Jump to content

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
fixing my typo
Line 328: Line 328:


Someone want to block creation of any article about this woman for a week or more? -- [[User:Llywrch|llywrch]] ([[User talk:Llywrch|talk]]) 06:53, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
Someone want to block creation of any article about this woman for a week or more? -- [[User:Llywrch|llywrch]] ([[User talk:Llywrch|talk]]) 06:53, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

== Conflict of interest disclosure ==

Hello everyone. In light of some concerns that have been brought to my attention about some [[WP:COI]] editing I have done, I wanted to solicit some advice regarding some articles I've written or edited with which I have a personal relationship.

The first article is ''[[Duck Attack!]]'', about a video game I wrote in 2009. I wrote the Wikipedia article myself in 2010, which, it's safe to say, is against current best practices. I was a relatively new editor at the time (about 100 edits) but I have been regularly maintaining and updating the article with new sources since then.

In accordance with the current best practices, I have tagged the article's talk page with the {{tl|connected contributor}} template, and have updated my userpage to indicate that I am the author of that game.

Could any interested editors please take a look at that article, and vet it for any signs of overly promotional language, puffery, or POV-pushing on my part? I have tried to keep the content neutral and close to what the reliable sources say about it, but of course I am not the best judge of my own neutrality. Please take a look at the sources and help make sure I am not quoting them in an unfair or biased way. If you can add to the article additional or better reliable sources, please, by all means do so, whether they review the game positively or negatively. It is important to me that the article is an accurate reflection of what the reliable sources say, good or bad.

Please also check the [[Special:WhatLinksHere/Duck Attack!|"what links here"]] for the article to make that any references to the game from other articles are appropriate to those pages. Most of the articles linking to it are as a result of its presence in [[Template:Homebrew]], which other homebrew articles include as a NavBox.

The second article is [[Digimarc]], a company I worked for from 2001–2008. I made [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Digimarc&diff=381537264&oldid=376558595 these] [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Digimarc&diff=586573557&oldid=585388133 three] [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Digimarc&diff=586573659&oldid=586573557 edits] to the article, and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bruce_Davis_(video_game_industry)&diff=381538237&oldid=347331216 this edit] to the article of the company's CEO, after I left the company. The company did not solicit me to make these edits or (as far as I know) know I had done so; I just happened to be reading the article and noticed the wikilinks weren't pointing to the right place. Given the minor nature of the edits and the fact that it's been years since I worked there, I did not add a {{tl|connected contributor}} to that talk page, but I will be happy to do so if other editors feel it would be appropriate.

I will post a link to this discussion on the COI noticeboard so that the editors who watch that board can comment here as well. [[User:28bytes|28bytes]] ([[User talk:28bytes|talk]]) 09:00, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Revision as of 09:00, 21 December 2013


    Welcome – post issues of interest to administrators.
    Shortcuts

    When you start a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page. Pinging is not enough.

    You may use {{subst:AN-notice}} ~~~~ to do so.

    Sections inactive for over three days are archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.(archives, search)

    Template:Active editnotice

    "WP:CR" redirects here. You may be looking for Wikipedia:Cleanup resources, Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects, Wikipedia:Copyrights, Wikipedia:Competence is required, Wikipedia:Dispute resolution and Wikipedia:Content removal.
    "WP:ANC" redirects here. You may be looking for Wikipedia:Assume no clue.

      You may want to increment {{Archive basics}} to |counter= 38 as Wikipedia:Closure requests/Archive 37 is larger than the recommended 150Kb.

      Shortcuts

      Use the closure requests noticeboard to ask an uninvolved editor to assess, summarize, and formally close a Wikipedia discussion. Do so when consensus appears unclear, it is a contentious issue, or where there are wiki-wide implications (e.g. any change to our policies or guidelines).

      Do not list discussions where consensus is clear. If you feel the need to close them, do it yourself.

      Move on – do not wait for someone to state the obvious. In some cases, it is appropriate to close a discussion with a clear outcome early to save our time.

      Do not post here to rush the closure. Also, only do so when the discussion has stabilised.

      On the other hand, if the discussion has much activity and the outcome isn't very obvious, you should let it play out by itself. We want issues to be discussed well. Do not continue the discussion here.

      There is no fixed length for a formal request for comment (RfC). Typically 7 days is a minimum, and after 30 days the discussion is ripe for closure. The best way to tell is when there is little or no activity in the discussion, or further activity is unlikely to change its result.

      When the discussion is ready to be closed and the outcome is not obvious, you can submit a brief and neutrally worded request for closure.

      Include a link to the discussion itself and the {{Initiated}} template at the beginning of the request. A helper script can make listing easier. Move discussions go in the 'other types' section.

      Any uninvolved editor may close most discussions, so long as they are prepared to discuss and justify their closing rationale.

      Closing discussions carries responsibility, doubly so if the area is contentious. You should be familiar with all policies and guidelines that could apply to the given discussion (consult your draft closure at the discussions for discussion page if unsure). Be prepared to fully answer questions about the closure or the underlying policies, and to provide advice about where to discuss any remaining concerns that editors may have.

      Non-admins can close most discussions. Admins may not overturn your non-admin closures just because you are not an admin, and this is not normally in itself a problem at reviews. Still, there are caveats. You may not close discussions as an unregistered user, or where implementing the closure would need tools or edit permissions you do not have access to. Articles for deletion and move discussion processes have more rules for non-admins to follow.

      Technical instructions for closers

      Please append {{Doing}} to the discussion's entry you are closing so that no one duplicates your effort. When finished, replace it with {{Close}} or {{Done}} and an optional note, and consider sending a {{Ping}} to the editor who placed the request. Where a formal closure is not needed, reply with {{Not done}}. After addressing a request, please mark the {{Initiated}} template with |done=yes. ClueBot III will automatically archive requests marked with {{Already done}}, {{Close}}, {{Done}} {{Not done}}, and {{Resolved}}.

      If you want to formally challenge and appeal the closure, do not start the discussion here. Instead follow advice at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE.


      Other areas tracking old discussions

      Administrative discussions

      Place new administrative discussions above this line using a level 3 heading

      Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1156#Boomerang_topic_ban_proposal_for_User:Hcsrctu

      (Initiated 40 days ago on 9 May 2024) Ratnahastin (talk) 03:35, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

       Not done Ratnahastin; ANI reports that have been archived will not be closed. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:06, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Restored the request because AirshipJungleman 29 has refused to clarify his above misleading response.[1] Ratnahastin (talk) 04:15, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Requests for comment

      Talk:Anatolia#RfC:_Should_the_map_be_changed?

      (Initiated 120 days ago on 18 February 2024) RfC tag has expired and there haven't been new comments in months. Vanezi (talk) 09:40, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

       Comment: The RfC starter, Youprayteas, did not include any sources when starting his request. Multiple new sources have been added since February. Bogazicili (talk) 18:42, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
       Done --slakr\ talk / 04:09, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      RfC: Change INFOBOXUSE to recommend the use of infoboxes?

      (Initiated 94 days ago on 15 March 2024) Ready to be closed. Charcoal feather (talk) 17:02, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      new closer needed
      The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
      Before I try to close this I wanted to see if any editors believed I am WP:INVOLVED. I have no opinions on the broader topic, but I have previously participated in a single RfC on whether a specific article should include an infobox. I don't believe this makes me involved, as my participation was limited and on a very specific question, which is usually insufficient to establish an editor as involved on the broader topic, but given the strength of opinion on various sides I expect that any result will be controversial, so I wanted to raise the question here first.
      If editors present reasonable objections within the next few days I won't close; otherwise, unless another editor gets to it first, I will do so. BilledMammal (talk) 04:43, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I am involved in the underlying RfC, but my opinion on the issue is not particularly strong and I am putting on my closer hat now. Per WP:INVOLVED, "[i]nvolvement is construed broadly by the community". In the Rod Steiger RfC, you stated: [T]o the best of my knowledge (although I have not been involved in these discussions before) every recent RfC on including an infobox has been successful. From this it is clear that the topic is settled, and insisting on RfC's for every article risks becoming disruptive. Although the underlying RfC was on a very specific question, your statement touches on the broader question of whether editors should be allowed to contest including an infobox in a particular article, a practice that you said risks becoming disruptive because the topic is settled. That makes you involved—construing the term broadly—because answering this RfC in the affirmative would significantly shift the burden against those contesting infoboxes in future discussions. That said, if you can put aside your earlier assessment of consensus and only look at the arguments in this RfC, I don't see an issue with you closing. It wouldn't be a bad idea to disclose this at the RfC itself, and make sure that nobody there has any objections. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:43, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Pinging @BilledMammal. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:45, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      if you can put aside your earlier assessment of consensus and only look at the arguments in this RfC, I don't see an issue with you closing; per WP:LOCALCON, I don't see lower level discussions as having any relevance to assessing the consensus of higher level discussions, so I can easily do so - consistent results at a lower level can indicate a WP:IDHT issue, but it can also indicate that a local consensus is out of step with broader community consensus. Either way, additional local discussions are unlikely to be productive, but a broader discussion might be.
      Per your suggestion I'll leave a note at the RfC, and see if there are objections presented there or here. BilledMammal (talk) 02:37, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I don’t think that !voting in an RfC necessarily equates to being too involved, but in this case, the nature of your !vote in the Steiger RfC was concerning enough to be a red flag. Is it still your contention that “every recent RfC on including an infobox has been successful. From this it is clear that the topic is settled, and insisting on RfC's for every article risks becoming disruptive”? That was wrong (and rather chilling) when you wrote it and is still wrong (and still chilling) now, as the current RfC makes rather clear. - SchroCat (talk) 03:30, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Is it still your contention that “every recent RfC on including an infobox has been successful. From this it is clear that the topic is settled, and insisting on RfC's for every article risks becoming disruptive”? No. I've only skimmed the RfC, but I see that while a majority have been successful a non-trivial number have not been - and the percentage that have not been has increased recently. BilledMammal (talk) 04:13, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Part of my problem is that you said it in the first place. It was incorrect when you first said it and it comes across as an attempt to shut down those who hold a differing opinion. As you're not an Admin, I'm also not sure that you can avoid WP:NACPIT and WP:BADNAC, both of which seem to suggest that controversial or non-obvious discussions are best left to Admins to close. - SchroCat (talk) 06:44, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      In general, any concern that WP:IDHT behavior is going on could be seen as an attempt to shut down those who hold a differing opinion. I won't close this discussion, though generally I don't think that raising concerns about conduct make an editor involved regarding content.
      However, I reject BADNAC as an issue, both here and generally - I won't go into details in this discussion to keep matters on topic, but if you want to discuss please come to my talk page. BilledMammal (talk) 07:53, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      There was no IDHT behaviour, which was the huge flaw in your comment. You presumed that "every recent RfC on including an infobox has been successful", which was the flawed basis from which to make a judgement about thinking people were being disruptive. Your opinion that there was IDHT behaviour which was disruptive is digging the hole further: stop digging is my advice, as is your rejection of WP:BADNAC ("(especially where there are several valid outcomes) or likely to be controversial"), but thank you for saying you won't be closing the discussion. - SchroCat (talk) 08:10, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
       Done --slakr\ talk / 03:55, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      WP:RSN#RFC:_The_Anti-Defamation_League

      (Initiated 72 days ago on 7 April 2024) Three related RFCs in a trench coat. I personally think the consensus is fairly clear here, but it should definitely be an admin close. Loki (talk) 14:07, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      • FYI this discussion can now be found in Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 439. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:22, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • As an update, it's been almost two months, the comments have died down and the discussion appears to have ended. I suggest three or more uninvolved editors step forward to do so, to reduce the responsibility and burden of a single editor. Either taking a part each or otherwise. I'm aware that's not the normal procedure, but this isn't a normal RfC and remains highly contentious. CommunityNotesContributor (talk) 13:45, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • Bump nableezy - 19:02, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      "Part 1: Israel/Palestine" has been closed by editor TrangaBellam – "part 2: antisemitism" & "part 3: hate symbol database" remain open. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 19:24, 12 June 2024 (UTC) 20:59, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Enforcing ECR for article creators

      (Initiated 71 days ago on 8 April 2024) Discussion appears to have died down almost a month after this RfC opened. Would like to see a formal close of Q1 and Q2. Awesome Aasim 00:11, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Brothers of Italy#RfC on neo-fascism in info box 3 (Effectively option 4 from RfC2)

      (Initiated 70 days ago on 8 April 2024) Clear consensus for change but not what to change to. I've handled this RfC very badly imo. User:Alexanderkowal — Preceding undated comment added 11:50, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

       Comment: The RfC tag was removed the same day it was started. This should be closed as a discussion, not an RfC. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:03, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Mukokuseki#RfC on using the wording "stereotypically Western characteristics" in the lead

      (Initiated 68 days ago on 11 April 2024) ☆SuperNinja2☆ TALK! 09:41, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      See Talk:Mukokuseki#Close Plz 5/21/2024 Orchastrattor (talk) 20:34, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Climate_change#RFC:_Food_and_health_section

      (Initiated 62 days ago on 17 April 2024) This was part of DRN process (Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_245#Climate_change). It is ready to be closed [2] [3]. Bogazicili (talk) 18:39, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Israel and apartheid#RfC: Wikilink to Weaponization of antisemitism

      (Initiated 52 days ago on 26 April 2024) Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:58, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:International Churches of Christ#RfC: Ongoing court cases involving low profile individuals

      (Initiated 47 days ago on 2 May 2024) RfC template has been removed by the bot. TarnishedPathtalk 13:21, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      RFA2024, Phase II discussions

      Hi! Closers are requested for the following three discussion:

      Many thanks in advance! theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 04:27, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Andy Ngo#RfC: First sentence of the lead

      (Initiated 45 days ago on 3 May 2024) Discussion has slowed with only one !vote in the last 5 days. TarnishedPathtalk 11:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 440#RfC: RFE/RL

      (Initiated 41 days ago on 7 May 2024) Archived Request for Comment. 73.219.238.21 (talk) 23:32, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather#Discussion -- New Proposal for layout of Tornadoes of YYYY articles

      (Initiated 38 days ago on 10 May 2024) RFC outcome is fairly clear (very clear majority consensus), however, a non WikiProject Weather person should close it. I was the RFC proposer, so I am classified too involved to close. There were three “points” in the RFC, and editors supported/opposed the points individually. Point one and three had 3-to-1 consensus’ and point two had a 2-to-1 consensus. Just need a non WP:Weather person to do the closure. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 14:39, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Discussion-only period#Early close

      (Initiated 18 days ago on 31 May 2024) Since it's an injunctive discussion, I was hoping someone could step in and close after I withdrew my own. Thanks! theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 07:26, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Place new discussions concerning RfCs above this line using a level 3 heading

      Deletion discussions

      XFD backlog
      V Mar Apr May Jun Total
      CfD 0 6 17 74 97
      TfD 0 0 2 1 3
      MfD 0 0 0 1 1
      FfD 0 0 0 3 3
      RfD 0 0 10 16 26
      AfD 0 0 0 0 0

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 21#Category:Crafts deities

      (Initiated 75 days ago on 3 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 23#Category:Mohave tribe

      (Initiated 72 days ago on 6 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 27#Category:Unrecognized tribes in the United States

      (Initiated 72 days ago on 7 April 2024) This one has been mentioned in a news outlet, so a close would ideally make sense to the outside world. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 13:56, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

       Closed by editor Fayenatic London. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 13:43, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 27#Category:Indian massacres

      (Initiated 71 days ago on 7 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 27#Category:Volodimerovichi family

      (Initiated 71 days ago on 8 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

       Closed by editor Fayenatic London. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 13:41, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 29#Category:Muppet performers

      (Initiated 66 days ago on 12 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 30#Category:First Nations drawing artists

      (Initiated 65 days ago on 13 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 30#Category:Neo-Latin writers

      (Initiated 64 days ago on 15 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 May 13#Category:Pocatello Army Air Base Bombardiers football seasons

      (Initiated 54 days ago on 24 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

       Closed by editor Fayenatic London. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 13:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 May 4#Category:Fictional West Asian people

      (Initiated 52 days ago on 26 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 May 4#Natural history

      (Initiated 52 days ago on 26 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 May 13#Roman Catholic bishops in Macau

      (Initiated 50 days ago on 28 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 June 3#Frances and Richard Lockridge

      (Initiated 48 days ago on 30 April 2024) * Pppery * it has begun... 22:35, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Amina Hassan Sheikh

      (Initiated 42 days ago on 6 May 2024) If the consensus is to do the selective histmerge I'm willing to use my own admin tools to push the button and do it. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:07, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Place new discussions concerning XfDs above this line using a level 3 heading

      Other types of closing requests

      Talk:Anthroposophy#Evidence

      (Initiated 139 days ago on 30 January 2024) This seems to just now be a forum thread about being banned elsewhere or something (in fact I am unsure it has ever been anything but a forum thread). Slatersteven (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 16:22, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      I am the main author of that thread, and I agree with this request. Initially, it was a reply to a Facebook post by Anthroposophists seeking to remove me from Wikipedia. At /r/WikipediaVandalism, the attacks against me were even more vicious. tgeorgescu (talk) 16:27, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Rupert_Sheldrake#Talkpage_"This_article_has_been_mentioned_by_a_media_organization:"_BRD

      (Initiated 62 days ago on 16 April 2024) - Discussion on a talkpage template, Last comment 6 days ago, 10 comments, 4 people in discussion. Not unanimous, but perhaps there is consensus-ish or strength of argument-ish closure possible. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:24, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      It doesn't seem to me that there is a consensus here to do anything, with most editors couching their statements as why it might (or might not) be done rather than why it should (or should not). I will opine that I'm not aware there's any precedent to exclude {{Press}} for any reason and that it would be very unusual, but I don't think that's good enough reason to just overrule Hipal. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 01:01, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Fwiw, one more comment in discussion since this comment. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:09, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Press_Your_Luck_scandal#Separate_articles

      (Initiated 46 days ago on 2 May 2024) Please review this discussion. --Jax 0677 (talk) 01:42, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Anti-Normanism#Requested move 22 May 2024

      (Initiated 26 days ago on 22 May 2024). Should be closed by an uninvolved admin.--Berig (talk) 07:47, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Notifying_Wikiprojects_and_WP:CANVASS

      (Initiated 21 days ago on 28 May 2024) Latest comment: 3 days ago, 79 comments, 37 people in discussion. Closing statement may be helpful for future discussions. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:29, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Israel–Hamas war#Requested move 29 May 2024

      (Initiated 20 days ago on 29 May 2024) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Josethewikier (talk • contribs) 01:31, 14 June 2024 (UTC)  Closed[reply]

      Talk:Fiona Muir-Harvey#Merge Request

      (Initiated 19 days ago on 29 May 2024) Some1 (talk) 22:31, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Srebrenica massacre#Requested_move_2_June_2024

      (Initiated 16 days ago on 2 June 2024), then relisted 10 June. 2 !votes in the last 5 days. Discussion, on the criteria, appeared to stabilise on 15 June, Tom B (talk) 09:51, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2024 June#X (social network)

      (Initiated 15 days ago on 3 June 2024) - Only been open three days but consensus appears clear, and the earlier it is resolved the easier it will be to clean up as edits are being made based on the current result. BilledMammal (talk) 08:06, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

       Closed by editor theleekycauldron. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 12:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Dani Cavallaro

      (Initiated 14 days ago on 4 June 2024) A formal closure would be helpful to solidify consensus for future reference. Thanks! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 15:42, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Together (coalition)#Requested move 16 June 2024

      (Initiated 1 day ago on 16 June 2024) This is a combined merge and move request for two articles. At the very least, consensus seems to have been reached on one of those fronts, (that being to merge L'Europe Ensemble and Together (coalition)), while the rename discussion seems to be at a standstill. There hasn't been any major discussion or back-and-forth in over a day, and I think it would be worthwhile to at least act on the consensus to merge the two articles while leaving the rename discussion open. GlowstoneUnknown (talk) 07:09, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      @GlowstoneUnknown:  Not done One day is far too short a time to establish consensus, unless a massive pile-on of WP:SNOW occurs - which isn't the case here. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:25, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Place new discussions concerning other types of closing requests above this line using a level 3 heading

      Notifying users of a sockpuppet discussion

      (non-admin closure) Reason for not requiring notification clarified. wctaiwan (talk) 23:50, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

      I had always been under the impression that any administrative (or higher) action being discussed about a user required that the users involved or accused must be notified, so I added this to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/header. It was reverted here by Legoktm with the edit summary of "no you don't". Since when? If a user is being discussed on WP:AN or WP:ANI (or any of the related boards), they must be notified. If the user is being discussed in a mediation or in an arbitration case, they must be notified. Why is WP:SPI special? It's not like they can do anything to hide evidence already created, so there no need for secrecy. Please share your thoughts on this issue. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:12, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      I have notified Legoktm here. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:12, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Maybe you could have asked me before coming here? It's pretty simple, why should we notify LTAs that we've detected their socks? Legoktm (talk) 20:13, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      As this involves more than just you and me, I brought it here for broader input. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:29, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Not really, but okay. Legoktm (talk) 20:32, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I'm not sure how it involves only you and me. Things are done by consensus here on Wikipedia. I was WP:BOLD and made a change, it was reverted by you, so now we are here to find out what the rest of the community thinks. I brought the issue to everyone so it can be discussed and a consensus reached. Whatever is decided will be fine with me, even if I disagree with the final decision. How is that a bad thing? ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:44, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I thought we only notified unblocked editors? With LTAs they'll be blocked anyway, so there's no point in notifying them as they won't be able to take part in the SPI anyway. Black Kite (talk) 20:15, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      The issue which prompted this involved an unblocked editor. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:29, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Right, a blanket rule like the one you tried to add won't work. Each case needs to be considered on it's own. Clerks will notify a user if they feel its appropriate and the filer didn't. Legoktm (talk) 20:32, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      So modify it to suggest it be done in some cases (like a clueless newbie who isn't really doing it maliciously). ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:35, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I prefer the sockpuppet discussions to remain under the radar, as it were, with regard to the person who is about to get blocked. This prevents them from learning more about how we detect them. For editors who have been making many useful edits, perhaps they can be notified as a courtesy. Binksternet (talk) 20:20, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I agree with Binks here. I never file a report unless I am 95-100% sure, so not notifying the editor decreases drama. And like B says, gives the master acct less info about his tells. -- Diannaa (talk) 20:26, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      This argument doesn't really hold water since once a sock is blocked, they have one of the various sockpuppet templates placed on their user page, and all of those templates link directly to the SPI discussion. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:32, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I oppose this change (which should have been discussed with the SPI team beforehand) for the same reasons as Legoktm. Of course, established users should be notified, but not for trolls who enjoy being reported to SPI (and I'm not being sarcastic, some actually do). --Rschen7754 21:01, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Nothing in WP:BOLD indicates that all such changes need to be discussed with the self-appointed "SPI team" (whoever that is). As this was a rather minor change in the grand scheme of things, I didn't see a reason to discuss it beforehand, though you'll note that I didn't get in an edit war and immediately brought it up for discussion to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding things. As I already posted here, I'm fine with it either way, however consensus determines. I'm not crusading for one way or the other. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:16, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Please see WP:CUOS and WP:SPI/C; the SPI team is not self-appointed. Furthermore, it's common courtesy to ask the people who actually do the work in any organized area of Wikipedia, be it ArbCom, SPI, BAG, AFC, DYK, FAC, DRN, CHU, etc. before you go around making changes in their procedures. I expected a bit better from a bureaucrat. --Rschen7754 00:19, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Outside of Checkusers, they are all self-appointed as clerks can be "any user in good standing" (with training, as it notes), and administrators are welcome to help without any caveats. Pretty much anyone who wants to help in the process is welcome to do so. Regardless of that, almost all pages on the site can be edited by anyone, including project pages, with or without discussion. As I keep stating, and as people keep ignoring, I didn't see it as a significant change in anything. Getting all worked up over a tiny things such as this is not worth the time it is taking. The change I made was reverted, and I brought it here for discussion. I haven't ever tried to force people to keep it. I haven't said Legoktm was wrong to remove it (though I did ask if I was remembering things correctly with my, "Since when?", above). It appears I was incorrect in my reasoning on this one point, and that's fine. You're blowing this far out of proportion to the change I made in good faith.
      And quite waving your holier-than-thou "I expected a bit better from a bureaucrat." over my head. I have never claimed to be infallible, and that's certainly not a prerequisite for being a 'crat. I'm sure you make mistakes, too. Many procedures and guidelines have been changed over the years without extensive (or even any) discussion, especially when it's a low-impact, non-critical part such as user notification (which is handled for logged-in users by the notification system, as pointed out by someone below). I wasn't expected to be attacked by people when I brought the issue here for discussion. If you can't participate in a discussion without flinging underhanded insults like "I expected a bit better from a bureaucrat." (implying that I'm somehow perfect and will never make a mistake, and therefore have failed for perhaps making one), then perhaps it's time for reevaluating how you interact with people. I made the edit in good faith, thinking it was a good thing to do and just overlooked for some reason. It appears there was good reason behind leaving it out, and I can accept that reasoning. This is the whole reason I brought it here, to make sure of the reasoning behind removing my good faith edit. That's it. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:48, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      "Outside of Checkusers, they are all self-appointed as clerks can be "any user in good standing" (with training, as it notes)" - no, we regularly decline candidates for clerkship.
      My issue here isn't that you made a mistake, it's that you are showing a gross lack of respect for people who actually work at a Wikipedia process, and not valuing their input. And then, you took it to AN, to override what the SPI team would say. It's that you don't see the issue with barging in and changing the instructions for a process that is disconcerting. --Rschen7754 01:06, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Have you even read the page (WP:SPI/C)? It specifically states a clerk can be "any user in good standing" (with the training I mentioned, and that it mentions, emphasis added). To quote the third paragraph on the page in full: "Clerkship is open to any user in good standing after an extended period as a trainee. Administrators are also welcome to help at SPI by patrolling."
      As for your other allegation, I'm not showing any lack of respect for anyone at SPI, and I certainly value their input. That's why I brought the question here and notified interested parties at WT:SPI. I specifically wanted their input (as well as that of the rest of the community). I didn't bring it here to "override what the SPI team would say". You're assuming far too much and trying to read my mind, and you're not very good at it. The SPI process does not belong only to those who are currently working in that area; rather, it belongs to the community as a whole. You seem to me to be trying to wall off your own little private garden there and getting all huffy because someone (in this case, me) made a good faith edit, correcting what I thought was an simple oversight, and then accusing me of motives I don't and have never had just because I opened a discussion about it? I've respected you as a great contributor for years, Rschen, and this attitude really surprises me. I'm not trying to step on toes here. I'm simply trying to find out the reasoning behind Legoktm's actions. Now I understand them, and I'm fine with the reasoning. It makes sense. You don't need to keep attacking my motives and accusing me of things which are blatantly untrue. I have great respect for all of the volunteers who help with Wikipedia in whatever capacity they choose to help. So don't say I don't, and don't accuse me of things about which you have no clue. I came here to have a discussion about the issue, not to be beaten up for doing something which seemed to be good at the time. I've already admitted my mistake, but I'm not willing to fall on my sword over something as insignificant as this. As I stated before, you are blowing this far out of proportion. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:26, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I've been involved in the selection process with quite a few clerks, so I'm well aware of how it works. In practice, very few non-admins are selected for the role, as a non-admin clerk cannot block; furthermore, CUs make the final decisions regarding who can be a full clerk, and the standard is fairly high. You may also want to read through the actual selection process WT:SPI/C.
      I fully understand that you may not have realized the impact that such a change would have at SPI. But in general you would probably have gotten a similar reaction if you had done something similar at FAC, or DYK - yet even more so here, because the entire process at SPI is to aid the CheckUsers, who are legally liable to the Foundation for any bad checks that they make, and thus have to abide by policies that are not determined by community consensus. That's where being BOLD may be your right, but doing something without asking, or telling people who work there how their process works, will step on toes. I don't want to go on and on about this on AN as we're getting off topic and repetitive, but I hope that you'll take this into consideration in the future. And for the record, my statements were not meant to come off as insulting, and I apologize if it came off that way. --Rschen7754 08:02, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Notifying is discretionary on the part of the filer or anyone who is investigating that feels that there is a need. Sometimes we do but most of the time we don't as it isn't required. Many socks have a history of bringing disruption to cases and it is better to not invite them to the party. Also, there are considerations such as beans in line with Binksternet & Diannaa's concerns. I concur with Rschen7754.
       — Berean Hunter (talk) 21:11, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Adding that your impression "I had always been under the impression that any administrative (or higher) action being discussed about a user required that the users involved or accused must be notified..." isn't correct. We never notify vandals to explain their actions at AIV for example.
       — Berean Hunter (talk) 21:23, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes, I can see that. You are incorrect about my impression, though, because that was my impression at the time I wrote that. I couldn't, off the top of my head, think of any such incident boards where we didn't do that. I haven't done much with AIV for a few years, so I'm not surprised my quick interneal, "Can I think of any places where we don't do this?" process overlooked that one. It is an exception to the rule, however, as is (apparently) SPI. As I noted above, perhaps an instruction would be in order which suggests notification in the case of established editors, or in cases where it doesn't appear the person was doing it maliciously but rather out of frustration. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:16, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      The change was (rightly) reversed. The next step was to discuss the suggested change on the policy/process talkpage, as per WP:BRD. ES&L 21:19, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      A link to the discussion was placed on the talk page of WP:SPI and the discussion was placed here in order to get more visibility for the discussion. I didn't initially place one on WT:SOCK, but I've put one there now. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:16, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      It's just a bit disturbing that such lapses should come from a bureaucrat. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:13, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      It's not a lapse, but rather not seeing a valid reason (initially) for not having that bit of instruction there when it was common across almost all other such incident boards. Apparently being a 'crat now means a person must be perfect. I don't remember that being in the job description, nor am I aware of any 'crat (or admin, or editor) here who is perfect. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:16, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Misunderstanding of WP:BRD isn't just limited to n00bs :-) ES&L 22:55, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Nor are mistakes. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. I can't say that I have every nuance of Wikipedia memorized, nor do I think anyone does. We make mistakes, learn from them, and move on. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:21, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      If someone has an account, WP:Notifications will automatically let the person know that the account has been mentioned on the SPI page. A long-term abuser can be expected to have the SPI page watch-listed. For IP editors, it would be a courtesy to let them know they've been reported. —rybec 22:46, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      The WP:DENY principal adapts well in this situation also. Mlpearc (open channel) 22:59, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I can see it applying in many or most cases at SPI. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:18, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I thought I had converted most of those templates to use {{noping}}...blegh. Legoktm (talk) 08:44, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I took a look at the discussions currently listed at WP:SPI. Apart from {{checkuser}} (which pings the potential socks), many of the discussions link to one or more of the accounts in the evidence or discussion. If users aren't to be notified, people should also avoid linking to accounts that way. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:15, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      The instructions here do mention notification, but for the reasons stated above, it is only a suggestion. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 15:03, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      I see this as yet another case where the thinking behind WP:DENY produces a perverse result. As mentioned above, persistent abusers have tools available to see any relevant SPIs and will probably use them. Thus the attempted secrecy will fail of its intended purpose. The people actually affected by lack of notification will be innocent users incorrectly named, especially IP users. Notification should be mandatory, just as it is here. DES (talk) 16:27, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Agreed , yes anytime someone's mentioned in a sockpuppet investigation, they should be notified.  KoshVorlon. We are all Kosh   17:02, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      That is a bad conclusion and were we to accept it then it would mean that we have always been blocking the innocents. If you frequented WP:SPI enough then you would have the experience to know that isn't the outcome of our cases; you would also know it because editors would have been complaining about incorrect outcomes on multiple noticeboards. Usually the complaint is that we are backlogged and not that we are doing the job incorrectly. But if we are, the first place that you would start would be WT:SPI which is where you would hold any such discussion on mandatory notices...it wouldn't be decided here as this isn't the right place to form consensus on that issue.
      This discussion was held because of someone's misunderstanding of BOLD. It applies to article space but not to the operational areas. This is generally covered in the section Wikipedia:BOLD#Non-article namespaces but is specifically covered in Wikipedia:BOLD#Wikipedia namespace <== SPI is within that namespace. The place to have discussed this should have been on WT:SPI just as the first place you should discuss being reverted in an article would be that article's talk page. Jumping straight to this noticeboard was incorrect process albeit made in good faith.
      (...and now a word from our sponsor) Learn how you can help out at SPI. We invite you all to begin reading cases and helping where you can. This also gives the opportunity for review to anyone who thinks that we are missing our marks and convicting the innocent.
       — Berean Hunter (talk) 17:34, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I didn't say that you have mostly been blocking innocents (although I do think that some SPI regulars are a bit overly confident in their conclusions). I said that actual long-term abusers will learn of SPI filings whether you notify or not, so it is only the occasional incorrectly-accused user or collateral-damage IP who is affected by the lack of notification. And this, or perhaps VPP, is a fine place for such policy discussions. DES (talk) 18:12, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Mandatory notification of SPI listings is akin to waving a red cape in front of a bull. The disruption a group of socks can generate in an investigation is a time-suck for clerks and CUs and only serves to provide the attention some of the sock masters crave. Will some socks show up at an SPI regardless of notification? Yes. Should we invite them there? No. Editors opening cases are given the latitude to use their best judgement to decide whether informing the potential socks of an open case is prudent. Making it mandatory only serves to add more bureaucracy to an already complicated process with minimal benefit and possible detriment. Would editors requesting CU assistance via IRC or email also be required to provide a mandatory notice to the suspected sock/master? The modus operandi of sockpuppeting is subterfuge, yet you are endorsing shining as much light as possible on those trying to limit the disruption quickly and quietly. If it's not apparent, I would oppose any mandatory notification. --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 18:46, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      What Ponyo said. There is no benefit to requiring us to inform long term abusers that we have caught them socking for the 250th time, it only encourages them. Yes, it is a courtesy that should normally be extended to established users, but it should not be a hard requirement. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:22, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I agree. Importantly, as noted above, if an account is reported and not notified (whether deliberately or accidentally), and any clerk believes that the account should be notified, then the clerks provide notices themselves. A failure to require notifications does not mean that people aren't finding out.
      And let's remember the practical issues: if you require notification for everyone, even LTA and DENY cases, then we're just going to see more SPIs filed in e-mail. I've seen people brag about their socks offwiki. We've had people ask to be listed at WP:BANLIST. It's a game for some of them. We need to use discretion to stop rewarding them for breaking the rules. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Absolutely not. Are you seriously asking us to make notifications all the way around when we have to expand something like Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/NoCal100/Archive? Think about it for a moment: if you're a prolific socker, and you know that you'll be told when your sock has been caught, you can know at any moment which socks are still safe! Also, Nihonjoe, a bureaucrat should know that this page isn't for proposals: that's why we have WP:VP/Pr. Nyttend (talk) 14:17, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I like that Nihonjoe came here to ask for clarification. That said, Beeblebrox sums it up as good as anyone. Why notify them for the some hundredth time that they are being given a CU. The fact is LTA's tend to enjoy disruption, so the less obvious we make it, the quicker they'll get bored of it and the less the LTA's will continue popping up. That said, if you have a user with lots of experience, which includes loads of featured content, community trust, and perhaps advanced tools, then they should be notified that they're being checked out. That said, WhatamIdoing is also right in saying that not notifying them doesn't mean they don't know the secrets of SPIs and LTAs. So I'd say leave it up to the discretion of the clerk. Sportsguy17 (talk • contribs • sign) 03:32, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Awesome - Requiring people to notify everyone who is subject to a sock investigation should have a twofold benefit: one- a massive increase in bureaucracy and nonproductive work, since each and every account listed in the investigation should and must be notified (after all, they could be different people who just seem similar, that's what the SPI will determine); and two- a big increase in the time needed to run around chasing egregious sockmasters who will just abandon socks as soon as they get a notification, reset their router and create a new one. This sounds like fun! - Who is John Galt? ✉ 19:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      WP:TOPRED up to 940

      Well, TOPRED is now up to 940 links, about 800 of which are +m/+n patterns. This is about 150 larger than it was four weeks ago when the +m/+n problem first showed up, and 650 larger than when I last made a redirect for these. A lot of attention was paid when I was doing something about it, and now it seems to have fallen off of everyone's radar. But the problem hasn't gone away - it's only gotten worse - and all the people who were so quick to criticise and issue threats haven't done a thing about it. So is anyone going to follow through on any of the previous discussions and actually try to fix this, or are we going to pretend like 1 1/2 million redlink hits a week aren't happening? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 11:46, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      I have a hard time believing these are legitimate red links being searched for. Do humans have a problem with their pinkie finger on Wikipedia and hit m or n a lot? I don't think so. If you're asking if you think Lincoln (2012 film)m, Portal (video game)m and List of Family Guy episodesn need to turn blue for the sake of top red links being filled, no, we don't. If it's a matter of the report being bad and adding m's and n's on the ends of article titles then that will have to be fixed some other way, and creating a ton of really bad redirects isn't the way. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 14:14, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Obviously, these are links that are being mangled somewhere, not "searches". The problem is, the mangled links are being followed, and people (or bots) are being directed to a non-existent page, and I got jumped on for fixing it. But the detractors have had two weeks to do something about it - to try to find out where they were coming from, and why we were getting mangled hits - and they've done nothing. So count me as pissed. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 14:29, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Well being pissed doesn't justify going against repeated consensus at RFD not to create trailing m/n redirects for articles, or a thread here at AN really. I'm not sure what can really be accomplished here. Either it will get fixed and the problem will get resolved, or it won't and we will get reports with mistakes or misleading information on them until it is fixed. If you want to ping those involved in fixing the error, then that might be the better way to find out if there is any progress, not pinging a bunch of administrators who can't do anything about it. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 14:50, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Well, A) that's a flat out lie. All of those redirects were made before there was an AN post or RfD about them, let alone consensus against their creation. and B) I posted here because this is where this matter has been discussed, and since neither you, nor anyone who commented on the previous discussion, has lifted a finger in the last two weeks to find out where this traffic is coming from, let alone done anything to mitigate it, I figured you all should know that your doing absolutely nothing hasn't solved the problem. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 15:25, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Unfortunately, Moe, you've failed to propose any solution to the problem: the only way for editors to make this page useful again is to convert these into bluelinks. These clearly don't go against WP:RFD#DELETE 1-7 or 9-10, and 8 is overridden by the fact that they are useful because they make the real TOPRED links findable. Improving an encyclopedia is the goal here: having these pages as redlinks impairs that goal, and having them as bluelinks helps that goal. The point in coming here appears to have been to ask us administrators to shut down opposition that doesn't have the goal of improving the encyclopedia. Nyttend (talk) 15:05, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      No, turning them blue Nyttend would go against the consensus of a couple RFDs that have already taken place. The last one ended sometime last week and I believe you participated. So are you going to override consensus with a supervote under the guise of "improving the encyclopedia" because a user subpage isn't useful with errors? That seems more problematic on your part than a page reporting errors. I can't fix the errors on the report, I have nothing to do with it. Those who are involved probably are investigating the problem, though I can't be sure since I don't follow them around. Obviously you got the short stick on the consensus discussion, but that doesn't mean I'm here not to improve the encyclopedia. If you really think additional m's and n's on the end of titles are good redirects, go ahead and re-create them. I'll see you at RFD. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 15:27, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Having monitored traffic that arrives at a couple of small servers over a long period of time, I can assure onlookers that trying to make sense of what happens on the Internet is pointless—it's just random crap. For three months, a significant amount of our (not Wikipedia) incoming traffic was attempts from China to open a connection with some nonexistent port on a nonexistent IP (in our IP range, but an IP that had never been used, and a port that had never been used on any of our servers). While the persistent red links may be a lot of different users with the same typing malady, it is much more likely to be someone experimenting with a spambot, or a bored kid laughing at how they can push nonsense onto TOPRED and get editors to spend hours debating whether it should be redirected somewhere. Just ignore it, or make a list of titles to ignore and modify the software that generates TOPRED to ignore unwanted titles. Johnuniq (talk) 00:21, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have trouble seeing why there is a need to "do" anything about this, and frankly I question the wisdom of even having such a list. The idea that, because of this list, we should create List of misconceptions about illegal drugs" \l "Man slices off his face and feeds it to dogs or Sierra Boring ass is not an idea that is likely to be supported by the community or by logic and common sense. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:36, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I agree with Beeblebrox; we absolutely don't need to create these ridiculous pages simply because they show up in a report. We should be focusing on how to rid the report of them. @West.andrew.g:, is there any way to create an "exclude" list of obviously bad titles that can be used in conjection with this report, so that the report does not show them? Ideally it could be something that's regular expression-aware, like the spam blacklist, but even a simple list would be a great start. 28bytes (talk) 00:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • As the individual who generates WP:TOPRED, I couldn't agree more that this has been blown out of proportion. Sure, I can generate a list that doesn't have "m" and "n" ending red links. But next week it will be something different. People need to follow consensus as to whether redirects should be created or not so we have some policy moving forward. I don't feel the list is the problem, but people are the problem (and I'm not taking sides). The list has taught us something interesting about percent encodings and what I presume to be a buggy bot/API. I don't know what data the analytics team has at their disposal, but I would be interested to see if these problematic cases have referrer headers or IP sources that trace back to a single or narrow IP range. If we had evidence this was some really boring, non-human activity it might help in achieving consensus. West.andrew.g (talk) 04:32, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Creation or deletion doesn't matter to me, and I would really like everyone to stop debating this non-issue either way. Until we have the opinion of the devs on whether or not these edits could be created by human or bot these 'evidence' are not really conclusive, and honestly who better to ask on questions of software than the MediaWiki community? As I said earlier though, the devs might come up with a solution on the tech side to the problem, and there are a few questions I've posed in a deletion discussion to consider; once the correct encoding is put in place to convert the javascript into percent-encoding, what will happen to the redirects? Will they continue to inflate the PAGECOUNT and remain inaccessible to everyone but devs because they're hidden 'underneath' the new encoding, or will they be absorbed into the new software seamlessly and the previously created 'redirects' deleted? TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 01:07, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Note also the ongoing Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2013 December 9#\x22Weird Al\x22 Yankovic, another TOPRED deletion discussion which can use more input. (I don't think it was linked from here yet). Fram (talk) 09:48, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • MediaWiki's search already gives you a "Did you mean" prompt if you search for a title similar to that of an existing page. People make typos all the time; I don't see why this shouldn't be integrated into the page you get when you try to access a non-existent page. Perhaps people are using external applications that just try to access a page directly instead of going through Special:Search. That page does have a link to Special:Search, but stuffed down into the wall of text that most people will just ignore (see banner blindness). I would advocate that MediaWiki integrate search into the "non-existent title" page. The project exists to serve the readers, and we should make things easy for them. Perhaps in the meantime the MediaWiki: page containing the "non-existent page" message could be changed to make the Search link more prominent.

      Also I notice the "Special centralautologin start?type=1x1" title appears to correspond to: 

      <img src="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1" alt="" title="" width="1" height="1" style="border: none; position: absolute;" />

      which shows up in the page source, and I assume is a tracking pixel for CentralAuth. Looks like some clients are mangling it. Maybe the devs should be notified about this if they haven't been. --108.38.196.65 (talk) 13:56, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Examining the cause

      My examination shows the +m/+n page views are usually very consistently around 10-13% of the page views on the corresponding real page, including when those views go up and down from day to day. Compare for example http://stats.grok.se/en/201312/Great%20Wall%20of%20China and http://stats.grok.se/en/201312/Great%20Wall%20of%20Chinam. The latter adds 'm' to Great Wall of China. The real title has fairly consistently been around 6000 daily views for years, so the +m issue doesn't appear to affect page views of the real title. The +m views started low on 31 October 2013 and climbed until reaching 10-13% of real page views on 11 November. Compare November stats: http://stats.grok.se/en/201311/Great%20Wall%20of%20China and http://stats.grok.se/en/201311/Great%20Wall%20of%20Chinam. Many other +m pages follow a similar pattern: The views started low around October 31 and gradually climbed until reaching 10-13% of real views where they stay. This makes me conclude: This is very unlikely to be an external program which keeps requesting the same page. There is no way this would consistently generate 10-13% of our traffic on lots of affected pages for weeks. We get a lot of our traffic from Google but we have large variations in the number of internal wikilinks and the popularity of the pages containing them. When page views of real titles look "natural", there is no reason page views of +m titles should follow them so closely unless the problem is internal. I can think of three scenarios:

      1. For certain real pages, 10-13% of normal page views (including human readers) are incorrectly by our own software directed to a +m/+n page instead.
      2. 10-13% of page views on certain real pages are incorrectly reported as instead being on a +m/+n page.
      3. 10-13% of page views on certain real pages also cause an additional page view (maybe not seen by a human) of a +m/+n page.

      There is a way to discover human readers: Ask them! We could place something like this on a few "popular" +m/+n pages with hundreds of daily views reported:

      "You were probably looking for [[real title without m/n]], but there appears to be an error and we would really like to know how you got here instead. Please report it at (new section url to page collecting reports). Note that your report will be visible to everyone so don't reveal anything you wish to keep private. If you post without logging in to a Wikipedia account then your IP address will be revealed. Report as much of the following as you know and are willing to publish (this could also be specified with a preloaded page in the edit link):

      • How you arrived at the wrong page, including the exact url to a page where you may have clicked a link to get there.
      • The exact url of the page where you saw the request for the report, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_wall_of_chinam
      • Your browser and version number.
      • Your location (city and country)."

      We could also ask people to view the end of the html source of the wrong url and report the server name after "Served by", but many don't know how to view the html source and the server may have changed by the time they look at it. I admit it would be an untraditional use of mainspace but finding the cause is important if they are human views, and if they are not then few humans will be bothered by the message. Maybe it would be better with a shorter mainspace message like "You were probably looking for [[real title without m/n]], but please report at (link) how you got here instead." Before we consider going forward with this, is there somebody who can examine the "rawest" version of the page view stats to check whether the "Great_wall_of_chinam" views are there and weren't added later by mistake? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:18, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      I downloaded one of the log files provided by the WMF, http://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/pagecounts-raw/2013/2013-12/pagecounts-20131214-010011.gz (chosen because I expected it to contain the most requests for Great_Wall_of_Chinam/Great_Wall_of_Chinan) and found that the "m" and "n" requests were logged there. They're not an artefact of West.andrew.g's script.

      Here's an extract for the Great_Wall_of_China example. Note the one request for simple:Great_wall_of_chinam.

      requests to all sites for titles containing "great", "wall", "of" and "china" (any order, any case)

      bs Datoteka:Map_of_the_Great_Wall_of_China.jpg 1 13663
      commons.m Category:Great_Wall_of_China 1 29053
      commons.m Category:Great_Wall_of_China_at_Jinshanling 1 11414
      commons.m File:Great_Wall_of_China,_Satellite_image.jpeg 5 54449
      commons.m File:Great_Wall_of_China.jpeg 1 10606
      commons.m File:Great_Wall_of_China.jpg 1 0
      commons.m File:Great_Wall_of_China_%281010067%29.jpg 4 32160
      commons.m File:Great_Wall_of_China_July_2006.JPG 1 16265
      commons.m File:Great_Wall_of_China_location_map.PNG 5 76310
      commons.m File:Great_Wall_of_China_location_map_blank.PNG 2 19196
      commons.m File:Map_of_the_Great_Wall_of_China.jpg 12 173710
      commons.m File:The_Great_Wall_of_China_in_sand.JPG 1 0
      en File:Great_Wall_of_China,_Satellite_image.jpeg 2 21386
      en File:Great_Wall_of_China_July_2006.JPG 2 31788
      en File:Great_Wall_of_China_location_map.PNG 5 48935
      en File:Map_of_the_Great_Wall_of_China.jpg 22 347296
      en File:The_Great_Wall_of_China_at_Jinshanling.jpg 8 72630
      en Great%20Wall%20of%20China 1 20
      en Great_Wall_of_China 143 6242731
      en Great_Wall_of_China_hoax 1 11690
      en Great_Wall_of_Chinam 18 862829
      en Great_Wall_of_Chinan 4 225008
      en Great_wall_of_china 3 137043
      en Great_wall_of_china_marathon_2011_tours 1 7038
      ja %E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB:Great_wall_of_china-mutianyu_4.JPG 2 26390
      pl Plik:Map_of_the_Great_Wall_of_China.jpg 1 14468
      pt Ficheiro:Great_Wall_of_China,_Satellite_image.jpeg 1 12188
      pt Ficheiro:Great_Wall_of_China_July_2006.JPG 1 18196
      pt Ficheiro:Great_Wall_of_China_location_map_blank.PNG 2 22329
      simple Great_wall_of_chinam 1 61208
      simple Talk:Great_Wall_of_China 1 7307
      th %E0%B9%84%E0%B8%9F%E0%B8%A5%E0%B9%8C:Great_Wall_of_China_location_map.PNG 1 43754
      zh File:Map_of_the_Great_Wall_of_China.jpg 1 16678

      —rybec 23:12, 19 December 2013 (UTC) [reply]

      Thanks. I suppose another theoretical scenario would be a bug in a browser version or operating system at least 10-13% of readers have, but I don't see why that would give so consistent mishits on some pages and none on most others. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:54, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      SPI merge?

      User:Movieeditor229 seems to be a sock of User:Niloy229 itself, but there's two separate SPIs open. Should Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Movieeditor229 be merged into Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Niloy229? Frood 17:43, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      @Frood: Yes, I have done so. Feel free to re-open Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Niloy229 if you find more socks. Mark Arsten (talk) 22:06, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Template:PD-UK and the absurdities of Commons

      Files are routinely moved to Commons from here. This is, of course, a good thing, but we need to be careful that so moving does not cause the files to disappear.

      Commons has a bad habit of depreciating templates that were made consistent with other Wikipedias, but not bothering to update the corresponding templates. On English Wikipedia, Template:PD-UK is the only template for describing UK copyright law beyond a simple Template:PD-Old-70. However, on Commons, any file tagged with PD-UK is automatically nominated for deletion. Instead, one is meant to use Commons:Template:PD-UK-anon, a license does not exist on En-Wiki, or Template:PD-Old-70, as appropriate.

      I don't know how much we can do about Commons. It can be an exceptionally stupid place. One possibility might be to give in, and copy the templates they prefer over here, and institute a sane review system for things tagged PD-UK and other such templates, to update them to the ones Commons prefers. However, as I said, Commons can be a stupid and arbitrary place, and there's no guarantee they won't do this to another template.

      Indeed, it would not surprise me if whole rafts of templates we have would cause automatic flagging for deletion should the file be moved to Commons. A terrible, terrible situation.

      Commons discussion: commons:Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard#Template:PD-UK_-_a_major_problem_in_implementation Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:19, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      I don't really see the problem. You aren't supposed to move files with a bot and not review them yourself. The template gives very clear instructions on what tags may apply instead. If you just reviewed your own files, there would be no problem. It is automatically tagged for deletion because there is a review system, and that's the uploader. For the anon template , move to enwiki yourself if you want. I might do it later if that's what you're all worked up about. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 13:51, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      It's a disproportionate and inappropriate response by Commons to what is, at the very most, a minor issue. Because of the CommonsDelinker bot, undoing a deletion fully is almost impossible - all usages of the file will be long gone, and there is no way to reverse the bot. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:22, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      If you're too lazy to review your own files, admins and other editors will review it. See the response at the Commons discussion by User:Stefan2 as well. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 20:27, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Actually Adam Cuerden, your whole basis is wrong. The template that Commons has exists on enwiki. It just doesn't have the same redirect. I will now create that redirect since it is too hard to do. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 20:31, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Redirect now in place at Template:PD-UK-anon. I guess this is  Done now. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 20:34, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
       Not done. I think you're missing the whole point, and the general nature of the problem. Once something's deleted, all usages are removed by bot, and there is no undo on that. As such, the bizarre behaviour at commons can screw us over, if just two people don't display sufficient care. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:36, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      All you need to do is to read WP:CSD#F8. Once you have read that, you will find that everything is  Done. Per WP:CSD#F8, admins deleting files here as F8 should check that they have been cleaned up properly on Commons, or else they can't be deleted locally. Also, CommonsDelinker's delinking can easily be undone by looking at the delinker log for the deleted files. --Stefan2 (talk) 20:43, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      (edit conflict × 2)Why would it be deleted? It's not deleted immediately. Editors review it before it is deleted. You need to review files you upload. I don't understand why this is so hard. User:Stefan2 just told you how to undo the bot if the file here and at Commons is deleted but per WP:CSD#F8, files here shouldn't be deleted if the file at Commons is in danger of deletion. What you're basically saying that if 4 people are very lazy, including yourself, you might have to undo a bot's edits? Just stop trying to create a problem out of thin air. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 20:46, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      {{keeplocal}} or {{Do not move to Commons}} Rmhermen (talk) 03:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I really don't see why it's necessary to have such a problematic process in the first place. This isn't really anything to do with my own files, it's something I noticed, and thought I should bring it to the attention of people, and am somewhat shocked that it's not seen as a problem, since, apparently, it's presumed admins never make a single error from rushing to do a large batch of files at once. Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Crap. I had a fit about this on Wikien-L earlier this year, and the consensus (which was widely agreed to) was that the bot should stop removing local images after a Commons move, as it doesn't save space or anything (the images aren't *actually* removed off the servers when "removed" locally...). And then it got dropped because I had surgery and stopped paying attention for a couple of months. Can we get a local consensus here on-wiki and then direct the bot's owner... ? ...! Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:58, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Draft namespace live

      Just in case you weren't watching, we now have a new Draft namespace. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Draft namespace live and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Draft namespace being enabled soon. — This, that and the other (talk) 02:07, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      we have it, thankfully, and there is consensus to use it for AfCs , and probably other things, but we need to be careful not to actually put material there until there is some degree of agreement on how to do it, without messing up exxisting processes and templates. DGG ( talk ) 19:29, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I have a bunch of drafts in my userspace which I would like to move over to the new namespace immediately. So far as I know, there are no template issues that would arise from such a move. Is there any particular development that I need to wait for, or can I go ahead with it? (I see that there are about a dozen drafts in the namespace already). bd2412 T 19:34, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      There are a few. I suspect whatever is done with them will have to be done over once we have a working procedure for how to handle them. I suggest it would be helpful not to add to their number. DGG ( talk ) 06:12, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I accept your reasoning, and will refrain. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:44, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      VR.5 -- "new editor getting started"

      VR.5 is an article about a TV show. Looking at the edit history of the article since April of this year, a weirdly high percentage of the edits are by different editors and are tagged with "new editor getting started". It seems fishy to me. I can't think of why this article would attract such a high proportion of new editors. Or maybe it really does, I'm not sure. Anyway, it doesn't seem to be creating a huge problem with the article, although a lot of those edits haven't really improved it. Thoughts? — Mudwater (Talk) 03:42, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      See Wikipedia:GettingStarted and this archived explanation. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:02, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks for the reply, John of Reading. I've read through those two links, and the inference seems to be that, as part of the Getting Started program, that article is one of many that are being suggested for new editors to work on. So that makes sense so far. But, how does Getting Started decide which articles to suggest? I was thinking it might be based on some kind of maintenance category but I don't see that on the VR.5 article, although I'm not an expert on this so I might be looking in the wrong place. — Mudwater (Talk) 00:21, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      The second link says that suggestions are randomly taken from the "copyediting category", after BLPs and some other things are removed. DES (talk) 00:44, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      In this case tht seems to be Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit from November 2012, a hidden cat. DES (talk) 00:47, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks DES. And the article is in that category because it has a {{copy edit}} in it -- even though the copy edit category can not be seen, even when editing the article -- right? So that makes sense. Does that make it one of the "improve clarity" suggested articles an editor goes to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:GettingStarted ? And if yes, how do articles get suggested for "add links" and "fix spelling and grammar"? Or better yet, is there a page that explains all this? (And if not, shouldn't there be?) — Mudwater (Talk) 02:15, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      @Mudwater: The categories are those listed here. The usual way for an article to be listed in those categories is via the tags {{Copy edit}}, {{Confusing}} and {{Underlinked}}. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      @John of Reading: Brilliant, thanks! — Mudwater (Talk)

      Italy article hacked

      I went to the Italy article and it has been both hacked and vandalized, with a subversive message on the upper part. Also, in the background it has a sexually offensive image. Can anyone fix it?

      --Workalot (talk) 20:59, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Looks like it's been fixed, the article itself wasn't touched, but probably one of the unprotected templates on it was altered. SirFozzie (talk) 21:03, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Thanks a lot! It was fixed --Workalot (talk) 21:10, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Seems to have been more than usual template vandalism in the last week. Dougweller (talk) 17:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      AfD closed as delete, article not deleted

      Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jennifer Wong was closed (a non-admin closure) as delete, but Jennifer Wong has not been deleted—is this the right place to report this?

      Thanks!

      הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 04:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      No, the article was deleted at AFD over 3 years ago, recreated earlier this year, and an IP editor has put up an AFD template with a link to the old discussion. Since this version of the article is substantially different from the deleted version (mainly it contains many sources that appear reliable at face value), it would have to go through a new AFD to be deleted. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:15, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Also, to clarify: the editor who closed that 2010 AfD was an admin at the time. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 04:50, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Good point. It never occured to me that ghosts of departed AfD's might come wafting by at WP:AFD/T. How odd. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 05:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Sorry guys, saw this a couple of hours late. I saw the old discussion in the log and removed it. I also removed the template from the article and left a note with the new editor who tried to nominate it. I've offered to log a second nomination if anyone so wishes. Apologies for any confusion. Stalwart111 10:50, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention/Bot bot is again not working

      For quick reference, the original inquiry is archived here. User:DeltaQuad said he was working on it, so you might want to drop by his talk page. Or draw a wider audience at Wikipedia talk:Bot owners' noticeboard. Rgrds. --64.85.216.158 (talk) 18:30, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      EDIT: sorry that shouldn't be the talk page, that should be Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard. (Same dynamic IP as before, it changes when I log off). Rgrds. --64.85.216.216 (talk) 01:44, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Indef-blocked IP amnesty

      You may have seen recent discussions about the number of indef-blocked IPs. Most of these discussions are in favour of unblock, as it were, usually caveated with "apart from the problem ones". To bring clarity to this matter and start some action I make the following proposal:

      • Any indefinitely blocked IP address whose block was made over five years ago, may be immediately unblocked.

      I am bringing this to the attention of admins as despite having rough consensus from the community it will involve blindly reversing several admins' decisions. It also takes admins to make unblocks. The oldest blocks can be found around here and the newest blocks are around here. Any admin who supports this proposal must make at least thirty unblocks. It's a really simple couple of clicks (x30). Thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 16:34, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      • Support. -- zzuuzz (talk) 16:34, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose. Many of those oldest ones are marked as open-proxy or even as a named proxy service (rather than just some guy running some open port or possibly even hacked by third-party). That sort of thing is possibly easy to (re)test, and if it still is an open proxy, why they heck would we want to unblock it? Your proposal completely ignores the "apart from the problem ones" idea that you mentioned as being a popular idea in the consensus-building. DMacks (talk) 16:44, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        These things are not easy to check. There are few people, and it takes time and organisation. Statistically speaking, reports indicate most of these IPs should be unblocked (dynamic, etc). -- zzuuzz (talk) 16:51, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        "We'll assume that what an admin thoughtfully did at one time based on evidence is no longer correct because we're too lazy to look for evidence now" is not gonna fly. If you had written a proposal that was aimed at the actual more limited scope of non-proxy items (again, that's what the consensus seems to have been) (and others, good point about CUBL, Berean Hunter), you might have more of a chance. DMacks (talk) 16:58, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        No disrespect to them or their blocks, but what's a checkuser going to tell you about a hardblocked IP after five years? Open proxies can and probably should be reblocked to current policy standards. There are several ways to get through this list. This is just a moderate version of one end of the spectrum of views, but probably the most practical. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:37, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose. First, a reminder that no admin may undo a checkuser-imposed block without running the gamut of desysopping (see WP:CUBL) and second, many of the IP's may be TOR nodes or other open proxys. A blanket unblocking would be daft.
         — Berean Hunter (talk) 16:50, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      WikiProject on open proxies notified.
       — Berean Hunter (talk) 18:03, 19 December 2013 (UTC)      [reply]

      Full disclosure: I often speak for WP:OP, but I don't here and this proposal doesn't stem from there. My interest is that the alternative, basically, is listing all 20k+ of them there. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:35, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose as per a completely crazy idea. Some IPs are long-standing, still-active open-proxy IPs. Some were checkuser-imposed blocks that would need investigating to some degree. I would happily support a compulsory review of all of these IPs, but to blanket unblock them may be tantamount to Wiki-suicide... Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 18:39, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose I think your proposal is well intentioned but dangerously broad. If they are to be unblocked let us check them first and then open them up. JodyB talk 11:25, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • (edit conflict) Oppose any proposal for lifting of blocks without review of the reason the IP were blocked in the first place and whether the reason still applies. -- KTC (talk) 11:29, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment I'd be interested to know how many indeffed IPs there are for a start. And also to know if there is any sort of 'progress check' gets made to see if they are still part of the Axis of Evil. Do they get checked again only when someone using them puts in a request, and if that's the case, is that sufficient so that no other action needs to be taken? Peridon (talk) 20:14, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose Such a broad decision is inappropriate because it can't take into account the circumstances of any of them. Bring up any of them individually? I'd be willing to consider the requests on their individual merits. By the way, remember that community consensus trumps everything except Foundation policy and real-life things such as applicable laws; Arbcom do not have the authority to tell the community that we may not decide to unblock someone. The point is that individual admins may not undo a checkuser block by themselves. Nyttend (talk) 22:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose What evidence is there to support the idea that unblocking hundreds of open proxies and TOR nodes would help the encyclopedia? Mindless unblocking can occur after MediaWiki includes tools to detect and respond to abuse. Johnuniq (talk) 22:41, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose a silly idea that, at best, would require a lot of volunteer time, effort, and scrutiny with no clear benefit to the encyclopedia. At worst, it would be a total catastrophe, the wiki equivalent of letting all the prisoners go at once just to see what happens. While the actuality of it would probably be somewhere in the middle, there's still no benefit to it. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 01:42, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Vandal reconciliation template with a personal touch

      Well, I was wondering that the warning templates are pretty rough. I prepared a rough draft of a template in my userspace and moved it to Template:Vandal-rc. It is to be used as in {{subst:Vandal-rc}} ~~~~. Any comments on this? I mean, adding it to Twinkle and other vandalism removal tools may be beneficial as many may just flip back their decision to vandalize. Criticism as well as suggestions are most welcome. Ethically (Yours) 17:06, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      You may want to visit Wikipedia:WikiProject user warnings. All talk page warning templates were carefully crafted over time by several users. Deviation from the usual templates is discouraged. Not to rain on your parade, but I see your good faith attempt soon being deleted. :( Rgrds. --64.85.216.158 (talk) 18:20, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I would say that the draft is condescending and patronising. I would also say that the existing warning templates aren't tough enough and that we certainly don't need 4 of them. (all IMO, of course). Leaky Caldron 18:40, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I would never say "Let me share the truth with you", tell an editor how the entire Wikipedia community regards their edit or venture such patronising advice, or then invite the recipient to visit my talk page to tell me what they now thought of me, even though I might learn some new words. If Twinkle imposed such phrasing on me then I would stop using Twinkle to warn vandals. NebY (talk) 18:58, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Not an admin, but I don't believe the warning you've created will have a net-positive effect, in part because of the reasons summarized in above posts. I may be willing to offer editorial advice if you're serious about this, but I think it might be better to start with the standard warnings we have and modify them to make them kinder and gentler. Cheers. DonIago (talk) 19:34, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I've given the template a substantial copyedit to smooth out the prose. I think there might be something to the kernel of an idea of "Let's talk to new users and try to explain to them why vandalism doesn't help and editing can be fun", but I don't really think this template is going to do the job. Ethically Yours, you may want to start a discussion on the WP:Village Pump about creating a template or set of templates that adopts this mindset - that way people can help you shape what it says - but I don't think this version is adoptable. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Also, if you think the process of getting the template officially adopted would be too much of a headache, there is nothing to stop you from using it yourself. You can keep it on a subpage of your user page and set up Twinkle so that it appears on your Twinkle menu, and then it will work just like the other Twinkle warnings do. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Sorry to cast another note of dissent here, but having taken another look, this really is so obsequiously fawning it is actually dishonest and we should have no part of it. I have added my personal thoughts in bold.
      Hello Vandal-rc! The Wikipedia community considers your recent edits to be vandalism. [but you already know that] Let me tell you a little bit more about Wikipedia so you understand why your edit was undone. Wikipedia is built by people like you and me [actually, it is built by people like me and harmed by people like you], for the betterment [??] of the people all over the world. Wikipedia's goal is to make information freely accessible. I understand that it can be a lot of fun to edit Wikipedia pages to include nonsense or silly things,[I, for one, have never understand the fun in vandalising public works but maybe I just see things differently to you] but before you do it again, wait a second and think: what if you could share your knowledge - true knowledge - with the rest of the world? [we don't share personal knowledge, we carefully aggregate other people's knowledge and I doubt whether your knowledge could actually cover the size of a pinhead] By taking a moment to create an account [as an aside, I understand that it can take ages to create an account] and contribute positively, you can not only make the encyclopedia a better one, but drastically improve your knowledge, too. [a highly questionable concept in your case] A positive contributor is appreciated by the community [but not always universally so and you can be blocked for speaking you mind or criticising others] and we're always in need of someone like that. We don't like to see people be blocked for being vandals,[actually some of us really do like to see vandals such as you blocked, preferably indefinitely. Indeed, if it were possible I would like to zombify your computer or render it unbootable] so perhaps you can think on this [if you can manage to do that] and maybe even create an account [duplication] to edit constructively. If you need any help whatsoever, feel free to approach me on my talk page. [please understand, the template requires me to say this but in truth, I really hope you don't, you vandalising troll] Thank you,. Leaky Caldron 14:44, 20 December 2013 (UTC) [Happy Christmas, Scrooge's little helper][reply]
      In principle it's not a bad idea, as most of the template are far too big and unwieldy, which contributes to the increasing trend of driving away new editors. These templates are way too big - just say what you need to say. For things I say a lot to new accounts, I keep a couple one/two sentence templates User:WilyD/whydeleted - anything more than that isn't informative, it's serves only to discourage new editors from joining the project. But if you're using twinkle, there's probably no hope for you to welcome potential new editors into the project successfully anyhow. WilyD 14:52, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      I've noticed a general lack of interest in notifying vandals (and I'm talking vandals, not misguided new editors or people trying out the editing interface) that their actions have been noted and reverted. In most cases, a level 1 or level 2 warning is enough to serve notice that Wikipedia editors are paying attention to one's edits, and that vandals can't get away with much. This is often startling enough that the vandalism stops. If it continues after warnings, we're dealing with someone who will probably need to be blocked. A more diligent effort at notifying people in the first place that their edits are being scrutinized is a key to reducing vandalism. I can't tell you how many times I've seen persistent vandals who never get warned at all. Our existing templates do a pretty good job, especially since the level 2 warnings were toughened and given an orange icon. If we want to be kind and un-bitey, the level 1 warning is pretty good as it is, and is suitable for use where you can't tell if the edits are experimentation or a warm-up to vandalism. Acroterion (talk) 15:03, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      On the occasions that I encounter a vandal who has some sign of intelligence and clue (not the same thing...), I'll put a personalised message on their talk page. If it's really a minor vandalism, I'll use Level 1 - but I rarely use any of the Level 1s as they're a bit wishy-washy. (I've got to keep getting the panto allusions in - haven't scripted one this year...) I like to be personal if there's a hope. Look like a bot, and they won't respect you. Peridon (talk) 20:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      please consider banning User:Smartguy1413

      User:Smartguy1413 has had no constructive edits as far as I can tell: [4] as such, I suggest that a ban would make a lot of sense. **** you, you ******* ****. (talk) 22:17, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      I think what you mean is a block. The typical process is to give escalating warnings until level 4, and then report to ARV. He's only received a level 1 and level 2 warning so far, so I gave him a level 4. His recent contribs (midget, dwarf, little person) I guess could maybe be argued to be made in good faith. The rest are obvious vandalism. It doesn't look like we'd be losing anything with an indef. However, please be careful about your language as well; some of your comments have been a little abrasive. It's best to try to stay as dispassionate as possible, even in cases of vandalism. Thanks!   — Jess· Δ♥ 23:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks for your comments. I couldn't actually discover what is really meant by ban on Wikipedia, but it's the term used almost everywhere else on the web for what I was thinking. The level 4 warning should be enough I guess. I understand your comments about language, though I disagree that it really matters. Cheers. **** you, you ******* ****. (talk) 08:31, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      WP:BAN and WP:BLOCK are the easy ways to find out the details :-) ES&L 11:22, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Ban proposal for User:Mr Wiki Pro

      Mr Wiki Pro originally seemed to come across as a user you was seeking an opportunity to reform and contribute constructively. Since then it has been increasingly obvious that Mr Wiki Pro is uninterested in this and is instead seeking attention through the creation of sockpuppets (see here and here) to disrupt the project. Given that Mr Wiki Pro's original purpose was to request an unblock I believe a clear signal from the community that this behaviour will not be tolerated and will reduce any chance of an unblock. So I ask the community to ban Mr Wiki Pro. Given the number of sockpuppets being created to disrupt I haven't notified the user. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 02:01, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      • I'd say he is banned:

        "In the event an indefinitely blocked editor has continued to be disruptive and no administrator is willing to unblock, they are considered de facto banned."

        — Wikipedia:Ban#Appeals_and_discussions
      -- John Reaves 02:18, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      There is a difference between individual admins telling a user that they won't unblock them and the community telling a user they are disruptive and are blatantly acting against policy, and most importantly that they are not permitted to contribute to the project until the community decides they can be trusted. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 03:26, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Right. The differences between indefinitely blocked and community banned matter in true abuse cases. The de facto banning has not held up as justifying inclusion on the "banned by the community" banned user lists or blanket reverts of contributions. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:54, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Community ban proposal

      Mr Wiki Pro (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is banned indefinitely by the Wikipedia Community.

      • Support as proposer. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:54, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose as pointless and unconstructive. Per John Reaves, above, this user is already banned and it is magical thinking to suppose that anything said or done here is going to change his behavior. This is a WP:DEADHORSE. Now let's all go build an encyclopedia, shall we? Roccodrift (talk) 05:02, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support as suggester. Mr Wiki Pro has said that individual admins declining unblock requests doesn't mean anything because there is always another one. If the community takes action and shows him that this behaviour is unacceptable then he might give up. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:31, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support banning as he is recalcitrant in continuing to sock and the community cannot trust him.
         — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:26, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support Doesn't want to take the standard offer. Wants to be here, but won't fit in. He says he's active on Commons and WikiSpecies, by the way. All I can see is userpage creation on Commons, and no contribs on WS. Not being an admin at either, I can't say what deleted contribs there are - and haven't checked the socks to see if they're active there. Might be interesting if anyone can be bothered; perhaps someone here who also works there might find it worthwhile. Peridon (talk) 20:19, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support - There is, and always will be, a distinction between being "de facto banned" and actually being banned by the community. While the latter represents the collective will of the community, the former is only as good as the willingness of every single admin on en.wiki not to unblock. While I have, in general, great respect for our admins, I also know that if you get 3 of them together there are liable to be 5 opinions among them, so I'd rather not rely on all 1600 of them agreeing not to unblock someone. The community ban, although it certainly doesn't technically prevent a "rogue" admin from unblocking, acts as a deterrent and gives the block more weight. Given this, I would think that we would stop seeing comments like the one from Roccodrift above, poo-pooing a community ban as being "pointless and unconstructive". It's not. An editor who is simply blocked merely needs to convince one admin to unblock them, while one who is community ban needs the community to agree to allow them to edit again, a much heavier burden to overcome. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:48, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support per above. Mark Arsten (talk) 02:33, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Justine Sacco

      Just Google the name. Or go to Twitter & look for #HasJustineLandedYet. Need I say more?

      Someone want to block creation of any article about this woman for a week or more? -- llywrch (talk) 06:53, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Conflict of interest disclosure

      Hello everyone. In light of some concerns that have been brought to my attention about some WP:COI editing I have done, I wanted to solicit some advice regarding some articles I've written or edited with which I have a personal relationship.

      The first article is Duck Attack!, about a video game I wrote in 2009. I wrote the Wikipedia article myself in 2010, which, it's safe to say, is against current best practices. I was a relatively new editor at the time (about 100 edits) but I have been regularly maintaining and updating the article with new sources since then.

      In accordance with the current best practices, I have tagged the article's talk page with the {{connected contributor}} template, and have updated my userpage to indicate that I am the author of that game.

      Could any interested editors please take a look at that article, and vet it for any signs of overly promotional language, puffery, or POV-pushing on my part? I have tried to keep the content neutral and close to what the reliable sources say about it, but of course I am not the best judge of my own neutrality. Please take a look at the sources and help make sure I am not quoting them in an unfair or biased way. If you can add to the article additional or better reliable sources, please, by all means do so, whether they review the game positively or negatively. It is important to me that the article is an accurate reflection of what the reliable sources say, good or bad.

      Please also check the "what links here" for the article to make that any references to the game from other articles are appropriate to those pages. Most of the articles linking to it are as a result of its presence in Template:Homebrew, which other homebrew articles include as a NavBox.

      The second article is Digimarc, a company I worked for from 2001–2008. I made these three edits to the article, and this edit to the article of the company's CEO, after I left the company. The company did not solicit me to make these edits or (as far as I know) know I had done so; I just happened to be reading the article and noticed the wikilinks weren't pointing to the right place. Given the minor nature of the edits and the fact that it's been years since I worked there, I did not add a {{connected contributor}} to that talk page, but I will be happy to do so if other editors feel it would be appropriate.

      I will post a link to this discussion on the COI noticeboard so that the editors who watch that board can comment here as well. 28bytes (talk) 09:00, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

      Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard&oldid=587074653"