Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard

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For urgent incidents and chronic, intractable behavioral problems, use Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. If you are new, try the Wikipedia:Teahouse instead. Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead use Wikipedia:Requests for oversight. For administrative backlogs add {{Admin backlog}} to the backlogged page; post here only if urgent. Do not post requests for page protection, deletion requests, or block requests here. Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. If opening a close appeal, use {{RfC closure review}} When you start a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page. Pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:AN-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Sections inactive for over seven days are archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.(archives, search) Start a new discussion

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Administrative discussions

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive366#IBAN_appeal

(Initiated 32 days ago on 18 October 2024) This shouldn't have been archived by a bot without closure. Heartfox (talk) 02:55, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

@Heartfox: The page is archived by lowercase sigmabot III (talk · contribs), which gets its configuration frum the {{User:MiszaBot/config}} at the top of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. Crucially, this has the parameter |algo=old(7d) which means that any thread with no comments for seven days is eligible for archiving. At the time that the IBAN appeal thread was archived, the time was 00:00, 2 November 2024 - seven days back from that is 00:00, 26 October 2024, and the most recent comment to the thread concerned was made at 22:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC). This was more than seven days earlier: the archiving was carried out correctly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:16, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

There was no need for this because archived threads can be closed too. It is not necessary for them to remain on noticeboard. Capitals00 (talk) 03:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. It is back in the archive, and hopefully someone can close it there. Heartfox (talk) 05:23, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive366#Is_WP:RECALL_a_policy?

(Initiated 21 days ago on 28 October 2024) Discussion has slowed for the last week. I think the consensus is pretty clear, but I'm involved. – Joe (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

 Note: discussion has been archived. voorts (talk/contributions) 16:52, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Requests for comment

Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline

(Initiated 101 days ago on 9 August 2024)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline is WP:PROPOSAL for a new WP:SNG. The discussion currently stands at 503 comments from 78 editors or 1.8 tomats of text, so please accept the hot beverage of your choice ☕️ and settle in to read for a while. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Talk:International Churches of Christ#RfC: Referring to International Churches of Christ (ICOC) as a cult in the lead

(Initiated 60 days ago on 19 September 2024) Legobot removed the RFC template on 20/10/2024. Discussoin has slowed. Can we please have a independent close. TarnishedPath^talk 23:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... I've read the whole discussion, but this one is complex enough that I need to digest it and reread it later now that I have a clear framing of all the issues in my mind. Ideally, I'll close this sometime this week. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 20:23, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. This issue has been going on in various discussions on the talk page for a while so there is no rush. TarnishedPath^talk 03:26, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: just checking in here. voorts (talk/contributions) 16:53, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm still working on this, and I apologize for the delay. Because of my health problems, I only occasionally have days where I am fit to take on complex stuff like closures, and this particular one is testing me. I do have an outline of my findings in a document, but need to flesh it out and proof it against the discussion. I could finish this as soon as tomorrow, depending on how things go, but I can't promise anything. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 19:39, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

No worries. Your health always comes first. Best, voorts (talk/contributions) 23:12, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I fear I gave the wrong impression. My health is in no jeopardy whatsoever, I just have intractable problems with fatigue and focus that frequently keep me from doing the things I want and intend. I appreciate your concern, though. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 19:37, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Memorial_Hall_(Harvard_University)#Rfc_on_use_of_"imposing"

(Initiated 96 days ago on 14 August 2024)

Coming up on two months since the last comment. Consensus seems pretty clear, but would like an uninvolved party to look it over. Seasider53 (talk) 23:13, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 456#RfC: using photos of record labels from Discogs?

(Initiated 51 days ago on 28 September 2024) Discussion has died down and last vote was over a week ago. CNC (talk) 17:31, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Archived. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 20:53, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/In the news criteria amendments

(Initiated 42 days ago on 7 October 2024) Tough one, died down, will expire tomorrow. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Turkey#RfC_on_massacres_and_genocides_in_the_lead

(Initiated 41 days ago on 8 October 2024) Expired tag, no new comments in more than a week. KhndzorUtogh (talk) 21:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:David Lammy#RfC: First sentence

(Initiated 34 days ago on 15 October 2024) Discussion has died down. The last vote was on 4 November. Khiikiat (talk) 10:10, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Administrator recall#RfC: Should we add text prescribing just signatures, no discussion?

(Initiated 16 days ago on 3 November 2024) The amount of no !votes relative to yes !votes coupled with the several comments arguing it's premature suggests this should probably be SNOW closed. Sincerely, Dilettante 16:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:One_Direction#RfC: Band status and members in the infobox

(Initiated 31 days ago on 18 October 2024) Expired today, last comment was three weeks ago. The consensus on this RfC appears to lean one way among the participants, but because of the high-profile and contentious nature of the change under discussion, I think an uninvolved editor should close. Thesixthstaff (talk) 19:25, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Deletion discussions

XFD backlog

V	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Total
CfD	0	0	0	35	35
TfD	0	0	0	3	3
MfD	0	0	0	5	5
FfD	0	0	0	2	2
RfD	0	0	5	60	65
AfD	0	0	0	1	1

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 November 8#Confederation of the Rhine

(Initiated 19 days ago on 31 October 2024) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:15, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 November 9#Category:Fictional characters from the Solar System

(Initiated 9 days ago on 9 November 2024) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 21:18, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 02:07, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Other types of closing requests

Talk:Feminist art movement#proposing merge of Feminist art into Feminist art movement

(Initiated 307 days ago on 16 January 2024) It would be helpful for an uninvolved editor to close this discussion on a merge from Feminist art to Feminist art movement; there have been no new comments in more than 2 months. Klbrain (talk) 13:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... may take a crack at this close, if no one objects. Allan Nonymous (talk) 17:47, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:List of pholidotans#Merge to Manidae

(Initiated 19 days ago on 31 October 2024) Discussion only occurred on the day of proposal, and since then no further argument has been made. I don't think this discussion is going anywhere, so a close may be in order here. Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 07:03, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to close this so soon. Merge proposals often drag on for months, and sometimes will receive comments from new participants only everything couple weeks. I think it's too early to say whether a consensus will emerge. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 14:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: OK, so what are you suggesting? Will the discussion remain open if no further comments are received in, say, two weeks? I also doubt that merge discussions take months to conclude. I think that such discussions should take no more than 20 days, unless it's of course, a very contentious topic, which is not the case here. Taken that you've shown interest in this request, you should be able to tell that no form of consensus has taken place, so I think you can let it sit for a while to see if additional comments come in before inevitably closing it. I mean, there is no use in continuing a discussion that hasn't progressed in weeks. Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 15:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Wolverine X-eye, I don't think thats what they are saying. Like RfC's, any proposals should be opened for more than 7 days. This one has only been open for 4 days. This doesn't give enough time to get enough WP:CONSENSUS on the merge, even if everyone agreed to it. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 21:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Cowboygilbert: So what should I do now? Wait until the discussion is a week old? Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 11:14, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

@Wolverine X-eye:, Yes. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 17:04, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

@Cowboygilbert: It's now 7 days... Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 14:09, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: You still interested in closing this? Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 04:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

This isn't a priority, given all the much older discussions here. I'll get to this eventually, or maybe someone else before me. In the meantime, please be patient. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 13:34, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: It's now been 7 days...I know this isn't a priority to you but can you at least take a look at it this week, even if it's not today? Thanks for your time, Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 04:26, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Pages recently put under extended-confirmed protection

Report

Pages recently put under extended confirmed protection (21 out of 8844 total) () WATCH Page Protected Expiry Type Summary Admin Mariam Barghouti 2024-11-19 01:24 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:A/I/PIA ToBeFree 17 November 2024 Russian strikes on Ukraine 2024-11-19 00:51 indefinite edit,move WP:GS/RUSUKR ToBeFree User talk:138.64.112.72 2024-11-18 13:20 2025-02-18 13:20 create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector Thori Si Wafa 2024-11-18 05:28 indefinite create Pppery Betar 2024-11-18 01:03 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement; requested at WP:RfPP Fathoms Below 2024 in the State of Palestine 2024-11-18 00:29 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement; requested at WP:RfPP Isabelle Belato Battle of Bamut 2024-11-17 18:21 2024-11-21 18:21 edit Persistent disruptive editing from (auto)confirmed accounts; requested at WP:RfPP Isabelle Belato Rihanna Death 2024-11-16 20:26 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated: per RFPP Daniel Case Justin bieber dead 2024-11-16 20:25 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Daniel Case Template:Infobox airline/styles.css 2024-11-16 18:00 indefinite edit,move High-risk template or module: 4651 transclusions (more info) MusikBot II User talk:220.81.134.147 2024-11-16 12:13 2025-02-16 12:13 create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector Amazfit 2024-11-16 11:37 2025-11-16 11:37 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: persistent WP:COI Yamla User talk:118.237.51.201 2024-11-16 09:42 2024-12-16 09:42 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot Sidhant Mohapatra 2024-11-16 05:45 2025-08-23 01:14 edit,move Persistent block evasion Geniac Solomon Etefa 2024-11-16 02:11 2025-11-16 02:11 create enforcing outcome (draftify) of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Solomon Etefa Asilvering Pannu 2024-11-15 21:56 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: WP:CASTE RegentsPark Lamba (surname) 2024-11-15 21:53 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: WP:CASTE RegentsPark Mirdha 2024-11-15 21:52 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: WP:CASTE RegentsPark Karel Komárek 2024-11-15 17:43 2025-05-15 17:43 edit Violations of the biographies of living persons policy HJ Mitchell Millennium Dome 2024-11-15 13:54 2025-05-15 13:54 edit Persistent sock puppetry Goodnightmush User talk:61.80.147.98 2024-11-15 09:01 2024-12-15 09:01 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot

WP:AN/CXT

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

There is consensus to move forward with Mathglot's proposal (see #Proposal), which will cause a mass deletion of the pages on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review, with the option to save certain pages from deletion within a two-week window. As part of the proposal, there is also a consensus to amend WP:X2 in the manner S Marshall specifies in this edit.

Opposition to this change revolved around the argument that the articles which would qualify for mass deletion should be improved instead of deleted. Elinruby proposed alternatively that we should focus on recruiting editors fluent in foreign languages, Mathglot initially proposed to mass-draftify the articles instead of deleting, and Sam Walton argued that the articles contained valid content that didn't deserve mass deletion.

A majority of other editors, however, argued that many of the articles involved are poorly sourced BLPs that have the potential to harm their subjects if left unimproved. Given the large number of articles and low number of editors involved, it will likely be months before these articles are improved. Additionally, a user who is not fluent in both of the languages involved in a translation will not be able to adequately evaluate the validity of the machine-translated content; the article may appear unproblematic to such a user, but the content translation tool could have subtly altered the meaning of statements to something false.

In short, the consensus is that in the long run, the encyclopedia would be better off if these articles were mass deleted. Respectfully, Mz7 (talk) 23:22, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Addendum: The process for working out how to cause the mass deletion has been established. To mark an article for retention, please strike it out. To unambiguously identify an article for deletion, include the word "kill" in the same line as the article. The articles will be deleted on or after June 6, 2017. Thank you for your patience. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:16, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

---

Hi, Wikipedians. I wanted to give you an update on WP:AN/CXT. Since that discussion was closed about eight months or so ago, we've cleared out about 10% of the articles involved, which were the easiest 10%. The work is now slowing down as more careful examination is needed and as the number of editors drops off, and I'm sad to report that we're still finding BLP issues. The temporary speedy deletion criterion, X2, is of little use because it's phrased as a special case of WP:SNOW and I'm not being allowed to improve it. The "it's notable/AFD is not for cleanup" culture at AFD is making it hard for me to remove these articles as well, so I'm spending hours trying to get rid of material generated by a script in seconds. I'm sorry but I'm discouraged and I give up. Recommend the remainder are nuked to protect the encyclopaedia.—S Marshall T/C 23:15, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

For more context on this issue, please see Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#X2 revision. Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 23:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Update: This link is now located at .../Archive_61#X2 revision. Mathglot (talk) 01:10, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this, S Marshall, and I don't fault you for your choice. - Dank (push to talk) 19:49, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

• Isn't there some way to use the sortware to delete all of these in bulk, if only as a one-time thing? Seems like a huge waste of time if it's being done manually by hand. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 00:07, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• Easily doable as a batch-deletion. I could have it wrapped up in 15 minutes. Unfortunately community consensus did not lean towards approving that option. In fact, most CXT creations which have been reviewed needed cleanup but turned out to be acceptable articles. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 21:00, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I would support a nuke, a mass draftification, or some loosening of X2. The current situation is not really tenable due to the density of BLP violations. However, ultimately, the broader community needs to discuss what the appropriate action is under the assumption that we are not going to get much more volunteer time to manually check these articles. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:54, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• No, the broader community doesn't need to discuss that. It's completely needless and the community has had a huge discussion already. All that needs to happen is for WT:CSD to let me make one bold edit to a CSD that was badly-worded from the get-go, and we'll all be back on track. That's it. The only problem we have is that there are so many editors who want to tell me how to do it, and so few editors willing to get off their butts and do it.—S Marshall T/C 19:34, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

• Restored from archive, as it's unhelpful for this to remain unresolved.—S Marshall T/C 17:30, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support systematic nuke/ revision of X2 to enable this mess to be cleared up. It's not fair that @S Marshall: is being prevented from improving the encyclopedia like this. Amisom (talk) 15:21, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support @S Marshall:'s revision or a nuke from orbit. I wasn't active when this situation was being discussed originally, but having now read over the discourse on the matter, it is clear that our current approach isn't working. No one else is stepping up to help S Marshall do this absurd amount of reviewing, leaving us stuck with thousands of machine-translated BLP violations. It's all well and good to say that AfD isn't cleanup and deletion solves nothing and we should let articles flower patiently into beautiful gardens, but if no one's pulling the weeds and watering the sprouts, the garden isn't a garden, it's a weed-riddled disaster. Give the gardener a weed whacker already. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:17, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support the bold edit required to X2; it's true, of course, that AfD is not clean up- but neither should it be a barrier to clean up. In any case, moving a backlog from one place to another is hardly helpful. — O Fortuna! ^{Imperatrix mundi.} 09:39, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Question @Elinruby and Yngvadottir: As users who (from a quick glance) seem to have been active looking through these articles, do you think the quality is on average worse than a typical random encyclopedia article, and if so, bad enough that speedy deletion would be preferable to allowing them to be improved over time as with any other article? I don't mean to imply that this is necessarily the case, but I think it should be the bar for concluding whether mass speedy deletion is the correct answer. Sam Walton (talk) 11:22, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• (I wish I'd seen this earlier; thanks for the ping. I feel I have totally let down S Marshall; I just couldn't stand it any more.) On the whole ... yes. Support deletion of those remaining that have not been marked as ok/fixed. As I tried to explain in the initial discussion, the basic premise here is incorrect: as it states somewhere at Pages needing translation into English, a machine translation is worse than no article. It will almost always be either almost impossible to read, incorrect (for example, mistranslating names as ordinary nouns, or omitting negatives ...) or both. Some of these translations have been ok; many have been woefully incomplete (just the start of the lede), and they all require extremely careful checking. Yes, what lies in wait may include BLP violations. I sympathize with the article creators, and I am usually an inclusionist; I put hours of work into checking and improving some of these, and I'm not the only one. But please, enough. We'd wind up with decent articles faster if these were deleted, and the majority that are bad do a disservice to their topics. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:52, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• You haven't let me down. You've given me a truckload of support with this.—S Marshall T/C 13:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• Still oppose mass deletion -- @Sam Walton: What she said: Thank you the ping; this discussion was seeming a bit reiterative and I had mentally checked out. Like @Yngvadottir: I have put considerable effort into some of these articles. In fact, two or three of them are my own translations, which I would not have attempted without the translation tool, btw. Some are from my translations on French law, and I think 1) they cover important and previously missing topics and 2) they are high-quality technical translations. In most cases they speak for themselves. A couple are not perfect, reflecting the state of the French article, yes, and need work. But while these articles -- I am speaking here specifically of my own translations that appear on this list -- may be imperfect they are still reasonable stubs that can be built upon, and they also support more important articles by helping to prevent redlinks in some of the top-level articles on French law and also the French colonial legacy in Rwanda and the Congos etc. See Biens mal acquis for example. That was painful but I am proud of that translation. I have also encountered other people's translations on that list that made me proud of Wikipedia; the one on a cryptology algorithm for example comes to mind, or Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations. I am an inclusionist, I have to admit, and yes yes, great wrongs and all, but I do think it is important that (for example) articles on Congolese history mention that there have been civil wars (beyond "unrest", and no, I am not kidding). The worst BLP problems I am aware of are in the articles on Dilma Rousseff and I don't believe they are on this list or were created with the tool. Some of the worst PNT pages I have seen predate the translation tool, for instance Notre-Dame de la Garde, which took me years to finish, and Annees folles which is as we speak an incredible mess requiring research in addition to copy-editing and translation. Yngvadottir is correct in saying that inappropriately translated proper nouns is a frequent problem. I recall a Hubert de Garde de Vins who became "wine", and yes, this did reduce the sentence to gibberish. It's annoying enough to make me wanna regex. But. Not mass deletion. I suggest case-by-case intervention in the case of egregious problems with particular users. It's not as though more that a very few users even try to translate. Or perhaps we should revise the criteria for translation user privileges. But even there -- one of the people tagged as delete on sight has created a number of skeleton articles about Quebec. These articles should be be fleshed out not deleted; we should have articles about Quebec. Some of the authors are unquestionably notable, the equivalent in my small culture of Simone de Beauvoir or Colette or Andre Gide. It seems to me that an article that says: this author was born, drank coffee, won the Governor-General's award and wrote these books, is better than having nothing at all. The placeholder takes the topic from unknown unknown to known unknown, or little-known in this context, I guess. We do know a little more about the folk dances of Honduras because there is a very bad article, for which I have done what I could. There are many different problems with the articles on this list. Someone has created multiple articles about, apparently every madrassa in central Tunis. Who am I? Some of the articles I have rescued at PNT were about the medieval wines of Provence, which might seem equally trivial to some. Some of the important but very flawed articles I have noted maybe should not be in the article mainspace -- I am thinking of the ones about the Virgin of Guadeloupe, pretty much everything flagged Mexican historical documents, the Spanish procession of the flowers, etc)--but an interested Spanish speaker could build these out. These topics are unquestionably notable. We should have an article about the Virgin of Guadeloupe, really, people, we should. My suggestion would be recruiting. We desperately need a Portuguese speaker and additional help with Spanish. Some of the unreferenced BLPs sitting around appear to be very fine even though they are unreferenced, and may in fact veer into fluff. But they don't approach liability for libel if that's the concern. I avoid them, personally, because I have in the past deciphered Abidjan l33t about a beloved soccer player, only to be told that we don't as a matter of policy consider these leagues notable. Fine then, they should not be on the PNT to-do list. I'd love to see the translation workflow improved but we should be encouraging the people expanding our horizons is what I think. I am sorry for the very long answer but I appear to be a voice wailing in the desert on this topic and I have now said pretty much the above many times now. Nobody seems to care so oh well, it's not like I don't have other work I can do on the history of the Congo and figuring out what Dilma Rousseff had to say about her impeachment. Reliable sources say she was railroaded (NPR for one) and that is not included in the article at all right now. The articles on Congolese history airily write off genocide and slaughter as "some unrest". In a world where these things are true I really don't care whether on not we find a reference for that Eurovision winner. Someone who cares can do that and I think ethnocentrism is a bigger issue on Wikipedia that these translation attempts. Move the ones that don't meet a minimum standard to some draft space or something. Educate the people who are creating this articles instead of shaking your finger at them. The article creation process is daunting enough and I myself have had to explain to new page patrollers that this punk band is in fact seminal whether you have heard of them or not and whether or not they sing in a language that you can understand. But I have been here enough to do that and I assure you, most people will not. Wikipedia wants to know why its editors grow fewer cough cough wikipedia, lookee here. I will shortly wikilink some of the examples I mention above for easier show-and-tell, for the benefit of anyone who has read this far. Thanks. Elinruby (talk) 20:38, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support removal of these attempted articles (especially to avoid BLP problems laying around). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:00, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support [1] I'd say "do a disservice to their topics" is a mild way of putting it. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose blanket deletion. Having just checked a bunch of the remaining articles I found plenty of perfectly reasonable, non-BLP articles here, and any bad articles I did find were certainly not in greater number than you would find by hitting Random Article, nor were they particularly awful; the worst offenses I found were poor but understandable English. There's a lot of valid content here, especially on non-English topics which we need to do a better job of writing about. FWIW I'll happily put some time into going through this list. Sam Walton (talk) 14:12, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Please take a look at the 20 articles I just reviewed here; none had any issues greater than needing a quick copyedit. Sam Walton (talk) 14:38, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
    • @Samwalton9: Thanks. It's been a long, hard slog. I appreciate it if any of these can be saved. However, did you check for accuracy? It's possible for a machine translation to be misleadingly wrong. And the miserable translation tool the WMF provides usually doesn't even attempt filmographies: look at that specific section of Asier Etxeandia. This is not acceptable in a BLP. Somebody who reads the original language (Spanish? Catalan?) needs to go through that article sentence by sentence and film by film. Unfortunately it's not a matter of notability (that's almost always attested to by the original article), it's a matter of whether we have time to save this article. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:27, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
      • That names of works likely don't get automatically translated properly is a good point that I hadn't considered, thanks for pointing that out. If that's one of the primary issues then I'd favour a semi-automated removal of "filmography" or similar sections, if possible. It just seems that there's a lot of perfectly good content in here. Sam Walton (talk) 15:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
        • I looked at the first one you listed, it is a mass of non-BLP compliant (non-neutral, no-inline source) material. Letting stuff like that hang around is not just bad for that BLP but as an example for other BLPs to be created and remain non-compliant. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
          • Sam Walton, you didn't answer Yngvadottir's question. Can you speak the source languages? Remember that because of the defective way that software feature was implemented, you cannot assume that the translator speaks English and in many cases they obviously couldn't. (In practice the source language matters a lot because the software accuracy varies by the language pair. Indo-European languages are often but not always okay, and Spanish-English translations have particularly high accuracy, approaching 80%. Japanese-English, for example, has much, much lower accuracy.) So the correctness of the translation must be, and can only be, checked by someone with dual fluency in the source language and English.

            In the real world you can establish some rules-of-thumb. For example, you can quite safely assume that everything translated by Rosiestep is appropriate and can be retained. The editorial skills of the different translators varied very widely.

            All in all the best solution is for a human who's fluent in the source language and English to look at each of these articles and form an intelligent judgment. The thing that's preventing this solution is that, having looked at the content and formed the judgment, I can't then remove a defective article, because the defective wording in WP:CSD#X2 encourage sysops to decline the deletion unless it's a WP:SNOW case... so I've got to start a full AfD. Every. Single. Time. The effort for me to clean up is out of all proportion to the effort editors put into creating the damn things with a script.

            If you don't want the articles nuked (and that's a reasonable position), then please support the X2 revision I have proposed.—S Marshall T/C 17:37, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

When you say "the first one you listed" are you talking about Tomokazu Matsuyama? Yes, if so. it is indeed an unreferenced BLP but... I suspect five minutes of quality time with Google would take it out of that category, and it's essentially a resume, something like the placeholder articles I mentioned above. I think that perhaps we are better off knowing that this Japanese contemporary artist exists. Why not do a wikiproject to improve these like the one we just had on Africa top-level articles? It does seem to me that you could use a break from this wikitask and a little gamification might well get er done. I share your sentiment that in some ways we have our fingers in the dyke here, but the dyke does serve a purpose I think...In short I respectfully disagree with the current approach to these articles. Elinruby (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Break

@Alanscottwalker: I found a reference for his influences in less time than it took to add the ref code....Elinruby (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Elinruby: Did you mean to ping me back here, many days after I commented, to tell me you found a pretty crappy commercial source? When I looked at it awhile ago, the article was filled with non-npov/non-referenced/BLP violating text. It is, thus, no comfort that since I commented, awhile ago, someone has according to their edit 'removed the worst of the puffery', and you added that crappy commercial source - its still not policy compliant (even if it is marginally better, since I flagged it) Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: I brought you back here to tell you that while it may be have been unsourced, fixing this is extremely trivial. I don't give a hoot about this particular article, but his gallery is not a "crappy commercial source" imho and if you want people to fix then article then you should enunciate your problem with it. Sorry if that doesn't fit your preconceptions Elinruby (talk) 00:51, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Adding a non-independent crappy commercial source is not fixing. It is selling. We are not in the business of selling. What you call "trivial" sourcing does nothing to fix just makes it worse - "trivial" should have tipped you off. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 08:25, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@AlanscottWalker: Um no.... I was using the term in its software development meaning. I apologize for picking the wrong dialect to make my point. I thought, since you were critiquing the software tool, you might know something about software even though you don't seem to be familiar with the features of this instance of it, or for that matter with a representative sample of its users. Commericial, hmm. The same could be said of my article about the thousand-year-old Papal vintages, you know. That vineyard is selling wine today. Is that article also commercial crap? Since it is a direct translation from French Wikipedia, are you saying that French Wikipedia is commercial crap? You really don't want to make me argue this point, seriously. Incidentally what is with the arbitrary insertion of a break in the discussion? Consider, for just a moment, that I might actually have a point. Entertain the notion for a minute. Why are you belittling my statement? Elinruby (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Critiquing software tool? No, I was clearly critiquing an article in English on the English Wikipedia. And I was referring to the crappy commercial source - you pinged me, remember, so that I would know you added it to the article. That was not done in French, it was done in English. As for break, that is your doing, why should I have any idea why you added the crappy source, and then wanted to tell me about it in this break. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:54, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: Let me use small words. CTX is software. Bad translation can happen with or without software. Lack of sources can happen without software. In software development "trivial" means "easy". Do you see now? Be careful who you patronize next time. 01:07, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall:I'd consider supporting your proposal, perhaps, once I have read it, but could you provide a link for we mere mortals who don't normally follow these proposals? I also disagree that all of these articles require a bilingual editor; some just need a few references and/or a copy edit. But you know I disagree at this point. And if you do, god help us, nuke all of these articles as opposed to one of the other courses of action I have (again) suggested above, please move mine to my draft space if you find them that objectionable. Some sort of clue as to what your issue is would also be nice. Elinruby (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

• The revision I want to make is this one. The intended effect is so that a human editor, who has reviewed the script-generated content and given it due consideration and exercise of judgment, can recommend the content for deletion and receive assistance rather than bureaucracy from our admin corps.

  The basic problem with these articles is that they are script generated and the scripts are unreliable. Exactly how unreliable they are varies according to the language pair, so for example Spanish-English translations are relatively good, while for example Japanese-English translations are relatively poor; and whether the articles contain specific grammatical constructions that the scripts have trouble with.

  You can test its accuracy, and I recommend you do. The script it used, during the problem period, was Google translate. I've just picked some sample text and run it through Google translate in various language pairs, first into a different language and then the translated text back into English, to see how it did. These were the results:-

Source text	Korean	Punjabi	Farsi
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition	Fourth and seventh years ago, our ancestors left the continent, a new country born in Liberty.	Four score and seven years on this continent, first our father a new nation, brought freedom and dedicated to the proposition	Four score and seven years ago our fathers on this continent, a new nation, the freedom brought, and dedicated to the proposition
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.	And when he saw the multitude, he went up to the mountain, and his disciples came, and opened his mouth, and taught him, saying, Blessed are the souls of the poor: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.	Jesus saw the crowds up on the mountain, and when he sat, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth, and the poor in spirit was teaching, that theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Yes: interestingly the algorithm interpolated "Jesus" into the text.)	And seeing the multitudes, he went to the mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for the kingdom of heaven.
Editors agree not to publish biographical material concerning living people unless it is accurate	The editors agree not to post electrical materials about living people unless they are the correct person.	To publish the biographical material about the editor, it is right to disagree,	Editors agree to publish biographies of living people, unless it is accurate.

I encourage you to try these and other examples with different language pairs. Can you see why you need to speak the original language in order to copyedit accurately?—S Marshall T/C 22:00, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

But that is not a fair test since it magnifies any word choice errors. There *will* be errors, yes. We clean them up at WP:PNT --- ALL THE TIME. And no, it is not necessary to speak the language always, though it certainly help. I really suggest that maybe you just need a wikibreak from this task. Bad english can mostly be fixed. There are the occasional mysteries, yes. There are colloquialisms, yes. This does not justify wholesale destruction of good content. I was just here to get the link as I mentioned your proposal to one of my PNT colleagues; I need to go but I'll look at your proposal the next time I log in Elinruby (talk) 00:46, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

The liquor was strong but the meat was rotten.

Translation wonks will recognize the (apocryphal) story behind the sentence above, concerning literal mistranslations exacerbated from there-and-back translation. (The story perhaps originated after the NY World's Fair of 1964, which had a computer translation exhibit in the Russian Pavilion.) In any case, I'm just getting up to speed on this topic and will comment in more detail later.

Briefly: yes, you definitely have to speak the language to copyedit accurately. I'm actually in favor of a modification to WP:MACHINETRANSLATION to make it stronger. I fully agree with the worse than nothing statement in the policy now, but I'd go one step further: the only thing worse than a machine translation in an encyclopedia, is a machine translation that has been copyedited by a capable and talented monolingual (even worse: by someone who knows a bit of the language and doesn't know what s/he doesn't know) so that the result is beautiful, grammatical, smooth, stylish, wonderful English prose. As a translator, puh-LEEZ leave the crappy, horrible, machine-gobbledygook so that a translator can spot it easily, and fix it accurately. Copyediting it into proper English makes our job much harder.

If it's too painful to leave it exposed in main space, perhaps moving to Draft space could be an alternative. In fact, rather than a mass-delete, why not a mass-Draft-ify? (Apologies if someone has already said this, I'm still reading the thread.) More later. Mathglot (talk) 01:31, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

mass-Draftify would work for me. And yeah I disagree with you too a little, but I knew that. My point is, we all agree that an issue exists so what do we do? I also have some more reading to do before I comment on what S Marshall (talk · contribs) is proposing. I have a story about the policy but I want to make sure it pertains to this discussion. Elinruby (talk) 22:03, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

• Elinruby is certainly correct to say this "wasn't a fair test", because going through the algorithm twice doubles the error rate. But a lot of people reading this discussion will speak only English so this is the only way I can show them what the problem is ---- without that context, they may well find this, and the original discussion at WP:AN/CXT, rather impenetrable because they won't understand the gravity of the concerns.

  It was even more unfair because it was me who selected the examples and I don't like machine translations. In order to illustrate my point I went with non-European languages and convoluted sentence structures. If you tried the same exercise with a verse from "Green Eggs and Ham" then you'd get perfect translations 99% of the time. (It tripped me up with the Sermon on the Mount because quite clearly, the algorithm recognised that it was dealing with a Bible verse, which I found fascinating.)

  The script is particularly likely to do badly with double-negatives, not-unless constructions, adverbs of time ("since", "during", "for a hundred years"), and the present progressive tense, in some language pairs.

  It would certainly be possible to construct a fairer text using more random samples of language.—S Marshall T/C 10:27, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall: alright, I grant you that there aren't many bilinguals here. This *is* the problem in my view. I'll also specify that I don't claim expertise outside the Romance languages, and very little for some of those. But allow me please, since I know you speak or at least read French, to propose a better example. There are common translation errors that can occur, depending on which tool exactly was used. The improperly-translated name (nom propre) problem was real but is now mostly fixed. The fact that a writer whose novels were written in French gave them titles in French should come as a shock to nobody. The correct format for a bibliography in such cases *is* title in the actual language of the words in the book, webpage or whatever. Translated title, if the title is not in English, goes in the optional trans-title (or is it trans_title?) field of the cite template. Language switch to be set if at all possible. If it is not, let me know, and I can reduce the number of foreign words that English wikipedia needs to look at. So. In all languages, pretty much, words like fire and sky and take tend to be both native to the original people and likely to carry additional meanings, as in take an oath, take a bus, take a break etc. On the other hand what the software tool does do extremely well is know the correct translation for arcane or specialized terms, often loanwords, like caravel or apse or stronghold. These words are in my recognition vocabulary not my working vocabulary and using the tool in certain instances saves many lookups. When there is a strong degree of ambiguity or divergence in meaning (like the example on my user page) then THEN yes a fluent or very advanced user is needed. There are known divergences that a bilingual would spot that an English speaker would not. Sure. "Je l'aime beaucoup, mon mari" is a good example. But the fact that this is true does not prove that every line of every one of these articles still needs to be checked before they can be permitted to continue to sully Wikipedia, or that each of these lines needs to be checked by you personally. If you feel overwhelmed, take a break. Elinruby (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

• I speak English, French, German, Gibberish and Filth.  :) Joking aside -- I'm not concerned about noms propres. I'm concerned when the script perverts or even inverts the meaning of the source text. It's quite hard to give you an example because the examples I've discovered have all been deleted, and there's only the one non-English language we share, but perhaps an administrator will confirm for you the sorry history of Daphné Bürki. It was created as a machine translation of fr:Daphné Bürki and the en.wiki version said she was married to Sylvain Quimène, citing this source. Check it out; the source doesn't say that. In fact she was married to Travis Bürki, at least at one time (can't say whether she's still married to him). We had a biographical article where the subject was married to the wrong bloke. It's not okay to keep these around.

  Draftification is exactly the same as deleting them. Nobody is going to fix these up in draft space. The number of editors who're competent to fix them is small, and the amount of other translation work those editors have on their hands is very large, and it includes a lot of mainspace work that's more urgent than fixing raw machine translations in draft space, and it always will; we can get back to fixing draft space articles about individual artworks when every Leibniz-prizewinning scientist and every European politician with a seat on their national parliament has a biography. (We're on target never to achieve that. The democratic process means new politicians get elected and replaced faster than their biographies get translated from foreign-language wikipedias.)

  I don't object to draftifying these articles if that's the face-saving solution that lets us pretend we're being all inclusionist about it, but it would be more honest to nuke them all from orbit.—S Marshall T/C 00:51, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

• I am just coming back to this. I agree about the relatively few translators and the large amount of work, and yet, we so fundamentally disagree. Some of the designated articles do are, in my opinion, within the top percentiles in article quality. Others have in fact been fixed up. You and I consulted about one once. Others, yes, need work, and I at least do get to articles that I say I will get to. Slowly, at times, sure. I have no problem with articles that don't meet a certain standard not going to mainspace, but I don't see why you singly out the translation tool as your criterion. I mention noms propres because I have mentioned one above from Notre-Dame de la Garde where Commander de Vins came across as wine, and this did make the sentence gibberish. But that article did not come out of the CTX tool. Ihave no idea what the Leibniz prize is, but I am not sure it's more notable, in the abstract, than Marcel Proust, but fine. Work on that all you like, sure. But don't tell me it's more important that some mention in Congolese history that there have been civil wars, or I will just laugh at you. The sort of error you mention above with Daphné Büki -- I'll look at it myself shortly, if it's from French I don't need an admin -- can be made by anyone who knows less than they think they do. Automated translation not needed. Now, I propose that since we are talking about this we work out some sort of saner translation process. For instance, if African football leagues are by policy not notable, as someone once told me, fine then, the article should not be in the translation queue. Put something in there about a minimum number of references, require the use of trans-title in the references, whatever is agreed upon is ok with me. Your proposed change would preserve most of by not all of the articles that have been worked on, which is a slight improvement I guess, except you'll also nuke the 3-4 articles that needed nothing and a whole lot of biography that I've avoid because people tend to write me snooty messages to inform me that the person isn't notable, and why waste work when articles like History of Nicaragua are so lacking? Elinruby (talk) 01:01, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposal

Okay, I've gone through this and thought about it, and I'm conditionally a Yes on change to X2 and nuking the list, with an option to save certain files.

S Marshall, I take your point about draftification being pointless, as they'll just sit there with most of them never being edited ever.

I believe you've also persuaded me that the nuke is appropriate, given some conditions below. In order to keep Elinruby and Sam Walton (and me, and others) happy about not deleting certain files we are working on or wish to work on, I had an idea: what if we agree to allow a delay of two weeks to allow interested parties to go through and mark files in the list we want to keep so when the nuke-a-bot comes through, it can pass over the files thus marked. (I don't know if we can gin this up for two weeks from yesterday, but that would be auspicious.)

More specifically, to Elinruby's (22:03, 1 April) "So what do we do?" question, I think here's what we do:

• Those of us who want to retain files, mark them with {{bots|deny=X2-nukebot}} to vaccinate them against nuking.
• Change X2 accordingly
• Somebody develops the nuke script
• Nuke script should nuke "without prejudice" so that if someone changes their mind later and wants to recreate a file, it shouldn't be "salted" or require admin action to "undelete"; you just recreate it in the normal way you create any new file.
• If needed, we run a pre-nuke test against sandbox files, or can we just trust the vaccination will be respected?
• Start the script up and let 'er rip

Elinruby, if this proposal were accepted, would you change your no to X2 modif to a yes? Sam Walton, would you?

Naturally for this to have any value, we'd have to agree to not vaccinate the whole list, but just the ones we reasonably expect to work on, or judge worthy of keeping. If desired, I can envisage a way to greatly speed up the first step (vaccination) for all of us. Personally, I won't mark any file translated from a language I don't know well enough to evaluate the translation. But, going through all 3500 files is a burden, since there's no point my even clicking on the ones in languages I don't know. If I knew in advance which ones are from Spanish, French, etc., that would be a huge help. If you look at 1300-1350, you'll see that I've marked them with a language code (and a byte count; but that was for something else). I could commit to marking another 200 or 300 with the lang code, maybe more. If we could break up the work that way and everybody just mark the files for lang code, then once that's done, we could all go through the whole list much more quickly, to see which ones we wanted to evaluate for vaccination.

I really think this could be wrapped up in a couple of weeks, if we get agreement. Mathglot (talk) 18:17, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

• Entirely happy with this idea.—S Marshall T/C 19:33, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
• Agree. Amisom (talk) 11:31, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
• This is fine with me. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:03, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Are there any objections to moving forward with this? Tazerdadog (talk) 01:48, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Almost two weeks of SILENCE sounds like "go for it". Primefac (talk) 02:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm still good with this as proposer, of course, but just to reiterate: we'd still need a two-week moratorium *after acceptance* of the proposal before nuking, to allow interested parties to vaccinate such articles as they chose to. I assumed that was clear, but that "go for it" got me a little scared, so thought I'd better raise it again.

On Tazerdadog's point, what is the procedure for deciding when to go forward with a proposal? Are we there now? Whatever the procedure is, and whenever we deem "acceptance" to happen, can someone close it at that point and box it up like I see on Rfcs, so we can then start the two-week, innoculation period timer ticking without having more opinions straggle in after it's already been decided? Or what's the right way to do this? Mathglot (talk) 07:00, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

• Request formal close, per Mathglot. Do I need to post on ANRFC?—S Marshall T/C 18:40, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

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

X2-nuke interim period

Wow, cool! Glad we made some progress, and just trying to nail down the next steps to keep things moving smoothly. To recap my understanding:

• we are now in the "inoculation period" with a fortnight-timer which expires 23:22, 6 May 2017 (UTC) an interim period where we figure out how to implement this.
• during this period, anyone may tag articles in the list at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review with the proper tag to prevent nuking two weeks hence

A couple of questions:

• do we have to recruit someone to write a script to do the actual nuking?
• what form should the actual "vaccination" tag have? In the proposal above, I just kind of threw out that expression: {{bots|deny=X2-nukebot}} but I have no idea how we really need to tag the articles, and maybe that's a question for the script writer?
• will the bot also observe strikeout type as an indicator not to nuke? A possible issue is inconsistent usage among editors: for example, some editors have not used strikeout for articles they have reviewed and clearly wish to save (e.g. see #1601-1622)

As for me, I will continue to tag a couple hundred more articles with language-tags as I did previously in the 1301-1600 range, to make it easier for everyone to find articles translated from languages they are comfortable working with, and that they therefore might wish to tag. Mathglot (talk) 02:28, 23 April 2017 (UTC) Updated by Mathglot (talk) 09:02, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

• Let's make two lists, one of articles to delete and the other of articles to retain for the moment. I don't think that it will be necessary to formally request a bot. We have quite a few sysops who could clean them all out with or without scripted assistance.—S Marshall T/C 15:55, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

  I would implement it as a giant sortable wikitable - Something that looks like this:

Name	Language	Vaccinated	Notes
Jimbo Wales	es	Tazerdadog (talk)	Translation checked
Earth	ar	--	Probably Notable
My mother's garage band	fr	--	X2'd, not notable

Tazerdadog (talk) 17:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Isn't the current list easier to deal with than creating a new table, or two new ones? Can we just go based on strikeout type, or add some unambiguous token like, nuke=yes in the content of the items in the enumerated list that need to be deleted? I'm just trying to think what would be the least work to set up, and easiest to mark for those interested in vaccinating articles.

If we decide to go with a table, I might be able to use a fancy regex to create a table from the current bullet list. Although I definitely see why a table is easier to view and interpret once it's set up, I'm not (yet) persuaded that there's an advantage to setting one up in the first place. For one thing, it's harder to edit a table than a bullet list, because of the risk of screwing up cells or rows. Mathglot (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The real advantage of the table is the ability to sort by language. This way, if we have a volunteer who speaks (for example) only English and Spanish, they can just sort the table by language, and all of the Spanish articles will be shown together. It's harder to edit, but in my opinion, the ease of viewing and extracting the information far outweighs this.

I have created a list that removes all struck items at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review/Tazerdadog cleanup list. I'm currently working on getting rid of the redlinks as well. Once that is done, we can move to a vaccination model on the articles that have not been cleaned up in the articles thus far. The vaccination can take virtually any form as long as everyone agrees on what it is - I'd recommend that we vaccinate at the central list/table rather than on the article however. Once the two weeks expire, it's trivial to extract the unvaccinated articles and poke a sysop for deletion. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:07, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: This was posted over at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review as well but wanted to mention it here. Timotheus Canens has created a language-sortable table in their sandbox at User:Timotheus Canens/sandbox that I think is similar to what you were thinking. Mz7 (talk) 04:06, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

And we may have to recreate the table, as I didn't notice it and have been continuing to mark language codes on the main list (and shall continue to do so, unless someone yells "Stop!"). Also, not sure how trivial it is: given a full set of instructions what to do, then, yes, it's trivial, but this is not formatted data (yet) and there are all sorts of questions a sysop might have, such as, what to do with ones marked "moved", or "redirected", and other situations I've come across while going through the list that don't spring to mind. We don't want to burden the sysop with an illy-defined task, so all of those situations should be spelled out before we ask them to take their time to do it, as if there are too many questions, they'll either give up, or they'll do whatever they feel like. Mathglot (talk) 06:20, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@Timotheus Canens: Tazerdadog (talk) 05:55, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

And am still doing so on the main page, and so have at least six others since the message just above this one was written. Mathglot (talk) 11:53, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

X2 countdown and vaccinate indicators

Floating a proposal to get the clock started on the two weeks. Any user can write "Vaccinated" (or anything equivalent , as long as the meaning is understood) on the list on the same line as the Strike out any article they want to vaccinate. I can then go through and use regex to remove the vaccinated articles line-by-line from the delete list. I will then separate out the articles with no substantive commentary attached (anything beyond a language or a byte count is substantive) for an admin to delete or draftify. Any article which has been individually substantively discussed will be evaluated independently. If this is OK, we can start the clock. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:23, 6 May 2017 (UTC) Updated Tazerdadog (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

People are already using strikeout type as the "vaccinate" flag so no additional method is needed though I see nothing wrong with using both, if someone has already started with the the other method. Mathglot (talk) 22:51, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, I have been placing substantive commentary on plenty of articles, with the intention of facilitating the work of the group as a whole, in order to aid people in deciding whether that article is worth their time to look at and evaluate. In my case at least, substantive commentary does not indicate a desire to save, and if you intend to use it that way in the general case, then you need to suggest another indication I can use as a "poison pill" indicator to ensure it is nuked despite the substantive commentary. Mathglot (talk) 23:31, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Strikeout works even better than my idea, as it is easier to write the regex for. I was figuring that substantive commentary at least deserved to be read before we nuked them, although unless a comment was actively positive on the article I would have sorted it as a delete. If you want every article you commented on to be deleted, I can use your signature as the poison pill. Otherwise, use what you want, just make sure it is clear what it is. Ideally, place it at the start of a line, so I don't have to think when writing the regex. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: If you need a tester, feel free to shoot me a pattern; I'm a bit of a regex wonk myself, plus I have a nice test app for it. Can't use my sig as poison pill, cuz often my commentary is unsigned cuz I did them 20 or 50 at a time, with the edit summary carefully explaining what was done, but no sig on the individual line items. Beyond that, quite a few have commentary by multiple people, so even if I did comment (and even sign) others may have, too. The only clear way to do this, afaics, is to have an unequivocal keep (or nuke) indicator (or more than one is okay, if you want to OR them) but anything judg-y like "substantive commentary" seems risky to me. In the latter case, we should just get everyone to review all their edits they forgot to strike, and strike them now, or forever hold their peace. In my own case, no matter how positive my comment, or how long, if there's no strike on the article title, it's a "nuke". It occurs to me we should poll everyone and get positive buy-in from all concerned that they understand the indicator system, to make sure everyone knows "strike" equals "keep" and anything else is nuke (or whatever we decide). It won't do to have 2,000 articles nuked, and then the day after, "Oh, but I thought..." Know what I mean?Mathglot (talk) 06:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I think the solution is to draftify until everyone agrees that no mistakes have been made, then delete. I'm happy to do the grunt work of the manual checking of longer entries, and I don't think it is particularly risky to do so. However, the vast majority are short, and can and should be handed with a little regex script. We do need to make sure that the expectation of strikeout = delete instead of strikeout = resolved was clear to all parties. As for a deleteword, literally anything will do if it is unique and impossible to misinterpret. I would recommend "kill" as this deleteword, as it is clear what the meaning is, possible to write the regex for, and currently has only a couple of false hits in the page that can be worked around easily. Does this work for you?

The reasoning for checking longer entries is to try to catch entries like this:

|Battle_of_Urica -seems fine, at least not a translation issueElinruby (talk) 19:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Tazerdadog (talk) 08:02, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: If by "draftify" you mean quarantine, i.e., staging/moving all the to-be-deleted files someplace prior to the hard delete, I totally agree. (Whether that should actually be the current Draft namespace is debatable, but might be the right solution.) As far as regexes, I count 738 <s> tags, 732 </s> tags, 587 keepers, and 2785 nukers as of May 7 ver. 779254187. Mathglot (talk) 22:40, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Ok, sounds good. By draftify, i meant "Move out of mainspace to a different namespace where the content is accessible for translators, but unlikely to be stumbled upon accidentally by someone who thins they are reading an actual encyclopedia article." it also should be noted that when any of these pages are deleted, it should be a WP:SOFTDELETE, i.e. if someone asks for a small number to be restored after they have been deleted so that they can work on them they can just ask any admin to do so. I think that's all that needs to be resolved for now, so I'm going to go ahead and start the two week countdown until someone yells at me to stop. Pinging some participants: @S Marshall:@Elinruby:@Yngvadottir: Tazerdadog (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

For clarity, the process is: At the deadline, June 6, 2017 all struck articles listed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review will be retained, and all unstruck articles will be deleted. Articles with significant commentary attached will have the commentary read before the deletion, but the default is the struck/unstruck status unless the commentary indicates clearly the opposite result is better. The work "kill" may be added to unambiguously mark an article for deletion. On or after June 6th, the regex nerds will compile a list of articles to delete and retain. The delete list will be moved to draft space (or subpages of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review), where it will be audited briefly just to make sure nobody made a systematic error, then deleted. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Per #deadline it's June 6. Your clarifications on "draftify" and the process all sound good, otherwise.
P.S. Note that one article matches /kill/i but none matches /\bkill\b/i. Mathglot (talk) 23:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Fixed, I was unaware of that discussion, thank you. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:34, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot and Tazerdog: so for purposes of making life easier I will strike what I think should be struck. At one point people were checking my work so I was rather tentative initially. I am following the regex discussion but haven't used it in a while so save me the trouble of looking this up -- did you conclude that "kill" would be useful, or not? Elinruby (talk) 00:58, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Elinruby: If the title is strikeout type, it will be kept; if it isn't, it won't. Placing "Kill" on an article has no effect at nuke time, but it does have a beneficial effect now:, i.e., it saves time for others. It lets others know that you have looked at this one and found it wanting, so they should save their breath and not even bother looking at it. For example: You marked #18 Stevia_cultivation_in_Paraguay "really, really bad". That was enough for me not to bother looking at it, so you saved me time, there. If you want to place "kill" on the non-deserving items you pass by, that will help everybody else. I may do the same. But in the end, on Nuke day, the "kill" markings won't have any effect. Make sense? Mathglot (talk) 01:20, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: yeah it does, thanks. And indeed I seem to be the most inclusionist in the discussion so if I think it's more work than it's worth I doubt that anyone else in the discussion would disagree. Elinruby (talk) 01:31, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Re-pinging@Tazerdadog: on Elinruby's behalf for confirmation. Due to the ping typo above, he may not have seen this, and it's really his call, not mine. Mathglot (talk) 01:35, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Mathglot's interpretation above is basically correct. Please do not duplicate work you've already done just to add the kill flag, but please strike entities that could be ambiguous (I will manually evaluate your intention based on comments that you left, but the default is the struck/unstruck status unless you are clear in your comments otherwise). Please do use these flags from now on, or on any where your intention is unclear. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:15, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Tazerdadog I'm looking at formation of the strikeout tags enclosing the linked titles, and found 43 anomalies that might trip up the nuke pattern. I'll probably starting fixing these tomorrow. Mathglot (talk) 09:44, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

assumption for User space items

@Tazerdadog: I notice that various contributors are strikeout-tagging Userspace items: see #14, 15, 691, and 695 for example. I have not been tagging any of them, my assumption being that all User space items will be kept automatically regardless of presence/absence of strikeout title (and ignoring any "kill"), and since it's trivial to skip over them with the regex it's not necessary to tag them. If you agree, please make a note at WPT:CXT/PTR, or let me know and I will, so everyone can save their breath marking these. Mathglot (talk) 01:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

That was my assumption as well, all entries outside of mainspace should be fine. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:39, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

rescuing clobbers by CXT

@Tazerdadog: I just rescued #2611 Garbacz. This was a good stub created in 2008, then clobbered in 2016 by ContentTranslation tool, leaving a rubbish translation deserving of deletion. I just rescued it by reverting it back to the last good version before the clobber, and struck it as a keeper.

I'm concerned that there may be an unknown number of formerly good articles of long standing in the list that we don't want to delete, simply because they got clobbered by CXT at some point and thus ended up in the list, and time ran out before anybody got a chance to look at them. If I can get a list of potential clobbers in the next week, I will check them all out. (Am betting it's less than a couple hundred, total; but maybe S Marshall would help out, if it turns out to be more than that.) Shouldn't be too hard to create such a list:

pseudocode to generate a list of possible CXT clobbers

# Print out names of Titles in CXT/PTR that may be clobbers of good, older articles. # (Doesn't handle the case where oldest version is CXT, followed by user edits to make it good, # followed by 2nd cxt later which clobbers the good version; but that's probably rare.) # For each item in WP:CXT/PTR list do: $line = text from next <ol> item in list If the bracketed article title near the beginning of $line is within s-tags, next loop Extract $title from the $line If $title is not in article space, next loop Read Rev History of $title into array @RevHist Get $oldest_es = edit summary string of oldest version (last index in @RevHist) If 'ContentTranslation' is a substring of $oldest_es, next loop Pop @RevHist: drop oldest summary from @RevHist so it now contains all versions except the oldest one If 'ContentTranslation' is a substring of @RevHist viewed as a single string, do: Print "$title possibly clobbered by CXT" End For

Are you able to create a list like this, or do you know someone who could? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:56, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• Why not just ask the deleting administrators to check the translation is the first revision before they push the button?—S Marshall T/C 23:32, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

That would be a shitton of work for the deleting admin. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:57, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

3.6 metric shit tonnes, to be exact. ;-) And thanks for the ping, Taz. Mathglot (talk) 01:56, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: I think I've maybe got your query: I see from Samtar's query that you use MySQL. If that's the case, then to do this, I think you can take Samtar's query 11275 exactly as it is, with one more WHERE clause, to exclude the oldest revision:

AND WHERE rev.date > @MIN_REV_DATE

where @MIN_REV_DATE is either separately selected and assigned to a variable [as there would be one min value per title, it would have to either be an array variable or more likely a 2-col temp table with title and MIN date, which could be joined to rev.] Edited by Mathglot (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2017 (UTC), or probably more efficiently, a subquery getting the oldest rev date for that page using standard "minimum value of a column" techniques. So the result will be a subset of Samtar's original query, limited to cases where ct_tag was equal to 'ContentTranslation' somewhere other than in the oldest revision for that page. (By the way, I don't have access to your file structure, so I have no idea if 'rev.date' really exists, but what I mean by that, is the TIMESTAMP of that particular revision, whatever the field is really called. Also, again depending on the file structure, you might need to use techqniques for groupwise minimum of a column to get the min rev date for each page.) Mathglot (talk) 03:09, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Unfortunately, I've never used MySQL before. I was hoping I could muddle through with some luck and googling, but I had no such luck. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: And I could totally do it if I had the file structure but I don't; but my strong hunch is that this is very easy, and needs one additional "WHERE" plus another query (probably the groupwise MIN thing) to grab the min value to exclude in the new WHERE. OTOH, if you have access to Quarry, shoot me your query by email if you want, and I'll fix it up, and you can take that and try again, and with several back-and-forths I bet we can get it. Or if you've got zip, I can try a few establishing queries for you to try, and then we can try to build the real one depending on the results you get from those. (Or, we can just wait for someone else to do it, if they will; it really should only take minutes.) Mathglot (talk) 05:11, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Re-requesting closure of Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest#Investigating COI policy

Someone already requested a closure of Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest#Investigating COI policy, which concerns outing/paid editor/harassment/COI... whatever. However, Casliber says that more than one closer, preferably three-person, may be needed. I wonder whether more than one closer is necessary. If so, this indicates that the discussion would be another one of more difficult discussions we've seen lately. Thoughts? --George Ho (talk) 13:44, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

It's not obvious from the discussion and the number of editors participating and the number of proposals made that it's a difficult and controversial topic? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:59, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

To me, closing the whole discussion is very difficult because of the controversy of the topic. However, I concentrated more on milieus and proposals. To be honest, I saw two milieus and one concrete proposal receiving support from the majority. I concentrated on the straw polls and arguments. How about this: close separate milieus and proposals separately? They aren't that difficult to separately close due to other milieus and proposals not likely to pass. --George Ho (talk) 20:17, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Closing each one separately probably makes more sense from a numbers perspective. However, it should still be one group of editors that does it, since there is the possibility (mentioned on the discussion) that some of the milieus could contradict each other depending on what gets passed. Primefac (talk) 01:57, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Milieus 1, 2, and 5 are easy to close as the majority opposes them individually. Milieu 3 and concrete proposal 1 received majority support, so those would be also easy to close. But you're right; one same group of editors should do the individual closures. However, I won't be part of the closing group, so I'll await the uninvolved closers then. --George Ho (talk) 04:44, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I would be willing to be involved in a group closure on this. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:02, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I cast a !vote in the discussion which I had forgotten about - it would therefore be grossly inappropriate for me to participate in this closure Tazerdadog (talk) 01:04, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I guess this means we're putting the band back together ;) Primefac (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

We still need one more volunteer for this. Tazerdadog (talk) 10:01, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll step up, if you like.—S Marshall T/C 17:34, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

And... we're back down to 2. Primefac (talk) 02:30, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Needed: Another closer please!—S Marshall T/C 15:35, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I suggest you just go ahead with however many closers you have now. I further suggest that the "milieux" were intended to get a "general view of the community" and were very vaguely worded, so that if all you can say is "there was no apparent consensus", then so be it. As far as concrete proposal 1, which I proposed, the 28-6 result seems to make the close obvious. You might as well just go ahead and close it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:53, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

• @Primefac: thoughts? Nobody else is stepping up.—S Marshall T/C 19:36, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Meh, let's just go for it. I think I've still got your email kicking about. I'll send you my thoughts hopefully in the next 24 hours. Primefac (talk) 20:46, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll write mine independently over the same period, and we can see if we agree.  :)—S Marshall T/C 21:39, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

• Sorry, I've re-opened the RFC. Re-opening interest for other editors willing to work on a close. Primefac (talk) 22:31, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Take your time. ;) Meanwhile, what happened to closing separate, individual milieux and proposals? George Ho (talk) 10:35, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll go back to what I said 4 comment above. The milieux can be very difficult to close because of the wording. I thought the reverted close was a very good attempt to make sense out of M.3 in that it focused on what the consensus there actually agreed on, but that aroused a storm and nobody seems to be able to agree on what was actually agreed on. Concrete proposal 1, which I proposed, is very much the opposite and I think can be easily closed. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:27, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll help close it, but I think the section below the actual RFC should be considered as well, since they're actively discussing the RFC and how to proceed. Maybe we should wait just a little while longer to see how that develops. Katie^talk 23:23, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. No point in cutting off productive discourse. Primefac (talk) 11:48, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac, KrakatoaKatie, and S Marshall: I'm going to close a couple separate milieus that receive huge opposition. Casliber, the proposer, is fine with it. However, may I summarize the tally votes as just short rationales? I'll leave the others open. --George Ho (talk) 22:18, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Fine by me, George Ho. It'll make the overall close a bit cleaner. Primefac (talk) 23:08, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Closed milieu 1 and milieu 5. I closed milieu 2 as "no consensus", but I commented that another closer can summarize that better than me. --George Ho (talk) 00:51, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I changed my mind and briefly summarized milieu 2. --George Ho (talk) 01:18, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Milieu 3, Concrete proposal 1, and Concrete proposal 2 are closed by Winged Blades of Godric. Give Godric thanks for the closures. George Ho (talk) 19:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I've been thinking. After closing all the milieus and concrete proposals, I wonder whether closing the remainder of the whole discussion as a whole is possible. If not, how about separately closing "RfC discussion" (including Break 1), Break 2, and Break 3? George Ho (talk) 02:53, 25 April 2017 (UTC); rescinding this consideration. 18:22, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Nonadmin Close review at Alternative for Germany

An RfC at the article above was closed in this diff.

The close speaks to the RfC question about removing one "ideology" item from the infobox, and also "closes" a discussion among a few editors in the discussion section about removing many more ideology items from the infobox, saying Appropriate contents for the infobox "ideology" field have been agreed upon in the discussion section and should be applied, although this was not part of the formal RfC question.

One of the participants in that discussion section promptly took action based on that part of the close, in this diff.

I asked the editor who made the close, User:JFG, to retract that part of the close, here. Here, they said they would not.

Per their contribs, JFG is very active in US populist politics, and was just made subject to a DS action on contemporary US politics per this notice. It was unwise for JFG to make this non-admin close at all.

I am not contesting the close of the RfC question but I am asking for the the quoted section to be struck. The basis is that this was a discussion and agreement by a small set of editors who share a view on this political party. Jytdog (talk) 22:46, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

While I have been editing for years in US politics, I am totally uninvolved in German politics, and happened on this RfC by chance when browsing through WP:RFC/POL; I took up the close as it looked like a clear consensus. Jytdog is exhibiting WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality on a content issue where he happened to find himself in the minority. He could easily discuss the extra "ideology" items with his fellow editors instead of contesting a close which simply attempted to reflect the balance of the RfC discussion.

Concerning Jytdog's innuendo about my editing activities, the "do not revert" sanction levied today against me is totally irrelevant to my close decision. In case anyone here is interested, they can refer to my appeal for clarification. — JFG ^talk 23:15, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

No battleground; I am not objecting to the main close. I am objecting to the over-reach. If you cannot see the continuity between AfD's politics and Trump/US populism I don't know what to say to you. I will not respond further here unless asked to. Jytdog (talk) 23:39, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

I understand your objection, I considered your arguments carefully and I stood by my close because you look very isolated in your refusal to trim the other infobox entries. I advised you to open a new discussion if you want them back. Regarding similarities between AfD and Trump's political positions, they are indeed obvious, so what? How does this fact have any bearing on the validity of my closing statement? — JFG ^talk 00:34, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

• The problem is that you (JFG) are asserting a consensus in your close when that was not the question asked, and as such we don't know if there was really the consensus you are claiming (maybe those that disagreed just didn't participate in the discussion section). Can you explain to me why you think there was a broad consensus on this topic (as a close of an RfC usually is) despite the fact that it was "not part of the formal RfC question"? -Obsidi (talk) 22:06, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm happy to provide a more detailed reasoning behind my closing statement. (For a shorter version, see Talk:JFG#Close at Alternative for Germany.) Prior to the RfC, there had been abundant discussion on the talk page about what was perceived as bloat in the infobox field "Ideology" that included up to 10 items (see for example this version of the article. Some editors argued that "ideology" should not be a laundry list of political positions or policies, whereas others were adamant that such policies reflected the core values of the party and should therefore be included. Some argued that articles about other political parties did not include such long lists. There were some semantic discussions about what can and cannot be called an ideology. Accusations of "whitewashing", "trolling", being "childish" or "dysfunctional" were thrown around, so clearly it was time to assess community consensus more formally.

The RfC was opened with a question to include or exclude a particular item from that list: "Climate change denial". In the survey and in the discussion, the issue of the other items was addressed again. At closing time, I saw not only a very broad consensus to exclude "Climate change denial", but also an emerging consensus among many commenters about the 3, 4 or 5 items that should remain in the "Ideology" box. Conversely, I saw no comments arguing to keep any of the extra items not included in those five. This situation informed my reading of the consensus: closing only on the narrow first item would have been a misrepresentation of the balance of the discussion, hence my wording. While consensus was to trim the list, there was no prejudice in my mind against adding back an extra item if people would agree on it separately. But I also felt it was more helpful for editors to start from a core list that most everybody agreed on, and build from there, rather than starting from a long list that had already created a lot of noise, and arguing each item to death.

In the event, the list was trimmed to the "top 5" ideology items that most people agreed upon, and in the next couple days a straw poll was open to discuss the whole list: Talk:Alternative for Germany#Ideology field. As of this writing, most commenters in the poll agree with the reduced list and would even remove another item: "German nationalism". Again, I see no pledge yet to add some of the five deleted items. As you said, this may be due to lack of participation, but on Wikipedia Warnock's dilemma is generally interpreted in the Latin tradition of Qui tacet consentire videtur per WP:SILENCE. Most editors who had been active on the talk page also participated in the RfC, and seeing the discussion veering into what to keep in general, they could have voiced their opinion about items they deemed important to retain. Of course, those who speak up now can argue for inclusion of any item that has been excluded, and see if they get consensus. — JFG ^talk 14:59, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

What it sounds like you are describing is a WP:Local Consensus as to changing the Ideology field as you describe. The question is one of if there is a different level of consensus for an RfC. I've always understood RfC's bring in the entire community to decide the issue, as such they shouldn't usually be overturned shortly after they are closed even by a local consensus. (After a long period of time or a intervening new event/facts, then potentially a local consensus might change the consensus.) By incorporating it into the RfC closure, it seems to be expressing a community consensus on a wider scale than is necessarily occurring. You say those who speak up now can argue for inclusion of any item that has been excluded, and see if they get consensus, but if this is the consensus of the RfC than trying to change that consensus would usually be considered disruptive so quickly after the RfC was closed. For instance, look at what happened on this very page when someone tried to create a new RfC about the same topic as a recently closed RfC: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Third_time_unlucky_RfC_at_Talk:Human.23Proposed_merge_with_Homo_sapiens. I don't have a problem with the straw poll or with you changing the Ideology field as you describe, if there really is a local consensus on the issue. But I would prefer if that line was removed from the RfC's closure. -Obsidi (talk) 16:35, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@Obsidi: Thanks for your cogent remarks. I still stand by my closing statement which I consider a fair and neutral reading of the discussion among editors. However I would be happy to clarify it by adding "No prejudice against further discussion of the exact contents of the "Ideology" field, starting from the baseline of 5 items that have attained local consensus at the time of closing this RfC." @Jytdog: Would this take care of your concerns? — JFG ^talk 22:21, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

• This has been kind of upstaged by the far more interesting stuff below, but I would be grateful if this could be reviewed and decided upon, as the 2nd consensus claimed in the RfC is now governing that page. thanks. Jytdog (talk) 07:08, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Regardless of the outcome of this technical dispute, there would not appear to be a consensus at the moment on the talk page to restore any of the material in question. You will need to discuss this with us on the talk page before you make any changes, though I understand that you may not have done so yet because of the outcome of the RfC. L.R. Wormwood (talk) 15:11, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

There is no deadline here, and consensus and descriptions of what there is consensus for, are important. If this part of the close is overturned, then of course we will discuss what should be in the field, on the basis that there is indeed no consensus about that. It is important to follow sound process with regard to consensus building. Jytdog (talk) 19:17, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Needing more than one to close RfC discussion at WT:V

The discussion "Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Recent changes to policy about verifiability as a reason for inclusion" started in April. Then the discussion got larger and larger, making the discussion very complex. I discussed it with the proposer S Marshall, who says that several closers are needed. I welcome at least two volunteers. --George Ho (talk) 14:33, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho:--I am willing to serve as a closer.Winged Blades ^Godric 09:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Godric, and I welcome that. I also need another or more closers for teamwork closure. --George Ho (talk) 15:07, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, I created the subsection Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#How to best close this discussion? for team closers to discuss preparing the closure. --George Ho (talk) 02:51, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog at ACC

Resolved

 – CU backlog cleared. Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 02:54, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

For those of you admins and non-admin page watchers who may be interested, there is apparently an incredibly urgent backlog at WP:ACC. I am judging this urgency by the fact that a user has been repeatedly inserting a notice to this effect at Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations, despite having had the notice removed by one administrator, having been advised to post the notice here by a second administrator, and having now been advised that this behaviour is silly by a third administrator. So, please, for the love of all that is good and starchy with a nice creamy alfredo and some fresh grated parmesan, please somebody log in to WP:ACC and offer assistance. Won't somebody please think of the children?! Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:15, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

This has gotten a little out of hand, and part of it is my fault for getting annoyed with Mlpearc because of the way they went about things. I'm consulting privately with a couple of other CheckUsers, and it looks like Mlpearc's post at the WP:SPI Talk page (reverted by me) was not unreasonable. In other words, there may indeed be a backlog at ACC that can be handled only by CheckUsers (not something I do, but I think some others do). Anyway, Mlpearc left the building in a huff, although I don't know how long that will last. I'm still letting another CheckUser review all this before I or they restore Mlpearc's post at the SPI Talk page.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:37, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

@Bbb23: How did I "go about things" ? besides lying about the backlog? Mlpearc Public (open channel) 20:44, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I logged into ACC and there are indeed 87 checkuser needed requests, which is a rather significant backlog that requires checkuser attention specifically.--Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 17:52, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Just re: the 'proper place' for such a request, would it be at WT:SPI or WT:CHECK? I'm thinking it's not directly related to the carrying out of investigations, but is relevant to the CU tool itself. Unless the difference I'm drawing between the two is irrelevant and a sign of developing dumbassery? — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 18:03, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I suppose another issue here is, where exactly is the "CheckUsers Noticeboard"? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:00, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't think we necessarily need one; if there is a specific sock concern then SPI is the venue, or IRC or the mailing list (for requests requiring discretion). For general policy queries we have Talk:Checkuser. I think a noticeboard would just turn into "SPI light", which wouldn't benefit anyone.--Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 18:08, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Just knocked out 20 requests from the CU queue. Several were for IP blocks that had expired during the long wait, and I anticipate there will be several more further down. When the requests put into the CU queue are easy, they're really easy, but when they're not, it can be more difficult than SPI to analyze. I'll work on it some more tomorrow morning. Katie^talk 00:57, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

@KrakatoaKatie: Thank you very much, it is appreciated. - Mlpearc (open channel) 02:04, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Disruptive editing by User: Light show

• Light show (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

First of all, this is my first time bringing a problem to ANI so if there’s any information that’s missing from this message, please let me know and I will add it ASAP.

To get to the point — for the past five years User:Light show (previously known as Wikiwatcher1) has been a disruptive editor on several entertainment-related articles, such as Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. The Chaplin article was overhauled and brought to FA status by myself and another editor, User:Loeba, and throughout that process and ever since the FA nom passed, he has been showing up to complain, argue and edit war on numerous different topics. Usually his edits seem to be dictated by his opinions and are contradicted by the most authoritative sources. Regardless of how you try to explain that his point of view is not supported by the sources, he refuses to consider this and continues to force his opinion. He rarely tries to be diplomatic and is quick to accuse others of slandering the subject of the article when the content differs from his opinions. It seems impossible to discuss anything with him, as once he has an opinion about a subject, he will try to edit the article to match it, no matter what. Unfortunately, he is also a very prolific editor, especially in entertainment-related articles, despite the fact that his understanding of research and source criticism is shoddy at best, thus endangering any credibility that Wikipedia has.

Here are some of the repetitive talk page discussions that we’ve had with him on Charlie Chaplin:

• March 2013
• October 2013
• November 2013
• November 2013 #2
• November 2013 #3
• February 2015
• July 2015
• September 2015 #1
• September 2015 #2
• April 2017

Despite having all these grievances about the article, he chose not to bring them up during the GA and FA reviews.

When I began to edit Marilyn Monroe in the summer of 2015, this behaviour continued there, again even after the article reached FA status:

• October 2015
• April 2016
• July 2016
• July 2016 #2
• July 2016 #3
• July 2016 #4
• November 2016
• November 2016 #2

When I began to edit Elizabeth Taylor in late 2015, Light show was there immediately, attempting to bar me from editing it by nominating the article for GA despite it clearly not meeting GA standards:

• The article when LS nominated it
• Our first ‘discussion’ once I began editing the article
• Light show’s subsequent GA nomination

Unsurprisingly, the nomination failed. As I continued overhauling the article, it became apparent that it contained paragraphs that appeared to be plagiarized from Alexander Walker’s biography on Taylor:

Yet another dispute, during which I listed the plagiarized paras I had found and diffs proving that he was the source of the plagiarized material in the article:

• Diff 1
• Diff 2
• Diff 3

This is especially concerning given the fact that Light show is banned from Commons due to repeated copyright infringements.

Light show’s latest campaign is to change the nationalities of famous figures to “American” if they spent major parts of their career in the US. The above discussion on Chaplin’s nationality is just one example, you can find several others by quickly browsing his recent edit history. In particular, I find it concerning that he changes the nationalities of people who apparently do not/did not hold American citizenship. Examples:

• British actress Claire Bloom
• Egyptian actor Omar Sharif
• British neurologist Oliver Sacks
• Austrian-born Swiss actor Maximilian Schell

This kind of behaviour is standard with Light show. He has been banned from Commons for similar disruptive behaviour regarding copyright questions [2], and is banned from editing articles related to Stanley Kubrick [3] and Peter Sellers [4].

After five years, I'm fed up of having to spend so much of my time arguing with this user, who seems to be more interested in editing articles from his point of view than based on research. Arguably, he is also violating the credibility of Wikipedia. His disruptive editing has been reined in at Commons, but I now think something needs to be done in Wikipedia as well, as he has had several years to improve but he simply refuses to get the message, as he does not see anything wrong with his style of editing despite constant negative feedback from other editors. The examples I've listed here are from my personal interactions with him, but if you browse his history, it becomes apparent I'm not alone in having issues with him.TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 16:15, 25 April 2017 (UTC)TrueHeartSusie3

Comment Am in agreement as the disruptions never seem to stop. A failed FA of last year, started RfC when his changes weren't welcomed, a recent violation of WP community upload ban (see above) Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Violation_of_community_ban . The editor seems to want everything his way and is willing to disrupt in the effort. This is just a sample; there are more examples at the Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers talk page archives. We hope (talk) 16:27, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Comment I'm not a member of the Light Show fan club and in the past I have found him frustrating to deal with, and in one article (whose name escapes me) I contemplated going to ANI. Most recently I was summoned by bot to comment on an RfC he commenced in Charles Chaplin, in which I initially agreed with him but then decided not to do so. He can be tough and somewhat tendentious. However, he edits in an area in which editors jealously guard their articles to the nth degree, to OWN levels at times, and in which FAs are viewed as being chiseled in granite. In the Chaplin article he is in the wrong in my view, but he is attacked like it's going out of style. Not every editor functions well in that environment. So I would suggest that this be taken into consideration. Coretheapple (talk) 22:10, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Question-What's the suggestion then? More topic bans at Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe to go along with the ones he presently has for the Peter Sellers and Stanley Kubrick articles? Years worth of continual disruptions which mainly return to the same theme or variations thereof can be hard for editors producing and maintaining these articles to take. We hope (talk) 22:30, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

My main concern has always been the copyright problems. Images, quote spam etc... But what are people asking for here? What is being proposed ...community ban....comment limitations...edit limitations ? -Moxy (talk) 01:53, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

(Also in reply to We hope above) If an editor is getting to the point where they are banned from two biography articles, and people are considering banning them from two more where they are being disruptive, its clearly at the point where a topic ban from all biographical editing broadly construed should be considered. Its an ongoing issue, its the same behaviour at multiple articles, existing bans from articles have failed to curb their disruption - the next step is either a broad topic ban that allows them to continue editing, or just saying goodbye on a more permanent basis. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:05, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

(In reply to Coretheapple) We must be careful not to confuse stewardship with ownership. The problem with Light show is that he will try to change an article to his liking, based on his opinions and maybe one or two sources that he has found to support them through the Google Books preview function etc. When you explain to him that his additions to the article are not supported by the majority of sources on the subject and hence are false or misleading or superfluous, he refuses to consider this and charges on. Sometimes he also drops his original grievance and immediately comes up with another, hence continuing the fruitless discussion. To get an article to FA status, you have to do months of research and read dozens of books and articles — this is especially true in the case of pop culture giants like Chaplin or Monroe who have had hundreds of books written about them. When LS has an opinion about something (e.g. nationality), then he will never back down and consider other people's perspectives, even when the majority of editors contributing to the discussion disagree with him. This is also evident from the problems he has with copyright: he is of the opinion that his interpretation of the US copyright law is right, and Wikipedia's legal team is wrong. You can't really co-operate with a person like this.

In addition, given the plagiarism I found on Taylor and his refusal to comply with the Commons rules, I would not be surprised if he was guilty of more plagiarism. Overall, I'm concerned that this is the type of editor who is extremely prolific but doesn't actually improve Wikipedia, due to his strong opinions and inadequate research and prose skills (which could be fairly easily improved if he were able to admit to himself that he needs to accept feedback and develop his skills). Personally I wouldn't consider it unreasonable to maybe ban him from biographical articles. He's had lots of feedback over the years, with no noticeable change to his behaviour. However, even if that were done, I think he would simply take this behaviour to other articles and continue wasting his fellow editors' time there. TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 12:01, 26 April 2017 (UTC)TrueHeartSusie3

I particularly enjoyed the changing of the description of Omar Sharif to include 'American'. Personally I am of the opinion someone who makes that sort of error shouldnt be anywhere near a biography. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:05, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• Disruptive, never; Following guidelines, always. That's clear from my original question about Chaplin's lead. I try to avoid giving any opinions, even on a talk page, where I gave multiple sources and guidelines. I've never been accused of trying to own an article, as I actually prefer collaborating and having text copy edited and improved.

But note that neither the complaining editor nor the commenting editors here, have any issue with someone redefining those guidelines: According to the MOS, we give official citizenship priority. And blatantly violating them, as she did here and on other talk pages. In fact, that was my last comment at the Chaplin talk page. No one took issue with it. She never denied violating it. And while such continuous PAs have consequences, ie. Repeated or egregious personal attacks may lead to sanctions including blocks, it's only the complainer that gets censured and even banned for bringing it to the attention of admins, as I did for Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers. --Light show (talk) 16:18, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Comment This is far from the poster boy for no PAs. He's willing to hand them out and ready to cry wolf when necessary.

• at Kubrick talk "BTW, your math is about 3,000% off, since it's closer to 5K at most. Guess math wasn't your favrit subject either, huh doc?"

When some editor attacks me for adding 27,000 words of quotes, when it was only about 800 in a massive article, that kind of reply is an understatement. --Light show (talk) 17:07, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• to another editor at Joan Rivers "I'm glad you found a buddy to cover for you, but this will go to ANI if you can't get over your erroneous edits."
• again at Joan Rivers "Before posting there, let me know if you've used or are using different usernames, since socks are an exemption to 3RR, and your arrogant style of discourse and warring methods are too similar to previous events."
• At FAC talk page Catherine Zeta-Jones "And it's worth absolutely nothing, just as the giver." "Couldn't resist another PA, huh?"

Don't forget to mention that the PA came from you, not me. Credit where credit is due. --Light show (talk) 16:54, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

It's laughable that you construe what was said as a PA-you were invited to take it to ANI, but chose to pass. We hope (talk) 16:59, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Gee, I wonder why I'd actively avoid complaining to that neutral forum? --Light show (talk) 17:23, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• reply to Light show"Take it to WP:ANI with the understanding that your past and present actions will be part of the discussion."

We hope (talk) 16:49, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Light show, it's not a personal attack to point out that you're changing the nationalities of several people on Wikipedia on very dubious grounds. It was pointed out to you in the discussion on Chaplin's nationality that citizenship takes priority as that's a non-negotiable legal definition, and that you appear to be the only person who believes that Chaplin's forty years in the US is not prominent enough in the lead. Please also note that this AN concerns not just that most recent discussion, but your behaviour in general during (at least) the past five years. TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 17:53, 26 April 2017 (UTC)TrueHeartSusie3

It should be obvious by now that I don't change any nationality statements on "dubious grounds." Quite the opposite, as you'll discover here. As for your PAs, the last time you falsely accused me of so-called plagiarism you apologized for not reading the source. And yet you continue to use that pretext to attack my edits. --Light show (talk) 18:22, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

You changed Omar Sharif to add American. I am not sure how much more dubious you can get... Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:53, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

He spent 20 of his prime career years acting in American films. Why is it wrong to then describe him as having been an Egyptian and American actor? The MOS covers this. --Light show (talk) 19:24, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

That doesn't change his nationality, unless he has dual nationality. The MOS does not explicitly say you can do that. Indeed, the MOS is perfectly met by the sentences "Omar Sharif ... was an Egyptian actor. He began his career in his native country in the 1950s, but is best known for his appearances in both British and American productions.". Claire Bloom is another example. The MOS says "or if the person is notable mainly for past events, the country where the person was a citizen, national or permanent resident when the person became notable". Bloom was born in England, became notable in England, most of her major films were British productions, and still has British nationality. This edit on Oliver Sacks is even worse - you are suggesting he gave up his British nationality and became American, which is clearly untrue. Black Kite (talk) 21:27, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

If the MOS is wrong, please say so. Otherwise, commingling his place of birth with his career misleads readers without proper context. Since he only practiced neurology in the U.S., saying he was a "British neurologist" simply because he may have still held British citizenship, can be considered phrased without proper context. That's the case now with Chaplin, where everyone makes context (his career) irrelevant and says his citizenship is all that counts. And anyone who even questions that, despite citing the guidelines and numerous reliable sources, is considered disruptive. Per guidelines: The opening paragraph should usually provide context. --Light show (talk) 22:00, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Context is fine - all you need to do (in the Sacks example) is say "British neurologist who spent most of career in USA" (which is exactly what the article did say before you changed it) - that's perfect context. Changing someone's actual nationality without any reliable source is (a) simply wrong, and (b) if they're still living, a BLP violation. MOS is irrelevant here, that's a failure of WP:V, which is policy. You can't override that with an interpretation of a style guideline. Black Kite (talk) 22:06, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Sacks wasn't discussed after it was changed back since it at least did have context in stating he spent his career in the U.S. Now getting back to Charlie Chaplin, do you agree that it lacks proper context? (See RfC.) He moved to the U.S. at 19 where he spent the next 40 years making films. Yet not only the entire first paragraph, but the entire lead section, skips over his relationship to American films. In fact the article doesn't even mention he actually made films in Hollywood until 7,000 words into the massive article. Do you think someone commenting about that is being disruptive? --Light show (talk) 22:54, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I didn't say it was - I was merely commenting on the nationality-changing issue. But I'll have a look at that - will have to be tomorrow now as it's past midnight here. Black Kite (talk) 23:24, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

(In reply to Light show)First of all, the paragraphs that I have linked above are plagiarized; yes, I was wrong about an additional one, and I apologized for that immediately when I realized that. As for the US not being mentioned in the lead of the CC article, that's simply untrue. "At 19, he was signed to the prestigious Fred Karno company, which took him to America. Chaplin was scouted for the film industry and began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios." The lead then describes his career in the US, and also mentions his leaving of the country in 1952. TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 11:37, 27 April 2017 (UTC)TrueHeartSusie3

Well, that's very unusual. You link to a discussion implying some plagiarism yet the lengthy discussion proved the opposite. The other few links also proved that if anything, I may have been over-quoting to avoid it. So between your silly plagiarism accusations, and User Moxy, who always complains about me using too many quotes (see above), it's quite a circus.

As for CC, I said "his relationship to American films" was essentially skipped over. You show it was, unless people go to film articles, note that they're all American, and see his name. Of course if they did that, they might also wonder why he's mis-described as having been and "English filmmaker, actor, director, composer, and producer," when he did his 40 years of work outside of England. It's because the context is excluded. I'm also surprised you said that the lead "also mentions his leaving" America, when you wrote on his talk page that the U.S. "booted him out." It sounds like you're now supporting what I wrote there. Golly, maybe we're both being disruptive. --Light show (talk) 18:29, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

With plagiarism, I am referring to the three paragraphs, which are related to the beginning of Taylor's film career, her family's relationship to Cazalet, and her preparation for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — I don't see any quotes in these paragraphs, you're just reproducing the author's text as your own, with minor tweaks. As for your quotefarming, you've been told not to do it by several editors, many of whom have been concerned that you might be breaching copyright laws. It's definitely not just Moxy who is concerned about this.

It's pretty clearly stated that Chaplin worked for American companies before setting up his own. As for 1952 and Maland's statement – Maland does not mean that Chaplin would have been ok to return with no consequences, what he is saying is that the US government had no real 'dirt' on him, despite their hostile treatment of him. The message was pretty clear: we don't want you here and will continue making your life difficult if you do return. In this situation, Chaplin chose to leave the US and settle in Europe, but it can hardly be said to have been voluntary. To claim otherwise is to seriously distort historical facts. TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 19:31, 27 April 2017 (UTC)TrueHeartSusie3

Light show continuing with disruptive editing

• Changing the wording to imply that Sam Wanamaker wasn't in fact blacklisted: [5]
• Changing Hitchcock's nationality, despite a statement on top of the page clearly prohibiting it: [6]
• Reacting in a hostile manner when another editor points out that he needs to use proper sources: [7]

Tagging We hope, Coretheapple, Moxy, Black Kite, Light show and Only in death does duty end.

TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 15:22, 9 May 2017 (UTC)TrueHeartSusie3

I can't believe that AN editors keep letting such content issues be discussed here.

• The Wanamaker change was based on cited material and expanded shortly after with actual reliable sources. If THS thinks that it's OK to label someone a Communist and say they were blacklisted without any source, she should explain that on the article's talk page, not in the AN. If she wanted to add a conflicting source, she should have done so.
• The Hitchcock nationality addition change is also common sense, as he became an American citizen and a U.S. resident for most of his career.
• The Bacharach talk page comments were clear on their face and the tagger did not reply there. A link to an explanation about "drive-by" tagging was included to support my comments there.

THS is hounding my edits, which is itself the only thing that is "hostile," and disruptive. I have not been involved with her on any of those articles. She seems desperate in a desire to undermine valid edits or comments anywhere, as shown by this most recent post. Misusing AN as a platform and stage for discussing content issues instead of on the talk pages, shouldn't be allowed. There are no edit wars. --Light show (talk) 15:56, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

• Responding to ping. This strikes me on its face as a content dispute, but I'm not denying that this editor seems to get in a lot of these kinds of tiffs. Coretheapple (talk) 16:45, 9 May 2017 (UTC) Striking out my comment as I simply don't want to get further involved with this editor or his articles. Also I wanted to mention that I was originally pinged to this discussion after it was already archived from ANI, and I carelessly responded to it there and got yelled at. This whole issue is simply more trouble than it's worth. Coretheapple (talk) 15:45, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

  Comment The Wanamaker article is in need of more RS re: BOTH claims of blacklisted or not, Communist Party member or not. Re: Hitchcock, suggest it be "was a film director and producer...". The next sentences deal with his being a well-known director in Britain, his move to Hollywood in 1939 and his US citizenship in 1955. It's neutral and just states facts without stepping on any toes. This is a classic response to anything he disagrees with -"blitz tagging" and "drive-by". We hope (talk) 17:49, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

• When a user's editing follows certain disruptive patterns in several articles over several years, it's more than a content dispute. These are just further examples that demonstrate the issues I outlined above; I chose to include them to show that this goes beyond the articles on Chaplin, Monroe and Taylor and my own interactions with this person. The changes that Light show has made on Wanamaker seem very similar to the ones he has attempted to make in the Chaplin article over the years. It appears that the blacklist article itself lists reliable sources for Wanamaker having been placed on a blacklist, which certainly should be mentioned on the Wanamaker article as well, but that's beside the point here. My point in bringing this up is that Light show focuses on certain themes (politics, nationality) and edits them, often without mentioning a reliable source, or without having looked at research on the topic as a whole, or without engaging the community in discussion. It's again illuminating that Light show seems to regard mentioning that a person was blacklisted to be equal to stating, as a fact, that someone was a Communist. As for Hitchcock, it's explicitly stated in the lead that you shouldn't change his nationality, to do so without prior discussion and consensus is questionable; more importantly, I wanted to bring this to your attention to demonstrate that Light show is continuing with his nationality changing campaign, without discussions, RS, or explanations. He focuses on enforcing his POV, disregards research and reacts very poorly to constructive criticism. In other words, his edits are not constructive. TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 18:55, 9 May 2017 (UTC)TrueHeartSusie3

Comment Agree with you that he returns to the same themes at different articles. Re: the blacklisting, many people were blacklisted because "someone said" or "someone thought" he/she was a member of the Communist Party. If you read Frank Sinatra's FBI files, though he wasn't blacklisted, he was suspected of having Communist sympathies. Others had their lives ruined by actually being placed on the blacklist because you couldn't get work if you were on it. His "America First" campaign needs to stop as it's not in the interest of facts.

Taking the Hitchcock example, Hitchcock was a very well-known and respected director before he ever set foot in Hollywood. His important works were not all done in the US. When someone has done notable work in countries other than the US, it appears arrogant to stress the US theme-they should be treated equally. We hope (talk) 19:13, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

On the other hand, any editor who spends nearly half their time editing over a two week period by hounding and attacking another editor is not exactly "constructive" either. There are over 5 million articles in WP, so please get off my case. Excluding you and We Hope, who also tracks my every edit, there are very few actual disputes I've dealt with over the past months. When Core used an RfC, the discussion was kept reasonable and sane. When I added one for Chaplin, likewise. But when I once commented about Marilyn Monroe being more than a cartoonish "dumb blonde," THS went ballistic.

We Hope's comment claiming it's "arrogant to stress the US theme-they should be treated equally," again is ridiculous. The edit and even her mentioning Sinatra re: Wanamaker, makes that clear. Either source it or stop complaining. --Light show (talk) 19:41, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Why are you guys continuing this on an archived page? Please either move this section to WP:AN or let the issue lie. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:10, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

No point in trying to explain.....hes not going to change.....been asked by many many many editors over the years to stop spamming quotes.... to no avail. Think hes going to stop the Americanization of random bios...no way....even community ban on uploads has not stopped him. Best we just watch his edits over a ban.....would be harder to track any socks that would showup after a ban. Perhaps mentors to lead him in the right direction.--Moxy (talk) 22:49, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

What about a TB for biographies? Despite the accusations of hounding by this editor, I was brought to the discussion by the ping above and didn't read any of his edits until then. I could care less about watching his edits-that's self-flattery. As he said above "Either source it or stop complaining."-he should try taking his own advice re: accusing people of hounding him. We hope (talk) 23:23, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Accusing others of hounding/tag teaming is nothing new from Light show. I would support a topic ban for biographical articles, either a shorter (i.e. three months) one as a warning or an indefinite one. Unfortunately I don't think that a temporary ban is going to do much though, as haven't the other topic bans or the Commons ban.TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 07:55, 10 May 2017 (UTC)TrueHeartSusie3

Proposal

Given Light show's persistent disruptive editing (disregard for research/proper use of sources, quotefarming, plagiarism, POV pushing) and disregard for feedback, I propose that he is banned from editing biographical articles. He is a very active editor, but ends up creating more work for editors who have to deal with the factual errors and copyright problems (among other issues) that he introduces. A mentor scheme was mentioned by User: Moxy above, but given the fact that he does not seem receptive to feedback at all, I doubt it would work. I also don't believe that anything other than an indefinite ban would work here; Light show already has two bans from biographical articles and is banned indefinitely from uploading images to Commons (which I believe followed several shorter ones which produced no change in his behaviour). TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 09:28, 11 May 2017 (UTC)TrueHeartSusie3

• Support While I've dealt with him more regarding images here and at Commons, I've seen the repeated disruptions at Peter Sellers and Stanley Kubrick that went on until topic bans were imposed. Also having seen the editor argue the point time & again about his interpretation of copyright being correct while those in opposition were wrong, I doubt a mentor situation would solve the problems.

His Commons unblock had been conditional on having someone else approve proposed images prior to upload. The editor decided to forego this and the result was a community-imposed ban at Commons; he's currently under the community-imposed bans mentioned above and one for uploading images here at en:WP. A topic ban for biographies was brought up earlier and would be preferable to banning his total participation here. We hope (talk) 11:09, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

• Support with hesitation. Honestly, I don't believe they are capable of contributing in a collaborative way and an indef block is coming eventually, based on what I've seen here and in checking some diffs. I feel we are putting off the inevitable, as it takes more man hours to monitor the editor than the editor gives in worthwhile contribs. I would see this topic ban as the last chance before we just follow Common's lead and block them. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:52, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Creating a new category

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

---

I'm trying to create a new category, but I recieve a "Permission error". Would someone create it for me?

The title: Category:Military personnel killed in the Syrian Civil War

The content:

Military personnel participating in the [[Syrian Civil War]] who were [[killed in action]] or died of wounds received in battle.
[[Category:Military personnel killed in action by war|Syrian Civil War]]
[[Category:People killed in the Syrian Civil War]]
[[Category:Military personnel of the Syrian Civil War]]

Thanks in advance. --Z 10:37, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

@ZxxZxxZ:  Done GiantSnowman 10:40, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

It looks like the words "killed in" appears on a blacklist. Perhaps trying an alternative wording, such as "casualties"? Wes Wolf ^Talk 10:41, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

'Killed in' looks to be the standard wording for those kind of categories, see Category:Military personnel killed in action by war. GiantSnowman 10:48, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Comment "Casualties" is not a synonym for "killed"; injuries are included in "casualties".--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:35, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

If the blacklist applies to you, can you move an innocuous title to a blacklisted title? Or because that's considered a form of new page creation, would that action be blacklisted as well? Nyttend (talk) 03:24, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

No, you shouldn't. I'd say though that killed in has too many legit uses to belong on MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. I recommend its removal from there. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:07, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Certainly in the category namespace - is it possible, and not too complicateed, to change that regex to exclude the Category: namespace? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:12, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

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

Alternative for Germany

More eyes on this article would be helpful. Jytdog (talk) 21:48, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

FYI to everyone — this is a political party, not a redirect to "Greater Denmark" or "Greater Poland" or something proposing an alternative to the existence of Germany as I initially thought :-) Nyttend (talk) 03:23, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

:) Jytdog (talk) 03:54, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Bothered by Template Messages

I was bothered by template message by some people regarding my articles that I been writing in two years see User talk:Mjbmr/Archive 3, most of my articles are gone now, but now I have created AfD for the rest of my articles but it seems people have conflicting opinions on the same type of articles, I'm getting ambushed by groups of people who are protecting an article or trying to take than an article. to compare people's conflicting opinions see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/OmarGoshTV (2nd nomination) and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul Robinett (2nd nomination). Mjbmr (talk) 18:11, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Mjbmr, I know you're upset at a recent spate of successful AfDs of articles you created, but that is no reason to nominate more of your own articles. Those users were correct to leave template messages to notify you of the deletion nomination. Those articles were deleted due to notability problems, but not all of your article creations were about non-notable subjects. For future article creations, take extra care to have found multiple independent reliable sources before you start the article.

Other admins - is the Autopatrolled userright appropriate for this account? Fences&Windows 19:33, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Fences and windows, given the rather large number of now-deleted pages created by this user, I would say that right would no longer be appropriate. Primefac (talk) 19:37, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

User:Fences and windows There is no red line for notability, it was an ambush, I don't want be creater of the rest articles, they all had the same amount of resources, if they weren't notable then other articles should be deleted right away. Also see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#BigHaz Mjbmr (talk) 19:45, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Mjbmr, every article must be judged on its own merits. Just because a few articles from a user were deleted for lack of notability doesn't mean every article by that user fails notability. Give yourself some credit! Throwing your hands up in the air and calling it quits is a lousy way to go. Primefac (talk) 19:49, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Primefac Yes, you should see the new AfD I made. Mjbmr (talk) 19:51, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

I would say that AfDing your own articles because you're pissed about others of your articles being AfD'd is pretty darn WP:POINTy behavior. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:18, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• Once you press the "Save changes" button, you have freely licensed your words under the CC BY SA 3.0 license and GDFL license. You might still own your words, but you can't revoke that license. That means the community has the final say whether it is kept or deleted, not you, and any other website may also use your text as they please, under the terms of that license. That is how it works. Some articles are going to be deleted, some will be kept. Acting out by throwing your toys out of the pram isn't a mature reaction. I agree, autopatrol is probably the wrong bit for you[8], not sure how that happened. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:41, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Given the history, I think it was a mistake for Schwede66 to grant autopatrolled, given the sheer volume of deleted articles created, so I have removed that right and pinging him as well. I think that is the first time I've taken a right away from someone, but this is one of those cases where it seems rather obvious you are not prepared to use that particular tool. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:50, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• That doesn't look good, and if you hadn't removed autopatrolled, Dennis Brown, I would have gladly done so myself. I haven't delved into the user's talk page history to see whether there were deletion discussions that had been deleted, but from memory, the account looked pretty clean in mid-February when I assigned the right. When the user first applied to get autopatrolled, the 25-article threshold hadn't been met. A week later, that was no longer an issue. The issues now are of different nature, of course. Schwede66 02:54, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

I just want to know which rule on Wikipedia is applied to these articles, there should be either Keep or Delete not if we say keep it then later we say delete it, Schwede66 you said there was no problems with my articles and you can see there are a lot other articles like mines which you see you can't even touch them, Dennis Brown please leave a message regarding removed my rights and based on what rule on my talk page, autopatroll right were granted before I get ambushed by AfDs, I didn't say I own the content of my articles, I'm the creator and every time someone whats to delete it, I get bothered by messages, so I don't want be the owner of those articles, delete them and recreate them with your own name. Mjbmr (talk) 04:57, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

You were notified here, which is sufficient. It isn't personal, it is just that anyone, regardless of who it is, that can't create articles with a near perfect record of "keep" at AFD should not have the bit. As far as getting messages, notifying you is a courtesy and we generally frown on any editor that does NOT give notice of an AFD. If you are bothered with too many AFD notices, it means your articles are likely not up to par for Wikipedia, and you might want to consider using the WP:AFC system or keep them in user space until they are ready for prime time. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:16, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

You REALLY want to be blocked huh? For your own sake, stop talking. --Tarage (talk) 05:03, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Tarage Stop harassing, we are talking, I wanted to clarify this Wikipedia is full people who ambush to either keep or delete one's article, don't worry I won't bother anymore as you can tell, this admin Dennis Brown took an action based on his own interest on any policies. Mjbmr (talk) 05:22, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

After being told to stop three separate times, one has to wonder if perhaps they should stop. --Tarage (talk) 06:05, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Mjbmr, you are welcome to open a new thread to review my actions. You are not welcome to cast aspersions and claim my actions were for my own interests. As for me, I'm no longer willing to discuss it as I feel I have fulfilled my obligations under WP:ADMINACCT, so again, take it to the community if you think I did something wrong. I'm happy to comply with their wishes in the matter. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:57, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

The OP is WP:CANVASSING [9] Beyond My Ken (talk) 15:34, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Just block them. This temper tantrum has gone on long enough. --Tarage (talk) 18:28, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

He continues to revert his personal attack on his user page. Anyone? --Tarage (talk) 08:27, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I'll second that call. I know as an admin I can do the blocking myself, but I was involved in this to the extent that I de-tagged his original bad-faith CSDs and so on, so any actions I take here would probably be seen as part of a "vendetta" of sorts. If anyone feels it's my button to press, please let me know and I'll get to it tomorrow morning (my time, AEST). BigHaz - Schreit mich an 12:07, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

BH is probably the last person who should be pushing buttons, for the sake of propriety, but nominating almost a dozen of your own articles for deletion is pointy enough on its own, even without two ANI threads, and now this. If they come back, someone kindly do us the favor of putting an end to this dog and pony show, at least until such a time that they decide to WP:LISTEN. TimothyJosephWood 12:18, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• Before becoming aware of this thread, I have just warned OP for making an explicit legal threat in an edit summary due to a post I saw at ANI. This thread is a bit of a pile-on, I'm inclined to leave this as it is and see if Mjbmr calms down. That being said, they did just revert my warning. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:21, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tarage: we appreciate your input and intervention, but please stop taunting the user. Posts like [10] and [11] aren't really helping here. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:24, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

... and RickinBaltimore has blocked OP. Well, good job, team, that was obviously coming. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:27, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

(ec) Upon seeing the "legal threat", followed by the immediate revert and accusation of "committing a crime", not to mention the above dialog, I've given the user a 31 hour break for disruption. I would agree with this being a "temper tantrum" in some why, and I feel the editor needs to cool down and WP:LISTEN. RickinBaltimore (talk) 16:28, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I endorse this block, in case anyone was going to ask based on my other posts here. While I would have liked to see if we could have worked out the issue with the user, there's obviously consensus here for a block, and we can try again in a day and a half. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:33, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Sadly I think we will be right back here with their recent edits to their talk page. RickinBaltimore (talk) 16:35, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

A clear case of Wikipedia:Suicide by admin, but as their recent edits were only to noticeboards and talk pages I don't think we needed to pull the trigger. The initial deletions were a pile-on and now we've piled on their over-reaction. Fences&Windows 17:05, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Legal threats, canvassing, forum shopping, POINT, IDHT, personal attacks (read having your user page deleted as a BLP violation)... am I missing anything? When did we suddenly become so lenient? TimothyJosephWood 17:24, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Just so I'm not falsely accused(again) of 'taunting the user', I'm going to make special note here that he restored my comment, not me. I disengaged. --Tarage (talk) 18:55, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm going to lose this account

Resolved

 – User rights have been transferred from User:Khaosworks to User:Khaosworks101 following a discussion at the bureaucrats' noticeboard. 28bytes (talk) 16:32, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Dear all - this is not a call for help (I've checked and there's really no help to be had), just a very sad announcement that once the current cookie on this login vanishes I'll be losing access to this account, since I've lost my 2FA authenticator token and scratch codes. I'm not sure it's worth creating a new account and going through applying for admin all over again, so that'll probably be it for my administrator career here. Thanks for all the good times! -- khaosworks (talk • contribs) 06:26, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

While there might be a technical barrier to you keeping access to this account, I am sure there is no process barrier if you have to make a new account to have admin rights transferred. Assuming you can satisfy the crats you are the same person as the editor who created this account. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:15, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Khaosworks: The simplest remedy would be to Special:CreateAccount a new account directly from your current account, which would prove once and for all that it is you.--Jasper Deng (talk) 08:19, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, @Khaosworks:, create a new account now, from your current one, link to it on your UP, and link to this discussion for background. Hey presto! -we don't unnecessarilly lose an admin. Simples! — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 08:26, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, @Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: - stupid question: are you saying I just put up another admin application? What do I link to the original account on the new User Page? --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 08:42, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Khaosworks: Just choose anywhere prominent (for example, the very top). To remove all sense of doubt you can indicate the status of your current account (Khaosworks) on your current userpage and explicitly name your new account as the successor. In turn, on the new account's userpage, prominently wikilink your current userpage.--Jasper Deng (talk) 08:46, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Khaosworks:, yes, I agree with Jasper. This should create a paper trail to satisfy your application at WP:BN that it is who you say you are and that the account is not compromised. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 08:50, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Khaosworks:, perhaps I don't understand the problem, but why would you lose the account? I don't have 2FA, and don't anticipate losing my account over it (compare [12]). If you've lost your password, you can reset it via e-mail. Bishonen | talk 08:30, 15 May 2017 (UTC).

@Bishonen: The entire premise of two-factor authentication is that you are authenticated if and only if you satisfy both authentication factors. The password is only one of those factors. Therefore, if he loses his other authentication factor, he will never be able to get into the account again.--Jasper Deng (talk) 08:36, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

In addition, while (as Khaos points out below) he can log in as already authenticated, any change to the 2FA method (if it has been implemented correctly) will require the 2nd factor to authorise. Its a big downside for 2FA in areas that do not have a painless method to reset it. Of course most companies that use 2FA where you are a customer (banks, any paid internet service like games etc) always have some route by which you can remove the 2FA or reset it, but thats because you are a paying customer. The theoretical loss of your business outweighs the cost of handing the occasional person who is locked out. Given Khaos' comments, I am guessing the WMF has nothing of the sort set up for usernames using 2FA Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:48, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

So, Jasper Deng, the takeaway for others is, don't activate 2FA? At least, don't do it if you only edit from home and have a strong password which you don't use anywhere else. But then I suppose the idea of 2FA is to keep your account safe also when you edit from less safe places. Bishonen | talk 08:57, 15 May 2017 (UTC).

@Bishonen: Wasn't it encouraged to prevent admin accounts being hacked quite recently. I don't think it matters what or where the machine is. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 09:02, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Fortuna, I won't go further down the rabbit hole here, but please compare this discussion that I linked to above. Bishonen | talk 09:20, 15 May 2017 (UTC).

Interesting. Thank you very much. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 09:26, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

This is already resolved, but for the benefit of anyone reading this belatedly: if you don't want to use 2FA, the most important thing you can do to secure your account is to use an unguessable password that is unique to Wikipedia. If you do want to use 2FA, and don't want to be in the position of losing your account, then you should print out your recovery codes and put the paper in your underwear drawer. If your underwear drawer is compromised, you have worse problems that someone stealing your Wikipedia account. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:59, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Bishonen: 2FA is a really great thing, but it shouldn't be used unless you know what it means and what it does. Anyways, I think discussion of 2FA in general (unrelated to the OP's case) should continue at m:Help talk:Two-factor authentication.--Jasper Deng (talk) 09:04, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Bishonen: - I set up 2FA, but have lost the ability to authenticate so I can't log in from any other machine which I'm not logged in already. Those cookies are set to expire after a year, so at the end of that time I'll be logged out and without my token, although I have my password, I'm unable to key in the authenticator code on top of that to log in again. So, the account will not be accessible. My fault entirely. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 08:41, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Khaosworks: An alternative to creating an alternative account now is to create a WP:committed identity, which will allow you to prove your identity even at a later date. It should be a relatively painless process to transfer administrator access from your current account to any other you would like to make. Tazerdadog (talk) 08:47, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: Too late, (s)he's already invoked the creation of an alternative account. By the way, from a technical standpoint, while a committed identity is a great way to do it, many bureaucrats don't have the technical background to understand it, so a paper trail is prudent. Plus, if P=NP then all bets are off!--Jasper Deng (talk) 08:56, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

In any case, I would still advise using a committed identity, especially if they have to drop 2 factor authentication for a time. While many crats don't have the technical background, enough do to make it useful (I remember that Cyp's identity was very clearly established by the crats using a committed identity a few months back). Also, P very likely does not equal NP, we just can't prove it yet. Tazerdadog (talk) 09:07, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

It's a good idea - if I do set a committed identity up, probably better to do it on the new account once admin access is restored? --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 09:19, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

I'd do so as soon as the dust settles and you know which account you'll be using for the forseeable future. Tazerdadog (talk) 09:23, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks all for the suggestions. I've created User:Khaosworks101 and linked this discussion as suggested. Just placed a request at WP:BN - will see what happens. Thanks again! -khaosworks (talk • contribs) 09:03, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Of course, we've now got to hope that your account isn't already compromised and that this is a way of granting the tools to a hacker :p ;) — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 09:08, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

If you are already logged in and still have an authenticator app then you could just disable 2FA in your preferences. Or you could ask WMF tech staff to remove it through a Phabricator request. I guess the current solution works, though. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 09:09, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ajraddatz: The OP can't do that because per m:Help:Two-factor authentication#Disabling two-factor authentication, they'd need their second authentication mechanism to work, and they've said it doesn't.--Jasper Deng (talk) 09:18, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, with regards to asking through Phabricator: without checking the credentials themselves, the following could happen: the OP forgot to log out on a public computer, a malicious user comes by, authenticates to Phabricator via that, and asks for 2FA to be turned off, making the account easier to hack. 2FA requires that any privileged action be authenticated in the sense I mentioned above.--Jasper Deng (talk) 09:33, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

As a side note, I had this EXACT issue happen, turned on 2FA, lost the device that had my authenticator, and lost the scratch codes. I fortunately had multiple admins confirm my identity and through Phabricator I was able to recover my account info. (I also printed out scratch codes and have them at home to make sure this doesn't ever happen again). RickinBaltimore (talk) 12:19, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

You can keep multiple flash drives with the free, cross-platform KeePassXC installed (KeePass for Windows users). One master password to access your encrypted list of passwords. It supports 2FA. There are a few others as seen here but this one is free and I've used it before unlike the others so I can recommend this.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:02, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

I keep my scratch codes in Dropbox. They're available across all my devices in case I need them. Katie^talk 16:33, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

It's a good idea to have them available. I have them (both for GMail and this account) somewhere I know where to find them. I don't particularly like the idea of having them available online, just in case someone were to compromise me in such a way that they were able to both sniff my password and compromise whatever cloud storage platform I have them on. You can't remotely crack into a piece of paper, I don't care how good you are. :) I've actually had to use a couple of the GMail scratch codes, when my phone wasn't getting the texts for some reason, and my wife wasn't around (hers is my backup). Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:20, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Small issue at ANI backlogged 5 days now

Five days ago I requested help at ANI with a disruptive user who had recently received a BLP ban but whose other edits are highly problematic and so far it has yet to be addressed. The behaviour has ramped up since but it's not really vandalism per se so reporting to AIV won't help. Is someone able to take a look please? --- PageantUpdater (talk) 12:18, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Issue has now been addressed, thanks. --- PageantUpdater (talk) 12:57, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Disruptive edits

I had been making some minor edits to a couple of pages that were badly in need of attention and also hadn't had any talk page discussion since 2012. Apparently that drew the attention of an editor who merged three pages into one (Divine madness). I thought that it was a good move. But then I noticed that this editor had changed the wording in a quote that he moved, and it seemed as if it was in order to make the quote support the minor content he had created to replace major content that was lost/destroyed. There were also various edits to the (merged) article that showed a blatant lack of understanding of the subject matter (rather than a difference of opinion or viewpoint), which resulted in edits that actually changed the meaning of the original content, thwarting the entire concept of the article subject. Then, after having been confronted concerning the misquote, the editor in question then seemed to do a lot of talking and misdirection to hide what he had done; on top of that, radical edits were suddenly made to an otherwise agreed upon consensus, seemingly as both revenge edits and as a ploy to cover up irresponsible (unethical?) editing. All of the aforementioned has been documented on the Talk page. Can someone please intervene? I'm basically a gnome and an inclusionist, and my honest and sincere concern is the preservation of content and the integrity of the work. Thank you! WikiEditorial101 (talk) 13:21, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

WikiEditorial101 has now reverted three times different edits I made to this article, to preserve his preferred version. The first times he re-inserted full quotes which I had shortened, while I'd kept the full quotes in notes; and he re-inserted info which was removed by MSW; the second and third time he reverted the addition of info from reliable sources. The sequence:

• edits by me and Ms Sarah Welch (12 may 2017)
• reverts by WikiEditorial101
• JJ:

• removal of doublure, created by re-insertion by WE101;
• revert of re-insertion of problematic information, which was removed by MSW, and re-inserted by WE101 without discussion;
• removal of doublure, created by re-inserion by WE101;
• Discussion at the talkpage: Talk:Divine madness (religion)#Re-insertion

• edits by WE101;
• addition of info from reliable, University Press sources, by JJ and MSW (and removal of a source-tag by WE101);
• wholesale revert by WE101;
• counter-revert by JJ: "Undid revision 780489016 by WikiEditorial101 (talk)See talk. You removed sourced info from reliable sources, and seem to be taking WP:OWNership of this page"
• follow-up whole-sale revert by WE101.

At Talk:Divine madness (religion)#Administrive intervention WE101 states:

The most recent edits ruined the lead, equating Divine madness with clinical mental illness and had an overall negative tone; my concern is not just with the quality of the article, but that the article communicates an accurate understanding of this phenomenon. Because of recent edits that I found to be (unintentionally) destructive, and because there is the issue of misquoting Tungpa, I am requesting administrive intervention in this matter and respectfully ask that no further edits be made until I can get someone in to moderate, else this become an edit war. WikiEditorial101 (talk) 12:53, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• The lead was updated with info from reliable sources, in contrast to the sentence "is the universal phenomenon of any unconventional, outrageous, unexpected, or unpredictable behavior that is considered to be a manifestation of spiritual accomplishment." I tagged this sentence with a "source needed"-tag; this tag was removed by WE101; it is not supported by the info in the article, making to broad claims. In contrast, I added info which questioned this sentence and it's interpretation of divine madness; this info was fremoved by WE101's wholesale reverts.
• Both June McDaniel and David DiValerio make the comparison with mental illness; and explain why divine madness is not mental illness, but derives it's name from this comparison.
• The "accurate understabding" og WE101 seems to be mainly based on Feuerstein, a source which is discredited by DiValerio, as explained in a note (this was removed too by WE101) and noted at the talkpage (Talk:Divine madness (religion)#Additional sources and info).
• "Destructive" is a misqualification of the edits by me and MSW
• WE101 has now three times asserted that I changed the Trungpa-quote when I shortened it; I've explained two times that I didn't change the wording (Talk:Divine madness (religion)#Trungpa-quote: "Nothing was changed to these three sentences."; "No, I didn't change the wording. If the quote was incorrect, that was not my work."). Somehow this doesn't get through to him.

WE101 seems to be taking ownership of this page, and unwilling to reaxch a compromise. So far so good, but removing sourced info from University Press published schlarly sources is unacceptable. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:43, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• This doesn't belong here. It might belong at ANI or ANEW, that is, if either of those were literally the first step in the dispute resolution process, which they aren't. The two of you have spent all of 72 hours "discussing" the issue, with almost zero input from anyone else. Consider WP:3O, Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion, and... basically everything on WP:DR other than here. TimothyJosephWood 14:06, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Timothyjosephwood. I've also stated this yet. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:15, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• Too early, WikiEditorial101, this content dispute is. Even for DRN, leave aside AN. As Timothyjosephwood notes, this needs more discussion on the talk page, then if necessary by other dispute resolution process. AN is not appropriate as the first stop. You are edit warring, which needs to stop. Further in an AN case, WikiEditorial101, always provide edit diffs whenever you allege/accuse anything significant by anyone. This is a borderline WP:Boomerang case, but I urge that this case be closed without action AGF. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 16:07, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

(ps) I am too busy IRL, will review that article later this week. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 16:07, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@(ps): okay; thanks. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:23, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Closing this thread: issue resolved, and this wasn't the right place for this anyway. WikiEditorial101 (talk) 02:28, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

A trolling group...

...is using the article Rölli as their playground. Please see its recent edit history. 169.54.85.74 (talk) 21:38, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Article semi'd for 1 month. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:09, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Mass creation of improperly referenced BLPs by User:SwisterTwister

SwisterTwister is mass-creating articles on scientists: John Enemark, Mark Groudine, John Joannapoulos, Charles S. Apperson and literally hundreds more. None of those I checked contained even a single reliable independent source; they're all based on what the subjects, and organizations they are affiliated with, say about themselves. The subjects may well be notable according to WP:PROF, but as that guideline says (and as SwisterTwister knows), merely satisfying notability in the absence of reliable independent sources is not enough to be the subject of a Wikipedia article. This goes doubly for the at times promotional content of the drafts ("recognized for his contributions to an understanding of the host-feeding habits of mosquitoes" - says his own research paper?). Creating hundreds of BLPs without independent sources is detrimental to the encyclopedia. Doing so despite being aware of the requirements is disruptive. SwisterTwister should be admonished, and someone who creates articles like the above should not hold the autopatrolled right. I have had my disagreements with SwisterTwister in the past and thus bring it up here instead of just doing what needs to be done. Huon (talk) 21:39, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Ouch, you're not exaggerating with "mass creation". Yes, on a dip-sample none of these appear to be adequately referenced for BLPs—I'd agree that at minimum the autopatrolled bit needs to be removed, and consideration needs to be given to a mass deletion unless he's willing to undertake to fix them. ‑ Iridescent 21:47, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

A relatively minor issue compared to the above, but a quick sample found many stub-ish articles without a stub tag. That seems like something that an experienced user should be including by default, especially where volume is involved and they are autopatrolled. It seems like an imbalance between quantity and quality. Also not assigned to any WikiProjects, which reduces the visibility and chances of the right people fleshing them out. Murph9000 (talk) 21:52, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

The first one I looked at was John Joannapoulos and the man's name is spelled incorrectly. It's John Joannopoulos according to the sources. Capeo (talk) 18:54, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. I've moved the page to correct the error, and left a redirect (as it's a plausible misspelling of the name). Waggie (talk) 19:26, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

SwisterTwister appears to be creating articles for Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which would meet WP:NACADEMIC#3. They are citing the AAAS fellowship listing, which is admittedly really sparse. According to WP:PRIMARY: ...primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care. I think the AAAS fellowship listings would be considered a "...primary source...reputably published". Academics are notoriously difficult to source to popular secondary sources, after all. I think if I saw, say, John Markley come up at AfD, I would argue for keeping on that basis or, failing that, merging to Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 22:16, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:NACADEMIC #3 says fellow of a major scholarly society which reserves fellow status as a highly selective honor (my emphasis). I'm not in the least convinced that's the case here; looking at the list on their website and sorting it by "year elected", they dished out 377 of the things in 2016 alone. ‑ Iridescent 22:43, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

In a country as big as the U.S, its perfectly plausible for 377 to still be a selective group. Percentages are more important. For example, the NFL Draft just concluded selected 253 players from the 73,660 that play NCAA football[13] but I don't think anyone would challenge the notion that the NFL is highly selective within the world of American football. In sciences, according to the Congressional Research Service, in 2014 there were 6.2 million working scientists and engineers in the US.[14]. Even assuming half of those are engineers and not eligible, that's still a pretty selective group. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 01:29, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what is being looked at, but the list linked appears to only have a total of 329 elected fellows for all years [15]? Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:39, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I find it weird that not only does no-one say anything earlier but that something is said AFTER I added him back to AfC as there was no consensus to remove him... I feel like theres something more going on not related to ST, I have IRC logs of people, whom for now will be unnamed, not only disrespecting ST but criticizing him. If all parties approve I will release the logs. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ _Talk 22:40, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

What exactly are you insinuating here? If you're trying to claim that Huon and I are part of some IRC conspiracy, you're seriously barking up the wrong tree; if you're complaining that someone's criticising ST, so what? If he's done something that warrants criticism, he should be criticised, as is the case for every other editor. ‑ Iridescent 22:45, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• I thought the TOS for IRC said logging sessions wasn't kosher? Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:01, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• There is no TOS for IRC. Some networks have them but in regards to logging it is public logging that is not kosher. Almost everyone that frequents IRC has private logs that they take to refer back to. Publishing those without explicit consent from all parties involved is grounds for a ban from all related channels though. --Majora (talk) 23:04, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm only saying that, when I added ST to afc reviewers after Primefac removed him, was this brought up, all in the same exact few days, I mean I'm a little crazy, but I'm surely not the only one that could see these events being connected... in other words... I think DR is in order rather than AN. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ _Talk 23:19, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Zppix: No, you've threatened blackmailing Wikipedians based on what they said in IRC. Perhaps you might be leaving Wikipedia, too? Chris Troutman (talk) 23:32, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Chris troutman, if they didnt want the possiblity of me using those logs against them, then they should of done that in private, not to mention your threating me now. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ _Talk 23:38, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

"I have IRC logs of people, whom for now will be unnamed, [...] If all parties approve I will release the logs." - it will be difficult for the parties to approve if they don't know they're a party. Anyway, I tried to discuss the issue on SwisterTwister's talk page; they removed the thread. That was about 200 improperly referenced BLPs ago. This doesn't need dispute resolution, this needs SwisterTwister to stop creating inappropriately sourced articles. Huon (talk) 00:14, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I would say that you were in a better position before you decided to say; if they didnt want the possibility of me using the logs against them. So you're admitting to considering blackmail here? Article on blackmail; Essentially, it is coercion involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates, or threats of physical harm or criminal prosecution and WP:BLACKMAIL; Threats or actions which deliberately expose other Wikipedia editors to political, religious or other persecution by government, their employer or any others. Chris, they originally said they would reveal the chat logs if all parties approve. That would indicate, to me at least, that blackmail is not on the cards here. I'm now entirely lost on whether Zppix actually intends to coerce the other parties, "expose" them without consent or request their consent to reveal logs. I'd like a definitive statement on intent here. Do you intend to release these logs regardless of whether you receive consent? or only if you have the consent of the other party(ies)? Mr rnddude (talk) 00:20, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Zppix: WP:TINC might be worth a read for you. Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 00:35, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

This is about on-wiki behavior, we can all see what the articles look like, so the vague insinuations of IRC conspiracies strike me as entirely missing the point. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:42, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• I am in support of removal of the autopatrolled right. There are simply too many potentially problematic stubs for me to be comfortable with him mass-creating without someone checking his work (in addition to the issues mentioned above, a random spot-check showed about 75% of them are orphans). I'm not sure we need to go to S.v.G. levels of article nuking, but I wouldn't be opposed if someone were to put it up for debate. Primefac (talk) 00:34, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
• I'm surprised to see SwisterTwister do this, because he's a stickler for good sourcing at AfC. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:50, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
  • And had issues in the past at AfD with leaving generic "delete" comments...does seem to be a 180 in philosophy but I'm sure there's a reason for it. ansh666 01:11, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Primefac removed SwisterTwister as an AfC participant on 15:02, 4 May, [16] because of concerns about copyvios not being spotted, and ST began creating the stubs at 21:28, 4 May. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:31, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
• Would it be beneficial to take a route similar to the handling of SvG's articles? Meaning, all the ST articles with BLP violations are placed in a draft space for the time being to allow editors an opportunity to clean them up or delete them after a pre-determined deadline. I must add I am surprised this issue originates from an editor like ST.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 01:33, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
• I haven't followed past SwisterTwister-related issues, but I'm surprised to see this from an experienced editor. On the one hand, most if not all of these people would pass WP:PROF, and it's not unusual for academic articles to rely on limited and non-independent sources for basic biographical and career information. We're not going to suspect that the University of Pittsburgh is lying when they say that Rocky Tuan is on their faculty. The main problem with these articles isn't so much that they fall short of some WP:ALLCAPS, it's that they're useless. These days, a good rule of thumb on whether or not to create a new article is "will this article be a better resource for readers than what's already at the top of the google search results?" None of these articles actually serve that purpose; they just regurgitate a small amount of already-easily-available information. That doesn't serve any purpose other than playing high-score games, and in fact it might make it less likely that these people will get proper articles written about them in the future. While one-line articles listing people's faculty positions are unlikely to contain overt BLP violations - at least, I haven't found any on spot-checking - some of these are so devoid of content that their emptiness itself feels like a BLP issue. Given that this type of mass stub creation has recurred a few times with different editors, it may be that we need more effective guidance on creating a new BLP. (I might be willing to just make it simple and say that a BLP should never be a stub.) For the time being, I'd be in favor of draftifying or deleting any that haven't been substantially edited by others. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:42, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
• This is utterly absurd. Every individual Fellow of the AAAS , the ACS or the APS is notable, as is every member of the National Academy of Sciences , as is every person holding a distinguished professorship at a major research university. The relevant guideline is not WP:GNG, but WP:PROF. I note a comment above doubting this for the AAAS, burt I cannot recall a single case where this has been successfully challenged at AfD. (The only example mentioned above is someone who is not just in the AAAS, but holds a distinguished professorship at Wisconsin.) Furthermore the society membership can best be understood as a shorthand to simplify discussion, because I cannot imagine a case where the would not have met the really key part of the WP:PROF guideline, being a major influence in their field, as shown by book reviews or citations. Unlike the sometimes confusing status of the other special notability guidelines, WP:PROF is explicitly an alternative--it is enough to meet it without having to pay any attention at all to the GNG. OF. Not

All that is necessary is to prove they are indeed Fellows, etc. Ideally this should be from the organization's announcements of lists. But the person's official CV is also acceptable, as is an official university page. Out of the 5 or 10 thousand academic bios I've looked at here, I recall just one where the official CV was challenged, and was in fact making a claim, (to a doctorate) that could not be demonstrated. (I spent a day of checking all possible sources for it under any likely error in name or year or university before coming to that conclusion, because it was so extraordinary). Other sources are a little more dubious, because newspapersand publishers and conference organizers sometimes get things a little bit wrong. (I've just commented at a bio talk p. about one such a bio that was a little oversimplified to the point of making an incorrect implication).

I've looks at a few of these articles. I have not found one yet that would not have 100% success rate at AfD. The cited description of above that is called promotionalism, is in fact the exact quotation from the award from a professional society--most such academic field descriptions that might sound like puffery are. Yes, it should have been sourced more explicitly, but the source was in the reference list. (I normally remove a few adjectives from such statements, since they do tend to be a little flowery.)

I am going to check the entire list tomorrow. If there is any I think actually inadequate, I'll deal with it. For everything else, I will defend any prof article that I think meets WP:PROF as strongly as I can, just the same as I always do .

It sometimes has been regarded as inappropriate here to mass produce stubs of this sort without a fuller description & better sourcing. Personally, I do not myself think it wrong. I even would urge doing this here and in similar cases--people have done it, for example, for Olympic athletes, or winners of major prizes, or those holding positions in legislatures. All of those were good things to do, and so is this. In fact, I have planned to do just this myself, probably starting with the National Academy of Science list all the way back to the beginning and going on from there. Not really having the time, I've instead just urged other people to do this. Now, seeing this challenge here makes it very much more likely that I will take the time out from dealing with paid editors and do just that. It is not prohibited to create stubs--the argument for them is that other people can then build on them, and are more likely to do so when they find an article has already been started. We have sometimes reverted such additions--but only in cases where it could be shown that the method or sourcing was actually wrong , such as geographic stubs taken incorrectly from a census in a language the contributor could not read. Otherwise, attempts to make a speedy criterion for stubs have been overwhelmingly rejected several times.

I do agree that doing these in this large a number can be imprudent, especially for editors who realize that some other editors are not all that happy with some of their other work. I very strongly urge Swistertwister to immediately start filling them in. DGG ( talk ) 02:45, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

PROF is not the only issue. The pages I looked at were WP:PRIMARY violations because they relied entirely on primary sources. Policies apart, the question is whether these pages are useful for readers. The micro-stubs aren't. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I must be missing something. Neither WP:PRIMARY nor WP:BLPPRIMARY says that. Certain primary sources, e.g., trial transcripts, are indeed against policy but a distinguished society's own list of fellows or a university's designation of a distinguished professorship are nowhere prohibited that I can see. These policies say, "use caution," and verifying such facts against authoritative sources seems very cautious. Do we really think the AAAS or (for example) University of Wisconsin can't verify these facts? I also fail to find any policy that says BLP with only primary sources is not permitted. WP:BLP says that the non-negotiables are NPOV, verifiability, and NOR. These seem to have those qualities and notability under previously-agreed standards. Is "no primary-source stubs" enshrined in policy somewhere hidden? Am I being obtuse about this? Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 04:30, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Eggishorn, WP:PRIMARY, which is policy: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources."

I only looked at a few of the micro-stubs, but they were based only on primary sources. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:39, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

At the risk of repeating myself, @SlimVirgin:, WP:PRIMARY also says:...primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia.... Again, is there anything to suggest that these universities and the AAAS not reputable publishers? Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 14:13, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Primary sources can be excellent sources, but articles should be based on secondary sources. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:17, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Eggishorn, you're not really missing anything other than that "primary" sources are likely to be more common in academic biographies and less so in most other biographical topic areas. It doesn't make sense to object that these articles about AAAS fellows source that claim to the list of AAAS fellows published by the AAAS. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:12, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Opabinia regalis:, thank you. I think that was my point. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 14:13, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

The point of the policy is to avoid articles like this, where we have no way of judging how notable the person is. That's why we need secondary sources. Another consideration is that not everyone wants a BLP. Creating borderline-notable BLPs on people who may never have sought attention from secondary sources is problematic. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:28, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

DGG, I thought that at first too. What's going on here, people are dragging someone to the stocks for not using stub tags? But defending them on the grounds that the topics are notable overlooks the sheer uselessness of the articles, which displace more substantive resources in search results and are so sparse that they do a disservice to their subjects. I have no doubt these were created as a good-faith de-redlinking effort - as were the masses of stubs about athletes before this, and the masses of stubs about villages before that, and the masses of stubs about beetles, and the masses of stubs about algae, etc. I think it's been pretty well established by this point that indiscriminate stub creation from a list of redlinks without adding any substance to the articles is not a good way of growing the encyclopedia. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:12, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I think they are useful. At least, they are useful to people l who are much more likely to expand an article than to write one. Reasons why people do this differ: For me, I check thousands of articles, and I try to fix or add something about anything that I look at. They are useful to students and beginners, who may not know how to start an article and not want to figure out, but they know enough to add information, especially with the visual editor. They are very useful at Editathons. At least in NYC we generally advise people to start by expanding an existing article. in order to gain confidence. The number of editors who add material is much greater than those who write new ones,, and we need both . They are even useful to readers, who may see a vague reference to some academic in a press release , because they'll at least see the basics. WP grows. Almost all articles were stubs in the beginning. Any stub article on an academic is expandable. If we can find a cv we can add the full biographical data and positions and significant honors. Even if we can't we can add their most cited articles, and their books. We can go further add reviews of their books. We can say what the most important articles actually did. We can check for notable students. As I said, I am myself going to follow my own advice, and do a hundred or so brief stubs. Challenge my user rights if you care to. DGG ( talk ) 14:43, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

And this reflects the fact that, despite their importance and contributions to knowledge, academics and scientists just do not get anywhere close to detailed coverage compared to sports, and hence, while arguably being honored by these societies is one of the highest honors in academics, does not presume notability can be met (that is, it seems very doubtful that NACADEMICS#3 is really appropriate here). We've had to stop editors in past mass creating one-line BLPs on athletes, this is no different here. --MASEM (t) 05:20, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

If WP:PROF makes every AAAS fellow notable then it needs some overhauling in my view. I just went through a bunch of these stubs and couldn't find a single one that could be more than the single sentence they currently are due to there being no other sources out there other than these people's papers. In essence that equates to thousands of articles that will never be more than, "So and so is a professor at this school who researches this, this and that and became an AAAS fellow in (fill in the year)." What's the point of that?Capeo (talk) 19:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• It is with deep regret that I also must support removal of autopatrolled rights from SwisterTwister. Mass creation of poorly sourced articles is most certainly detrimental to the encyclopedia, especially when not adding those articles to the appropriate WikiProjects, or adding to stub categories. Indeed, SwisterTwister's continued lack of tangible response to criticism on his talk page is extremely disconcerting. I also attempted to work with ST regarding one of these articles that he removed the CSD tag from one of them, they simply refused to respond other than leaving an edit summary that there was no violation of guidelines. Frankly, I'm surprised that they would consider all this acceptable, while still declining articles at AfC with no better reason that "Not satisfying the applied notability standards.". Also, while this thread isn't about SwisterTwister's behavior at AfC, Zppix complains about the removal of ST from AfC and of some great IRC cabal conspiracy while citing logs he claims to have as evidence. ST was removed from AfC for allowing numerous copyvios to pass through un-checked by an administrator and continuing to do so after being alerted to the problem. There is a discussion on the topic at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Participants#Removal_of_SwisterTwister if anyone wishes to review it. I've tried to help SwisterTwister in the past, and even defended them more than once here at ANI desperately trying to get them to just slow down a bit, but to no avail. There is no great conspiracy. ST's lack of due diligence is affecting people across the project in many ways and now it's finally coming to a head - it was bound to happen eventually. I'm very sad to see it happen, and I tried to prevent it, even spending hours on IRC trying to work with them on improvement but with obviously few results. Waggie (talk) 03:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
• If ST is going to mass create stubs, he should at least tag them appropriately. I've just spent 3 and a half hours going through them adding stub and {{WikiProject Biography}} tags, and there are still umpteen more to do! Adam9007 (talk) 03:33, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
• I support removal of the right. I don't see autopatrolled as a right we give to people who have "done nothing wrong" while creating articles. I see it as a right we give to people whose articles are good enough that patrolling would not improve them further. In this case, these articles could be improved through normal patrolling with the addition of stub and WikiProject tags, so autopatrolled should probably be removed to let the patrollers help out. In other words, I don't think the question of whether SwisterTwister's articles violate policy is the only question relevant to whether he should have autopatrolled. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:17, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
• Yes, please remove the right, and inform them that adding meaningless sentences like "His most cited papers are 324, 322 and 244."[17] or "His most cited papers are 650 and 463 and was especially most cited in 2016."[18] only make the articles worse, not better. I see above that there have been copyvio concerns: looking at Christopher D'Elia, I see "nutrient dynamics in aquatic systems, estuarine ecology, coral reef ecology, algal/invertebrate symbiosisp, science history and policy, math and science education, marine pollution, global climate change and analytical chemistry" where the source[19] has "Nutrient dynamics in aquatic systems; estuarine ecology; coral reef ecology; algal/invertebrate symbiosisp; science history and policy; math and science education; marine pollution; global climate change; analytical chemistry." including the same "symbiosisp" typo. Fram (talk) 07:28, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

The speed of creation: n-n-n-nineteen all at 06:12 and another nineteen at 06:13?!? — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 08:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Fram, what's missing there is just a link to those heavily-cited articles. Citation figures like that are meaningful though they can need interpretation, and if they are that high go very far to proving notability . I always add them to any article I write about a contemporary scientist. I've advised people to add them wen they ask me how to write about an academic in the sciences, and I have some standing information to that effect on my talk p. that I ought to convert to an essay. DGG ( talk ) 14:16, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

No, DGG, what's missing there is readable English. "[...]and was especially most cited in 2016." won't be saved by just adding a link, such "sentences" need a complete rewrite, and someone who adds these meaningless lines to his stubs in response to the ANI discussion here (instead of contributing here or making high-value improvements) gives every indication of being an editor who needs a close watch. Fram (talk) 14:34, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Which explains why even in such short articles they get the facts wrong, like at Barbara Fried (who is not the "Marc and Eva Stern Professor of Law and Business at Columbia Law School"). Fram (talk) 08:28, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Wasnt SwisterTwister restricted recently in some way regarding deletions? Or was it another of the threads that went nowhere - the archives are full of so many SwisterTwister threads and our search is so crap its difficult to pin down one event. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:59, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Fram and Only in death: It's worrying, definitely. Actually that's putting it mildly in the context of this conversation. ST has previously been discussed here (deletion activities), here (AfD again), here(reviewing), and here (alleged aspersions). Nil consensium. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 10:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I have removed ST's autopatrolled rights per the above discussion. Autopatrolled is a right which should be given to those users whose articles require no further immediate checks by other users, including - but not limited to - copyright violations and tagging. Since ST's articles have had to be tagged with WikiProjects and stub tags, cleared of some copyright violations, and multiple users have raised concern about their quality, it is clear that further oversight of ST's articles by new page patrollers would be beneficial to the project. Sam Walton (talk) 09:49, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• The claim that the AAAS elected fellow page is primary as to the professor is just not accurate. The AAAS is not the professor, and it provides "independent" "evaluation" of the professor, all of which makes it WP:SECONDARY as to the professor. Alanscottwalker (talk) 09:53, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• The AAAS is a primary source on who is an AAAS member. If the AAAS was being used as a reference for the content of the *work* of one of its members, it would most likely be secondary, however as it has an inherant conflict of interest in the promotion of AAAS members it would fail to qualify as an indicator of notability. Secondary sources are not required to be independant of the subject, sources to demonstrate notability are. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:02, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

No. The professor's work is independently evaluated by the AAAS to make them an elected fellow. And the elected fellow is elected by other scientists based on the independent criteria. That makes them secondary as to the professor. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Still no. AAAS are a primary source on who is an AAAS member. As all organisations are on their own members/fellows. This is the context in which ST has been creating stubs 'Is a member of AAAS - source AAAS'. Their evaluation of his work would be secondary, but that is not what is actually under discussion. It would still also not be independant for the purposes of notability because they are reviewing his work in the specific context of him becoming a member/fellow of their society. Primary or secondary do not come into it. To demonstrate that mere membership/elected fellow of the AAAS is inherantly notable, you have to demonstrate that they as an organisation pass NPROF 3. NAS elects less than 100 a year, the Royal Society 50ish. In 2016 AAAS added closer to 400. If we are using the examples in NPROF, thats a very big difference in numbers. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:27, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

That's called goal-post moving since you now claim primary/secondary does not matter, and I am addressing primary/secondary. Mere membership is not the evidence I said my OP is about, the evidence is elected fellow. As for whether the process of AAAS elected fellow is NPROF3 worthy enough, that's best dealt with at AfD (or in an RfC), since DGG has already argued it is. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:45, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

There is no goalpost moving. The evidence of elected fellow is their membership of the AAAS, sourced to the AAAS. That is a primary source. Used correctly for how a primary source should be used. If you cant understand that basic fact about primary/secondary then there is no point continuing. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:35, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

No. Elected Fellow is not mere membership in the AAAS. Elected Fellow is an independent process of evaluation of the professor's work by other scientists. The plain words of wp:secondary for AAAS fellow are met -- while it's true that secondary does not have to be "independent", and what matters for secondary is that it is evaluation of the subject by the author, here the author is the AAAS making an "evaluation", and the subject is a professor, and here it's an independent judgement, too. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:11, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

That's synthesis, though, because the links provided in these articles don't contain any of that evaluation, they merely say that someone is a member. For a proper secondary source I'd expect some review of their work and/or the reason why they were elected a member. I'm not saying they're not notable, incidentally, simply that currently there aren't any useful secondary sources. Black Kite (talk) 14:13, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Definitely not. No one on Wikipedia is making up anything about the professor being elected. And a claim of not knowing what of the word, elected, means is no basis for a claim of original research. The why and the how of elected at the AAAS is explicitly wp:verifiable in black and white. They have told you why and how they elected him [[20]]. No one on Wikipedia is inventing or making anything up -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:10, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, we can verify the process by which they are elected, but AAAS does not publish much of the justification of why academic A was selected over Academic B, just that Academic A was selected as a Fellow. That gives us no secondary information to work with. Contrast that to what the Nobel Prize committee does, usually providing a great deal of rationale of why the selected awardees were picked and the importance of their research/contributions to humanity (eg what is linked too off this page [21]). If the AAAS provided something even close to these lines, that might be something, but they do not give any reasoning, just that their selected Fellows were from the output of their process. They clearly did some critical analysis but their lack of publication of this analysis means we can't use them as a secondary source. --MASEM (t) 16:24, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

No. Your comment just admitted while trying to not admit it there is information there ("not publish much" you argue). Whatever you claim is peculiarly enough for you is irrelevant. They have said why, with adjectives and everything which in ordinary plain English mark him out above others by the judgment of scientists, not himself, but by the judgement of other scientists in several rounds reviewing primary sources they tell you about - secondary in every way. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:14, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm looking at [22] and subsequently linked pages and I see no secondary information about these people. Secondary information involves transformation of primary and other sources (evaluation, critical analysis, synthesis, etc.), and a catchall statement of how fellow are elected by the AAAS fails this test. If they told us a summary of those rounds of elections unique to each person, then yes, there is something, but AAAS membership is a primary source and does not contribute to notability, given the limited information they provide about each. --MASEM (t) 03:31, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I linked above, [23] and your talking about mere membership just means you are ignoring what has been stated multiple times, we are not talking about mere membership. That you claim to not be able see the superlatives and the adjectives of evaluation just means your not reading the source. That you claim to not be able to see the list of primary documents upon which the evaluation is made just means you are not reading the source. As to the professor, that is secondary in every way. 14:12, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I read that, it explains very well how they are selected. That's great. But because they do not publish any of the specifics for how a random Fellow is brought to nomination and elected is the problem. From the encyclopedic side, it gives us zero information we can use to expand the article beyond "they are an AAAS Fellow", and as this discussion has shown, being an AAAS fellow is certainly not a guarantee that secondary sources for that person can be found. Again, contrast that to what the Nobel committee posts about all their winners, a high-level but reasonably deep explanation of why the recipients' contribution was important to human development. For something like AAAS Fellowships, I wouldn't expect that much coverage, but I would expect at least a paragraph for each Fellow that explains why their work is important. Secondary sources are based on transformation of information, not relationship (that's captured by the independent-vs-dependent axis) and that is completely lacking here. --MASEM (t) 14:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, to be brutally honest, having been a member of similar professional societies, the "AAAS Fellow" feels more like a rite of passage and/or a tenure after you've spent 4 years in the organization; there is nothing in the way that every 4+ year serving member of AAAS could become a Fellow (which of course would clearly make it a non-unique achievement and thus far unsuitable for notability). In contrast, the IEEE Fellow sets a specific limit [24] "The total number selected in any one year does not exceed one-tenth of one percent of the total voting Institute membership.". (And to add, at least the IEEE has a sentence or two for each Fellow as to why they were named such [25]). The way the AAAS is set up is the nature of how these professional societies work. --MASEM (t) 14:39, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Understood that some want to make the fellowship not PROF, but you do that in an RfC, and don't use the intellectually dishonest game of saying it is not secondary as to the professor, because such a claim is absurd. The adjectives of evaluation "distinguished" "meritorious", etc. etc. by the scientists are there, and the primary sources for their evaluation, the professor's articles, recommendations, etc, etc. are listed. Secondary all the way round. (What I would want to do with bio stubs is make lists, if anything, but I am not going to make up silly claims that that website and organization is as if it is a personal blog, and it does not say what it says). Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Actually, based on past problems of the years from other editors in mass article creation, we should have had consensus confirmation that AAAS Fellowship merited inclusion by PROF #3 before the mass creation was run. It would be completely appropriate to do a mass creation on IEEE Fellows - it is specifically called out in PROF #3, but AAAS doesn't appear to have been evaluated by consensus, putting the onus on ST to have checked that before creation. Clearly, now, there is probably a need for an RFC to clarified PROF #3, but this should have been done before the point of mass creation and now we have to deal with cleanup.

Separately, a catchall description of the Fellowship using vague words like "distinguished" and "meritorious", which are being applying to 300+ people per year, doesn't sound at all like a secondary source. I stress the need for a unique reason why these people were selected as AAAS Fellows, and from the general process for AAAS fellowship, at some stage, that reasoning had had to be made internally to the AAAS, but it is not published to the outside world. We cannot verify the exact reasons, and even though we could like access the CV and article lists does not allow us to make the original research-leap of logic of why the AAAS selected them. So no, we don't have any secondary information about the Fellows strictly off being named an AAAS Fellow. It's not an attempt to be dishonest, it is practically speaking that the reasons that would attribute to being a secondary source of information are not published and can't be verified. We can speak to the fellowship being given in context of a much broader biograph, it's not a bad primary source, but it has no weight to be a sufficient secondary source due to lack of publication of reasoning. --MASEM (t) 15:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

More absurdity, we are not here to see if the work of sources is reproducible, like you wish to do with the AAAS. We are not leaping anywhere -- they have expressly told you why and how they elected him. Your job as an editor here is not to make your own original research to see if you can reproduce the AAAS judgement and argue they got it wrong or right and should not have done what they did in finding him distinguished, meritorious, etc. etc. It is their clear secondary judgement. That your logic is indefensible and dishonest on the point of secondary sourcing is patent -- if they would have written more you argue, your argument would consider it secondary, but because they did not write more, your argument wishes to pretend it's primary - none of that has anything to do with primary or secondary, it is secondary as judgement by others, not because of how voluable they are. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:28, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it is secondary, but the lack of rational makes it a very useless secondary statement for purposes of meeting the GNG and building an encyclopedic article. They have told us how they elect Fellows, and by obvious logic, how random Fellow A was elected, but they have not told us why random Fellow A was elected. Yes, the "how" gives us qualities they look for, but these are very broad, vague terms, and effectively leads to a empty, fluffy statement from an encyclopedic view: "Prof. John Q Smith was elected an AAAS Fellow for his distinguished and meritorious work." Maybe it is secondary, but it certainly does not satisfy the "significant coverage" that secondary sources are supposed to provide for meeting the GNG (and further, it is technically neither independent, since the Fellow must have already been a member of AAAS). Note that this is not casting doubt at the judgment of AAAS, but that because they don't give us any more to work with, just being noted as an elected Fellow of AAAS is not qualified enough to meet the GNG. (The question of NPROF #3 remains, but as noted, at that point we can use primary sources. But from what others have shown, there doesn't seem to be a good correlation between being an AAAS Fellow and having a deal of other secondary sources written about that person, making whether NPROF #3 really applies here in question). --MASEM (t) 16:36, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I plan on releasing the logs if needed AFTER I personally get consent from the parties involved, I never had an intent to blackmail anyone, I only intend for the correct thing to be done, however if anything should be done is that, ST would have to go to those creations and tag them properly, I really don't see the point of removing a right when they could just fix it themselves... not to mention, WP:SOFIXIT exists. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ _Talk 12:53, 16 May 2017 (UTC) I moved this from the new subsection below because it belongs up here. Primefac (talk) 13:34, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Zppix, WP:SOFIXIT was not intended for mass-creation of stubs of dubious encyclopedic value. Are we supposed to follow SwisterTwister around the project and clean up after him instead of insisting he actually improve or doing constructive editing ourselves? As someone else pointed out, nineteen a minute! That's a full time job just going around and performing the basic due diligence that is expected of an experienced editor. Truly, removing auto-patrolled is really the bare minimum we need to do here, as he is clearly not getting the message that haste is not appropriate. Almost all of these AN and ANI threads regarding him all boil down to him being overly hasty and completely disregarding others when they ask him to slow down and collaborate effectively. People are airing serious and long-term grievances here, and for you to tell them "fix it yourselves" is quite a slap in the face to them. As I've mentioned above, I like ST, and have defended in quite strongly in the past and even tried desperately to help him improve, but feel like it's resulted in nothing tangible. I'm just not sure what else to do for him at this point. Waggie (talk) 18:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

With reference to O Fortuna's comment above, SwisterTwister has repeatedly been discussed at admin noticeboards for their editing over the years. The area changes - AFC, AfD, NPP, now article creations - but the pattern is the same: editing far too quickly and with too little care. Each time they just escaped a consensus to restrict their editing, though Primefac removed them from being an AFC reviewer this month. I don't know if this is a problem of competence or temperament, but SwisterTwister does not seem to be well-suited to being a constructive Wikipedian. I can think of restrictions that may help: 1. SwisterTwister will not create articles without reliable secondary sources; 2. SwisterTwister will not make more than one edit a minute; 3. SwisterTwister will follow WP:BEFORE in all areas related to deletion. Fences&Windows 13:38, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I've disagreed with Swister several times, but I strongly believe he's a constructive Wikipedian. Given that in the past he's been far too rigid (my opinion) in his notability interpretations and sourcing requirements, is it possible he's attempting to gain some empathy for the editors whose articles he is patrolling? 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 13:56, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• I looked at a couple, and they are copied word for word from the one web site. Shouldn't there be quotes or a cc license included? --2601:648:8503:4467:31C4:7809:BB3F:FBC0 (talk) 15:39, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  If that's the case, then those pages need to be nominated for G12 speedy deletion. Primefac (talk) 15:56, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• It seems there's a lot of discussion here about AAAS and whether it is primary or secondary, and whether it's a reliable source in either category. That would actually seem to be a discussion for RSN, not here. I propose moving that aspect of this discussion to there, as the problem would affect other articles as well, and we should make sure that the same standards apply to all articles, not just the mass-creations by ST. It is important that the same rules apply to everyone. Waggie (talk) 17:23, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Semi-arbitrary split regarding general mass/quick creation

• Circling back to Opibina's point is there a guideline that can be created on mass/quick stub bio creation? Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:09, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  Yes, though it should probably just read "don't do it". Primefac (talk) 11:49, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  OK. I note for example there is this stub-article Edwin Ross Williams, which was not part of this editor's mass creation, but according to the history was created because he is an APS fellow, so it seems we do need to target by guideline mass/quick creation, if we both allow Edwin Ross Williams and the like but want to not have mass/quick creation. Unless Opibina or others think they can get get a non-stub rule. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:27, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  While there are undoubtedly similar articles to the ones we're discussing, I think the issue with mass-creation is that it's harder to patrol. 19 articles per minute being created? That's just nuts. It implies that there is zero thought actually being given to the pages being created. This is what brings it back into SvG territory - that many creations can't easily be checked for accuracy, and as mentioned above there are a few ST creations that have factual errors. The autopatrolled made things worse, but even then the speed and volume would still make patrolling rather difficult. Primefac (talk) 13:32, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  Wikipedia as a whole would better off if we got a firm handle on mass stub creation. I've seen this many times by many editors over the years. In reality, stubs that are one or two sentences provide no substantive information to the reader. Mass stub creation like this serves no purpose but to create more work for oversight like this. Wish someone would come up with a definitive policy to ban mass stub creation. — Maile (talk) 14:26, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  Perhaps a sentence at WP:STUB creating stubs section would do for a beginning. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:48, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  I'd like to see something about this added to the BLP policy. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:22, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  Even I wouldn't propose an outright ban on mass stub creation, though it would probably be reasonable to say that one should get consensus (or at least absence of serious objections) before starting the work, and ideally provide samples of articles created using your intended process and data sources before scaling up. I think Sarah has the right idea in suggesting that any new guidance should focus on BLP stubs. I can imagine cases where they're created from a well-curated and thorough data source and therefore are OK, but in most real examples there have been too many problems that leave carelessly written and error-laden articles in mainspace where they will be unlikely to attract further editing in a timely manner. While it could use some fleshing out, I think this is actually already implicit in the text of the BLP policy: The idea expressed in WP:Eventualism—that every Wikipedia article is a work in progress, and that it is therefore okay for an article to be temporarily unbalanced because it will eventually be brought into shape—does not apply to biographies. Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:14, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• WP:MASSCREATION? -- Tavix ^(talk) 20:00, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• Comment. Here is the problem. Every member of National Academy of Sciences is indeed a notable person per WP requirements. However, the membership in American Association for the Advancement of Science is something very different. It includes 120,000 members, and almost any productive scientist can become a member. I think creating thousands pages about people who where not even mentioned in any secondary RS was a really bad idea. My very best wishes (talk) 18:37, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Membership in AAAS is very different from being a Fellow of the AAAS (which, confusingly, is again different from AAAS Fellowships) I see no arguments above that AAAS members are notable, only that AAAS Fellows are. Here is a description of the process for becoming a Fellow, and the honor is selective and peer-reviewed, exactly what our notability standards ask for. They are a significantly limited selection of AAAS members, for starters. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:47, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I see. But I checked a few these pages, and they only included information about person X being a scientist in the field Y. That was sourced only to their University or Society pages. These are actually self-published materials. I do not think anyone should create BLP pages sourced only to self-published materials and publications by the person on the subject of his/her scientific research (i.e. primary sources). My very best wishes (talk) 19:01, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposal regarding page deletions

SwisterTwister has created ~1700 articles, all but 200 of which are <1000 bytes, and most are still the (current) version. There are so many issues mentioned above, and more seem to be mentioned every third post. Thus, I am proposing that, similar to S.v.G., these articles be moved to draft space, checked by editors, and any unacceptable pages left over after a period of 60 120 days be deleted. Primefac (talk) 19:16, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Note: Due to some concerns below I've upped the timeframe to 120 days. Primefac (talk) 12:21, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Support

1. As proposer. While I don't particularly like the idea of nuking articles, when people's names are spelled wrong and their job title isn't even accurate, we have BLP issues to think about. Primefac (talk) 19:17, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
2. I concur, these should be moved to Draftspace for more careful review, as there's simply too many issues with them to leave them in mainspace. Waggie (talk) 19:31, 16 May 2017 (UTC) Edit: I support, but would like each to have the usual 6 months in draftspace providing there isn't blpvio or copyvio issues. Waggie (talk) 09:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
3. Obviously, since I proposed this earlier, I support this method. Unfortunately, there is too many concerns to be addressed but on the bright side the encyclopedia will not be too affected if most of these articles are just one or sentences long.
   Also, why hasn't ST come here to respond to this discussion? Does he not care about the outcome?TheGracefulSlick (talk) 20:36, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
4. That's a good idea. - Mlpearc (open channel) 21:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
5. Indeed. I've looked at a more since I found the name spelled wrong and there seems to be some issues of extremely close paraphrasing in some instances. I also found issues where the person's areas of research were described incorrectly or incompletely. Many list specific areas of research that are so exact that they are meaningless without the broader context of the field the person researches in. This context is usually provided in the sources already there. Capeo (talk) 21:10, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
6. Support 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 21:14, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
7. I agree. Leaving aside issues of notability or verifiability, in the 200 or so I've looked at I've found too many errors of the kind I fix in copy editing and cleanup work. While ST fixed the ones I mentioned on his talk page, more remain. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 21:37, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
8. Support. This allows for them to be checked and possibly salvaged, which is what the draft space is for. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:30, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
9. Support. I noticed one of these via a new maths pages lists and considered prodding it myself, as lacking both proper sources and any indication why they were notable. But on such a scale dealing with them manually would be impractical, creating work for everyone. Better to mass nuke them, keeping only the ones that other editors are able to find proper sources that establish notability.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:40, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
10. Support for lack of better solution. I do want to note my concern about the sixty day requirement considering the backlog in AfC, though.  I dream of horses (My talk page) (My edits) @ 04:27, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
11. Support; it does not (in my opinion) help the encyclopedia to create stub articles in this fashion. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:11, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
12. Support:--Good proposal!Winged Blades ^Godric 05:27, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
13. Support. And the irony that it is our most notorious deletionist mass-creating all these stubs is not wasted on me, nor I suppose on anyone else who has ANI on their watch list. Softlavender (talk) 08:09, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
14. Support. Came here following the trail from ST's talk page after I happened on a couple of these and went to drop him a note. This mass creation of sometimes erroneous, generally under-referenced stubs is an imposition on others to clean up the mess. Which in itself isn't that bad (after all cleaning up is what one does on WP much of the time). But making a mess, shrugging and walking off without comment shouldn't get the seal of approval, otherwise the next batch may be thrice that size and lead to real problems. Proposal is a good compromise of salvaging what's good but making the point.--Elmidae (talk · contribs) 10:44, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
15. Support. But how long can people tolerate ST wasting their time. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:37, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
16. Support, less about the notability issue and more about possible copyvios and unreferenced BLPs that have been identified. This seems like a proper way to quarantine questionable material until other editors can vet it further. --MASEM (t) 16:28, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
17. Support, and trout DGG for assuming bad faith on anyone who sees a problem here that warrants further action. Fram (talk) 07:24, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
18. Move these pages to draft space or userfy. Most of them do not satisfy even minimal requirements in terms of notability (this must be proven by sources currently used on each page) and content (no significant info about the persons). My very best wishes (talk) 04:50, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
19. Support – 120 days of review ought to be enough to salvage the truly notable ones. Others can be placed in a list, as suggested on Swister's talk page, to no answer. — JFG ^talk 07:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Oppose

• I oppose blanket discrimination against a class of BLP articles that have sources and are likely notable, as detailed by DGG and myself above. The porn tabstar/professor problem has been academically noted and is not new. An attempt to address this issue isn't a problem unless we make it one. SwisterTwister may have gone about their creations quickly but nuking them for that reason is a poor excuse for actual examination and deliberation. Many of the reasons for disliking these articles given above, e.g., they're based on primary sources, they're just stubs, they're created too fast for careful creation, etc. are not actual policy-based reasons for deletion. No one has yet convincingly argued that these professors and other academics are not notable under WP:PROF nor (with one possible copyright issue) have they been identified as otherwise against inclusion criteria. This case is easily distinguished from the SvG one on the grounds that there were no likely basis for notability for the vast majority of those. We haven't yet heard good rebuttal to the idea that these are of people that have verifiable qualifications for notability. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:53, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

What little I paid attention to the SvG case, claims of notability were made (a lot of olympians), but sources were in fact used incorrectly, or mis-read. In this case I think they should be moved to draft space not because there is no claim of notability, but because multiple issues have been brought to light, not the least of which is copyright concerns, which certainly is a policy-based reason for deletion. I would oppose outright deleting them, which would truly be "Nuking", this option gives the community time to review them. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 22:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Just because multiple notability guidelines are too permissive doesn't mean we should create thousands of non-notable articles. The problem with all these walled garden project guidelines is that nobody pushes back against them. That's how we end up with thousands of non-notable porn star articles and athlete articles. To me the answer is to cull not keep making more chaff. Even looking at WP:PROF I don't think being a fellow of the AAAS would cut it. They give out way too many fellowships. They also give out awards yearly that they themselves say are for notable accomplishments. That I could see being worthy of an article and I'm trying to find some of these stubs that may be these people to try to expand. I understand other editors don't agree with my interpretation of notability as far as these article subjects are concerned, and that's fine, because we're not talking about deleting them. Everyone is free to clean them up, and they need some serious cleaning up. These are BLPs and myself and others have already found a slew of basic errors. That has to be taken seriously. Capeo (talk) 22:32, 16 May 2017 (UTC)ttps://www.aaas.org/general-process

@78.26: and @Capeo:, I understand the quality concerns. I wonder, on the other hand, what is "too many" fellowships? As mentioned above, 377 a year out of a working population of millions seems hardly non-selective. That's a side issue, however. If we want to modify WP:NPROF, then this isn't the right venue (an RfC on Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics) would give everyone a chance for input). More importantly, however, is that this discussion seems tending towards the SvG outcome, which is a short-circuit of the established deletion processes. If we had AfD's on one of these and the deletion rationale was: "There's too many cleanup issues." then WP:DELETIONISNOTCLEANUP would be linked in an eyeblink. I would counter-propose that we send the copyright vio's that 78.26 mentions straight to CSD#G12. If there's a reason to perform a mass AfD, then let it go through the normal process unless it can be demonstrated that there are reasons to avoid those processes. Poor quality hasn't been a reason historically to avoid established processes. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 23:43, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Eggishorn: I agree. I don't want to see everything deleted via G12, because I doubt all the articles have that issue. Moving them to draft, and letting editors such as yourself look at them seems to be the most prudent course of action. There appears to be enough issues that leaving them in mainspace also does not seem prudent. Primefac's proposal seems to be the most moderate approach. It is because I don't want to see all of these articles outright deleted that I support this. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 00:53, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@78.26:I think my real issue is the 60 day limit in Primefac's proposal, after which these are to be removed. If there really is no deadline, why limit it? Especially when we seem to agree that there is at least a reasonable possibility of notability? Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 01:11, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Look at these stubs. I haven't looked at all of them obviously but the ones I have have shown nothing but decently published academics that have done nothing of note. Not a single of the ones I've looked at has advanced their field in any notable way outside of any typical working field. No theories that have made any traction nor any practical applications that have lead to any actual technical or procedural advances. To me, I see no point in filling an encyclopedia with CVs. That said, I know most here don't agree with me as far as notability in general, so I'll just reiterate the sloppiness of these mass created stubs that include enough errors, already found, that BLP has to be the overriding factor. Not to mention, how many of these people would actually want a stub on WP that pops in searches above their CVs? That's already happening. Do a google search on these names. Do you think these people want that? Add in the errors and I can't see how one would have a problem with throwing these articles into draft and seeing if anything can be made of them. If most articles get nuked in 60 days it's not like the list of AAAS fellows on their website suddenly disappeared. Capeo (talk) 03:40, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

None of these arguments address any basis for deletion in our documented deletion policy. They all amount to some combination of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and an re-definition of notability for academics. Again, if we want to have a discussion on standards for academic notability, this isn't the place for it. WP:BLP is not a reason for deletion, as BLP requires adherence to NPOV, V, and NOR, none of which are violated by stubs. Is ANI to become an undocumented but de facto fourth deletion process for the project? If so, then we are doing readers and article creators a huge disservice by making it possible to delete large bodies of work based on whoever happens to show up in this corner of the project. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 12:22, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Again, we are not talking about these stubs being deleted at this moment. Not that any particular policy matters here. IAR-based common sense does when dealing with, yet another, mass, speedy creation mess. Particularly when it's mass creation of BLPs. This proposal is not unlike other solutions the community has come up with to deal with similar circumstances. I've looked at a ton more of these and many are not good. Many have areas of research that are unintelligible because it seems ST just cut and paste terms without understanding their scientific meaning. I guarantee you most of the article subjects would rather have nothing on WP instead of a single run-on sentence that doesn't represent their research. Capeo (talk) 16:00, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Deletion is exactly what this process points towards, though. The 60120 day limit in the proposal all but guarantees mass deletion. Furthermore, at the risk of repeating myself yet again, "not good" is not a reason for deletion. Just to test the proposition that these are unredeemable, I picked one SlimVirgin identified as useless above, Stephen Pearton. SwisterTwister created this, which gave me enough information to add his Distinguished Professorship, fields of study, two books he co-authored (one with the inventor of semiconductor lasers, a hugely important scientific/engineering advance), two very important academic awards, and four distinguished Fellowships in selective academic societies[26]. This article is about a subject that ticks so many boxes of WP:PROF it isn't even funny. Arguably, all of #'s1-6. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:26, 17 May 2017 (UTC) Updated post because I hadn't seen Primefac amended proposal. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:38, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I didn't identify this as "useless". Here is what I wrote. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:04, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

You'll notice I didn't put it in quotes which was specifically so as not to put words into your keyboard. That said, you also said: ...the question is whether these pages are useful for readers. The micro-stubs aren't and soon after identified Stephen Pearton as one of the articles that policies are in place to prevent from being created. My point is the article you pointed out was as one that should not be part of the project was actually about a person who is notable. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:14, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Eggishorn, looking at Stephen Pearton actually shows the issues with these stubs, even after you expanded it. You're using two primary sources to say what Pearson's primary areas of study are rather than a secondary bio or, if you insist on using a primary source, it should be at least Pearson's own words about his focus. You basically decided yourself that those sources mean those must be his main areas of research. In this case this is easily fixed because he has secondary bios on the pages of some the institutions that granted him membership or awards, which should be the sources rather than simply the lists anyway. They go into better depth as to what he is known for in his field. This article, amongst I'm sure a ton of these mass creations, could actually be brought past being just a stub. The point is, they all need to be gone through to see if this is the case. Even if they have to remain stubs they have to be checked for the basic errors that have already popped up. Putting this many BLPs out there that could well contain errors isn't something we should be doing. I have time this weekend and hope to expand those stubs that can be expanded whatever the outcome of this discussion. I'm just in favor of prudence when it comes to living people. As of this moment google already suggests his WP article in the search bar first and the article is already the 4th link after the search. For most of these people their WP stub is first after the search, more than any of their accomplishments. WP is hugely favored in searches and, especially with living people, serious thought needs to be given to tossing out a one sentence, possibly inaccurate, stub about them. Capeo (talk) 22:45, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Capeo< I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, but none of those reasons you identify are reasons for deletion. Deletion is not cleanup. Primary sources are acceptable (as mentioned above) for establishing notability. Stephen Pearton satisfies several criteria for notability. There is no policy-based reason to quarantine under threat of mass-deletion notable subjects. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 14:12, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Primary sources can only be used for notability if we are talking about showing how a subject-specific notability guideline is met (the general notability guideline requires secondary sources). But there is a question that is begged is if AAAS Fellowship is something that qualifies under WP:NPROF #3. If AAAS had been previously established via consensus as an organization that fit that SNG, then mass creation would have been fine, though I'm sure we'd be arguing over how these could be expanded. But AAAS never seemed to be discussed as an appropriate organization that would fit NPROF #3, so we presently have a huge number of mass created articles that fail the subject-specific guideline and lack secondary sources, and others have found most cannot be expanded ("cleaned up") to qualify for an encyclopedic article, so we need to consider deletion or at least isolation off mainspace to figure which ones can be salvaged. --MASEM (t) 14:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

We're both starting to sound like broken records ;) I didn't bring up the problem of primary sources establishing notability. I said you used primary sources, two books co-authored by the subject, to make them claim of what research they are know for, instead of secondary sources like their bios at some of the institutions that granted him recognition. Those bios actually give the history of his notable research and it doesn't gel precisely with what you wrote. That's neither here nor there at the moment though. As I said I don't care about the deletion policy in this instance. There is no policy for every situation, especially the mass, speedy creation of hundreds upon hundreds of BLPs. It's times like this when the community must IAR and come up with a creative compromise. I think putting them in draft and having interested parties go through them is the best compromise. Capeo (talk) 15:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Just an example of the type of secondary source bio I was talking about for Pearton [27] in regards to an award you mention in the article. Definitely a notable award by the way. Given out once per year from a prestigious institution that outlines its selection criteria. That's the type of stuff we'd hope to find for some of these stubs. Capeo (talk) 15:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I took the day limit into consideration and bumped it to 120 days, but if that's still an issue it could be negotiated. Primefac (talk) 16:31, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I amended my above statement to reflect that. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:38, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I think we have enough interested parties here at this point, on both sides of the discussion, that these would not be left alone in draftspace. I support (as noted above) that the articles be given the full 6 months. Outright deletion isn't being discussed here, just trying to give these articles a chance to improve without ending up in Google search results where they would potentially be very problematic for us if there are blpvios or copyvios that we haven't caught yet (other folks already caught a few). The fact that an experienced editor committed copyvio in even just a few of these should really be a clarion call here that each of these really does need to be reviewed in a more careful and "quarantined" manner. Experienced editors should know that copy/pasting content is absolutely unacceptable here, yet it was clearly done. I just don't understand why the copyvios found so far aren't a good enough reason (never mind all the other arguments), to "quarantine" these mass-creations until we can get a handle on what might be copyvio or not. Waggie (talk) 17:34, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I went back through the conversation above, and I see only one article where a copyvio has been asserted, Christopher D'Elia, which Primefac has already removed. I am aware that ST's autopatrolled bit has been removed because of copyvio issues prior to this creation of academics' articles. That doesn't mean that there's any rash of copyvios in this set of articles, or even "just a few." As of now, we have zero (thanks to Primefac). If we find more, then maybe it needs a separate process. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:42, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• Procedural oppose -- would such a proposal mean that we could also move other stub-class BLPs into Draft? In my experience, numerous sports bio articles would fall under this category. See for example: Priit Tomson, among many. In addition, 60 days seems arbitrary. Abandoned AfCs are generally given 6 months before they can be speedy deleted. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose 95% of these articles are about notable individuals. Almost all of them adequately document the essential elements of notability. Most of them are incomplete. Some have errors.I estimate the proportion of unacceptable articles is lower than one percent. Voting for this is a vote to abandon the policy that stubs are permitted--or at least to abandon it if the editor is unpopular. I see above some very questionable statement ,

for example, that most are copyvios. I do not see that demonstrated either. I don't see it demonstrated that 10% are, or 1% (In fact, most of the articles are composed of non-copyrightable facts that have a limited number of ways of expression)

or that there is an unacceptably high proportion of errors. I see that based on 1 or 2 examples. Not on evidence that 10% or so have major errors. Or 1%. If all the people working to try to discredit the editor have been able to find only these, there can't be many.

I see a mention of one article where the person was confused with someone else. I do not see that even 10% of them are. In fact, I don't see that even 1% of them are.

I see a statement that AAAS Fellows are not notable. Even if we disregard the established convention that they are, I thing 90% at least can be shown notable by the other parts of WP:PROF. I see not a single example of even an attempt to find any examples or evidence to the contrary.

I see the absurd statement that an organization is not a RS for the list of its members.

I see a far-reaching statement that we should revise the WP:STUB policy, by which I suppose mean eliminate it. It was overwhelmingly supported in the past. It would require very wide consensus to change it, not just here. If we did forbid stubs, it would indeed have an effect00it would greatly decrease the growth of the encyclopedia and the new contributors. I gather some see that as a good thing.

I see a remarkably over-reaching statement we should change WP:BIO, I suppose to require independent sources for everything ,not just reliable sources. And I see some of the comments here by "independent" mean totally disconnected. That's overkill based on this one case, and would of course require very wide consensus.

I suspect that some of the people mean by this they would eliminate WP:PROF. By the same principle, we could eliminate state legislatures, and geographic places. We'd also omit al the early Olympic athletes, and I know some here do have said elsewhere that they fact want to do that also. We would certainly greatly reduce our already pitiably small coverage of the less-developed nations, and even the most developed nations that do not use the Latin alphabet. alternatively, it might mean only professors. There are in fact a few people who have expressed from time to time the view that they were not notable unless they were in effect famous--that is , to effectually eliminate a whole field on the basis of IDONTTHINKTHEYREIMPORTANT.

I am going to make a prediction here--if this passes, I and others shall personally be able to fix or verify 95% or more of the articles. (I hope others will do some of it, but rather than abandon two of our basic working principles that hundreds of editors have used, WP:STUB and WP:PROF I would even do it myself. ) In practice, a 5% error rate is as good as one can hope for in an encyclopedia like ours'. The best editors can sometimes reach 2%,but not most people.

I've been asked why I care: I came here to improve our coverage of science and scientific bios-- I found that the sciences that I knew were pretty well handled, but not scientific bio. I think some of the negative attitudes that I found here about them was do to bias--that people just didn't think that ordinary science was as important as ordinary films, or ordinary politics. I've always been an inclusionist for most topics--(except local topics), which means that I think small variations in WP:N are not actually more important than the gross violations we have throughout WP in some of the other factors of NOT. I care about stubs because I write that way myself, in successive improvements. Many other people do also. Many of our best articles were written that way.

I also care because I want to get away from the very foolish and destructive idea that we should base general rules on individual cases, and from the even more destructive idea that we should act on the basis of isolated examples. We have elements of the herd mentality here--there's a tendency to panic over things we could perfectly well handle carefully. That's a very poor basis for cooperative work.

An even worse basis for cooperative work is instability. To me, it has always seemed obvious that the key part of the inclusion policy is that it should be predictable. People should know what they can expect to find here. People should know what they can expect to be able write about. People like to have some idea whether what they do is going to be accepted to the group they're joining. One or two of my first articles were rejected. I stayed anyway, because I cam here with a longer term plan I'm the exception. DGG ( talk ) 04:50, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Has anyone actually found any real concern with the content of the articles? Are there massive BLP issues? Copyvios? Other areas to worry about? As there are 1,700 articles in scope, take a random 1% of them to AfD to see what happens. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 06:59, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, people have been pointing out copyvio issues, primary source issues (BLP's need secondary sources to verify the contents), etc. Waggie (talk) 17:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Which ones specifically? Please list a few here and we can take a look at them. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:22, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply Lugnuts. Already posted below in the discuss sub-section at the bottom. Waggie (talk) 07:31, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose In addition to the good points made by DGG and others above, it seems clear that these are skeletal stubs which don't say much and so it wouldn't be a significant problem to leave them where they are. If you make them red links, then they are likely to get recreated and this would cause chaos and confusion if there's another draft elsewhere. If people think there's a problem then just stick a clean-up tag on them. Note also the case of stubs like Farukh Abitov. That's still a two sentence-stub which was nominated for deletion by John Pack Lambert. He was sanctioned for going up against WP:NFOOTY. Is it one law for football players and another law for professors? Andrew D. (talk) 07:28, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - I actually came upon one of ST's stubs while doing NPP, which was striking to me since I knew he was an established editor (still not sure how it happened, since it was either last week or the week before – prior to this discussion being enjoined). Then I discovered this discussion going on. Seems to me most of the support !votes are based more on a dislike for ST than on actual policy. Are they stubs? Yes. Is there a policy against making stubs? No. Are they poorly sourced? Yes. Is that against policy? No. Are they incomplete (missing stub tags, talk pages, etc.) Yes. Is that against policy? No. The one issue that is a problem is the copyvio issue. I am not sure how prevalent that is. I've reviewed (and added stub tags) to well over 100 of ST's stubs, and that hasn't been an issue. In all those stubs there was only one which I found with questionable notability as well. As per WP:DELETE, if these articles' subjects are deemed to be notable, which according to current guidelines they are, then as per WP:ATD, "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." And I see no advantage to moving them to draft space. Would all of them be moved to draft space, even the hundreds which have already been looked over by other editors? Talk about making more work for folks. I think the more coherent arguments in this discussion are by Eggishorn and DGG. Especially DGG's final point: People need to feel secure in that the same rules apply to everyone. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 11:45, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, for good reasons expressed by editors Eggishorn and DGG. The pages are identified now as stubs, or they could/should be tagged that way. The editor's article creations are no longer auto-patrolled (by removal of auto-patrol right during this discussion). If there is some way to toggle the status of the articles created already, so that they show as unpatrolled, bringing them to new page patrollers' attention, that could be done. But simply put, stub articles on notable topics are allowed, and I don't want to see Wikipedia changed that way. Also I tend to think all these topics are notable, that the recognition of fellow status is in effect secondary, reflecting judgment of a group, and is difficult to achieve. What would be primary and unusable would be individual nomination documents that assert a given professor should be accepted to fellow status. --doncram 15:33, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

doncram, my concern is that some of these aren't notable stubs, and there's no way to know the percentage without actually checking them all. It seems appropriate (and again, I reference the SvG case) to move them to draft as a stopgap measure - it allows us to check the pages, approve the actually notable ones, and delete the non-PROF pages. Primefac (talk) 15:40, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

You can create a worklist of articles to be checked (perhaps at a subpage of WikiProject Biography), and check them, without removing them to Draft space. --doncram 15:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes there is a way to know the percentage without checking them all: use random sampling upon the articles in a full list created by copying the results of Xtools on the editor's contributions. A sample size of about 30 will suffice to assert a 90 percent confidence interval on what the percentage is. I'll help with the statistical reasoning, including about what sample size is reasonable to measure the rate of non-notability within some specific range like +/- 5 percent, if you start such an effort. --doncram 15:55, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose I agree with DGG, the proposal is an irrational waste of time given that the stubs are almost all notable (I looked through about 20 and couldn't find on that was not notable). --I am One of Many (talk) 17:38, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Out of curiosity, I am One of Many, did you check them for copyright violations? Primefac (talk) 17:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
    • No, but since when are copyright violations a criterion for notability? --I am One of Many (talk) 17:46, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
      • A criterion for notability? They're not. A criterion for deleting a page? Always. Copyright violations must be deleted. I genuinely can't believe I have to spell that out. Primefac (talk) 18:07, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
      • I'm sorry, are you seriously suggesting we should leave copyvios in mainspace because the subject is notable? People aren't stating categorically that the subjects aren't notable, in fact most people are saying that they are, but that the articles probably need serious attention. We need time to identify whether each article has copyvios in it, as it's clear that it's more than just one or two that have copyvios issues. Copyvios isn't about inclusion criteria, arguments over WP:PROF, or people not liking ST, it's about possible legal ramifications for the WMF that we need to act on with efficiency and due diligence. Waggie (talk) 18:14, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
        • You fix copyright violations when you find them. It is a safe bet that there are currently thousand of undetected copyright violation in articles. Should we move all articles in to draft space to be on the safe side? --I am One of Many (talk) 19:48, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
          • Hi I am One of Many, thanks for your reply! Most new articles are subject to NPP or AfC review, which should (ostensibly) be copyvio checked. What's happening here is that most of these creations have been marked auto-patrolled and thus circumvent any prompt review and checking for copyvio. Some articles that have been in mainspace for awhile do get copyyvio that creeps in, and we try to catch that as we can. The big difference here is that an experienced and auto-patrolled editor shouldn't be the one introducing any of that copyvio. I've provided some samples of problematic content from these articles (in a copyvio sense) at the bottom of the Discuss sub-section below. Waggie (talk) 06:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose unless someone can point me to where someone checked a significant sample of these articles for copyright problems and found an unacceptably high percentage. The noability issue seems to have been addressed - the articles are presumed notable per WP:PROF. Maybe that SNG is too loose, resulting in useless articles, but if that is the case the SNG needs to be amended, instead of backdooring it here. Similarly the sourcing concerns also seem weak to me. Secondary sources are certainly preferred, but primary sources are still permitted with narrow exceptions. The big concern is copyright, and if anyone can show me a pattern of copyright issues, I'll quickly change my tune. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:38, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Your wish is my command, Tazerdadog. Provided below at the bottom of the Discuss section. Regarding the notability issue, I'm not sure it has been addressed. I agree, though, that this is not the correct venue for discussing whether or not AAAS or a professor's own school website is a reliable source for meeting WP:NPROF. Waggie (talk) 06:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
• Comment' Many copyright problems are very easily fixed. If a few word is cited from a persons or his institution's web site, which is what is usually the case for bio copyvios of the sort being discussed here, they just need the reference added. If a plain list of non-copyrightable material is added from such a site, tho it is not copyvio, the attribution needs to be added. If a sentence or two of unessential material is a copyvio, it can be removed. (I will say that a list of academic fields from a persons or university web page is essential to understanding, and should be sourced, not removed) This is very different from the sort of copyvio spam where essentially all of a long articles is lifted directly from the web site. If the person is extremely notable, it is possible to quickly rewrite, but usually, it isn't worth it i've come across academic bios like that, and I delete them except on the very rare occasion nowadays I have time to rewrite them. Usually such a copyvio is promotional as well, and both reasons should be given--if only to discourage the person from going to the fruitless effort to license what will be deleted anyway. I very much doubt if there are any copyvio here of that sort, but if there are, I shall either delete or rewrite them. We cannot tolerate copyvio, but the preferred way to deal with it is to fix them or stubbify or find a noncopyvio version, but that does not seem to apply here).

As for notability let's see what happens at AfD. I cannot exactly predict, for AfD is subject to pile-ons of various sorts. and even for straightforward cases, results are erratic. I am going to make again a more exact statement of what I said before. I think it likely that essentially every AfD brought on the basis that AAAS fellows do not meet WP:PROf or that WP:PROF is not a valid guideline, will fail, and both principles will be upheld. But even if it is decided that AAAS Fellow is not sufficient to meet the guideline, I am certain that I can show that at least 90% of them meet the WP:PROF guideline on other grounds--most of them here have distinguished chairs, and almost all the rest will have stellar citation records to show they are considered authorities in their field. I am going to say this even before I individually examine them, because I am familiar with the in-practice decisions generally used by AAAS. If I am wrong about AAAS, I shall say so. If 90% jhold up, will the people challenging them say as much?

The sort of bullying that is being seen here is not very unusual at AN/ANI. What is unusual is the variety of issues used as an excuse, and , most of all, the disproportionality of the condemnation by small sample; usually there's more of a pretense at representative evidence. DGG ( talk ) 04:46, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi DGG, did you see my response to you earlier with the diffs of collaboration issues? Could you look at that response and respond in return, please? I hope you don't see it as a "pretense at representative evidence." I'm not bullying SwisterTwister, I've been trying to help him, but have been clearly rebuffed. I was his friend for almost a year on IRC, but he finally stopped talking to me when I kept trying to coach him on collaborating more effectively. I have never been mean to him, spoken poorly of him, or intended anything but to help him - I've even defended him from bullying (more than he knows). Have you considered that the variety of issues is unusual because there's simply a lot of issues going on with him in many areas of the project? People are frustrated and it's been building up for a good long while, so the level of frustration is breaking through, which I believe contributes to the seeming disproportion you refer to. Yes, some people are mean to him, which is highly inappropriate and needs to be handled with a very firm hand, but there ARE issues here that need to be addressed. I really want him to do well here at Wikipedia, and I want him to learn and grow here, because he has a lot to offer the project, and we have a lot to offer him. Waggie (talk) 06:35, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

The pretense at representative evidence is your listings of purported copyvios. 1. that someone else added a copyvio is not blame of tST, who did not add it. 2. A list of publications has no copyright--it has an extremely limited possible way of presentation. 3. It is impossible to say without copying or close paraphrase the material that says X held a position or received an honour. One is inevitably going to have to write one of 3 or 4 variations. Your examples are at best your own misunderstandings. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I do need to clarify that though I think some here are indeed bullying , some or undoubtedly not realizing the nature of the bullying, and are joining the hue and cry out of genuine concern. And there are genuine concerns: he generally works too fast and consequently not as carefully as he should. I've said that in the previous discussions, and it is true here also. I apologize if I gave a different impression. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose This oppose is based on my personal principles. I cannot, in good conscience, accept a 60-day countdown to nuke option. This is especially true when the proposal calls for automatic deletion of pages if people don't take action. I can forsee ahead that those who want to see such pages gone to simply stand around and not do anything. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:53, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

  As a minor point of interest, OhanaUnited, I upped the timeframe to 120 days about 16 hours before you posted. I know that probably doesn't change your overall opinion but I felt it should be mentioned. Primefac (talk) 12:25, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose per above. Most of these are notable and problematic articles can be fixed. This is a Wiki after all, and it's meant to be improved on. -FASTILY 06:53, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
• Comment Of course there is one law for football, if you nominate people for deletion who meet the criteria, you will be sanctioned. There is another law for subjects that do not apply heavily to hard core males. So I guess heavy deletion nominations of articles on female porn starts might earn a sanction, especially if the aritcles deleted included photos. Nominating sports figures earns a special level of hate. Actually, this whole discussion shows another problem with Wikipedia. There is not enough defense against hounding. Bascially SwisterTwister is actually trying to do the common work of crafting a set of guidelines for the encyclopedia and leaving it to others to flesh out the project. Now, maybe this should be done with much clearer under collaborators in mind. I may be among the few who feel biographical articles should tell us at least a little about a person's life and not just be a list of citations. However I hold that even with these articles we can say more of them as people.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:14, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

• Look at something like this. Maybe he is notable expert, I do not know. However, this is not at all clear from the "referencing", which is something essentially self-published. Moreover, the page does not tell anything of significance about the person. As written, this is advertisement, pure and simple, regardless to motivations. This whole discussion is actually about responsibility in creating new pages. Everyone who creates new page must be responsible to satisfy at least some very minimal requirements for a stub. My very best wishes (talk) 17:39, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Discuss

What if there're pages that haven't been reviewed after 60 days? The wording on the proposal seems to suggest that any unreviewed pages are defaulted to nuke option. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

OhanaUnited I think that is the case. Like with the SvG scenario, any article that is not reviewed will be nuked.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 22:02, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I think there's reasonable concern that 60 days may be too soon. I would support a modification of the timeframe to simply match the G13 criteria. Waggie (talk) 03:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I think six months is a little extreme, but I just picked 60 as a relatively round number (and two months seemed like a reasonable timeframe to go through 1700 two-sentence stubs). If the general preference is to make it longer, I have no objections. Now that I write this out, I realize that 60 may have been too short... Primefac (talk) 12:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Is anyone else... bothered that he has not replied once to this discussion? --Tarage (talk) 21:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

You are not alone Tarage. I quipped about that in my support to the proposal above.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 22:02, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I've been wondering about that as well. He removed posts from his talk page from BrownHairedGirl and Huon with the edit summary "I have nothing else to say here, questions have been answered," having addressed only the notability concerns by citing PROF. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 23:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

And that is part of the larger problem here, he doesn't see a problem or doesn't want to deal with it, and that's simply not collaborative editing which is part of th Wikipedia Five Pillars ("Editors should treat each other with respect and civility"). It concerns me quite deeply. Waggie (talk) 03:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm less concerned about a lack of response here (although it seems odd behaviour that an established user would not at least give a brief statement to present the rationale behind their actions, rather than leaving it to be inferred). If someone chooses not to respond to a noticeboard discussion, that is their prerogative, even if it's possibly not the most prudent choice.

What I find more concerning is that the issue about not including stub tags was politely raised on 11 May, then removed without response. Removing without response on the talk page is ok at a low level, although it seems odd to not just reply to a polite request with some sort of thanks / acknowledgement. Removing it without response either in talk or in subsequent actions, does not seem ok. As noted in a new followup message, even a generic {{stub}} tag would be significantly better than no stub tag, although I find it a little difficult to justify an experienced editor not just using a more specific appropriate tag each time. These articles would all fall within either a single specific stub cat, or a small group of stub cats, wouldn't they? So, it shouldn't need a huge amount of additional effort to just use a reasonably correct tag?

In my earlier note about stub tags, I expressed surprise that they were not included, characterising it as a relatively minor issue. That changes to concern when I discover that the issue had been politely raised and apparently ignored.

Murph9000 (talk) 03:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

When I bought the lack of stub tags up with ST a week ago, he removed it in a way that it didn't ping me. Unfortunately, I'm unsurprised that ST has yet to respond. I'm sure he is well aware of the discussion, but is being avoidant of it. It's pretty characteristic of him to do so both on-wiki and on IRC.  I dream of horses (My talk page) (My edits) @ 04:25, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Frankly, he would be unwise to respond to an attack like this, one which is clearly based on some degree of dislike. I judge this by the series of attacks on his work that have been brought here and ANI for different things over the last fe months. (I suppose one or another is the root cause, but it's hard to tell.) When attacked by a group, sensible people try to get away. Some would-be heroes would rather go down fighting. We have here a perfect example of why I advise people to keep far away from ANB/ANI. From arb com also; the reason I became an arb is to attempt to at least limit the harm they do. Just as I'm trying to do here. DGG ( talk ) 05:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

You need to stop excusing ST's disruptive behaviour. The issue with their 'stub' creation has been explained to them on their talk page, and they ignored it. The issue with their new article reviewing has been explained to them, and they ignored it. The issue with them failing to check new content for copyright issues has been explained to them, and they ignored it. I don't think people are asking for much when they ask SwisterTwister to do things in the normal way that they're normally done on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a collaborative project, we do need people to discuss issues when they're raised and to actually collaborate, SwisterTwister primarily finds themselves at AN/ANI not because of what they are doing, but because they ignore concerns and refuse to collaborate with other users. Nick (talk) 08:43, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Nick. And I also feel that ST is heading for an ArbCom case to evaluate all of these continued disruptions if he persists in repeated disruptive non-collaborative behaviors. Softlavender (talk) 08:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

You feel that Huon is attacking SwisterTwister by registering his concerns here after being simply brushed off on ST's talk page? Folks tried to communicate with him and their concerns were effectively ignored, and so it ended up here. I, myself, have tried to work with ST before on his talk page and been brushed off. I realize there have been unjust and specious complaints about ST in the past, and I regard them with disdain, this isn't one of them. Here's a few smattering of examples both recent and past of SwisterTwister not collaborating to resolve an issue: [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34],[35],[36], and here, only a couple months after an AfD keep consensus. It's his prerogative to not respond here, but he is expected to collaborate constructively with other editors. I like SwisterTwister and think he can do a lot of good here if he slows down, performs due diligence, and works to collaborate more effectively (and part of that is accepting constructive criticism). I respect that you're trying to defend people from attacks, but there is genuine concern about a pattern of behavior here. If he won't collaborate on his talk page, and won't address them here, where WILL he address them? If there is a venue in which he'll communicate, discuss, and accept constructive criticism, I would truly enjoy working with him further. Waggie (talk) 09:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I wonder if any of these could be effectively "trans-wikied" to Wikidata. "Alice Expert is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science", sourced to the authoritative AAAS list of fellows, would presumably fall into their scope. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

certainly it belongs in Wikidata, as do all other subjects of WP articles. The place to challenge his notability is AfD, not by bringing actions at ANB against the ed. who wrote the article. ANB, of course, does not deal with questions of notability , for no admin has a greater voice in that than any other editor. Before blaming people for disruptively writing inadequate articles on non0notable people, it is appropriate to see if the articles hold up at AfD. DGG ( talk ) 00:57, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

A couple of folks have asked for samples of copyvio or similar issues. I did some spot checks and found:

Close paraphrasing: Mark Berliner Mark Chance Nicholas Roy Guhan Subramanian Charles Stewart III

Lists of publications copied in part or whole: Amedeo Odoni

Clear copyvio: Bertram Bruce (note however: most of the copyvio was added by User:Chipbruce - presumably the subject themselves - not SwisterTwister)

Methodology: I took a fairly random sampling from the top of the list, a few scattered in between, and a few around the 1000 mark. The examples above represent approximately 10-15% of the articles I sampled.

That's high enough to warrant some serious concern here, I think. There were quite a few other articles that had very close paraphrasing, but the text was short enough to not warrant inclusion here (because it was only a one sentence article to begin with). Waggie (talk) 06:12, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't think your samples support your conclusion. The article you called an example of clear copyvio, is one you admit SwisterTwister didn't create with the violation. It has no probative value to demonstrating whether ST's creations are being put into the project without proper care. The "close paraphrasing" examples include many phrases highlighted by Earwig's tool that have limited or no other ways to re-express. For example, "American Association for the Advancement of Science" is a phrase long enough to be tripped by the tool, but is the name of the organization. From the Mark Berliner article it picks out "...early research focused on Bayesian statistics, decision theory, and robust Bayesian analysis." and I can't think of too many ways to restate that information without gross grammatical torturing. I appreciate the obvious effort you put into this sampling, but the limited number of at best borderline examples is not indicative of a copyright violation problem that requires special handling. I would venture to say that a similar sample of articles that have been approved through AfC, especially on scientific or academic subjects, would find similar levels of paraphrasing. If these weren't the articles created by ST, I doubt this would be considered problematic. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:21, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

@Waggie: I really don't want to move the goalposts here, but I think that almost all of these are either not a copyright violation (Name of an organization or professorship), borderline ( short complicated technical phrase which is difficult to reword), or do not reflect on ST because the copyvio was added by a different editor. The copied list of publications really is a problem, but if that is the only problem, we can just excise such lists from ST's articles using manually assisted regex, and move on with our lives. Thank you for assembling the data - it makes it much easier to have a discussion about what to do about the articles. I don't think a 5-7% borderline copyvio rate and a 1-3% serious copyvio rate warrants a quarantine and nuke approach, but the converse position is totally defensible. Are there any indicators in ST's work beyond a list of publications that may indicate a copyvio is likely? Tazerdadog (talk) 00:17, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

• SwisterTwister is conspicuously absent from this entire thread. I'm not sure what to make of that. It's clear that he has not created any further articles since it began and, since he has archived this page, it's pretty certain he's seen it. ST, I think a comment here regarding your intentions, any plans for the future, and your opinions regarding this thread would be helpful. I think the ideal scenario would be for you to commit to going back through these articles to check for (and fix) copyright issues, make sure they're notable, and address the other issues brought up in this thread. And, importantly, to commit to discussing any future mass creations. I think if that if you committed to that, then there are some users who would probably want to check up on these articles (or even help), but I think this thread would head towards a relatively quick closure. IMO, anyway. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:11, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• I note the time is now 120 days. They will all be reviewed by then, though there will probably be a number of AfDs that will need longer discussion. Enough people seem to be interested . DGG ( talk ) 15:43, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
• Of course I knew the articles were not complete, but I would have gone back and fixed them. People should have let me do it, rather than find every possible reason to pick on the few mistakes in a few of the articles. I recognize now that it would have been better if I had gone slower, and written them in more detail initially. SwisterTwister talk 01:06, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
• I have not been able to read beyond the start of this discussion. However my basic reaction is that it would be best for editors to at least do a search to see if they can find more sources on the people involved than to complain that all these articles were created. I know such takes work, but with the admission that some may well be notable, it would behove us to do the work to seek for the references, which often do exist for people, they are just hard to find.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:05, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
• Comment Some people seem to have the view that creating lots of articles on under-covered in our encyclopedia professions (academics, especially scienctists), or under-represented biographical populations (women, especially those who are writers, academics, lawyers and politicians and maybe a few other such professions), ethnic-minority group members in Europe and especially the US, Canada and Australia, people from the world outside of those areas, members of religious minority groups, and a few others, will somehow make for a more inclusive better encyclopedia. I can in general see this sentiment, I have deliberately created articles on people who fit one or more of these criteria Emmanuel Abu Kissi and Joseph W. Sitati are the two that come to mind the fastest, and Edward Dube if I created that article. I still agree with this sentiment in general, however I am not sure that an article like the one of John Enemark that says virtually nothing substantive about him really advances the encyclopedia. Will we really be better off if we go from more articles on porn actors than scientist to more articles on scienctists, but a high percentage of the later are two sentance articles that say nothing of meaning?John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:12, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
  • A fact we need to face: up until about a few decades ago, and even today, the human mindset did a crap job of covering females, minorities, non-Western/non-Asian citizens, and professions that were important to advancement but didn't have the glamor of celebrity or the draw of money. We can't change that, and that means we are going to have imbalance of articles favoring white and male people up to and including the 21st century. We cannot create information that does not exist (as being asked here), nor should we weaken our sourcing, verification, and notability policies/guidelines just to enable poor or nearly-absent sourced to be used to "correct" that imbalance that we did not create. As an academic myself, it sucks that the bulk of sources overlook the people that actually do the science, but that's how the world works, and we are not here to right great wrongs. --MASEM (t) 03:40, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Actually we can change the level of coverage received be certain people before any given year. The caveat is that it cannot be changed by original reseach in Wikipedia. However no Wikipedia notability guidelines requires a person to have been covered in contemporary reliable sources. Thus Elijah Abel merits an article based on 21st-century coverage of this 19th-century man, to give one example that came to my head quickly.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:25, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
      • Absolutely true, but my point is that if you turn to sources of the 19th century (to use an example), they are going to be very woefully overrepresenting men and dismissive of females, minorities, etc.. That happened, society is trying to fix it, but we cant retroactively change what was or what wasn't written then. If anything, contemporary sources are going to a more likely shot to cover the underrepresented classes then. That still doesn't mean we should weaking our sourcing requirements to be more inclusive as if try to fix that historical systematic bias. --MASEM (t) 04:44, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
• Comment This would probably make more sense above, but I think there is goal post moving. Early on someone complained these articles are based on "primary sources". However then it was correctly pointed out that the published membership of a society is a secondary source. Weather it is fully independent is another issue, but it is not a primary source. While there is some wiggle room, a primary source is generally one that is not published, if a source is published in some form it is secondary. Weather it is either independent or reliable is another matter, but it is not primary.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:21, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Being listed as a member or a fellow of a society is a primary source. A secondary source requires novel transformation of primary and other information, and we would be expecting things like analysis, critique, synthesis, and other aspects (effectively, why each person stood out to be elected a member), and that is completely absent here. --MASEM (t) 03:40, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

this is one of the cases where that source is the best source. How can it possibly be mistaken or ambiguous? It speaks for itself. The subject's own source is reliable for this also, but a report by a journalist can not be certain to get the nature or name of the distinction right. It's exactly the same as our using a legislative register to show someone occupied an office. (If one wants to be technical, the true primary source is the certificate of the award given to the person, and the listing just an authoritative report on it, or for a political office, the report of the body certifying the election ) Trying to reject article content because of this is getting sourcing exactly upside-down. The true problem is that for some awards and memberships we have no easily accessible membership register. DGG ( talk ) 05:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Having looked at the actual articles, so many of these people not only have done lots of research but hold named chairs from research universities and have done other important work in their fields, that draftifying this is a backward approach. All we need is a few people with the time and temperment to write good bios of scientists to step forward. I have worked to flesh a few bios out, but do not claim a deep enough understanding of science to feel like trying more. However I might if I got some time. 120 days is just too little of a time, that is only 4 months, and a good fleshing out will take a while.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:36, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Time to do something about Vote (X) for Change

Vote (X) for Change has been disrupting Wikipedia for years now (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Vote_(X)_for_Change). Since he was banned in 2010, his disruption has mostly been harrassment of individual Admins. It has a knock-on effect, in that his actions often lead to semi-protection being applied to pages which other IP's should be allowed to access. He is in the UK and in that time the police here have started to crack down heavily on online harrassment and related issues. Who do we have to prod at the WMF with a big stick to get them to actually take action on this? And I dont mean their usual 'we are looking at ways of improving dealing with harrassment blah blah' fob off, I mean actually lodging a formal complaint with the local police authority. And no I am not joking about this. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:04, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

And also Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Vote (X) for Change. Supposedly the Foundation was informed last February following an ArbCom motion and they responded something to the effect of it being on their list of things to look at, which looks to me exactly like what you'd expect a dismissive hand wave from an authority that doesn't give a crap to look like. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:11, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• While I have no idea with how to proceed with that, I am in full support of any measures taken to remove an LTA from our noticeboard. Primefac (talk) 13:11, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
• Just a question/observation, not a proposal: how many Wikipedias have disabled IP editing? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:14, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ivanvector: IIRC no WMF Wikipedia, disables IP editing... Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ _Talk 13:25, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Not directly related, but in general, there's been quite a lot of stalking of users (offwiki) who I will not name. I've asked Jalexander (Jalexander-WMF) if the harassment which, strictly construed, falls under California law, is being responded to and he said that him and the WMF have attempted to help the victims. Hopefully something legal could happen with these LTAs. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 14:09, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I am also aware of such cases, and yes, I also know that the foundation legal team DOES assist, where it can, people who are experiencing harassment which originated on Wikipedia and has reached the level where legal action needs to be taken. Being annoying and refusing to go away is not even in the same ballpark when dealing with the sorts of harassment these cases have shown, which is scary as hell. Being told to leave and keep coming back to post on Wikipedia is, while a pain in the ass, not going to be something that the legal team gets involved with. They've got bigger fish to fry, honestly. That doesn't mean there isn't some middle ground between "Taking them to court" and "Doing nothing", but to compare what Vote (X) is doing to the sorts of legal cases that are out there (if we're thinking of the same one) doesn't even compare. Vote (X) is annoying, but generally gets shut down within seconds. If we wanted to, perhaps something in the Edit Filter way could be used to shut it down for a while, but really, this will probably go away on its own; Willy on Wheels did, Mascotguy did, Davidyork71 did, etc, etc. This sort of low-level trolling and refusal to go away isn't the worst thing we deal with; it seems like a bigger problem than it is because it's one person, but it's not hard to shut down, really. --Jayron32 16:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Its been seven years. No sign of them getting bored yet. Perhaps you like to deal with this crap endlessly, but there are other options. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:48, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, yes, we did contact the Foundation about this last year. I wouldn't call the response "dismissive", but it did sound like this was not (then) at a level that would make dealing with it a priority for them. To be fair, being a long-term nuisance on-wiki but not (AFAIK) pursuing people off-wiki or harassing them elsewhere is fairly small-scale compared to other issues on their plate. I understand there's some new efforts at the Foundation aimed at dealing with harassment, and engaging with those efforts might be the best path forward for issues like this that are chronic irritants rather than serious threats. A range-specific semiprotection tool might be useful? Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:10, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Vote (X) for Change posts irrelevant stuff but not actual patent nonsense, admins revert and block, cycle repeats. He turned up on my page, I ignored him as a crank and he went away of his own accord. So why don't we all try doing that - he's obviously trolling admins and having a laugh at those who rise to the bait. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:20, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Ritchie, you might be quite the baseball player with all those WP:RBI. RickinBaltimore (talk)

@Ritchie333: It's not that straightforward. Vote (X) for Change posts are a mix of irrelevant stuff, half-truths, and outright lies that can fool editors into thinking there's something to them if they don't know they're dealing with a LTA. You yourself re-added one of their posts to a RFA after it had been removed by another editor. And then proceeded on a wild good chase that caused a rather heated argument between us. So, yes, RBI but realize they do occasionally cause significant disruption for unsuspecting editors. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 12:42, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I can't even remember what you're talking about or when that was - and I'm not saying that to be belittling, it's just it wasn't significant enough to lodge in my memory. For me, it's the articles that are the main draw, everything else is just background noise I can tune out. It's the admins who can't let this go that keep using their tools like Sisyphus pushing his rock up a hill, and wondering why it never ends. Again, not being nasty, just stating experience. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:03, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, I was blocked for restoring some of (apparently) his posts to my talkpage which I felt were perfectly benign, and was declared by the blocking admin to be "proxying for a banned editor". Thankfully some common sense prevailed after 17 minutes... The Rambling Man (talk) 12:51, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

The only solution would be to have him physically restrained from Wikipedia or design a bot which can instantly recognize his posts & edits, that would immediately revert/delete them. GoodDay (talk) 12:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I reverted some of the LTA user's edits. Then I found out that Vote (X) for Change's activities extended to Wikimedia Commons, solely contributions from December 2016. This user used one of IPs and a username "Miletian" there. --George Ho (talk) 18:11, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:BLP and WP:HOAX at Murder of Seth Rich

Really need quick eyes on this and some admin intervention, cause it's a BLP issue with potentially serious implications. The article is Murder of Seth Rich. The controversy is over a report, originally from Fox News (who then altered their story) which then spread through the fringe conspiracy websites, about Rich's "emails to Wikileaks" being discovered by a Private Investigator. It's a hoax. Sources debunking the story are here, here and even here and here (one fox news affiliate debunking the original fox news story, yup).

There are a couple accounts which are trying to both force it into the article (there's some discussion on the talk page and, obviously, no consensus for inclusion) [37]. The user who's trying to add it also accused those who don't want in of being "DNC users" [38].

Another single purpose anonymous account has been edit warring to add this to In The News [39].

Please, at the very least, semi-protect the relevant articles. This is some Sandy-Hook-didn't-happen conspiracy theory bullshit all over again.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:37, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

from what I can see this editor above is attempting to end around protect the page as he pushes bias about president Trump and it has nothing to do with Seth Rich story - the editor who added the item originally has a long history on wiki of good faith edits https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3ALasersharp --2600:8800:FF04:C00:2169:C266:D9F6:9F08 (talk) 17:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

on the other hand the above editor Volunteer Marek has an EXTENSIVE HISTORY OF EDIT WARRING BLOCKING and is currently engaged in multiple issues of POV bias pushing and edit warring https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3AVolunteer+Marek --2600:8800:FF04:C00:2169:C266:D9F6:9F08 (talk) 17:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

This is the single purpose anonymous account which has been edit warring on multiple articles and adding the crap about Seth Rich to the Portal News. It's also clearly not a new user. WP:NOTHERE.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:46, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

not sure who you are referring to I each and every day edit the Current Events page as does Lazorsharp - you on the other hand have never edited that page before and keep swearing instead of making a real arguemnet - I ask again are you a sockpuppet of Geogene or whoever today is also swearing on the current events page?--2600:8800:FF04:C00:2169:C266:D9F6:9F08 (talk) 17:51, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Volunteer Marek Is not a sockpuppet. Be careful with your accusations. - Mlpearc (open channel) 17:55, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

This anon account has been causing trouble and being disruptive for the past eight hours. It's obviously WP:NOTHERE.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• The registered editor has been Blocked by User:Lord Roem for violation of 1RR. I suspect enough people will have eyeballs on the article to prevent a reoccurrence. Black Kite (talk) 17:52, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Hmm? Are you sure you're in the right section? I don't see anyone involved here blocked. Never mind I see it now. ansh666 17:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Um, try looking at User:Theguide42 at Murder of Seth Rich. And I've just rangeblocked the IPv6 - possibly the same editor - that has been disrupting elsewhere. Black Kite (talk) 17:59, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
• The story about Seth Rich and Wikileaks (whether a hoax or not) has gotten enough RS coverage by now that I'd call it encyclopedically notable, so we should document it, carefully of course. Seth Rich himself is also obviously not a living person, though maybe borderline "recently deceased". 173.228.123.121 (talk) 02:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• This article does deserve some careful attention, as it has the potential of major BLP violations, but hyperbole such as This is some Sandy-Hook-didn't-happen conspiracy theory bullshit exacerbates the problem, rather than defusing it. There is no doubt that there are some questions to be answered, and we need to be careful about how this article is editied, but the multiple "debunkings" are statements from the family who may or may not know all the facts, regarding one aspect of the story. Words such as "hoax" are not apropos.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:44, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• Given the publicity that has been given to this matter, its a notable political hoax, discussed as such by the NYTimes. There is no BLP question, there is no added harm that can be done by repeating the nonsense in Wikipedia. It's at the stage where we must include it as part of the historical record. DGG ( talk ) 04:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Help:Maintenance template removal‎

Although not officially classified as a policy or guideline, Help:Maintenance template removal‎ looks in part much like a guideline and is probably often treated as such. With about 3000 daily page views (compared to 80/day for WP:BRD, 700/day for WP:NPOV) changes to it have potential to make a major impact on the project. However, this page has very, very few watchers. There are editors who'd like to change it in various ways and lately I haven't been able to channel the disputes into consensus-building procedures appropriate for such a prominent page. My lonely efforts to that effect are clearly not enough and I think we really could use more admin participation there. Eperoton (talk) 19:15, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

What he really wants to say is that he disagrees with two other editors who view the lack of certain information on that help page as an omission to be rectified. I may add that I am one of them, and am one of the veteran contributors to Wikipedia in general and this help-page in particular, albeit not of the most active ones. In either case, Eperoton's suggestion to open a Rfc on the subject is probably the best course of action, and this post is superfluous. Debresser (talk) 19:28, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

It's not superfluous if only because we badly need additional eyes on that page. If there's a broader consensus for change, then it should change, but not before this has been established. As it happens, the removal criteria which were expressed on this page when I recently started watching it agree with my understanding of community norms, and I'm obviously concerned to see it undergo significant changes without broader community input. Eperoton (talk) 19:43, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

So open the Rfc you mentioned. Please notice though that, speaking for myself, my edits are based in demonstrated yearlong consensus. Which, I may note, significantly predates the creation of said helppage. Debresser (talk) 22:24, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

More input will be welcomed by this party at least, and I have expressly stated so (even suggesting two ways to get said input). Although I don't understand why there was a need to specifically ask for admin help I'm sure this works too. Regards CapnZapp (talk) 22:34, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Wesley Wolf Trolling

The editor Wesley Wolf (formerly Mouse), has posted abusive comments on the Talk Page of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 article. He has called editors 'trolls' and referred to them as 'sorry arses'. Clearly abusive terms that should not be acceptable under wikipedia guidelines and certainly are neither welcome or community minded. However, when responding to such comment, I received a warning from another editor, whereas Wesley Wolf has thus far avoided censure and indeed continues to post highly personal and critical comments, none of which have any place in the wikipedia community. I am sure you will take immediate action. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.103.212.137 (talk) 19:45, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Probably belongs at ANI. I've been dealing with this during the past couple hours. User_talk:NeilN#Personal_attacks_from_IPs --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:07, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Calling anyone "sorry arses" and the level of abuse Wesley Wolf is using is very disturbing and is causing considerable upset and distress to several users. I cannot post this to your ANI page (whatever that is) as it is locked.

83.103.212.137 (talk) 20:14, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Wesley Wolf is now writing in capitals - shouting - abuse and calling editors bullies and other such terms as well as taunting them. Yet I see no trail of any warning about harrassment or bullying posted to their talk page or any remarks concerning their behavior. Please can you advise on the steps to take to escalate this action and have user Wesley Wolf warned without any further delay? It would be appreciated as the personal attacks are insufferable. "Sorry arses" is a highly abusive and frankly disgusting term. @NeilN: 83.103.212.137 (talk) 20:24, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

And just as a point of interest @NeilN:, I do have an account. I have decided not to log on to respond to this debate as I have seen what Wesley Wolf does and how they handle any criticism before. To avoid having my account blocked or shut down by such a troll, I decided to comment on their behaviour without logging in. I think that is a reasonable self protection.83.103.212.137 (talk) 20:29, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Before you posted this, I edit-conflicted adding, "I very much doubt your hands are clean so I'd be careful here.". Now you're blocked for violation of the sock puppetry policy, specifically WP:SCRUTINY. Logging out to post the above is not acceptable. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:35, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I am finding all of this deeply distressing to say the least. To be accused of trolling, when I have done no such thing is absurd. To note to admins, I have been a victim of long-term harassment, bullying, and hounding over the last 6 years; and yes it has got to the point that I might come across as harsh at times, especially when provoked by IP trolls. I know that CT Cooper has retired from Wikipedia, so I cannot exactly ask call upon him as a key-witness to this long-term provocation. However, other users have recently noticed that I have become a victim of these IPs who are accusing me of "taunting", when in actual fact it is they who are taunting and attacking me directly. The IP above alone has proven the sly attitude by admitting scrutiny in order to attack me while they are "immune" from blocking. I am more than happy to provide evidence to show that certain IPs are targeting me personally and directly with means to cause distress and intimidation. It has even got to the point that I get scared to log on Wikipedia lately, due to the extreme level of attacks that I am being put under. To be called an "elite" and an "acolyte", is unacceptable. OK I am passionate about the topical area that I work on, but I do not and have never claimed to own the topical area. I have, however, given advice if users have asked questions, or listened to proposals and ideas they may have put forward. Some have been rather outstanding, and implemented. Others, have not complied with Wikipedia policies, which is what I point out to these people. But when I point out rules and regulations, I get called an "owner". I joined Wikipedia in 2011, and had to change my email address in the last 4 years, due to receiving death threats from someone who claimed to be an IP editor on here. This is how serious the matter has escalated, and I should not have to be put under that sort of intimidation or onslaught. In those emails, the person writing them always used the term "royal we"; and strangely enough I have seen IPs since I changed my email account, post attacking comments directed at myself with the same "royal we" wording. I find it very hard to see those incidents to be unrelated, and easily see them as more connected incidents. This response on my part is probably long enough as it is, and I will be more than happy to cooperate with admins with this matter at any given time. Wes Wolf ^Talk 23:39, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorry about this situation, Wesley Wolf. If in the future you find yourself subject to harassment on Wikipedia, please report these incidents immediately here or at WP:ANI, or through the instructions at WP:EMERGENCY if you feel this is warranted. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:24, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Wesley Wolf, in addition to the WMF emergency procedure, you should also consider reporting email death threats to law enforcement (if there are any current or new instances, older ones may be too "stale" to reliably gather evidence). It varies by jurisdiction around the world, but there's been a steady increase in prosecutions for online trolling and harassment when it crosses certain lines. Choosing to do that is very much something you have to think about personally, based on how credible and distressing you find the threats (and certainly not to "win" anything, but to try to deal with a problem that's having negative impact on you). If you do that, don't tell us about it here or mention it here (i.e. anywhere public on Wikipedia), because of the WP:NLT policy. Absolutely do not tell any suspects that you are going to involve law enforcement, to keep yourself completely clear of NLT (and because silence is the best response to trolls). You can, however, discuss that with the WMF emergency email people. You can still raise concerns here, just don't mention any parallel legal action. To be clear, I'm suggesting the legal approach only for the most serious of cases (serious real world stuff), things that can't adequately be solved by WMF staff or administrator intervention inside Wikipedia, and because you specifically mentioned "death threats". Murph9000 (talk) 16:56, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ivanvector and Murph9000: Thank you for the advice regarding this situation. As I previously mentioned I had raised the issue a few times in the past with CT Cooper; however he is now retired from Wikipedia, so I cannot call upon him as a witness to this historical and long-term abuse. If I had known at the time I received the emails about reporting them to WMF, then I would have done so. However, as I have closed that email account down, I no longer have access, and as Murph points out, they will probably be stale anyway. The IP above has admitted to having an account, and only posting as an IP to hide their account identity and make it immune from blocking - which to me would suggest they have been warned in the past about harassment and probably have a history of such acts towards other Wikipedians. What makes this more astounding, is the emails always used the phrase "royal we" within them, and the IP above and another one which starts 212, have also used the words "royal we" when posting intimidating messages on various talk pages. For me that is too coincidental. And what makes it more evident of harassment and hounding, is that these IP's tend to jump on to talk page discussions that they have had no previous involvement, it is as if they are looking for where I am taking part in discussions and then targeting m directly. I have kept a list within my sandbox of who I suspect the account identity belongs to, but I doubt SPI would be of use in this case, as I'm not suspecting sock-puppeteering, but suspecting severe hounding instead. Any advice on the steps to take hereafter wuold be most grateful and appreciated. Kindest regards, Wes Wolf ^Talk 08:59, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• I have no dog in this fight, but I'm just wondering if a SPI is necessary, given the above admission by the IP editor, into their "real" account. Apologies for interjecting. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 22:46, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• @Eggishorn: A SPI will require the naming of registered editors and behavioral evidence linking IPs to these editors. I want to be clear - the block was only temporary because it's an IP account. The person behind the IP can only edit if they log into their registered account. More evading scrutiny will just result in more blocks. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

• I am indeed retired though since my name has been mentioned and I do have a long history with Wesley Wolf (talk · contribs), I think it is appropriate for me to comment. For a number of years I worked with Wesley as he took a leadership position in WikiProject Eurovision and Eurovision articles generally by striving to improve article quality, standardise things etc. This unfortunately brought him into conflict with other users, some of which had reasonable editorial disagreements with him, though many others weren't really here to build an encyclopedia and his efforts to shut them down has made him a target for harassment, trolling and other bad behaviour. I did my best as an admin to protect Wesley and other Eurovision editors from harassment and other forms of trouble, though I sometimes had to walk a thin line between being effective at this while complying with WP:UNINVOLVED and avoiding accusations of favouritism. Also in truth, I often had many distractions and personal matters to deal with and I simply wasn't always able to keep up with things – particularly in my last few years on Wikipedia. Both me and Wesley have dealt with some pretty creepy people on Eurovision articles, and while I was not aware that he had ever received death threats by e-mail (which is regrettable, as if I had been aware I would have given advice similar to that given above), I don't find it all that surprising, sadly. I don't know who the offending IP is and if I took the time to create a list of possible suspects, it would be quite long, and while I've given it some thought and noted that their style of writing definitely rings a bell, I can't pinpoint it to anyone I'm afraid. Regardless, I wish to thank NeilN (talk · contribs) for dealing with this situation effectively and credit must go to Wesley for his continued dedication to the project, despite the harassment he has received. In truth, harassment (mostly offwiki and not related to Eurovision) was one of the major factors in my decision to leave the Wikimedia world (for the most part) and I do not want to see others depart for the same reason. CT Cooper · talk 18:45, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Appeal of my 1RR restriction

I would like to appeal my WP:1RR restriction, placed by the community here over a year ago (with the minimum waiting period for an appeal set at 6 months). I have, to the best of my knowledge, gone above and beyond in meeting this requirement, attempting discussion after a single revert is challenged (and in some cases without even that one) in all but those cases that fall under WP:3RRNO, and only making another revert after a far longer period than the minimum 24 hours (often a week) if there is no response.

In fact, I plan to continue doing so voluntarily, not least because I have been blocked for as little as two reverts in the distant past. The reason for my appeal is that I would like to return to full good standing with the community, in particular as this would apply to any potential user rights requests and such.

(From a technical perspective, please note that my restriction is currently listed under my former username of "Mdrnpndr" at Wikipedia:Editing restrictions. In addition, the closing administrator User:HighInBC confirmed in this diff that the note about civility there is a general expectation, not an actual restriction, and as such is not subject to appeal.) Modernponderer (talk) 21:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• Support. This user has made approximately 1000 edits since being unblocked. In that time, they've avoided blocks and engaged in discussion. They appear to have a solid understanding of the concerns and a specific plan to avoid running into problems again. --Yamla (talk) 12:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• Support - user seems to have a good understanding of the issues which led to the block ban, indicating they will avoid it in the future. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:26, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Long enough, time to move on. - Mlpearc (open channel) 16:31, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• Support This is someone who "gets it". The fact they have avoided any blocks, and have communicated constructively since this restriction was put in place tells me that they should have this removed. RickinBaltimore (talk) 16:33, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• Support Everyone deserves a second chance, particularly if they seem to "get it". Dennis Brown - 2¢ 17:57, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• Support, for the reasons everyone else has already given. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
• Support - as editing restrictions are preventative, not punitive. Indications are that disruption will not occur if Modernponderer's restrictions are lifted, per above. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 16:21, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

FYI for checkusers

• How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell

Somewhat related:

• Why lost phones keep pointing at this Atlanta couple's home

--Guy Macon (talk) 02:21, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Not at all surprising to me, and I'd hope not particularly surprising to the CUs. No harm in your reminder, Guy, as it's easy to forget how inaccurate it can be, and apparently even the FBI forget how inaccurate it can be. In my personal case, both geolocate tools linked on IP contribs pages provide two different locations, both many hundreds of miles away (in a different country), none of which matches the public whois data. Geolocation can be relatively accurate some of the time, but it can also be wildly inaccurate for a significant proportion of the IP address space. Murph9000 (talk) 04:59, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Rather than a glitch, I think that it's laziness on the part of mobile ISPs. At any rate, we've been aware of that for pretty much forever. Geolocation of IP addresses is hit-or-miss at best, and in some countries and regions, it is completely useless. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 12:13, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, by "aware", I mean the geolocation issue. I didn't realize what those unfortunate land owners were dealing with, and the ISPs really should do something about it. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 12:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

What I find more disturbing is that law enforcement apparently was treating the geolocation as a reliable source of information... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:20, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:10, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Appeal against restrictions accompanying an unban/unblock

One year ago today, following my successful appeal here against a ban and block, I had three restrictions applied as conditions of the unban and unblock granted. I was told that I could appeal each of those restrictions independently after one year. So following one year of trouble-free and productive editing (I have made more than 1500 edits in the last year) I would now like to appeal each of those restrictions in turn. I don't plan on any big changes in the types of articles I edit, but I would like to be restored as a fully privileged member of the community without these limitations, and be free to edit in all areas. Please consider my following three appeals. -- de Facto (talk). 20:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Following Tarage's comment, I'll just appeal the first for now. -- de Facto (talk). 21:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Appeal against topic ban

The first restriction I was given is a topic ban. I was indefinitely topic banned from metrication and units of measure, broadly construed, for all countries and all pages on Wikipedia including, but not at all limited to, talk and user talk pages - with the exception that I may add measurements to articles I created so long as they were in compliance with the WP:MOS. I have complied 100% with this restriction so I would like now to ask for this topic ban to be lifted. -- de Facto (talk). 20:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Appeal against 1RR restriction

The second restriction applied is a 1RR on all areas of Wikipedia, including articles I created. Again, I have complied 100% with this restriction so am now asking for it to be lifted. -- de Facto (talk). 20:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Appeal against 1 account restriction

The third restriction applied is a 1 account restriction which also excludes editing whilst logged-out. This restriction too has been complied with 100%, and although I don't envisage using other accounts, I would like to also ask for it to be lifted now. -- de Facto (talk). 20:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Comment I think perhaps you should start with just one of these to appeal and go from there. Might be easier for folks to swallow rather than getting rid of all three at once. --Tarage (talk) 21:24, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Fair comment, I've struck the last two for now. -- de Facto (talk). 21:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose all appeals at this time, and I feel pretty strongly about this. This wasn't a simple unblock and add topic ban. There is a lot of history and I'm familiar with it, most of it ugly, and I hesitate before allowing you to edit in areas that got you blocked and that you continued to stay active in as a puppetmaster. I'm not opposed to you editing, just not in those areas. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 01:41, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• @Dennis Brown: I very much want to return to playing a full part in this enterprise, and to that end I have determinedly kept my nose clean in the year since my unblock, navigating very carefully clear of any articles or article content within the scope of the topic ban, including removing articles related in any way to that topic from my watchlist. Before saving anything I also made a conscious and very determined effort to double-check each of my edits to satisfy myself that nothing I did contravened my restrictions. My fateful block was over five years ago, the "history" you refer to ended more than two years ago, and I have been unblocked and actively editing again for over a year now. What would I have to do before you would accept that I am now an asset once again, rather than a liability, to Wikipedia and worthy of full privileges again? -- de Facto (talk). 19:23, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

• Support. I bet enough people will be watching you so that any return to troublesome behavior will likely result in a re-ban. I'm willing to AGF that you're committed to editing productively according to the policies. Mr Ernie (talk) 01:54, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Request for contents of a deleted page

I recently created a page Kevin Johnston for an individual who has recently become notable. I notice that there was a previous article named Kevin Johnston 10 or so years ago that was deleted. I'm wondering if I can see the contents of the deleted article so I can see if it's teh same person and if any of the info in the previous article can be used today? If this is the wrong page to make this request please direct me to the proper place. Thanks. Hungarian Phrasebook (talk) 22:45, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it's the same person. The article was about a Canadian fellow, but a graphic designer rather than a YouTuber. Deor (talk) 22:54, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kevin Johnston. There's some similarities. The content was not great, or very substantial, or very usable, and contains more details than I'd be comfortable disclosing. You could try WP:REFUND or CAT:RESTORE and you'd want to enable email.-- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:01, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Ok thanks. Looked up the subject's LinkedIn and that does seem to be what he was doing 10 years ago before becoming a YouTuber so possibly the same guy. Hungarian Phrasebook (talk) 23:28, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Repeated attempts to close a discussion by an involved editor

The user ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants has twice tried to close a discussion that he is involved in. I've reversed both closures but I'm bringing the issue here since he doesn't seem to be showing any signs of stopping.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_fake_news_websites#Add_CNN_to_the_list 2602:306:C583:2370:651D:41CC:9232:B7CE (talk) 00:32, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

It is time for all of you to drop the stick. It has crossed into the territory of disruptive editing. --Majora (talk) 00:34, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Majora has re-closed and I've endorsed the closure. Happy now? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:40, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Apparently not, NeilN since they just undid it again and I reverted again. At risk of breaking 3RR if it happens again can you protect the talk page and or block (note if you block you may have to do the /64 due to it being a IPv6 address that has already posted from multiple IPs on that one page). --Majora (talk) 00:41, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Will do. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:43, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't notice there'd been further replies here. I thought It was the same guy just re-closing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:C583:2370:651D:41CC:9232:B7CE (talk) 00:44, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• That discussion is worth reading if only for the line "the President of the United States isn't a reliable source"... quite. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:56, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Postpone ANI report

An individual has threatened to take me to ANI this weekend, but given my other commitments, I will be unable to defend myself until June 13th. I have let them know I will observe a voluntary topic ban until June if they postpone the report, so that I can give myself a fair hearing, and they have refused. Is there anyway I can put this off until a later date, so that I can explain my position (and raise my concerns about their own behaviour in the relevant dispute).

Context: I have been involved with two content-disputes (and RFCs) on the Alternative for Germany page. A regular user (who does a lot of useful NPOV work on GMO, science-related pages etc, which I appreciate) has found himself in a minority in both cases. The first concerned how information in an infobox field should be displayed, and the second, the meaning of the term German nationalism. Accusations of WP:BADFAITH editing were dished out to several users, but in response to him being in a minority in the second RFC, on the 14th May he made significant changes to the German nationalism lead, which essentially redefined the term and refocused the article in his favour vis-a-vis the dispute on the Alternative for Germany page. The user insists he "updated" the article, and I insist that he fundamentally changed the scope of an article with is focused on German nationalism understood as the German question, the process of German unification, and the consolidation of the German nation-state in the 19th century.

This was a WP:BOLD change, per WP:SILENCE (the user ignored WP:BRD), and this ought to have been an honest disagreement. Instead, I received this (ANI) threat on my talk page (since I left his expansion of the 1945-present section, his argument about 'updating' does not hold). "Several others" presumably refers to the other people who disagree with him on the talk page (at the moment, he and possibly an IP are the only dissenters), so I assume the plan now is to TBAN several people who disagree with his interpretation of German nationalism, and force his views over the consensus.

I will be unable to defend myself on ANI until 13th June at the very earliest, due to RW commitments. I have offered to observe a voluntary TBAN until June if he postpones his report, so that I can give myself a fair hearing (and raise my own concerns about his potential WP:IDHT and WP:GAMING behaviour in this particular dispute) but he has (unfairly) declined.

For anyone interested, I would suggest you read the preceding discussion here, here, and here.

I would very much appreciate if involved persons (people have been involved with these disputes before, bar the user in question who is obviously welcome to respond), do not place hostile messages here, I just want advice. L.R. Wormwood (talk) 16:31, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I have actually not responded on the delay or not delay issue. What I am concerned about immediately is:

1. LR Wormwood's original reverting edit this morning contained one of the most tendentious and ridiculous edit notes I have ever seen in Wikipedia: diff; describing my work to update an obviously not-updated article as violating "consensus by silence". They even repeated that above.
2. LR Wormwood has subsequently acknowledged that their edit was "sloppy", yet has also said that they "stand by" the edit and its rationale (diff).

So bad edit, bad edit note, but defending it to the ground, and generating all this drama.

Yes, I am going to bring this pattern of behavior to light at ANI. Jytdog (talk) 17:11, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

The above user's behaviour on the AfD page has been appalling, as much will be evident to anyone that reads it. I will ignore all drama until the 13th from now L.R. Wormwood (talk) 17:14, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

And for the record, that comment was in response to Jytdog's bullying behaviour, and I retract it. He changed the scope of the article, redefined the concept, to support his content dispute on another page, against WP:CONSENSUS. This is WP:GAMING. This term has a very specific meaning. L.R. Wormwood (talk) 17:21, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

So you have said things you didn't mean, and you made a very contentious set of edits, reverted to defend them, and then you say you are not going to be available to discuss them until a month from now? This too is not acceptable behavior.Jytdog (talk) 17:52, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I didn't make the changes, you did. Please explain, under the header I left on the talk, why you want to change the scope of the article, and move the focus away from the German nationalist movement (which is the sense in which the term is most often used - an historical term which refers to the period of national unification and the ideas which gave rise to that movement)), towards contemporary dilemmas.

Jytdog has left unpleasant and spurious "warnings" on the talk pages of other users involved in this dispute, as the AfD talk testifies. This really is my last comment for the time being. L.R. Wormwood (talk) 18:05, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Why don't you ask for a block? It won't matter; you apparently won't be able to edit/spend time here until then. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 18:00, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I have requested a block from Neil. L.R. Wormwood (talk) 18:05, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Just a note, if I am blocked at my own request, I would expect that Jytdog has the courtesy to not refer me while I am blocked, or if not, that someone explains why I cannot respond on ANI. L.R. Wormwood (talk) 18:24, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

ahd if you go for a self-block and will not stick around to defend your removal of well sourced content, then your edits will be reverted. The other elephant in the room here is that LR Wormwood = Hayek79 who already received a 3 day block in March for disrupting the alternative for germany article per this ANI. That behavior has continued unabated, which is what I will show. It will not be difficult. Jytdog (talk) 18:57, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, thank you for your attempt to poison the well. Your block log is far longer than mine, but I wouldn't raise that at every opportunity, because it's irrelevant. There has been no disruptive behaviour on my part since that episode (in which your behaviour was hardly edifying), and at the moment there's an extensive record of personal attacks and bad faith accusations from yourself on the talk. L.R. Wormwood (talk) 19:38, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

And I'm sure that's what he'll do on ANI, and may well be successful. Still, I'll have the summer to go through oversight and put a stop to this, he shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. He could have just accepted the consensus and moved on, instead, he's wasting everyone's time. L.R. Wormwood (talk) 19:44, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• They are now making inappropriate personal attacks on article Talk pages again; not a thing to do with content but all about me: dif. This is the same behavior that led to the 3-day block before. And per its history, still no substantial response at the talk page, justifying their removal of sourced content from the German nationalism article. They are doing everything other than dealing with the actual content dispute now.

Perhaps I do not need to waste my time gathering diffs; new ones are being provided in real time. Jytdog (talk) 19:56, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

You keep trying to draw me into this, but I won't comment any further, other than to say that my recent comment was obviously not a WP:PERSONALATTACK. I'm washing my hands of this. Someone else can address the tendentious behaviour until I get back in June. L.R. Wormwood (talk) 20:06, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

You are digging your own hole here. I am not doing much of anything except noting each bite of the shovel. Jytdog (talk) 20:33, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Are you actually serious? Honestly? You don't get to hold an entire website hostage to your own timetables. This is a ridiculous request, and the idea that you are self-asking for a block for that duration is baffling. What the hell is this even? I have never seen anything like this ever. --Tarage (talk) 22:16, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

A note that L. R. Wormwood is no stranger to WP:Gaming the system. Shortly after his block as User:Hayek79 (for IDHT editing on Talk:Alternative for Germany) was over he changed his screenname, attempting to put distance between himself and his editing history. (This was not a WP:CLEANSTART, as L. R. Wormwood immediately began editing the same articles and subjects that Hayek79 had edited.) He was told at the time that any sanctions or warnings which has accrued to Hayek79 were attached to the person doing the editing, and not simply to the screenname being used at the moment, and was pressed to connect the old user pages to the new ones. [40] Now it seems he's continuing the same Hayek79 behavior pattern as L. R. Wormwood, so Jytdog's mention of his block was not "poisoning the well", it was informing the community of the history of this editor, which is necessary to make a proper evaluation of his fitness as an editor. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:56, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I've reverted his revert on German nationalism. You don't get to hold an article hostage like that. --Tarage (talk) 01:36, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Prod backlog

Category:Proposed deletion as of 10 May 2017 still has 24 articles in it. At least one article I prodded 9 days ago is still sitting in the queue. Can some admins take care of this? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 01:09, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

ARBPIA "consensus" provision modified

The consensus required restriction in the Palestine-Israel articles case is modified to read as follows:

Editors are limited to one revert per page per day on any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In addition, editors are required to obtain consensus through discussion before restoring a reverted edit. Each editor is limited to one revert per page per 24 hours on any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours. Reverts made to enforce the General Prohibition are exempt from the revert limit the provisions of this motion. Also, the normal exemptions apply. Editors who violate this restriction may be blocked without warning by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offense.

Passed 9 to 0 by motion at 00:22, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

For the Arbitration Committee, Miniapolis 00:32, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#ARBPIA "consensus" provision modified

RFPP backlog

For the last week, we have about 30-50 items at WP:RFPP, which is way bigger than normal. I am not quite sure what is going on, and I see that other areas are also backlogged, but any help will be much appreciated. Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:56, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Cleared up, thanks a lot.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:27, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Possible outing related issue

Could someone fix this page history, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alan_Robock thanks. prokaryotes (talk) 12:43, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

(1) Please don't put OUTING-related issues at a public noticeboard; report them by email or at least a private message at someone's talk page, please. (2) Speculation about the person using an IP address, while not particularly helpful most of the time, isn't an OUTING thing; OUTING is when you give out private information that you know (or claim to know) about a person, based on off-wiki sources. Merely saying "This IP [or "This account"] is behaving as if it's operated by X" isn't a problem; behavioral analysis can be problematic, but it's entirely based on publicly available information. Nyttend (talk) 13:05, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Okay. prokaryotes (talk) 13:46, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up! Maybe my response sounds harsh or complaining: I wasn't at all trying to sound that way. Nyttend (talk) 14:10, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

No it's fine. And I wasn't too focused, edited a little, then a door bell ring, had to work on something else, and in between i've noticed the talk page. All good :) prokaryotes (talk) 15:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Reverting closure without discussion

Moved from WP:ANI § Reverting closure without discussion

I had closed an RFC at Talk:Catalan Countries (edit | article | history | links | watch | logs) based on a request at WP:AN/RFC (Request). The user Asilah1981 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) reverted my closure (diff) with a note calling it personal opinion. I reverted his edit (diff) and took the matter to the talk page asking him to present his reason for overturning my closure (diff). I asked him to show me any points I missed. Before I could reply to his assertions (here), he again removed the RFC closing statement (diff) and left a note asking any other editor to close the discussion.
My reply to his assertions (here) were actually written before he reverted my edits. I asked other editors to comment on my closure. I was working as per WP:closure review where I would have reviewed my own closure and changed the statement had anything meaningful been brought before me or if most of the participants were unhappy with my closure.
Please correct me if my closure was wrong or take action against him if I was in the correct place. Also, I only wanted to resolve the issue with proper discussion but this reverting of closures isn't really helpful. Thanks, Yashovardhan (talk) 14:55, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I believe WP:AN is better place for this. Capitals00 (talk) 15:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks @Capitals00:. Yashovardhan (talk) 15:06, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Snooganssnoogans

I have had some interactions with this editor in the past, and have noticed that he seems to have a strong tendency to go from page to page attempting to character-assassinate any people and organisations that he personally disagrees with.

After checking his editing history, I have noticed patterns in the pages that he systematically makes massive changes to, and am concerned that he may be severely slanting many of them to become onesided hit-jobs, which severely damages Wikipedia's overall NPOV informative reliability.

I would greatly appreciate if somebody more knowledgeable and experienced than myself could investigate further. Thank you. David A (talk) 16:31, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I suspect a WP:LTA type behaviour. Should this be discussed at WP:ANI instead as it's related to user conduct? Yashovardhan (talk) 18:14, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I do not know. I am not very good at navigating all of the specific regulations and institutions within Wikipedia. David A (talk) 18:35, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Is... this still a thing? It feels like the last ANI wasn't even a month ago. TimothyJosephWood 18:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Apparently. An admin (TParis) recently expressed the similar concerns: (link). Editor was warned about this then warned again. To me the edits look more like political-party pushing than pov pushing, for example:

Greg Gianforte (R) is a candidate in the May 25th special election. He supports medical marijuana legalization but opposes full legalization. The editor expanded his drug-views section to include the claim he "compar[ed] marijuana to more addictive drugs."

Compare that to the articles Tim Kaine (D) and Political positions of Hillary Clinton (D), which he's edited extensively. They don't mention Clinton's similar characterization of marijuana as a "gateway drug" [41] or Kaine's stringent views on legalization (rated as one of the worse Democrat senators.) [42] [43] [44]

The editor apparently avoids editing Democrat politician pages (the ratio of R to D BLP's is something like 30:1) precisely I believe to avoid exhibiting these inconsistencies; only edit Republican pages and only add information likely to hurt them politically. Examples to the contrary would be welcome. James J. Lambden (talk) 19:02, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Well... here is the previous thread. Good luck with that. I thought the election was over? TimothyJosephWood 19:07, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Given the close of that ANI thread, I think any complains should be sent to WP:AE but would likely need extensive and solid evidence of disruption. EvergreenFir (talk) 19:10, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Noping right out of that one. I'm not allowed at AE. I have a doctor's note and everything. TimothyJosephWood 19:11, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Is this some kind of joke? I added Gianforte's stance on drugs because it happened to be mentioned in one of the articles I was reading. I added Hillary's position on fracking to her article, am i supposed to spend hours finding Gianforte's as well (never seen it in any articles about him) for the sake of some weird balance? I've also edited the pages of Dem politicians Tulsi Gabbard, Jon Ossoff and Rob Quist. I have edited both the pages of high-profile Dem and GOP politicians, it just so happens that GOP politicians get more attention in the Trump era (e.g. will they / won't they support health care reform, Comey firing, call for independent commission etc.) whereas Dem politicians are just assumed to be no's on everything. That hasn't been the case with Gabbard, Quist and Ossoff though who are getting extensive coverage and are interesting enough to bother reading about. I added that both Quist and Gianforte support clean coal technology, I'm curious: which one of them am I trying to hurt by adding that information? Should I have omitted that information from both pages? Ridiculous. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 19:16, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I've also made sure that the pages of Louise Mensch and Michael Chossudovsky (who are popular among conspiracy-minded Democrats) reflect that they are proponents of conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated claims (all reliably sourced). What's my grand scheme with that, James? Could it be a genuine concern that proponents of conspiracy theories should be described as such (if RS do) or yet another Snoogans plot against Republicans somehow? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 19:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Re: "Lambden trying to get me sanctioned again", I didn't start either of the threads above. In fact I don't recall filing any complaints against you but in case I'm mistaken, I don't have much to add so I'll leave this to others. James J. Lambden (talk) 20:02, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@David A: First, is there a particular area that this user appears to be disruptive in? Second, would you be opposed to someone (me) copy-pasting this over to WP:ANI? Third, do you have any example diffs of the behavior in question (I'm not seeing anything popping out)? EvergreenFir (talk) 18:58, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Without knowing specifically what David A has in mind, I'm going to assume it has something to do with my encounters with him on immigration-related Wikipedia pages where he has a tendency to add original research and try to remove reliably sourced content. Here we are spatting on 'Immigration and Crime'[45], 'Gatestone Institute'[46] and most recently at the page of 'Tino Sanandaji'[47] (no discussion on the talk page but my edits amounted to changing text to make it consistent with sources, remove a Kickstarter advertisement and add criticism of his book from two economists). Snooganssnoogans (talk) 19:21, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

It still looks an awful lot like you're just combing google news to find political controversy to stick into every crack of an article, especially BLPs (e.g., [48], [49], [50]). And, well, that's basically TL;DR of the previous ANI thread. TimothyJosephWood 19:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

If you notice, all my edits on those pages occur when they are actually prominent in the news, so no, I'm not combing through ancient dirt. In the case of Kobach, I stumbled upon a SPLC article on my feed when he was being considered to run a commission about voter fraud about that mentioned that he was a birther. I thought to myself: "that can't be, I would have seen it before, especially on his Wiki page" but I quickly discovered a bunch of high-quality sources showing that he not only promoted birther conspiracies but used his powers as Kansas Sec of State to act on them. Upon discovering this, I added it to his Wikipedia article, because it was extremely notable. I added it to his Wikipedia, just like I add pretty much everything I read and know isn't already on Wikipedia (if you check my editing history, you can for instance find me adding the most mundane findings from studies almost every day). Snooganssnoogans (talk) 19:40, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Mundane said in a self-depreciating social scientist way... I think the findings are all amazing. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 19:44, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

So, are we still doing a TL;DR of the ANI thread? I can't tell. TimothyJosephWood 19:43, 19 May 2017 (UTC)