User talk:Andrewa

G'day! This is Andrew Alder's user talk page, you knew that. Welcome!

If you're tempted to go below the top three levels, you might like to read User:Andrewa/How not to rant first

Psalm 150 (paraphrased)

WikiProject Article Rescue Squadron Newsletter

Article Rescue Squadron Newsletter Volume I, Issue III February 2012 Front cover | Feature | News and announcements | Humor | Want ads To contribute to the next newsletter, please visit the Newsletter draft page. ARS Members automatically receive this newsletter. To opt out, please remove your name from the recipients list.

List of current IPL team rosters listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect List of current IPL team rosters. Since you had some involvement with the List of current IPL team rosters redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so).

Life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of energy sources

As I noticed you on the talk page, please check this out and let me know what you think.

2012 Yale University systematic review and Harmonization

A Yale University review published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology analyzing CO2 life cycle assessment emissions from nuclear power determined that.

"The collective LCA literature indicates that life cycle GHG emissions from nuclear power are only a fraction of traditional fossil sources and comparable to renewable technologies."

It went on to note that for the most common category of reactors, the Light water reactor:

"Harmonization decreased the median estimate for all LWR technology categories so that the medians of BWRs, PWRs, and all LWRs are similar, at approximately 12 g CO2-eq/kWh"

The study noted that differences between emissions scenarios were:

"The electric system was dominated by nuclear (or renewables) and a system dominated by coal can result in a fairly large ranging (from 4 to 22 g CO2-eq/kWh) compared to (30 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh), respectively."

The study predicted that depending on a number of variables, including how carbon intensive the electricity supply was in the future, and the quality of Uranium ore:

"median life cycle GHG emissions could be 9 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh by 2050."

Merger Proposal

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Road Case/Flight case merge

Agreed. I think that someone looking for encyclopaedic information on this topic would not differentiate between a flight or road case and would want all the information available in one article. Indeed, it would make Wikipedia more concise to merge. A visitor may not know there's any difference anyway, and not look for the other article at all.

What is the procedure for getting a merge to happen once it's been flagged on a talk page?Black Stripe (talk) 14 July 2013.

Cuban missile crisis or Cuban Missile Crisis

There is currently another vote taking place on the talk page of Cuban missile crisis whether to recapitalize the name or keep it in lowercase. You participated in the 2012 vote, and may want to voice an opinion or comment on this one. I'm writing this to the voters from 2012 who may not know about this vote. Randy Kryn 19:04 13 January, 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Andrewa. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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Talk:The Tipping Point#Requested move

Since you participated, over a decade ago, in the above-linked discussion, a current one at Talk:The Tipping Point#Requested move 25 September 2017 may be of interest. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 21:16, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Someday, but, 0.02 cents for now

• Fascinatingly enough, this thread returned to memory fr:Spécial:Contributions/Mr_rnddude. This has been relitigated at AN/I more times than I can remember, probably six or seven times now with no action every time. At some point, somebody has to take a better look at it. Me? I'm avoiding it like the plague as I'm unable to actually fix it. Somebody with some content knowledge or ability to speak French could fix the content issue, an admin would have to adjudicate the behavioural question. Mr rnddude (talk) 15:32, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest, Mr rnddude.

I see one contribution at fr:, and a welcome at fr:Discussion utilisateur:Mr rnddude which I could translate for you but it's fairly standard. I speak and read passable French having studied it for six years at high school plus one year at University and several months living there (in Bourges, lovely spot). A bit rusty perhaps.

(To my horror they put me in the "advanced" first year stream at uni, but I passed... while several native speakers failed, academic French is Australia is scandalously bad! But my high school teachers were excellent, two of the four had worked as free-lance journalists in France, writing in French, and a third was Belgian and a native speaker. And the fourth teacher thankfully I had only in first year high school, he knew no French apart from what he'd read in our textbook the night before class but in first year that was almost enough.)

And I can well imagine that it's come up at ANI before with no action. ANI has problems. People are allowed to rant chronically and as a result nobody has the time to unravel the threads. Any help appreciated. Andrewa (talk) 21:23, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Your work on a long-running dispute about French universities

• WP:ANI#Repetitive accusations of antisemitism and homophobia, and threats and personal attacks by XIIIfromTokyo
• Panthéon-Assas University (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Sciences Po (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Hello Andrewa. Happened to see some of your edits about this difficult topic, and you are trying to do all the logical things that an admin would do. Since I did issue one 3RR block some time back, my name is sporadically mentioned in the thread. At one time I was hoping to get to the bottom of this, but the volume of material is large. Let me know if there is anything I can help with.

If you want to propose an action and need one or more other admins to review it, I am ready to do that. Blocking people for WP:Tendentious editing is a thing, and could be an option. Legal threats, not so easy, because these cases are borderline. There is also a clause of the WP:COI guideline, that could apply: "Accounts that appear to be single-purpose, existing for the sole or primary purpose of promotion or denigration of a person, company, product, service, website, organization, etc., and whose postings are in apparent violation of this guideline, should be made aware of this guideline and warned not to continue their problematic editing." This means that the COI rules can be invoked on behavior alone even if the person doesn't have the type of a business connection that could disqualify them from making edits. I can read French, if that helps. Thanks, and good luck with your work, EdJohnston (talk) 02:51, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement, EdJohnston, and those are very interesting points indeed. I also read and love French, and as I said recently, I think my French may be better than their English. The other possibility is that they're playing wp:IDHT, but that's the beauty of our guidelines etc... we don't need to decide that. A block isn't about justice and punishment, it's just about protecting Wikipedia. Disruption is disruptive even if unintentional. We do not need to speculate on motives.

I don't pretend to have enough competence in French to get involved in a controversial issue there, and think that neither of these accounts is showing the competence to be similarly involved here. But how exactly to fix it...

Bigger picture is that, as you said, there is a lot of material involved, much of it missing the point completely. I think this is part of a chronic problem with ANI. These walls of text are clogging the system to a standstill. Andrewa (talk) 05:56, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

This edit seems to be an example of casting WP:ASPERSIONS: I'm not saying that Launebee personally did it, because I can't rull out that s/he is has been working with a larger group and/or company (because creating 2 accounts to target 2 version of Wikipedia clearly indicates that some level of organisation and/or experience is involved : these actions were carefly planed). Does that read to you that Launebee was part of a careful plan to create two different accounts to target different versions of Wikipedia? And that he was working with a larger group? Someone could ask the editor to either withdraw the charge or be blocked. By continuing his campaign against Launebee, I think the editor is reopening the case for a sanction for his comment from September 15 calling Launebee a 'criminal'. EdJohnston (talk) 12:45, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

With regards to the comment, in my opinion, what it looks like is; I'm not saying [you're involved]; I'm just saying [you might be]. I think it's best to let the rope run taught on its own. There's a better chance of dealing with the whole situation, if the whole issue is dealt with in a single blow, rather than dealing with individual issues piecemeal. That is, add it to the list of reasons to act. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:16, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Trying to close the entire thread would be exhausting. But we do see some bad faith editing by participants which admins could take action on. Aspersions are not acceptable, or hinting at violations of the law. If either side of the dispute could write briefly, the thing might be over by now. EdJohnston (talk) 13:49, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

I asked XIIIfromTOKYO to withdraw their aspersions against Launebee. Some his statements appear to be accusations of criminal misbehavior. If he leaves his charges in place on our talk pages, the policy of WP:NLT may apply. EdJohnston (talk) 16:57, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

If either side of the dispute could write briefly, the thing might be over by now.... Exactly. But that's not entirely their fault. Stonewalling, wikilawyering and rantstyle are rife and IMO increasing, particularly on ANI as I said above. And there is even an open RfC at wt:talk page guidelines that seeks to make discussions longer and more difficult to follow, IMO, and seems likely to close with overwhelming support.

Perhaps it is not coincidence that the affected articles concern law schools, or that one of the panel that presided over the NYRM2016 fiasco is a lawyer! But perhaps this is also an inevitable disease. Is Wikipedia merely showing the first signs of senile dementia? Andrewa (talk) 20:16, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

• I has a question, for both you and EdJohnston. Is it rabbit season, or, duck season. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:03, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

So far I don't see any controversial edits by the precocious newcomer at Panthéon-Assas University. On the whole their changes seem to be an improvement. EdJohnston (talk) 17:33, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Interesting. There are a couple of arguably bad ones to other articles that I can see, not sure I'd call them controversial. And as Launebee has repeatedly pointed out, most of their edits are constructive too. But Benmit is new... possible meatpuppet? Worth an SPI I wonder? Andrewa (talk) 18:07, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

You would need to show content similarities (or some kind of a pattern) if you want to have SPI be interested. Also, when there is no abuse the matter is lower priority. EdJohnston (talk) 18:15, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

I do see some similarities, and some differences, as you would expect of a meatpuppet IMO.

It will be difficult, even impossible, to prove either way, I guess it always is. Doing a lot of reading on it, and there is lots to read!

See also this heads-up from Launebee to Benmit, to which Bemmit later linked from ANI. If it's sockpuppetry it's sophisticated, give them that. Andrewa (talk) 23:48, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, I can point to one similarity. This user isn't a native English speaker either, though it's harder to detect, it was this edit that tipped me off. There's a number of other little hints as well; erroneous edit, chose then should be then chose, in which, not on which, and this improperly phrased edit. You're right though that meat is more likely, and there's not much to do for now because their edits are mostly constructive. Mr rnddude (talk) 03:10, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

The issue is how much weight to give this edit supporting Launebee, and the only one yet to oppose the proposed TBAN on them. This conversation proves nothing. An SPI closed as Likely or even as Possible in terms of Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Administrators instructions#CheckUser cases would have some weight, however. Andrewa (talk) 20:20, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Have a look at the last paragraph of this edit. I think for the moment that might be sufficient. Andrewa (talk) 07:33, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Move review

An editor has asked for a Move review of Grand Duchy of Kraków. Because you participated in an earlier requested move for this article, you might want to participate in the move review. Academicoffee71 (talk) 05:11, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Tonmoypaul.71

Hi, how can I help?

Tonmoypaul.71, please feel free to speak your mind here. I can see that your English is poor, and that you do not have a good understanding of English Wikipedia policies and guidelines, which are of course written in English. I will make allowances for that and request others to do so too. Andrewa (talk) 04:50, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Redgro vs 67.162.25.59 (IP disruption - Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents)

Just curious as to the result of your investigation. I can't seem to find it in the revision history of the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents page. If it is too much work, don't worry about responding. 2602:304:415C:4B69:3C2A:160B:C0AD:17DA (talk) 18:41, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I think this refers to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive966#IP disruption. Does that help? Andrewa (talk) 19:19, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks2602:304:415C:4B69:3C2A:160B:C0AD:17DA (talk) 20:00, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

That thread has been archived without closure. This is unfortunately common at ANI owing to the large volume of material and the finite time that admins have to deal with it. (It might have been done automatically by lowercase sigmabot III which patrols the page, or manually by a registered and uninvolved user, and either is quite valid if a thread is going nowhere, and not ideal but there we are.)

In that the user who raised the issue gave evasive answers when I asked for details of the charges, and no answer whatsoever when I upped the ante and said that they were themselves risking sanctions by this, I would regard the charge as withdrawn with no trouble found, and I think they might not be so lucky next time they waste ANI time like that. Andrewa (talk) 23:30, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Topic ban?

Hello. Did you mean that both editors are now topic banned? ("They are topic banned too"). I didn't follow the ANI closely, so can you confirm? Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 17:14, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

EdJohnston, yes, that's the current situation as I understand it... see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive966#Repetitive accusations of antisemitism and homophobia, and threats and personal attacks by XIIIfromTokyo. Andrewa (talk) 21:22, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. It would be helpful if someone logged these bans at WP:EDRC. EdJohnston (talk) 04:32, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Done. EdJohnston, could you check that I've done it correctly? Andrewa (talk) 06:05, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, that looks correct. EdJohnston (talk) 13:36, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

The diffs you asked for

[1][2][3] The reasons are in the ANI request. --Launebee (talk) 21:29, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you.

Looking at the first you cite, at 07:12, 12 October 2017, the first part could be seen as a personal attack on myself but does not seem to concern you. The second part reads Only Launebee has edited the article (102 times as of today". S/he did try to write in the introduction that the institution provided "fake education". Many contributors have tried to stop that beheaviour, but have been legally threaten, harrassed, and disgusted away by that contributor.

The ANI request was made here with the edit summary (→‎Page moves to different names)... That is, no relevant edit summary at all. It contains the charge 3. personally attacked me by writing "Many contributors… have been legally threaten, harrassed, and disgusted away by" me. [4] That of course is the same diff we are looking at here.

You should first ask that the statement Many contributors… have been legally threaten, harrassed, and disgusted away by be either substantiated by evidence or withdrawn, IMO. Have you done this? Where?

I'm also interested that the idea of fake education has come up again. Did you insert this text into the article? When? Andrewa (talk) 02:50, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

I answered your first question on the ANI page.

I never wrote that it provided a fake education, as a fact. However, many reliable books, newspapers etc. report that the institution is often criticized as being "Sciences Pipeau" (or Pipo), even the former president of SP states that it is an enduring criticism,[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and pipeau has been translated in the beginning by "fake"[12]. We have now a better translation with scam.[13]

XIII knows very well I never accused the institution of that. It has been discussed intensively in the relevant talk page (it was actually quite hard because like with other pages, he has never been there to improve the article, but only to do personal attacks, and it was difficult to concentrate on the discussion).

--Launebee (talk) 08:54, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

XIII knows very well

he has never been there to improve the article, but only to do personal attacks

@Launebee:, you have been warned very clearly a few days ago "against comments addressing the motive or character of other conversants". Do you understand what it means ? Do you think your last comments are acceptable ? XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 10:01, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

No, only you have been warned for personal attacks. And I was answering a question of Andrewa. --Launebee (talk) 13:05, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

No, only you have been warned for personal attacks. Correct. XIIIfromTOKYO, please take note. Andrewa (talk) 14:10, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

True. My bad. That's only a violation of WP:5P4 and of Wikipedia:Assume good faith. I'm therefore asking @Launebee: to aknowledge these violations by striking these comments. XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 15:04, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Do you think your last comments are acceptable ? I can understand your objection to them, I have problems with some of them too. Andrewa (talk) 14:10, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

like with other pages, he has never been there to improve the article, but only to do personal attacks - This is a very serious accusation. It should be easily tested.

Perhaps XIIIfromTOKYO can provide up to four diffs (and no more, so please pick four of your best) of constructive edits they have made to that particular article?

And Launebee, can you provide at least two (more is better) examples of other pages that XIIIfromTOKYO has edited but has never been there to improve the article? Andrewa (talk) 14:10, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

That part is very easy. As I have already told you, I haven't done a single edit to that particular article. My only edits are on the talk page to show the problems with some of the references. XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 15:04, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

A fake school and a financial loophole

As Andrewa has requested the diff showing that @Launebee: wrote that Science Po provides a fake education, here it is :

On top of being a fake school and being a financial loophole for France, (...)[14]

The Issue has been raised on the talk page [15], and the only change after the "discussion" was to add On top of being criticized for being a fake school and being a financial loophole for France. Two references were provided, but I can't find what is used to back what's on the article. Maybe Launebee could give the exacts quote(s) used to support the claim. XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 12:16, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

The quote is obviously cut, the complete sentence show that it was part of a criticism, because it seemed unclear I precised it, and then we found with other contributors a better formulation. --Launebee (talk) 13:05, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

You did introduce the phrase, and the phrasing has been problematic from time to time, and was always going to be tricky as the nuances of English can be subtle. In hindsight you should not have been editing the article on such a controversial claim. More evidence that the TBAN on yourself is appropriate. Andrewa (talk) 14:44, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

I did not request the diff showing that Launebee wrote that Science Po provides a fake education. I asked specifically whether Launebee had inserted the text fake education into the article at any point, and for the diff if so. They have not answered this very simple question, but one of your diffs (or more precisely this one which was half of a two-edit diff you provided) shows them doing exactly that. Thank you.

So having now answered that, Eh bien, continuons. Andrewa (talk) 14:31, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Three or four

We have looked at only one of the diffs so far (originally four, reduced to three here and also at ANI). Andrewa (talk) 14:56, 15 October 2017 (UTC)