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Other areas tracking old discussions

Administrative discussions

ANI thread concerning Yasuke

(Initiated 45 days ago on 2 July 2024) Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1162 § Talk: Yasuke has on-going issues has continued to grow, including significant portions of content discussion (especially since Talk:Yasuke was ec-protected) and accusations of BLP violations, among other problems. Could probably be handled one sub-discussion at a time. --JBL (talk) 17:50, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Proposal: Topic ban from GENSEX

(Initiated 3 days ago on 13 August 2024) I'm not seeing any comments in two days and I'm reading clear community consensus for a TBAN. Admin close required. TarnishedPath^talk 14:39, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

Requests for comment

RFA2024, Phase II discussions

Hi! Closers are requested for the following three discussion:

(Initiated 106 days ago on 2 May 2024) Administrator recall
(Initiated 104 days ago on 5 May 2024) Designated RfA monitors
(Initiated 104 days ago on 5 May 2024) Reminder of civility norms at RfA

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

Doing... reminder of civility norms. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:24, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Partly done reminder of civility norms. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:40, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If re-requesting closure at WP:AN isn't necessary, then how about different various closers for cerain section(s)? I don't mind one or two closers for one part or another or more. --George Ho (talk) 17:39, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

During Phase I of RFA2024, we had ended up having multiple closers for different RFCs, even the non-obvious ones. I think different people closing subparts of this should be acceptable Soni (talk) 09:22, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bumping this as an important discussion very much in need of and very much overdue for a formal closure. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Doing... designated RfA monitors (at least in part). voorts (talk/contributions) 16:40, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Partly done designated RfA monitors. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:31, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For recall, @Sirdog: had attempted a close of one section, and then self-reverted. Just in case a future closer finds this helpful. Soni (talk) 07:17, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the ping. For what it's worth, I think that close was an accurate assessment of that single section's consensus, so hopefully I make someone's day easier down the line. Happy to answer questions from any editor about it.

—Sirdog (talk) 07:38, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I also think closing some sections at a time is pretty acceptable, especially given we have only been waiting 2+ months for them. I also have strong opinions on 'involved experienced editors' narrowing down a closer's scope just because they speak strongly enough on how they think it should be closed. But I am Capital-I involved too, so shall wait until someone takes these up. Soni (talk) 08:53, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree. Not many people agreed with the concerns expressed on article talk about closing section by section. If a closer can't find consensus because the discussion is FUBAR, they can make that determination. voorts (talk/contributions) 12:50, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 444#RFC: The Telegraph on trans issues

(Initiated 75 days ago on 3 June 2024) Initial close has been overturned at review. A new close is required. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:36, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Gaza genocide#RfC on the inclusion on the BU Today article in the lede

(Initiated 56 days ago on 22 June 2024) nableezy - 17:53, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Titles of European monarchs

(Initiated 55 days ago on 22 June 2024) - I thank the Wikipedia community for being so willing to discuss this topic very extensively. Because 30 days have passed and requested moves in this topic area are already being opened (For reference, a diff of most recent edit to the conversation in question), I would encourage an uninvolved editor to determine if this discussion is ready for closure. AndrewPeterT (talk) (contribs) 22:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(Also, apologies if I have done something incorrectly. This is my first time filing such a request.) AndrewPeterT (talk) (contribs) 22:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is ongoing discussion there as to whether a closer for that discussion is necessary or desirable. I would suggest to wait and see how that plays out.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:58, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is dragging on ad nauseam. I suggest an admin closes this, possibly with the conclusion that there is no consensus to change. PatGallacher (talk) 17:50, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Anti-Defamation League#RfC: Wikipedia reliability section

(Initiated 47 days ago on 30 June 2024) - Note: Part of the article and talk page are considered to be a contentious topic, including this RfC. --Super Goku V (talk) 10:28, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 447#Reliability_of_Thomas_Lockley

(Initiated 45 days ago on 2 July 2024) - The original topic (Lockley's book, "African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan") has not been the focus of discussion since the first few days of the RFC when it seemed to reach a concensus. The book in question is no longer cited by the Yasuke page and has been replaced by several other sources of higher quality. Since then the subject of the RSN has shifted to an extension of Talk:Yasuke and has seen many SPA one post accounts hijack the discussion on the source to commit BLP violations towards Thomas Lockley almost exclusively citing Twitter. Given that the general discussion that was occuring has shifted back to [Talk:Yasuke] as well as the continued uptick in SPA's committing NOTHERE and BLP violations on the RSN, as well as the source in question is no longer being used - I think closure is reasonable. Relm (talk) 20:17, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Hermann_Göring#Rfc_for_Herman_Göring's_Lede_Image_(2024)

(Initiated 44 days ago on 4 July 2024) Discussion is ready to be closed. Nemov (talk) 01:09, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Nikola Tesla/Nationality and ethnicity#Nikola_Tesla_birthplace_,_review_after_10_years

(Initiated 43 days ago on 5 July 2024) This is a contentious issue, so I would like to ask for an uninvolved editor to properly close. Please have consideration to each argument and provide an explanation how each argument and source was considered. People have strong opinions on this issue so please take consideration if their statements and claims are accompanied by quotes from sources and whether WP guidelines are followed. We need to resolve this question based on sources and not opinions, since it was discussed multiple times over the years. Trimpops2 (talk) 23:46, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The present text in the article is ambiguous. The present sentence within the Military Frontier, in the Austrian Empire (present-day Croatia) can be interpreted in two ways, as can be seen from the discussion. One group of editors interpret this as "although today in Croatia, Tesla's birthplace was not related to Kingdom of Croatia at the time of his birth in the 19th century" and other group of editors are claiming that "at that time the area was a part of "Kingdom of Croatia". I hope that end consensus will resolve that ambiguity. Whatever the consensus will be, let's not have ambiguous text. The article should provide a clear answer to that question. Trimpops2 (talk) 16:16, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:La France Insoumise#RfC: How should the political position of La France Insoumise be described?

(Initiated 40 days ago on 7 July 2024) Discussion has already died down and the 30 days have elapsed. Uninvolved closure is requested. Thanks a lot! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:45, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Chaotic Enby I was reviewing this for a close, but I wonder if reopening the RFC and reducing the number of options would help find a consensus. It seems like a consensus could be found between options A or D. Nemov (talk) 12:35, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That could definitely work! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 12:41, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:2024 United Kingdom general election#RfC: Inclusion of parties in the Infobox

(Initiated 40 days ago on 8 July 2024). Ready for closing, last !vote was 12 July by looks of it. CNC (talk) 16:27, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Proposal to revise CSD R3

(Initiated 38 days ago on 9 July 2024) Poster withdrew the RfC but due to the language used, I think a summary by an WP:UNINVOLVED editor would be preferable. Nickps (talk) 20:52, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Gaza_Health_Ministry_qualifier

(Initiated 33 days ago on 15 July 2024) -sche (talk) 15:19, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There have been only 5 !votes since end July (out of 50+) so this could be closed now. Selfstudier (talk) 10:23, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

Deletion discussions

XFD backlog
V	Jul	Aug	Total
CfD	0	37	37
TfD	1	3	4
MfD	1	0	1
FfD	0	1	1
RfD	16	21	37
AfD	0	0	0

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

Other types of closing requests

Talk:There was no such thing as Palestinians#Merge to Golda Meir?

(Initiated 261 days ago on 29 November 2023) Discussion started 29 November 2023. Last comment 25 July 2024. TarnishedPath^talk 00:34, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Twitter_under_Elon_Musk#Requested_move_24_May_2024

(Initiated 84 days ago on 24 May 2024) Originally closed 3 June 2024, relisted following move review on 17 June 2024 (34 days ago). Last comment was only 2 days ago, but comments have been trickling in pretty slowly for weeks. Likely requires a decently experienced closer. Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 01:54, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive 194#Notifying_Wikiprojects_and_WP:CANVASS

(Initiated 81 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]

Doing...— Frostly (talk) 22:35, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Frostly Are you still planning on doing this? Soni (talk) 16:57, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Soni, yes - have drafted close and will post by the end of today. Thanks! — Frostly (talk) 17:56, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wanted to note that this is taking slightly longer than expected, but it is at the top of my priority and will be completed soon. — Frostly (talk) 05:14, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Frostly Just checking, would you like someone else to help with this? Soni (talk) 07:31, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Archived. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 13:32, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:You Like It Darker#Proposed merge of Finn (short story) into You Like It Darker

(Initiated 79 days ago on 30 May 2024) Contentious merge discussion requiring uninvolved closer. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:35, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:2024 Nuseirat_rescue operation#Proposed_merge_of_Nuseirat_refugee_camp_massacre_into_2024_Nuseirat_rescue_operation

(Initiated 69 days ago on 8 June 2024) Since much of the discussion centers on the title of the article rather than its content, the closer should also take into account the requested move immediately below on the talk page. Smyth (talk) 15:17, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the closer finds "no consensus", I have proposed this route in which a discussion on merger and RM can happen simultaneously to give clearer consensus.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 20:10, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:List of common misconceptions#Split proposal

(Initiated 40 days ago on 8 July 2024) – Editors would feel more comfortable if an uninvolved closer provided a clear statement about whether a consensus to WP:SPLIT exists, and (if so) whether to split this list into two or three lists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:06, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

Laura Hale topic ban

I would like to propose a topic ban for User:LauraHale from using any Spanish-language sources, since these are her most frequently used sources, but she doesn't understand them and frequently introduces completely incorrect "facts" into articles. This is always a problem, but certainly from someone with a semi-official function wrt Spanish articles.

From her user page: "I have been a Wikimedian in Residence for the Spanish Paralympic Committee since late June 2013."

She recently came back to my attention in the discussion Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 99#Laura Hale revisited from early December 2013, where she had an article lined up for the main page claiming that a Spanish Paralympian had competed at the 1996 Paralympics, which was completely false. Her defense there was:

"I admit that I made a mistake because of a bad Google translation. I have tried to be as diligent as possible to insure I make very few mistakes of this kind. Problems of potentially misunderstanding a source is why we have a review process though, to try to correct any unintentional insertions of non-factual information. It's also why DYK requires articles to be fully sourced."

Yesterday, she moved Rafael Botello Jimenez to the main namespace, but again, this article contains blatant misinformation which seems to be due to poorly (machine-)translated Spanish sources. In this case, the article claims that "In 2010, he competed in the New York City Marathon, finishing in a time of 1:47.39, making him the first Spanish wheelchair competitor to finish the race.[3]" This is rather awkwardly phrased, but stringly gives the impression that he was the first Spanish wheelchaor competitor ever to finish the NY marathon, which is clearly wrong, considering that e.g. in 2007 another Spanish competitor finished ahead of him[1]. The article also claims that "He was the first Spanish wheelchair competitor to go sub 1:15 on in the marathon and sub 10:15 in the 5,000 meters.[1]", but the source makes it clear that he went sub 1 hour 25 (not 15) minutes on the marathon, and it would be nice if different notation was used for hour:minutes and minutes:seconds, not as it is done here.

Another example, also from yesterday: Aitor Oroza Flores: the article claims that he "works as a mechanic, cook and lecturer.[2]", which seems rather intriguing. In reality, his hobbies are "Aficiones: Lectura, mecánica y cocina.", so he doesn't work as a lecturer but likes reading...

We shouldn't let an editor who has so much trouble understanding even the most basic Spanish texts work on BLPs of Spanish people, and even less so as a "Wikimedian in Residence" for such topics. Considering that the problems continue after even the rather blatant incident from last month, and seem to be widespread and serious (the Aitor Oroza Flores example above is a good illustration of this), protecting her, ourselves, and the people involved from further problems and a more massive cleanup operation than we probably already need to undertake, needs to be our priority. A topic ban seems to be the most efficient way to achieve this. Fram (talk) 17:17, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You'd need more evidence of consistent multiple errors in her articles than that Fram.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:26, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Dr Blofeld, it seems reasonable to me that once we know someone doesn't adequately speak the language of the sources they're using, and therefore has been introducing errors into articles based on poor translation, we should ask them to stop trying to use sources in that language. Once or twice is enough for that.

However, what's not entirely clear to me from Fram's summary is whether someone has tried to have a conversation with Laura about this. I don't see one on her talk page, at least. Fram, have you or anyone else approached Laura and said, "Hey, it looks like your Spanish isn't really good enough to be doing this sort of sourcing; could you please avoid using Spanish-language sources"? Has she refused to do so? Or have we jumped right from "I recognize a problem in someone else" to "proposing topic ban" without attempting "asking them to stop"? A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:38, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I believe such conversation is contained in the first reference provided by Fram. (Actually, I see a consensus for DYK topic ban there, does someone know why the topic ban was not implemented?)--Ymblanter (talk) 17:45, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The DYK talk thread appears to be about topic-banning Laura from DYK. It mentions the Spanish issues, but only in the context of "...and here's why she shouldn't be allowed to submit DYKs," and no one in that thread is really addressing whether Laura should stop using Spanish sources. I guess my point is that no one has presented Laura with "Your Spanish skills aren't up to the job, we need you to stop using Spanish sources for now, in any article," and it seems weird to escalate to a topic ban without seeing if she'll just, you know, stop. That said, however, I do think Laura needs to stop attempting to use Spanish sources, based on what I'm seeing. I'm just wondering whether a topic ban is necessary to have that happen (and maybe it is, but I'd like to see this involve a conversation with Laura about this particular issue, so we can determine that). Hopefully now that this thread is here, she'll be willing to weigh in and engage with the community's concerns. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:27, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)I have not contacted her on her talk page, no. I would think that someone who has her position, and has a problem like the one from the DYK discussion from last month, would recognise that she needs to take a lot more care with the sources she uses. Considering that with her position as Wikimedian in residence and her topics, she basically can't agree to not using Spanish sources, but seeing that on the other hand she doesn't seem capable to do so with sufficient accuracy at all, I thought that having an outside, binding discussion would be more logical and fruitful. Anyway, other articles and DYKs seem to have sufficient problems as well, looking at rejected recent DYKS like Template:Did you know nominations/María Carmen Rubio and Template:Did you know nominations/David Mouriz Dopico. Fram (talk) 18:04, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I echo what User:Fluffernutter said. If someone (doesn't matter if it's Jimbo or an IP editor) heavily relies on Google Translate or other online translation service to translate an entire sentence, they probably don't have a clue in that language to judge whether the translated sentence is factually correct. Now back to Laura. Fram provided evidence of three articles that contained wrong information as a result of improper translation. Others above have brought the previous DYK topic ban attempt into the discussion. From a chronological perspective, we see that only the first article made its way to DYK and the two subsequent articles did not. So I don't think we should tie this with the DYK topic ban. However, since this topic ban proposal is about "using any Spanish-language sources", I see the merit in it. But if it's enacted, how can we enforce it? Laura could have used other languages (e.g. Italian, Portuguese) to circumvent this topic ban and we will be back here very shortly. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:16, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that she only speaks English, so topic-ban for using any machine translations seems in principle sensible to me.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:34, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ban? When the obvious solution is to run it by a competent translator? We are still tying to help each other out, I think. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:54, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

" I would think that someone who has her position..." Wait, what has her employment got to do with this? If she wasn't a Wikimedian in Residence, would you still be making this proposal? If so, why is it relevant? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:02, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- This is not someone making a one-off or limited series of articles based on Spanish sources, this is someone who does this in a semi-offocial position on a serial basis and can be expected to continue doing these articles. Her position is important background, also indicating that she is not some newbie. Fram (talk) 21:50, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Apart from the original mistake (which has been discussed before), you've given three examples here:

The first is mildly badly written English ("In 2010 ... making him the first Spanish wheelchair competitor to finish the race" implies the 2010 race, not every year's race.) It's not a translation problem; the problem is merely the slightly ambiguous English.
The second looks just as likely, in fact far more likely, to be a typo rather than anything to do with Google translate. (Does Google translate turn "25" into "15"?) The 1 and 2 keys are next to each other on most keyboards.
The third is a bit more uncertain, but could just as well be a careless hurried manual translation (see false friend) rather than a Google translate problem.

Your evidence doesn't prove your thesis, in fact it doesn't even come close. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:11, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

- The topic ban is not based on her using machine translations, human translations or baboon translations, the tpic ban is because she consistently uses bad translations. I really don't care where she get these, the "Google translation" comes from her own admission, not from some research on what produced these results. Fram (talk) 21:50, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I really do think that this should have been discussed with Laura before it was brought here, As a Wikimedian in Residence in Australia she did some excellent work. She is now living in Spain, and presumably learning Spanish. A quiet talk with her would probably result in getting a Spanish friend to check her translations. All this drama could have been avoided. --Bduke (Discussion) 21:34, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- She had a completely incorrect DYK due to a bad translation, which was discussed with her at WT:DYK, but which didn't change anything. Yes, all this drama could have been avoided if she had made some effort instead of continuing with more of the same... Fram (talk) 21:50, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- This is a very ill judged discussion. Lets just imagine that these mistakes had come from poorly misunderstood sources in English. They might be misunderstood facts, poorly written English or because it is unusual English. Would we ban that editor from using English sources? We are constantly having to make value judgements about sources and facts and we make mistakes. I'm pleased to see that someone spotted an error. They should fix it and move on. If there is a problem then it doesnt require us to vote on someones first guess at a solution to the problem. Other solutions exist ... and actually the problem is not going to cause the sky to fall. Victuallers (talk) 22:06, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - Yes, what on earth is this doing on an Administrator noticeboard. Fram should have discussed this on Laura's user page. That would be much closer to our standard approaches with problematic user behaviour. As for Laura's English, no it's not perfect (nor is mine), but that's the easiest thing in the world for any of us to fix. And why a topic ban? She obviously has good knowledge of the area involved, and access to good sources. The aim here should be to simply fix the translation problem. HiLo48 (talk) 22:10, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    - And how would you suggest we do this? How do you fix a translation problem? Victuallers as well says "other solutions exist", but offers none. This is not about making "value judgments", when you claim that someone works as a lecturer because you can't understand Spanish and the source says that someone has reading as a hobby, then you just aren't fit to use Spanish sources (and no, the Spanish source was not written poorly or in unusual Spanish; a sports journalist writing solely about Spanish artists should know the word "aficionado", and here the word was "Aficiones", which is very basic Spanish anyay) and when someone has had serious problems in that regard recently, but continues to create dozens of articles based on nothing but Spanish and Catalan sources, then something needs to be done. Fram (talk) 05:46, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      - Discuss it with her? Offer to help? HiLo48 (talk) 06:16, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Indeed. Serious lack of WP:AGF from the originators of this AN thread, from what I'm seeing. Orderinchaos 08:34, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      - It just seems hard to believe we are bereft of knowledge of Spanish, and no one will help vet before publication here when she has a problem on BLP's. [2] [3] For example, I have asked knowledgeable wikipedians to vet non-English sources, and they seem to be quite helpful people. Doesn't your proposal seem more than a little cruel for someone working in Spain?-- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:48, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Cruel? It's her choice to continue producing clearly deficient articles on BLPs by using completely incorrect translations (no matter how they are produced), even after the result of such actions have been pointed out. In the above linked DYK discussion from one month ago, she stated "My Spanish is good enough that I can pick up most facts, and know where there are issues. [...] I also hangout in #wikimedia-es and #wikinews-es a lot asking for clarification on Spanish I do not understand. I also have access to native speakers that assist me when I ask." If all these assurances she gave are not sufficient, then what more can we ask? She is producing English language articles for the Spanish Paralympic Committee, who probably trust her work blindly (considering that she is the Wikimedian in Residence). Isn't it cruel towards the Committee to let her continue to produce such basic errors? We know there are problems, her assurances from a month ago seem to be worthless, so the next step is to force a change. Fram (talk) 13:18, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        But, no the first step and restriction is not a total ban. 'Hi Laura. I notice you are still having problems with BLP Spanish translations: ... . Especially because these are BLPs, we should have these articles and sources vetted by people more knowledgeable in Spanish before publication (See [4][5]) What do you say?' The Committee probably believes we are helpful to each other and interested in their work that is notable, so it would be good to foster that belief, since we regularly say we produce this work in a "spirit of camaraderie and cooperation". -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:42, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Considering the years of problems with this editor, as evidenced by the comments from others here as well, this is hardly "the first step". And I have no interest in playing games to hide the incompetence (or whatever reason applies) of some editor; yes, we are interested in their work and the notable athletes, and for that reason we feel that it is very problematic that the dedicated editor for these is making such a mess of it, and continues doing so after many earlier problems. That is the message the Committee should get, not some "spirit of camaraderie and cooperation". Fram (talk) 14:10, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Games? Cooperation is not a game, here. What years of problems with Spanish translations? You appear to admit that some of the work is serviceable and you say below that there is virtually no one else who is interested in writing for Wikipedia about the Committee. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:35, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Cooperation is a two-way street though. And it looks as if you prefer incorrect articles to no articles? I'ld rather not have an article in an encyclopedia, than an article with such blatantly incorrect information. And if I were the Committee, I certainly wouldn't want to have a Wikimedian in Residence who contributes such incorrect and poor articles. Fram (talk)
        I am seriously concerned with the fact that we seem to have some real problems with Laura's editing, she is aware of the discussion, but has chosen not to respond. I have left another message at her talk page, inviting he either here or to any other place at her choice.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:48, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        What? You have not read what I wrote (I said approach with a vetting plan). If cooperation is a street, this board is telling the OP that they have not driven on it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:00, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        I do not understand what you are talking about. What cooperation? What board? Anyway she has responded, hopefully we can resolve the issue at least temporarily.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:21, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        I assumed you wrote, "cooperation is a two way street", (is that someone else's unsigned comment?) so that is the cooperation I am talking about. As for board, I meant this comment notice board, AN. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:27, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        No, I did not write that, but anyway, thanks, I now understand what you mean. My communication with Laura is in the meanwhile going nowhere. If someone feels they can help I would welcome any help there.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:36, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        My apologies, my signature was missing there, I have now added it. Sorry for the confusion. Fram (talk) 15:39, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's rather poor form to start a thread here without a serious attempt to discuss the matter with Laura privately: it's not like she's difficult to contact. I've always found her to be receptive to comments, including in relation to errors in her DYK nominations. Nick-D (talk) 08:01, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with Nick and others - a topic ban should be the last stage of a process that has involved failed previous attempts to resolve any perceived problems and serial offending. I'm not seeing any evidence of any previous attempts at all - there's been a race on to find the biggest hammer to crack the nut, which is an abuse of the process being engaged. If you have a problem, talk to the editor about it. And the basis is weak too - many new articles on Wikipedia, even by experienced editors, are weak, contain misunderstandings of sources etc... then the Wikipedia community fixes them up. Orderinchaos 08:31, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I see her Australian colleagues are rushing to her defence. No, Laura Hale has consistently demonstrated a cavalier attitude to the use of sources; that is why she's been effectively chased out of Australian paralympic topics, where like a rapid bulldozer she created hundreds of article stubs that were marked by the poor use of sources and consequent factual errors—not to mention the display of a talent for appallingly bad prose. Something more substantive needs to be done to stop damage to the project. There are so many examples, but here is one where the BLP subject came along and corrected bloopers herself. You wonder whether Hale actually reads the sources she quotes.
"what's not entirely clear to me from Fram's summary is whether someone has tried to have a conversation with Laura about this"—The problem is that anyone who approaches Hale concerning her substandard editorial practices is likely to be slapped in the face. That's what happened to me. So my advice is: don't dare to. Tony (talk) 09:35, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Firstly, I'm not a "colleague", nor are most here - I write on political and geographic topics, as a cursory inspection of my edits would quickly demonstrate. And I think it's a little misleading to not note your own mile-wide conflict of interest with regard to Laura - it'd be fair to say you don't like her very much for reasons that have nothing to do with WP and everything to do with the internal politics of a national chapter neither of you are part of any more. Orderinchaos 15:15, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The more I look into this, the less I believe that a topic ban from using Spanish sources is really sufficient. Looking at random articles she created the past few months, I stumbled upon Cesar Neira Perez. It contains the sentence "He was the number one cyclists to finish in the Road Trial race." What is intended is that he won the gold medal at the Individual time trial, i.e. at the Cycling at the 2008 Summer Paralympics – Men's road time trial, where he is still a redlink BTW (the article she created should be at Cesar Neira). "Contrarreloj en Carretera" can literally be translated as "Trial in Road" or "Road Trial", but certainly in a cycling, sporting context, it is the road time trial that is intended. And "the number one cyclists to finish"? Well, that sentence seems to be a stock phrase, looking at Juan José Méndez Fernández: "He was the number three cyclists to finish in the Road Trial LC4 race." "He was the number two cyclists to finish in the Road Trial LC4 race. He was the number three cyclists to finish in the Individual Pursuit track LC4 race." But there are equally incorrect variations, like in Roberto Alcaide García: "He was the first racer to finish in the Individual Pursuit track LC2 race." "He was the second racer to finish in the Individual Pursuit track LC2 race. He was the third racer to finish in the Road Trial LC2 race." Perhaps he really was the third racer to finish, but that is totally unimportant. If he finished third though, and won a bronze medal, then perhaps that should be written a bit more clearly? I don't know whether LauraHale doesn't understand sports or doesn't copyedit her articles, but really, this kind of crap should not be created by someone with her credentials.

Two days ago, she added "[...]he was a participant in the awarding of the Medals of Asturias component, [...]". What meant is that he was awarded a Medal of Asturias. In the same series of edits[6], she incorrectly removed the 1992 participation and medals this athlete won. Editors which are supposed to be knowledgeable in the field, but start removing correct and fundamental information (Paralympics participation and medals are quite essential info for a Paralympic athlete), make Wikipedia worse, not better, with little chance of being swiftly being corrected as they are implicitly trusted, and working in a field with very few editors. Fram (talk) 14:04, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not understanding Spanish, or sports, or both? Juan Emilio Gutiérrez Berenguel: "He also participated in road events, finishing one event in eleventh place in a thirteen deep with a time of 1:42.51.[4][11]" This rather vague sentence refers to the Cycling at the 2012 Summer Paralympics – Men's road race C1–3, where he finished 11th in the time given (note that he still is a redlink in that article). So where does the "thirteen deep" come from. Well the actual field had 40 cyclists, of which 26 finished, but the source LauraHale used, [7], states "En la clase C3, Juan Emilio Gutiérrez fue undécimo (1:42.51), seguido de Juan José Méndez (1:43.32) y Maurice Eckard (1:43.32)." Logically, if you finish in 11th place, and there are two people behind you, then the field was 13 deep, no? Well, no, not if the source really means "followed by two other Spaniards (given) among a number of riders from other countries (not interesting to our readers, so not given)".

Her articles are filled with these errors, uninformative sentences, oft-repeated phrases, misconceptions, and so on, and I don't know what the best solution is to deal with it. Wikipedia:Competence is required comes to mind. With an editor with hundreds of DYKs and so on, it is not as if they are still learning the requirements. Fram (talk) 14:39, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If what you say is true you'd need to provide sufficient evidence of mass errors in everything she creates. She's created a staggering number of articles on Spanish paralympians and I'd need to see examples of multiple serious errors in articles to warrant a ban. At the end of the day she's a volunteer here and doesn't have to bother. I'm curious Fram, do you suspect she's being paid to do this? This really doesn't seem to be the right place to make such a proposal and as you can see most of the editors who've turned up are Australian who know Laura and it's hardly going to attract a neutral investigation.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:16, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Of course she doesn't have to bother, that's hardly the point. I have no idea if she is paid or not, that's not really essential (although I would consider it a waste of money if she was); I notice loads of problems (probably not in every article, but in way too many), and no signs of improvement or even recognition of the problems. She has now responded on her talk page concerning this[8], claiming e.g. that "The three examples Fram provided were not about translation errors. One was a typographical error. One was contorting the English language to avoid close paraphrasing from a translation. The third was a misunderstanding of a topic, not an issue of translation." The third she refers to is putting "works as a lecturer" instead of "hobby is reading"; I fail to see how this "misundestanding of a topic" can be anything but an issue of translation, but feel free to provide an explanation that is not less charitable than "translation issue" (I don't think she doesn't know the difference between work and hobbies, and I also don't believe that she was deliberately including false information here, so which explanations remain possible?). Fram (talk) 15:47, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Dr. Blofeld: I think you are going too far in your defence of LauraHale. You are acting ignobly to the extent of casting aspersions on the motives of Fram even when the proof of Laura's incompetence is for all to see. Yes, we should stick up for fellow DYK contributors, but don't let blind loyalty obstruct the real goal of improving WP. Languages are full of intricacies, and many do not become apparent until you become an advanced user who understands the culture as well as the words themselves. LH is so obviously out of her depth with Spanish. She does not understand it properly to make good sense of the story, which explains why this is a recurring problem. I think you, of all people, should be having private words in her ear to get her to amend her ways before the community does with blunt force. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 02:36, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How am I going too far in defending Laura??? I think my response has been fairly neutral. All I know is that Fram for a very long time has not approved of Laura and he felt that way long before she even began working on Spanish articles, it stems from her earliest Australian sportspeople articles. If every article Laura produces does contain major translation errors then this is a clear problem and needs to be solved. I've simply said that I really want to see evidence that she's consistently makes translation errors. A handful of articles with minor issues out of several thousand Laura has created isn't enough for me to think that a ban from Spanish translation would be necessary. Rather I'd urge her to slow down and get a friend in Spain or on here to proof read them.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:46, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to talk to her at her talk page, but I got the impression she believes the percentage of her errors is low. Then I randomly took one article she created (the last one) and found four significant errors (which I corrected). So I believe this is a problem, I believe a topic ban is not the best solution (since the problem is not restricted to translation errors), and I do not see from her side any willingness to slow done. May be you can help on her talk page to take the matter further. Note that I am perfectly neutral, I do not have any issues with her, I do knot know who is her employer and I do not want to know, and our previous interaction was reasonably pleasant.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:41, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"A handful of articles with minor issues out of several thousand Laura has created isn't enough for me to think that a ban from Spanish translation would be necessary." Not "out of several thousand", but out of the handful she created most recently. And I don't think claiming that someone works as a lecturer when what is said is that his hobby is reading is a "minor issue". And you don't need to show that every article contains such errors, if the frequency is sufficiently high then that is enough of a problem. Anyway, I have since provided a fair number of examples indicating that while the problem is not restricted to translation errors, it is very widespread nevertheless. Fram (talk) 12:59, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, so long as you tried to speak to her and are convinced that she is genuinely causing a major problem with every article.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:03, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Again, someone doesn't need to be "causing a major problem with every article" to get a restriction. There are major problems with too many articles, but that doesn't mean that every article is problematic (nearly all have more minor problems though). As for speaking with her, in the past I had a discussion with her about incorrectly using Spanish sources (on the Flat Bastion Road article), I tried to keep her out of DYKs because she had too many problems there, and there was the DYK discussion of last month regarding a major hook mistake due to an incorrect translation. I didn't have a further discussion on her talk page, having received the impression from those discussions that that would not have been welcomed or fruitful at all. Before the note about the December DYK discussion, the last time I went to her talk page was to inform her of the deletion discussion for Template:2012 Australian Paralympic Ski Team, which she had created. Fram (talk) 14:36, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, is it your proposal now that Laura Hale be banned from Wikipedia for incompetence? Since your first proposal is failing, is it wise to go long? Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:52, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, I am further researching her contributions, and encounter further major issues, some directly related to the original post, some more tangential but not less problematic. Any thoughts on how to resolve this are welcome, but I no longer think that simply restricting her use of Spanish source will be sufficient (nor the help of editors who have a better knowledge of Spanish and are willing to help). It seems to be a more general problem with her editing, as seen in the above examples and in the comments of people who noticed the same when she was working on articles for Australian athletes. Mentoring may be a possibility. Requiring her to go through AfC, which was recently imposed on another long-term contributor, is also possible. Letting her continue as before is also a possibility, but I fail to see why nyone would support that. Fram (talk) 14:59, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Has there been an RFC/U? Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:12, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Has there been any somewhat successful RfC/U on any well-established editor in the last few years? Fram (talk) 15:39, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That probably depends on what one means by success: 1)Identifying the problems? 2) having a good discussion about it? 3) leading to mutual understanding? 4)leading to resolution? or 5) leading to a basis for further action? Some have probably had some success in some of those areas but not in others. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:53, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Whoever suggested that Laura didn't aware of this or calling it "serious lack of AGF" should give their head a little shake. During the discussion in DYK last month, it already mentioned Spanish issue. That's sufficient to say that she's been given notice (or warning, depending on how you see it) to be careful with it. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:46, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see merit in an RfC/U, mainly because discussions like this end up in a wall of text which discourages passers-by. I have noticed her name pop up in a few discussions like this, and I think it is worth a well-structured RfC with all the evidence in one place (sorry Fram). I have not looked into her editing myself as have been busy elsewhere but this seems to be popping up frequently enough it needs some sort of more formal resolution one way or the other. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:49, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Now I looked into her last created page (Jan 4), and reported the results at her talk page. On top of the awkward prose (which I may be wrong about as a non-native English speaker) I found at least four issues, some of which might originate from a bad translation, and others presumably from elsewhere. Based on this analysis, (i) I believe we have indeed a problem here; (ii) a topic ban as suggested is not an appropriate solution, and I do not knwo what would be appropriate. Possibly RFC/U is for now the best course of action. There we can discuss problems, and, hopefully together with Laura, find the best way to address them. If somebody things that one randomly taken article for whatever reason is not representative please let me know, I can do a couple of more (it took me about an hour to handle this article).--Ymblanter (talk) 21:05, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This thread is a perfect example of what's wrong with Admin noticeboards, and why I am very reluctant to bring any problem to them. Anyone with any negative feelings about an editor, from any time in the history of Wikipedia, is free to leap in with irrelevant negative bullshit that shouldn't but does build an even bigger negative image of the accused for the case at hand. Those who join this massive pile-on of mud suffer no negative consequences themselves. The real case gets buried in crap. Wikipedia's justice systems stink! HiLo48 (talk) 21:18, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Uninvolvededitor This thread is too involved for me to jump in at this point, but you need to seriously tone it down, HiLo48. Erpert ^{WHAT DO YOU WANT???} 01:32, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why? Is what I said not true? HiLo48 (talk) 01:42, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is a systematic problem with the way the dramaboards work. Mark Arsten (talk) 03:20, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This needs to end (support ban). There have been enough language and other problems with articles User:LauraHale has been writing on Spanish paralympians. Fram drafted the original complaint in November 2012 that didn't fly; she was reprimanded at DYK in early December 2013 for her now infamous "Did you know... that 2006 Spanish Paralympic alpine skier Daniel Caverzaschi was ranked 20th in the world in wheelchair tennis in October 2013?". At that time she offered her excuses and promised to be more vigilant. Her skills in Spanish are clearly not up to it, and I had suggested she voluntarily stop using machine translations. She said that she had a pool of Spanish-speakers she could call upon, but I don't see any efficacy in that from the results demonstrated hereinabove. I also see no embarrassment, contrition, nor sense that she admits to anything but a bit of carelessness. She has so far kept to her talk page, it seems that she is deliberately ducking this discussion although she was duly warned, hoping that others might think that she hasn't been adequately warned and that it will go away if she keeps a lower profile. Whilst she admits to some basic human failings, she casts Fram as the bogeyman, probably hoping that the messenger would get shot instead of her.
Fram was persistently on the back of another editor whom I (and many others) thought was close to God. They spotted the early warning signs, but it was only much later and after escalating problems that the community later realised the legitimacy of Fram's concerns and banned/blocked said editor. Although I would like to see enthusiastic editors get the benefit of the doubt, I'd say that the assumption of goodwill is wearing mighty thin. IMHO, Fram is again spot on. I hope that the community realises sooner, rather than later, that Laura is becoming a menace and needs to immediately stop, or be stopped from, using sources in a language that she does not have full mastery of. It's time for a zero tolerance approach to Laura's continued incompetence and blame game. Let it be made clear at the same time that if her "typos" (particularly when numbers get mistyped, transposed or otherwise mis-stated) are a matter of continuing concern with her work, that the community will ban her from using a keyboard to contribute to Wikipedia. I don't know if she realises she may lose her job if she gets banned from WP for any length of time, but so be it. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 02:18, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is that what this is about? Targeting her employment? I did wonder above why Fram brought that into it. I'm sure something similar came up in a past arbcom case. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:55, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's not "targeting her employment". You got it the other way around, as she seems to be using Wikipedia to further her own ends. But note that she's not doing her "employers" any favours either with the very blatant errors she is committing. Oh, I wonder how they would react if they knew the truth... -- Ohc ^¡digame! 03:02, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That seems like a pretty serious allegation. Do you have any evidence for it? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not interested in dishing out any dirt. Go look elsewhere. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 03:25, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose from editor 9,600 mi / 15,400 km from Australia. As previously noted, concerns should be discussed with editors before raising them on AN or ANI. NE Ent 03:04, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. There is good evidence on both sides, but not good enough to merit a topic ban, and yes, I looked at the diffs. Viriditas (talk) 06:27, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support, part of along-term pattern. Graham87 08:15, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support - this is a long-term issue with this user not confined to DYK, but which also extends to GAC and FAC. I cannot in good conscience oppose this topic-ban when this user continuously flouts editorial process and shows a lack of discipline in their editing. Quality not quantity. When a user focuses on the creation of poorly-reviewed, poorly-sourced and poorly-written content, there exists a problem. James ^{(T • C)} • 9:27pm • 10:27, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support per James above. Andreas JN466 23:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support Compelling evidence that suggests long-term poor QA & disregard for community concerns. 94.194.24.46 (talk) 02:11, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - The above anonymous IP seems dubious...New anonynympus IP account that from his summary comments HERE seems to know his way around WP extremely well. Dubious? Yes. Maybe even a disengenuous sockpuppet perhaps? Mercy11 (talk) 18:23, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Since Laura has declined to participate in this thread or in further conversation about her sourcing/article creation habits, I support this proposal with a wrinkled nose, though I prefer Tony's "Formal Proposal" below as a way to handle Spanish issues, and I'm beginning to wonder whether some sort of overarching article creation probation may be needed as well based on evidence people are surfacing here. Per the evidence given by other users, it seems that the trouble is more in Laura's article-creation QA than in her Spanish skills in particular, but it currently seems to be leaking out mostly in Spanish-related articles. Topic-banning Laura entirely from Spanish-source-using is therefore using a hammer that's a bit too blunt for my taste, but I'd take this option over no restriction at all. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 03:37, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose It’s the job of the DYK team to check the quality of the work that is published. This witch-hunt is trying to mask their own incompetence. See also WP:SOFIXIT. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 07:54, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- This is not solely about DYKs though, many of her articles are never submitted for DYK. And DYK is not a substitute for fat checking, editors are responsible for the content they produce, blaming the errors on the reviewers is ignoring the initial problem completely. Fram (talk) 11:05, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - "Fat-checking"? Haha. Brilliant. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 14:43, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Premature. It looks far too much like a grudge match from those who oppose her work for other reasons - merely identifying possibly valid issues isn't enough excuse to ignore cornerstone principles and jump straight to the Wikilawyering. I'm not endorsing the content produced in saying this - Laura clearly needs to work on some things, but I believe reasonably communicating with her on these and perhaps having someone who's stronger in Spanish-English translation being available for her to speak to would likely solve the problems. If it doesn't, well, that's a matter for the future. I just think as someone that's been around a while (coming up to my 8-year anniversary) that Wikipedia has tended in a more Wiki-litigious and punitive direction when people are trying to contribute positively, it's a lot tougher to be a newbie or developing editor now than when I joined. Orderinchaos 08:33, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- But LauraHale clearly isn't a "newbie or developing editor" anymore. Fram (talk) 11:05, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also in favour of the ban per what I said earlier. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:09, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per what I and others have said earlier. Moreover, appears resolved below (per Hale and The Rambling Man cmmts). On other issues: 1) RfC/U has been noted as an option, not overly blunt and ill-fitting topic bans. 2) It was wise of Hale not to respond earlier, while the OP was going '... and another thing ... and another thing ... and another thing'; 3) If you have not even tried to talk to someone about a ban proposal against them before coming to AN, don't bring it here; 4) Punishing the User for past Australian sins is not a good or even decent basis for this ban; 5) Hale should act upon some of the sound advice she is getting in the area of QA -- most people do not like to clean-up, when the maker does not appear to care. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:15, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support - idea of editing encyclopedia using sources in language that you don't understand is already quite surreal on its own, doing so in BLPs just makes it much worse. Frankly its even questionable should she be editing BLPs at all as thinking that google translate is sufficient indicates quite serious attitude problem.--Staberinde (talk) 18:11, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose ridiculous proposal for a topic ban. Such a wide-ranging topic ban is a serious and major penalty for a content creator, and should require - at the very least - prior discussion of the problem on the target's talk page. None of that happened here. What should happen is that, if the complainants are really seriously concerned about Laura's editing, not just following up past disputes and the like, they should take the time to open an RfC/U so that this can be discussed properly. The unwillingness to do that (there's been plenty of opportunity now) is an indication of how bad faith this is. Oh, and the "hey perhaps she could get fired from her job" people need some blocks laying down on them. There's already been an arbcom case on the last editor that used that tactic against Laura, it's not rocket science. (I did give them an opportunity to retract - above.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:26, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - come on people, there are a lot of people who are contributing here with a limited knowledge of English, but are still able to contribute. If we start topic banning editors from using sources in languages that people perceive them to not be able to understand, then we are going to massively limit our non-native English content's creation and maintenance. Although there is evidence here that Laura cannot understand Spanish, and she possibly should avoid using those sources, to enact this topic ban would be a bad precedent. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 00:04, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More evidence

Yesterday, I noted how she removed correct pertinent information in these edits[9]: the article stated correctly that José Manuel González had participated and won medals in the 1992 Paralympics, but LauraHale removed this for unknown reasons.

Picking other articles she created on Spanish Paralympians randomly, I came across two table tennis players, Tomas Pinas and Álvaro Valera. The sentence "He played table tennis at the 2004 Summer Paralympics, 2008 Summer Paralympics, 2012 Summer Paralympics and the 2012 Summer Paralympics." (with the repeat of the 2012 Games) appeared in both articles, which caught my eye. Looking further, it appears quite strongly that she copied the (at first glance basically correct, despite two different birthdates) Pinas article to create the Valera article, and couldn't be bothered to do even the most basic checks. The result is that the Valera article starts with "Alvaro Valera Muñoz-Vargas (born October 16, 1982 in Seville) is a Class 3 table tennis athlete from Spain." (Pinas is a Class-3 athlete, Valera is a Class-6 to Class-8 athlete), and that his main achievements include "In 2008, he finished third in the Class 3 singles table tennis game. In 2008, he finished third in the Class 7 men's singles.", which would be a unique combination. Obviously, the first bronze medal was Pinas', not Valera's.

To add insult to injury, by copying the Pinas article, who started participating in 2004, she somehow missed that Valera also competed in the 2000 Paralympics, where he won a gold medal. So she wrote an article where she categorized a Paralympian in the wrong category, awarded him the wrong medal, and omitted the most important of his participations and medals. Fram (talk) 09:14, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to find a source that says he competed in 1992 paralympics - not used to looking for stuff like this....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:10, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The most authoritative, [10], search for surname:Gonzalez and first name:Jose Manuel in "Athlete search", and you get all the results. Here he is listed as one of seven Spanish athletes to compete in the 1992 and 2012 Paralympics. This page from the Asturian Radio and Television lists him as participating in 1992, 1996, and so on. Seems pretty conclusive to me. Not really a "typo or other minor problem"... Fram (talk) 10:51, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is getting ridiculous. Take a look at these five pages:

Antonio Delgado Palomo: born March 26, 1962 (created by LauraHale 11:19, 30 October 2013‎): 14 years old at the time of his Paralympics
Julio Gutierrez García: born March 26, 1962 (created by LauraHale 12:14, 30 October 2013‎‎): 14 years old at the time of his Paralympics
Eloy Guerrero Asensio: born March 26, 1962 (created by LauraHale 12:16, 30 October 2013‎): 14 years old at the time of his Paralympics
José Santos Poyatos: born March 26, 1962 (created by LauraHale 16:39, 30 October 2013‎): 14 years old at the time of his Paralympics
Francisco Benitez: born March 26, 1962 (created by LauraHale 10:36, 6 November 2013): 10 years old at the time of his Paralympics

Every single article created by LauraHale needs thorough fact checking for even the most basic facts. These are not occasional mistakes; this is a systematic lack of applying the minimal care that can be expected before posting something to the mainspace. We all make mistakes, but I have rarely encountered someone who does this so frequently and fundamentally, and gets away with it. Fram (talk) 10:44, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Made any attempt to fix those pages? No, didn't think so. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:37, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And your point is...? Are you going to check and correct all her pages? Have you checked or corrected even one of them? I have, but I'm not going to do all of them, and certainly not if nothing is done to prevent a further influx of similar problems. Have you actually looked at WP:SOFIXIT before linking to it? The second section is WP:RECKLESS. Fram (talk) 10:51, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I did [11]. What is your point please?--Ymblanter (talk) 11:03, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My point is that you'd rather sit here and bitch about it, rather than do anything. Carry on. With doing nothing. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 11:23, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am trying to do something about it. You don't. You prefer people creating hundreds articles riddled with errors (and worse, removing correct basic information from articles), and other editors cleaning up after them time and time again? That seems a rather unproductive way to proceed. Fram (talk) 11:33, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, you're not doing anything. Just blaming others and not doing any real work. Like most fireguards on here. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 14:40, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The next one I worked on [12] was almost fine, just some mess with the references (which is unfortunately now a common sight even for English language sources and otherwise good and productive editors).--Ymblanter (talk) 09:10, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Formal proposal

In view of the ongoing damage to the project being caused by Laura Hale's insufficient knowledge of the Spanish language and her poor editorial practices, any article text she creates and/or edits that is derived from Spanish-language sources should be worked on first in a sandbox, and be transferred into mainspace only when endorsed as acceptable by at least one editor from each of the following classes—those with sufficient skills in:

both Spanish and English, to review and endorse each of her translated texts; and
English, to review the quality of the prose.

This proposal, which I suggest should be a 90-day trial, would involve Laura Hale's informing AN of the editors who have agreed to do this, and a dated signature on the sandbox talkpage declaring that a version is acceptable for transfer to mainspace in each respect (1 and 2 above). Her progress would be reviewed at AN after the 90-day period.

The alternative would be to ban her use of any non-English-language sources. Tony (talk) 02:58, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, This is actually a second formal proposal. The first one, which seems not to enjoy consensus, was the one started by Fram above "I would like to propose..." --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have previously mentioned on numerous occasions at DYK that I would be glad to check any DYK using Spanish-language sources. Having said that, I am not available to work for Laura Hale or to check her DYKs; considering the extremely poor quality of her work and the long-standing problems, I don't understand why she hasn't been topic banned from DYK. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:18, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would support Tony's proposal as a first choice iff we or she can line up editors before the close of this thread to be Laura's "designated checkers". Passing a sanction that says she has to have her work evaluated, without having anyone on hand who says they'll evaluate it, is setting us up for Laura either never being able to create an article again (due to lack of reviewers), or deciding to sneak articles in the backdoor just to see them published (due to impatience). A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 03:37, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I also have reservations about setting up a complex machinery to follow one rogue editor's work. And although I would have supported simply banning her from using any non-English source in articles she contributes to, it seems that the problems are not so much her ability to grasp Spanish, but more down to her general inability to contribute responsibly and with due care. But something needs to be done. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 06:01, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - seems excessive given the relatively small scale of the problem being described. Also seems to set up an unnecessary hierarchy. Orderinchaos 08:36, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why not juwt ban her from translating? Or from misleading translations? Not to be ultratechy, but is using a type of source really a topic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Howunusual (talk • contribs) 14:32, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Echoing Ohconfucius and SandyGeorgia above. Andreas JN466 01:37, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by LauraHale

I apologize for not responding earlier. As someone who has created over 1,200 articles,[13], I am sure that there are a number of typos and some other minor problems with my work. Perfection is not required to contribute to Wikipedia. The issue of potential problems was first brought to my attention in early December 2013, and I responded on December 4 [14][15] to affirm that I would be more careful with my use of Spanish sources to try to insure better understanding of the source material. Most of the examples brought up here have pre-dated this committment, and I do not think there has been any demonstration of systematic problems since that commitment. I have repeatedly and privately asked for people to assist me with translations since that time on IRC, via e-mail and in person. I stand by that commitment from early December to make sure that my understanding of Spanish sources is more accurate and I am daily working to improve my own Spanish speaking skills. I would be more than happy to accept a six month requirement that before I move any article to the main space that heavily relies on Spanish language sources, that it be vetted by a native language Spanish speaker who has read all the sources and checked the accuracy of my text against the article, and then have that person comment on the draft article talk page before moving it. --LauraHale (talk) 08:45, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good enough. Move along here, nothing else to see. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:37, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Typos and other minor problems"? Have you looked at the evidence (e.g. in the section "more evidence")? And these are not from your full list of 1,200 articles, these are all from articles from the last few months, including multiple serious issues within the last dozen articles you created. Downplaying the percenatge of problems and the seriousness of them in one go gives the strong impression that you don't realize (or don't want to admit) what the actual issues are. Perhaps you can show for the next six months that you can create accurate articleson English-language sources, before we let you back near sourcs in other languages? Fram (talk) 10:30, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Waa-waa-waaa, this poridge is too hot. Give it a rest. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 11:24, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Any reason why you are trying to turn this into a childish and uncivil discussion? If you can't behave like an adult, go find some other playground. Fram (talk) 11:35, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No personal attacks please. You should know better. Again, hiding behind your own failures rather than fixing the articles in question. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 14:42, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to get involved in whether or not there should be formal bans or any other action, and I have no doubt that @LauraHale: is a valuable contributor and asset to the project; also if the issue is in hand as of 4 December 2013 than that's great. Just to say, though, that having read the above I would like to add my support to the request that Laura should be a bit more careful about making sure facts are correct, and not being flippant or dismissive when concerns are raised. The lack of necessity for WP:PERFECTION is of course an important part of the project, allowing for people who aren't brilliant writers or who just have sketchy information on a subject, but it is certainly not a licence to indiscriminately write factually incorrect material in articles in the hope that someone else will clean them up afterwards. The case of the five paralympians mentioned above seems a classic example of this. They all show the same date of birth, which I assume is not correct for all of them, a situation which could have easily been avoided with more rigorous checking of the text before or after hitting the save button. Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 10:59, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you want further examples of translation problems (and general sloppy editing) which happened since 4 December, take a look at these three, made within the space of twenty minutes on 24 December 2013: [16], [17], and [18]. "the Championship of Spain by Autonomous Open Paralympic Swimming"? Let's see, that very strangely named tournament is the "Campeonato de España Open por Autonomías de Natación Paralímpica"[19], which even Google Translate translates better than you do ("Open Championship of Spain by autonomous Paralympic Swimming"). What is meant is the "Open Paralympic Swimming Championship of Spain by Autonomous Community" ("Autonomías" being the Autonomous communities of Spain). Not a major problem, but not really an indication that anything has improved since 4 December. Oh, and of course the inevitable copy-paste error needs to be included; Alejandro Sanchez Palomero: "In 2013, he competed in the Championship of Spain by Autonomous Open Paralympic Swimming where she represented the Balearic Islands." If you change one "she" to a "he" in a sentence, it's best to change the other one as well, to avoid strange results. Fram (talk) 11:30, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think we've established that Laura makes many errors and needs to take more care before moving articles to the mainspace, but correct me if I'm wrong, above she has volunteered to a six-month embargo on moving any article translated from Spanish to the mainspace before being vetted by a native Spanish language editor. That seems like a good solution without dragging up more and more of this (which I'm not sure is benefitting anyone). For what it's worth, I'm happy to volunteer to vet these from an English-speaking perspective to knock Fram's most recent concern on the head. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:37, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A six-month ban from DYK nomination is also in order, until we can be sure that her editorial practices have improved significantly. Tony (talk) 12:24, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well presumably that isn't necessary if the new articles she nominates have to be double-vetted? And User:Lugnuts does make a valid point, if these DYKs are getting to the mainpage, it's an indictment of the DYK review process as much as Laura's editing skills. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:30, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem with such a page-vetting by one or two people for the next months. I'm just worried by her apparent dismissal of the number and seriousness of the problems her articles have. But I assume that either she will improve her work, or the "vetters" will make it clear what is wrong with it, and that in six months time we will have a much better view of the situation and way forward. Thank you for the offer to check the articles. Fram (talk) 14:41, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Goodness, who is Lugnuts? Grow up. On a more serious note, it's possible that Spanish Paralympic Committee might know of this very public thread. We should proceed with that in mind. Tony (talk) 03:01, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

He happens to be the most productive film editor on wikipedia Tony, and in my experience of him he generally has a fair outlook on most things.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:37, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More to the point - who the hell are you? Have you fixed any of these articles, or are you too busy back-slapping your lynch-mob buddies? It's not the former, if you're struggling with that one. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 18:36, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, Lugnuts, what do you think about [20]? Recent LauraHale article, not yet introduced in this discussion, again contains rather blatant errors. I corrected this one (well, I removed the most obvious errors, can't promise that there aren't any others left), but I'm really not going to spend dozens (hundreds?) of hours checking and correcting all the others, and certainly not when nothing is done to stop the influx of new ones at the same time. Any constructive comments about this whole situation? Fram (talk) 17:39, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I say, holy shit! Fram actually fixed something. Wow. Sorry I didn't reply earlier, I was busy adding content. I see you've still doing nothing about the Francisco Benitez article you linked to earlier. I'm sure another witch-hunt got in the way. Oh well. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 15:48, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jesus wept. The evidence is overwhelming, as they say... Somebody put us out of misery, please. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 08:10, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Why in this whole thread has the fact that these are BLPs not even entered the discussion? Did that policy expire in 2013? Ultra Venia (talk) 20:40, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support topic ban. It also seems like someone at the WMF needs a smack to back of their head for officially supporting (paying?) someone (cf. "Wikimedian in Residence" status) to write about topics that normally require competence in a foreign language, when said competence is clearly lacking. Someone not using his real name (talk) 21:53, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Someone not using his real name: Whoa, wait. What did we do? We're not paying her. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 04:06, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, you didn't. But some thinking on and clarification of the status of Wikipedians/Wikimedians in Residence may be useful? At the moment, it seems like these positions are mostly self-declared, organised between the institution and the editor, without any intervention, help, support, or "seal of approval" from the WMF. But the title "Wikipedian in Residence", and the pages about it on Wikimedia and Wikipedia, gives the implicit impression that these are "official", WMF-approved positions, where some vetting of the candidates or soemthing similar is done. As far as I know, this isn't true at all. Creating some clear separation between WMF and the Residents may be useful (or alternatively doing some vetting and restricting the position/title to those who the WMF have approved). Fram (talk) 08:31, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The press, where it comments on the title at all, describes (recent example) the title thus; "Wikipedian is the term used for the people who write and edit the pages of the site". Doesn't seem particularly misleading to me. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:44, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And the same article indicates that it (not the "Wikipedian", but the "Wikipedian in Residence") is done in collaboration with Wikimedia UK, making it look like an official position, not something an editor does on his own... Fram (talk) 11:54, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

...but not an official position of the WMF. While the WMF do a lot of things (we're even responsible for Anne Murray) your complaint is not with the WMF, it's with the chapters - that is, you probably want to be objecting at the organisations that have Wikipedians in Residence, as opposed to the ones that don't. It's not the Foundation's job to resolve problems caused by individual chapters. Ironholds (talk) 20:05, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ironholds, I didn't claim that it is an official position of the WMF, I said that they are "without any intervention, help, support, or "seal of approval" from the WMF.", but that the title "gives the implicit impression that these are "official", WMF-approved positions", aided by pages like [21] or [22], the latter of which makes it clear that "Wikipedian in Residence" is a title that entitles you for "requests for resources" more than regular users apparently. The WMF is sending out a very unclear message, and I asked for clarification, not for intervention. Fram (talk) 08:11, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Have no position on LauraHale, or Spanish Paralympic medalists, or <grin> intrinsicly-blameworthy entities... but do have a position on whether the WMF is properly involved here or not, as an implicit supporter of Wikipedian-in-Residence folks. Wikipedia is a trademark of the foundation; it is the global brand, which represents the efforts of all concerned. The chapters do not have carte blanche to use the trademark as they see fit (cf Wikipedia: The Shaving Cream). And moreover, the WMF has the explicit legal requirement to exercise quality control over the use of their legally-owned trademarks (held in trust for DahCommuhnity™). Prolly the noticeboards is not the place for a discussion of how much control the WMF folks ought exercise over the chapters, or over individual wikipedians, that wish to call themselves or their activities something official-sounding. The appellation of wikipedian *is* at present extremely broad, and ought be, methinks. But the WMF does give the implicit seal of approval to all uses of the WMF trademarks, and I'd like to see a bit more thought put into global-branding-issues like this. See meta:Trademark_policy for the proposed 2014 rulz. Hope this helps. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:04, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The murky status of WiR has been further discussed at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 154#Wikimedian in Residence. Someone not using his real name (talk) 22:23, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Independently of the topic ban question, I'd urge Laura to slow down and edit more carefully. I always cringe when I hear someone created 1200 articles, since it sounds like a trainwreck in progress. Wikipedia has too much history of whackamole bot rampages, copyvio sprees affecting 1000's of articles, or in this case bad translations, for "so-and-so created 1200 articles" to produce any good feelings from where I sit. The use of automated translation tools is another scary sign. It's much better to write 12 really good articles, or even just 1, than 1200 that are automatically suspect just by their quantity. 50.0.121.102 (talk) 07:05, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"I'd urge Laura to slow down and edit more carefully... ...affecting 1000's of articles". There's no apostrophe on 1000s. I urge you slow down and edit more carefully. I have 16,000+ page creations to my name - happy for you to check every single one if you like. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:10, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Community sanctions and block

Option 2 (reference desk topic ban for all 3 parties) has been overturned by Writ Keeper. Anyone wishing to seek a topic ban from Reference Desk for any involved party should start a new, properly focused RfC or ANI thread. --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive825#Community_sanctions:_The_Rambling_Man.2C_Baseball_Bugs.2C_and_Medeis

I recently closed the above per the request at the WP:AN/RFC page.

User:Baseball_Bugs chose to evade the topic ban by posting to the reference desk talk page. And so subsequent to that I have blocked him for 24 hours for ban evasion.

I'm posting here for WP:3PO on both the close and the block.

As a quick note (I need to go deal with RL, but should be back in several hours), in my estimation, while option 1 clearly had overwhelming consensus, when readin the entire discussion, option 2 had consensus as well, though perhaps not as "overwhelming" as option 1. That doesn't make it any less "consensus".

Thank you for taking the time to look this over - jc37 20:08, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I had looked at the number of outright opposes on choice 2, and suggest that there was no actual "clear consensus" there - and that if one reduces the weight given to strongly involved editors (as best practice indicates), "no consensus" or even "no" is the result. One ought not give full weight to the involved editors, and the idea that an edit by Bugs questioning the close is the impetus for "instant block" is not altogether wise. Far better if you had another admin give a block, but since the only "bad edit" by Bugs was one questioning the "consensus" you saw, it looks like you let yourself get far too close to the issue. Cheers. Collect (talk) 21:02, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am very confused by this. There is an overwhelming consensus for an interaction ban, whether counting all votes or only argued votes. Yet this is reported as a modest consensus. And the topic ban was strongly opposed, at least 2-to-1, whether one counts unargued votes, or votes with comments. This is clear from people opposing any sanctions as draconian and unwarranted, people supporting only sanction 1, and people outright opposing sanction 2. These votes all give reasons against sanction 2. User APL's vote is particularly instructional. With a cursory view, he supported all sanctions, then reversed his support for sanction 2 and commented on his reason for doing so. His crossing out his support for 2 may be unclear unless you enlarge the text and read the matter he appended to the end of his comment. μηδείς (talk) 21:15, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jc37, you're probably aware that your call of "consensus" for Option 2 (=that all three editors be topic banned from the Reference Desk) is not self-evidently clear. I'm not saying your call is wrong, but it's certainly debatable. What Baseball Bugs did, once you had notified him about your reading of consensus, was to object to your call concerning Option 2. He posted his objection in three places in rapid succession: on your page,[23] on the Reference desk talkpage immediately below, and with reference to, your "Notice concerning community sanctions",[24], and on his own page.[25] And for the post on the Reference desk talkpage you have blocked him for 24 hours, for violating his "Reference desk topic ban." I don't think that's a good block. If I'd been you, I'd have overlooked that particular post. I think Baseball Bugs should be unblocked right now, perhaps with a reminder to completely stay off the Reference desk and its talkpage until Jc37's reading of the consensus has been reviewed here.

I don't quite understand your summary of your finding about Option 2, "Has consensus (noting that indefinite is not interminable - especially as there is a criteria for appeal).[26] What criterion for appeal is that? (No, I haven't re-read the entire thread, it's a monster, and really depressing.) Do you mean there's a venue for appeal of those topic bans? Where? It seems to me that BB did appeal his topic ban with his three posts, and that all three of them were in reasonable places for the purpose. Blocking him for using the RD talkpage for such a purpose seems bureaucratic to me. Any more cumbersome type of appeal (and, as I say, I don't even know where it ought to be posted, and perhaps BB doesn't either) would obviously be a bit pointless for a 24-hour block. Come on, unblock him, please. Bishonen | talk 21:24, 15 January 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Unblock pending review of close. NE Ent 21:34, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Ent, unblock pending review. BMK: Grouchy Realist (talk) 22:18, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

[ec with BMK, whose comment strengthens my first point] In response to what the last several people have said, I'll be unblocking momentarily, as Bugs didn't violate the ban's prohibitions of editing the Reference Desk or of interacting with the other two. When a topic ban is imposed, it either covers a specific set of pages ("You may not edit page A, page B, page C...") or prohibits the editor from editing pages on the topic and from discussing that topic elsewhere (e.g. "You may not edit anything related to the topic of weather"), aside from processes such as block/ban appeals; moreover, we always specify when someone's prohibited from discussing the ban itself. You closed as successful a proposal that they be "topic-banned from the Reference Desk, indefinitely"; the proposal said nothing about the RD talk page, and your closure included nothing additional. When people are banned from editing specific pages, they are not banned from editing those pages' talk unless the ban specifically says so. Nyttend (talk) 22:27, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My intention proposing the community sanctions was RD and its talk pages, but if that was ambiguous I support a discussion to determine what people thought it meant. And, separately, I am also surprised by the option 2 consensus, though I think it was a good idea. We're sort of vague on how we "count" !votes when someone Supports 1 and says nothing explicitly about 2 and 3, for example. Are those assumed neutral on 2 and 3, or oppose on 2 and 3, or what? I have tended to assume conservatively (an implicit no). All of this said, as the proposer, I think others should be primary on the review. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:16, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think its quite clear that a commenter who supports option #1 is implicitly saying that they do not support the other options - or else why mention only one of the options? Still, I'm glad my !vote said explicitly "Support #1 only", and I advise all commenters in all future !votes anywhere on Wikipedia to do the same, to avoid exactly this kind of thing. BMK: Grouchy Realist (talk) 00:36, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Following myself up, but... Thank you, Jc37 for having spent the time to review and close it. That was necessary and is much appreciated. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:23, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for unblocking. I will stay totally away from the ref desk until this case is fully settled. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:15, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A few thoughts:
- If there was consensus for Option 2, I really think it is clear that the talk page and all sub-pages of the RD are included, per very clear wording at WP:Topic ban. I don't think a whole new discussion is needed to arrive at that fact.
- The thing is, I have a very hard time seeing a consensus for Option 2. Well, no, that's too gently worded. I do not think there was a consensus for Option 2. I cringe at the idea of yet another discussion about this (the equivalent, I guess, of a DRV), so I'd ask @Jc37:, please review the comments in the archived ANI discussion and consider changing the close for Option 2. Otherwise, I feel a DRV-ish discussion somewhere (here, I suppose) would be reasonable.
- I despise myself already for saying this, and will surely burn in CREEP hell for it, but... instead of relying on common sense, we should probably come up with some kind of standard way for someone subject to a topic ban or interaction ban to (a) appeal the ban, and (b) report a violation of the interaction ban by the other party. I already see TRM flirting with a violation on his user page, and BB's complaint about that is being reverted as a violation of the IB as well.

--Floquenbeam (talk) 00:20, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We got that (appeals; appeals go here WP:AN or WP:AC. NE Ent 03:58, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for unblocking, Nyttend. I suppose it does need to be clarified whether or not people thought it was GWH's intent to include the RD talkpage in the topic ban. (Groan… these discussions get more fine-drawn and labyrinthine by the day. Yes, you will burn in CREEP hell, Floquenbeam.) But I don't think it matters as far as the 24-hour block of Bugs is concerned. For my part, I assumed that Jc37's topic ban did cover the RD talkpage, but thought the block was bad all the same. See my post above. Collect's comment seems very reasonable to me, though I will surely burn in letting-the-side-down hell for saying such a thing. Bishonen | talk 00:48, 16 January 2014 (UTC).[reply]

jc37's declaration of the ban wasn't very good; the closing admin should make a clear, explicit statement of the terms and scope of the ban on the user's talk page, not a reference to "#2" on that page. Bureaucracy no, clarity yes. NE Ent 03:58, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to think consensus requires a sort of quorum where a certain portion of those weighing in have to weigh in on a specific issue in question for there to be any valid determination of consensus on that issue. Here you did not have a decent quorum to justify any finding of consensus with regards to the topic ban. When so few people commenting on a series of proposed sanctions mention a specific one, their silence should be considered a strong sign of a sanction not having sufficient support to pass. Even then, I feel there was more than enough opposition to the sanction expressed that any finding of consensus for the sanction would be completely nonsensical. Clearly the interaction ban had consensus, but that is the only consensus for a sanction I saw in that discussion.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 06:04, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, rather than get lost in the threading above, I'll try to respond here. I'm hoping to avoid tl;dr, but we'll see : )

First thank you to those of you who did WP:AGF, and were requesting clarification.

I've responded to Medeis's request for clarification on their talk page, and I think it should answer much of what I see above concerning the closure. And as for the block, please see User talk:Nyttend#Note about unblock.

That said, I think I should reiterate something: When saying something has consensus, I was presuming that all would understand that that means that it has consensus to be enacted. I am rather surprised that it is suggested that could be interpreted in any other way and thus engender actual confusion. And second, I'd like to respectfully request that you each please re-read WP:BAN. The policy and practices you're looking for are there as far as I can tell. I wasn't aware that I needed to re-summarise WP:BAN in a close, but I'll think about considering that in the future.

And finally, to try to be as clear as possible. If some truly uninvolved editor feels that they now wish to close the discussion, please feel free. You (completely uninvolved editor) are welcome to revert the close partially, fully, or fabricate completely out of whole cloth. One of the benefits of being uninvolved, is that I really don't care that much. My care is only concerning the encyclopedia in this case. And I daresay none would argue that the was not consensus that what the commenters clearly saw as disruption at the reference desk pages needed to stop. But who knows, I also thought that the rest of the close was fairly obvious. And in that at least I was apparently mistaken, if only having that impression from reading the above. - jc37 07:10, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think from looking at the discussion (and noting I was involved), that saying there was a consensus for option #2 was what Sir Humphrey might have described as a "courageous" decision. With that said, Baseball Bugs' raising the stakes by posting on the ref desk talkpage concerning the ban, when there are plenty of less drama-prone ways to do it, was certainly not a smooth move either. Vigourous troutings all around are called for, I think. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 11:15, 16 January 2014 (UTC).[reply]

So, how do we--how do I--proceed on this? I think it's clear from the comments above that a finding of consensus for option two is unsupported. Jc37 has explained that he did not take into account votes that supported only option one as implicitly opposing option 2. But even then, and looking only at votes where justifying comments were given, the total of votes opposed to any sanctions: 6 and votes opposed to sanction two or in favor of only sanction one: 11 far outweigh the total of votes in favor of sanction two: 8.

Again, I would draw attention to comments such as APL's "(Edit: Looking more closely, I notice that Medeis makes a significant number of apparently useful contributions to the Language desk. So I've struck my support for #2.) APL (talk)" in response to Doc9871's suggestion that criticisms should be based on diffs. Indeed, the lack of rationale for sanction two and evidence to back it up is striking. There's the question of what harm this topic ban prevents. The ref desk is mentioned here only because it was the venue of TRM's name-calling disputes with me and Bugs. An interaction ban solves that problem. A topic ban seems only punitive in this context.

At this point I feel like a defendant left sitting at the bench while the judge and lawyers are out chatting in the hall. I ask that if someone here has the ability to reverse the judgment of consensus on sanction two in regards to not only myself, but Bugs and The Rambling Man as well, that they please do so. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 19:34, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No one's commented on Medeis' quite reasonable request for the past six hours since he posted it. I think it would be good, given the comments above, for the proposal to be re-closed with only Option #1, the IBAN between BB, Medeis and TRM, being the only accepted part of GWH's overall proposal. Jc37 said the response was sufficient to implement that, but his implementation of Option #2 has met with considerable dissension, and Option #3 is a non-starter. So... will a non-involved admin please close this with Option #1, the mutual IBAN between the parties implemented, or does a non-admin have to jump in and do the job and cause all sorts of chaos in the process? BMK: Grouchy Realist (talk) 07:37, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Update: In case it wasn't noticed, I've attempted to clarify the close after reading comments here, and a discussion at User talk:Nyttend. Please see also User:Medeis's talk page, and User:Baseball Bugs's talk page (history as it's been blanked) and User:The Rambling Man's talk page as well. - jc37 07:51, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Forgive me if I've missed it, but I don't believe any of these comments addresses the question of Option #2, whch was closed as having a consensus, but about which the commentators I am aware of have said that there is no actual consensus for. Did I miss something? BMK: Grouchy Realist (talk) 10:51, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A reason it's important for an admin notifying an editor of ban to conditions is that WP:: pages are not static -- if an editor is WP:IBANned, and WP:IBAN is the updated to reflect a new community consensus, it would not be a worthwhile use of resources to wikilawyer over whether the terms at time of imposition applied, or whether the current terms of the WP: page would. A declaration of terms on the user page is just simpler. NE Ent 11:17, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, if this interaction ban (option 1) has been enforced, why is one of those banned allowed to now post here, once again commenting on my behaviour, in direct contravention of the interaction ban ("These bans include article, talk, wikipedia, and user space, without exception. No mention of the others or their actions shall be permitted")? See "the venue of TRM's name-calling disputes " above. This is a violation of the ban (that everyone seemed to agree upon). Or does the ban no longer apply in certain circumstances? The Rambling Man (talk) 11:22, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is a proper venue, with a discussion started by the closer of the discussion, Jc37 - thus it is proper for anyone to weigh in on the correctness of the close. If people were banned from such a discussion, we would have a lovely catch-22 situation. Meanwhile, your forumshopping to Jc37 seeking to have one party blocked for posting at what likely is a proper venue is weird, and as being in an improper venue is more likely to be a violation. And the "clarification" was posted after the post about which you complain in any case (Jc37 posted it at 20:09 16 Jan, notifying Medeis at 20:16 on 16 Jan while the post you cavil about was at 19:34 on 16 Jan -- making it quite unlikely that the first poster had already seen the later post) Tachyons do not exist. Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:55, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, to clarify, this venue is fine to continue discussing each other's behaviour, as per above? I asked jc37 to enforce the sanctions he had imposed, what's wrong with that? Moreover, this was with regard to proposal 1 which has not been argued against by anyone. The clarification was only regarding proposal 2. Are you saying the leave to appeal clause allows all editors in question to continue to debate other editor's behaviour? It's unclear to me. If so, then I'd like to provide more evidence as to why proposal 2 has been correctly enacted. By the way, there is no Catch 22, we just have to wait the minimum time in each proposal before we can appeal. Otherwise what is the point of that clause as well? The Rambling Man (talk) 13:43, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I said nothing of the sort -- the clarification that the ban applied to all pages was made after Medeis' post, therefore it would be a catch-22 to sanction her for what would normally have been accepted practice -- that the noticeboard on which the admin who closed the case specifically asked for input would normally be a place to give such input. Sanctioning people for something they were not notified of until after they posted would not be quite cricket. You, on the other hand, not only posted here but also at the admin's talk page in a wonderful example of WP:FORUMSHOPPING seeking to have Medeis sanctioned for something he could not have known about sans tachyon technology, and you iterate it now. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:22, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

what? The clarification on the sanctions applied to 2 only. Therefore there should be no discussions of each other's behaviour per the unchanged proposal 1. No time travel require for that. Are you suggesting I am allowed to discuss the other two's behaviour here with regard to proposal 2? Thanks. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:30, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The clarification effectively applied to the entire closure - as it is in the clarification that "all pages" is given, and that was after the initial posts here. Meanwhile I fear that you seem to be WP:Wikilawyering in a losing cause. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:41, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I fear you have realised your error. The clarification on no way had any effect on proposal 1. Which is the clause violated above. Your time machine will have to wait. Cheers. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:43, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(ec x3) I don't know if I would call it forum shopping. TRM asked me (as closer) for clarification, and then asked me presumably as one of many admins to look over the behaviour. I gave my opinion, but also suggested he was welcome to ask another admin. And he brought his concerns to the administrators' noticeboard, which is, in my estimation, probably the best venue for such a request for review.

As I noted on his talk page, from my perspective (and also because I was considering the time frames involved as well), I was willing to let Medeis's comments concerning TRM above "slide" for now as they were mostly a request to review the close. But TRM is right I think that even this page should not be used as a way to violate the interaction ban with each other. But it's possibly the only venue that a request concerning another's behaviour may be made, I suppose, if kept as neutral as possible, and keeping WP:BOOMERANG in mind of course. This sounds perfectly in line with WP:BANEX. That said, I obviously welcome others' thoughts on this. - jc37 14:44, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

At this point, I suggest Jc37 "unclose" the sanction discussion, as it might be considered wheel-warring for any other admin to simply undertake a review sua sponte of the close. The "extra" edit by TRM on your UT page was [27] and was not the one you appear to refer to -- it is the latter at 8:31 17 Jan which is "forumshopping" as it occurred well after discussion here and appears on its face to be a request for you to sanction an editor. Again -- please unclose the sanction result so that a fully uninvolved admin may weight consensus. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:53, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I welcome your evidence diffs that I am WP:INVOLVED in any way with the discussion I closed.

That the close may not have been clear as it should have been, I won't argue. But I think you'll have a rather difficult time proving I was "involved" in this in any way.

Beyond that, it is closed and clarified. And further, if the community feels that one or more of the editors should no longer be page banned, it is simple enough to immediately appeal the page ban. But I leave that to others' discretion. - jc37 15:09, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Whoa! I did not call you WP:INVOLVED with regard to anyone at all, nor do I think any fair reading of my post should arouse such umbrage. I did suggest that you might now be an eensy weensy bit defensive about what appears to just about everyone else here to have been a "blown call." Where only a minority of the !votes were favouring "option 2" it is difficult to assert that it had "consensus" alas. And I was only suggesting that you consider unclosing the case in order to prevent what might end up as a long discussion about what a "consensus" is and what a "supervote" is. Cheers. So here it is:

Proposed

That an independent administrator re-examine the finding at [28] that "option 2" has a clear consensus for adoption in the TRM/BB/M AN/I discussion.

Support Collect (talk) 16:26, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:21, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support NE Ent 23:15, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support BMK: Grouchy Realist (talk) 04:12, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Somehow, I don't think a community consensus will be overturned by a local consensus of 4 editors voting, including at least 2 of whom participated in the discussion in question, and you, Collect, who, after I started this thread to review the block and close, decided to request that I start such a thread (here).

That aside, the editor was unblocked, and following discussion here and at User talk:Nyttend, I even apologised for the block (here). So I'm not certain what "unbrage" is supposed to have been "aroused".

You keep using phrasing like "totally uninvolved" and "independant", which suggests to me that you consider me WP:INVOLVED (or at least are trying to indicate that by inference), when in my estimation it merely sounds to me like you just want a close you don't like to be overturned.

Honestly, I think this is all moot anyway. As I mentioned above, at this point, any of the three editors are welcome to appeal to the community to remove the page ban if they wish, at their discretion, and if the community feels that one or more of the editors should no longer be page banned, it is simple enough to find out through such an appeal. - jc37 21:04, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

First of all -- I suspect that others will "sign on" to the proposal. Second, you are actually beginning to sound like "IDONTWANTTOHEARTHAT" in your tone here. I stated above that I never said you were WP:INVOLVED which you seem to wave as an accusation in every post you can at this point. Look at what the other admins stated above and tell me how many said in their posts that your "clear consensus" was either "clear" or a "consensus" <g>. And yes -- this is a reasonable noticeboard for this purpose. Your adamantine posts do not impress me at this point, just as your hair-trigger block which no one supported did not impress me. I admit I am hard to impress -- I have been online for over thirty years now, most of it as a contract holder for an ISP with responsibility for several hundred sysops. And I would note that, aside from you, no one here seems to oppose having a fair independent review of the close. Cheers -- have a cup of tea and simmer down, please. Collect (talk) 22:13, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Big balls, forum shopping, tea for three, time machines, when will it stop Collect? There's a sore point and a complex here, and this isn't the forum for it. You asked for your re-run, live and deal with the disinterest. Continually insinuating that jc37 is somehow "involved" is beyond the pale. Go harvest some opinion elsewhere lest this become a terrible embarrassment for you. Oh, and should I be allowed the honour of !voting in your latest game, I'd go for "oppose", I'm happy to be banned from interaction and the reference desks. I think it's all fully justified. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:48, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

HooHaa -- your impressive wit is boggling. I posted to Jc37 before I went back to look at WP:AN if you care to look at the chronology -- so much of your repartee here is not worth tuppence. This is the proper forum -- so your stuff about "forum shopping" is inane at best. And again I NEVER SAID JC37 WAS WP:INVOLVED so the big lie form of discussion is not worth iteration by you. In fact, it makes me thing that your "topic ban" might be insufficient. Cheers. Collect (talk) 22:54, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Listen, getting all angry and bold about it won't help you know. And all your "in fact"s are fascinating, but considering your track record, you're hardly the "go-to guy" for good behaviour, eh?! Calm down, take a couple of gallons of tea, remove the tachyons from your mind, chill out and start acting rationally. Cheers! (and judging by all your previous edits here, you'll need the last word, so please, after you....) The Rambling Man (talk) 22:56, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gosh -- what erudition! BTW, you are officially banned now from my user talk page. With warmest regards - Collect (talk) 23:03, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Genuinely, my heart breaks. I was never there. Get over yourself. Last word? The Rambling Man (talk) 23:05, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

With all due respect, Jc37, you started this thread yourself as a request for 3PO on your closure (and a block which was reversed). In response there seem to be unanimous agreement that there was no consensus in favor of sanction two. At least no one here has supported that exists what you are now calling a "community" consensus for that finding. Now you say I can file an appeal if I want. But I already have filed an appeal immediately above at 19:34, 16 January 2014 (UTC). User:Collect kindly put this in a formal structure, and once again formal consensus seems to be that part two of the finding needs revisiting. Please let that process play out. μηδείς (talk) 21:53, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. What collect proposed is not an appeal of the existing page ban. But that aside, I would suggest that if you would like to post an appeal, you may want to start a separate thread for clarity. If you would like help with the formatting, please feel free to let me know. - jc37 04:40, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Continued

User:Jc37, please could you point out where TRM (or others) used the mis-spelling "independant"? I've not see this. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:47, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Me too. I hate to make such errors. User:Demiurge1000, please could you point out where User:jc37 has suggested that I (TRM) used this spelling? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:51, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

[29] --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:24, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh thank God and all his tachyons, I never made such an error. A gallon of tea for you and a teensy weensy cake to suit. (and the insinuation that jc37 is not "independent" is unacceptable without proof from the esteemed "Collect"). The Rambling Man (talk) 23:27, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(To Demiurge1000) - In the diff you linked to I did indeed misspell independent, my apologies for that oversight (I'll leave the misspelling for clarity, now that it's been commented on.)

But the "you" in the comments was clearly referring to User:Collect, who in the above discussion did use the words "totally uninvolved" and "independent", with the implied assertion that the current closer (me) was neither, and said various other things above to try to continue to assert (insinuate?) that. (Age-old tactic - don't let lack of evidence stop you from making unfounded assertions. See also Three men make a tiger, among other things.)

And I merely was and am pointing them out. I honestly am unconcerned about Collect's implied assertions save that I think it's a bit disingenuous to assert such things then claim "I never said that". But shrugs, to each their own.

But regardless, my apologies to you Demiurge1000 if is was in any way unclear that my stating "...you, Collect..." implied someone else. - jc37 04:24, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

jc37 previously commented previously that " If some truly uninvolved editor feels that they now wish to close the discussion, please feel free. You (completely uninvolved editor) are welcome to revert the close partially, fully, ..." (As such a close may require imposing bans, the editor would have to be an admin). Has your (jc37) position changed since that statement? What has been proposed is not a reversal of the page ban but a request for a second opinion from an admin not previously a participant in the discussion. NE Ent 11:58, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hogwash. Your intent to trip up jc37 is seen on the various pages that you were so quick to comment on. Your immediate announcement after the closure/block on the Ref Desk talk page, here, gives the appearance of nothing less than an uncalled for attack on the judgement of a fellow editor. 54.196.70.85 (talk) 15:12, 19 January 2014 (UTC) Preceding edit posted by an IP-hopper from Amazon.com - see separate section. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:58, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

IOW -- you note that I not only did not raise the "uninvolved" bit, it was raised ab initio by ... Jc37 himself. All the snideness about me asserting he was "involved" because of my use of his own word is simply a sideshow unworthy of this noticeboard. I honestly thought he would welcome having others support what he himself suggested earlier. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:23, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(intervening attack was revdeled) Collect (talk) 15:36, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: The above troll was fed by TRM by his reinsertion of the post with the snarky edit summary: the point is well made and since it directly comments on your behaviour, you'd better leave it to someone... "uninvolved"). Cheers. I suggest that WP:Deny recognition constitutes sound advice here. And that no one here seems to have felt that the "instant block" in the case presented was wise. Cheers. Collect (talk) 16:50, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note, the above editor's behaviour was discussed by the so-called troll, including a diff. I'm sure there's an SPI somewhere covering all these IPs, or maybe they're just concerned editors who call a spade a spade. No tachyons required. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:54, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not in other words. I pick my words very carefully. Our wiki interaction is limited to words, and the problem with words is they are always context dependent. "Involved" is a particularly sticky wiki word, as it can mean both WP:INVOLVED -- editor abusing sysop privilege in content dispute -- and real life wikt:involved (prior association with a dispute); jc37 is clearly not the former and definitely the latter. Additionally it's not a binary thing, as jc37's use of the phrase "truly uninvolved" implies. It was for that specific reason I used the more grammatically awkward phrase previously a participant instead of the simple English involved (not WP:INVOLVED) that I was actually thinking.

What should be important at this point is not who said what to whom when why, but that there are concerns that good faith closure of a community discussion did not reflect a reasonable interpretation of the discussion; a unbiased read of the entire thread will show there are more than four of us who feel another look is appropriate. NE Ent 18:47, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And an unbiased read of the initial RFC will show that many editors raised concerns over behviour at the RD. While they may not have had a numerical advantage, their arguments were genuine and saddening and needed resolution. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:56, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

However, this discussion is not about the original discussion per se, but about how that discussion was closed. And in this discussion, we've had comments about the close of option #2 such as:

Bishonen: "call of 'consensus' ... not self-evidently clear"
Floquenbeam: "I have a very hard time seeing a consensus"
The Devil's Advocate: "[no] decent quorum to justify any finding of consensus"
Lankiveil: "saying there was a consensus for option #2 was what Sir Humphrey might have described as a "courageous" decision"
Collect: "there was no actual "clear consensus" there" and supports proposal that the closing of #2 be re-examined to determine if there was a clear consensus
Demeiurge1000: supports proposal that the closing of #2 be re-examined to determine if there was a clear consensus
NE Ent: supports proposal that the closing of #2 be re-examined to determine if there was a clear consensus
Beyond My Ken: supports proposal that the closing of #2 be re-examined to determine if there was a clear consensus

So it's not just 4 editors questioning the close, and it's not about any one editor, we've got 8 editors in this discussion questioning whether the close for Option #2 accurately categorized the result of the debate, including a couple of admins and an Arb. Surely that should be enough for some other admin who has yet to comment here or in the original discussion to evaluate the close? BMK: Grouchy Realist (talk) 23:08, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If we're going to go argumentum ab auctoritate the better Floquenbeam /Arb quote is: "I do not think there was a consensus for Option 2" NE Ent 23:16, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I stand corrected. BMK: Grouchy Realist (talk) 03:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps someone could engage those editors who stated their support for proposal 2 to contribute to this discussion, as it appears that none of them have been given an opportunity (or notification that this discussion even exists) to discuss this. Or perhaps it's too late, a done deal, that an admin had the guts to actually read opinion rather than simply count votes. As it stands, the enforcement of option 1 will mean those editors who have been ostracised, chased out and forced to leave the Ref Desks have no voice. Unless one of the above is prepared to initiate an RFC on the Ref Desk situation, of course, but it seems unlikely as many are actively chummy with one or more of those noted. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, you're suggesting that someone notify only one part of a topic ban discussion, the people that !voted for Option #2? As an admin, you certainly must be aware that such an action would be in direct contravention of WP:CANVASS. All the participants can be notified, but notifying one side only is verboten. BMK: Grouchy Realist (talk) 21:52, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Great point. Thanks for your contributions. Apart from those which end up in you being blocked, of course. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:05, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I believe I have commented a whole three times here, politely requesting an independent admin to address Jc37's own request for a third opinion. BMK and NE Ent have summarized the situation very well. I think any admin who's looked at the situation can and should act based on the clear facts. μηδείς (talk) 00:37, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

54 trolling

Amazon-based trolling / harassment-only accounts (DC and state of Washington, primarily):

54.242.221.254 (talk · contribs) Dec 17, 2013

54.224.35.46 (talk · contribs) Dec 28-29, 2013

54.224.206.154 (talk · contribs) Dec 31, 2013

54.224.53.210 (talk · contribs) Jan 4, 2014

54.204.117.139 (talk · contribs) Jan 6, 2014

54.196.70.85 (talk · contribs) Jan 19, 2014

If I've overlooked any, feel free to add to the list. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:46, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I've commented on Bugs' page, not realizing that his IP list was here as well. It would be useful if somebody good at the subtleties of rangeblocks could complement my analysis, because in that regard I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants. I do agree with Bugs that there's some trolling and harassment in there. Bishonen | talk 07:27, 20 January 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Conflated problems, parallel discussions, and a proposed next step

After going back through the ANI in question -- as I'm sure several others have done now -- it's becoming clear the procedural problem rests with the conflation of two insufficiently related issues via three-part, three-party proposal followed by parallel arguments and a closure that sought to address them both (much to the confusion of those engaged in one argument or the other).

On one hand, there's the disruption and incivility via interactions between Baseball Bugs, Medeis, and The Rambling Man across many pages including the reference desk. This is the obvious impetus for #1 in the initial proposal, clearly, and its severity was made clear in the overwhelming support for #1. The confusion begins when people look to their interactions for evidence to support #2 (or #3), but don't see it. Obviously that three users can't get along doesn't mean they should be topic banned, right?

On the other hand, there's the issue that The Rambling Man was only involved in as one of many critics: the pattern of problematic contributions at the refdesk by Medeis and Baseball Bugs. Many of those participating in the discussion appear to be refdesk regulars (or former regulars) frustrated by this chronic issue and lack of admin intervention. For those people this was the ideal opportunity to seek the topic ban desired long before the recent flare up with The Rambling Man -- and which is only merited with consideration of broader, longer-term editing histories. While those looking to interactions between the three might be confused as to why #2 would even be proposed, to others it was the most important part of the proposal.

In other words, while I suspect the two editors who opened and closed the thread had similar motivations, I think it wasn't entirely clear to everyone involved just what was happening in terms of matching indiscretions with responses. It would've been clearer if these proposals were separated, rather than jointly proposed and thereby blurred: (A) "interaction ban for Baseball Bugs, Medeis, and The Rambling Man based on interactions between the three?" (B) "topic ban for Medeis and Baseball Bugs based on long-term editing record?" That The Rambling Man zealously sought to point out B doesn't mean A and B should be the subject of a single proposal/discussion.

Since it seems overwhelmingly clear there's consensus for (A), I think this discussion should be closed with that resolution, but that an RfC immediately be opened to address (B). (I say this as someone who was in favor of the ban in the original discussion, but at this point I think the closing resolution to enact the ban is not only evidently controversial -- which of course is not reason enough in itself, necessarily -- but also based on a confused discussion and confusing proposal. I'm confident a separate RfC will result in the same outcome, but going through the process seems worthwhile). --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 20:23, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(presumably for "Running Man" you mean "Rambling Man"?! And yes, thank you for your suggestion, the ability to launch an RFC on the behaviour of editors at RD was paramount in my thinking, as I have stated variously. Of course, being IBAN'ed, I can no longer perform that task, so I appreciate the suggestion that this should be conducted post-haste.) The Rambling Man (talk) 20:31, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, your suggestion is that the topic ban on the three of us be removed, not because it was never supported by any consensus in the first place, but because it was misdirected, and should only have applied to Bugs and myself? TRM's behavior is not to be examined? The topic ban should simply be removed as unsupported. This requires no relitigation. The explicit result of the ANI was 17 argued votes against sanction 2, and 7/8 in favor of it. That's a failed consensus. μηδείς (talk) 22:07, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- What I mean is that because the original discussion was confused from the start, the only thing we can take away from it is that there was consensus for #1 (the interaction ban). Even if the vote tally leaned harder in either direction, #2 and #3 should be closed as no consensus. But, because the only reason there was anything resembling consensus for #2 is due to longer-term issues for which TRM is not a central figure, an RfC should be opened, immediately following the "no consensus" close, concerning you (Medeis) and Baseball Bugs. In the interim, there would be no topic ban, and a new evaluation of the arguments would be necessary by the next closing admin--but this thread would be closed. In practical terms, I'm on your side here (in the short term anyway). I think the determination that #2 had consensus should be overturned, but that it shouldn't prevent (and indeed should be predicated upon) an RfC. If that results in a topic ban or not, the process will at least have integrity (which it's lacking somewhat now). --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 22:49, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I agree with you that the only thing that can be taken away from the ANI is that point #1 is overwhelmingly supported. Recognizing that stands on its own, however. That there be an RfC on point #2 is not a proper condition of recognizing that fact. μηδείς (talk) 23:05, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here's how things should happen: (1) Option 2 had no consensus, and should immediately be nullified; (2) If someone wants to file an RFC against either of us, they are free to do so; (3) If so, there should be two different RFC's, i.e. one for me and one for Medeis. The notion that we are somehow a "team" is a false characterization. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:18, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's true there's not really a precedent for a close made conditional on an RfC being opened, so how about this: an assurance to those parties who would continue to argue that #2 had consensus to enact that there will be an RfC on the issue. ^[1] - I think that's fair to not want to be joined together as a "team" as has been the case. Two RfCs would probably be cumbersome, though, since the issue at hand is generally the same: unhelpful and/or offensive and/or counterproductive contributions at the refdesk. I think a single RfC could be properly framed to ensure separate consideration, though. But that's for a later step. Hoping jc37 weighs in about [the above] to legitimate moving away from this metadiscussion and to the separate discussion of #2 that would have ideally been separate from the start. --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 23:45, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Several problems: The RfC rules appear to preclude yoking together editors. Second, RfCs specifically can not produce sanctions on their own. The proper solution is to vacate the close with regard to proposal 2, as no one at this point is suggesting that a "consensus" existed to topic ban the editors. Then after things cool down - say in one month, allow a new community sanctions thread at AN/I which will hopefully not have a multitude of "sections". At this point in time, I suggest that this is the only procedurally correct course under Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Collect (talk) 23:55, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically which policies and guidelines say to allow a new ANI "after things cool down" such that it's the "only procedurally correct course under Wikipedia policies and guidelines?" You do raise the good point that an RfC cannot result in sanctions, which I was unclear on (although I'm not seeing anything about not being able to discuss two users in the same RfC). So I suppose a separate AN(/I) is the best course, but an arbitrary waiting period defeats the point.

The point is there are two issues that need to be discussed, and since at least one of them was ill-framed in the previous ANI, the discussion couldn't come to an adequate consensus. As this is not because of the issue itself, it doesn't make sense to just now push it aside. It should be adequately discussed in its own separate thread, apart from the interaction ban matters. --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 01:01, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What Collect has suggested, in general follows what I was thinking. There is no consensus for a permanent ban from the ref desk. However, there have been some good-faith issues raised. So, what Collect calls a cooling-off period, I would call a probationary period, of whatever length can be agreed upon - I was thinking a month, but it could be anything - to demonstrate a willingness to stick to the straight and narrow on the ref desks, and thus obviate any reason or necessity to re-impose a topic ban. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:15, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify something: Bans, like blocks, are to be preventative. In this case to prevent disruption. Afaik, if anyone were to propose a "cool down" period, I would expect opposition to that idea, as it is contrary to how things are to be implemented, per long standing practice. (As an aside, one of the fastest ways to upend an WP:RFA is to suggest imposing a "cool down block" in response to a hypothetical.)- jc37 07:11, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If an admin finds that there was not consensus for a community sanction, the procedure is not to immediately propose a community sanction again -- the noticeboard is not the place to argue instantly for something which has already failed to gain consensus. That is the idea behind waiting a month -- that you are now so invested in the decision is unfortunate but irrelevant. "I would expect opposition to that idea, as it is contrary to how things are to be implemented, per long standing practice" is wrong and inapt. We do not keep after anyone with immediate proposals for sanctions after one proposal fails. And, at this point, there is now no doubt in my mind that proposal two failed. If we allow instant reruns of every call for sanctions, the editos in question would be quite effectively forced off of Wikipedia without anything remotely approaching an orderly process. Decisions once settled are not then "rerun ad nauseam" until the "right result" occurs. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:29, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Collect: - You missed the point. Procedure was flawed. A viable outcome could not be determined because the discussion was confused. That doesn't mean there was an on-topic discussion where everybody was arguing about the same thing and the result should be "no consensus" (or, obviously, that there was a consensus one way or the other). The discussion that should've taken place didn't, leading to a mistrial, so to speak. A mistrial that, in order to determine consensus, needs to be retried (again, so to speak). So your suggestion that this amounts to "keeping after" someone with sanction proposals is not applicable (nor the latest in a line of shots at jc37). It's a regrettable situation, but now in the way you describe. --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 14:40, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I believe Rhododendrites has made a perfectly reasonable suggestion (and backed it with strong logic). I would suggest that unless jc37 explicitly objects that Rhododendrites goes ahead and does as suggested - "overturn" the close to be option A only and initiate a fresh discussion (at RfC or ANI depending on the goal of the discussion) on option B. I agree that the two issues (fighting between the 3 and Ref Desk disruption) are partially independent and the previous discussion improperly conflated the two. --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:40, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A general RFC (in WP:RFC-style), as noted probably wouldn't be helpful, for several reasons, including a few of Collect's comments. If we were to implement as User:Rhododendrites suggests, it would probably need to be another WP:AN/I discussion. (essentially a redo on technical grounds - both as User:Rhododendrites notes and as User:Nyttend and I discussed (wording: topic ban / page ban).)

The other way to do this is as is already an option, any of the three can appeal the page ban, which in that case would also be an AN or AN/I discussion.

So anyway, since you asked (smile) - regardless of format, I in no way oppose starting a community discussion at WP:AN/I concerning whether one or more of the three editors should be page banned from the Reference Desk (including all its talk pages, subpages, and any other directly related pages). This can be an appeal, or due to perceived confusion of the previous nomination, or even because WP:CCC. A notice of the discussion should be placed at the reference desk so that those who may be affected by this may be aware of the discussion. If someone would like to notify everyone who participated in the previous discussion, that probably wouldn't be a bad idea either.

But in the meantime, considering the many concerns of our fellow Wikipedians, I would suggest all 3 editors stay away from the Ref Desk et al until this is resolved.

Incidentally, I'd like to commend User:Rhododendrites for some very well-reasoned, insightful comments. - jc37 06:59, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Rhododendrondronites is "not an admin" -- but any admin can read the tea leaves -- with such a strong discussion, no one can claim "wheel war" at this point. The idea that editors can appeal a wrongful claim of consensus is not something which is practical as an admin might require a 3/4 "consensus" to overturn the "bold close" in the first place, while the best procedure is to do what Jc37 initially asked for -- that is for an admin to take him up on his invitation to review the close. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:35, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jc37: - Thanks. But if it's framed as an appeal, the discussion will inevitably become dominated by the present one -- about the enactment of the ban to begin with and the content of previous threads -- thus precluding discussion of the actual problem and inevitably leading to another unhappy outcome. I think the same would be true if the ANI were posed as a community discussion while the current ban stands, which has the additional problem of lacking urgency and would appear to be an appeal even if not framed that way. As much as I, too, in your position, would hate to feel as though I was validating the various accusations and rhetorical black-and-white imperatives here, to me, it's the best of the possible directions as I can see them: (a) you unclose #2 and an ANI is opened seeking action -- hopefully as though the previous ANI didn't even take place; (b) you let the close stand, it is contested and subsequently overturned such that the result is closer to an AfD "no consensus"; (c) you let the close stand, it runs its course or is contested and upheld; (d) you let the close stand, the parties appeal the ban, ensuing discussion hinges on procedurality, and again either the ban stands or it doesn't but we still haven't had a real discussion of the substance of #2. --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 14:41, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Blinks <re-reads my comments> Ok, so after re-reading, I still think that they say what I thought they did, that I don't oppose your proposal for a "re-do" on a discussion. I merely suggested that it be an AN/I discussion for various reasons, including some Collect noted.

And frame the "why" of the discussion as you like. Call it an appeal, or a re-do on technical grounds, or even suggesting that consensus has changed. Regardless of the why of the discussion, it would be a request to the community to consider the question: Should one or more of the three editors in question be page banned from the Reference Desk (including all its talk pages, subpages, and any other directly related pages). I welcome this specific question being put before the community to discuss.

I've bolded this because I feel like I've repeatedly said this and it's not being heard.

Our goal presumably should be to try to respect the community's wishes, and to try to prevent disruption (particularly as noted by other members of the community). - jc37 15:17, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would note that your close specifically bars any appeals for six months. Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Have you not read anything I've actually been saying above? Anyway, here's a diff from 5 days ago, which I believe is reflected in my above comments. Happy reading. - jc37 16:42, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jc37: - Aha! Got it now. Indeed I did see that you were saying discussion can go ahead but I didn't read in the corresponding "and the current ban will be lifted." Well ok then. So what you're saying is that you're banning everyone and deleting the refdesk, right? Because you hate freedom? :) I'll open the ANI if nobody else does, but as I am a relative newbie to the refdesk I think there are others better equipped to do so. I'll post to the refdesk talk page and go from there. --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 16:31, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure how "one or more of the three editors" equals "everyone" lol, but enjoy your wiki-break/vacation if you so choose : )

And sure, if you would like any help with formatting, as I offered User:Medeis above, I would be happy to help. - jc37 16:42, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Probably doesn't need clarification (indicated by your reciprocal smiley), but I was kidding re: people repeatedly misunderstanding you. I'm not concerned about formatting the ANI or taking a wikibreak (as if I have the willpower); the reason I say I'm not best equipped is mainly because having not been lurking around the refdesk as long or as actively as others I don't have as many examples/diffs ready-to-hand, is all. Regardless, I'm moving my part of this thread over to the refdesk now. --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 18:13, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, in my experience, when someone doesn't wish to actually hear what you are saying it's rather easy for them to decide to "not understand". It has been interesting to listen to what has been said here though, it's definitely been an experience. - jc37 06:53, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If your statement about "cooling off blocks" were true in practice, then every block would be indefinite. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:12, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, Collect, you've made lots of dramatic and bold and italicised comments, but it's been substantially more heat than light, which is quite depressing, but not surprising. In other news, I agree that all three of us should be banned from the RDs for the six months proposed. In fact, it appears that other RD regulars breathed a sigh of relief when the initial close was made. One comment in particular seems pertinent to this "discussion". I could add other diffs discussing the behaviour of the other editors but I think I'm prohibited from doing so per the interaction ban. If the current sanction is overturned, it would be great (and entirely appropriate) for another editor to immediately launch an RFC about the behaviour all concerned editors at the Ref Desks. There should be nothing preventing an RFC being lodged, and it looks like we have plenty of volunteers, including many former RD regulars who no longer contribute there. While I'm prohibited from commenting on other editors' behaviour, I hope I'm allowed to be polite and note it's been gratifying to see at least one of them getting stuck into mainspace edits, along with a promise to rein in the chuckles at RD. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:41, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Um -- ad hom rants do not actually belong here. I did bold comments when people accused me of writing what I did not write, of doing things I did not do, and I admit to thinking that making ad hom charges here indicates a problem on your part. Further you should note that I had zero interaction with you prior to this discussion, making your vehemence against me a puzzlement at best. Cheers. Collect (talk) 18:19, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you have just plenty more drama to add, and that seems evident from your track record. If you have something to actually action, do it. Otherwise, remember what you've been told, Arbcom etc.... Your perplexing ban on me from your talk page is puzzling. I've never posted there, unless, of course, you consider these pages as your talk pages? That'd be appropriate given your contributions. Your "reputation" precedes you.... Let's get this RFC started! The Rambling Man (talk) 19:57, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I looked at that thread when it was going on, and was considering posting something to oppose sanction 2, but decided that what was already posted was SNOW-y enough against the sanction that I didn't bother posting. I've never had problems with the wascally wabbit at any of the wefdesks. I'm shocked to hear that the sanction "passed", and it does sound like a bad closure. 50.0.121.102 (talk) 08:10, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Starting yet another ANI discussion about the closure is not called for. This is that discussion already. Jc37 started this discussion, explicitly asking for a review of his closure. We've got exactly that in these threads. Excluding the parties of the ANI there is not a single user among some ten who have commented who says there was consensus for sanction 2. (This is greater than the 7 or 8 users in the original ANI who supported sanction 2 in the first place.)

On this basis the finding should be reversed now.

We don't need another ANI to discuss the meaning of this AN in discussing the closure of the prior ANI. We simply need one uninvolved admin to say officially there was no consensus, or there actually was. Where does one recruit such an admin? Is there a tag or template? Someone should be invited t act on this review of the closure, not another review. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 18:58, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's clear that the Option 2 decision should be tossed out. And it occurs to me that, for the sake of fairness, if there is to be an RFC following up on Option 2, it would necessarily have to review all the parties to that option. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:19, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very content to be banned from the Ref Desks indefinitely, assuming that applies to all other appellants. As noted above, there's been a certain "sigh of relief" from the existing RD regulars since this option has been exercised. Should the discussion need to be held again, then an RFC is the only way forward, and I'll gladly and immediately volunteer to be banned from Ref Desks under the current sanctions. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:24, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Has Option 1 been nullified? I don't recall seeing any announcement about it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:50, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Baseball Bugs: @Medeis: - Clarifying: The [not yet created] new ANI is not connected to this one or the previous. Unless I misunderstand jc37's intentions, the IBAN stands as the only result from the previous ANI. The topic ban is to be lifted irrespective of consensus one way or the other because the procedure/proposal which conflated the interaction ban issue with the topic ban issue was flawed from the start. In other words, they should've been discussed separately; now they will be (and not in connection to past ANIs). --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 22:32, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If any editor here alleges that the ref desk is happy that Option 2 has been implemented, should such a comment be allowed to stand without supporting reference, or should citation(s) be required? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:36, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Option 1 has not been nullified. Check here, and you will find 4 restrictions that apply to you, including "Option 1". As far as "...happy that Option 2 has been implemented..." see the last paragraph of the link that TRM gave. 202.4.114.18 (talk) 23:34, 21 January 2014 (UTC) (edit from "confirmed proxy server") Collect (talk) 15:29, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I do recall that comment of Baker's, and he was clearly pleased that Option 2 had been implemented against all parties. I'm not sure that single comment is enough to make any bold claims about what the ref desk regulars, as a whole, think of this process. I can think of various occasions where some topic has come up and someone said, "Ask Bugs, he'll know." Alas, barring a rollback of Option 2, they'll have to ask someone else now. I haven't looked at the ref desk since the ban was clarified, so I don't know what questions have arisen lately. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:02, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In regard to editing restrictions, aside from the current discussion they're basically moot, as they have to do with topics and/or persons that I'm uninterested in and are off my radar. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:07, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I did not mean to offer any opinion, only to provide links that may have provided information for you on the 2 questions you raised. 202.4.114.18 (talk) 00:16, 22 January 2014 (UTC)edit from "confirmed proxy server" Collect (talk) [reply]

Thanks for the info. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:32, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To re-state: As of right now, option 1 and 2 have consensus. The implementation of Option 2 does not preclude starting an WP:AN/I discussion concerning option 2. So yes the page ban is in place, and yes also you are welcome to start an AN/I community discussion concerning option 2 (page ban). You can frame it as an appeal, as a "re-do", or even frame it as if you feel consensus has changed (or all of the above, if you like).

And one other thing I should probably point out. Based upon the discussion, it would seem that the reason option 2 was under discussion is due to what commenters saw as disruption at the reference desk et al. Even if there was no page ban in place, at this stage, I think that any admin could consider all three of you warned that further disruption is unacceptable, and could immediately block at their discretion.

(takes off my admin's hat and closer hat for a moment) - And incidentally, I would think that if you want the ban lifted, you would want a community discussion before returning to the reference desk, both as an opportunity to show community support, and to express to the community that your intentions are not to cause disruption, even unintentionally, and therefore displaying for the community that such preventative measures are unnecessary. Quality edits in the meantime might be helpful as well. But anyway, I leave such thoughts and decisions to your discretion of course.

(picks up the two hats) - Also, I think I saw that nobody ent tried to start such a discussion, but it was removed. Other than using the phrase "topic ban" (which I am uncertain if they concretely meant) rather than page ban, I'm not sure what was untoward in the discussion being started - oh and it probably should have been at AN/I as the original forum, I suppose, but venue shouldn't be much of a big deal, as a neutral notice may be placed regardless of discussion location. - jc37 06:53, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There was no "community" decision to implement option 2. There was no consensus. You simply decided to impose your will. You should admit that you got it wrong, and rescind option 2. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:45, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jc37 - I must admit that I don't really understand why you brought this here for community consideration if you're unwilling to accept what the comments of the community mean - you could have simply sat on your haunches after closing the discussion and imposing the bans. Instead, you csme here, asking for community input, which speaks well of you -- but you seem determined to ignore the input you received.

My reading of the comments here, which is backed up by pretty much everyone except The Rambling Man, is that everyone agrees that Option #1, the mutual interaction ban, has consensus, but that there is 'no clear consensus for Option #2. That's not simply my opinion, it's the consensus opinion here. Why you continue to contest that, in the face of the comments you/ve received, confuses me. Please, you asked' for community reconsideration of your close, and you have received that input. Now, please act in accordance with the feedback you received, void your close of Option #2, and allow other Wikipedia processes to deal with that problem. BMK: Grouchy Realist (talk) 12:16, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My read on this is that BB, BMK and others are asking for the wrong action (jc37 to reverse himself), and taking this conversation back in a loop. I see that:

A) jc37 is confident in his closure, but open to having others review it.

B) jc37 did not count votes, but pursued consensus by researching the various opinions, and giving weight to them based on the evidence. Skimming the discussion would easily form an opinion of no consensus for a page ban, but by diving into opinions concerning the Ref Desk, and it's talk page history, he may have found that "This" conversation is just the manifestation of a deeper, long rooted problem that has existed at the Ref Desk for some time.

C) jc37 has provided...repeatedly now...a suggested remedy for anyone that feels a need for a "re-do", a correction of a "wrong", or that a change of consensus is now upon us.

D) The facts of the matter are not in question, it is whether or not any individuals decide to make an appeal.

202.4.114.18 (talk) 14:30, 22 January 2014 (UTC)edit from "confirmed proxy server" Collect (talk) 15:29, 22 January 2014 (UTC) [reply]

Well, first, to be clear (in case it wasn't), none of the IPs above are me.

Regardless, last I recall, IPs are welcome to comment in any discussion. (While noting their comments won't "count" in a consensus determination at RfA/RfB.) - jc37 18:28, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, the IP 202 above is listed at [30] as a confirmed proxy server and is noted as Recently reported forum spam source. It was blocked for two months back in 2012 as a proxy account. Collect (talk) 15:24, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But that in no way detracts from the points the IP has raised. On another note, it would be interesting to invite those who contributed to the original and incompetently-worded car-crash AN/I to participate here. Most of the discussion here has been from AN or AN/I "regulars" who haven't actually ventured out of the shell and experienced the issues under debate. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jc37: - I, too, am confused now. We just had an exchange above that I thought belabored just the opposite of what you're now saying. When I asked for clarification and you responded (the response above starting with "blinks"), you reaffirmed that don't oppose a "re-do." In particular, Call it an appeal, or a re-do on technical grounds, or even suggesting that consensus has changed. Regardless of the why of the discussion, it would be a request to the community to consider the question: Should one or more of the three editors in question be page banned from the Reference Desk. As the meaning of "re-do" is a retrial and nullification of previous outcomes, I felt secured that we were on the same page and so responded as such (Indeed I did see that you were saying discussion can go ahead but I didn't read in the corresponding "and the current ban will be lifted."). But now I see you don't actually mean "re-do." You mean "appeal," just as you did when the thread began, but you're open to the appeal being worded as something other than an appeal. This is silliness. A "re-do" implies voiding the "initial-do" in order to "re-do" it. It does not mean "let the initial-do stand unless there's a different outcome when the process is repeated." When there's a "re-do" in sports after a point is scored, the point doesn't stand pending the outcome of the re-do; it's considered never to have happened. When there's a re-trial, the original trial is nullified; otherwise it's an appeal. Your words indicate being open to all sorts of other possibilities, but when it comes down to it I don't see what the point of this thread has been if we're still in the same place we were when the previous discussion closed. --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 14:41, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I posted here to review the block related to the recent close as I noted. And the main take away so far has been: a.) that the close needed clarification and b.) that I felt per comments here and a discussion at User talk:Nyttend, that I should apologise for the block (and would have unblocked, had the editor not already been unblocked).

I did apologise, the editor is unblocked, and the close has been clarified, in particular to allow for an immediate appeal of the page ban, rather than needing to wait 6 months.

And you presume a "re-do" requires the "initial do" (to use your terms) to be overturned first. That is not necessarily true, and in my estimation, is rarely the case on Wikipedia. Examples go from here to arbcom.

Regardless, I suppose I should accept, as the IP apparently noted, that this discussion is becoming circular indeed.

If this was an WP:XFD close, I think about now I'd be pointing to WP:DRV. So in this case, I think it's probably time to point to WP:AN/I concerning appeal of the page ban etal, as I have suggested repeatedly above. Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment. It has been appreciated. - jc37 18:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If it's becoming "circular", you're the one to blame, as you made a bad decision and you're sticking with it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:38, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More clarification needed - I was hinting at something earlier, and nobody seems to have picked up on it, so I'll put it slightly more directly: If one of the members of the interaction ban makes a comment indicating everyone at the ref desk is happy that we're banned, isn't that comment by itself a violation of the interaction ban? And whether it is or not, doesn't it require supporting evidence? And by "supporting evidence", I mean more than just a several-days-old offhand comment by a single editor. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:12, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As described, a diff was given, the above editor actually commented. Isn't the above comment by itself a violation of the interaction ban? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:19, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to anyone "who took the time to comment"? The question asked by User:Collect is still open, and there's not a single uninvolved party suggesting it isn't. Unless one counts IP's who've shown up for that sole purpose. μηδείς (talk) 02:08, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've been following this discussion on and off but couldn't really be bothered commenting. But I'll try to put you 2 out of your misery. As a reference desk regular I can confirm I'm not happy that μηδείς or BB have been topic banned. I'm not saying I'm unhappy. Although I was mildly opposed the topic ban, I don't care that much either way. Is this enough or is there now going to be an argument over whether there is any RD regular who is unhappy over the topic ban?

In case it's not clear, I don't see how this is a productive discussion in any way. In nearly any case, we can be sure that there will be someone who isn't happy, someone who is happy and someone who doesn't care, provided there are enough people and there probably are enough considering the strength of feelings about BB at least. Someone not caring is generally the most likely thing to exist. The fact that some people were happy is a given since some people who supported option 2 were reference desk regulars. It's fairly likely at least one person is unhappy too since I seem to recall some of those strongly opposed were RD regulars. Of course it's possible they changed their minds, but again none of this really matters. Most people who cared enough to comment already gave their opinions in the previous discussion and that's all that really matters here.

I do think having an uninvolved admin review the consensus would be helpful. While I'm not sure there was consensus for option 2 myself, I explicitly am not saying that option 2 had no consensus since I didn't look closely enough. But considering this continuing controversy, it may be the only way to put the issue to bed. In particular, hopefully it will mean you three can respect option 1 which I think we all agree had consensus. We could have another discussion, but I think the state of discussion here and in WTRD strongly implies most people are sick of discussing it.

Nil Einne (talk) 14:20, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jarndyce v Jarndyce: call for uninvolved admin

"Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means." No no no no no, please don't start all over again on ANI. For the love of god, could an uninvolved admin please please review the obvious consensus above for reviewing the consensus of the ANI discussion which Jc37 closed, then go ahead and review that ANI discussion consensus already, and either void or confirm Jc37's finding that Baseball Bugs, Medeis and TheRamblingMan are banned from the reference desk? Anybody out there who hasn't already commented? I do realize it'll take a big chunk out of your life that you'll never get back, but it's either that or the whole estate will be absorbed in costs.

-"Do I understand that the whole estate is found to have been absorbed in costs?"

-"Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge.

Bishonen | talk 10:43, 23 January 2014 (UTC).[reply]

If nobody else does it, I will start doing it in the evening of European time.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:40, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, that's okay, I've been looking at this issue for the past few hours (with the help of a stiff drink...) and am about ready to do the thing. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 08:33, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please do it by all means.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:40, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure I speak for the entire Court of Chancery when I say thank you, guys. Bishonen | talk 08:49, 24 January 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Okay, uninvolved admin analysis

Full disclosure here: Bishonen did email me and ask me to take a look at this. I don't think that makes me involved; I'm certainly not doing her bidding, or have formed my opinions based on hers. I know I'm not the only one she's emailed, either, so it's not like she carefully selected me as a person who would give her the answer she wanted. Whatever. Anyway:

Looking back at the previous ANI thread, I have to agree with the number of editors here; I don't find that there's consensus for option 2. Not many people supported it; many opposed it. Some of those who did support two qualified their support (things like "for Bugs and Medeis only", e.g. NoFormation and Steve Baker; "for Bugs only", e.g. Rhododendronite; etc.). One of the major problems is that option 2 lumps Medeis, Bugs, and TRM into one group, as if they were on "the same team", so to speak; they are not, and so asking for a blanket topic ban for all three of them doesn't make much sense. This is borne out through the aforementioned qualified supports, and also in this thread. To ignore these qualifications and implement the blanket ban anyway is to misread the intent of the participants. Also, there are several editors (e.g. NE Ent, Mendaliv, KTC, Agathoclea) who feel that all three of the measures are too harsh, and one who specifically withdrew their support (APL) for measure 2 based on the positive contributions that Medeis makes to the refdesk, furthering the apparent harshness of the sanctions. These are all reasonable issues to take against the measure, none of which were particularly refuted as such. I know that this is not a vote, but let's look at the numbers anyway: 5 support option 2. 4 express qualified support (which cannot be considered a real support for the blanket enactment of 2 that Jc37 did, but still.) 16 people explicitly oppose it (either through saying something like "Support 1 only" or through saying something like "oppose 2" or expressing disagreement with 2 in their rationale). 5 don't mention measure 2 (which could or could not be taken as opposition to #2, but certainly couldn't be taken as a support). So, even reading these numbers in the terms most favorable to #2, 9 supporting and 16 opposing, we have a serious imbalance in the numbers. Again, this not being a vote, the imbalance is not automatically mean that #2 doesn't have consensus, but the numbers aren't irrelevant, either: there would need to be a serious imbalance in the validity of the arguments in favor of the supporters, and I just can't see how that could be said to be the case; the opposes are legit. So, taking jc37 at their word when they said they were looking for a third opinion and that they didn't mind to be overturned, I would say that option 2 (that is, the page bans of Bugs, Medeis, and TRM from the Refdesk) did not have consensus, and therefore, I'll take the responsibility to vacate them. If y'all still think topic bans of some sort are called for, I'd recommend starting an RfC or something for each editor individually, to make things as clear as possible. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 09:20, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much, Writ Keeper. Just a minor pedantry: you've reminded Bugs, Medeis, and TRM on their pages that Option 1, the interaction ban, is still in force, and you put it in a way that could be taken to mean that none of the three may interact with each other. That wasn't Option 1, since Bugs and Medeis are on good terms, as I take it, and are free to interact all they want to. The users themselves will hardly be confused, but you might want to clarify your notes to them just to make sure some admin who hasn't followed this doesn't come along and hassle Bugs and Medeis for chatting. Bishonen | talk 10:19, 24 January 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Except they should be hassled if they chat on a reference desk or a reference desk talk page as that has been overdone. Johnuniq (talk) 10:38, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can this be closed now? BMK (talk) 14:47, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Looking for unsuitable usernames

Functional again since yesterday--Ymblanter (talk) 10:48, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

User:DeltaQuadBot used to look for unsuitable usernames, and put its findings in Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention/Bot, but (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/DeltaQuadBot ) it has not done this since 01:13, 14 December 2013. What has happened to it? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 08:17, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've left a message for the bot op here notifying him. Organics^LRO 14:15, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I remember this was discussed either at AN or ANI a few weeks ago also, did nothing come out of it? ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 17:14, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Discussed here, here and here. So, no, nothing ever seems to come of it, to say the least. Rgrds. --64.85.215.175 (talk) 16:04, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Closure review request

Closure requested at WP:ANRFC. Two non-involved editors endorsed the closure, and that should be more than enough. (Closing this before it get's archived.) Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 12:36, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Would an uninvolved admin please review the non-admin closure of Talk:United States#Inequality, tax incidence, and AP survey? The non-admin who closed the discussion used very strong language disparaging the sincerity of those who have been discussing the topic. Worse, the non-admin closure did not properly weigh peer reviewed secondary sources opposed to astroturfed propaganda sources. It was opened December 1st, and while the arguments continue on other articles' talk pages, the RFC sections have not been touched for weeks other than for the non-admin closure. EllenCT (talk) 03:16, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Concur with the closure. The fact that it was an WP:NAC is irrelevant; NAC's done by an uninvolved editor are just as valid as admin closes. And closure review is done by this board, not by an individual admin. As such, although I find myself in philosophical agreement with those advocating the inclusion of the graphs, the closure seems to only be deficient in terms of a lack of details. But the closure is, nevertheless, a valid summary of the discussion. There is no consensus to include the images, and the parenthetical is also in good faith: those advocating inclusion are fighting against the fairly clear consensus in regards to this matter. Continuing to fight this battle is disruptive, and Ellen would be well advised to drop the WP:stick and work on making productive contributions to the article. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 07:21, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Did you consider the extent to which right-wing political think tanks' unreviewed sources, such as the income tax graph from the Peterson Foundation, are being used to counter the conclusions of the secondary peer-reviewed literature, e.g. on corporate tax incidence? I strongly object to the implication that upholding the standards of source reliability is beating a dead horse with a stick. EllenCT (talk) 22:22, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you just changed the question. Did you want a closure review, or did you just want to re-argue the matter? A closure review asks whether the closure was an accurate and good-faith summary of the discussion. This one does not seem to have crossed any lines. A closure review does not include questions like "how would I have commented?", or even "how would I have closed the discussion myself?". You are asking me to lodge an opinion on the underlying matter, not of the closure itself, and that is something I have no interest in doing, considering that I did not comment on the matter the first time around, even though I was aware of the discussion. If you have concerns about the balance of ideological material in the article, the Neutral Point of View Noticeboard is thataway. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 08:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As a non-admin who occasionally does close discussions like this, I'd say A) the closure was correct. There was no consensus for inclusion in those discussions. And B) I'd say the closure could have been better done with a bit more tact. But yeah, the results of the close were correct. Hobit (talk) 14:55, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Nigger (song)

Good day. Why I can't create the article with such name? Can you please restore this one....I promise, it will have just a redirect to Clawfinger discography#Nigger. I'm not going to create the text.....so please, restore it just for redirect. Thanks --ВікіПЕДист (talk) 16:56, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You may be better off using a sandbox to show your intended article to people before it goes live. Britmax (talk) 17:01, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

oppose? I cant imagine justifying such a controversial redirect title for such a non notable song (no charting, no reviews, no evidence of influence or impact, etc). A far more useful redirect target would be [[31]] imo, but that is probably not necessary as the N word itself is already the title of that article. Gaijin42 (talk) 17:16, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The song is not terribly notable, but it would be a plausible search term for the discography or the album. Being "controversial" should not really be an issue.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 19:09, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see that an article with that name was ever created. So, how can it be "restored"?--Bbb23 (talk) 20:11, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is that the page is blocked to non-admins to prevent vandalism, but the suggestion above is not vandalism.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 21:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But if the song is not notable ("if", I have no idea one way or the other), then there's no need for an article, and, as Gaijin42 says, unsalting it simply for a redirect seems like creating unnecessary controversy. BMK: Grouchy Realist (talk) 21:48, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Moot point. The disambiguation in the title makes a redirect pointless. Ansh6 6 6 03:30, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How so? For readers familiar with our naming conventions and seeking information about the song, "Nigger (song)" is an obvious search term. Readers unfamiliar with our naming conventions might simply search by the title, at which point seeing "Nigger (song)" among the results would be very helpful.

Thus far, no valid reason to deny ВікіПЕДист's request has been given. Clawfinger discography#Nigger is an extant article section about a song titled Nigger. "Nigger (song)" is a plausible search term. Nigger#Music contains no mention of a song titled Nigger, so it isn't an appropriate target (and no other song with this title has been mentioned). The word "nigger" appears on our title blacklist to prevent vandalism, not to impose special restrictions on legitimate contributions because the word is controversial. Regardless, readers are unlikely to encounter the redirect without typing the word "nigger" or otherwise seeking information thereon, so it's difficult to foresee a realistic scenario in which the it provokes controversy. —David Levy 04:10, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note that Salvidrim! has redirected the page name to Nigger (disambiguation)#Music (on which no other song titled Nigger is mentioned) without elaboration. Is the basis that readers might mistakenly refer to Rock n Roll Nigger by this title? —David Levy 08:08, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can you tell me, why the page Nigger (Clawfinger song) is also blocked? --ВікіПЕДист (talk) 15:20, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty sure "Nigger" is just blacklisted entirely. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 15:28, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, probably in part because of a certain clown that used to frequent these parts... Ansh6 6 6 01:45, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Don't give one troll that much credit; it was blacklisted long before Bonkers' antics. On a side-note, no search-results come up while typing "Nigger (song)" into the search-box; typing it out entirely and hitting "enter" takes one to the desired location, but it's all but useless as a search-term. I wonder if anything can be done about this. Joefromrandb (talk) 08:35, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pages currently take a couple of days after being created to show up in the search suggestions, so you should be able to see it on the list fairly soon. This wait is apparently reduced to a minute or two with the new search backend that will be introduced soon. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 11:21, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Searching for "nigger song", which is assume is the most likely use of that term, returns these top results, in order:

Nigger (disambiguation) (redirect from Nigger (song))
Clawfinger discography (redirect from Nigger (Clawfinger song))
Rock n Roll Nigger
Nigger

I think this seems appropriate and desirable and it's how I think it should be, for the sake of our readers. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 15:39, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Nigger song" is not the same as "Nigger (song)". The latter refers to a song whose exact title is "Nigger". Precisely one song titled "Nigger" is mentioned within the pages cited in this discussion. —David Levy 16:36, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To us Wikipedians. But the project isn't made for us, it's made for readers, and for readers, nigger song is practically indistinguishable from Nigger (song). ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 16:46, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Having encountered the "Title (song)" format on previous occasions, many non-editing readers are familiar with that naming convention. Those who aren't familiar with it are exceedingly unlikely to include the parentheses in a search.

Why did you just create Nigger song as a double redirect? —David Levy 16:58, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

'Cause I'm a dumbass. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 17:05, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm hoping that the above was light-hearted self-deprecation. In case it wasn't, I want stress that my question wasn't intended as an insult (and I'm sorry if it came across in that light). —David Levy 17:15, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pshah, don't fret, I have an entire alternate account dedicated only to highlighting the fact that I sometimes do stupid mistakes. ;) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 17:51, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:Salvidumbass!, in case anyone doesn't feel like checking the page history. Nyttend (talk) 22:29, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding! Nyttend is correct! You win. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 22:41, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Genesis creation narrative

Could we have some admin eyes at Talk:Genesis creation narrative? Specifically there seems to be a lot of battlegrounding going on, and some personal attacks to boot. I said a few weeks ago that I'd watch the page and block people who went overboard but I haven't had the time to do that, so more admin eyes would be appreciated. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:04, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I second that, there is a lot of emotion flying around there and far more heat than light being generated. I poked my nose in there briefly and made an offer to try and get a clearer picture of the situation and myself was rather harshly attacked. I'd suggest several admin eyes, and people who can all stay very, very neutral. Montanabw^(talk) 20:40, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was wondering if I should comment, but given User:Til Eulenspiegel's latest attack on me at Talk:Burrows Cave#Alexander Helios where I removed something because the wrong person was said to have suggested it (Til responds "I take it that according to Doug, we are not allowed to mention the name of Alexander Helios in the article, nor explain that he has anything whatsoever to do with this theory as the A&E Network show did, because that's "too sensitive"..." although my edit summary simply said "not Burrows' claim"- Russell Burrows that is). Til has a long history of attacks such as this. At Talk:Genesis creation narrative an editor has picked him up for saying things such as "your bigoted goal of removing Christianity's voice from wikipedia", "you eliminated Christianity from wikipedia", "you are so desperate to utterly remove your enemy, Christianity, from wikipedia". I also see phrases such as "That tired old lie won't fool anyone." I'm not saying everyone else is behaving perfectly there, but Til creates a confrontational attitude. He did at that talk page, he's doing it now at Talk:Burrows Cave. The problem with Til at Talk:Genesis creation narrative is an old one, see[32] and [33]. It's worth looking at [34] Admins can read the rev/del'd material that brought this to ANI.[35] There's more on other talk pages I could show but this is representative. I don't know what the solution is but I think that this sort of battlefield mentality has gone on long enough to need one. Dougweller (talk) 14:29, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What creates a confrontational attitude is a couple editors with their heads so far up their ass they seriously try to argue that Christian viewpoints have no business in articles about Christianity because of "Conflict of Interest" and all articles about Christianity can therefore only be written by their detractors. I try to clarify to these people that since day one, Mormon views are mentioned on Mormon articles, Scientologist views are mentioned on Scientologist articles etc. but they use atrocious logic to throw every fallacy in the book into the discussion. I am attacking their atrocious logic only, and to claim that I am the source of all confrontation here is an underhanded and barely disguised attempt to remove me from the debate. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 14:40, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's the most recent page move request (Talk:Genesis creation narrative#Requested move) that's the problem. It's been open since Dec. 26, with constructive discussion ending long ago. A neutral admin should simply close it. I think that Til Eulenspiegel has been on the receiving end of a lot of baiting there (and has been taking the bait). Any blocks would have to include a whole cast of characters. I think that if an admin just closed this latest RM (the 11th for this article's title by my count), it would be akin to declaring "Let there be Light!". First Light (talk) 15:22, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, you create confrontation by assuming bad faith. Our first interaction started off by you saying, "This response seems like a bias against using any source that indicates Christianity in the source, as part of a trend of increased bigotry to get that viewpoint declared illegitimate according to wikipedia." [36] --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:32, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Probably an edit conflict there, since I never said that. Either way, the bad blood on this article's title goes way back. Closing this move request now would end the current problem, at least until the next move request. First Light (talk) 15:44, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@First Light Why did you change my indentation? [37] I've change it back as it was clear I was replying to Til. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:49, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for clearing that up. I was assuming, wrongly apparently, that consecutive unindented comments are confusing to those trying to make sense of a discussion. Apologies, First Light (talk) 15:54, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One way to show who you are replying to is "@First Light" etc. First Light, the point I am trying to make is that this isn't unusual behavior by Til. I didn't bait him at Talk:Burrows Cave. I've given examples of other times he was reported here or at ANI. Closing the discussion is a good idea, but won't deal with the basic problem. Dougweller (talk) 16:54, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Dougweller - I understand that you're pointing out that there may be broader issues with Til's behavior, and wasn't replying to those other issues. But since this thread's title and birth was about the Genesis article, I wanted to point out that there could rightfully be a lot of blocks thrown around for what's been going on there for a long time. Another thread or an RfC might be best for the broader issues, only because of all the rancorous baiting and back and forth at Genesis. First Light (talk) 03:05, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pleased that Til Eulenspiegel posted in a typical way at 14:40, 21 January 2014 above. It saves me having to provide too many examples of his regular habit of exaggerating and misrepresenting what I (and others) say. There are many other examples on the Talk page we're discussing here. Up above he says "What creates a confrontational attitude is a couple editors with their heads so far up their ass they seriously try to argue that Christian viewpoints have no business in articles about Christianity because of "Conflict of Interest" and all articles about Christianity can therefore only be written by their detractors." Obviously nobody has said that. And nobody has their heads up their arses. (My preferred spelling of that last word.) It's impossible to rationally discuss matters with an editor who contributes in that way. HiLo48 (talk) 22:45, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here is what you are saying in your exact words: "You know, I'd love to see Wikipedia's conflict of interest rules applied to religious articles. Christian opinion should not influence the content of articles on Christianity. Buddhist opinion should not influence articles on Buddhism. Etc, etc, etc. What do you think? HiLo48 (talk) 06:45, 6 January 2014 (UTC)" Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 22:50, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just to demonstrate the falseness of Til's claims that he addressed logic only, here are a few quotes. "First they declare Genesis = fiction (because THEY say so - doesn't matter what anyone else thinks). Next they will feel so empowered they will set their sights on the Quran, Book of Mormon, Baghavad Gita and Lotus Sutra etc. and try to officially declare which parts of that they think are "myth" and need to be declared "fiction" according to THEM. Instead of the original basic idea wikipedia was founded on, treating all major competing world views in the world impartially - it becomes the antithesis" ; "your bigoted goal of removing Christianity's voice from wikipedia";"you eliminated Christianity from wikipedia"; "you are so desperate to utterly remove your enemy, Christianity, from wikipedia". "And you despise [Christianity] that is clear." Note that the discussion is about changing one word in a title. Rwenonah (talk) 23:37, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's one of the best spin jobs at cherry picking quotes out of context ever, but one would have to read the entire page to see some of the ridiculous things that have been said in the endless (going on one month this round) unfounded complaining about the supposed "bias" of the term "narrative". Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 23:45, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Til, thank you for finally quoting my exact words. It's a big improvement in your behaviour. However, while you seem to think it's somehow wrong, I still strongly believe that "Christian opinion should not influence the content of articles on Christianity." Christian opinions can be included as quotations, with an attribution that the holder of that opinion is Christian, but they must never guide how we write the article. The concept that we treat Christianity differently from other faiths, apparently because there's a lot of Christians likely read it and some might be offended if we treat it just like all other religions, is completely unacceptable to me, but I think it's what you want. Apologies if I have misrepresented your position there. HiLo48 (talk) 00:37, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I closed the RM. Hopefully all parties take a step back and let things cool down now. If not, further admin actions (stern warnings/blocks for those who continue to engage in inappropriate behavior) may be required. --ThaddeusB (talk)

I find comments like that pretty unhelpful. You have not identified any inappropriate behaviour, nor those who are guilty of it. None of the latter will believe they are guilty of any of the former. Not sure what it will achieve. HiLo48 (talk) 02:31, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A fair critique... I will be keeping an eye on things and will give specific (hopefully helpful) warnings for anything I see going forward. --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:04, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I don't see how the result could be anything other than no consensus. But I had been wondering, that if the closer had made reference to unanswered arguments, whether it was worth taking it to a move review, on the basis that personal attacks from editors were driving people away. I know I was driven away by the personal attacks, though none were directed at me. I submitted a !vote, and I think something I said was queried, but I didn't respond because of the toxic environment that had developed (nothing to do with the person who queried what I said, though!) Anyway, the whole issue is moot now, but it raised an interesting question - are personal attacks within a discussion sufficient grounds for contesting a requested move result? St Anselm (talk) 21:31, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The name calling and bad behavior was limited to a few participants and most of us were able to exchange views, possibly strongly held, without attacking the other person. The last thing I would want to see is for this discussion to be reopened.--agr (talk) 00:27, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Review of block

Nascarman1 (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log)

I indeffed this user for creating inappropriate articles, removal of templates, and WP:NOTHERE. Because this does not appear to be run-of-the-mill vandalism, I've brought it here for others to look at. A review at the user's talk page (including a final warning from Gogo Dodo), contribution history, and deleted contribution history is illuminating. The user's two interests appear to be fire departments and NASCAR, and he's repeatedly creating really silly articles about fire departments, and one-sentence articles about NASCAR (teams, drivers, etc.). The articles keep getting tagged for speedy delete. Some get deleted, the tags of some are declined (I've even done that because I'm not sure of my ground when it comes to sports notability), and others redirected.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:39, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Prolly a stern talking to and pointing out that single line articles generally are frowned upon might help and that we do like to see references for what is in articles? WTH - he might even be salvageable, 2 days is not a long time for an editor to enter and be ejected :(. Of course I am not second-guessing the block after a final warning, but think perhaps in future cases we might offer some better rope at the 2 day mark? Cheers. Collect (talk) 20:05, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I gave the user some advice on my talk page, but they don't seem to have taken it. I ignored his question about he can tag and delete articles (part of the WP:NOTHERE).--Bbb23 (talk) 20:16, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More evidence of cluelessness on the user's talk page, as well as threats of disruption post-block:

I have read the article on the board about my recent blocking. I am working hard to block the individual who blocked me. I am a very strong believer in equality, and I know the folks at Wikipedia are too, so I know that I have the same rights on here to block other people as they have done. The page said I was doing inappropriate articles, which I never have done. I am already sending in a request to be unblocked, and if that fails I will be creating a new account on a different computer.

--Bbb23 (talk) 21:29, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed the editor is clueless. This the normal state of affairs for a new editor. ^[2]Given that the editor has been here for 2 days, had a total of 47 mainspace, 2 talk and ~4 user talk, it's had to see how WP:NOTHERE applies -- the editor clearly wants to contribute, they just don't know how. They should be unblocked with firm instructions not to create any redirects or new articles until they get the lay of the land and perhaps some direction to the teahouse. The silliness about "blocking" and creating a new account should, of course, be ignored. NE Ent 03:04, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Cite error: The named reference Baseball Bugs was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ If the were competent they'd be accused of being a sock.

What earned them their final warning from me was the first redirect they created for Jim Rosenblum Racing. I gave them the final warning after noticing the previous warnings given to them. I didn't check over their previous edits when I issued the warning. After now reviewing all of their edits, I suspect that the editor means well and should be given another chance. The redirect I deleted was their only vandalism edit that I can see. Their unblock has been declined, so perhaps we should see what they do after reading NE Ent's advice. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 07:11, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't call that "advice" except in the broadest sense. NE Ent spoonfed the user as to what to say in an unblock request. So, let's say the user makes another unblock request repeating what NE Ent said they should say - we're supposed to accept that as credible?--Bbb23 (talk) 09:02, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They didn't and their latest unblock request was declined. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 04:56, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see an enthusiastic but misguided newbie whose talk page was plastered with templates and warnings without anyone extending a friendly helping hand until NE Ent came along. Sadly all too common here. Thrub (talk) 08:44, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Assume Ignorance? ES &L 13:39, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

can't say that one hasn't tried. Going on the usual assumption that he's read what has been removed, his last (declined) unblock request has all the hallmarks of a severe lack of clue and we all know how that usually ends. Blackmane (talk) 17:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Vandal category needs removal

Now blocked editor Hole rabbit (talk · contribs) recently added "Category:Shits" to {{OW}}. Before this was reverted, it was added to 85 IP pages. Can someone unlink these, possibly with a mass rollback or such?--Auric talk 21:00, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't need it, MediaWiki will sort it automatically. Not immediately, unless you do a null edit on each user page, to force a page recreation using the now-clean template. Any editor could do this. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:11, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks.--Auric talk 21:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Out of curiosity, what exactly is the purpose of {{OW}}? Erpert ^{WHAT DO YOU WANT???} 06:53, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mainly for school IPs, dynamic IPs or business IPs, etc., where it is obvious the current user does not need to see a talk page full of crap from 11 years ago, but the history may be useful to an investigation or whatnot. Rgrds. --64.85.214.127 (talk) 11:20, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've cleaned the category with some API magic. Normally it's best to wait for MediaWiki to update categories by itself, but I think it's reasonable to make an exception for vandal categories like this one. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 11:08, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've just finished clearing it. For some reason, pages would show on the category page, despite the category not showing on the user talk page.--Auric talk 14:35, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

RfC of interest

Administrators and other editors here may perhaps be interested in Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure#RfC about listing discussions. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Crashsnake

Crashsnake (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I am looking for input on what to do with User:Crashsnake. I have seen his name pop up a lot both on my watchlist, and in other places. A perusal of his talk page going back over three years, many editors have tried to reach out to him to get his attention and try to communicate with him. He does not respond on his talk page, and rarely leaves edit summaries. I am concerned that we have a basic competence issue with this user , who is apparently often described as disruptive and engages in edit warring.

I considered starting a user RFC to bring up these issues, but this user's particular non-communicativeness makes me concerned that such a thing would be pointless. Reviewing his contributions list on user talk pages (with none on his own page), article talk pages, Wikipedia pages and Wikipedia talk pages reveals fewer than 10 total edits between those spaces in over a 3 year span. While a user is not required to communicate in any of these venues, it is important to respond to people when they bring issues to your attention, and the fact that he has used these at all tells me that he does know how to use them, so the only conclusion I can come to is that he chooses not to communicate with other editors.

His block log reveals that he has been blocked twice by J Greb and once by Nightscream, both of whom made multiple efforts to reach out to him before blocking him. Spidey104 has also made quite a bit of effort to reach out to him, again with no response. What, if anything, can be done to get this user to communicate with other editors rather than shutting everyone else out and going back to the same behaviors to get his way? If there is nothing that can be done, should we consider a topic ban or more serious measures? BOZ (talk) 21:04, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Given that they're not responding in any way, a topic ban is largely meaningless. A wake up block might be necessary. Blackmane (talk) 22:24, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that he has had three "wake up blocks" already – one just two months ago – which failed to catch his attention. Since, as far as I can tell, his editing is limited to articles about comic book related topics (characters, movies based on comics, etc.), topic banning him from comic-related articles would definitely catch his attention. If and when he is able prove to the community that he is here to work collaboratively, the topic ban could be lifted. If he just decides to "become someone else's problem" by moving on to another subject area and exhibiting the same behavior there, then he would likely face an altogether ban. Please tell me if I am going about this all the wrong way. BOZ (talk) 23:28, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Topic bans are not a valid solution for anything. All they do is shift the problem from one group of editors to another. My feeling is, if an editor is causing problems on a persistent, ongoing basis, and refuses to acknowledge warnings, then he/she should be blocked, indefinitely, until he/she responds. Period. Nightscream (talk) 01:01, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Real nice suggestions. You guys make it sound like the "persistent, ongoing problems" I cause are edits that are completely irrelevant any said page that I've edited. I mean the way you all talk about me makes it sound like I make edits that are completely repetitive (or even inappropriate). Crashsnake 10:50, 21 January 2014

They are. Nightscream (talk) 05:52, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Crashsnake: Communication is vital in any collaborative editing atmosphere. A quick glance at your talk page tells me perhaps wikis aren't a good fit for you. -- œ ^™ 13:07, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for replying, Crashsnake, although it is unfortunate that it took a ban discussion to get a response from you, but perhaps this can be a good starting-over point for you? While we have your attention, would you please explain why you usually do not respond to other editors when they bring up concerns on your talk page, and why you do not usually use edit summaries on your edits? BOZ (talk) 16:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One of the main problems with your edits, Crashsnake, is that you make large changes in one edit without any explanation in the edit summary. Because you have a history of edit warring or making bad edits it is hard for other editors to assume good faith without an explanation of what you have done, especially when you remove large portions of articles. I will admit that some of your edits are helpful, but the unexplained changes, large removals, and no response to questions far outweighs those helpful edits. The point of this discussion is to stop all of the negatives and increase all of the positives of your editing. Do not take this as a personal attack, but as our last resort to help you so you do not have to be blocked. Spidey104 19:11, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Crashsnake made a two line comment three days ago and he has not done anything to change his behavior. Obviously he is aware of this discussion because he posted that comment, but clearly he doesn't care if he is doing nothing to change his behavior. I was hoping we could change his behavior without a block, but I think he's shown that he won't change his behavior without some sort of repercussion to show him he needs to change. Unfortunately I think we need to block him to get his attention and hopefully he will fix his behavior after the block expires. Spidey104 14:06, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was hoping to address this today as well. Yes, Crashsnake's brief response above was more than we ever see from him, but it does nothing to address any of the criticisms laid out here and elsewhere, nor does it even attempt to suggest that he may be willing to implement any changes. I may assume good faith that an editor is willing to change if they at least make an attempt or promise to do so, but I see nothing like that here. He continues to not use edit summaries, and although I have not checked for any further edit warring, I see no reason to think that will simply change on its own either. I think it's clear from responses above that my earlier suggestion of a topic ban has no traction. The question I must pose, then, is do we think another block will do any good, or should we have a discussion on whether the community would place a ban on him? If a block is the solution, it should be more than just a few days, which will expire and then he can just go back to business as usual; I would suggest an indefinite block in that case, with the proviso that if he can demonstrate a willingness to collaborate with his fellow editors on an ongoing basis that he be unblocked at that point. BOZ (talk) 16:20, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some WP:SPI constipation

(Probably not the best metaphor (admins are laxatives?)) There are currently 45 cases listed: 28 open, 11 curequest, 3 endorsed, 3 checked. Regards, vzaak 06:58, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A reminder that any open cases not requiring CU can be handled by any admin willing to review the evidence presented. There are only two cases that have been endorsed by the clerks for checkuser attention, and 11 awaiting (completely underrepresented, overworked and underpaid) clerk review. That leaves the majority of the requests (22 at last count) that require admin eyes.--Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 19:35, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everyone who works on SPI - I've decided to double your pay in recognition! Aren't I nice? ;). Ironholds (talk) 02:31, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've gotten the message that this was a bad joke. Sorry, no disrespect/offense was intended. vzaak 15:10, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Peter2212 requesting unblock

Could someone take a look at User talk:Peter2212 and handle the unblock request there? It's been sitting open for 3+ weeks now. I can't quite make full sense of the plagiarism concerns involved, but hopefully someone else can. only (talk) 22:49, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'll handle it. Not going to do anything about it directly at the moment, but I'm going to ask the blocking admin fro input. Nyttend (talk) 01:40, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

13 January expired PRODs

Taken care of.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:01, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Hello, just noticed that there are a lot of expired PRODs for 13 January. Is there a reason why they haven't been deleted yet? Thanks, JMHamo (talk) 11:38, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

and Zahn's Airfield from 12 January... JMHamo (talk) 11:40, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

AfDed this one.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:56, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I got the rest. -- œ ^™ 11:57, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Jan 19 to Jan 21st edits deleted

Hi all, It looks like a huge number of edits (including one of mine) were deleted in some way (sorry, don't know the various ways of deleting edits rather than pages) from this page. These were from Jan 19th to Jan 21st. Could anyone explain what that was about? Sorry if there is an obvious way to tell why or who did it, but I can't figure it out to ask them. Hobit (talk) 17:37, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The edits were suppressed by an oversighter so "normal admins" (if that isn't an oxymoron) can't tell you why because we don't have the power to read suppressed edits, and oversighters won't tell you why because otherwise that defeats the purpose of oversighting. From a look at the history, it appears that the second comment in #Lee arango me contained a link or information that it was necessary to remove from the entire edit history of this page for privacy reasons - so all the diffs from the time it was added until the time it was removed had to be suppressed so that the link/info couldn't be seen at all. There's no suggestion that you did anything wrong. Bencherlite ^Talk 17:44, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with everything Bencherlite says. To expand on a little: this is normal procedure when we need to redact content completely, rather than simply removing it from the latest revision. Deleting every revision containing that content is the only possible way to do this, since we can't edit old revisions — unless a revision is deleted, it will always show precisely the same code. The alternative of not deleting the revision will result in the content still being in the history, so there wouldn't be a point in deleting any revisions in the first place. If you have time and want to read more about it, see Wikipedia:Revision deletion ("RevDel"). Oversighters lost a major ability some time back (they used to be able to get rid of content entirely), but nowadays they're only able to perform RevDel. The only difference between oversight-type RevDel and "normal" RevDel is that the oversighters are the only ones able to undo their RevDel, while normal RevDel can be undone by admins. Nyttend (talk) 01:45, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's not exactly right, Nyttend. Oversighters perform suppression actions, which differ from revdelete actions in that they remove the edits in question from the view of everyone other than oversighters, while revdelete removes them from the view of only non-admins. It's more or less accurate to say that the suppression tool is just the revdelete tool on steroids, but they are different tools. I think what you're thinking of when you say that we lost an ability is old-style oversight, which literally removed the edits themselves from the database, wiping the data, and was not reversible. With old-style oversight, a page history wouldn't even show that an edit had ever existed there (I think. That version of the tool was deprecated well before my time and I never used it). Modern suppression replicates this "nobody can see this content" behavior in a non-destructive manner by implementing oversighter-only restrictions for viewing the content of the edit, rather than the deleting the existence of the edit in page history. With oversight, anyone can still see that an edit was made, but only oversighters can see (or restore) what was in the suppressed portion of the edit (the exception to this is page delete+suppress simultaneous actions, which does not show the "a page with this name was previously deleted" box that a normally-deleted page does). That digression set aside, Bencherlite's response to the original question is correct. To remove the content for an edit that wasn't immediately reverted, we need to suppress all edit history during which that content was on the page. This sometimes results in large swaths of collateral damage, diff-wise, but the "innocent" content is still available on the page itself, just not diffable. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 02:35, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think you misunderstand me. There's no real difference between suppression (which is the "oversight-type RevDel" that I talked about) and "normal RevDel" aside from who implements it, who can read stuff to which it's been applied, and who can undo it — both work essentially in the same way, with the relevant user rights being the only real difference. And the removal of the ability to get rid of material entirely, the old-style stuff, is what I mean about "lost a major ability". Nyttend (talk) 02:56, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, we're saying the same thing (though I would argue that referring to suppression as revdeletion is likely to confuse people who don't already know the intricacies, so there's probably some value in being explicit). Carry on! A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 03:08, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Problem was that I couldn't remember what it was called; I would have said "suppression" if the term had come to mind. Nyttend (talk) 13:40, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all. I knew it wasn't about me, but I'd never seen that many edits removed before. Hobit (talk) 05:02, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Appeal request

I would like to appeal a six month ban I was given three months ago. Here is the discussion. The requester cites a dispute on the Shushi article. He says I was ignoring the discussion on the talk page, but I was very active in it. He also claims I was edit warring, but I had only undone two edits, the same amount as he himself, and did not violate the three per day rule or anything that required sanctioning. Also, it was not I who was undoing a consensus, but the requester who was placing his POV edits before the talk was over. I feel the request to ban me was more like a ban for having a different opinion and EdJohnson rushed to place a ban. I think this was a relatively small incident that was reacted to too harshly. Considering almost all of my edits are focused around Armenian topics, most of which aren't controversial, I think half a year is too long of a sanction. Having already spent half the time banned, I want to request it be removed now. I promise I will not do any undoing during my next talk regardless of if the other editor does it or not. --HouseOfArtaxiad (talk) 18:19, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lucia Black's editing restrictions

User:Lucia Black has been under editing restrictions for less than a month, including an interaction ban between herself and User:ChrisGualtieri, as imposed by the community. In this short span of time, she violated it (reverting Chris directly, requesting proxy editing, discussing the content of his edits), which led to a one-week block and an additional topic ban from Ghost in the Shell (manga); she admitted she didn't mind being blocked because she got her way. This was not the first time she disregards editing restrictions.

Today, I was contacted separately by three editors, including ChrisGualtieri, that get a strong feeling that since the expiration of her block, Lucia has been systematically involving herself in topics that were previously the subject of disputes between her and Chris; since he is obviously not allowed to engage with her at the time being, this could be an attempt to use the IBAN to her advantage in "having her way" with the subjects of these disputes. Examples: Ghost in the Shell, Sailor Moon.

The last discussion was aptly summarized by User:TParis who pointed out that "There is strong opinion that Lucia Black is wearing on the community's patience.", and the situation seems to have failed to get better, even with the imposition of editing restrictions intended to minimize disruption without having to further remove Lucia from the project.

I am not sure how to proceed with this; escalating blocks don't seem like a good idea to me, a wider topic ban seems like the restrictions would become just too much to be practical, and an indef-block would no doubt be contested and discussed (so I thought discussion might as well take place beforehand...). Something needs to be done, I think, but I can't make up my mind as to what exactly, and I trust the community's judgement in reviewing & handling these matters.

(Just to make it clear, the active restrictions include forbidding Lucia from starting a new thread on an administrative noticeboard, but she's obviously allowed to respond to this if she sees fit.) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:36, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All I know is that it seems she's already violated her "last chance" set up twice now with these sorts of antics. How many last chances do we give? Sergecross73 msg me 18:52, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It depends. For established editors (more or less equal to "people whose names you recognize"), the answer is usually "a lot". For newer people, the answer is usually "one". (That might make an interesting research topic.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure about that - I recognise Lucia Black's name only too well. And given the reasons I recognise it, I'm of the opinion that the last 'last chance' she was given was at least one too many. She seems incapable of contributing without creating drama and conflict, and since she's demonstrated that she isn't going to comply with restrictions the community imposes, an indefinite block would seem entirely reasonable on the face of it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:23, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh come on, you guys. You know this website just won't be the same without everyone constantly bickering with Lucy Black over the most petty shit imaginable. Whoever else will come with stuff like keep your personal opinions to yourself, or i will save it for a time to put in ANI. it's that simple in case she's gone? Lucia Black related drama is an essential part of the Wikipedia experience. --Niemti (talk) 20:37, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Although your statement is obviously dripping with sarcasm, I agree that it highlights an important issue, which is that Lucia seems to expect drama to be the result of her actions and does nothing to avoid or minimize conflict. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 20:42, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I came in, ready to levy a long block for IBAN violations, but then I re-read it and realised that you were linking to an old violation as an example. Has Lucia done anything that, by itself, warrants sanctions right now? Your point about the systemic involvement may be a good reason for further sanctions, but we definitely need discussion on it. Nyttend (talk) 23:44, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Nyttend, unless there has been something recent that has not been addressed then I really do not see what the issue is here. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of users addressed me with the concerns laid out above that she was using the IBAN as a tool in disputes, and after personally reviewing the issue I was unable to decide what (if anything) should be done, which is why I'm submitting this for review, in light of the other recent violations. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 00:13, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Knowledgekid misunderstands me. I'm acknowledging that the review you want may be grounds for sanctions, and I'm acknowledging that there might be something recent (I've not checked either way on that); my question was purely "has there been anything specific?" Long-term patterns are sometimes disruptive when nothing individual is; most arbitration cases, for example, deal with disruptive patterns that lack specific problematic edits. Nyttend (talk) 01:10, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As for requesting closing of WP:GAR, that was consensus reached in the GAR. i'm only trying to get carried out. I personally would've preferred that it just get GA pass right then and there.

I don't know why Sailor Moon is an issue, if i had any dispute with Chris in the past regarding Sailor Moon, i would've remembered, or was too petty to discuss and in the end was resolved. But taking advantage of the interaction ban? I'm only bringing up an issue that had received consensus along time ago but didn't have the means to doing it because no one was interested in it (at that time).

This is ridiculous, I've been avidly interested in Sailor Moon for a long time. I was just about to contact User:Knowledgekid87 on the issue to see if he can make sense of this when i noticed something. ChrisGualtieri private messaged Knowledgekid87 asking he could make the article into GA. Here i thought "oh crud, how was i supposed to know he got involved before i did". But i noticed he removed it, and then i thought why he needed to remove it if this was evidence enough to get me blocked forever. so i took a closer look and noticed he asked 5 hours after I got involved in the discussion and i decided to help. i dont know if he's trying to "hide" this information, but i can see why he would. Now if this is the issue of "getting my way" and taking advantage of the interaction ban, the editor was asking for help publicly in WP:ANIME in which I accepted to help on my own. Anyone from WP:ANIME can tell you that I've had my own personal interest in Sailor Moon for a very long time, practically since the time i joined.

Gaming the system would be if i did the exact same thing Chris did just now. If Chris accepted to help another editor and getting involved, but suddenly i choose to go around the discussion by bringing it up in the talkpage. So basically, WP:BOOMERANG at its finest. i have a pretty clear idea on who these editors are.

HOWEVER, if i accidentally get involved in a public discussion that was brought up by the person i was banned from interacting with through private messaging, per WP:IBAN i would prefer if you mention either one of us in the discussion so that we don't accidentally get involved in a discussion that was brought prior to it being made public. Sounds like a quick and easy way to get banned. although from now on i suppose i could look into talkpages before to double-check.Lucia Black (talk) 00:41, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For the record I did reply to Chris here addressing the issue with some ideas: [38] which was reverted on his talkpage as "No comment" - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And even more i'm in the dark. i wish this WP:AN didn't even started. Salvidrim, you should consider analysing the situation and actually discussing it with me BEFORE bringing it in WP:AN.Lucia Black (talk) 01:17, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this is why you're banned from starting discussions at AN/ANI. You have no idea when it is or is not appropriate to start a discussion here. This was a very sensible move by Salv, and you go and try to lecture him about it. Get a clue. Sergecross73 msg me 02:37, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lucia has been a member of the anime/manga project though longer than Chris has and has made constructive edits on Sailor Moon, I do not see where the dispute between her and Chris was regarding Sailor Moon. As for the request for closure in Ghost in the Shell the edits made by Lucia were before the interaction ban between her and Chris. The latest edit for a request for closure seems warrented given that over two months had gone by, in addition another editor seemed to be in agreement with this: [39] - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:28, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There also appears to be a history between Lucia and User:Verso.Sciolto from the very start that raises more questions. [40] - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:37, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Sergecross73: WP:CLUE is all about having the better reason to move discussions along. We should focus on the real issue. Chris intended to game the system here, and with 2 other editors tried to make it look like i was trying to do that when there's nothing suggesting it. that's a serious issue, regardless if you're irritated or lost patience with me. Now, we been down this road before...but should your view on me outweigh actions of these 3 editors?Lucia Black (talk) 05:57, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have been following the edit histories of several contributors because I’m looking for indications on how to proceed with the improvement of the Nausicaa related articles. I’ve had a conflict with Lucia Black about the Nausicaa (manga) article in the past, do not know what her intentions are for those articles and have kept an eye on her edits for that reason. I was aware of ChrisGualtieri’s edit history as well because of his edits to Nausicaa related articles but also because of his interactions with Lucia Black. There was a marked difference between the way each of them approached me and that certainly has influenced how I evaluate each of them individually. It is for this reason that I’ve read previous discussions on these pages and have on previous occasions also voiced my own opinion about Lucia Black’s, in my opinion disruptive and unnecessarily confrontational behaviour.

Before the interaction ban was enacted between Lucia Black and Chris Gualtieri, but as the discussion to implement such measures was unfolding here earlier this month the discussion had already reached a point when it was clear that corrective measures would be applied. Lucia Black nevertheless reverted several of Chris Gualtieri's edits on Ghost in the Shell related articles. While this was before a ban was imposed it seemed hardly in the spirit of trying to resolve the issue or working towards consensus to do so while a discussion of this kind was in progress.

After the interaction ban was imposed Lucia Black indicated not caring about sanctions because her edits had been the last ones and would therefore be preserved as the status quo. After Lucia Black and ChrisGualtieri had both been blocked from editing one particular segment of the contested set of Ghost in the Shell articles. ChrisGualtieri has been advised to abandon the entire set of articles and I thought it unwise for Lucia Black to get involved in any Ghost in the Shell related topic at that point. Since the underlying dispute was for the Ghost in the Shell articles in their totality it was not a topic she should have addressed in any form within two days of returning from a general editing block. That was the opinion I expressed on the Ghost in the Shell reassessment page.

When I noticed that Lucia Black had also indicated a desire to work on Sailor Moon related articles again that too seemed an unwise decision because of a dispute she had been involved in with a different editor. (That dispute did not involve ChrisGualtieir directly but involved Malkinann who disappeared shortly after mediation was initiated. Malkinann had previously been involved in editing Nausicaa related topics.)

I thought it would have been wiser for Lucia Black to select topics with a less troubled past for her return to editing. I did not comment at this point. Lucia Black followed up her initial comments on Sailor Moon by using Dragon Ball Z as an example for her intentions. At this point I questioned her decision because it seemed unwise to invoke that particular example to make a point to demonstrate the supposed necessity of either splits or merges.

The choice of example seemed unwise to me because Lucia Black was well aware that ChrisGualtieri would want to comment on the applicability of Dragon Ball Z but was restricted from doing so as a result of their mutual interaction ban. Dragon Ball Z is another topic she is well aware has been the subject of heated confrontations over the split and merges of that article - with ChrisGualtieri being one of the primary voices of those who opposed Lucia Black’s own interpretations.

If avoiding rekindling conflict is the goal why not pick a less contentious example? That was my thought and that’s why I questioned Lucia Black’s choice of topics and examples. This is what caused a few exchanges on my talk page and I left a comment on those topics on Lucia Black’s talk page.

I had also noticed that ChrisGualtieri had indicated, on Knowledgekid87’s talk page, that he was interested in editing Sailor Moon related content and that too seemed an unwise move to me given the interaction ban and Lucia Black’s earlier indication that she would like to work on Sailor Moon related articles again.

Contrary to Lucia Black's assertion I did not single her out for revenge but contacted several other editor's to alert them that the situation between the two of them might require attention to avoid reigniting the drawn out conflicts related to Ghost in the Shell in particular but also mentioned the desire expressed by both of them to work on Sailor Moon related articles. I did so because of the contentious issue of splits and merges of other manga and anime articles and because Dragon Ball Z had been mentioned by Lucia Black.

It seemed to me that the continued efforts to edit in overlapping areas would cause further conflict. I did not say that there had already been violations but I indicated that a situation was brewing with the potential for reigniting the conflicts. The status quo is untenable, imo. There is no clarity on which articles or parts of series each individual can or can not address or edit and that is the reason why I posted my messages.

Because of my own prior conflict with Lucia Black I contacted 2 editor’s for their input and disclosed my own previous conflict with Lucia Black in those messages. Sometime later I also messaged an other editor, Salvidrim, particularly after the exchanges on my talk page. [edited 2x] Verso.Sciolto (talk) 06:45, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A)The edit was done prior to the ban, so gaming the system would be reverting my edits in any fashion (and no, it was not discussed in the talkpage at all) regardless of prior to or after. Which is why i couldn't discuss in any discussion Chris was already involved in even if i was already invovled (and the same for him). It's still violation of the interaction ban. And its not a win-win situation for me either. For example, i've been intending to heavily reduce the gameplay from Ghost in the Shell (video game) but the ones i want to remove involve Chris's edits. I've consciously avoided removing them as that would be violating WP:IBAN by removing the content "he" added. So per status quo, i can't touch that specific information.

B)Chris and I were topic banned Ghost in the Shell (manga) specifically not the topic as a whole. And were to avoid any topics that have had previous disputes with him. In Ghost in the Shell (video game) there are none that were left unresolved. Also note that we were not specifically advised to avoid the entire topic. I've been editing Stand Alone Complex for quite a while without worry because Chris does not make an large contributions there. if he ever planned, i wouldn't know, but i'm free to edit other articles that i have not disputed with him. Chris more or less involved in the Ghost in the Shell film articles which i've avoided for some time, i'm in Stand Alone Complex series articles aswell and he hardly makes any edits there. the main dispute with me and Chris would have to be the franchise article and the manga article relationship as it has been the longest dispute ever (mainly due to a specific edit liking to do edit wars when he doesn't get his way). and we should both be avoiding them (not out of rules, but out of etiquette to follow further disputes).

C) I was advised to avoid articles that have had issues with Chris in the past. That does not mean you should HOUND any discussion that has had any issues in general. I brought up Dragon Ball Z as an example of how Sailor Moon fit the situation of being able to split (an issue Chris shouldn't have to begin with as he's pro-split for big series such as these). the discussion was NOT to discuss Dragon Ball Z in any way other than using it as an example as to allow a Sailor Moon (anime) article. Which means, Dragon Ball Z was not in danger of being re-merged anytime soon or being a major topic. And trying to make it look like it was cringe worthy for Chris to avoid is only falsifying information. Even if he did, i only brought up the other example to further allow a split of another article. And for the record: this was a topic long before Chris even joined Wikipedia.

D) If you construed the information here, as much as you did when you informed the other editors, especially if there's only one unbias editor that made the email, then it only shows bad on your part. (which i don't doubt the third emailer was unbias isn't because the only editor willing to follow this e-mail campaign rather than straight out would have to have had an issue with me, or some form of bias already. So right now, if you, and Chris, are the 2 out of 3. You can see why the 3rd anonymous editor isn't so hard to pick out).

Salvidrim! should've known, why couldn't you all OPENLY have asked? you see, it only shows more on you and your intentions.Lucia Black (talk) 06:56, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I contacted 3 editors independently and although the comment above is more elaborate than the e-mails were, my message to them already contained each of the topics addressed. Each of the editors can identify themselves if they see reason to do so but ChrisGualtieri was not one of the editors I contacted.Verso.Sciolto (talk) 07:16, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

theres so much more to say on how you construed the information, but its best to end this now. because theres nothing here. Lucia Black (talk) 07:32, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote my comment on the Ghost in the Shell reassessment openly, appended an example showing that Chris Gualtieri had been advised to avoid all Ghost in the Shell articles. It seems appropriate to suggest you do the same. I also asked you openly about your choice of topics and examples on the Manga and Anime talk page regarding Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z. I also openly addressed your responses on my talk page. The message I left on your talk page was also posted openly. I suggested that you remove the Dragon Ball Z reference for the same reason you removed my comment from your talk page. There was no revenge motive nor was there subterfuge nor was there any collusion but I would still like clarity on the topics addressed. The status quo is untenable and my decision to contact three other editors was supposed to be preemptive. [edit]Verso.Sciolto (talk) 08:13, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No such advise was given to chris. and i have the link myself to prove he was not advised to avoid all Ghost in the Shell articles. and i was not advised either. [41] this shows that Chris (and I0 were warned to avoid discussing Ghost in the Shell (manga) not the topic as a whole.

Sailor Moon is an even more ridiculous because i had no prior dispute with Chris, and this only show more on your part. Sailor Moon has nothing to do with Chris and me, which means i'm free to discuss it and edit it. IN fact, it shows how he was willing to game the system by forcing his foot into a topic i already stated i was going to be involved in. And there's no reason for me to avoid those articles. You just mentioned how you knew Malkinann in the past through Nasicaa articles and how we had disputes about sailor moon, so you already show a strong sense of Bias here by admitting the connection to Sailor Moon could also be through Malkinann NOT ChrisGualtieri.

Keep in mind, you continuously chose to discuss ChrisGualtieri in my talkpage and in urs, something you know i can't discuss about and i've warned you several times and refused to discuss it with you. So knowing full-well i was banned from even "mentioning" his name, you continued to bring him up.

Seriously, can someone just close this. Verso.Sciolto have made serious accusations based on what he believes, but theres links to show how construed his basis is. And we should just close this now.Lucia Black (talk) 08:26, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why would we close it now? Have any of the concerns been addressed? I feel like you've only added more fuel to the fire; as soon as you actively joined the discussion, the drama/rants/wall-of-text responses flared right up again. This is the sort of crap we're trying to cut down on. Sergecross73 msg me 14:00, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Merging histories

And that is that. (NAC) Erpert ^{WHAT DO YOU WANT???} 09:16, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

I need help, because content of the article aeromobil is lost when Draft:Aeromobil was renamed in Klein Aeromobil. It should have first been merged with already existent article, and then removed. The draft was created because I unintentionally posted a copyvio on that page. However, I heard that admins can merge histories, so can you please do that for me? Alex^{discussion ★} 20:01, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Nyttend (talk) 23:40, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Devanampriya keeps reverting at Yoga Page

A specific version of the page was clearly agreed to on the talk page by multiple people, including well respected Joshua Jonathan. Devanampriyakeeps reverting these edits. HathaYogin (talk) 04:10, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see two reversions over three days by Devanampriya, same as HathaYogin. I also see no attempt to discuss the matter with Devanampriya (and no notification of this thread as CLEARLY stated is required). Instead of running to tattle on someone when they do something you don't like please first try to work things out by talking with them. --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:33, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is up to Devanampriya to discuss things on the talk page. There is not a single comment by Devanampriya on the entire talk page! He is not a regular editor on the Yoga page. How can we force someone else to engage in dialogue? HathaYogin (talk) 05:00, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And it is up to you to make an effort to resolve conflicts before seeking intervention... A friendly note on someone's talk page works wonders; talking about "forcing" people do things does not. It is quite possible that Devanampriya is not even aware of the discussion on the talk page. Please try to assume good faith about other editors. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:14, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the notification, ThaddeusB. It's surprising that a two day old user has the sophistication to go to ANI at the drop of a hat and is suddenly supporting a "respected and senior editor" (with whom I'm in DRN for another issue as we speak). The timing is even more fortuitous considering I just asked an admin to tell said "respected and senior editor" to stop stealth editing during DRN...I suppose that's why I always preferred sandals to sox...Anyhow, I know admins are very busy, so I don't want to waste any more of your time. Good day, sir. Devanampriya (talk) 05:27, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're out of line here, Devanampriya, with the term "stealth editing". I removed info I'd added myself, in response to Bladesmulti, with a clear edit-summary. Which can't be said of you, twice removing a {{dubious}}-tag diff diff without mentioning this in his edit-summary, and changing "Vishnu, the Vedic god of preservation" to "Vishnu, the Hindu god of preservation" diff, also without mentioning this in his edit-summary. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:28, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's just dawning on me, that you seem to be accusing me of sock-puppetry. Now you're really out of line. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:48, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I usually don't support when people make changes to main page(especially lead) and then challenge others to prove them wrong, especially when information is already established for weeks/months, and/or has sources/obviousness. Neither I support any changes made by 3 days old account for such huge articles. It is only one page, and somewhat not really controversial edit either. Don't know what is this fuss about. Bladesmulti (talk) 13:49, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:Mr.Hoseman

Sockmaster and socks have been put away. (NAC) Erpert ^{WHAT DO YOU WANT???} 19:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Could somebody take a look at this editors single contribution so far. Very unpleasant stuff imho. Thanks. --Roxy the dog (resonate) 10:23, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty hopeless at this, sorry for mislabelling this section. Am now going to notify Hoseman per rules--Roxy the dog (resonate) 10:26, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mr.Hoseman (talk · contribs) I reverted their edit but a VOA block seems appropriate. Johnuniq (talk) 10:33, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If I knew what a VOA block was, I'd agree with you. Can some sort of immediate discretionary sanction not be applied? --Roxy the dog (resonate) 10:37, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A VOA block = a vandalism-only account block. That's an immediate discretionary sanction for sure which I just applied. only (talk) 10:38, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've blocked him indefinitely. only (talk) 10:38, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. --Roxy the dog (resonate) 10:45, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

I need the history of a deleted page

I need the history of a deleted page, to work on it and improve it. Please send the history to my mailbox. Where should I ask for? Is it OK to write my request here?--Taranet (talk) 10:37, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, the place to ask for this is at WP:REFUND. Rgrds. --64.85.216.191 (talk) 13:46, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c) @Taranet: A tailored place for such requests is Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion. I suggest you ask for userfication rather than that it be emailed to you. Your request may or may not be honored depending on the basis for the deletion. For example, if it was a copyright violation, it will not be undeleted at all.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:48, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:AXiS CreepyPastas

Please check history, why other user created userpage to other user ?--Musamies (talk) 19:02, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How To Stop Stalker Admin

Just wondering how do users prevent Admins from stalking them? In particular ones with possible multiple admin accounts?

[Baseball_Bugs-1] Cite error: The named reference Baseball Bugs was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[2] If the were competent they'd be accused of being a sock.

[1]

[2]

@@ Line 851: / Line 851: @@
 Please check history, why other user created userpage to other user ?--[[User:Musamies|Musamies]] ([[User talk:Musamies|talk]]) 19:02, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
+== How To Stop Stalker Admin==
+Just wondering how do users prevent Admins from stalking them? In particular ones with possible multiple admin accounts?

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Wikipedia's centralized discussion, request, and help venues. For a listing of ongoing discussions and current requests, see the dashboard. For a related set of forums which do not function as noticeboards see formal review processes.
General	Administrators Main Incidents Bots Bureaucrats Centralized discussion Closure requests Education Interface admins Main Page errors Open proxies VRT Oversight User permissions
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