone involved in the conversation with Sarah777 (whom I don't know) was acting reasonably and in good faith. One user asked a genuine question - were there editors who found the current page title of Republic of Ireland fundamentally objectionable. There may be circumstances I'm not aware of that meant asking Sarah777 about it directly was unwise or even risked getting her into trouble, but as far as I can see nobody (whether Sswonk or Dmcq) was trying to so anything other than make sure that all views were fairly represented in the discussion about the page title. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 17:05, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with ComhairleContaeThirnanOg's assessment. -- Evertype·✆ 17:10, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

My only problem with this issue is that at user talk:Sarah777, Sswonk suggested that Sarah type "What Sswonk wrote is accurate, I am exceedingly unhappy with the title, and do not want to participate in discussions due to discomfort with the atmosphere". Sswonk should be well aware that Sarah is topic-banned from the page in question, so her non-participation is not due to any "discomfort with the atmosphere." That said, I've no problem with the first clause of his suggestion. Agree with Cailil and Kittybrewster above - fair play to Sarah. There's no need for a block here, that would just escalate things unnecessarily at WP:IECOLL. Let's close this and move on? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 23:16, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Uncooperative editor has serious problems with WP:FRINGE and WP:RS

Wheres Dan (talk · contribs) is always using sources (most WP:FRINGE) from the 1800s which contain information that modern sources don't bother to reprint. Dougweller, Heironymous Rowe, and I have repeatedly asked him to find the information in modern sources to verify that the information is still accepted by modern scholarship. To date, he hasn't (or hasn't found anything), and I know I failed to find anything as well (even though it's his job to find that stuff, not mine).

• He has previously been blocked for various personal attacks, including refering to good faith edits as vandalism (in that case, while reversing WP:BRD after I explained it to him elsewhere) and calling Dougweller an antisemite.
• Here he suggests that a 1938 occultist source is an appropriate source for to suggest that historians think that the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio is connected to the unrelated deities Kneph (more on that later) and Ahura Mazda, and unspecified "Japanese and Indian traditions."
• Even after his previous block, he shows contempt for anyone not supporting his edits, and makes up imaginary editors to support him.

The few good edits he's made (like this), do not begin to outway the amount of following after he is going to require, as he does not understand cooperative discussion in the slightest, and twists guidelines to his own ends (such as reversing WP:BRD to insist that other people discuss his edits without reversion, reinterpreting WP:RS so that outdated, unscholarly, or fringe sources have to be countered).

This is a highly uncooperative fringe-pushing editor, who one admin has considered blocking indefinately. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

 Question: Were you going to let us know who it is, or just keep us in suspense? (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 15:56, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

D'oh! Meant to put that in the beginning. Editted in. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:02, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE has steps for liberal blocking of longstanding pushing of fringe sources. Trying to link a mound in Ohio with Ahura Mazda is definitely way fringe. If the editor has been sufficiently warned and can be shown to have continued afterwards (diffs, please, if you have them) then escalating blocks are definitely called for, in my opinion. Just need an uninvolved admin to do it. (And what was the more on Kneph?) DreamGuy (talk) 16:23, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion we have too much patience for this type of editor. There are obvious WP:COMPETENCE issues, and that should be enough for a block. Hans Adler 16:37, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Ack, forgot that (should really finish my morning Mt Dew before I do anything). At Kneph, Wheres Dan continued to push fringe and outdated material, taking a 19th century source (which should have been removed) that conflates Kneph, Osiris, Jesus, and Krishna and turning it into the primary source for the article, and citing a metaphysical text by René Guénon for historical information.

The histories for the articles Tribe of Dan, Kneph, and Serpent Mound show nothing but continued reversions after being asked to not use fringe and outdated sources.

Wheres Dan has just cited several outdated and fringe sources that were previously removed, claiming that Dougweller approved of all of them because Wheres Dan included two sources Doug suggested along with the fringe material.

He is also being a hypocritical when it comes to sourcing. This demonstrates that he understands that 19th century romantic, reductionist, and religious material are not reliable sources for historical claims, but when ignores this when it supports his point of view.

Even if it weren't for the fringe issues, that his concept of cooperation is a bit one-sided seems reason enough to not want him on this site. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:52, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

And now he's reported me for edit warring (even though I have yet to violate 3rr and have reverted no more than he has), where he accuses me of acting out of a religious bias by taking a comment out of context (at first, he tried to accuse me of an anti-Biblical bias, which prompted me to point out that I'm a Baptist). As I've stated over at WP:3RRNB, I will no longer be nice about this, he is useless to this site and should be blocked. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:09, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the above statement that editors of this persuasion are given way too much leniency here. The user has shown, per this conversation at Talk:Serpent Mound#Tribe of Dan Egyptian gods nonsense, that they either have WP:COMPETENCE issues or are on an elaborate trolling mission to insert inaccurate information into articles. The user couldn't seem to understand the difference or wouldn't admit the difference between the armchair philosophizing of a historian (if you want to call an author publishing in "Rosicrucian Digest" in 1938 an actual "historian") in the early 1900s and the 100 years of peer reviewed academic archaeology that has taken place since that armchair historian wrote his book. They have also yet seemed to understand our policies on WP:SYNTHESIS, WP:OR, and WP:RELIABLE. It's not our job to tell a person what to believe, but surely, we can stop them from serially inserting this] sort of nonsense into history and archaeology articles? Heiro 18:14, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Since they've been blocked before, I've just blocked for a week for edit-warring at Tribe of Dan during which they overstepped 3RR as well as WP:COMPETENCE. I've pointed out both in the block notice, and also noted how they can contribute to this discussion. But frankly, if anyone wants to up it to indef, be my guest. Black Kite (t) 19:54, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

"conflates Kneph, Osiris, Jesus, and Krishna" — where have I seen that before — Caesarion and WillBildUnion (talk · contribs). Maybe.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:20, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, Wheres Dan is citing a lot of 19th century sources, and a lot of people (whatever their beliefs) who wrote about religion in the 19th century were kinda stupid (IMO more so than in eras before or after). He doesn't quite smell the same to me. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:06, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Agree that there are generally very serious, questions about the current reliability of sources from the era of the source in question. Having said that, I think that there probably is, to some degree, information of this type which is relevant to at least some article, maybe a spinoff, in wikipedia. We do rather often have child articles which might address or summarize previous opinions regarding a subject, and it rather often is the case that such older premises, for good or ill, are in some way foundational to current theories, of varying reliability. I think maybe confining the editor to relevant talk pages, until and unless there is obvious and poorly-defensible editing abuse there as well, might be the best alternative. John Carter (talk) 22:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

*Ahem* I'm thinking it's time for an indef. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

To be clearer about my previous remark, a sockpuppet of Wheres Dan has been found and indefed. The block on Wheres Dan is still for a week. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:25, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

More socks have been found. This guy knows what he's doing. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:32, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Wheres Dan after looking at the various contribs of the socks at the SPI, which go back for weeks and months even, I think my above mentioned suspicion that WP:COMPETENCE may not be the issue but that an elaborate trolling mission to insert inaccurate information into articles may be. One of the accounts (User:Sourced much) seemed to be overly drawn to articles on Nazis, specifically attempts to white wash their reputations(see here). I would like to ask for an indefinite block or possibly a community ban for this editor. Would there be any support for this? Heiro 03:01, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

• I support a community ban on Wheres Dan and associated accounts due to the systematic and planned disruption of the encyclopaedic process by pushing FRINGE. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:15, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support community ban as per my statement above. Heiro 03:20, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Questionable semi-protection of English Defense League

I have been around this article for a couple of years, most recently only to copy edit and revert vandalism. The article attracts its share of non-neutral contributors, ownership issues and inevitable arguments that flare from time to time. I noticed a semi-protection yesterday by Admin/CheckUser User:Tiptoety and discovered this brief exchange on their talk page conversation [111]. I requested clarification but Tiptoety has been off-line for 24 hours. I raised a request at WP:RPP which was not responded to until I approached the active patroller directly [112]. They declined to lift the semi-protection. This [113] is simply an enquiry, not a request. There is no WP:SPI request. I need clarification on (a) the validity of the semi-protection by Tiptoety and (b) the justification for using "Persistent sock puppetery" as the stated reason when there appears to be no such evidence. The claimant has identified 2 IPs which each have only made a single edit – that is not persistent editing, much less persistent socking. Can the situation be reviewed to ensure that semi-protection is in line with policy and to ensure that unregistered users are not prevented from contributing to article space for no valid reason. Leaky Caldron 17:39, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Hmm ... if those 2 IPs are the same editors (and remember, User:Tiptoety is a CheckUser, so he would actually know if they were socks of banned users if he had used his CU tools), then the semi may be reasonable; you'd really need to wait for a reply from him though. Black Kite (t) 19:23, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Tiptoety stated "Per the privacy policy, I can not link an IP address to a named user. That said, I went ahead and protected the article for a few days." So he's semi-protecting without evidence and using a plainly misleading reason by describing it as "persistent sock puppetry". I can think of hundreds of articles on my watchlist where I might suspected a SP at work. I wouldn't just expect a simple nod for any request I made. I don't agree with unregistered users but by policy we have them and by policy we should protect their rights. Leaky Caldron 19:31, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• By which I assume he means that those IPs are one of more blocked users, but he's not mentioning the user's names per privacy. I assume that, but as I say you'd really have to ask him, us mere admins can't help with this one I'm afraid. Black Kite (t) 19:34, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• I'm with Black Kite here; absent of any other comments, it is pretty obvious that one can read between the lines. Tiptoety knows who the IP addresses are; his Checkuser will tell him that. What he cannot do is tell you who it is (directly), but that does NOT prevent him from protecting the page to prevent disruption. You can easily put two-and-two together here, even if he doesn't come out and say it, not because he doesn't have good evidence, but because Wikipedia's privacy policy prevents him from giving YOU that evidence. --Jayron32 20:48, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• But you know as well as I do, that wikipedia policy doesn't and shouldn't use protections preemptively. Was there major disruption on that page? I didn't see anything that would result in a semi-protection. A few ip edits, even disruptive ones, has hardly been huge cause for alarm. Only when the vandalism and disruption is persistent or there is a major WP:BLP problem, does protection usually come into play. Although, to play the other side, semi-protection is not a major disruption for those who wish to edit. Anyone can create an account, and the 10 edit and three day rule, is hardly a major obstacle to get over in order to edit a semi-protected page. I'm sure Tiptoey had a good reason, and I would like to hear it, but until then, the semi-protection won't cause too much stress or harm to the project.--JOJ ^Hutton 21:01, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• No, it won't - so why remove it, since it won't? When it comes to IP vandalism and sockpuppetry, semi-protection is honestly pretty much the only recourse - dynamic IPs make blocking an exercise in fultility all too many times. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:22, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
• So what about the Founding Principle that anyone can edit articles without registration? If SP was applied to every article where a couple of dubious edits turned up then that particular principle would be out the window. Leaky Caldron 22:32, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Editor removing others' comments at Talk:C. S. Lewis

Please see this removal by Yworo of another editor's comment in a discussion at Talk:C. S. Lewis. The underlying issue is how C. S. Lewis's nationality should be described, British or Irish. Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898, which is prior to 1921, which seems to qualify under some style guide for describing him as being born in Ireland (I haven't studied this carefully), but conducted most of his career in Britain. I've left two warnings for Yworo about removing others' comments from an article talk page, but cannot seem to get his attention. Yworo has removed other editors' comments twice from the article talk. Article talk pages are subject to the WP:Edit warring policy like any other page, plus Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, which I have to admit is a guideline not a policy. Advice on whether admins should formally caution Yworo would be welcome. EdJohnston (talk) 20:06, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I started a poll that clearly stated that it was a multiple proposal poll and that only support !votes were allowed. I consider that all editors who intentionally ignored these proposals to be intentionally disrupting the poll as presented. There have been claims that editors cannot construct a poll and then enforce the poll's formal form. I find that nowhere in policy. There have been claims that polls must allow oppose !votes. I also find that nowhere in policy. Maybe I'm wrong, but I personally feel that the multiple-proposal-support-vote-only-polls would be a much better way of weighing consensus than the current combination of endless discussion with support/oppose-polls than yield no clear result.

Also note, I started this poll before anyone brought up any policies which determined how C. S. Lewis should be described. Personally, I don't care if he is described as British, Irish, or even Martian. I do care about being able to conduct a poll as I describe it clearly in advance without it being disrupted by disruptive editors supported by admins without any policy basis for their actions. Voting "oppose" in a poll that specifically from the start excluded oppose votes is intentionally disruptive and talk page policy allows disruptive comments to be removed or moved to where they are no longer disruptive. Yworo (talk) 20:20, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Really people, really? To EdJohnston, did you bring this up with Yworo and try to work this out before coming here? To Yworo, wouldn't it have been more suitable to simply move the comment/vote to the appropriate section, rather than simply removing it altogether. I haven't looked through the whole situation on the talk page, but a little more communication between the two of you would be desired, if this whatever you two are discussing is going to get worked out.--JOJ ^Hutton 20:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I notified Yworo twice and asked him to restore the comments by other people which he removed. You don't see those requests now on his talk page because he immediately removed them. EdJohnston (talk) 21:27, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I removed once, I added subheadings the second time rather than removing. Both were reverted by Snowded (talk · contribs). I've asked him on his talk page to support his actions with policy, but he seems unwilling or unable to do so. Yworo (talk) 20:37, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I looked through some of the revision history and the proposals on the talk page. I think I see what you were trying to do, and why you made those reversions. So I get it, "I" see your plan. Others may not have, but I don't think it was in the best interest of consensus to remove those comments, even if they were not the way t=you expected them to be. Those comments were made in good faith and it only appears that by removing those comments, (even if done in good faith on your part, which I believe), seemed to ultimately piss other people off, to put it bluntly. My advice to you is to be more careful in the future and maybe, if you ever create a poll like this in the future, add a section where other editors can express their displeasure at a particular proposal. Only my advice though, take it or leave it.--JOJ ^Hutton 20:48, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• This poll/!vote thing about nationality and citizenship is a shambles. Attributes should be determined by policy, including WP:RS not by a straw pole of editors. Leaky Caldron 20:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Agreed. The poll was started before such policies were brought up. It any case, with UK nationalities, this question is sometimes left to consensus when there is no determining policy. When I started the poll, I believed we had one of those cases. Yworo (talk) 20:46, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

it's worth checking the full edit history. Yworo deleted two oppose votes to an option then edited the article directly arguing that option had the strongest support on the basis of two votes one of which was a one time Ip. A review of his/her edit summaries is also instructive. Lots of snarky comments. It should also be noted that this took place AFTER the policies per style sheets had been posted. Some days after in fact so the above comment is shall we say, interesting.--Snowded ^TALK 21:19, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I posted the poll first at 00:13, 16 November 2011. You posted the first comment about "policies per style sheet" under the heading "Standards" at 01:01, 16 November 2011, almost an hour later. Please retract your disinformation. Yworo (talk) 21:37, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I also note that you have not at all addressed what policy gives you the right to override the stated conditions of a poll started by another user, as you did here, striking one of the stated conditions of the poll. Yworo (talk) 21:41, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Poll? Really? What ever happened to verifiability and reliable sources? What did Lewis call himself? Until we have sources which verify that, the best thing is to say that he was born in Belfast and lived in the UK. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 22:48, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

The majority of reliable sources say "British". However, edit warriors kept changing this to Irish. Then all mention of nationality was removed. The article was originally based on reliable sources until a small handful of editors started to disrupt both the article and the talk page with the intent of changing this to Irish. There were a number of arguments for British, a number of arguments for Irish, there seemed to be no progress toward consensus. What's wrong with a poll in such an ambiguous circumstance? Yworo (talk) 23:22, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think an editor should be able to remove other editor comments from an article Talk page unless it falls within one of the stated guidelines or is otherwise removable for policy reasons. Although I have some sympathy for Yworo's frustration, essentially, he's saying that by starting the poll, he owns the topic and can therefore control it. That can't be right.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Why can't an editor own a section in order to administer a poll by stated rules? Other editors have the whole rest of the talk page to make other comments. WP:TALK says that disruptive posts may be removed under Removing harmful posts. By definition, an "oppose" vote where such votes have been disallowed by the definition of the poll are disruptive, thus they may be removed. It is not really possible to simply leave the comments, as they subvert the counting mechanism using ordered lists. Yworo (talk) 23:14, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Ask yourself this: if you can remove oppose votes just because they're not part of your rules, what's to prevent your whole poll from being removed because it doesn't follow general talk page rules?

For that matter, what would the straw poll show, other than the most-preferred option? It would not demonstrate consensus to make a change; there'd then have to be discussion—open discussion, not just an up/down vote—on whether the option was supported by a consensus of editors. —C.Fred (talk) 23:21, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Yworo, if you read the entire part under "Removing harmful posts," it clearly wasn't intended to extend to posts that don't follow your rules, which, apparently, is your interpretation of "harmful" in this context.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:46, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Polls do not violate talk page rules. WP:POLL allows polls, states they should be clearly defined, and also states they should not be changed during the poll. If talk page rules prevent specific types of polling, there is something wrong with the rules and they should be modified to clearly allow a defined polling process. At the moment, there is nothing that prohibits defining a specific polling method when staring a poll. Starting a poll is not disruptive, responding to the poll outside the poll's stated process is disruptive. That's the difference. Yworo (talk) 23:25, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Best guidance I can find is WP:Prune. In other words, don't delete other editor's stuff. Leaky Caldron 23:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:POLL also points out a number of pitfalls with polls, including that they stifle discussion that builds consensus. I think this situation has turned into a poster child for that problem with polls. —C.Fred (talk) 23:38, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure polls have pitfalls, especially the support/oppose polls usually used. They are not, however, prohibited. Discussion had been going on for weeks without resolution. How's a poll going to make that worse? In any case, discussion continued in the section following the poll without stop after the poll was posted. Claiming it stifled discussion could only be made someone who hasn't actually read the talk page or observed the order that discussion, polling, discussion occurred in. Discussion was continuing unimpeded. Just more "Wikipedia dogma" being spewed without any actual thought applied. Yworo (talk) Yworo (talk) 23:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Discussions have been going on without resolution, in part, because there was an rfc that never got closed.--FormerIP (talk) 00:48, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

While I think Yworo set up the poll in good faith and that his removals represent a good-faith effort to keep order according to his concept, it's really not possible to conduct a poll on WP under those conditions, nor is anyone able to establish such ground rules and then enforce them by removing other editors' good-faith posts on article talk pages, and Yworo should not have done so. As I noted on the talkpage early on, such a poll isn't regarded as a valid means of arriving at a consensus. The RfC should be addressed; I was asked to look at it but did not feel comfortable doing so. Acroterion (talk) 01:00, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Clearly, polls are allowed. The ability to start different types of poll and have the polling process described is valuable and should not be eliminated just because some editors choose to ignore the stated process and make up their own rules. I will be taking this to both Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines and Wikipedia talk:Polling is not a substitute for discussion for modification to these policies to allow creation, monitoring and maintaining of polls by their originator without regard to other editor's disruptive tactics. Yworo (talk) 02:01, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

"Other editors" aren't being disruptive simply because they choose to disregard your "stated" self-imposed rule format; that's why this is here at AN/I. Acroterion (talk) 02:24, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

If it's impossible to have a specific type of poll, it's due to the disruption of intentionally rude editors. They should not have this power. It should be possible to start a specific type of poll without obviously intentional disruption. Yes, it's disruption, regardless of your opinion. Yworo (talk) 03:41, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

You could suggest the parameters of a poll, but you don't have the authority to make such suggestions compulsory. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:45, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

user:Delivernews and Operation Linda Nchi

There is somewhat of a dispute going on on the Operation Linda Nchi, a certain editor named user:Delivernews is trying to delete any information, sourced or unsourced, which contradicts claims made by the Kenyan regime, which is clearly POV. I have been trying to prevent major damage to the thread however I have been banned for edit warring once before so I am wary to do to much and thus would like to get some administrator involvement. The user typed in the comments by his edits: "I understand terrorist groups run propaganda and I hope the FBI is tracing all of you editing this as you are shoing signs of supporting a terrorist organization" - which I think is completely unacceptable and should immedietly be moderated since he is insulting everyone which disagrees with him as a terrorist or terrorist supporter and calling on them to be arrested. He has definetly decided not to act in a civil manner and I think there is little room for assuming good faith left. Administrators should get involved.Kermanshahi (talk) 21:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, as for a little of this users history, he recently vandalised casualty figures on the African Union Mission to Somalia, adding random low figures claiming the casualty figures on the articles were "propaganda," although this was later reverted because these were actualy the amounths of casualties acknowledged by AMISOM commanders.

The FBI comment doesn't rise to the level of a legal threat, but it is utterly unacceptable as a personal attack - I've warned him as such at his talk page. (Don't have time to assess further, other admins can decide what to do here.) - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:18, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

AgentPolkaDot removing information from Occupy Cal

AgentPolkaDot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been removing lots of information from Occupy Cal saying that it's unsourced, and a violation of the BLP policy, while most of it (as far as I can tell) is not about people, and sourced, though some is poorly sourced. At least two people have asked him to discuss it, and has been warned about edit warring and blanking pages on his talk page. An editor expressed the concern that he may be a sock of someone, as he knows very much about WP policies, despite being created today. Because checkuser isn't to be used for fishing we thought that ANI would be more appropriate. Pilif12p 23:45, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Someone filed this a few minutes before I did this. Pilif12p 23:49, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I think what we have here is a bad case of WP:BITE, with me assuming good faith with that user. CheckUser might produce interesting results if we had a known master, but we don't.Jasper Deng (talk) 23:52, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Update: User blocked.Jasper Deng (talk) 23:54, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, not much choice really. The problem is that the material AgentPolkaDot was removing was poorly aourced, but it was sourced; and the identification of the policeman involved is also out there in reliable sources ([114]). I'd suggest that if anyone's going to put the information back, though, it's sourced properly and inline. Black Kite (t) 00:00, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Definitely not a new user, as the following accounts are  Confirmed as each other:

• AgentPolkaDot (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• SkywardJesus (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• WheelAhead000001 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• CurvyCurvacious (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Downwithsuits (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Bigburlyguy408 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Hibiscus86732 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Changling49-02 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• EPiSoDE058082 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• ShakerSJC (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• 911 is a joke (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Cheekytrees (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• RadioDancer (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• An interested reader 555 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Can o' Clouds (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Model o' Bricks (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Dalia327 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

 IP blocked, and I have ramped AgentPolkaDot's block to indefinite. –MuZemike 01:05, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I've edited the article for WP:NPOV. It had a lot of charged words and repeated content.--v/r - TP 01:12, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

AgentPolkaDot is clearly not the oldest account, but it doesn't matter, really.Jasper Deng (talk) 01:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Block evasion

Resolved

Blocked--v/r - TP 00:33, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

The IP userUser_talk:202.3.77.183 got blocked for personal attacks and editwarring, but he is hopping IPs now to edit war. This is the second IP User_talk:202.3.77.205. In this diff he continued to editwar revert after being blocked on the previous IP (refer to article history) [115]. Though the article in question is now protected but the real issue was of personal attacks at different places including the AVI page and my talk page. Since he's already blocked does it call for a range block for block evasion? (he'll keep coming back otherwise with his personal attacks). --lTopGunl (talk) 23:49, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I WP:DUCK blocked the IP. The block will expire at the same time as the other IP's block.--v/r - TP 00:33, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Thankyou. Expecting another hop though. --lTopGunl (talk) 01:46, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Weird activity on fish stubs

This isn't a complaint, and it's not vandalism. I don't know what it is, but the editors won't talk about it, so I thought I'd mention it here. It's a bunch of SPA's editing fish stubs by pasting in what looks like term papers. Here are the three I spotted. It seems like a class project or something, given the sporadic and longterm nature of the editing. I also notified the fish wikproject:

1. Popeye Shiner by Lmb213 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
2. Etheostoma neopterum by Jkaitchu (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
3. Luxilus coccogenis by Jusabelle (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 02:07, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Forgetting for a moment whether they are term papers or not, what is the quality of the articles, in terms of content and references? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

It's really random. At first it was super lousy, now some of them are improving, but they generally include a lot of off-topic material. Instead of being about the fish, they have sections like "recommendations for management". They could be turned into good articles, but they really need some guidance.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 03:17, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

List of culinary vegetables‎

List of culinary vegetables‎ has has a spate of anonymous edits attempting to add "Pizza" (usually with foul language as pseudo-latin species names) as a culinary vegetable. They've been from a variety of IP addresses, which is puzzling. Each has been reverted, but they keep coming back. Would this be a good case for semi-protection? Waitak (talk) 03:33, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

If it continues, you could report it to WP:RFPP. You'll usually get pretty fast action there. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:36, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

For what its worth the Feds have classified pizza as a vegetable regarding school lunch menus, so perhaps that is what is provoking this bout of vandalism. Quinn ^{✩ STARRY NIGHT} 03:42, 21 November 2011 (UTC)