I had an IBAN imposed in October of 2019 and I am requesting the removal of it.
The details are at: Wikipedia:Editing_restrictions#Placed_by_the_Wikipedia_community.
I admit that the IBAN was imposed correctly and to avoid disruption and I was 100% at fault in that case. However, I am asking that the IBAN be removed at this time. I don't believe I had any recent interaction, even tangentially but it is hard at times to keep to the IBAN due to the nature of the details.
I am not sure about notifications or comments, but I would request that any discussion I have here be sanctioned by BANEX.
Thank you. Sir Joseph(talk)23:19, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am inclined to keep an interaction ban that has been successful, not only in keeping Sir Joseph away from TonyBallioni but in keeping Sir Joseph on-Wiki (see the ban discussion: Sir Joseph's very survival on Wikipedia counts on it as the patience of the community is wearing thin). Perhaps Sir Joseph could enlarge on how the ban is preventing him from editing Wikipedia and how he would interact with TonyBallioni if it were lifted. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 14:19, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, as you see in the interaction analyzer, we edit lots of the same administrative pages and there are times when I want to comment on a discussion but I can't. I also feel that there is no more need of an IBAN and we shouldn't keep it just to keep it. It's been well over a year and we shouldn't be punitive. Sir Joseph(talk)14:26, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK, you want to be able to comment in discussions where TonyBallioni has commented. I would support lifting the IB for that with the advice that I think you would wise to continue to avoid commenting on, about or in response to TonyBallioni; just comment directly on the topic being discussed. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:12, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal - SJ is aware of the issue and knows to avoid interaction with TB. He has demonstrated that it's possible for him to do so as a mature adult. It's easy enough to restore it, so what's the big deal? Realistically after 6 mos, t-bans and i-bans become punishment to those who have to carry the full responsibility of that ball and chain. They should never be forever anymore than PP should be forever on an article. Atsme💬📧14:44, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support reduction per WP:ROPE. Would it be possible to reduce the IBAN to merely avoid direct interaction (i.e. addressing directly or responding directly to comments) rather than merely avoiding pages/sections where the other is active? If not, I would also support a full elimination of the IBAN (pending TB's comments regarding the issue) as a second best option. --Jayron3215:16, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
*Support reduction I think Jayron makes a good argument and we should allow SJ a rope and if there will be a slight problem the ban could reinstated again. --Shrike (talk) 19:36, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I reread the arguments one again and I now Support removal but I urge SJ to minimize his interaction to TB to absolute minimum --Shrike (talk) 08:01, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal. Both his admission and the time that has passed with no further events suggest that SJ has learned from the experience, and could interact productively with TB. François Robere (talk) 20:20, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I guess this has started while I've been away from Wikipedia for a bit. I oppose removal and ask that this be kept open a bit after my response of Sir Joseph's IBAN with me. There is literally no reason to remove it. What does it accomplish? Sir Joseph and I do not edit the same topic areas. I actually can't think of a time where I have come into contact with him recently just through going through the normal pages that I go through. My experience with Sir Joseph is that he harbors grudges and would likely use lifting this as an opportunity to go through my contributions to bring me to a noticeboard at the drop of a pin over something that's not an issue, comment negatively at me for no reason elsewhere, or generally make my life unpleasant on Wikipedia.I'm also going to point out that my concerns here have some merit as it was made while I was on a wikibreak for a few weeks. Sorry if I'm being overly cynical, but I suspect Sir Joseph looking through my contributions for no reason, noticed I wasn't around, and then decided to ask for this because he knows that the community is usually unwilling to remove a 1-way IBAN if the other party is opposed. If he's already looking through my contribution history while under an IBAN, forgive me if I assume that he's going to do the same when he's not. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:57, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You're expressing a lot of ABF in that response and I hope you rewrite it. More helpful than sharing your assumptions would be sharing if you've had any problems with SJ in the last 17 months or not. Because if the answer is "not", it may be you who is holding a grudge here. Levivichharass/hound14:37, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Assume good faith is not a suicide pact. I don’t comment on or interact with Sir Joseph because of the IBAN: its not fair to him. I’m not going to pretend that I think he is going to behave any differently towards me today than he did when the IBAN was placed. That’s not an assumption of bad faith or holding a grudge, that’s having an extremely negative experience with someone and not wanting to be subject to it again.The community traditionally does not lift one-way IBANs if one party objects. I’m simply asking that the community give me the courtesy of considering my request that SJ keep from interacting with me. There’s literally no reason for him to do so since we don’t edit the same areas and he’s at no risk of violating his ban on accident. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:15, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"I'm not going to pretend that I think he is going to behave any differently towards me today than he did when the IBAN was placed" is the very definition of holding a grudge. I'm not suggesting you need to assume good faith, I'm suggesting you should not assume bad faith, like don't assume he went through your contribs, and let go of your grudge. Levivichharass/hound16:23, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that’s an odd definition. I don’t wish Sir Joseph any ill will. I’m not asking he be banned from the site. I’m asking that he continue not to talk about me. By your definition you’re suggesting, anyone who has experienced someone behaving overwhelmingly negatively towards them should have their concerns dismissed as a grudge or as assuming bad faith. That’s not particularly fair—it means that people who have legitimate concerns with the way others have treated them simply to have those concerns ignored. The community already decided that Sir Joseph was acting inappropriately towards me. I don’t have to demonstrate that. My concern that Sir Joseph will continue acting that way is a real one, and I think I’m within behavioural norms to express it. I also don’t think I need to defend every word choice I made from in-depth analysis and reframing of arguments when expressing that, so I’m not going to continue engaging in this thread since you appear to have made up your mind, and I am also fairly resolved that I continue to not want to have to worry about Sir Joseph interacting with me. I’ve made my request known. The community can decide, and I’ll accept the result. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:47, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I do not support the concept of lifting sanctions just because "it's been a long time." The IBAN appears to be working, so why would we lift it? Just for the hell of it? I do not see how it is limiting SJ from doing anything except interacting with Tony, and that's a good thing that we should want to continue. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:32, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
would likely use lifting this as an opportunity to go through my contributions to bring me to a noticeboard at the drop of a pin over something that's not an issue, comment negatively at me for no reason elsewhere, or generally make my life unpleasant on Wikipedia. - I guess a verbal commitment to not do these would be a positive step. starship.paint (exalt)16:49, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal as the other party opposes the lifting of the ban, and also WP:IBAN says Although the interaction-banned users are generally allowed to edit the same pages or discussions so long as they avoid each other, they are not allowed to interact with each other, so I don't see how Sir Joseph's stated reason for lifting the ban, we edit lots of the same administrative pages and there are times when I want to comment on a discussion but I can't is valid as he can still comment on a discussion, just not directly to TB.-- P-K3 (talk) 18:02, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It prevents him from commenting on discussions started by TB, and it might be understood by some admins as preventing him from commenting on points previously addressed by TB. François Robere (talk) 17:18, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No it doesn't. It prevents him from commenting on me (directly or indirectly) or replying to me. WP:IBAN does not say that he can't comment on RfCs or the like started by me. Shrike (replying to you here), my view is that WP:ROPE is a really bad essay for IBANs: it'd force me to gather diffs and write out a long explanation of why SJ's behavior towards me is continuing a long trend of thinking everything I do is wrong and going out of his way to comment on me in other forums. I didn't request the original IBAN myself because I thought it'd look bad for an admin to request one from someone who has criticized them, and I'd be pretty unlikely to request it again for the same reasons. That being said, it was very much a relief when someone else proposed it, and I'd rather not have to go back to worrying about him showing up out of the woodwork to say negative things about me.To Jayron32's point, my understanding of WP:IBAN is already in line with what he is calling a "reduction". SJ is not prevented from commenting in or on discussions I have already commented in. He has done so on multiple occasions since his IBAN: he opposed the RfC I recently started on community based desysop. He has supported an RfA where I was one of the main opposers. He commented in the anti-harassment RfC last year, where I also participated before him. He opposed and RfA where I was the nominator. He made this comment at AN after I had blocked the person who started the thread and commented in the thread. He made this comment on a thread about the SashiRolls ban that I had proposed after it was enacted. He made this comment in a block review thread I had already commented in.I would be fine with a clarification to Sir Joseph that he is free to take part in discussions that I take part in or start so long as he does not directly or indirectly reference me or reply to me, but he already seems to be aware of this as he's been doing it pretty regularly. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:16, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@TonyBallioni: I too would like to know under what conditions you would consider supporting the IBAN being lifted? Or a theoretical other one-way iban with you if that is easier to answer. I'm finding it difficult to interpret your view, and thus the merits of the request, without knowing this. Thryduulf (talk) 00:40, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Thryduulf: sorry for only getting back to you now. I'll answer it theoretically since I think it's easier to explain that way. I would be open to lifting a one-way IBAN if the the party consents the overwhelming majority of the time, if not always. In cases where the other party doesn't consent, my analysis would go something like this: has an issue been identified where the IBAN is causing undue difficulty for the party who is under it to edit Wikipedia productively? If yes, would it be better to extend to two way? If not, does it seem likely the issues would return?If you want me to apply my logic above; it'd stop after the first question. The things Sir Joseph says this IBAN prevents him from doing (commenting on administrative discussions I am present in) is both not actually in line with what IBAN says, but as I pointed out above with diffs, he does regularly anyway, oftentimes disagreeing with where I stand, which is fine.My conclusion based on that is that he wants the IBAN lifted so he can directly comment on me. Given my past experience with Sir Joseph, I'm not exactly confident that he'd do so in a way that wasn't combative/hostile and containing personal attacks. That's something I'd like to avoid. I hope that makes sense. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:08, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes that does make sense, thank you. I still need to think a bit before opining on this request but you have made that easier. Thryduulf (talk) 00:12, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal - I hadn't !voted until now because I was waiting to hear from TonyBallioni. Not knowing that TB was on a Wikibreak, I interpreted his apparent silence as his being OK with removing the IBAN, and since the !voting was going in that direction, I didn't see any purpose in !voting myself. But now that I know that Tony is opposed to removing the ban, I also oppose it, as I would for almost any one-way IBAN in which the victimized editor objects to its being lifted. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:27, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal - 17 months with no issues seems long enough for another go. Not a fan of indefinite sanctions with no clear reason why they need to continue. Also not a fan of 1 way ibans either, but that is more a in general thing and not specific to this instance. PackMecEng (talk) 13:18, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal 1 way IBANs should only be removed with the blessing of the user who the affected user cannot interact with, with limited exceptions in case of abuse.Jackattack1597 (talk) 23:06, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal per TB. I'm a very firm believer that sanctions for harassment should not be lifted, ever, over the objection of the victim. Sir Joseph's relentless harassment of TonyBallioni was beyond the pale, and did not stop after many warnings until the moment they were formally sanctioned. Many editors were calling for Sir Joseph to be sitebanned. As TonyBallioni has explained, the sanction is not actually preventing Sir Joseph from doing anything, so why is he asking for it to be lifted if not to resume his harassment campaign? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:08, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal per above. We should not remove a 1-way IBAN against the will of the affected editor; that is a recipe for disruption. If SJ plans to not harass Tony, then the TBAN shouldn't matter. If he does plan to harass Tony, then we should keep it. We don't know for certain which one the future holds, so keeping the TBAN is the best option to limit damage. It may be hard for SJ to comply, but it will be harder for us to deal with problems should they recur. — Wug·a·po·des01:24, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Guy, it's my understanding from the last time we interacted that we were not going to comment on each other or to each other. I've been keeping up my end of the deal and I'd like to know if that gentleman's agreement is no longer applicable. Thanks! Sir Joseph(talk)00:39, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal: Wikipedia badly needs admins such as Tony Ballioni who are willing to handle highly contentious matters. The community in return has the obligation to protect them, per their request, from continued harassment by a disgruntled editor. Otherwise admins would have a strong disincentive to get involved in settling disputes. The iban should continue. NightHeron (talk) 13:17, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal most of the "harassment" was for a very short period of time in September 2019; before then there had been some interaction but not just one way - and following the links I don't see anything before March 2019. Editors opposing prefer the restriction to remain even permanently without any possibility of it being removed - that is unreasonable. Peter James (talk) 14:24, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I also think it's unreasonable. For my part, when I supported the IBAN, I thought I was supporting a WP:SO-in-six-months-if-there's-no-further-problems IBAN. Had I known it would have been permanent until the other party agreed to lift it, I never would have !voted in support of it. I believed "indefinite doesn't mean infinite". (Also, "harassment" was a word only mentioned once by one !voter in the original IBAN discussion; I never felt that SJ engaged in harassment, and it was never my understand that there was community consensus that he did. Not every IBAN is the result of harassment; I didn't think this one was.) Levivichharass/hound17:41, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Split the distance proposal
IBANs are annoying because you do have to worry about checking each time to see if the other person is involved in the thread/topic/whatever. Each and every time. Tony doesn't have a distinctive signature (which is fine, I don't either) so it makes it that much harder to check. And because it's one way, SJ has to check each time, even if it's someplace he's edited recently. That said, Tony's response here is quite reasonable. But even in the real world, restraining orders (or prison terms) are rarely truly infinite, and this one has already run for ~18 months I believe. So how about we give just a little WP:ROPE by reducing it to "SJ is not to comment on or directly interact with Tony subject the normal exceptions. SJ is expected to avoid other interactions normally associated with an IBAN. If any uninvolved admin feels that SJ is intentionally interacting with Tony or otherwise trying to create friction with Tony they can restore the full IBAN on their sole judgement." Still should get the same impact without having SJ having to check each and every edit. SJ would need to agree to this for at least a year before coming back to ask for it to be removed. Hobit (talk) 19:15, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hobit, I guess my confusion with the various suggestions about updating the IBAN to be along the lines of what you're saying is that that's already what WP:IBAN says, and Sir Joseph appears to know it since he already comments on areas I'm I've commented on fairly regularly (I had a bunch of diffs above showing this.) I think I've already said that I would be fine with a clarification that IBAN's do not prohibit him from commenting in discussions I have already taken part in, but this is also something he already appears to know since he's doing what he says he can't do anyway. I guess in my head calling an IBAN something other than an IBAN because we want to clarify something doesn't make much sense to me, especially in this case. But yeah, I'd support making it even more clear that IBAN allows him to comment in the same thread as me so long as he doesn't interact with or reference/comment on me. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:59, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mikehawk10 stated in closing: Some of the sources provided by those who argue Turkey are a belligerent do not seem to strictly indicate anything beyond support, but it should be noted that support does not preclude Turkey from being a belligerent. Future reporting and investigations may change this, and a new RfC may be appropriate at that time, but there does not appear to be consensus at this time among editors that Turkey qualifies a belligerent.
I believe there is enough due WP:WEIGHT to list Turkey as a full belligerent and list the Turkish leaders involved as commanders and leaders. I provided a number of sources for this relating to Turkey deploying Syrian mercenaries (the article infobox currently erroneously lists the mercenaries under Azerbaijan) and fighter jets and also reliable sources confirming Turkish involvement, which I will quickly recap. I have also since come across three more incriminating sources for Turkish involvement that were not included in the RfC (1, possibly 2, were published afterward). These sources include Columbia University, JISS (note that Israel provided support to Azerbaijan), and even an Azeri source, Turan Information Agency.
The mercenaries were recruited by Turkey and transported on Turkish military aircraft.[2][3][4][5] Many major third-party sources also described Turkey's role as "decisive" and "critical".[6][7][8][9]
These sources are currently cited in the infobox:
the transfer of foreign terrorist fighters by Turkey from Syria and elsewhere to Nagorno-Karabakh, as confirmed by international actors, including the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries - European Parliament[10]
The presence of the Turkish fighter aircraft ... demonstrate[s] direct military involvement by Turkey that goes far beyond already-established support, such as its provision of Syrian fighters and military equipment to Azerbaijani forces. - Stratfor[11]
Ankara denies its troops are involved in fighting but Aliyev has acknowledged some Turkish F-16 fighter jets remained in Azerbaijan after a military drill this summer - Reuters[12]
The European Parliament has made an official statement condemning Turkey for its involvement in the war and confirming the Turkish government was responsible for deploying "terrorist fighters" (their choice of words), Stratfor has literally stated Turkish military involvement goes far beyond support and confirmed the presence of Turkish fighter jets, and Reuters confirmed that even Azerbaijan admitted that Turkish F-16 fighters were provided.
And now, here are the three additional sources I have since found:
This page identifies perpetrators of the conflict in Artsakh, highlighting...(ii) Turkish commanders overseeing and advising the operations
1. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar Akar, Turkish Defense Minister since 2018, was one of the first Turkish officials to make public threats against Armenia after Azerbaijani aggression in July 2020. In a meeting with Azerbaijani high command that month, he pledged Turkey's support to the Azerbaijani cause in Artsakh. Following that meeting, Turkish weapon shipments were delivered to Azerbaijan. Akar was in Baku on September 28-30 and played an important role overseeing all operations in Artsakh. His Ph.D was on WWI-era Armenia and American views of the Armenian Genocide, which Turkey still denies.
2. Lieutenant General Şeref Öngay Öngay is the Commander of the Third Army of the Turkish Ground Forces, which is based in eastern Turkey and has responsibility for the Caucuses...The Armenian delegation at OSCE say he “took part in planning and conducting” Artsakh operations. He was also spotted in Azerbaijan on 4 September 2020, as well as October, planning joint operations with the Azerbaijani military.
3. Major General Bahtiyar Ersay Ersay, whose title is officially “Chief of the Operations Directorate of the Land Forces of Turkey,” oversaw the Azerbaijani General Staff in Artsakh following the sacking of former Azerbaijani Chief of Staff Najmeddin Sadikov...Ersay was confirmed to reside in Azerbaijan as recently as March 15th 2021, using the title "Commander of the Turkish Mission in Azerbaijan". Since the Azerbaijani Chief of the General Staff still remains vacant, and Ersay has been seen wearing Azerbaijani military attire, it is likely he is de facto in charge of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces.
Ersay was also involved in Syria and Libya, potentially recruiting and overseeing the mercenaries that fought there. Because of this and his commando past, he is likely the Turkish commander most directly involved with these jihadi mercenaries.
4. Major General Göksel Kahya Kahya is an important Turkish drone commander who heads the Turkish Air Force’s 1st Supply and Maintenance Center. Prior to the Artsakh conflict, he led the deployment of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones in the Libyan Civil War. This drone expertise was then shifted to Azerbaijan, where he was based since July 2020 and oversaw the well-documented use of TB2 drones. These drones both were instrumental for the Azerbaijani victory in the conflict and made possible the devastating human rights abuses against civilians.
5. Adnan Tanrıverdi Tanrıverdi is a retired Turkish general and the founder of SADAT Inc. International Defense Consultancy, a private defense contracting company started in 2012...Tanrıverdi has significant influence over Erdogan, using SADAT against Erdogan enemies in the "coup" in 2016, and helping re-organize and purge the Turkish Armed Forces. As a result, SADAT has been referred to as a shadow military. Reportedly, he and SADAT have played an important role in recruiting, equipping, and transporting about 3,000 Syrian mercenaries to both Libya and Artsakh. Importantly, SADAT is also the primary organization training these Turkish-backed mercenary proxies. Though he lacks any official position in the Turkish government/military, his influence is significant.
All of these figures should be added to 'Commanders and leaders' in addition to Erdogan at the top of them.
Turkey strongly supported the decision by Azerbaijan to begin in September 2020 a military campaign intended to wrest back the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh from Armenia. Evidence rapidly began to accumulate that Ankara was maintaining a similar pipeline of Syrian client fighters to the battleground, as had been the case in vis Libya. The components and tools of this strategy were familiar. Again, official denials from Ankara and Baku were rapidly belied by reports from the battle zone.
Once again, the Syrian fighters were recruited by the SNA, in cooperation with SADAT. The fighters were offered monthly fees of $1,500-2,000 for agreeing to serve in the southern Caucasus. The contracts, again, were for three to six months. The main recruitment centers were in the cities of Afrin, Al-Bab, Ras al-Ain, and Tel Abyad. The route taken out of Syria, according to fighters’ testimony, was also similar. Fighters crossed the border at Kilis and were then transported to the Gaziantep Airport. From there, SADAT-chartered A-400 transport aircraft flew them to Istanbul Airport, and from there they boarded flights to Baku, Azerbaijan.
The specific SNA-associated militias used for this deployment differed from those who provided the manpower for Libya. The main pools of manpower for this deployment were the Sultan Murad, Suleyman al-Shah, Hamza and Failaq al-Sham brigades. The first two of these brigades draw their support from ethnic Turkmen populations in northern Syria, and hence may have been assumed to have had a greater natural affinity for the Turkic Azeris than would Syrian Sunni Muslims of Arab ethnicity.
But in its general contours, the deployment in Nagorno-Karabakh resembled the blueprint established in Libya. In both cases, the role of SADAT was paramount in the recruitment, organization, and transport of the fighters; the SNA was the chief pool of manpower; and the deployment took place alongside the use of specialists from the official Turkish armed forces.
One of the Turkish commanders died in a helicopter crash earlier this month, and Azeri news agency Turan Information Agency confirmed his role:
As a result of a plane crash with a military helicopter, which occurred on Thursday, March 4, in eastern Turkey, Turkish General Osman Erbash, who was at the origin of the creation of the Bayraktar combat drones, was killed.
The son-in-law of Turkish President Erdogan, the owner of a company that produces Turkish drones, Selcuk Bayraktar, wrote about this in his Telegram channel.
Their cooperation consisted in testing developments for the combat use of drones.
In addition, General Erbash in Turkey is called one of the authors of the strategy used by Azerbaijan to succeed in the Second Karabakh War.
I trimmed everything not directly related to my argument. And if you bothered to look at my discussion with the closer, you would know he suggested there was "significant additional information or context was left out of the discussion" and encouraged making a closure review. --Steverci (talk) 23:43, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:Steverci - You will recall that you brought this dispute to DRN in December 2020. When I began the moderated discussion that ended in my launching the RFC on 14 January 2020, I wrote, on 22 December 2020: "Be civil and concise". I have often written that overly long statements may make the poster feel better, but they do not clarify the issues or help resolve a content dispute. A 1460-word closure appeal does not clarify the issues. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:40, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Admins and editors: I made a long unsuccessful attempt to resolve this dispute in December 2020 and January 2021 that ended in composing and posting the RFC. This is another area where there is battleground editing because there have been battles, and where ArbCom has imposed discretionary sanctions. My sympathies to anyone who tries to help resolve it. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:40, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Responding to a talk-page message from Steverci, who asked me to provide comment given that I was the closer. I think that there is room to review the closure anew following the closure of the WP:RSN discussion on Kommersant. The reason for this is that, in the closure, I found no local consensus on the reliability of Kommersant, though if the community finds a consensus at the reliable sources noticeboard that Kommersant is reliable, then this would overrule the local consensus, which in turn would require the closure to be revisited. For now, however, I would restate what I said on my talk page I don't see significant additional information regarding Turkey's involvement, at least as far as reliable sources are concerned. As a result, I don't see a need to further modify the closure at this time. If Kommersant is indeed a reliable source regarding Turkey's involvement, then this would change, though it's not clear to me that the community has come to a consensus on that issue yet. As such, I would advise that we wait until the WP:RSN thread is closed until this closure review is itself closed. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 18:33, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mikehawk10 Have you taken a look at the above extended content? It contains sources from the Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights, the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, and even the Azeri source Turan Information Agency, all providing additional information regarding Turkey's involvement. --Steverci (talk) 18:44, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Steverci:I have. The lattermost source says that the general was instrumental in creating the strategy that was used, which would be consistent with the support designation as well as with the belligerent designation. The middle source provides evidence that militias/mercenaries had been supported by Turkey to fight in the region. This is something that the RfC concluded (and it was noted that mercenaries should be included as belligerents). But, the source doesn't actually say that Turkey's role went beyond logistical/financial support for these militias. As I stated on my talk page, there appears to be a weak consensus among editors in the discussion that the fighting of these Syrian Mercenaries with logistical support from Turkey and payments from Turkish companies does not constitute the Turkish state's direct involvement in the conflict as a belligerent, so while this is information that I did not see upon reviewing the discussion, it doesn't have a bearing on its closure. The first additional source listed gave me a bit of pause, since it points to a much tighter coordination between Turkish brass and Azerbaijani forces than other reliable sources had reported, and because it is an academic source independent of the conflict entirely. It would also call into question the veracity of some of the claims that had been made by some of those favoring a designation of support, particularly those who stated that Turkish military personnel were not spotted in the conflict zone during the war or that the support was merely diplomatic in nature (though there was already strong consensus that there was military support being given). That being said, it's not 100% clear to me if this would have changed overall consensus, though as I noted in the close, future reporting and investigations may change this, and a new RfC may be appropriate at that time, but there does not appear to be consensus at this time among editors that Turkey qualifies a belligerent. I think the close should stand for now, though it might very well be appropriate to have another RfC on this (particularly after the Kommersant RSN thread closes), if you believe that this is significant new information that would affect consensus, in light of the arguments made in the previous RfC. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 19:31, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mikehawk10: Even if this is not enough to change the consensus for the time being, can we change "alleged by Armenia" to just "alleged" if I also add the Columbia University Institute source in the infobox? And how would you feel about the Turkish leaders listed in the Columbia source being added to the 'Commanders and leaders' list in the infobox? --Steverci (talk) 04:46, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Steverci: Since MOS:ALLEGED states that although alleged and accused are appropriate when wrongdoing is asserted but undetermined, such as with people awaiting or undergoing a criminal trial; when these are used, ensure that the source of the accusation is clear, we need to be explicit is to who the alleging party is. And, to restate the above, the Columbia source gives me pause, but also since I'm not sure it would have changed local consensus. For both of these reasons, I would advise against changing "alleged by Armenia" to "alleged" in the infobox for the time being. I would also advise against expanding "alleged by Armenia" to something along the lines of "alleged by Armenia and by [Columbia source author]", since, while the source shows closer military coordination between Turkey and Azerbaijan than any other independent source provided in the article, it's not clear that the local consensus would find this to be an accusation of belligerence rather than one of support.
Again, community consensus on what constitutes a "belligerent" would be helpful here in clarifying if there is something to judge this against, but I can't find any and it doesn't appear to me that such a consensus has been fleshed out. If you are interested in assessing community consensus on a particular (general) articulation on what constitutes a "belligerent" for purposes of the infobox, perhaps opening a thread on the relevant template talk page would be helpful, as this consensus would probably be best defined in a general sense rather than in the sense of specific application to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. If you choose to do this, I would recommend you leave a note on Talk:2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war page and/or notify each and every editor that participated in the survey/discussion 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war RFC on Infobox, so that they could be informed of your attempt to get community consensus on a proposed general guideline in a manner that does not constitute canvassing. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I for one think Mikehawk10 did an excellent job of weighing up the consensus at the RfC. It was a thankless task carried out diligently. While the current consensus on Turkey's status doesn't precisely match the stance I held at the RfC, I think it's a solid, supportable compromise. @Steverci: the administrators' noticeboard isn't the right place to ask for a review of this content dispute, the correct place is back at the talk page where it was previously discussed so editors familiar with the topic will participate. There's currently a section on precisely this issue, you could add your concerns there and try to build a new consensus to overturn the previous one. Perhaps a new, narrower (neutrally worded) RfC will make some headway on this in the future. However, it's probably better to let some more time pass first, even if you're unhappy with the status quo – as the previous consensus was only thrashed out recently and received a lot of input a dramatically different outcome isn't particularly likely. Jr8825 • Talk20:47, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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.
For some background, see User_talk:Carlossuarez46/Archive_12#Please_don't_create_any_more_articles and User_talk:Carlossuarez46#Places_in_Iran. The former link involves the discovery of large quantities of misinterpretation of a source an original research to create a couple thousand place stubs in California that largely turned out to be barely verifiable, false, or non-notable, probably well over 1,000 have been deleted, created by a single user, Carlossuarez46. It is the latter one that is causing this report, though. It was found that something similar happened with creating short stubs from a directory of abadis in Iran - an abadi is a very generic term that in Iran can refer to everything from decent-sized cities to wells, farms, individual buildings, and even gas stations. At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mazraeh-ye Dariush Baharvand Ahmadi, it was found that Carlossuarez46 created over 5,500 stubs for abadis that are uninhabited. While some abadis are notable, given the background of these, it seems unlikely that any of the ones that are uninhabited are notable, which is the consensus of that AFD. There's no way that 5500+ articles can reasonably be processed through AFD and PROD, so it's looking like a batch deletion of this mess is the best call. I believe there's a list of the relevant ones in existence somewhere. Hog FarmTalk00:58, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The list of articles to be deleted (linked at the AFD) is at User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported. I removed the three pages I found that had additional content beyond the original creation, and others with further information may also be exempted from such soft deletion. Carlossuarez46 altogether made about 70,000 articles (pages 2–8 here) on places in Iran from 2011 to 2014 using the 2006 census, and I did not find any approval to do so in accordance with Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 66#Proposal: Any large-scale semi-/automated article creation task require BRFA. While the discussion linked above indicates half of these tens of thousands of places with are not actually "villages" in Iran (may include e.g. neighborhoods and census tracts) and their status and notability are likewise questionable, these 5,500+ pages have no population reported and are not conceivably auto-passes of WP:GEOLAND. Reywas92Talk01:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Non-administrator comment) I've noticed a lot of stubs about misidentified populated places, usually in California, in WP:PRODSUM for several months now. Based on the aforementioned evidence, I recommend that Carlossuarez46 be banned from creating articles about places. Thoughts? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:32, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mass creation seems to have stopped in April 2020 with a run of stubs for ancient sites, so I'm not sure that an article creation ban would be necessary. Hog FarmTalk03:01, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There are large blocks of items beginning with the same word, which likely identifies what they actually are; for instance, place names beginning with Chah-e are most likely wells. I'll ping... Paraw (talk·contribs), the only active user who is fa-N, to scan the list and identify such prefixes so that they can be processed in bulk AfD or mass PROD. Which items on the list reported a population of 0 in the 2016 census, like the farm named in the AfD? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 07:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all 5573 article I think we have explained all in a/m talking and we ask and recommend the mess deletion of no notable, no village and no populated articles. Please Delete all 5573 article. In FAwiki, as last talking there is Consensus that Abadies there aren't notable.@4nn1l2Shahram08:38, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have no objection to a mass deletion (we did the same in the past for other similar issues with 1000s of articles by other editors), but an alternative may be to mass-move them to draftspace: that way, people have six months to rescue ones which are mistakenly moved or which they have edited. After six months, the remainder will get deleted anyway. Perhaps other groups of articles by the same editor need to be looked at as well, something like Alīābād, Yardymli gives little confidence, so perhaps all 233 articles with the sentence "suspected that this village has undergone a name change"[13] should be deleted or draftified as well? These are in Azerbaijan and Artsakh, so not duplicates of the above proposal. Fram (talk) 08:40, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can delete the articles no problem, but I do not have capacity to go through all of them to see what it salvageable and what is not. If there is consensus that all of them have to be deleted, no problem, but I remember that with Sander v Ginkel articles, which I also batch deleted (after time was given to improve them) people were still unhappy with the deletion. May be just move them to draft and let sit there for six months before getting deleted?--Ymblanter (talk) 08:53, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We have come a long way since it was alright to mass-create articles for places, and experience has taught us some lessons about cleaning up the resultant inaccuracies. It's not completely clean-cut, though and I point to Robert, California (AfD discussion) as a counterpoint. For safety, I recommend restricting any mass deletion to articles that don't tell the reader anything beyond the shaky claims about being villages. If the statement that "X is a village" is shaky in the first place, then an article that says "X is a village and nothing else is recorded about it" isn't particularly useful. Although Robert, California did start out that way, as you can see at Special:Permalink/288124514.
Delete all Native Farsi speaker here. Please just delete them all. No more discussions or hesitations. I checked User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported with Petscan, and all of them should be gone, except Sharafabad, Markazi. You can check it yourself. Go to the Templates&links tab and insert "User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported" in the field All of these pages: from the row Linked from. Then go to the Page properties tab and specify a size Larger or equal than 3000, 2900, 2800, ... 2000 respectively and check it for yourself. 4nn1l2 (talk) 09:08, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wondered why we didn't ask Carlossuarez46, an active editor and admin, to help clean up his own mess and to go through his creations and delete G7 or draftify all problematic or potentially problematic ones. Turns out that he was contacted about these specific articles (which follow the many similar deletions of US locations he created), at User talk:Carlossuarez46#Places in Iran. His responses there are extremely disheartening though, and the callous disrespect he shows for basic collegiality, sourcing requirements, ... is rather concerning in an admin. He could save us all a lot of work (he should have done so when the first deletions started to happen), but he doesn't seem to care about this at all. Fram (talk) 09:18, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely subpar responses. It isn't realistic to expect individual review for each page of such a massive number of pages, when an error rate for these reaches a certain threshold. El_C13:21, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not to be "that guy", but if you don't understand that a Census tract is not automatically notable, perhaps you don't need to have the Autopatrolled bit, no less the admin bit. At this point, I'm forced to agree with mass deletion as I don't think our Draft: system needs to be flooded. Seeing the discussion on his personal talk page did not fill me with hope that he is willing or capable of reviewing these articles himself. This would make me also support a sanction to prohibit article creation outside of draft space, which is very problematic for someone with the admin bit, but seemingly necessary. Dennis Brown - 2¢15:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So, to summarise, so far we have mass creation of California place stubs based on the GNIS database, a lot of which have now been deleted as misidentified railroad sidings/ponds/post offices, a mass creation of Iranian place stubs based purely off the census records, thousands of which appear to be misidentified farms/gas stations/isolated buildings, and looking at the recent edit history of Azizkend and it's associated talk page it looks like there may be issues with their Armenian place stubs as well (again this is an article created using only a place name database). I think this is going to need a major clean up effort - we are dealing with potentially thousands of hoax geography stubs here. Kind of reminds me of the Neelix case from a few years back. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 15:23, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support deletion Having spot-checked the list, these articles don't meet Wikipedia's standards for verifiability and should be deleted. I also agree with Dennis Brown that based on their comments on their talk page on this topic, Carlossuarez probably should not be auto-patrolled. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 16:15, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support mass deletion of User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported. They don't need to be checked further. When Carlos writes "population not reported", it means the census data said less than 3 families – so obviously not a "village" as claimed. Spot checks by multiple users have confirmed that they are not remotely close to meeting WP:GEOLAND. The problem is that the Iranian census describes both populated and unpopulated places with the same word, abadi (see this comment from 4nn1l2 for useful context), and according to one source up to 25% are "non-residential".[14] The tens of thousands of other articles also need to be dealt with, but this list is a good first step. Thanks to Hog Farm and Reywas92 for compiling it. – Joe (talk) 16:52, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On the broader issue, I was really hoping that Carlos would be more receptive to helping clean these up. We all make mistakes and if you're mass-creating articles (which I think is usually a very valuable contribution), it's understandable that a simple mistake can create a big mess. As an admin, he could easily have acknowledged the problem and G7'd them all, saving everyone all this trouble. Instead he flat out refused to listen, insisting that other editors laboriously "prove" that each place wasn't notable individually, even after he'd been presented with ample reliable sources showing that they were not notable as a rule, and it had been explained that the burden is on him to substantiate his claims. I don't want to drag anyone to ArbCom over something like, but yeah... autopatrolled is bundled with the sysop bit, so it technically is tool misuse, and I worry about him going on another stub creation spree with no oversight. – Joe (talk) 17:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support mass deletion I have participated in a few Afd's for these articles, It's about time that someone brought this to administrator attention. I would even support some sort of block for disruptive editing.--Kieran207(talk-Contribs) 18:12, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is an odd can of worms we've opened. If this were not an admin, I would have already removed the autopatrolled bit from the editor without discussion. Because they are an admin, only Arb can authorize a bit change, and since autopatrolled is automatically included with the admin bit, they would have to remove the admin bit. Without further evidence of gross incompetence or abuse of the admin bit, I don't see this happening. The same for sanctioning an admin. Conventional wisdom has always been that if you can't trust an admin to operate without being under sanction, you can't trust them with the admin bit. Carlossuarez46 is walking a very fine line here, and if I were them, I would be volunteering to never create articles outside of draft space, rather than risk a sanction and possible Arb case to review their bits. If one of the "community desysop" discussions had ended with the community being granted the ability to desysop someone because they lost in faith in them, this would be a textbook case, although I don't pretend to know the outcome in either case. Dennis Brown - 2¢21:21, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The more I think about this, some sort of sanction on creating articles is needed. See their responses to the questions about them in the California place names one I linked in the starting post here, or in the places in Iran one. They went on a CFD editing run per their contribs after I notified them about starting this AN discussion. And these 5500 are just the tip of the iceberg. There are tens of thousands of stubs they created that are still dubious, just not quite as bad as this batch request. And they won't provide helpful answers to basic requests about this. IMO this is a WP:ADMINACCT issue. Given the sheer amount of poor quality article creation and lack of communication to questions about it, there should be a restriction on creation of geography stubs - a requirement to send new geography articles through AFC sounds reasonable to me. Hog FarmTalk21:55, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that a AFC requirement or removal of autopatrolled are fundamentally incompatible with being an administrator, for an administrator being trusted to be able to write articles is the bare minimum we should expect. I also don't think the proposed restrictions really get to the crux of the issue: the problem here was the mass creation of stub articles based only on database entries. I think a better set of restrictions would be a ban on article creation using automated or semi-automated tools and a requirement that any new articles they make have multiple substantial sources in them (as in sources containing a significant quantity of prose). 86.23.109.101 (talk) 22:33, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support batch deletion - I was initially against this idea but I now can't see any alternative. Having reviewed and PRODed many of the offending articles, I now see that it will take several weeks to getting around to properly looking at them all. Since they make no valid claim to notability, the chances of any of them actually being notable is low enough that I think the positives of batch deletion outweigh the negatives significantly. Spiderone(Talk to Spider)00:32, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking as the person who just fixed Escalle, Larkspur, California, I point out that the problem is not notability, and there is a significant likelihood that some of these places are notable. The problem is that we have one-sentence articles hanging around for years (almost 13 years in the case of Azizkend (AfD discussion)) where that one sentence is an outright falsehood, because the source databases were not properly filtered and everything was labelled "populated place" or "unincorporated community". I think that you'll get wide agreement on mass-deleting one-sentence articles whose dodgy mass-creation makes them likely false. Don't make it about things being "just a mill" or "just a railway station", and about notability, though, especially if arguing in the same breath about how great a burden it is to evaluate notability of all of these subjects. You will not get agreement from people like me about "just a" anything. But you will get consensus on long-standing one-sentence likely falsehoods with shaky foundations. Uncle G (talk) 11:53, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Concerning community restrictions: It is true that only ArbCom can currently desysop (the last community desysop proposal is still open, but is certain to fail, like its predecessors). However, if needed, we can just impose a ban on creation on the articles. A ban violation would be a solid ground for a desysop. However, I do not see any issues with the recent article creation, and I do not see why such topic ban would be needed, In fact, Carlossuarez does not now create any articles, for the last year I only see one, which is a dab and is completely uncontroversial. All the articles we are talking about are from the 2000s, and I do not see any current need of a ban.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:08, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support sanctions on Carlossuarez46. He made a big mistake and now even cleaning up his mess gives us headache. I PRODed 100 farms and wells (mazraeh and chah) but got reverted by another contributor who claims these abadis pass WP:GEOLAND. Being unwilling to clean up his own mess, Carlos has wasted a lot of valuable volunteers' time. The fact that he has not contributed to this thread so far means a lot to me! 4nn1l2 (talk) 10:26, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The PROD reasons were probably unclear as the articles say "village" and give the population from a census, which would make them notable. Some of them seem to be hamlets or something similar, but others are only farms. Peter James (talk) 15:02, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm the PROD remover@4nn1l2 and Peter James: indeed all the articles that I de-proded stated that they were villages and they also had a number of families. If they are an exception to the general rule that legally recognized places are notable then probably needs to be discussed at a bundled AFD nomination not PROD. I think its fairly likely the rest of the PRODs will be contested by Necrothesp or Phil Bridger or someone else anyway. In any case although we may make an exception that a place that is just a well or petrol station isn't notable even if its legally recognized if we assess that its an exception there's no requirement that a place has people living there to be notable under GEOLAND. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:28, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that you've missed the thrust of the argument here, possibly because those Proposed Deletion nominations didn't give it. It's not whether these places are notable. It's that the articles have been mass-created as bad stubs that give incorrect context, because everything has been translated to "village". The problem is that editors do not have the correct context to even begin working on the articles. Tolombeh-ye Mehdi Shariati is actually a pump, for example. But an editor looking to do cleanup or expansion won't know it from the bad stub at hand, which says that it's a "village" and leaves it at that. There are over 5000 articles in this class. Uncle G (talk) 19:44, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If these articles contain false information then I support whatever is needed to fix this even if this means moving them to draftspace or even deleting them however this is generally not allowed but perhaps we can do it per IAR since checking 5000 article is far too much of a job to do oneself. Zero information is better than incorrect info. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:53, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support mass deletion and topic ban on geo article creation I support mass deletion of the articles, and I also think that Carlos deserves some sort of sanction. I'd be in favor of a a topic ban on creating new geography articles because of the degree of disruption that the non notable stubs have caused, and I think that that would be the minimum that we would be considering if this were a regular user and not an admin. ( I have to imagine that a new user would get a disruptive editing block for creating this many non notable articles and refusing to clean them up.) Jackattack1597 (talk) 13:27, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alexis Jazz, you have certainly become old, man! You used to be a Commoner and are well aware of Petscan. The Alexis Jazz I knew didn't need some hours (days[!]) to check the status of these articles. He wasThey were able to be done with it in less than 10 minutes. According to the English Wikipedia, the UK has only 3700+ hamlets[15], but Carlos has made 70,000+ articles on Iranian ābādīs! Both Iran and the UK belong to the Old World, so what Carlos flaunted about the New World does not apply here. 4nn1l2 (talk) 15:46, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@4nn1l2: Getting vilified causes one's hairs to turn grey. I have rarely found Petscan to be of any use over CirrusSearch, personally. I can't use it to do a history check. The kind of checks I ran on Commons also often took a while. I agree that likely 90%+ of Hog Farm's list should be deleted, but I'd like to filter out the <10% that should be kept or discussed. Btw, feel free to use something from Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:03, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. I always use neutral pronouns on Commons. I don't know why I switched to "he" on the English Wikipedia. Sorry for that! 4nn1l2 (talk) 17:17, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I'm running the thing now. It takes hours because a) of the sheer number of articles (dealing with 5000+ pages wasn't a common occurrence, even on Commons) b) I'm doing a history check, which is slow. c) There are other things I have to do, I'm spending somewhat less time on wiki nowadays. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:34, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support sanctions and mass deletion I'm glad to see interest in addressing disruptive mass stub creation, and admin status should be no barrier to the article creation restrictions which are clearly necessary here. It's unfair for an editor who mass-creates thousands of articles from tables (which are specifically excluded from establishing notability per WP:GEOLAND) to demand that others do the work of searching exhaustively to disprove notability. Mass-created geography stubs are a widespread problem [16][17] and a huge time sink since some editors insist on article-by-article deletion instead of PROD or batch work. In my opinion we should have a general rule or process that allows geo stubs to be deleted immediately, with no WP:BEFORE requirement, if they are sourced only to databases. The few notable articles that may exist are useless as long as they're buried under a massive pile of crap. Any editor who would like to search for these hidden gems is welcome to look through the easily-accessible databases and recreate them with better sourcing. –dlthewave☎05:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I show up a lot in a lot of page histories. Support batch deletion, since these are rather unfortunately widely untenable as articles. BD2412T17:53, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I show up in a lot of page histories, but I don't use batch. I primarily fix typo's, broken links, etc. I Support batch deletion. Quebec99 (talk) 18:57, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support batch deletion and sanction - I came to this as someone who is far from a deletionist. Indeed I have been accused on more than one occasion of being some kind of inclusionist. The thing was I started seeing lots of California location articles showing up at AFD that were by the same creator, and written using the same unreliable sources. My efforts to try to save these articles quickly turned into a conclusion that every one of them had the same problem - the editor who created them basically hadn't cared about even the most basic rules of notability and verifiability, and had systematically mischaracterised what a source they had regularly cited (Durham) was actually saying. Diving deeper I saw that the creator was one of Wiki's most prolific article-creators and had created many other location articles all around the world many of which appeared to have similar problems. Reaching out to the creator I saw that they were basically dismissive of any requests for help with dealing with the problems that they had created. Further checking showed that, as a direct result of their negligent editing, some counties of California had more "ghost town" articles (places that they couldn't find population data for ended up being labelled this) that inhabited places - a clearly ridiculous situation.
The Iranian articles are a very extreme case of this negligence. Carlos claims to be able to read Persian, yet they did not notice that they were creating thousands of places with names like "Well no. 3" and "Mechanic Hoseyn Sohrabi", each of which blatantly says that is not populated and may never have been populated according to the sources they relied on to write the article. These articles simply have to go - the only thing I'd like to do is just to check that these are only the articles where Carlos was the creator, since he has edited his phrase stating that the location is not populated into a few GNG-passing articles he did not create.
We should not forget that this negligent editing can have real-world consequences. Wiki's location data gets mirrored onto e.g., Google Maps and you can end up with people going to places thinking they are populated but which are in reality open desert. For this reason, although many of these articles were created some time ago and Carlos has not created any recently, as their negligent editing in 2009-2014 is still having an impact today which they refuse to do anything about it, I support sanctions against Carlos. Frankly, I would support Desysoping him due to a failure of accountability (WP:ADMINACCT), but if this is not possible I would support removing autopatrolled from them. If an Admin without autopatrolled is somewhat unusual, this can be raised with Arbcom.FOARP (talk) 07:49, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: Carlossuarez67 seems to give permission to delete qualifying articles per WP:CSD#G7("withdraw all my contributions...Please make it so.") (I notice the relevant WikiProject was notified also). –xenotalk02:47, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Now that I've thought about it, I think a new CSD is needed to hasten deletion of low-quality mass-created articles. For some of these large batches, we do not have the patience to check that every page meets WP:V and WP:GNG. A user recently closed this ANI about cricketers and populated places in Turkey mass-created by Lugnuts (talk·contribs) from an unreliable database. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 22:38, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify, a reply to a red-dot notification, that ANI was not about "cricketers AND populated places in Turkey..." (my emphasis), but just the latter. The cricketers do have a RS, while the places apparently do not. With regards to that, I am working my way through all of them to replace that source. Thanks. LugnutsFire Walk with Me17:12, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support deletion mass creation creates a huge issue when done poorly, and this was clearly done poorly. I hope we're strengthening our norms to allow mass creation done only with proper vetting and permission. I also support Alexis Jazz's comment to check the history of these, just in case there's a few which are valid encyclopaedia articles. The issue is not with WP:GEOLAND stubs which are reliably sourced, and I'm worried that'll be next - the issue is poor creation of stubs which fail WP:SNGs/WP:GNG. SportingFlyerT·C20:26, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alexis Jazz has raised what to do about the article creator on another noticeboardbelow, so I'd like to focus back on the original request by Hog Farm and Reywas92, which is what to do about the articles in the list at User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported.
Summarizing the above so far:
It appears that we have 9 people supporting mass deletion of the articles on that specific list; and 1 wanting to do more checking xyrself.
The Proposed Deletions that there is disagreement over, such as Special:Diff/1014460959, appear to have been of articles not on this list.
Ymblanter has offered to do the mass-deletion if there is agreement.
Any people opposed?
Any more people wanting to do some checking for themselves?
Obviously, there's no rush to closure here; we give AFD discussions a week, after all.
I'm just trying to keep focus on the original proposal and whether there is consensus supporting an administrator doing this.
Uncle G (talk) 08:10, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Uncle G: I would like to confirm your second point. For PRODing 100 articles, I went after specific articles with special conditions. First, all of nominations have the terms mazraeh and chah (farm and well respectively) in their names. Second, they had some population, because I assumed and still assume the 5000+ "uninhabited" abadis are definitely gone sooner or later, so I spared them. Third, I nominated those with a population of less than 100 people and 20 families, because Iranian villages must have a population of at least 100 people or 20 families according to the law. See my comments here and there to become more familiar with Iranian villages. We don't have the concept of hamlet in Iran (except in Mazandaran and Gilan which have a Mediterranean climate). Generalizing this Anglo-Norman concept to arid Iran is a kind of Eurocentrism. Settlements in Iran are basically of two kinds: 1) cities [شهر]; 2) villages [ده، روستا]. We don't differentiate between towns and cities. We don't have communities or concepts such as incorporated, chartered, etc. Everyone should read this academic article about Iranian villages. The following paragraph is of interest:
The basic statistical unit. Much of the available information about rural areas in Persia and, to a lesser degree, in Afghanistan has been collected at the village level. As delimitation of villages varies according to different government sources, however, that is not a guarantee of accuracy. Uncertainty is greatest in the Caspian lowlands and Ḡilzay country, where the so-called “villages” are generally artificial groupings of maḥallas (see, e.g., Bazin, 1980, I, pp. 100-01) and qalʿas respectively. In other areas, too, it is often difficult to ascertain whether a small settlement is an independent village or a mazraʿa attached to a larger village nearby (see, e.g., Patzelt and Senarclens de Grancy, p. 225). Gazetteers of inhabited places in Persia thus include from 14,721 (Mofaḵḵam Pāyān) to 80,717 names (Pāpolī Yazdī, 1989), and estimates of the total number of villages range from 42,000 to 58,000. A figure of 48,592 was used by the Persian government for purposes of land reform (McLachlan, p. 686). In Afghanistan conflicting figures have been published: In 1339 Š./1960 the Ministry of agriculture and irrigation enumerated 14,205 villages (Survey), a figure that was increased to 15,270 after the agricultural census of 1346 Š./1967 (Natāyej); the Ministry of interior, on the other hand, listed 20,753 villages, of which 15,599 were classified as “independent villages” and 5,154 as “associated subvillages” (Aṭlas). Although the Ministry of agriculture’s figures for villages and the Ministry of interior’s enumeration of “independent villages” are similar, they only partly coincide. Combining both lists would produce a total of 22,425 inhabited places (computed from Aṭlas). It is thus necessary to use the data from gazetteers with caution.
The article is a bit old. It dates back to 1994. According to the latest data, Iran has 45,926 villages. Now Carlos should explain how he managed to create 70,000 articles on Iranian "villages". 4nn1l2 (talk) 09:34, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not in this section. ☺ Let's keep it just to the articles and getting a consensus on what we do to them. It looks like there's a case to be made for Hog Farm et al. creating another list. But Proposed Deletion rationales would need to explain all of that and not just be "fails WP:GEOLAND". Because if people don't get a decent rationale they will not know all of that and will work from what the article says on its face. I suggest that you work with Hog Farm et al. on another list, for a second discussion, and we focus here on the "population not reported" one initially. I also suggest that you update any still active unchallenged Proposed Deletion rationales of yours to at least point to Special:Permalink/1014651141#The articles, specifically. Uncle G (talk) 11:23, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the places are groups of houses separate from other groups of houses; if these places are not hamlets, are too small to be villages, and "farm" is inaccurate, what would they be described as? Peter James (talk) 07:25, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Akili: extensively vandalized (I filtered a bunch of vandalism, but unfortunately the "Reverted" tag was not made available retroactively. The list could have been shorter otherwise.)
We should take a closer look at these 528. Some additional filtering may be possible. (please ping me with suggestions)
If someone who is normally a WikiGnome actually added a source in some instances, sadly I couldn't realistically differentiate between that. I filtered all edits from known WikiGnomes. There's other theoretical issues (every edit before a revert was also filtered, but someone adding a source right before someone else reverts an earlier edit is probably extremely rare), but the lists should mostly be accurate. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:06, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Alexis Jazz: I have indeed editedAhmadabad, Avaj, but what does that mean to you? New counties/townships (شهرستان) get created in Iran by splitting, etc. Avaj County was created in 2011.[18] Carlos has used the data of the 2006 census when this abadi was in another county. I just updated the data in 2017. Why didn't I react back then? See my comment here near the facepalm and you will understand why this topic matters to me now. I was not and still am not an editor of the English Wikipedia, so why should I care? 4nn1l2 (talk) 20:37, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@4nn1l2: It could indicate that there's something special about the article, but in this case you were a WikiGnome. I'm thinking of some better/other ways to filter. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:18, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have two questions:
Hog Farm, Reywas92, 4nn1l2, et al.: Is this list of 528 articles small enough for you three (and whomever else) to review by hand?
Alexis Jazz: Do you think that Hog Farm's list should be reduced by these 528 articles?
I ask because I looked through some of the ones that you mentioned and I'm not yet convinced that we have a case for removing them. That Darafsh used the same prose wording for the likes of "the water beneath Haji Ali" and called it a "village" with "population not reported" only emphasizes the robotic nature of these contributions, and that this is boilerplate wording constructed from a problematic source database. And the source cited at Special:Diff/300106952 is a WWW page that gives a Google Maps reference to a farm, emphasizing the fact that there's an echo chamber of bad information on the WWW that we at Wikipedia are part of.
I think it can be trimmed a little bit. Akbarabad-e Olya is just Carlos, bots, a gnoming edit, and somebody adding a hatnote. Mazraeh-ye Afzalabad is Carlos, two bots, a AWB run, and a gnoming edit. Mazraeh-ye Kaleh Chub is Carlos, the same AWB run, three bots, somebody changing the spelling in a category, and somebody reverting said change. There's a few others like those. The 528 list looks pretty close, although there's some false positives in there. Hog FarmTalk22:55, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I personally am still persuaded by your argument that a collection of articles calling things like "the best farm" and "Wood Head farm" (fa:مزرعه) a "village" are bad stubs with falsehoods as their context. ☺ So perhaps that 528 article list can be re-filtered, at least for the obvious groups with falsehoods revealed by their titles. Uncle G (talk) 23:46, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Hog Farm:Akbarabad-e Olya is on the list because of Prana1111's edit. (I already filtered M.k.m2003 as a WikiGnome) Mazraeh-ye Afzalabad is on the list only because of the edit by SACRED. Mazraeh-ye Kaleh Chub includes a manual revert, if Bearcat had reverted NikolayEfesenko (or the "reverted" and "manual revert" tags would be available everywhere) it wouldn't have made the list. I can probably filter small edits (like these -4 overlinking edits, edits marked as minor were already excluded but these were not marked as minor) and I think there are some other ways to get that 528 further down. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:41, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to exclude anything with the AWB tag, as well? Anything done with Auto Wiki Browser is likely to be gnoming, formatting, or something minor like that. Hog FarmTalk14:55, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - "Never edited by Carlos. But it follows the same style. So... wut?" - It is not a surprise to see other editors creating articles in the same style as Carlos, people learn how to write articles from other editors on Wiki, particularly admins. This is why this behaviour is so harmful. FOARP (talk) 14:36, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Uncle G: There doesn't seem to be any objection other than making sure the list is proper. If you need someone to complete the technical step once complete, please let me know. –xenotalk02:47, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I personally would like to see Alexis Jazz take another pass over xyr 528 articles to be taken out list with respect to the article titles that (as noted earlier in this discussion, with transliterations) clearly identify pumps (fa:تلمبه), wells (fa:چاه), farms (fa:مزرعه), mechanics, and so forth; as I strongly suspect that having been edited by someone else has not fixed the problem of these things falsely being categorized as populated places and called "village" with "population not reported". Uncle G (talk) 06:51, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Uncle G: I'm working on filtering the list another way, am making progress and it looks fairly promising so far. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 07:02, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've edited 95 of the unchecked articles (two of these edits have been self-reverted) which just means I have added info and reference on ethnic composition. The fourth village on that list (Abza-e Dudera) is stated to have a non-reported population according to the 2006 census used on Wikipedia, but was reported to have had a population of 24 according to the 2011 census[19]. A settlement like this one, I believe, should not be deleted. (Since this area is Luri-populated it could be a case of nomadism but that's just my guess.) Now my reference does also have the note "(less than 3 households; population not specified in 2011 Census for reasons of privacy)" on some of these settlements, but I frankly ignored this and carried on with adding the info. Perhaps these are the settlements that should be put in group 4? --Semsûrî (talk) 20:59, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As aforementioned in this discussion, there are lots of articles that you can immediately include by their titles. Since we know that this list is a list of things where the prose says "village" and "population not reported"; all of the "chah-e" articles about (water) wells (fa:چاه), for example, must be factually wrong. And there are several such title groups in that list.
@Uncle G: I'd rather not automatically exclude pumps or wells, even if the odds of collateral damage are quite low. The "chah-e" on the list are false positives due to entries that don't use {{IranCensus2006}}. I've moved them. There was only one "Mowtowr-e" in the list of 398, cases where at most a few entries exist are not worth automating. I went over the list of 398 articles by hand, one by one, moving obvious false positives to the relevant section. This leaves us with 164 articles that I think we should take a more fine comb to. @Semsûrî: How does the list look to you now? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:20, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Uncle G: I moved the false positives due to redirects. I've also moved all entries that link iranatlas.net (edited by Semsûrî) to the section for articles that shouldn't be mass deleted. If anyone wishes to challenge those, I believe they should go to AfD. There are only 65 entries left now. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:17, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that that is a more manageable size for manual review. Several are on your list only because (like Jahangirak and Tolombeh-ye Hajjiabad, Anar for examples) people have tried to make them verifiable by citing Wikipedia mirrors or aggregators that use Wikipedia. Let's see what other people think.
Thanks. I have some more work to do anyway. You just can't trust Visual Editor not to produce garbage. It's a reasonable assumption that {{For}} appears on its own line, but with VE all bets are off. Not too many articles are affected (probably just a handful), but playing fast and loose when filtering always comes back to bite one in the arse. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:23, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Let's say you save one article or two out of this mess. Is the English Wikipedia with over 5M articles thirsty for an article on an Iranian abadi? Of course, not. With all due respect, Alexis Jazz, I think you are just wasting your time and other volunteers'. Just delete the whole batch as soon as possible. There are more important things to do, such as going after abadis with an actual population (but less than 100 people). 4nn1l2 (talk) 07:39, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@4nn1l2: There's always something more important to do. But checking thousands of something is what I do. And I think we should be thorough, show that we aren't ruthless. Even if we end up deleting everything, we can show we didn't trash anything of value. If these badly sourced stubs had been detected and proposed for deletion shortly after creation, we could have blindly deleted them. But years have passed, so now we need to check if others have contributed to these stubs. I didn't waste our time - Carlos did. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 01:55, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am planning on reviewing all of these edits of mine. Where should I make the potential list of articles that I believe can be deleted? As I mentioned above, two of the articles I have edited, I have self-reverted but have been moved to 'Manually checked articles that may not be eligible for mass deletion'. --Semsûrî (talk) 10:51, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Semsûrî: Dump it here, dump it on my talk page, move them to garbage pile yourself. I take it you misidentified some? Just for clarity, being saved from mass deletion doesn't mean these articles (currently 44 remaining unchecked plus 97 with iranatlas ref) are saved forever, just that they shouldn't be blindly mass-deleted. (which is a fairly low bar, far lower than WP:GNG) Discussions might be started from some anyway. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 01:55, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Semsûrî: Can you please move the entire line unchanged (this makes it easier to review the diff) and move it to the "Manually checked articles (Vandalism, etc" section? The last section with 5000+ articles was created by running a filter, these were not looked at one-by-one. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:25, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Semsûrî: Nevermind, I see your second batch was already the final batch and I've moved it the way I wanted. I just want to be sure that nothing gets accidentally broken, that's easier to check when lines are moved unchanged. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:55, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I think the 5227 stubs at User:Alexis Reggae/Articles for locations oh my what a mess#filtered garbage (which is a subset of Hog Farm's list) can be deleted. I have done another check to make sure I haven't missed anything that includes "http" (which might be a ref), and nothing was missed. (unless somebody quietly added links in the past few days, which seems unlikely)
I have my doubts about Fram's suggestion to maybe move to draftspace: after all the filtering I did, saying that 99% of the stubs on Hog Farm's list is rubbish isn't all that far off. And moving them wouldn't contribute to making draftspace more manageable.
The 242 stubs at User:Alexis Reggae/Articles for locations oh my what a mess#garbage pile can be deleted as well I think. For the list of 5227 stubs I tried to filter in way that would avoid having stubs wrongly marked as not containing any additional contributions. The changes (as included on the list) for those 242 were all checked manually. It's a combination of false negatives (because the 5227 were filtered conservatively), some vandalized pages, pages that only had a citypedia.ir ref added which appears to be completely unhelpful, a few with a citypopulation.de ref which doesn't appear to go beyond county level (so doesn't mention the abadis) and a bunch with an iranatlas ref that Semsûrî (who added those refs to begin with) has reviewed and found they had misidentified. [20][21]
The articles in the two top sections (44 "unchecked" and 54 with an iranatlas ref that Semsûrî hasn't marked as misidentifications) should not be mass-deleted, I think. These have references or additions of some sort. They can still go to AfD or get PRODded where appropriate.
Are the other articles okay? I can't read Farsi but "Woolen Goods Prairie Pumping Complex" doesn't sound like a village, and (at a skim) there's not many results on Google (that aren't just based off our article) for either the English or its Farsi translation. Yet when you search "Woolen Goods Prairie Pumping Complex", Google (based on Wikipedia's article) seems to believe that's a village. I guess it's reasonable that a small Iranian village might not have results on Google and that'd meet WP:GEOLAND, but if all these are mass-created from an Excel document and some of the creations are dubious I feel like it's worth making sure the rest are reasonably accurate before closing the thread?
Also, just curious, how does Wikipedia do transliterations for places without English names? The Excel document has no English names for that article I linked or the others, but isn't it borderline original research to just use Google Translate and come up with an English/romanised translation and title the article as such? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:19, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@ProcrastinatingReader: I think it's not uncommon for multiple different transliterations to exist, 4nn1l2 may be able to say more about this. I understand your concern, but this discussion about mass deletion concerns User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported and my list which is just a filtered version of C46 population not reported. For the other lists, we'll need another discussion. There is no consensus for deletion of the articles on the other lists because that hasn't been discussed yet. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@ProcrastinatingReader and Alexis Jazz: Bad translation by Carlos. Sigh. Apart from passing off âbâdis as villages, another aspect of original research by Carlos is his translations. The correct translation into English would be "Pashmine-zâr Farming Pumps Complex". Pashmine-zâr is a proper name here and should not be translated. By the way, the English Wikipedia has an article on Pashmina. Carlos has translated this word into "woolen good". He has also wrongly translated -zâr (Persian suffix) into "prairie". I can understand why he got it wrong, but this suffix only denotes the concept of "multitude". Pashmine-zâr means a lot of pashmine, not a prairie of pashmine! Anyway, the article should be deleted.
@4nn1l2: What's normally good practice for notable (per GEOLAND) places that have a name in the local language but no sources exist for the place and hence there's no Romanised name to use? If a Wikipedian does the translation, even if it were 'correct' linguistically speaking, that's still surely OR? This seems to apply for pretty much all of these articles - the census Excel file doesn't have English names for any of them. My feel/guess is that we wouldn't create the article at all? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:22, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@4nn1l2: I'm willing to help, I have already identified a few to PROD/AfD, but before I start on that I want confirmation that sections 1 and 2 won't be mass-deleted. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:54, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for that. So that leaves, for those interested, manual review of the other part of User:Alexis Reggae/Articles for locations oh my what a mess, which has a far more approachable size. We've also been coming up with other lists. For the California GNIS problem, I found a book of California springs, which we've used to quickly correct a whole bunch of "Something Spring, California" articles at User:Hog Farm/springs to at least not say unincorporated community any more, and find a bunch of problem articles that need more in-depth attention. Editors have been checking things like Salminas Resort, California (AfD discussion) and Ettawa Springs, California (AfD discussion) against the Arcadia Publishing Resorts of Lake County. I'm sure that any further efforts to whittle away at this huge problem will be welcome at the Wikipedia:WikiProject California/GNIS cleanup task force as well as further ways to look at Iran articles (perhaps an Iran WikiProject cleanup page is needed). Uncle G (talk) 14:43, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, a few probably got missed. Reywas92 did a good bit of filtering work as well. But with 70,000+ articles, it's almost a given that a few will slip through the cracks. With stuff like that, I'd say it's best to just PROD them with a permalink to this discussion. Hog FarmTalk00:46, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So I generated the original list User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported via JWB, then alphabetized and removed duplicates in Excel. Doing the same thing to this list actually removed 62 items so I'm guessing that there's an issue in JWB's "generate from search" function (or more likely the Wikipedia search itself), and there may still be some left that it didn't pick up after this set is cleared. This will take another batch of 1700 from Xeno, then the last few dozen could perhaps be prodded. Thanks! Reywas92Talk01:17, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Other wikis
I did a quick spot check, just randomly clicked some articles. I found translations and entries on other wikis by:
This list isn't complete, it's just a quick spot check. It would be helpful to bring in some people who are familiar with those wikis to bring the issue to their attention. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:57, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Bad idea which only escalates the situation. I'm sure the English Wikipedia knows very well that it has no jurisdiction over other WPs. Some of these WPs that you cited are failed projects which only try to boost their number of articles by creating whatever that can be created regardless of quality. Arabic Wikipedia and Persian Wikipedia are engaged in a contest! (See also Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict.) Egyptian Arabic (arz) is just another Cebuano or Waray-Waray. Leave these projects alone and let them be busy with their own games. 4nn1l2 (talk) 07:50, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I thought it would be responsible to inform them, but seeing as it's mostly bots and I have pinged them here, I suppose that's enough. And Wikidata is forced to keep anything that has a translation, which is nearly everything. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 04:35, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Suggested edit restriction for Carlossuarez46
[Note: The section below was originally posted on ANI. Since it concerns a proposal for a sanction, it should have been posted here on AN. Since there is an ongoing discussion about the editor in question here on AN, it should have been connected to that discussion. For these reasons I have moved it here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:15, 28 March 2021 (UTC)][reply]
I suggest an edit restriction is put in place that requires Carlossuarez46 to inform the community before mass-creating articles and give the community a reasonable amount of time to respond, Carlossuarez46 should explain based on what they will be creating articles and how they can ensure that the articles they create will be accurate and about notable subjects. Carlossuarez46 should also respect the comments on these announcements.
I have kept the details deliberately vague, as is usual to avoid gaming the system. We're all grownups (right? right?) and the goal of this restriction is simply to make sure we won't suddenly have another 5000+ dubious stubs that may require mass deletion.
I am aware Carlossuarez46 is an admin, and as usual, I don't care. Adminship doesn't make one immune from edit restrictions. If they stop being an admin in the future for any reason, that wouldn't affect this edit restriction. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:10, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Carlossuarez46: Absolutely baffled by your comment. I genuinely forgot. I did mention your username so unless you disabled notifications, which no admin should do under normal circumstances, you were alerted to the existence of the thread. That would make this a rather shittily executed conspiracy wouldn't you agree? I initially thought several commenters below were a bit harsh, but now I think maybe I've been far too kind. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:32, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support stronger sanction: no article creation outside of AFC - Normally, I would not support sanctions on edits this old, but this is the type of action that might go unnoticed for years, and it indicates a lack of understanding of our general policies on article creation. Personally, I think this sanction is too weak. That they are an admin only makes the point stronger that a sanction is needed. Admin are supposed to know better. I would support this sanction, the stronger sanction I am recommending, or even stronger sanctions. The fact that they have been editing yet refused to participate in this discussion, thus avoiding all accountability for their actions, makes me think they shouldn't be an admin at all. Dennis Brown - 2¢11:56, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support stronger sanction I would prefer Dennis Brown's stronger sanction to the originally proposed ones, but if Dennis' don't pass then I would support Alexis Jazz's sanctions because something needs to be done about this, and Carlos shouldn't get off scott free just because they are an admin after causing this much disruption through creation of thousands of articles and refusing to clean them up. Jackattack1597 (talk) 12:26, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support stronger sanction: no article creation outside of AFC - The question is can we trust them to create articles that are not formally reviewed? Since almost all of there article creation is this sort of stub, and discussions have been going on on their talk page for months about there mass-created articles, in which they have not recognized that any of this creation is problematic in any way, I don't think I can trust them to create articles that then sit around for years and spread false content. To show the full extent of this mess, compare this Wikidata entry to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Snow Bend, California. Thanks to mass creation, azbwikipedia and zhwikipedia now have articles claiming that an obvious non-community Carlossuarez46's mass creation of stubs has essentially polluted the entire internet with false content. Hog FarmTalk18:10, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. He has created lots of 1 or 2 sentence stub articles and many of them are suspected hoaxes and are getting nominated for deletion. He only uses 1 source, from the GEONet server and most of the time doesn't cite sources, and when he does they are unreliable like this pdf source in Azerbaijani (feel free to translate it) that was politically biased. I think we should prevent him from making articles or even de-adminship. Cupcake547Talk. Thanks, 20:48, 28 March 2021 (UTC).[reply]
Lately I've been adding information on the composition of hundreds (if not more) of settlements in Iran. I can see that I have also edited some of the settlements where the population varies from 0 to 3, which just means that a reliable reference have not only recognized their existence but also their composition. --Semsûrî (talk) 20:50, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You edited "the well of Abbas Ali" (c.f. Special:Diff/1014289529) and called it a "village", citing an aggregation WWW site that cites Google Maps, and hence Wikipedia, as one of its sources. You seem to be making the very same errors as Carlossuarez46, just more indirectly, and should probably take a lot more care. Uncle G (talk) 22:55, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Uncle G I'll take a look at the edits I made at these troubled pages (User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported) and try to verify the 'village'-ness or revert my edits. I can see that I haven't edited that many of them. Regarding Cham-e Abbas Ali, I will revert my edits made since I must have mistaken it for another settlement in the area. I can't seem to find it in the source either. --Semsûrî (talk) 10:14, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I found Abza-e Dudera (or Owzā Dudarā[22]) and it is stated that it has a population of 24. Searching its coordinations ('31.36302, 50.81570') on Google Maps gives this result[23] which to me does look like a populated place. --Semsûrî (talk) 10:21, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Let me formally oppose per my reasoning above. The real problem here is not that Carlossuarez46 created a bunch of purely sourced stubs in 2006. At that time, we still did not understand very well what can be done and what can not be done, and whereas there is no way someone would create such stubs today, it was not uncommon at the time (you know, eventualists, article rescue squadron and so on). The problem is not that Carlossuarez46 continues to create stubs of doubtful quality, because he does not. In the last year, he created only one article which is a dab, and the quality is ok. Ban for article creation is not going to solve any problems. We could also propose a topic ban for Iran, we have even general sanctions in the are, and such topic ban would equally not solve anything, because Carlossuarez46 is not editing in the area. The problem is that currently Carlossuarez46 refuses to discuss the issue and do something about this. On top of this, Carlossuarez46 is administrator, and I see here breach of ADMINCONDUCT. I think the only issue to be discussed here which solves a real problem is a desysop, and then someone should prepare and file an ArbCom case. May be we are not yet ready for arbitration, then this thread must be closed with a formal warning, or may be a block if people think it is acceptable (I do not see why we need a block here, but I understand that other opinions are possible), but I do not see why we need a topic ban on article creation in this situation.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:05, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Iranian stubs have been created in 2014 using old data from the 2006 census while the data of the 2011 census was available. 4nn1l2 (talk) 21:12, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Respectfully, Ymblanter, I think the fact that this activity lasted for almost a decade, during which time the person concerned was an Admin and expected to be familiar with WP:GNG (already a guideline in 2007) and WP:GEOLAND (created as an essay in 2008, promoted to guideline in 2010), and which many times the problems with their articles were pointed out to them (see e.g., here). One of the worst periods for Carlos's article creation activities appears to have been in July 2009 after the creation of the leaderboard for who as created the most Wiki articles - I don't think I am breaking WP:AGF by saying that their article-creation activities were likely motivated in part by a desire to score highly on that board rather than being here to create an encyclopedia (i.e., they have been WP:NOTHERE for more than a decade). FOARP (talk) 08:35, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support stronger sanctionsAs far back as 2009 Carlossuarez46 has been completely dismissive of anyone who suggested that his article creations were questionable, consistently refusing to acknowledge that his mass-productions include errors or fail to demonstrate verifiability and/or notability. His continued rebuffing of those who have put in far too many man-hours cleaning up his mess is callous and unbecoming. Looking at the logs, Carlos has not used admin actions in many years, other than to delete pages to make way for moves of his mass-creations, so perhaps he doesn't need those privileges! Very sad to see downright false information not just here but on Wikidata and other languages that is even harder to fix due to his sheer incompetence and refusal to conduct adequate verification before mass-spamming of articles, even after being informed of the problems! Reywas92Talk21:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I would like to comment on the possibility of an Arbcom case here. I would support anyone proposing a possible Arbcom case request in addition, but not in place of, community sanctions, for the purpose of determining if this is enough for a desysop. I doubt that Arbcom would ultimately decide that a Desysop is warranted since the misuse of article creation occurred years ago, but I think it's worth a case request to investigate further. Jackattack1597 (talk) 21:33, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The simplest way to get arbcom to deal with this if needed is to establish a mainspace article creation ban . A subsequent violation of such a ban by an admin would be probably fall within their view of ADMINACCT. And if there are no subsequent violations the problem is solved. Sanctions are for prevention. If similar things happen with other editors, the ban is a good precedent. DGG ( talk ) 21:40, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support stronger sanction - Ban on mainspace article creation per DGG. If Carlos restricts themselves to their present work on categories this is harmless, but anything beyond this they simply cannot be trusted to do. For more than a decade they abused their position as admin to create vast number of articles that they must have known (because, as an admin, they are expected to know) failed WP:GNG and WP:GEOLAND. This was done with the apparent goal of simply boosting their article-creation stats to score higher on this board (i.e., WP:NOTHERE behaviour). We all may make mistakes, but most of us don't simply keep on making them even after they've been pointed out to us. Most of us will try to fix our mistakes. Most of us won't simply be dismissive and refuse to help as it becomes apparent that we have created an immense problem for others to clean up. Admins are expected to be accountable per WP:ADMINACCT yet Carlos shirked any accountability for their GEOFAIL stub creation. Yes, it will be a novelty to have an Admin who isn't even trusted to create articles, but here we are. FOARP (talk) 08:46, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Response Let's see the lynch mob wants to punish me for things done ten or more years ago - before WP:GEOLAND was established without WP:BEFORE to determine notability of anything? and most of these comments being basically unWP:Civil. Wondering whether a non-Latino would face this... Wikiracism at its worst. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:02, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This response convinced me to withdraw my opposition and encourage someone to file an ArbCom case. We have a clear breach of ADMINACCT here.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:10, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Go ahead. I'm sufficiently pissed off at the blatant racism and attacks that I really don't care what more you do. You all have sullied WP. I would like to withdraw all my contributions here as you all don't want them. Please make it so. I'm gone. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:22, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I also take objection to the accusation of racism - since I'm the OP and was involved in the deletion of a lot of these articles, I think it's reasonable to assume this is at least partially directed towards me. I've seen no indication that anyone was connecting this to your ethnicity before you comment, and this really comes across as a WP:NPA violation. Really starting to think that ARBCOM may be necessary - agree with Ymblanter that this is very concerning from an ADMINACCT perspective. Hog FarmTalk19:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Where? Freaking where? Glad to sanction any blatantly racist commenters but you're just trying to play the victim. Thanks for finally changing your mind, every other time you've just stonewalled, so now G7 applies! Reywas92Talk19:00, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Reywas92: G7 has to be "requested in good faith" which this arguably isn't as they just requested indiscriminate deletion of all their contributions, which would be highly disruptive. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 02:47, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Reywas92 and others have discussed elsewhere the strain that this would put on the speedy deletion or proposed deletion system, so I doubt that this is a course that any of them is seriously considering. Just in case: I recommend that no-one do this; and that we continue discussing what to do with the articles calmly, without reference to the high-jinks surrounding their creator. Uncle G (talk) 06:27, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
LOL We've done HUNDREDS of before searches on your California crap, and that's likewise what we've been doing here, more so than your making one every few seconds. It doesn't take more than a glance at the wall of notices on your talk page to see how much of a burden this has been for us, yet you haven't once provided more substantive sources to establish notability and accuracy or otherwise indicate why any or every thing we've done is wrong. Heck, GEOLAND lowers the bar for places, so since this was before it was approved, GNG would have been the controlling guideline and these are even more blatant failures of that! Moreover, 2009's Wikipedia:MASSCREATION was also ignored – this is exactly the reason we have that. The number of falsehoods you wrote in the California places that are inconsistent with what the Durham book says (e.g. calling hot springs or other names described only as "places" communities) is astounding. Piss off with your BS accusations of racism, an evidence-free personal attack itself here. I don't give a darn what your ethnicity is, and these articles and the response to their inaccuracies have nothing to do with the Latino world or people or your background. Reywas92Talk19:23, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Carlossuarez46. you have truly jumped the shark with your claim of racism here. You need to strike that attack on the editors here, which I consider a personal attack, and worthy of a block. So far, you have done nothing to fix the problem, and are instead attacking the messengers. Dennis Brown - 2¢02:10, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for now, looking at the 3 articles Carlossuarez46 has created in 2020/2021 (ignoring DABs and redirects) I only see 3 in April last year on Greek former settlements (Lagos (Phrygia), Takina and Lysinia) and all seem fine so given the small amount of article creation in the last year and that those seem OK I don't see any reason to ban. Regarding mass creation I think we need more of it namely for things like municipalities, districts, settlements (with a population figure) and islands which should probably be done with a bot or tool after consensus to make sure that they are both correct and notable. Perhaps the abadis that claim to be a village created by Carlossuarez46 claiming to be a village etc could be changed by a bot to simply be a abadis? since zero info is better than incorrect info. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:24, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support INDEF block I was planning to oppose sanctions if Carlossuarez made a reasonable statement; the behavior was so far in the past that a block would be punitive, there are almost no recent page creations, and community views on this type of creation have shifted over time. Instead, Carlos has baselessly accused everyone here of "racism", claimed this is a secret conspiracy, and placed a rage-quit {{retired}} banner on his userpage. This is incompatible with ADMINACCT. As Ymblanter suggests, the personal attacks are blockable, and a block is probably simpler than a full ARBCOM case (though I wouldn't object to someone else doing so). User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 19:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose sanctions, per WP:NOTPUNISHMENT. I realize that Carlos's behavior in this discussion has rustled a lot of feathers, but Carlos has not created any pages in quite some time, and has given no indication that they plan to mass-create community pages in the future. Many of the reasons others have given for sanctions are ultimately based on unwritten rules of courtesy (such as preferring immediate mass deletion per G7) that Carlos was under no obligation to follow, and may have had legitimate reasons not to do so, such as if they were planning to review the articles on a case-by-case basis on their own.--Molandfreak(talk,contribs,email) 00:42, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Let's back away from the brink for a second. Carlos hasn't created articles in quite some time--years it seems--so I really don't see how this restriction would do anything. His response leaves a lot to be desired, but looking through the discussion, we don't seem to have been particularly kind either. Given that the problem doesn't seem to be ongoing, I'd really rather we try to de-escalate and take time to cool off. — Wug·a·po·des02:15, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support I was the first to propose sanctions for this user, and I still stand by it based on evidence presented here. The sanction I proposed was a ban on articles about geographic locations, but I can support a ban on mass-creation of articles. But ArbCom will impose sanctions that are deemed necessary, if we fail to reach a consensus. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 22:38, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Desysop and block per above. His response to all of this isn't what I want to see from an admin and such behavior prior to an RfC would pretty much guarantee its failure. ♟♙ (talk) 18:54, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I would support this as advice, not as a restriction. The articles were in Special:NewPages and if they were not autopatrolled would have survived new page patrol without these errors being noticed when they were created (and it's possible that they still would). If creation of articles such as these resumes and there are similar problems then I would support a restriction. Arbcom can make the decision on whether to desysop. Peter James (talk) 12:34, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose Probably all moot, but if they're not creating articles at the moment, then there's no real need for restrictions, though I would prefer if they weren't autopatrolled. SportingFlyerT·C20:33, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - ARBCOM has issued a decision about Desysopping C46 (essentially he is temporarily desysopped for the next three months and will be automatically desysopped thereafter, unless he opts for a full Arbcom case in the meantime). This does NOT mean that no community sanctions should be issued. The essay Wikipedia:Mario problem is very persuasive that desysopping should not be treated as a replacement for community sanctions as this elevates admins about ordinary editors. There is a clear consensus above for a community sanction and I urge it be carried out. FOARP (talk) 11:39, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Suggested block for Carlossuarez46
There seems to be a consensus here that a block is not going to happen at this time; instead, much of the discussion in this section has diverged into a discussion about desysopping. Current Wikipedia policy only allows the Arbitration Committee to desysop administrators. Accordingly, further comments about desysopping should be directed to the Arbitration Committee at the pending request for arbitration against Carlossuarez46: see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#User:Carlossuarez46. Mz7 (talk) 19:59, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Comments copied from above that have frankly gone beyond the scope of the original suggested edit restriction (which, to be absolutely clear, also remains on the table):
I also take objection to the accusation of racism - since I'm the OP and was involved in the deletion of a lot of these articles, I think it's reasonable to assume this is at least partially directed towards me. I've seen no indication that anyone was connecting this to your ethnicity before you comment, and this really comes across as a WP:NPA violation. Really starting to think that ARBCOM may be necessary - agree with Ymblanter that this is very concerning from an ADMINACCT perspective. Hog FarmTalk19:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support INDEF block (now supporting de-sysop 04:13, 30 March 2021 (UTC)) I was planning to oppose sanctions if Carlossuarez made a reasonable statement; the behavior was so far in the past that a block would be punitive, there are almost no recent page creations, and community views on this type of creation have shifted over time. Instead, Carlos has baselessly accused everyone here of "racism", claimed this is a secret conspiracy, and placed a rage-quit {{retired}} banner on his userpage. This is incompatible with ADMINACCT. As Ymblanter suggests, the personal attacks are blockable, and a block is probably simpler than a full ARBCOM case (though I wouldn't object to someone else doing so). User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 19:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(noting that Hog Farm noted WP:NPA but didn't literally support a block in the above comment)
And frankly I support this. To paraphrase Ymblanter, I do not think I will let an accusation of conspiracy against me for forgetting a talk page notification stand. Admins are a subset of users. Any user would likely be blocked for this, and since Carlossuarez46 is a user, well. Now, how Carlossuarez46 is actually going to use their admin tools if they are blocked, well, that ain't my problem is it? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:44, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The purpose of NPA blocks is to prevent further attacks from happening in the future – either because further attacks are technically prevented, or because the editor wants to avoid another block. Neither really seems to be applicable. An indefinite block of a retired editor could simply be appealed in a few months, with a promise not to personally attack other editors again. It seems likely that such an appeal would happen and be successful. Without block and appeal, the result would be the same (perhaps minus a forced apology with doubtful sincerity – you want that?). An indefinite sanction against the behavior that led to the entire discussion, however, seems to be very effective in achieving exactly the desired effect: Preventing the behavior that led to the entire discussion. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@ToBeFree: How is retirement enforced? In practice, Carlos can simply unretire next week (or maybe next month) like nothing happened. I disagree that someone declaring themselves retired is a reason is skip sanctions. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:31, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with ToBeFree that a NPA block wouldn't really have much effect in preventing disruption here. However, I do support desysopping. Clear WP:ADMINACCT issues here. Between mass-creation, the general refusal to discuss and when discussing, refusal to recognize wrong, followed up with the bright-line WP:NPA violation above, gives me very little faith that they should have the advanced tools. Hog FarmTalk23:56, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support desyopping Having read ToBeFree's comment, I don't think a block would do much good, so I am abstaining on that question, but I think the WP:ADMINACCT violations overall are bad enough to warrant a Desysop.I hope somebody starts drafting an Arbcom case requestJackattack1597 (talk) 00:11, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Jackattack1597: Why don't you? Everyone seems to hope that "someone" will. My excuse is that I have near zero experience with ArbCom and will probably screw it up, but it seems I may well end up drawing the short end of the stick. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:31, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be worried about accusations of being a Sockpuppet, or being NOTHERE, because of my limited number of edits and my large proportion of edits on AN, if I posted a request in the cesspit known as ARBCOM. I could try writing up a basic request, but I'd prefer if somebody else submitted it . Jackattack1597 (talk) 00:39, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I don't feel like I have as much to do with this as Hogfarm; I think he'd be a better filer since he has actually had to deal with a lot of Carlos' articles, and I really haven't had any interaction with him.Jackattack1597 (talk) 01:08, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh goodness. Never been involved with ARBCOM before, no idea how to go about that. Also gonna be somewhat busy with work until after tax day. Hog FarmTalk01:39, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Jackattack1597: Please write up something basic (I can fill in details myself) and any suggestions for the process. If Hog Farm won't, I can submit it. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 02:26, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Hog Farm: He pretty directly accused me of conspiracy, so I think it would be fair to include me. Similar for Ymblanter I think. Beyond that I'm not sure. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:51, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support desysopping, hold off on NPA block. I agree with Alexis Jazz when they mention that retirement should have nothing to do with sanctions, and I do think the ADMINACCT violations are bad enough to desysop, but a block seems a bit overkill for now. Obviously we shouldn’t trust the user in question with a mop, but if a non-admin like myself did this, I don’t think we would be indefinitely blocked. After all, all admins are still users, and the mop shouldn’t make them "immune" to blocks/other sanctions, but I don’t think I would be blocked if I did this, so I don’t think Carlo should be blocked either.D🐶ggy54321(let's chat!)02:00, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Doggy54321: It would probably depend on the mood of the admin, but I think this behavior would be blockable. If an unblock request is made with a credible claim that that behavior won't continue, an unblock could happen relatively soon. But at that point the user would have to tread lightly to avoid more blocks, which fulfills the goal of such a block. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 02:26, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Alexis Jazz: Thanks for the clarification. I still stand by my "don't block for now" statement as I’ve read the other comments in this thread and I agree with them, but I’ve struck through some of my text above due to what you told me. Thanks! D🐶ggy54321(let's chat!)12:54, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It might make sense to hold off on further action to give Carlossuarez46 (who has marked themselves retired) time to reflect on their ill-considered remarks (and hopefully withdraw them). Their most recent contribution to this thread allows for any disputed articles without substantial contributions from others to be deleted per WP:CSD#G7. –xenotalk02:47, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
G7 has to be "requested in good faith" which this arguably isn't as they just requested indiscriminate deletion of all their contributions, which would be highly disruptive. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 02:52, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I read it as them withdrawing from the thread and acceding to deletion. Along with the general agreement above, I don't see any barrier to carrying out the deletions once the list has been checked for false positives. –xenotalk02:54, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support desysopping. Wow, I take a few days off and things get busy. I spent many hours along with many other people attempting to clean up a number of non-notable California locations. My hope was that Carlossuarez46 would participate in the effort, but I don't recall that they did, despite many notifications from many editors. If Carlossuarez46 was applying to be a sysop today, I don't think that they would win an election unless they participated materially in the cleanup. On the basis of their lack of effort in cleaning up the mess, I have strong misgivings about why they have any special privileges here. I'm very concerned about possible non-notable places in Iran, but as I have virtually no experience in that area so I'm not sure I can help. A block could help prevent future similar issues and might be useful as an example of how to avoid similar mass edits by other editors. Concerning the suggestion of racism, I've not seen any evidence of anyone being racist towards this user. Perhaps an apology is in order and we can move on? Cxbrx (talk) 03:45, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support de-sysop clearly, no admin is going to block unilaterally for the personal attacks, and one comment doesn't justify a community ban. I think that if a new user had responded to concerns about their editing this way, they would have been blocked; probably not forever, but indefinite blocks are not infinite. But no matter. The violation of ADMINACCT and the personal attacks clearly justify preventing Carlos from using the admin tools. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 04:13, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Without commenting on anything else, and pardon me if I've missed something here, but since anyone can create an article, and even autopatrolled is unbundled, creating an article is not an admin action. So, ADMINACCT does not apply. Usedtobecool☎️04:36, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think what is being said here is that Carlos wouldn’t have been able to get away with this mass-failing-article-creation if they hadn’t had autopatrolled, which is something they received by dint of being an admin (even if it is unbundled). Additionally, their uncivil, disruptive, and uncollegiate behaviour is simply not that expected of admins. Failing to communicate, failing to follow basic policies, are all potential reasons for desysop under WP:ADMINACCT. FOARP (talk) 05:36, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support desysopping If there is any victim in this scenario (which I think there is none), that is the poor Iran with all those misinformation Carlos spread about all over the internet. No, Carlos, you are not a victim here and you should be de-sysoped now for pretending to be one. 4nn1l2 (talk) 06:55, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support desysop. He creates a lot of articles about villages, not only in Iran, but in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia. He has created way more village articles than in the censuses of these countries. Since, he is spreading all sorts of misinformation and blaming people, I support a desysop. Cupcake547 (talk) 19:23, 30 March 2021 (UTC).[reply]
I've boldly promoted this to a level 2 header, on the grounds that the article-creator-related part, above, is going to live forever on this noticeboard and never get archived otherwise at this rate, as we keep finding more and more groups to mass-address. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 15:06, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
232 other articles that need mass deletion as well
It got a bit buried in the above long discussion, but there are also 200+ articles about "towns" in Azerbaijan and Artsakh, created by CarlosSuarez, with the text"suspected that this village has undergone a name change"[24]. Basically, the article itself makes it clear that these are probably Geonet errors, but they have been created anyway: "It is suspected that this village has undergone a name change or no longer exists, as no Azerbaijani website mentions it under this name."(Dondar-Azaply). Can these be mass deleted as well please? Fram (talk) 07:54, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support There was a recent difficult AfD where a former Azeri village in Armenia - not with this pattern - was deleted even though the Azeri government had it listed in their government encyclopaedia as a "former town." I have absolutely no problem with the mass deletion of these as long as it doesn't prevent them from being recreated if more sourcing is ever found (I know this is probably obvious, but wanted to put it on the record.) SportingFlyerT·C17:50, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pushing an admin related close on an admin board, to push it to the front of the line, seems out of place and improper, to me. There is nothing in that RFC that requires it be pushed ahead of other closes. Why a user with less than 200 edits would do this, or know about this, I have no idea. Dennis Brown - 2¢00:09, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely, but pushing an admin related RFC to the front of the line is still wrong. It is less important than content related RFCs, and smacks of taking care of our pet topics over content. There are plenty of eyes on that RFC, it doesn't need advertising for close. Dennis Brown - 2¢10:13, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, as a new user they probably assumed that a very high-profile RFC that is over a week past the 30-day timeframe and has had discussion die down (exactly one !vote over the past 4 days) would be closed quickly. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 01:49, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Another issue is that some folks think RFCs need to be closed the instant the bot removes the {{rfc}} tag; I even had to revert someone who re-added it (actually reverting the bot) because "the discussion is still open". This has been on my list of things to get to, but the last week was hella busy and I didn't have time for much of any editing, let alone a large RFC like this. Not saying that someone can't beat me to it, but I suspect there are a few non-voters that are eyeballing a close on it. Primefac (talk) 13:46, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User Engwk engaged in an edit warring in the article Fonblanque, imposing his point of view about a French count title, and using orginal search to support it. He deletes sourced info on the page, including about another subject (the middle name of a Fonblanque family member, Sir John de Fonblanque Pennefather. Administrators help would be useful. Engwk first used the account Newloo. He seems to be the same person as Correcteur21, a banned used who stalked the French wikipedia on pages about French nobility. LuciusAniciusGallus (talk) 15:02, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Additional Information :
- On Talk page I explained to user LuciusAniciusGallus he needs to stop deleting a version which by neutrality indicated that there were no reliable sources for this French title of "count of Fonblanque" given by some English sources to this French family.
- I indicated that an English source cannot be considered as a reliable source for a French title of count in France and that a reliable specialized French source is required to provide this information.
- I indicated that French sources say "sieur de Fonblanque"[1]) that means lord of the manor and not "comte de Fonblanque".
- I indicated that if the French de Grenier de Fonblanque family had been titled count in France, there would be at least one French source who would give this information : There’s none.
I had asked LuciusAniciusGallus many times to stop using unreliable sources to report false information, but he prefers to ignore my arguments and he choices to create a Edit war.
Contrary to LuciusAniciusGallus’s false accusations, I have no connection with Newloo or a userr Correcteur21 (???) It is a poor defence on his part to try to justify an unacceptable behaviour (vandalism, Edit War and refusal to understand what is explained to him). Such behaviour is no acceptable and raises the question if LuciusAniciusGallus is not in a conflict of interest (member of the family?). --Engwk (talk) 16:25, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strange answer from user Engwk, denying to be the user Newloo, even if it's quite obvious, regarding the fact they both made interventions on the same very specific topics.
Furthermore, Engwk, as easily understood if viewing his actions on Fonblanque article, doesn't behave cooperatively, but instead tries to rule what info may or may not be used, refusing text from reliable sources. Could please an Administrator help this case ? I didn't touch this user last revert on the article, to make the problem easier to understand.
LuciusAniciusGallus, you must respect Wikipedia:Assume good faith rather than continue your accusations to justify your vandalism and your non respect of the the principle of providing reliable sources.
You intentionally use non reliable sources to report falses information about a title ( conflict of interest?)
We are talking about a French title that would have been awarded in France to a French family : so as I asked you to do : find a French reliable source that provides the information the de Grenier family was granted in France a title of "comte de Fonblanque" and we so we could discuss about that.
Ok, looking at these threads and the talk page, this doesn't seem to be going anywhere positive. So, here's what I did - I reverted the article back to a stable version - prior to these two's re-writes/edit warring. And have protected the page for 2 weeks. Any uninvolved admin is welcome to undo/reset/whatever the protection at their discretion. I chose protection at this point, over blocking these two for constant incivility, slow (and not so slow) motion edit warring, etc. I'll also be dropping a notice on each of their talk pages next. - jc3703:35, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
He systematically reverts changes I made, including style or syntax corrections. And even deleted links to other Wiki articles.
Instead of discussing his point of view, he tries to impose it, removing entire paragraphs. He tried to cover his attitude by including unilaterally the article in the anthroponomy category, which doesn't seem enough to cover this article scope, who covers large parts of British and military history.
As as previously indicated a few days ago LuciusAniciusGallus is engaged in an Edit war and refuse to reach an agreement in Talk page. He prefers to falsely accuse others of vandalism to justify his behaviour. This behaviour is not acceptable and must stop. Regards --Engwk (talk) 20:23, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Neither of you is vandalizing (stop throwing that word around, LuciusAniciusGallus, you've worn it threadbare), you are having a content dispute. Actually, you are well into the uninhibited bitch-slapping part of one. How about backing up to a version well before the current imbroglio broke out (I'd suggest this one) and then talking everything over before making a single edit? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:30, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I agree with the version suggested, would be a wise move to end this vicious circle.
I agree backing up to a version before the "imbroglio"but not this one because this one give a false filiation and a fake title. On this point LuciusAniciusGallus and I agree. The problem is about an irrelevant passage that LuciusAniciusGallus wants to add (see here). I propose backing up to the version of TU-nor 07:40, 3 April 2021 : [25] --Engwk (talk) 22:35, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To put an end to this Edit war : I agree with the last version ofLuciusAniciusGallus(21:32, 6 April 2021) who moved the irrelevant passage in notes. For me the disagreement is settled, but I strongly ask LuciusAniciusGallus to go -next time- through a discussion and an agreement in Talk page before any significant changes (not punctuation, spelling etc) rather than choosing to start a new Edit war. Regards --Engwk (talk) 22:35, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As explained on the Talk page, the disagreement is not settled. I just put, temporarily, the disputed passage in a note. The reason for this solution I found, was that you kept on deleting it, reverting every attempt to get it back. Even if its relevance is largely understandable in this article, as I explained many times.
I always gave arguments, as shown by the article history. You instead suppressed some content without answering it. You also resorted to personal attacks, at one time even complaining about being insulted, which never was the case.
@LuciusAniciusGallus, I maintain that this passage you wanted to add is totally irrelevant in this article. This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anthroponymy and gives a list of personalities who bear the name "Fonblanque" and not about this man "François de Grenier, sieur de Fonblanque" (totally unknown) and details of his life. You knew perfectly well that in case of disagreement, you had to go through a consensus in Talk page, but instead you engaged an endless Edit war and you wrongly accused me of "vandalism" to justify a point of view. Your argument "The passage considered, giving sourced details about a Fonblanques' ancestor and giving a good insight of gentlemen glassmakers lifes" is irrelevant (this article is not about Grenier de Fonblanques' ancestor and not about gentlemen glassmakers lifes). I agreed you put details about this unknown François de Grenier and his life in notes only to put an end to your circus and your Edit war. Now I suggest you move on and be more cooperative next time. Regard --Engwk (talk) 17:22, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Engwk/Newloo/Correcteur21, I don't think it is of any interest to go ahead on this page with this discussion. The Fonblanque Talkpage would be more relevant. I answered to you there.
There is an article about Matt Gaetz created on March 30 that has such an incendiary title that I don't even want to repeat it here because even that could be seen as a BLP violation. It has been submitted for AfD but I don't see any administrator participation there. I strongly suggest the article is exceedingly problematic and needs to be speedily deleted. The section on his BLP is sufficient at this time, IMO. soibangla (talk) 00:20, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If it's a BLP violation to link to AFDs for BLP-violating articles, a bunch of admins are in a whole lot of trouble. Here y'all go. (Without comment as to whether the article does in fact merit deletion.) -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi.00:55, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The original title was problematic but the current one doesn't qualify for G10 (the only speedy category which applies) as everything is sourced ("libel, legal threats, material intended purely to harass or intimidate a person or biographical material about a living person that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced"). Whether it should be a stand-alone article or part of Gaetz's bio is something for the AfD to determine. I suspect there will be an article about it at some point even if it may be slightly TOOSOON at the moment. Black Kite (talk)01:09, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see that you left the original title as a redirect. Should we keep that, or delete it as a BLP violation? IMO it is a violation; it assumes the truth of serious, currently unproven allegations. Can we speedy it, or should I take it to RfD? -- MelanieN (talk) 15:46, 3 April 2021 (UTC) @Fences and windows: Sorry, forgot to ping you. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:15, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I deleted redirect 2 and 3 because there were no links to them and they violated BLP. Less clear what to do with redirect 1 as there are between 60-70 pages that link to this page. LizRead!Talk!17:33, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Gah! Would that you had not done that! I've just fixed all of the robot-generated article alerts and quality assessment logs, and now you've gone and got more robots making links because of the RFD discussion. There are right now, until the robots cycle back and undo it, no incoming links to redirect 1 that are not because of the RFD discussion. I wonder whether deleting that redirect right now will stop the robots from re-linking to it. Uncle G (talk) 18:46, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've closed the RFD as an IAR speedy, deleted it (and removed the entry from all of the new article analysis lists). That should do it, I think. Black Kite (talk)20:11, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you to all involved for your attention to this. I was so focused on cleaning up after the AfD move (which took an hour) that I didn't think enough about the redirect following the article move. Sorry I left the job incomplete. Fences&Windows00:00, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If a robot has been undoing actions by good-faith human editors then there's surely something wrong with the robot, and it should be stopped from editing until it is sorted out? There seems to be far too much of the attitude that "a bot did it so it must be right" recently. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:41, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
These are the ones that keep all of the article alerts and "for deletion" lists around the place maintained. Having an entire "You blocked the maintenance robots and all of our WikiProject and Portal lists have stopped updating!" brouhaha seemed less preferable to manually fixing the logs and alerts, to follow the page move, and checking that nothing was left and there weren't genuine human-made links to the title. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 13:38, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Personal and active attack
Hi, I'm complaining to User:Курды - ослы that they sent me a picture of a donkey and made it look like my mother and father[26] and made me Personal attack and Persian language He has distorted me into a donkey and a terrorist![27] Let me tell you why, why? Because I am a Kurd. Please take care of the respected managers. Please, I ask the esteemed managers to take care and follow up. Ahrirrr(talk)13:50, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you DanCherek for closing this user account, if you can please restore and censor this user's changes on my talk page and all seven of this user's changes
I ask the managers to close their accounts endlessly, you as an ordinary person, when your family, region and race are insulted for no reason and you are called a terrorist and a donkey, you will not be upset or from the point of view of a manager all this disrespect and personal attack in one frame It can be ignored for you and you only close that account for a while?!
I blocked the account indefinitely. Nobody should have to put up with personal attacks like that, though I'm afraid they do happen from time to time (and sometimes much worse). --Yamla (talk) 14:11, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you to all of you who care about all races and races, sorry I got it wrong and thought the account was closed for a short time, thank you all dear managers. Ahrirrr(talk)14:23, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The global account seems to have been hidden or deleted. If it was hidden it hasn't worked here; I don't know if it's still possible for global accounts to be deleted. Peter James (talk) 14:08, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Since the users is indeffed on 3 wikis (for similar reasons, if Google Translate is correct), I requested a glock with name suppression two days ago, although as far as I can tell nothing has come of it yet - although CentralAuth doesn't seem to register the username, it's still visible and the mark-glocked script I'm using doesn't show it as locked. Giraffer(talk·contribs)09:04, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
31 Mar : IC picked up the stick again and returned to the SPI report with the "evidence" that one edit by Reiner Gavriel matched another edit also by Reiner Gavriel. This may have been a move in the conflict that resulted in the EW report.
This is no longer (if it ever was) a content issue, it's a behaviour problem. IrelandCork is incapable of WP:AGF toward Goddard2000, and just as incapable of ignoring them. Over two weeks sparring on the dramaboards is enough. The imposition of a 1 way IBAN on IrelandCork wrt Goddard2000 seems the least that can be done here. Cabayi (talk) 15:45, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, reported what I saw. Your diff shows it's not all one-way. Quite happy for a 2-way ban, but this drain on resources needs to be curtailed somehow. Cabayi (talk) 17:10, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Cabayi, Uncle G I added IrelandCork to the investigation report after he updated his report against me with more diffs. I didn't even include him in the original report, you can check the edits. Also the "acting like a baby" comment was long ago, other admins already talked to me and warned me not to talk like that. I apologized for getting too aggressive and from that on i stopped. I did my best to ignore Irelandcork after this despite his accusations against me and reports after he "dropped the stick" in his previous report. Goddard2000 (talk) 17:14, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Cabayi Two-way ban? Only thing i did after we had a truce was add Irelandcork to the report i made long time ago AFTER he accused me of being Lamberd, Gavriel again and making several new edits despite agreeing to stop in the previous report. Maybe you want to check out these comments made by both Krackduck and Irelandcork? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Uchar-hadji
"Congrats on making a laughing stock out of admins here," -Krackduck
"You may be proud with your mastery in deception of admins here" -Irelandcork
Again this was after they allegedly "stopped" and "dropped the stick", i didn't even report them for these comments because i wanted to be done with them but since you are talking about banning me i feel like i have to say something. Goddard2000 (talk) 17:19, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to take this chance and show the moderators a compilation of IrelandCork attacking me/other users or accusing me/other users.
If they've managed to cause this many problems with only a couple hundred edits under their belt, maybe neither is capable of working in a collaborative project. Dennis Brown - 2¢01:38, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I gathered names from some recent AN/ANI reports, see the following table. I have evidence suggesting IrelandCork is Arsenekoumyk but I would prefer to email that to anyone doing a CU. Johnuniq (talk) 07:15, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Previously, Solavirum was blocked for two weeks on 7 March 2021 and was given a warning by the topic ban enforcer El C not to test WP:BROADLY ("Don't even mention the topic area in any way, whatsoever."). Within a week of the block ending, Solavirum violated the topic ban again. --Steverci (talk) 16:19, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A Seljuk prince in Syria is not related to WikiProject Armenia or WikiProject Azerbaijan. I don't know how expanding an article about Turkey and Syria is violation of the topic ban. You can ask about it to more experienced editors in the subject like HistoryofIran and Cplakidas. With this rate, I'm not going to be able to edit any article in Wikipedia. Your application is basically WP:WITCHHUNT. --► Sincerely: Solavirum16:45, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(talk page watcher) I see nothing in the diffs other than a commendable expansion of well-researched, neutral history. The edit does indeed include a tangential passing mention of a historical Armenian prince, but I think the context of the mention is important here. It's neutral, relevant and supported by the source; the subject of the expansion is clearly outside their topic ban, yet relevant enough to Solavirum's interest in regional history that they're willing to dedicate their time to write about it. With an edit this constructive, I'd encourage the reviewing admin to be generous and fair-minded. I can see how a blanket ban on using the word Armenian in all historical contexts, even when the subject is clearly not Armenia and Armenia is only being touched upon in the briefest contextual manner, could be obstructive to their efforts to contribute to other regional topics. Given that the edit is productive and in clear good faith (rather than an attempt to "nibble round the edges", which is what WP:BROADLY is designed to prevent), I'd be inclined to allow Solavirum to mention Armenia in a contextual manner on articles related to medieval history, provided that they strictly avoid directly discussing Armenia or Armenians themselves. BROADLY has a provision for determining "whether or not a particular edit violates a sanction ... on a case-by-case basis" after all. As an aside, I don't think the comparison with Solavirum's previous violation is accurate here, as that incident was a blatant violation in which they directly discussed a source related to the contemporary Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict on my talk page. Jr8825 • Talk17:41, 3 April 2021 (UTC) (Non-administrator comment)[reply]
Without digging too deeply, and taking the content of this discussion at face value, I would say that a "tangential passing mention of a historical Armenian prince" is indeed a violation, but likely an innocent one so I'm not inclined to slam down the ban hammer. "Broadly construed" means just that, and while sometimes these tangential edits go unnoticed, when they are noticed, we don't have a choice but to remind the editor that this really needs to be avoided. I understand this can be frustrating, but I wouldn't hold this one set of diffs against you in a future request to lift the restriction. As a guide, if there is any question that an edit might breach the topic ban, it is best to avoid it. Dennis Brown - 2¢11:28, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was trying to use IABot to add archives to a page, and I kept getting the same error message: Analysis error: blocked: You have been blocked from editing. I don't know where this came from, and I am assuming it's a bug as I haven't been blocked. Maybe I've been blocked from using the bot? If someone could clarify what this means, that would be great. Thanks! Update: Just to update, the bug is still there. D🐰ggy54321(the Easter bunny has been summoned...)16:47, 3 April 2021 (UTC) (updated 23:32, 3 April 2021 (UTC)) (please ping on reply)[reply]
@Doggy54321, this has also happened to me but I am able to use it after a few hours. You can drop by my talk page and ask me to run the bot on any page if you want. I will try to respond as quickly as I can. Cheers. EN-Jungwon10:57, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Translation: An editor not using an account, and who thus cannot create content pages, comes along as 81.178.203.235 (talk·contribs) and tries to add a bunch of articles, all of which already say that the subjects got this award, by its old or new names, to a new category. Editors blanket revert because the category page does not exist. The editor without an account comes back as 213.205.242.124 (talk·contribs), and in one edit summary asks why the reverting editors with accounts do not just create the category page, then. It would indeed be akin to Category:Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording. Xe is blanket reverted again, and comes to the administrators' noticeboard. Administrators are then told that this is hoaxery. We have constructed a quite byzantine way of doing things for editors without accounts, haven't we? Uncle G (talk) 23:04, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've had this same argument before and lost. I really don't get it. There's a general principle that you shouldn't revert an edit just for being imperfect. For instance, if a user adds a readable, well-sourced paragraph, you don't get to revert them just because it needs copy-editing. Hell, our policies even say you can't speedy an article for being written in another language. But apparently categories are exempt from this principle, and it's seen as acceptable to revert a constructive edit because it put red text in the box where there's only supposed to be blue text, when one could just turn that red text blue oneself. -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi.09:54, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This seems more like unfortunate confusion than any major problem with the English Wikipedia to me. Yeah sure, the category should exist. But when an IP adds a bunch of articles to a red category, and the article does not mention that award anywhere, it's easy to see why it was reverted. And while I didn't check, I'm fairly sure that the majority by far of our articles didn't mention the Immersive Audio award because it was only awarded for 2 years, whereas it was 14 years under the old name which is likely all those articles mentioned. Should those reverted have searched for any grammy award and then checked out the wikilink? Maybe. Should they have just searched for an award by that name? Maybe. But it's easy to see why someone would just search for "immersive" in one or two articles where the category was added, think it was bullshit since the article didn't mention that and revert them all. Even someone somewhat familiar with all the grammy awards may have never heard of the change from 2019 and at least to me, even if I had heard of the surround award, I wouldn't necessarily think maybe they renamed that when I read "immersive audio" without thinking carefully. And although I mentioned IP, frankly I think the same would often have happened if the editor didn't recognise the other editor or especially if they had limited history. Maybe the biggest issue was more precise edit summaries and messages rather than templates would have been bigger. Rather than saying it was a test edit or a generic comment on how to cat or simply saying it's red link, something like "this category doesn't exist because the award doesn't exist" would have been clearer and maybe helped the IP realise what the problem was so they could explain why there was confusion i.e. the award does exist but was called something else then. (Although should we actually add those surround articles to the immersive cat? This is the sort of thing where to me it seems like it might be better to add the surround article to a surround cat and only add 2019 and onwards articles to the immersive cat.) Nil Einne (talk) 19:24, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Uncle G: What nonsense? Who said it was mentioned in no article? I specifically said 'and the article does not mention that award anywhere, it's easy to see why it was reverted. And while I didn't check, I'm fairly sure that the majority by far of our articles didn't mention the Immersive Audio award because it was only awarded for 2 years, whereas it was 14 years under the old name which is likely all those articles mentioned. You've highlighted one article. So let's look at the actual stats here.
The first article modified, Brothers in Arms (album)said "immersive Latin American imagery". That's the only usage of the word immersive. It does mention the surround award, but as I mentioned above, it's easy to see why people wouldn't associate this award with the immersive album award or even find it if they were just doing a cursory search to see whether the edit could be constructive. The second article Genius Loves Company[31] and third article Morph the Cat[32] no mention of the word immersive. (I could repeat my points on the surround award for a third time, but it seems unnecessary.) The fourth article modified, Beyoncé (album)said "She highlighted the immersive experience of Michael Jackson's Thriller (1982)" and in a quite I miss that immersive experience, but again no mention of the immersive award. The fifth article modified, Love (Beatles album)[33], sixth article Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs[34] and seventh article Amused to Death[35] again all no mention of immersive. It's only when we get to the eight article Early Americans[36] and ninth article [37]Eye in the Sky (album) that we get the two articles which did mention that specific award title, those two years where it was actually awarded under that title.
While I'll admit, the numbers are less skewed than I expected, in big part because we don't apparently have articles on a bunch of these albums, by my definition 7 out of 9 or 77.8% is still a "majority by far". For example, it's more than a supermajority in the majority of voting systems I'm fairly sure.
So no I stick by my point, actually even more strongly now that I think about it more. While it may have been good if editors had just searched the article for any mention of grammy awards and then checked out the surround award article, or searched for the award by name in general; it's entirely reasonable they're not going to. If an editor adds a bunch of articles to a non existent category called about an immersive album grammy award, it's entirely reasonable an editor would check out 2 or 3 articles, see zero mention of an award with this title in the article (probably via a search for immersive since it's an obvious rare word) think not sure what this editor is doing but it's a red link cat plus there is no mention of this in the article, and revert.
While we expect those reverting recent changes to pay a bit of attention to see if the edit may be constructive, it's always very tricky about how much time people should spend. And when the award has such a unique title it's fairly reasonable that the amount of time would simply be searching for this fairly unique title in the article and reverting when there is no mention. And personally, I think 2 or 3 is enough before mass reverting but as my stats prove, it's actually easily possible that an editor could have made an effort in the first seven articles, then have given up by the time of the eight and ninth and not bother. If you check every single article when you're reverting an editor who has made the same edit to nine articles, the first seven of which seem obviously wrong, good on you I guess but I'm not going to say editors need to do that. It's unreasonable.
As I said, the one area where it seems to me we could obviously improve is communication, to better explain to the IP why you're reverting them. This seems to me what we should be discussing. Instead we're stupidly discussing whether editors should have found and realised that maybe the award in the article called "Best Surround Sound Album" was renamed to "Best Immersive Audio Album" when coming across a red flag a series of edits as the immersive audio album isn't mentioned and the cat is red; and whether after failing to find any mention of an award with the unique title Best Immersive Audio Album in the first seven articles, they should have kept looking in the eight and ninth articles.
I should perhaps mention that I'm concentrating on User:Tbhotch here as it seems fairly obvious from their hoax comment above that what happening is something along what I outlined. They looked in at least one, probably more than one of those articles, found the IP had added a red link cat, found zero mention of an award with that title in those articles they looked at, so reverted all thinking that the award clearly didn't exist since surely someone would have added it by now if it did. I admit, personally once the IP actually made it here, I would have searched for the award just to make double sure. Or maybe said something like, please create the article Grammy Award for Best Immersive Audio Album first, then we can discuss a category. And once I previewed or submitted and realised, oh fuck, there really is an award called that the IP was sort of right, apologised and taken effort to correct the problem. But meh, you can see from comments that I do probably but a lot more time into them than others so whatever. It's AN, Tbhotch was wrong, others corrected them.
For User:Binksternet their comments are less clear. If they really only reverted because the category doesn't exist without considering whether it should exist, okay a rap on the knuckles for them. However if they did the same thing as Tbhotch then yeah nah, no rap. And because they could have easily have done the same thing, it's more of a reminder rap than 'you dang screwed up in a series way' rap.
People actively working against those people who are building articles by treating them as vandals, is not right, however fine one chops it. There's also a fundamental flaw, there. Brothers in Armsmentions and hyperlinks to the award page at the beginning of its second paragraph, as do all of the other articles (in various places); and the reason given in Special:Diff/1015778825 (and below) is based upon wanting to impose rules instead of helping people who cannot comply with the rules because MediaWiki doesn't let them.
Honestly, too few people are seeing things from the point of view of other people who do not have accounts, or remembering what it was like for all of us once. And this is making a terrible experience for people without accounts. It's not right to be putting people in this Kafkaesque world where they cannot fix or improve things because they have to fight against a widespread culture of robotically applying rules, always reverting, and not thinking "How I could collaboratively help instead?". Moreover, this goes equally for a recent case I saw (not to get into the specifics for obvious reasons) where multiple people reverted an article subject erasing a clearly false statement (if one read the source) from the article and even warning the article subject about a conflict of interest and saying that it was the rules that the content stays in the article. Indeed, the article subject's interest there actually aligned precisely with ours, having an accurate encyclopaedia, and didn't conflict at all.
Not sure why this award would be different to any other award. Seems like it was just overlooked. It would be quicker just to create the thing than revert a dozen other edits...
It's the same for both of these related categories
Also, yes, what's with people making it a career of having thousands of reverts in their history? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.178.203.235 (talk)
I performed a bunch of reverts on this issue, and I would just like to say that I was considering only one thing: WP:REDNO, an editing guideline. Categories should exist before they are added to articles. That's it, nothing more complicated. I didn't bother checking to see if the notional category did or did not fit the topic – I just saw the red and reverted. Binksternet (talk) 03:32, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Binksternet: in that case, I do agree with Uncle G and Tamzin when it comes to your edits as I implied above. Yes the cat needs to exist. But the IP can't create it. So effectively you're asking them to go somewhere else to get (probably) someone else to create it, for something which seemingly should clearly exist if the award exists. It would be easier for everyone involved to apply a bit of common sense and if the category should clear exist, rather than reverting nine times or whatever, just create the category so you're not forcing everyone to put in a lot more work. (While the IP may not have specifically asked for the cat to be created the first time around, it seems reasonable to interpret adding articles to a non-existent category as request for creation.)
I mean IMO even creating a completely blank category with no description is good enough, the IP or someone else could fix it then. Note that plenty of us don't do such stuff enough to use automated tools. It probably took me about 3-5 minutes to re-add the article to 8 categories. Since it was the most recent edit I think I could have used twinkle more easily if I wanted to, and added an edit summary however the IP clearly can't.
As I also said above, the Tbhotch case shows even if you had put in a little work, it's easy to come to the wrong conclusion and think the category shouldn't exist since there's probably no such award so meh, in this case it's a bit of a wash. But in other cases, maybe no so much. It's one thing to recommend an order to be followed. It's another to waste time forcing stuff to be repeated just because the order wasn't followed when it serves no real purpose.
If this was a case where it was extremely questionable if the category should exist, so as an inexperienced categoriser you're not sure and not willing to create it then fine, but it seems to be very far from that considering I have very little involvement in the field and I was fairly confident the category should exist. (My only question was whether the other articles should be in the immersive cat or a separate surround one. But that's a separate issue from the red link one as if anyone had created the cat it wouldn't be a red link.)
Categories make me crazy, and I touch them as little as possible. (I cannot agree with a system that categorizes a dual-attribute thing as "Thing with X and Y" but the thing will not be found in the categories of "Thing with X" or "Thing with Y", even though the thing plainly has X, and it plainly has Y. I would rather see a great deal of redundancy so that each category page is a complete list.) All that to say I would rather not create a new category. Binksternet (talk) 05:46, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
81, I created both categories. Me and another editor populated the immersive audio album cat. For the engineered album one, maybe the the other editor or someone else will. Alternatively IMO you should feel free to populate it. Nil Einne (talk) 03:51, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much. I'll populate the engineered one.
On that last point, I remember seeing s type of link previously that gave the intersection of two categories. I believe that should be further developed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.178.203.235 (talk • contribs)
Off-Wikipedia canvassing on Horn of Africa topics
There appears to be active off-Wikipedia recruitment and canvassing to push ethnic POV on Nur ibn Mujahid. This started following a discussion of fringe additions on Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Nur_ibn_Mujahid, to which editors came to consensus of said additions being undue minority views, and thus removed from the article. This was promptly followed by off-wiki canvassing on Somali forums: [38][39], which resulted in two fresh single-purpose accounts registering to brute-force minority POV. Editor CSI99283 registered within hours of canvassing and proceeded to edit war [40], whilst editor Sade Tan registered shortly after and proceeded to votestack on every single discussion involving CSI99283, including on CSI99283's own talk page [41].
Off-wiki canvassing on this specific Somali forum has been done previously by long-term vandal Middayexpress [42]. Given the Horn of Africa project is currently under standard discretionary sanctions, I am hoping something can be done about this clear case of canvassing and possible SOCK/MEAT. --Kzl55 (talk) 10:52, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is unacceptable. First of all, that is an absolutely wild allegation made in bad faith, simple because you didn't like our propsals. I used to frequent the Nur ibn Mujahid article for a long time before I ever chose to register. I never accused you of cheating or doing something questionable nor did I ever force my opinion on anyone else. These are discussions going on these boards and I kept it there. If I wanted to force it, these discussions might not even be happening. Someone could have forced edit the article, but that's not happening is it? Unacceptable allegations. Sade Tan (talk) 11:17, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)I didn't follow edits to the article itself other than initially to see what the edits were about, but I read the FTN thread. Just by what was going on there I also suspected sockpuppetry, but then noticed that one editor, CSI99283 was apparently less experienced (canvassed is indeed likely). If I understand, Sade Tan would be 86.18.37.245 who then registered (and stopped IP editing)? —PaleoNeonate – 11:28, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Friendly reminder to any admins reading this that the Horn of Africa is a recently-authorized DS area (and this is exactly the kind of thing those DS were put in place for), so DS-based protection is fair game. SubjectiveNotabilitya GN franchise (talk to the boss) 15:22, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I literally signed on from my phone.
I still don't know what I did was wrong? I didn't edit any articles. Was just having a normal discussion giving an alternative point of view. Is that allowed over here? If it isn't I'll be glad to leave forever. Sade Tan (talk) 11:50, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Disruptive editing takes many forms and is not limited to editing articles, attempting to game consensus is disruptive. Evidence presented above demonstrates off-wikipedia canvassing on part of CSI99283 and yourself. Within minutes of registration, you methodically responded in support of CSI99283 across three separate discussions, including their own talk page (which you had no way of knowing about) as well as Wikipedia:Fringe_theories[43], [44], [45], not the typical behaviour of new good-faith editors. --Kzl55 (talk) 12:10, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Best bet is going to be ECP of any pages that are the subject of canvassing (again, under DS) - Nur ibn Mujahid is already ECP'd as of a few days ago, got any others? GeneralNotability (talk) 01:27, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So far it seems to be confined to that one article, but given that canvassing took place on the same site used previously by Middayexpress there may be more single purpose accounts/sleepers. I'll report any further instances I come across. Many thanks GN. --Kzl55 (talk) 17:42, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Request for an article about Ogedengbe Agbogungboro
The title is blacklisted because of the years-long promotional efforts of the Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Vwegba4real sockfarm to promote a Nigerian pastor with a similar name, with many minor spelling variations to evade page-level restrictions. Algomancer, I can't remove the blacklist entry, but if you can start your article as a WP:DRAFT or as a subpage in your user space, and then let me know where it is, I can move it to the correct title and you can work on it freely. The blacklist only prevents creating the page, not editing it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:04, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Algomancer, the title itself is not the WP:COMMONNAME (at least this what it seems like). There's a scholarly article about the subject titled Ogedengbe of Ilesha: an Introductory Note (as mentioned by J.D.Y. Peel). "Ogedengbe Agbógun Gbórò" is the naming variation used by BBC Yoruba. There are some WP:RS concerning the subject, so it can be deemed notable enough. If you want, I can expand a draft article in my sandbox. --► Sincerely: Solavirum18:33, 4 April 2021 (UTC) (Non-administrator comment)[reply]
Actually, my mistake, the blacklist prevents page creation in any namespace, so you'll need an admin to create the page as a draft or userspace subpage anyway. Let me know where you want it and I'll be happy to create it for you, I just don't want to create empty pages in the article namespace. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:02, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nationalistic vandalism, pushing of the Belarusian propaganda to the article of Pahonia
Hello, I have encountered a nationalistic vandalism, pushing of the Belarusian propaganda in the article of Pahonia as user Kazimier Lachnovič persistently removes content about the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Lithuania from this article, and falsely tries to prove that Pahonia is only the coat of arms of Belarus (e.g. this edit clearly shows his nationalistic vandalism). I tried to structure this article in a neutral form, which uses the historical coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as the primary illustration and included the Lithuanian, Belarusian and Pogon Ruska coat of arms as its other versions (see this edit of mine), however Kazimier Lachnovič systematically started an edit war with me and pushed the Belarusian variant as the primary illustration (e.g. see this edit of him and pay attention to his explanation of this edit "The Pahonia is Belarusian CoA, the Lietuvan (modern Lithuanian) version is already mentioned and has a separate article").
For those Wikipedians who are not familiar with the coat of arms of Lithuania here is a short explanation in order to easier understand the issue: the Lithuanian coat of arms had a few different names throughout its history, which includes Vytis and Waikymas in the Lithuanian language, however in the Polish and Ruthenian languages it was called as Pogonia, Pogończyk, Pogoń, Pohonia and there already is an extensive article of the coat of arms of Lithuania which analyzes this question from the beginning to the modern times. On the other hand, there are articles of the National emblem of Belarus and National symbols of Belarus which describes the Belarusian coat of arms and also includes the short history of the Belarusian variant of this Lithuanian coat of arms.
As a result, it was objectively and reasonably proposed by user Itzhak Rosenberg (see this discussion here) that the article of Pahonia should be merged into the article of the coat of arms of Lithuania as it is nothing else than one of the names of this Lithuanian coat of arms (e.g. Lithuanian name of this coat of arms – Vytis is a redirect page since 2004). His initiative received the majority support of non-Belarusians, of whom some desperately tries to steal the entire history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and spreads propaganda that its entire history is Belarusian only (crazy idea, which is part of the flawed nation-building of Belarus (White Ruthenia), and reminds the situation when North Macedonia attempted to steal the entire history of Kingdom of Macedonia from the Greeks). The discussion of this merging began on 14 May 2020, so its been almost an entire year already and we finally must take actions to solve it because this pushing of propaganda intensifies every day.
By the way, there was a referendum regarding this Lithuanian coat of arms usage in Belarus (see the article of the 1995 Belarusian referendum) and 78.6% of the Belarusians said that it should be removed (as it shortly was in use since 1991, after the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1990), while only 21.4% supported this Lithuanian coat of arms, so even the majority of the Belarusians clearly do not support its usage as the national coat of arms.
On the contrary, the Pahonia/Pogonia/Pogoń/Vytis/Waikymas coat of arms was accepted in the Republic of Lithuania immediately by the majority of the Lithuanians and there were no concerns regarding it nor in the interwar period, nor in 1990, so it is clear who are the more visible inheritors of this coat of arms. If any Polish (maybe Ukrainian as well) editors of Wikipedia will participate in this discussion, I am pretty sure that they will testify that they call the Republic of Lithuania coat of arms as Pahonia/Pogonia/Pogoń as already in 1551 Polish chronicler Marcin Bielski named the Lithuanian coat of arms as Pogonia, Pogoń, so it is a complete non-sense to separate the name Pahonia from the Republic of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Whatsoever, I see absolutely no problems with the usage of word Pahonia/Pogonia/Pogoń in the articles of the National emblem of Belarus and the National symbols of Belarus to describe these 5-6 years when it was the official coat of arms of Belarus, however Belarus (White Ruthenia) clearly is not the primary inheritor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania history and its coat of arms as this medieval state was created by pagan Lithuanians, not by Orthodox Belarusians (every reliable non-Belarusian/non-Russian source will confirm this fact, so you can check it yourself).
Finally, the 1991–1995 variant of the Belarusian Pahonia is nothing else than a copy-paste from the Marcin Bielski's 1567 version of the coat of arms of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which he drawn in a book Kronika Polska (Chronicle of Poland), see this and this, so it is not a Belarusian, but a Polish design. -- Pofka (talk) 19:12, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Kazimier Lachnovič is a highly problematic user who consistently pushes Belarusian nationalistic POV (including pushing their fringe Belarusian Latin alphabet which would, in particular, give Miensk for Minsk). They have blocked here for this. Recently on Commons I came in collision with them, when they gave a file an offensive name, and they accused me in Nazism (and, as expected, they got away with this even without warning, and duly moved the file back to the offensive name). I have never seen them listening to any arguments. The sooner they get long-term blocked here the better for our project.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:22, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just some information about User:Ymblanter: 1) definite prejudge to Belarusian language (like [46] while it is easy to find in w:en:Languages of Belarus that the statement about 95% of the population with the native Russian has nothing in common with the reality); 2) insulting the community of Belarusian Wikipedia (be-tarask is a project usurped by a group of ultra-nationalists[47]); 3) insulting the Belarusian language by comparing with Pidgin as well as Belarusian scientist by comparing them to KKK members ([48]); 4) the statement about the offensive name is not true, the offensiveness of the mentioned Belarusian scientific term in Belarusian language was never proved by the user. --Kazimier Lachnovič (talk) 20:00, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I said what I wanted to say. All contribution of this user is nationalistic POV pushing. They are not really interested in anything else. And btw it is not me who is the subject of this thread.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:22, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And I would like to point out for the reasonable users that the statement All contribution of this user is nationalistic POV pushing is just another unproved lie. --Kazimier Lachnovič (talk) 20:33, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not a good tactic. It worked on Commons, which is an absolutely disfunctional community as far as long-term users are concerned; I do expect the English Wikipedia community to be indeed more reasonable. You better explain how your contributions here are not nationalistic POV pushing. We have enough references in this thread showing they are.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:41, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, you haven't provided any sound reference based on Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Just your personal opinion, which has nothing in common with the reality like your previous statement about "Russian is still the mothertongue of 95% of the population of Belarus". --Kazimier Lachnovič (talk) 21:15, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously there are no Wikipedia:Reliable sources saying that User:Kazimier Lachnovič pushed nationalistic Belarusian POV on various Wikimedia projects. For a simple reason that reliable sources do not give a fuck about what happens on Wikipedia. One or two administrators to have a look at your contribution, or indeed to read this thread, would be sufficient. I am unfortunately involved because of your personal attacks on me here and on Commons, otherwise you have been already blocked indef.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:29, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously the definition of someone contribution as nationalistic Belarusian POV should be based on the Wikipedia:Reliable sources not on someone personal opinion that this contribution is nationalistic Belarusian just because someone doesn't like reliable sources in Belarusian language. And you are the one who is haunting me and looks like trying to attack me personally. --Kazimier Lachnovič (talk) 21:37, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Haunting? Really? Are you planning to apologize to me for the accusation in Nazism? Or may be you want to see reliable sources showing that I am not a Nazi first?--Ymblanter (talk) 21:47, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ymblanter:@Kazimier Lachnovič:Here are some of the finest examples of Kazimier Lachnovič's nationalistic POV pushing: check these edits of him here, here, and here. This nationalistic-propagandic attack of his began before any defensive stances of the Lithuanian Wikipedians. -- Pofka (talk) 11:16, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not true. Actually, you was informed here (revert, based on the reason provided in the file talk, main article for the history of Belarusian CoA) and here (Pushing the non-consensual edit + rejection of discussion on the talk page, the page protection will be requested). I would also like to point out for the reasonable users that the initiator is the one who push chauvinistic propaganda [49] (The Belarusians destiny from the beginning was to serve the foreigners <...> [you] still kneeing in front of Russia, not able to establish a sovereign country <...> Belarusian lands constantly were a land-locked colony of foreign powers). --Kazimier Lachnovič (talk) 21:15, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Kazimier Lachnovič: Your newly created discussion was nothing else than an attempt to extend this question for another year or two. As I already noted, this question was discussed here and was opposed only by the Belarusian nationalistic propagandists like you and others who uploads pseudo-historical maps (see this discussion here) where Lithuania proper is presented as a historical region of Belarus (which is a pure lie, propaganda, not accepted by anyone outside of Belarus and maybe parts of Russia, therefore this illustration was nominated for deletion). Quote of mine you presented here was a response to your chauvinistic-propagandic statements in which you called the Lithuanians as "Samogitian chauvinistic rubbish" (see these edits: here, here, and here) and it was based on the historical facts as Belarus was under the influence of foreign powers since the very, very early days (and undoubtedly still is). It is not an insult to call the British India as a colony of the British Empire or African countries as colonies of the Europeans as long as it is based on historical facts. Same with Belarus which was under the influence of Lithuania until 1795. The Lithuanians are the reason Belarus exists as of now as otherwise you would have probably ended up in the same way as Principality of Smolensk, which Lithuania failed to hold on to constantly due to the Muscovites invasions, so calling us as "rubbish" is a pure disrespect. After 200 years of the Russian rule, the sovereignty of the Belarusian nation and the language usage was almost completely annihilated and it is the opposite variant of the Lithuanian rule. -- Pofka (talk) 10:44, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Readability improved by the insertion of paragraphs.
You'be got that backwards. Paragraph breaks make long amounts of text more easily readable and allow for "easier development of discussion." Walls-o'text makes for eyes glazing over. Use logical paragraph breaks, please, here, and elsewhere in life -- unless you're writing a stylistic masterpiece that will keep the reader's attention in spite of no visual rests. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:49, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Beyond My Ken: I just now structured my initial report into paragraphs. I use paragraphs every time I edit Wikipedia, but I was not used to this reporting. Thanks for advices. -- Pofka (talk) 15:18, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Providing additional information about how Kazimier Lachnovič is pushing nationalistic POV in Wikipedia/Wikimedia. Just check out his Wikimedia Commons user page, which has a text in Belarusian: "! ВАЖНАЯ ІНФАРМАЦЫЯ ! Пры выкарыстаньні загружаных мною выяваў вельмі прашу спасылацца не на абстрактавую Вікімэдыю (WIKIMEDIA.ORG) або Вікіпэдыю (WIKIPEDIA.ORG), а на Беларускую Вікіпэдыю клясычным правапісам (BE-TARASK.WIKIPEDIA.ORG). Такім чынам вы дапаможаце папулярызаваць адзіную вольную энцыкляпэдыю, дзе нашчадкі гістарычных ліцьвінаў — беларусы — могуць вольна ўжываць свае традыцыйныя гістарычныя непалітызаваныя назвы (не спаскуджаныя расейскімі ўладамі дзеля маскалізацыі і калянізацыі Беларусі) і распрацаваны беларусамі для беларусаў свой традыцыйны клясычны правапіс (шырэй — норму беларускай мовы) без якіх-кольвек гвалтоўных сталінскіх палітычных перакручваньняў-спаскуджваньняў дзеля штучнага набліжэньня да расейскай мовы з мэтай далейшага зьнішчэньня беларускай мовы і асыміляцыі беларусаў".
I do not read in Belarusian myself, however the Google translate also quite well displays his nationalistic POV pushing as this text translates as: "!! IMPORTANT INFORMATION! When using the images I have uploaded, please refer not to the abstract Wikimedia (WIKIMEDIA.ORG) or Wikipedia (WIKIPEDIA.ORG), but to the Belarusian Wikipedia with the classic spelling (BE-TARASK.WIKIPEDIA.ORG). In this way you will help popularize a single free encyclopedia, where the descendants of historical Lithuanians - Belarusians - can freely use their traditional historical non-politicized names (not distorted by the Russian authorities for masculinization and colonization of Belarus) and developed by Belarusians for Belarusians their traditional classical orthography. ) without any violent Stalinist political distortions for the purpose of artificially approaching the Russian language in order to further destroy the Belarusian language and assimilate Belarusians". Pay attention to the line "where the descendants of historical Lithuanians - Belarusians - can freely use..." as it repeats these Belarusian chauvinistic-propagandic statements he spreads in the English Wikipedia and elsewhere which claims that the modern Lithuanians are Samogitians.
I repeat: check sources from your own country about Lithuania and you will realize that such statements are a pure propaganda, which cannot be tolerated in Wikipedia as it violates the Wikipedia:Here to build an encyclopedia rule. The Samogitians originates from the Duchy of Samogitia and there currently are about 0,5 million Samogitians in Lithuania, so they represent only 1/6 or 1/5 of the population of the modern Lithuanians, living in the Republic of Lithuania (and even less if we include 2,5 million of Lithuanians living abroad - the Lithuanian diaspora). -- Pofka (talk) 14:58, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So basically you left here and elsewhere a bunch of personal attacks and do not have time to be responsible. Perfectly in line with your general behavior.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:26, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think that first saying "You are a Nazi" and then, when being challenged, to respond "I do not have time discussion discussing with Nazis you, bye" is an acceptable behavior. Even if you called me a Nazi on one Wikimedia project and got challenged on another project.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:58, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A passing comment: this report fails on a number of important respects. It's too long. It presupposes reviewers would view evidence which the OP maintains is "clear," erm, clearly. I suppose it's clear to them (and Ymblanter and possibly Kazimier Lachnovič), but otherwise presupposing such familiarity for a subject of relative obscurity (in Anglo-American culture, etc.) is very much an unrealistic expectation. Finally, the egregious and the recent do not really seem to meet in the overall diff evidence. There's some egregious diffs presented, but they're from a June 19 conversation. Then, there are recent diffs, but they do not appear to be that egregious in nature. Whatever fault these represent (ethno-national POV pushing-wise), was something I wasn't able to immediately parse. Possibly, there are reviewers of this board who would be able to peer deeper into this — that is, without too much study into what the mainstream and scholarly consensus is for this matter (matters?). Lastly, Ymblanter: you keep saying that Kazimier Lachnovič called you a "Nazi," but have provided no diff evidence to support that claim. If it's on a Wikimedia project, there should be diffs, no? Just so a reviewer can get a sense of what was said, the context, etc. [For fun, no paragraph breaks!]El_C11:19, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A quick answer: This is the Nazi diff, this was their response in the same thread when challenged: [50]. Both diffs are on Commons. Now, here they made in total 727 edits, and a great deal of these of these are file renames on Commons, so obviously there are not so many ecent edits. However, I do not see many good recent edits. Essentially, they edit-warred with the topic stater at Pahonia, starting from here, and made, if I count correctly, six reverts in two days, which is the continuation of this discussion, which featured gems like this (this one is from a month ago). My conclusion is that they are only here to push pro-Belarusian POV (their idea, which they talked about multiple times, is that only Belarusian Tarashkevitsa, which is not in use in Belarus, is a "true" language, and Belarusian which is in use in Belarus and which has a separate Wikipedia is contaminated by Russian and is not a true Belarusian). --Ymblanter (talk) 15:59, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My assessment:Ymblanter, thanks, but a diff for I do not have time discussion with Nazis, bye is what I really was after. Regardless, Kazimier Lachnovič, my impression is that you are engaged in promoting some sort of ethno-national supremacism and, worse yet, doing so using inflammatory rhetoric and personal attacks. Also, you repeatedly quote WP:5P above as some sort of a defense for some reason, but is of course far too vague to to be of any real use for our immediate purposes here, in any substantive sense, at least.
Anyway, I'll give you a day or so to respond, but at the moment, I'm leaning toward sanctions of some sort, up to and including an indefinite block. Still, by all means, feel free to try to explain your position better — specifically, by addressing Ymblanter's points in his comment directly above this one. Needless to say, I urge brevity on the part of any and all participants. El_C16:43, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
El_C, I'm not engaged in promoting any sort of ethno-national supremacism. Could you please give any exact quote of mine that make you think in such way? I would also like to notice that the conflict with User:Ymblanter started from his abusing of Wikimedia Commons guidelines and his attempts to censor Belarusian language based on Russian and English languages which is a real manifestation of ethno-national supremacism. I would also like to notice that my position find a support from one of non-engaged in the conflict Wikimedia Commons administrator [51], who recognized that User:Ymblanter is actually the one who is highly problematic. --Kazimier Lachnovič (talk) 20:02, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I quoted WP:5P because these are the fundamental principles of Wikipedia. According to the fourth pillar Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility. And I believe that tolerating of such obvious (not supposed) direct personal attacks [52][53] and dirty language [54] now and here (not in some other project with other background) coming from the administrator is really shameful for the English Wikipedia that is positioned as an example for other local communities. --Kazimier Lachnovič (talk) 20:49, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, indeed, they did not say this literally. I have striken out the Nazis above and replaced by you - this is what they are saying in this very thread.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:47, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Eep, Ymblanter, that's a serious misquote... Well, at least it's corrected now. But it could have gone unchallenged and accepted as true by many reviewers who wouldn't have bothered to ask for the evidence. This is why serious allegations require proof in the form of diff evidence as a matter of course. I don't like quotes of a serious nature not be accompanied by diffs. It's just not on. El_C16:58, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I provided above the links to all the threads where these quotes are found, but indeed I should have been more careful with quotes and diffs. It is not like I am called a Nazi every day - and it does not really help that I have some Jewish ancestry.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:27, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@El C: The main reason why I reported Kazimier Lechnovič here was that he was fighting an edit war with me and was pushing propaganda into the article of Pahonia as he presented it as the coat of arms of Belarus (as primary inheritor), which is not true as it is the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Republic of Lithuania (it is a Slavic/Polish/Ruthenian name variant of this coat of arms since about 16th century when there was no Belarus at all ; Polish Wikipedia article of the Coat of arms of Lithuania also uses word Pogoń). Belarus currently is searching for its national identity, therefore some of the nationalists goes way too far. I reported it here because I do not want to fight an edit war with Kazimier Lechnovič as it is against the rules of Wikipedia, so I expect civilized actions from the administrators of Wikipedia against him. Otherwise, I will be forced to fight an edit (revert) war with him until the administrators steps in and finally takes actions against his pushing of propaganda into the article of Pahonia. The initial report is long because I provided reliable information for those who are not familiar with this issue and the history of this region of Europe. You can check any of the facts I provided, if you have any doubts about them. They are not propaganda and are recognized internationally, unlike the propaganda of Kazimier Lechnovič who desperately tries to prove that the Republic of Lithuania is Samogitia (Duchy of Samogita), as already shown by Ymblanter here. Such actions of his: pushing nationalistic POV, propaganda, edit warring, and personal attacks clearly is against the rules of Wikipedia. I and Ymblanter provided examples of such behavior. -- Pofka (talk) 19:49, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@El C: Yet another Belarusian nationalist is starting an edit war with me at Pogonia (disambiguation page of the same topic). Check this edit and his user page, which shows that he is Belarusian (it has Belarusian language template). It has become a serious problem in Wikipedia when the Belarusians tries to distinguish the Republic of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and this way later present the largest part of the history of Lithuania (pre-1918) as theirs (Belarusian). Civilized people do not search for national identity by stealing others history. England is England. France is France. Lithuania is Lithuania. -- Pofka (talk) 20:19, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pofka, unless you disable the boldface in your comment, I'm just not gonna read it. I'm sorry, but it feels like a discourteous manner in which to communicate (i.e. My eyes, the goggles do nothing!). I'd disable it for all of your comments, in fact. Just letting you know that you're doing your report a disservice by engaging in this practice to such an extent.
Kazimier Lachnovič, I'm seeing ethno-national hostility from you, call it supremacism or whatever. Anyway, have you tried normal dispute resolution? Like settling this dispute through a formal dispute resolution request, such as an WP:RFC or WP:RSN query? Because, until this is done and the dispute is for the moment resolved, per WP:ONUS, the status quo ante version is the version that should be displaying.
Finally, that Nazism insult was very much to your discredit. And it's beyond bizarre to me that you actually complain about civility above, but still haven't offered no apology for... well, the most egregious thing in this entire dispute(!). I'm sorry, but that does no inspire confidence. Finally, as Ymblanter noted, you seem to have gotten your Commons admin/editor status reversed. El_C21:48, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
El_C, Actually, calling it "supremacism" was your initial assessment [55], not mine. Anyway, could you please provide any example of my quotes with "ethno-national hostility"? And I'm really OK with status quo ante version of Pahonia, which was illustrated with Belarusian CoA since ~2006 [56]. That's the initiator of this request, who tried to change the previous consensual version, which was stable for many years, by refusing to discuss these controversial edits [57].
I'm really happy that the incident in the separate project really matters for the English Wikipedia. Actually I don't think that the result obtained there was fair (I mean the opponent didn't get even warning for obvious abusing the guidelines). And I did confuse the rights of the user, who supported me, but still this user has Rollback and Patrol flags there. Does it change anything? I've already explained my position in the Wikimedia Commons [58], but I will gladly offer my apology for emotional saying that the demonstrative language discriminations is close to Nazi ideology (where the Nazis began) to the opponent right after opponent's apology for direct calling me (as an administrator of the Belarusian Wikipedia be-tarask) and the whole local community by "a clique/group of ultra-nationalists" [59][60] that took place earlier. --Kazimier Lachnovič (talk) 19:16, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ymblanter: Well, it was a presumption, however Лобачев Владимир's nationality does not really matter for me. Any attempts to separate Pahonia/Pogon/Pogonia from the Republic of Lithuania is a propaganda, as I just proved that the Poles calls the coat of arms of the Republic of Lithuania (just like the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as well) like that. So all these pages must redirect to the coat of arms of Lithuania as it covers history from the GDL period to the present day and the Republic of Lithuania is the primary successor state of the GDL. Exactly like the Republic of France is the successor state of the French Empire or the Russian Federation is the successor state of the Russian Empire. If some other countries later begins to use your coat of arms, it does not make it theirs since the beginning, so Lithuania has exclusive rights to Pahonia/Pogon/Pogonia/Vytis/Waikymas. -- Pofka (talk) 16:37, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Kazimier Lachnovič, the hostility (supremacism?) is what I picked up on when you had said: I have no time to discuss anything with Lietuvan (Samogitian) chauvinists (diff). Anyway, listen everyone, I'm sorry, but I just can't really make out what's happening —not on Commons, not here— and simply do not have the time to investigate this too intensively. So, hopefully someone comes along that can. But if not, and I'm the best you got, my advise is for you to just launch an RfC on the question to settle it once and for all, and for the record. Until that RfC is concluded, the longstanding version should be displayed. But, if the original 2006 longstanding version was supplanted by a contending version, without it being disputed as such for, say, a couple of months, then the 2006 version, when re-introduced, has now converted into the contending version, while the newer one becomes the longstanding one (I counted eight commas in this sentence!). If that make sense, or is even readable. El_C20:58, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
El_C. It was a response to the personal attack of the opponent ("It is a typical and sad example of 'litvinism' on Wikipedia - User talk:Kazimier Lachnovič" [61]) and I actually don't see see any national hostility there, just the fact that the opponent stick to the chauvinistic version of the Belarusian history. Anyway, I agree that responding to a personal attack with a personal attack is not a good example of conversation, but this incident happened a while ago and from that time we had a quite civil conversation with the same opponent. Maybe RFC is a good option, but I believe that the request should be closed first as the initiator started it without even trying to discuss [62] his controversial edits like [63]. Is it accepted here to start an edit war in order to push repeating the same sentence twice in the beginning of the article one variation of which is the current coat of arms of Lithuania <...> The variation of the historical coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is the current coat of arms of Lithuania? BTW, the 2006 version (i.e. illustrated with the Belarusian CoA) was unchanged till this non-consensual edit of the opponent. --Kazimier Lachnovič (talk) 19:40, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have protected the article so the differences can be solved on the talk page rather than by a revert war and please be more civil to each other and WP:AGF. As it was suggested I have restored the version prior to the start of the edit war. As an editor I feel like since we already have an article on Coat of arms of Lithuania then in Pahonya we should emphasize other usage of the symbol particular in Belarusian context. Especially this symbol is widely used in 2020–2021 Belarusian protests and many people come to Wikipedia to check if Lukashenko is right claiming that this is a foreign Nazi symbol (he is obviously wrong). On the other hand the symbol is on the current coat of arms of Lithuania but not on the current coat of arms of Belarus, so I guess Lithuanians can claim precedence. Alex Bakharev (talk) 23:05, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Alex Bakharev: Thanks for your comment. Yes, the Belarusians do use it for protests recently (before the protests this symbol was quite rare and not very popular, at least certainly was not used by the majority, which is still very debated if the majority of the Belarusians support it now or they just want Lukashenko out), however why do the Belarusians need two separate articles (National emblem of Belarus, which also describes Pahonia, and Pahonia) when Lithuania, which used this coat of arms since the 16th century (or even earlier), deserves only one? Plus keeping Pahonia as the primary coat of arms of Belarus (which is not true even now) separates this Polish/Ruthenian name of the coat of arms of Lithuania from the Republic of Lithuania (as I already stressed in this discussion before, this is exactly what some of the Belarusian propagandists tries to do in attempt to steal nearly the entire history of Lithuania part about Grand Duchy of Lithuania and to prove that the modern Lithuania derives from Samogitia (Duchy of Samogitia), not GDL; I provided edits where Kazimier Lachnovič aggressively tries to prove such a lie, propaganda). I believe it should be described in the National emblem of Belarus that A variant is the official CoA (pro-Lukashenko), but there also is B variant of the CoA (pro-opposition, derived from Lithuania). This way it would be much clearer about the tensions between the pro-Lukashenko and pro-opposition symbols and its supporters. Articles in the Polish Wikipedia and Ukrainian Wikipedia use both terms to describe the coat of arms of Lithuania: Vytis (Lithuanian), Pogoń (Polish/Ruthenian). Leaving Pahonia/Pogoń as the CoA of Belarus opposition (primarily) would mean that we should remove words Pahonia/Pogoń from the Polish and Ukrainian Wikipedias articles, which does not make sense as that is exactly how the CoA of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was called before and the CoA of the Republic of Lithuania is still called just like that in the Polish/Ukrainian/Belarusian (+Russian?) languages. -- Pofka (talk) 16:57, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Opinion. I'm from Russia. Regarding the coat of arms Pahonia: to which country should he be attributed? The national elites of both countries claim the inheritance of the Grand Duchy. I think that legally neither the Republic of Lithuania nor the Republic of Belarus are the legal successors of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Therefore, it is wrong to consider the symbol as Belarusian or Lithuanian. Moreover, the Pahonia existed before the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in addition to the state emblems, the Pahonia is the patrimonial emblem of the Gediminovich princes and the emblem of the regions and cities of modern Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine and Poland.
There is, for example, article Double-headed eagle on the heraldic symbol, and there are articles on the coats of arms of specific countries: Coats of arms of the Holy Roman Empire, Coat of arms of Russia, Coat of arms of Montenegro. I think that the same should be done in this case. Otherwise, any preference of one of the parties will be wrong and cause controversy on the other side. --Лобачев Владимир (talk) 13:43, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Лобачев Владимир: Wrong. Duchy of Lithuania and Grand Duchy of Lithuania were created by the modern Lithuanians ancestors Balts, not Slavs (scientifically proved, recognized by the absolute majority of scientists, historians internationally). The Hypatian Codex associates word Pogonia with Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytenis (reigned Lithuania in 1295–1316), as in the codex it is written that Vytenis named his coat of arms as Pogonia. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania ceased to exist just because of the Russian Empire invasion and the Third partition of 1795. The Third Statute of Lithuania legally had established that Pogonia (Pahonia) is the official CoA of Lithuania since 1588. When Lithuania's statehood was recreated slightly more than 100 years later in 1918 as the Republic of Lithuania, it immediately, without any other choices, chose name Lithuania and from the very first days restored Pogonia/Pahonia/Pogoń/Vytis/Waikymas as its coat of arms. On the other hand, Belarus (White Ruthenia) in the same year (1918) was established as well and it identified itself as the Belarusian People's Republic (so absolutely NOT anywhere close to something like the Lithuanian People's Republic), also Belarus (White Ruthenia) never identified itself as Lithuania, just as a new state which formed in the former territories of the GDL/Russian Empire. Moreover, even the Belarusian song Pahonia (which was considered as one of the candidates for anthem of Belarus in the 1990s) has words "Ancient Lithuanian Pahonia; Cannot be crushed, cannot be stopped, cannot be restrained! (...) Where is your path, and where does it lead? Maybe, Belarus, they are chasing", so it does not sing Belarusian Pahonia and it clearly separates the Lithuanian Pahonia from Belarus (White Ruthenia). There are no pre-Grand Duchy of Lithuania sources which uses term Pahonia to describe some kind of CoA (but it was later used to describe similar coat of arms). The term was first used in 1551 when Polish chronicler Marcin Bielski named the Lithuanian coat of arms as Pogonia, Pogoń for the first time and with the spread of the Polish language and culture, the term gradually became established. The Pogonia/Pahonia/Pogon/Vytis/Waikymas is not anywhere close to the wide spread Double-headed eagle, which is a Byzantine Empire symbol, therefore it is popular among Orthodox countries. Articles of the Coat of arms of Lithuania and the National emblem of Belarus is more than enough (the Belarusians can freely describe in their respective article how Pahonia was used in their cities, towns, etc; I'm not trying to prove that they have absolutely no rights to this CoA, however they are not the primary inheritors of the coat of arms of Lithuania; plus this article also describes the usage in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania).
I would love to see a discussion when in a parallel universe, for example, Ukraine would claim that the Coat of arms of the Russian Empire is the coat of arms of Ukraine, so we must have a separate article for the Coat of arms of the Russian Empire as the Russian Federation is not the primary inheritor of this CoA (that's exactly what you are trying to prove here). So your opinion sounds very biased and only repeats the Belarusian propagandists opinion that the Republic of Lithuania is not the continuation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Then the Russian Federation is not the continuation of the Russian Empire, the Republic of France is not the continuation of the French Empire, etc. So why there are not separate articles for these countries coat of arms? :) For example, National emblem of France includes every coat of arm (from before 1305, to the imperial period, to the republics period) as French only as all these different types of French statehood are seen as continuation, so exactly the same situation is with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Republic of Lithuania. The Wikipedians certainly would not create a separate article for the coat of arms of the French Empire just because some kind of newly formed country (for example, in the territory of Germany, which was part of the First French Empire) would use nearly the same CoA of France and would call it in the same name. So your opinion is very, very biased as you try to prove that Lithuania is not Lithuania. Try proving that Russia is not Russia and that France is not France. -- Pofka (talk) 18:01, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Neither the Republic of Lithuania nor the Republic of Belarus are legal heirs to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Or provide a document stating the opposite. --Лобачев Владимир (talk) 19:25, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Лобачев Владимир: Here you go: "Lithuanians belong to the Baltic group of Indo-European people. The Balts settled at the Baltic Sea as far back as the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. They lived on the territory between the lower Vistula (Wisla), the basins of the Nemunas (Neman) and the Daugava (Dvina) up to the riverheads of the Volga, Oka and Dnepr. The first ruler to have united Lithuanian tribal groups and founded the state of Lithuania is considered to be Mindaugas, the first known Grand Duke of Lithuania" (the quote is from Eurydice Network's article about Lithuania: HERE). Here is who the Belarusians are: "Customarily, Slavs are subdivided into East Slavs (chiefly Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians), West Slavs (chiefly Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Wends, or Sorbs), and South Slavs (chiefly Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Montenegrins)" (the quote is from Encyclopædia Britannica's article about Slavs: HERE). So if the Belarusians are not Balts, how they could have created the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Kingdom of Lithuania)? :) So you are also spreading a pure propaganda and is one of these Belarusian propagandists. -- Pofka (talk) 18:54, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Лобачев Владимир: That is not my opinion. These are facts provided by the Eurydice Network and the Encyclopædia Britannica. If you want legal documents, then check out the Third Statute of Lithuania of 1588, which has a text that the coat of arms of Lithuania is named as Pogonia. So if the Balts (Lithuanians), not Slavs (Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles) created the state of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, why the modern Balts don't have the primary rights to this name and the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania? :) By the way, the 17th article of the modern Constitution of Lithuania claims that "The capital of the Republic of Lithuania shall be the city of Vilnius, the long standing historical capital of Lithuania" (check yourself HERE). Does that sound like the Republic of Lithuania is not the continuation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania? :) Stop spreading propaganda. Lithuania is Lithuania, Balts are the modern Lithuanians. Scientifically, linguistically, and historically proved. -- Pofka (talk) 19:11, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
ANOTHER VANDALIST ENCOUNTERED (who also participates in this discussion): user Лобачев Владимир is persistently reverting edits of mine and of user Onel5969 (autoreviewer, extendedconfirmed, extendedmover, patroller, reviewer, rollbacker with over 469 290 edits in the English Wikipedia) in the article of Pogoń (Onel5969's edit/revert/opinion). User Elmidae (extendedconfirmed, extendedmover, patroller, rollbacker) also reverted his propaganda in the article of Pogoń (Elmidae's edit/revert/opinion). Wikipedia's administrators actions must be taken as soon as possible in this situation as the propagandists anti-Lithuanian attacks are real and persistent. -- Pofka (talk) 19:03, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Kazimier Lachnovič: The main part of his words are: "We should rejoice, I think, that they do not reject the idea of Lithuania and respect our sovereigns". He does not say nowhere that we (Lithuanians) should respect the Belarusian sovereigns as our rulers because we are Samogitians, derived from the Duchy of Samogitia. So this quote changes nothing. Let me remind you, that Queen Elizabeth II was/is the sovereign of Monarchy of Canada, Monarchy of Australia, Monarchy of New Zealand, Dominion of Pakistan, Nigeria, etc. Belarus (White Ruthenia) was the same thing to Lithuania and the Lithuanian rulers (sovereigns) as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Nigeria were/are to the British Empire/United Kingdom/Commonwealth realm and Queen Elizabeth II. There even is a book, published by the Cambridge University Press, which calls the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as "A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe" (check it HERE), so not as an Orthodox/Belarusian Empire. You have every single right to respect the Lithuanian sovereigns and the coat of arms of Lithuania (Pahonia), but not to claim it as primarily yours because it is not. -- Pofka (talk) 20:53, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No. It is quite obvious, that in fact the main part is the Bumblauskas' conclusion, which I've highlighted in bold. But the most interesting thing is that according to lt:Zenonas Norkus, the concept of the GDL as "empire" was an invention of the Smetona's Nationalist regime: "The inventor or discoverer of the GDL as empire was a Lithuanian geographer and geopolitician Kazys Pakštas (1893–1960), who provided seminal imperiological analysis of the ancient Lithuanian polity in his book Political Geography of Baltic Republics (1929). <...> Pakštas’ ideas were most probable source of inspiration for numerous digressions on GDL as empire in the speeches by Lithuanian President Antanas Smetona (1874–1944) <...> Nationalist (tautininkai) regime, which was established in Lithuania after 1926 state coup, used the jubilee celebration to consolidate itself and to strengthen the Smetona’s personal authority. Lithuanian dictator gave numerous speeches, referring to GDL as empire on at least four different occasions. <...> The reference to GDL as empire in Smetona’s speech was no accident, which can be explained by special circumstances, because the term recurs after the anniversary year 1930. Smetona described ancient Lithuanian polity as empire in later speeches delivered on various occasions in 1932, 1933, 1934 and 1937" (p. 409, 419—420). At the same time "Despite the important, if not central place of “Vytautas empire” in the historical memory of interwar Lithuania, the word “empire” was only occasionally used in the work of the Lithuanian professional historians, and never was applied as analytical category structuring the historical interpretation" (p. 426). So, here is the answer to the question of who really pushes the nationalistic POV here. --Kazimier Lachnovič (talk) 22:08, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Kazimier Lachnovič: Book Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345 (HERE) was written by Stephen Christopher Rowell, who is not Lithuanian in any way. S. C. Rowell was born in Leicester, United Kingdom, he graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge and from the University of Cambridge (his biography can be found HERE). That's why his book was printed by the Cambridge University Press (which certainly does not print any propaganda or lies by risking their top-class reputation). He analyzed the situation of Lithuania in 1295-1345 certainly not from the Smetona's interwar point of view as he scientifically analyzed the question why it is an Empire, not a Grand Duchy. No matter how Lithuania of 1295-1345 should be called: Empire/Kingdom/Grand Duchy, it does not change the scientifically, linguistically, and historically proved fact that the Duchy of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were created by the Balts (Lithuanians), not Slavs (Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, etc.), so it makes the modern Balts (Lithuanians) as the primary inheritors of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania history and its coat of arms. Other nations (including Poles, Ukrainians) certainly contributed to its history, but did not created it, which is the main fact in the question of inheritance, continuation of statehood. -- Pofka (talk) 08:04, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mass reverting spree
After CuriousGolden was blocked for sockpuppetry, Archives908 has reverted about 100 of their contributions with the edit summary "removal of sockmaster copyedits". Despite inaccurate initial assessment, these reverts can not be justified using the block evasion section of the blocking policy, as CuriousGolden was not blocked at the time of the edits. Treating CuriousGolden's edits as block evasion has been described as gravedancing and damaging to the encyclopedia; Archives908 has provided detailed reasoning beyond the original justification and has sincerely apologized for the policy misunderstanding. Content discussion about individual edits is more suitable for articles' talk pages than this noticeboard; the conduct issue has been resolved. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:11, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Could someone please check recent edits of Archives908 (talk·contribs)? This user is on a mass reverting spree, undoing every edit of banned user CuriousGolden (talk·contribs), who was actually a prolific and useful contributor. The fact that a user is blocked does not mean that his every edit should be undone for no reason. I have no interest in getting engaged in an edit war with this user, but I think the community needs to look into his recent activity. Grandmaster21:07, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A prolific and useful contributor? Nice try but that user was a Sockmaster, and that's why they are banned. Admins, if you look closely to my recent edits, you will notice that I am reverting the mass copyedits of the now banned CuriousGolden. This user has been suggesting that virtually all towns in Armenia once had an Azeri majority and used unverifiable sources to push their POV. Grandmaster, I have done nothing wrong and if I have violated any Wiki policies you cold have taken the time to notify me on my talk page. Regards, Archives908 (talk) 21:15, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the sources you have removed as part of your recent reverting activity, in fact, qualify as reliable (information from state websites and third-party EU-based institutions). Also, when you reverted, you consistently wrote in your edit summary "removal of sockmaster copyedits" without even addressing the issue of source reliability. Furthermore, you have been removing content of a very specific nature, which was there before Curious Golden even became active on Wikipedia. That certainly cannot be justified by their sockmastery and is an alarming sign of bad-faith editing. Parishan (talk) 21:26, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Armenia did have a significant Azerbaijani population, so it is not impossible that many settlements in Armenia had sizeable Azerbaijani population. What you do is a mass reverting without any prior discussion or an attempt to reach a consensus. Reverting so many pages for no good reason is not in line with the rules. I was going to leave a message on your talk, as I did to another user doing the same kind of mass reverting, but I thought I would take it here first due to the sheer number of pages reverted. Grandmaster21:28, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For no good reason? It seems as if you are almost defending the Sockmaster. Your true sympathies to CuriousGolden (talk·contribs) really shine through. CuriousGolden literally copyedited the exact same 2-3 sentences on dozens and dozens of articles. They were using multiple accounts and as such, I strongly believe the editor was not editing out of WP:GF. Needless to say, if I was violating policy, you had every opportunity to warn me on my talk page. As far as I see it, I was rectifying the POV edits of a Sockmaster. Nothing more. Archives908 (talk) 21:39, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On a side note, can anyone provide me with any guidelines on dealing with Sockmasters appropriately? Clearly you both claim that I'm editing with ill intent, to which I assure you that I am not. As a sign of WP:GF I have stopped adjusting the Sockmasters edits until I know how best to proceed. Archives908 (talk) 21:50, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"As far as I see it, I was rectifying the POV edits of a Sockmaster" - The problem is that you were not (a great deal of those edits were properly sourced), and it does not appear to me that this is related to your unfamiliarity with the rules. A simple example (one of many): the Azeri name had featured in this article for many years. Curious Golden added a language template and transliteration. Then once they were banned, you came in and removed the Azeri name altogether, as if it never existed. You did so in over one hundred articles. Yet when reverting their edits on articles that carried Armenian names, you for some reason were not at all bothered that there was an unsourced mention of a supposedly older Armenian toponym, and it did not occur to you to remove it. Could all of this be possibly driven by your concern for bad-faith edits brought about by a banned user? I find it unlikely. Parishan (talk) 22:02, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Archives908. Please see WP:GRAVEDANCE. Taking advantage of someone getting banned to undo all his edits and even previous versions of articles that existed before he joined WP is not acceptable. It would be good if you restored all the articles you reverted to their original versions, and discussed your proposed edits with other involved editors. Grandmaster22:09, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Parishan If you have a closer look, you will notice that the Sockmaster added the translations 9 times out of 10, while not providing a single source. For the other times, I only removed unsourced material and explicitly stated that in my edit summary. How exactly am I (or any reader for that matter) supposed to know if what a Sockmaster added was legitimate or POV? Sadly, I am not a mind-reader. And to be fair, CuriousGolden was using multiple accounts, so their record was indeed tarnished. As such, I concluded that they were not here to build this encyclopedia. Again, I may have gone about it the wrong way but in my defense, I have never dealt with a Sockmaster before today (nor have I ever made so many edits in a single day) and wasn't aware of any protocols. I did try and search for wiki policies before I started this morning but couldn't find anything. Thanks Grandmaster for providing the link, I will thoroughly review it. And I do not have any issues reverting my own edits in the coming days if my actions violated policy. I will have a read through now. Archives908 (talk) 22:24, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was about to come to the defense of Archives908 and support them in that their removal of a sockmaster's edits is completely acceptable. I have myself been criticized for being too "soft" against sock edits when I have tried to rescue some good elements of the edits. In that case it was admittedly an editor using socks to reinstate edits that had been reverted, but still I would say that sock edits are in general "fair game". Looking a bit closer, however, I see that many, if not most of Archives908's edits with the edit summary removal of sockmaster copyedits actually do more than the edit summary says, systematically removing non-Armenian names. That is not OK. Removing content without explanation under the cover of doing something else is bordering on dishonesty. --T*U (talk) 22:32, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Sockmaster did in fact add most of the translations in previous edits, almost all of which were unsourced. Again, I assumed that the user was POV pushing, and I took the liberty to remove the unsourced information/copyedits. I realize now that I did go about it the wrong way. Prior to today, however, I had no experience in terms of dealing with the aftermath of Sockmasters and it was challenging for me to know what to keep/what to remove, what was POV/what was legitimate. I assumed that I was doing the right thing by removing the copyedits and the unsourced translations. And my record will show that I have not removed this much information before. Let me be crystal clear, I have no opposition to translations (never did) and don't mind reverting even my own edits. But, I do believe that the Sockmaster's claims/translations should all be properly sourced...unless I am mistaken about that too? Grandmaster provided me with the appropriate link, I would appreciate if the "noose around my neck" can be loosened for a moment, until I've had a chance to review it. Thanks, Archives908 (talk) 22:55, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alrighty, I have had a chance to review WP:GRAVEDANCE. I wasn't aware of this policy. Quite frankly, if this had been provided to me on my talk page earlier, I believe this could have been avoided. As per my understanding, it is against policy to revert edits without justification. My justification was that the copyedits and the vast majority of translations were added by a blocked Sockmaster and I sought to restore the pages out of GF. I reviewed the sources the Sockmaster provided but many of them did not support the claims. Which further reinforced me to believe that the Sockmaster's edits were done out of bad faith. The remaining translations were unsourced and there was no way for me to know if they were legitimate or added out of POV, yet alone if they were even correct. That was my rationale and justification- which was stated in my edit summaries. Fast-forward- I have thoroughly read the policy and can understand how my edits were perceived by others. I have zero intention to continue to remove content that the Sockmaster contributed, unless it directly violates any Wiki policy. I see that Parishan has already restored the translations and the text the Sockmaster added (with sources). I will not seek to revert those edits, but I will take time to verify that the sources check out because I was genuinely concerned about POV pushing on those articles. I thank Grandmaster for providing me with the policy guidelines to learn and hope to put this matter to rest. If there are any other related guidelines, please feel free to drop them on my talk page, as I'm always seeking to become a better editor. Regards, Archives908 (talk) 23:56, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep reverting the additions.....don't let them think that because of sheer volume we won't do anything. Zero leway.Moxy-00:23, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As usual, the "revert everything a sockpuppet account has ever done" religious mission of some users continues to damage and make the encyclopedia we work on worse. Nothing new there. If the sockpuppetting was about copyvios, then there would be some reasoning behind such reversion actions, but in other cases, it is almost always just vindictive and not based on actually improving anything. SilverserenC02:11, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This attitude is the reason they will keep being disruptive. Overwhelming the community with sheer volume so a few POV edits stick. The edits are not wanted by the community and should be removed on site.Moxy-02:46, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Except in many, many cases, it is not POV edits that are reverted, but actual encyclopedic additions. There have been a number of users who were banned for non-article reasons and who sockpuppeted to still make articles. There was nothing wrong with the articles, but then when the sockpuppets were found out, all those additions and new articles were removed. And, in many cases, never made again by anyone else. Meaning that Wikipedia was made worse for no reason at all. SilverserenC02:54, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
With full support for the policy that allows reverting block-/ban-evading edits, is this what has happened here? I must be misreading the situation then, and I would long have said what NinjaRobotPirate did in the closure if I had seen that. Or are we talking about reversion of pre-block edits? Moxy perhaps? I'm confused. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:18, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, I saw this in passing (where I learned about Golden's ban in the first place) and definitely hadn't expected this close. As someone who was watching the RM drama as it happened, either I'm seriously misreading something or NinjaPirateRobot is. Vaticidalprophet08:29, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If the edits being reverted were made before their ban—and by the master, not by a sock—then BANREVERT does not apply, and these reverts should be undone as being without a policy basis. There's probably no reason to block Archives908—at the moment, anyway—but they should definitely read up on our banning/socking policies before attempting any more stunts like this. ——Serial09:09, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's true. The cited policy only applies to the actions of sock puppets made in violation of a block or ban. I was tired when I closed the discussion. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 12:07, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Does that mean that you will be reversing your close, NinjaRobotPirate? Or at least amending it so that Archives908 is aware that such mass reversions did not have a policy basis?Sdrqaz (talk) 14:51, 6 April 2021 (UTC)struck 15:37, 6 April 2021 (UTC) due to responsiveness by Archives[reply]
For what it's worth, I reverted or struck all eligible edits (that is, those made by Golden's sock Gnominite (talk · contribs) in RM discussions) when processing the SPI case, but none of Golden's edits qualify for BANREVERT because there is no evidence that the master account was evading a block or ban. Whether the edits he made are good or appropriate is a question for those familiar with the topic area to answer, but indiscriminate mass-reversion of them is not something that policy allows for in this case. --Blablubbs|talk09:39, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that mass reversion is inappropriate here and I disagree completely with the close. CuriousGolden made a sock account about a month ago and used it to vote on about a dozen move requests that they started, that doesn't mean their other 12,500 edits they made over the last year are suddenly "Sockmaster edits" that require mass reversion per BANREVERT. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 10:24, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In hindsight, I am aware that the way I went about the edits may not have been the best. I don't know how many more times I can possibly repeat that. Are editors expected to be perfect 100% of the time? Surely, I am not perfect, but I have been more then respectful, open to dialogue, and eager to learn the proper policies this entire time. This was the first situation I encountered dealing with a Sockmaster in my years as an editor. I may have not had the best approach (due to a lack of policy knowledge) but I genuinely believed I was doing the right thing. Again, it is unreasonable to expect all editors to be perfect or know every singe Wiki policy verbatim. I was not even aware of Gravedance until yesterday, if I was, I would have had a better understanding in dealing with this. It also doesn't help that some editors have told me I did nothing wrong, while others are prepared to crucify me. This makes learning what is right/wrong even more confusing. Nonetheless, I have thoroughly reviewed the policies provided to me, have ceased further reversions, and am well aware of how to handle such scenarios moving forward. I have digested the feedback, learned from this, and hope to move forward a more knowledgeable editor. Archives908 (talk) 15:29, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify in response to the closing admin. The edits reverted were not made in violation of the ban, and they were not made by a sock account. Those were the edits of CuriousGolden made over the course of many months, before he created a sock account. I don't think that reverting those edits en masse is justified. Grandmaster18:51, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You didn't do anything wrong by bringing this here. The first close was simply inaccurate on all counts. I've unclosed it. IMO it could be re-closed with an accurate closing statement in light of Archives908's response above, but I'll leave that to someone else to decide. Levivichharass/hound19:07, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Universal Code of Conduct – 2021 consultations
Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2
The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a universal baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire Wikimedia movement and all its projects. The project is currently in Phase 2, outlining clear enforcement pathways. You can read more about the whole project on its project page.
Drafting Committee: Call for applications
The Wikimedia Foundation is recruiting volunteers to join a committee to draft how to make the code enforceable. Volunteers on the committee will commit between 2 and 6 hours per week from late April through July and again in October and November. It is important that the committee be diverse and inclusive, and have a range of experiences, including both experienced users and newcomers, and those who have received or responded to, as well as those who have been falsely accused of harassment.
2021 community consultations: Notice and call for volunteers / translators
From 5 April – 5 May 2021 there will be conversations on many Wikimedia projects about how to enforce the UCoC. We are looking for volunteers to translate key material, as well as to help host consultations on their own languages or projects using suggested key questions. If you are interested in volunteering for either of these roles, please contact us in whatever language you are most comfortable.
I've blocked the latest incarnation and semi'd the page for a month. But I can't help but wonder why in the world that page exists as anything other than a redirect to safe seat.... --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:40, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe an admin can take a look and close two cases that have been sitting. I've commented, as has another admin, but I've closed enough of these lately, we need a cross section of admin participating if possible. Thanks. Dennis Brown - 2¢00:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
5 days isn't really that bad for an AE report to be left open, especially when there's only two admins who have weighed in, minimal community commentary, and a backlog of a mere two reports. That's overwhelmingly out in front of the average AE backlog going back years. AE doesn't require a consensus, if you feel the threads are ready for closure you should by all means close them. Personally I don't, I'd like to leave them open for more feedback. ~Swarm~{sting}01:32, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'm also giving myself self-credit for my Noteduck note //ducking! edit summary. I forgot about that. Nice one, past me. El_C01:52, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Getting more feedback and/or closing was the goal. AE has been unstaffed for some time now, hence the request. The cases are pretty simple, I could have closed them but I don't like closing several in a row. Dennis Brown - 2¢09:22, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Then I misinterpreted your intent as insisting the cases needed to be closed, rather than generally soliciting more feedback, which is always a good thing to do, of course. ~Swarm~{sting}04:08, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a request to review the non-admin close of an RfC at Proud Boys ("Is the claim labeling the Proud Boys "White nationalist" verifiable and due?"). I briefly discussed the closure with the closing editor here.
My contention is that the closure violates WP:ONUS. I don't dispute that the RfC resulted in no consensus, I dispute that no consensus here means that the disputed content should be included in the article. The closer's rationale was that there was a status quo ante that the no consensus result implied we should return to, but this was not the case – this was new content under dispute. The content in question [64] was added less than month before the ensuing discussion linked to above, added without any discussion on the talk page. There was then some brief discussion on the matter [65] that didn't come to any consensus, and then the broader discussion/RfC a couple weeks later disputing the addition of the label linked to above. This is new, disputed content for which there was never a consensus to include, the ensuing discussion coming to no consensus on its inclusion means in my understanding that it should not be included, as per WP:ONUS. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 05:11, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
S Marshall, I'm puzzled. First, you send the WP:CLOSECHALLENGE directly to AN without comment rather than try to address it on your talk page first. I've already cautioned you against doing that the last time around (which, granted, was a while ago, but still). Secondly, your closure isn't really a proper closure as far as its statement is concerned. You've simply reiterated the RFC question and announced the result being an impasse. That is not good enough. You're actually expected to at least touch on some of the salient arguments from both sides (if only briefly), even if they are evenly matched (or close to). El_C05:33, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
El C, I apologize for falling short of your expectations in this case. I humbly point out that what I'm supposed to do as a closer is to read what people say and address the issue they raise. This user agreed with my "no consensus" finding, so there was nothing to explain (and indeed, I put it to you that "no consensus" was the only close available). The complainant offered me a simple, binary choice: either I change the outcome to his preferred one at once, or he was bringing the matter directly to AN. To be quite honest I should have been free to bring the matter to AN myself, rather than having to make the complainant jump through the hoops for me.As the complainant correctly identifies above, we need to restore the status quo, and at issue here is the question of whether the status quo is the article with or without the disputed wording. This is not obvious at all, and after I deal with your other points I'll discuss it at more length.I agree that my closing statement made no effort to summarize the arguments, but the arguments were extremely simple. While I do take what you say seriously, I would remind you that RfC is a community function, not an administrative one, and individual sysops have no special authority over RfC. In other words, you are not the RfC manager. It's not your role to "caution" me about RfC closes, El C.What's actually at issue here is a point the community has never decided. When we're dealing with disputed wording, after the disputed wording has been placed in the article, how much time elapses before it becomes the stable version? I feel that if the disputed wording was introduced a week before the RfC, then the stable version is the version without it. I also feel that if the disputed wording was introduced three months before, then the stable version is the version with it. In this case the gap is several weeks. You could make a good case for either outcome. In this case the article history contains edits such as this one, which to me, does strongly imply that the status quo includes the disputed wording.—S MarshallT/C09:39, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
S Marshall, it is absolutely my role to caution you against sending challenges directly to AN without even at least an attempt to try to respond on your talk page first. In the past, you did this so often, it became a problem. So, yes, I cautioned you then (which you seemed amenable to at the time), and I am doing so again now, so as to prevent backwards sliding. Now, as for the closing statement: it strikes me that a condensed (or even a full) version of what you've written above here would actually serve as a decent closing summary for that DRR (i.e. beyond just stating the outcome was X). El_C11:28, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"I've already cautioned you" is the tone an authority figure takes with an underling. Do not take that tone with me again.—S MarshallT/C11:37, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
S Marshall, but I did caution you about it in the past, so how else would you like me to express that fact? I'm not sure how you read it as me viewing you as an "underling," which is not the case. In any case, I'll choose the tone and tenor of my comments, to you or to anyone, as I see fit. El_C11:43, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've come to expect considerably more respect and consideration from this community than you're displaying, El C, so I'm surprised and upset about the tone you took with me above. It's overreach for individual sysops on their own authority to issue "cautions" about how RfCs are closed: this is a content decision and you're not in charge of it.—S MarshallT/C12:28, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
S Marshall, again, you're sidestepping the point: I cautioned you in the past against sending CLOSECHALLENGEs directly to AN without even trying to address pertinent concerns on your talk page first. How is that a content matter? How is that disrespectful? El_C12:42, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
From my point of view, it's exactly the opposite way around. I already discussed "trying to address pertinent concerns" above; I said what I'm supposed to do as a closer is to read what people say and address the issue they raise. This user agreed with my "no consensus" finding, so there was nothing to explain (and indeed, I put it to you that "no consensus" was the only close available). The complainant offered me a simple, binary choice: either I change the outcome to his preferred one at once, or he was bringing the matter directly to AN. I think that it is in fact you who are failing to acknowledge my point, which is that you're arrogating to yourself an authority you don't have. You've got the authority to block obvious vandals, and to block other editors with community consensus; you've also got the authority to delete pages that meet CSD criteria, and to delete other pages with community consensus, and to view deleted edits. But that's it, El C. The community has never given you any supervisory powers over RfCs or to issue "cautions" to closers.—S MarshallT/C12:53, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
S Marshall, the caution was about misusing AN for CLOSECHALLENGEs that you could have put a bit of work into on your talk page first. But it was last year, so maybe I should have dropped you a quiet note on your talk page rather than hammer you about it here. Probably would have been better. I don't think I've exceeded my authority, and in any case, nothing you've done here is sanctionable, anyway. Like I said last year, I'm actually a fan of your closes (still am), but that does not mean that there isn't room for improvement. As I've just noted below, there's nothing further that I feel I need to press (probably well over-pressed at this point), so am disengaging and will let other admins handle it. I hope this will make my points resonate further and much more effectively than anything adversarial in nature. El_C13:04, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I completely disagree with the EL C's assertion that you must touch on certain points in contention in all closes, that simply is not true. If the outcome is very obvious to all observers, there is no need. Often times, an explanation of how you weighed arguments is needed, particularly when closing an somewhat evenly split discussion and you DO find a consensus. The actual question before us is simply whether there is a "status quo" of it being included or not. All this discussion of how much verbiage S Marshall should have included is irrelevant. Dennis Brown - 2¢10:24, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For a discussion of that nature, simply announcing the outcome without additional comment is not a proper closing summary. Even an extra sentence or two would something. But just saying (basically) the result was X — that's a bad closing practice. I don't like seeing it, and I often give closers a hard time over it as a matter of course. El_C11:17, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"I often give closers a hard time over it as a matter of course" and folks wonder why other editors don't do more closures... if this sort of thing is common, of course folks won't volunteer to be given a hard time for not conforming to some unwritten rule. Ealdgyth (talk) 12:24, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"I often give closers a hard time over it as a matter of course" is...unnecessarily aggressive to say the least. ——Serial13:08, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I still don't think a minimum summary for contentious RFCs is out of step with expected closing practices. If you wish to put closures' backlog on that approach, well, I suppose that is your prerogative. But I don't think it makes much sense. El_C12:39, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)El C, you know that I have supported your good faith use of Admin discretion even in cases where I've explicitly disagreed with your actions and conlcusions. But here I completely agree with Dennis Brown and others, your conduct is grossly inappropriate and unfortunately not the only example of words and actions that overstep our importatant expectations for Admin conduct. Worse, it feels like your replies sound dug in, empty, and defensive. Again, thanks for your overall volunteer efforts. SPECIFICOtalk12:44, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SPECIFICO, if you can substantiate in what way you deem this to be so, I'm happy to consider your points. But to reiterate: answering a CLOSECHALLENGE on one's talk page first, rather than sending it straight to AN without comment, can either: a. resolve the matter; or, b. in case of an impasse, bring the matter back to AN in a more developed form. As for simply announcing the outcome for contentious RFCs: it's been my view that this is generally a poor closing practice, which is not anything new for me and for which I have never been challenged on before (example from this board). Not sure about why my tone is being questioned, but guessing I'm coming across too firm...? Maybe I'm just being a bit tone deaf today...? (Possible) Anyway, there's plenty of quality admins looking into this right now, so I don't really feel the need to engage this further, but I do feel that my points are valid in their own right, all impressions aside. El_C12:55, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's a difference between saying "here's something that is usually a good idea to do" and implying / speaking as if failure do that idea on this case means that the person is doing something wrong. IMHO the answer to your question might be that you are inadvertently doing a bit of the latter. North8000 (talk) 13:08, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
EL C, I do think your hard line on all this out of step with the community's perspective. N8K explains it well. All this spanking over the verbosity has served only to distract from the actual reason for the review request, which thankfully, is being handled below. Dennis Brown - 2¢16:45, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Irrespectively of the current case, I agree that the best practice is to motivate a close by something more than just ""keep" or "delete". It is indeed not a policy, and in some trivial cases (for example 10 well-motivated supports and 0 opposes) not really needed, but in many cases anything beyond a simple close helps everybody to understand what is going on.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:10, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - it seems like the correct outcome of a "no consensus" should have been to remove the disputed comment, both because of the OP's point that it was the long-standing status quo until January 2021 not to have that line, and also because of WP:ONUS, as Levivich mentions below. Whether the status quo convention or WP:ONUS takes precedence could be a matter for debate, if a piece of contested text had been in the article for a very long time... but that isn't the case here. I also second El C's assertion that a more thorough summary of the debate would be warranted in a controversial case like this, rather than the banal "The community fails to reach a consensus". At least some indication that you've looked at the main points raised, and concluded that neither viewpoint is more valid in policy than the other. Of course, some AFDs/RFCs/RMs do are in fact open and shut cases that don't need further explanation, but as a closer it's part of your job to determine whether that applies. And following that, if you do opt go for a short close summary, then be prepared to clarify further and engage with someone if they dispute the close, rather than simply batting it straight to WP:AN. That's a sensible and collegiate approach to take. — Amakuru (talk) 15:58, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What Levivich and Amakuru said. Per WP:ONUS a no consensus outcome on content questions should generally default to exclusion. That we're seriously debating what "long-standing" content is suggests there's no compelling reason to go against ONUS. Another RfC would probably be best at this point regardless. — Wug·a·po·des22:40, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The status quo
I completely fail to see how that diff on the article "strongly implies" the existence of consensus on the talk page. Could you explain to me why you think it does? ‑‑Volteer1 (talk)
OK, so, I do not think it strongly implies the existence of consensus on the talk page. Consensus can emerge via the WP:BRD cycle without any talk page discussion at all. I reviewed the history and I felt that consensus had emerged via that route, but I agree that this an arguable point on which reasonable people could differ. I personally would welcome, and benefit from, more guidance from the community about how long it takes for an edit to become "the status quo" without a talk page discussion. There's a relevant link with some nuanced thought at WP:SILENCE.—S MarshallT/C13:16, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding WP:SILENCE, there wasn't silence with the implicit understanding that the consensus in favor of its inclusion was obvious – there was an ensuing talk page discussion, and no one ever responded to the challenges to the content brought up on the talk page by TFD and Rectipaedia, they're still just sitting there unanswered in the archive (though to be fair the new discussion did take over somewhat soon afterwards), this is not a case of "consensus can be presumed to exist until voiced disagreement becomes evident". I don't think "well, idk, the material was there a couple weeks ago, wasn't it?" is a condition sufficient for establishing consensus for disputed content.
If your contention is instead that editors were choosing to follow WP:BRD by reverting reverts of the disputed material and leaving it up despite ignored challenges on the talk page, that would trivially be exactly the opposite of correct. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 14:20, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The no consensus result means the disputed content stays out, per WP:ONUS. That's global policy. Nobody, not a closer, not an admin, not an editor, can override that global consensus. Personally I think the focus is off here. Does anyone disagree with the "no consensus" result? If not, then ignore the defects in the closing statement. Sure, it should have included a summary, but who cares. (Also who cares about the appeal procedure.) Just go remove the content per the RFC. Anyone reinstating it would be editing against consensus, i.e. violating ONUS. You don't need a closer's permission, or an admin's, to follow global consensus. We editors should police ourselves, not outsource it to closers and admins. Levivichharass/hound15:26, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is no disputed content here, only disputed wording. The article says in the lede that the Proud Boys are neo-fascist. It then rather tautologically goes on to say that they're far right, as if that were separate from neo-fascism. As of right now it also says they're white nationalist. In fact the whole first sentence whiffs more of a thesaurus than an encyclopaedia. This matter is not about content (whether they're neo-fascist), but about phrasing (how to describe their neo-fascism), so ONUS isn't strongly applicable. I would advise against removing the disputed wording until this AN discussion is closed.—S MarshallT/C15:34, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If that's your take then overturn close because the closing statement says "The community fails to reach a consensus, so by our rules, the status quo ante is restored for the time being.", which is a flat incorrect statement of policy. (There is, in fact, no "status quo ante" rule. The rule is WP:ONUS, and it's the opposite of status quo ante.) "The outcome of this RfC is not to change the article" is also an overreach, as the question was whether there was consensus for inclusion (verifiable and due), not whether there was consensus for a change. There being no consensus that it's verifiable and due means it stays out. The closer shouldn't be putting down rules. Honestly, S Marshall, you and that closing statement is the same exact thing as El C's tone with you here. In both cases, you're both overreaching your respective roles. Levivichharass/hound15:59, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich: Actually, what you say here isn't entirely true. Per WP:NOCONSENSUS, unless the issue relates to a BLP, the "status quo ante" rule does apply. "In discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit". Which actually seems to be a contradiction of WP:ONUS, so it's not immediately clear which takes precedence. However, as I said above, both rules appear to be in alignment here, as the status quo ante was until recently to omit the disputed line. CHeers — Amakuru (talk) 16:08, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Point well taken, and I agree in this case the two are in alignment. NOCON says "prior to the proposal or bold edit", and that is a form of status quo ante, but key words being "or bold edit". Here, the close suggests that the status quo ante is just prior to the proposal, but after the bold edit. But bottom line for me is if someone adds something to an article boldly, and someone else challenges that addition with an RFC, and the RFC comes back no consensus, then the content should be removed. We don't keep the content based on an argument that the bold edit enjoyed consensus by silence and that this consensus needs to be affirmatively overturned by RFC or else the bold edit stays. (And boy could our PAGs use some clarity on that.) Levivichharass/hound16:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No consensus for inclusion of this material means it should be removed. WP:NOCONSENSUS says no consensus "commonly results" in retention. The wording of the policy implies that the results will be based on a case by case basis. For example, in contentious BLP claims, the material will be removed. In this case, there is no consensus among Wikipedia editors that the Proud Boys should be called white nationalist, although there is no opposition to citing sources that call them that. It seems to me that the claim is so significant, that we should not make it unless there is consensus to do so. If we do, we are saying that Wikipedia editors cannot agree whether or not they are white nationalists, but we'll say they are because we cannot agree. TFD (talk) 16:37, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is no community consensus on this perennial question, AFAIK. IMO, there is no duration after which consensus is required to remove rather than include, although that should be applied with some common sense. It's disruptive, for example, for someone to gut an article and demand that every portion be subjected to an RFC. Generally speaking, though, WP:SILENCE is broken as soon as someone complains.
Yes, it shouldn't have been reinstated without consensus. Compare: here the word "terrorist" is removed with the edit summary "No consensus for "terrorist" in the lead sentence" (correct), and here the words "white nationalist" are reinstated after removal with the edit summary "Please gain consensus on the talk page for this change." (incorrect). In both cases, it should be consensus to include, per WP:ONUS ("The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content."). In both cases, the removal makes the bold edits disputed, requiring consensus to reinstate. Levivichharass/hound17:28, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Levivich, you're misapplying ONUS. ONUS is about content -- it's about the substance of what we say. You're trying to apply it at the level of individual word choices and that's not correct. Here, the longstanding consensus text, supported by reliable sources, says the Proud Boys is a neo-fascist organisation. When we've decided they're neo-fascists, that necessarily means that they're white nationalists, you see. To contend that they're neo-fascist but not white nationalist isn't logically tenable. If we allow ONUS to apply to individual word choices, then we're creating a whitewasher's charter where anyone can remove a word choice that disfavours their own POV.—S MarshallT/C17:58, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm afraid I don't see that. I see everything that you're talking about as being a content issue, and not a conduct issue. I don't perceive a difference between your uses of the word "content" and the words "individual word choices". To me, individual word choices are content (as opposed to conduct; I'm familiar with content vs. conduct; I'm not familiar with content vs. individual word choices). I think the distinction you're drawing is between a fact and how to describe that fact, and you're saying that the fact of white nationalism has consensus because there's consensus for "neo-fascist", and neo-fascist = white nationalist, and so what's in dispute is how to describe the fact, e.g. "neo-fascist" or "white nationalist", and not whether to include the fact. If that is, indeed, the point you're making, that's not a distinction that I see as having the consensus of the participants in the discussion you closed. In other words, that it's "how to include and not whether to include" is, well, not supported by that RFC. The RFC question was whether it was verifiable and due: that's a question about whether to include, not how to include. Levivichharass/hound18:19, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, let's think it through. Let's try applying content policies to individual words with a real-world example. In January 2015, there was an RfC about who won the Battle of Chawinda, which I closed here. My close was disputed on the Administrator's Noticeboard here, and a key part of the disputer's complaint was that I shouldn't be allowed to say that Pakistan won the battle, because what the sources actually said was that India lost it. Did his complaint have merit? Or do content policies apply to concepts, as opposed to phrases?—S MarshallT/C01:04, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think it should be on a case by case basis as implied by the wording of the policy, which says that existing text is "commonly" retained. The policy is asking us to use our common sense and consider other policies and guidelines. Common sense tells us we should not present opinions as facts when editors disagree whether they have consensus support in reliable sources. TFD (talk) 17:59, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal: partially endorse and partially reverse the close
I propose that we partially endorse and partially reverse the close. MOS:LABEL is a guideline, rather than policy, but it still appears to carry the weight of community consensus on these issues in general. The result was definitely close, with editors in opposition arguing that there was not enough coverage to justify closing the gap between being "associated with" white nationalists and being white nationalist. Those who were in favor of including that the Proud Boys are White Nationalist pointed towards coverage they believed to be sufficient. Chillabit, who remained neutral, seems to have given a fairly good summary on some of the relevant sources at or before their comment, with Hobit (who supported keeping "white nationalist") adding a few more sources later down. Looking at top-level comments in the RfC, it looks like 9 editors (10 if you include Ryantheviking) seem to be generally in favor of removing the descriptor in general, while 7 editors were in opposition. One user, Emir of Wikipedia, opposed the use of "White Nationalist" in Wikivoice in the lead, though supported its use in the article (this appears to come from a due weight concern regarding the prominence of the term high up in the lead). These responses in the RfC are !votes, so we should not strictly use a count of these to determine the outcome. I don't think the closer was engaging in WP:SUPERVOTE behavior due to some ulterior motive. However, I do think that there was a consensus in the discussion that was not included in the close if we consider separately the questions of whether we should include the term in the lead and in the remainder of the article.
It looks like there was nearly unanimous consensus to include the Proud Boys as being "associated with" white nationalism, at minimum. Regarding the lead, it the discussion appears to have achieved a rough consensus to omit "white nationalist" from it in Wikivoice. Regarding the remainder of the article, I endorse the closer's finding of no consensus, seeing as the arguments provided by the community are themselves are fairly even in that scope. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 16:25, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a problem, in that the "white nationalist" title is at least adequately sourced, even if not heavily, and it has been there at least 2 months prior (from my quick check), which is on the boarder as to whether that is "status quo". What is probably the best solution is another RFC that draws in more participation, as the last one was a bit thin in participation. And yes, I would probably remove "white nationalist" until the end of the RFC. I don't think WP:ONUS applies in any way shape or form, but I also think the name being "status quo" isn't quite convincing enough to be beyond questioning in good faith. Stuck in the middle, we take the course of action that is the least negative, while we seek a larger consensus. I think the finding of "no consensus" was correct, but I won't spank S Marshall for thinking adding it was status quo, as it is on the cusp. I simply disagree with him on that point. Dennis Brown - 2¢16:58, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The point of this was to propose a change to the finding of consensus, rather than to contribute to the debate about whether the term should be kept throughout the article in the case that no consensus exists. I see this as separate from the review as it pertains to whether or not the resulting no consensus results in the removal of the term "white nationalist" in the body or if the term should remain. The "there was nearly unanimous consensus to include the Proud Boys as being "associated with" white nationalism, at minimum" part indicates that the association with White Nationalism should be kept regardless, even if the term is removed. I tried to convey through "at minimum" that this does not prohibit keeping additional information, though I understand that this may have caused ambiguity. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 21:16, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Does BLP apply to Proud Boys?
In the above discussion, it's been said that the rules would be different if Proud Boys were a WP:BLP. I wanted to raise the question of whether BLP rules should apply to Proud Boys, which I see as a group of living people. For example: suppose John, Joe, and Jim are co-founders of a hypothetical organization called Ashamed Boys. Is it true that one set of rules (WP:BLP policy) applies to the use of "white nationalist" in the biographies of John, Joe, and Jim, but those rules do not apply to the use of "white nationalist" in the article about their organization Ashamed Boys? Can we write "Ashamed Boys are white nationalists" based on sources that would not be sufficient to say, "John, Joe, and Jim are white nationalists"? It seems like a loophole to me. Organizations aren't people, but they are made up of people... Curious as to my colleagues' thoughts on this. Levivichharass/hound17:33, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can choose to be a Proud Boy (assuming I meet the criteria) or to not be one, it is my choice. I have no option but to be Dennis Brown. The person you are is not a voluntary association. Just as we don't extend BLP coverage to Republicans, Freemasons, or cheerleaders, or other groups you can join. Dennis Brown - 2¢17:42, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to raise the question of whether BLP rules should apply, not whether they currently do. The question is whether we should be describing groups of people using sources that we couldn't use for the same descriptions of the individuals in those groups. This is probably only a concern for new, smaller, member organizations (like Proud Boys), as opposed to centuries-old institutions (Freemasons, GOP) or general groups of people (cheerleader). Levivichharass/hound17:45, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I get that, I was explaining why they shouldn't. Kind of like the same reasons corporations shouldn't enjoy the same rights and privileges as humans, although that isn't always the case. Dennis Brown - 2¢23:16, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The question is whether we should be describing groups of people using sources that we couldn't use for the same descriptions of the individuals in those groups. Is this just a hypothetical? The sources being used for "white nationalist" are all generally reliable (NYT, NBC News, NPR, and The Independent) and would be perfectly usable in a BLP. GorillaWarfare(talk)18:08, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For me it's a hypothetical because of the point you make. But I note, e.g., Amakuru's comment above, "Per WP:NOCONSENSUS, unless the issue relates to a BLP, the 'status quo ante' rule does apply", which raised the question for me of whether this is an issue that "relates to a BLP". I agree with Amakuru's point that the "status quo ante" rules are different for BLPs and non-BLPs (per NOCON), and so the question is, is Proud Boys a BLP? Or is "Proud Boys are white nationalist" a BLP issue?
The principle affects many articles. Is calling Proud Boys white nationalist the same as calling the members or at least the founders white nationalist? (I think so?) But then what about a group like the NRA: the NRA might take a position in its platform but that doesn't mean every NRA member agrees with that particular position. On the other hand, what about Never Again MSD, an organization formed by 20 teenagers: it seems like any descriptions of that organization should comply with BLP (meaning "status quo ante" would not apply to that article), because describing the group is functionally the same as describing its members or at least its founders. For me, there's something about a large, long-standing institution like the NRA, and smaller, newer organizations like Never Again or Proud Boys. Levivichharass/hound18:42, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for clarifying. Personally I disagree that calling an organization X means that all of its members (or its founders, or its leaders, etc.) are all necessarily [X]. We should follow the sources; if reliable sources call the Proud Boys white nationalist, we should say that, and we can also say things like "John Doe founded the Proud Boys, a white nationalist organization". But to call John Doe himself a white nationalist, we would need sources that do so. Organizations are the sum of their parts, and not every member of a group is a reflection of the whole. I imagine this becomes more the case as time passes; many organizations evolve dramatically from how they were founded.
As a practical example, the article on Enrique Tarrio (PB chairman) says he is the chairman of the Proud Boys, and describes the PB as they are described at the article about the group, but does not describe Tarrio personally as a white nationalist, because sources don't regularly do so. GorillaWarfare(talk)18:50, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously, the problem is that we cannot assume that if John, Joe and Jim belong to a group, and that group is considered a white nationalist group, they themselves are white nationalists, unless separately that implication is made directly by RSes. This is part of the problem when ideological labels are used for characterizing a group because it does not reflect on true membership requirements (in contrast to, say, Girl Scouts being a group for teenaged and young women). We can't make the assumption that a person that has joined PB has a white nationalism streak, though it seems unlikely that you would not join PB without one - but that's still a bad assumption under BLP. So we need to make sure we do not all imply that all members of PBs are white nationalists as a matter of BLP and NPOV. Argubly, if the BLP involved are named individuals but those named individuals fail WP:PUBLICFIGURE, that could be a problem, though a solution, if possible, would be to remove the names of the individuals so that the labels are only being applied to the group and not specific persons. If the individuals are public figures (as the case would be for McInnis and PB) that becomes less of an issue though we still have to be careful of what those individuals have said on their own personal aspects. --Masem (t) 17:53, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In your view, does the current lead sentence of Proud Boys, The Proud Boys is a far-right, neo-fascist, chauvinist, and exclusively male white nationalist organization that promotes and engages in political violence in the United States and Canada, imply that all members of PBs are far-right, neo-fascist, chauvinist, male white nationalists that promote and engage in political violence in the United States and Canada? (In my view, it does, and so that implication should only be made if it can be supported by BLP-satisfying sourcing.) (I am not suggesting that there isn't BLP-satisfying sourcing for this particular lead sentence.) Levivichharass/hound17:57, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it does, particularly with the placement of "white nationalist" after "male", as it is propagating that as a characteristic to all members of its group, as well as the other terms. I've spoke well at length elsewhere about lede sections for alt/far right groups being way out of line in terms of neutrality and other facets and that's one example since it is loading up the characterization of the group before talking objectively about the group. "Proud Boys is a exclusively male organization founded by McInnis. It is considered to be far-right, neo-facist, chauvinist, and white nationalist, and promotes and engages in political violence." is far more neutral (could be better though) covers the same information and distances associating those labels to its membership and more as a function of the group as a whole. --Masem (t) 18:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at WP: BLPGROUPS it would depend on if it's possible to distinguish the group from the members of the group. If that distinction is not possible then BLP applies. --Kyohyi (talk) 18:56, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
WP:BLPGROUP covers cases of very small groups, where "it may be impossible to draw a distinction between the group and the individuals that make up the group." If I said for example that a rock band killed someone, it would imply that each and every member was responsible. If I said the CIA killed someone, it would not necessarily reflect on each and every member of the CIA. So I don't think it applies. Also, saying it is a white nationalist group does not necessarily imply that each and every member is a white nationalist. TFD (talk) 18:59, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That is actually my point. If I re-word it to say it is a group of white nationalists, that would imply that each member is a white nationalist. Which would be a violation per BLP Group. While it is more difficult to differentiate smaller groups from their membership, it doesn't mean differentiation between the group and its membership is automatic for larger groups. So, again, it matters if we can distinguish the group from it's membership. --Kyohyi (talk) 19:11, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Which is partially my point on the tone/language issue (regardless if white nationalism should be added). As it is phrased now per Levivich's green text above, it reads and implies that being a white nationalist is a membership requirement, and thus any person that we would factually identify in the PBs would be implied to be a white nationalist. Flipping a few words around to assign white nationalism as a common characterization of the group would remove that issue. --Masem (t) 19:21, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@The Four Deuces: A rock band is a group. The CIA is an organization. A rock band is not an organization. The Ashamed/Proud Boys are an organization. A white nationalist organization. Saying "Philip Morris International is responsible for millions of deaths" is not saying Jane from accounting is responsible for millions of deaths. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:22, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Cambridge Dictionary defines an organization as "a group of people who work together in an organized way for a shared purpose."[66]TFD (talk) 13:59, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@The Four Deuces: And still I wouldn't call a rock band an organization. It could be argued that rock bands don't "work together in an organized way" as they may work together more in a chaotic way. Merriam-Webster defines it as "an administrative and functional structure (such as a business or a political party)" which is better. Wiktionary seems to have the best definition: A group of people or other legal entities with an explicit purpose and written rules. The CIA has written rules, Phillip Morris has written rules, a rock band typically does not. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:58, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's moot, because BLPGROUP is about groups, not organizations specifically. I said that rock groups can be considered "very small groups," and hence are subject to BLPGROUP. TFD (talk) 17:52, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Close review: Unhelpful Close - While I do not disagree with the no consensus outcome of the RFC, and I also acknowledge that it is not technically against policy, I think that by not including any rationale or reflection on the arguments presented in the RFC, the close is thoroughly unhelpful.
As far as I can see, and the RFC is not that long, there are multiple RS that describe the PB as white nationalist, but the highest quality RS do not make the association routinely, rather making claims of association and ties of the PB with white nationalism and white supremacism (e.g. the SPLC).
This could have been stated in the close, and this would have made the path forward much more straightforward. Since RS do make the connection, but perhaps do not rise to LABEL territory, a reasonable thing to do is to remove the LABEL from the lead sentence, but follow it up (in the lead) with an explanatory sentence, e.g.: Proposal - The Proud Boys is a far-right, neo-fascist and exclusively male organization that promotes and engages in political violence in the United States and Canada. The group also has been associated with and members routinely maintain ties to white nationalist and white supremacist extremists.
We can then, in a further step, discuss whether (1) the LABEL does apply after all (re-opening the same RFC), or (2) discuss whether some association sentence is DUE for the lead, (3) tweak the details, positioning, etc. --Mvbaron (talk) 08:18, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
WP:AN is not an appropriate venue for hashing out content disputes and working out content proposals. If the RfC close was procedurally incorrect, as appears to be the case here in view of WP:ONUS arguments made above, then the correct thing to do now is simply to reverse the close and reopen the RfC. Somebody else can re-close it, or the discussion at the talk page can continue for a bit longer, perhaps with some extra input. Nsk92 (talk) 12:59, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"The RfC close was procedurally incorrect" is a poor way to summarize the current state of this discussion. Where we're at right now is: The community endorses the finding of "no consensus". There's a widespread feeling that the ideal closing statement would have given a summary of the arguments on both sides, but also, there's a widespread feeling that it's inappropriate to give discussion closers a hard time on this point. The community agrees that a "no consensus" outcome means restoring the status quo. Currently at issue is the question of whether restoring the status quo means the article should, or should not, contain the disputed wording. As of right now, a majority of respondents feel that the status quo is the article without the disputed wording, so if there's no further discussion on this point, then the right close for this review would be to endorse the "no consensus" finding and the decision to restore the status quo, reverse the decision that the status quo is to include the disputed wording, and insert a summary of the arguments into my closing statement. I have asked for more guidance about how long it takes for an edit to become the stable wording, but there has not been any substantive discussion about this. It would be very premature to make any such close right now.—S MarshallT/C13:28, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's a tough question: How long does an edit need to be live to be "status quo"? I don't think there is a simple answer. I think at 3 months, it is easy to argue that it is, although not absolute. Maybe it takes longer? Or less? Each situation is a bit different, so it is difficult to generalize, which is why sometimes you just have to ask the community and get a consensus. I don't think the procedure was wrong, I just disagree with the read of "status quo", which was obviously made in good faith but doesn't hold up to a larger consensus. Dennis Brown - 2¢13:56, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That is very true. My 3 month comment was for "average" articles with moderate traffic. Not sure that a few days is enough to confidently declare it "status quo" in all cases, even on heavily trafficed articles, but that is the problem. It is impossible to make a rule or formula that can be applied to articles. That's why I didn't bust S Marshall's chops over this. Since it had been 2+ months, I can see why they might have concluded it was the status quo. Dennis Brown - 2¢10:52, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That we are even discussing this point here also shows that the RfC close was premature and should be reversed. In unclear situations the closer should not supervote the discussion on an important issue like this one but leave it open for more input. My own opinion is that in general controversial content that had not been present in the article for very long (where what "very long" means does depend on the article, although I don't think it can ever mean just a few days) and for which there had not been expressly discussed consensus established for its inclusion earlier at the talk page, should not be considered a part of the status quo. In any case I believe that this RfC would benefit from being reopened and from receiving some extra input (which, I am sure, it would get now, if the close was reversed). Nsk92 (talk) 14:39, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's totally wrong, please retract it. The close can't possibly have been premature: The discussion had been open for considerably more than the requisite length of time, and it had been listed unclosed at Requests for Closure, by a neutral party. The close can't possibly have been a supervote: It was a finding of "no consensus" in a debate without a consensus.—S MarshallT/C14:58, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The close was premature because an important issue of which version of the wording to use after the close of the RfC remained unsettled, and had not even been substantively discussed. That somebody requested a close and that RfC run longer than the requisite amount of time doesn't change that fact. The closer doesn't get to unilaterally decide on the issue of prior consensus and the status quo without a specific discussion of that issue. The "no consensus" finding was indeed supported by the RfC discussion, but the decision that the article had to retain the disputed wording was a clear supervote by the closer. Moreover, Hobit makes it clear below that the addition of the disputed wording on January 26 was immediately challenged, on the same day, at the article's talk page, and the RfC started about 3 weeks later. Under these circumstances one can't argue that a consensus to include the wording in the article ever existed. Nsk92 (talk) 18:28, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
endorse no consensus finding, disagree about status quo. I !voted to have the label and I think it's justified. But I believe "white nationalist" was disputed on the talk page in the same day it was added (January 26th I believe). The RFC started about 3 weeks later. I think it fair to say that including the term never made it to status quo--it was boldly added and immediately disputed. Ideally it would have been reverted right away (per WP:BRD) but I think we shouldn't penalize someone for taking it to the talk page rather than just immediately reverting--especially in a contentious area like this. That said, I think we'll be back here again as I expect that label will see even more use in the media over time... Hobit (talk) 14:35, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm strongly opposed to any attempts to require reversion to establish a change is disputed. While WP:BRD may encourage it, it can also lead to dumb edit wars and we should never penalise an editor for not reverting a disputed change if they make it clear there is a dispute. It also encourages a defeatist mindset IMO i.e. where edits feel they must establish the status quo early on because there may be no consensus. I'd much rather editors concentrate on achieving consensus and then if there really is no consensus it's perfectly fine for argue afterwards what the status quo actually is. So definitely I do not agree we can take any time from once the RfC had started as helping establish a new status quo. So the only question is whether those ~3 weeks from the change until the RfC is enough to establish a new status quo. IMO given the early dispute combined with some limited ongoing discussion, was enough to prevent a new status quo from being established. Obviously there needs to be some genuine attempt to establish consensus, so an editor can't simply say I disagree with this change when it happens, then repeat that every month and then a year later say there isn't a new status quo. Nil Einne (talk) 13:18, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note that it is not 3 weeks, it is same day. See the thread Talk:Proud Boys/Archive 6#White Nationalist?, opened on January 26, the same day that the material in question was added to the article, that challenged the addition of that material and the usage of "white nationalist" term. The editor who opened the talk page thread chose not to revert the addition and instead proceeded to dispute it at the talk page, but indeed that's not a good reason to penalize them now. Nsk92 (talk) 00:39, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello,
I feel like the Jonas Tomalty page is unfairly being flagged for random infractions. Everything is up to code and there have been several legitimate contributors and there are several verified citations and sources yet when you open the page it has a bunch of warnings at the top. Several neutral people have been involved in developing this page and it looks like a bit of bullying is going on at this point. Not sure what else to do at this point.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonastomalty (talk • contribs) 2021-04-07T19:05:53 (UTC)
Adding the full name and date of birth seems to be a clear BLP violation, but I wouldn't say there's any reason to suspect a COI from it. (Other details of the IP may however suggest one.) As many celebrities seem to do nowadays, it was posted to Instagram, even the birth weight. Actually this is one reason we have so many problems, a celebrity posts it and some fan tries to add it, we deal with it a lot at WP:BLPN. Worse is if the celebrity is famous enough, something close to an RS reports it. Indeed a recently banned editor was often arguing in favour of naming children because they were talked about in entertainment sites. Nil Einne (talk) 02:43, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I posted to this noticeboard last month about this editor, but there was little participation (and I think someone accidentally posted to the wrong thread last time). User:LouiseFeb1974 has continued with their disruptive editing and seems to have a particular vendetta against psychologists who promote the use of medication for ADHD. They have continued to add unsourced information or information cited to primary sources and add excessive or unnecessary quotes to emphasize a negative POV.
If Carlossuarez46 should return to active editing on the English Wikipedia during this time and request that this case be resumed, the Arbitration Committee shall unsuspend the case by motion and it will proceed through the normal arbitration process. Such a request may be made by email to arbcom-enwikimedia.org or at the clerks' noticeboard.
If such a request is not made within three months of this motion, this case shall be automatically closed, and Carlossuarez46 shall remain desysopped. Carlossuarez46 may regain the administrative tools at any time only via a successful request for adminship.
The closure doesn't seem tp reflect the consensus in the RfC. My rough count gives 43 supports for C (only or first option), with 30 supports for A and B counted together. This despite the fact that the premisse of the RfC (that unhyphenated parameters like "accessdate" were already deprecated) turned out to be incorrect, thereby skewing the votes in the direction of A and B (after all, bots carrying out the removal of formally deprecated parameters is something much more normal than bots carrying out the removal of parameters which were explicitly not deprecated).
This misconception coloured the RfC close badly from the start:
"The first major aspect of this discussion was whether or not non-hyphenated parameters are still deprecated for the CS1/2 family of templates. Consensus can change, and the RFC establishing uniform template parameters happened more than five years ago." (emphasis mine).
The RfC (my third link above) only showed consensus (and a very small one at that) to create unhyphenated versions of hyphenated parameters, and to show these as the "normal" version of the two, but explicitly stated "Establishing this uniform parameter name convention does not preclude the existence of any other alias for a parameter, merely that a lowercase, hyphenated version will exist for each parameter" and "Reworded to make it more clear that this proposal is not to eliminate any current version of a parameter.". So to claim that the current RfC would determine if these parameters were "still deprecated" is factually wrong, the status quo was "not deprecated" and this was supported by a clear majority of the responders.
From this wrong start, the close then continues to allow the wholesale bot-powered replacement of one version of the parameter by another version in millions of articles, but only if coupled with other edits. The end result is the same, perfectly acceptable variants are phased out because a minority of editors don't want them.
Furthermore, the closure is some undiscussed hybrid, introducing concepts and decisions which weren't part of the RfC, making this essentially a WP:SUPERVOTE.
I support this request. Firstly I was surprised to see anything other than option C being determined as consensus given the number and strength of the arguments (although I'm not looking through neutral eyes), but a hybrid of B and C with aspects of A that was literally never discussed is definitely not the correct outcome. Thryduulf (talk) 12:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I want to say that I always appreciate anyone willing to read, summarize, and close a difficult RfC. I think the closer did a solid job on large parts of this, but anytime you close against numeric consensus you need to provide a strong rationale for the close. That wasn't really done here as well as it should be. And I remain a bit unclear on what the close is. I think what I'm seeing could be summarized as "Basically C, but bots are welcome to change to the hyphen versions but doing so is considered cosmetic (and thus shouldn't be done by a bot unless it is doing something else non-cosmetic, as per our normal rules) and the documentation need only list the hyphen versions. Removing the functionality can only be done via a new RfC". Is that accurate? Hobit (talk) 14:18, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Except going against the numerical consensus requires that it be based on wrong or weak arguments. Clearly not the case here; especially given the RfC statement itself was based on an incorrect premise that the parameters were already deprecated. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:45, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In general to close against numeric consensus it would have to be the case the the minority arguments were stronger. Doesn't always mean that the majority had weak arguments. But yes, that's what the closer would have to argue. Or, potentially show that there was some middle ground that meshed well with most of the !votes. That's trickier, but what I think the closer was shooting for. Hobit (talk) 15:23, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I am pretty satisfied with my close. If it gets overturned, I'll understand that, but I certainly hope that doesn't happen. I think that enough proponents of Option C had Option B as their second choice, and a good amount of people discussed their specific objections with each of the options that it could be addressed in the close. –MJL‐Talk‐☖14:52, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen you mention that C voters had B as their second choice. Why does that matter? When I vote "C 1st choice, B 2nd choice", that doesn't mean "C is my preference but B is ok, too", it means "C, but if C doesn't have consensus, then B but not A". If my first choice has majority support, my second choice shouldn't factor in. The reason I ask is because if "C 1st choice, B 2nd choice" is weighed as an argument in favor of B against C in any way, or as a weaker C argument than just voting for C, then I will stop voicing second choices and just vote "C" in the future. But I don't think that's the intent here. Levivichharass/hound15:03, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich: I mean.. I haven't thought about it like that before. I guess there might be an error in how I factor in second choice opinions if that's the case. In general, I see second choice !votes as basically something the commenter is saying they are fine with as an outcome (kind of like approval voting) just not preferred, but I see your point that it might not be like that. –MJL‐Talk‐☖15:19, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Of course it's not like that. People were simply expressing the opinion that if their preferred option C was ruled out then they would prefer option B to the even worse option A. The was no implication that any of them would be fine with that as an outcome. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Uninvolved, but having read it through: yes, an odd close altogether. It's true that on due consideration I probably would also have been a C-optioner; but more to the point, the close does not reflect the discussion, let alone codify an outcome. ——Serial15:43, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how this close can stand when the closer was under the misapprehension that non-hyphenated parameters had been deprecated several years ago. I was also initially taken in by the people who said that (you know, WP:AGF and all that) but was later surprised to find that the previous RFC had done nothing of the sort. When it was pointed out that the whole basis of the close was wrong then the close should have been vacated, rather than just a few words being changed. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Phil, *have* some of the non-hyphenated parameters been depreciated? I agree no RfC supports having done so, but I'm seeing claims that it happened anyways. I don't know the area well enough to have a clue what reality is. Hobit (talk) 16:55, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, some of the non-hyphenated parameters have been deprecated and some have been "recently removed". Honestly, I don't know what the difference is between the two, because if you use either one, a deprecated parameter or a removed parameter, it still throws a cite error in both instances and places that article in a tracking category for that parameter to be fixed → (replace with). However, accessdate, archivedate, archiveurl has not been deprecated or removed, but according to that help page, Plan for the future: Editors should expect that support for non-hyphenated parameter names will be withdrawn. Choose the hyphenated form when adding parameters to a citation template. Consider replacing non-hyphenated parameters with the hyphenated equivalents at the same time.Isaidnoway(talk)21:14, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Can you link to the place where consensus was reached that these parameters should be deprecated, and where it was agreed that "editors should expect that support for non-hyphenated parameter names will be withdrawn"? And I'm talking about discussions that actually involve people who use these templates, rather than unadvertised discussions on technical pages. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:12, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Phil Bridger:, Sorry, I can't provide a link, because I don't know of any discussion/consensus taking place. I have worked in those tracking categories doing ref clean up, where that help page link is given for the cite error generated when an editor uses a deprecated/removed parameter in a citation. I often have to refer to it to find the new parameter. I'd also note that some of the more popular cite templates, cite web, cite book, cite news, cite journal, show those same tables of deprecated/removed parameters, with a note at the bottom of the tables - all non-hyphenated aliases of parameters with hyphens are discouraged to be used in citation templates and are kept only for legacy support. They are subject to becoming deprecated and unsupported in the future as well To streamline the appearance and improve consistency across the project, these variants should no longer be used when adding parameters to citation templates. Instead, select the hyphenated parameter variants and also consider switching other non-hyphenated parameters, which may be present in a citation already, to their hyphenated equivalents at the same time.Isaidnoway(talk)16:33, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fram:, regardless of whether that change sticks or not, the fact still remains that those parameters listed in those tables have been deprecated/removed, and if an editor uses them, they create a cite error which places them in a tracking category where a bot or human replaces those deprecated/removed parameters with the new one. If an RfC changes that, and puts all those parameters back into use, I'm fine with that, less work for humans and bots.Isaidnoway(talk)17:01, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But not all unhyphenated parameters have been deprecated, not all of them generate errors or get placed in tracking categories; e.g. "accessdate" does nothing of these, and is very much "in use", but gets removed by bots (e.g. Citation Bot) anyway, because? Removing such an incorrect message is a small step in the right direction, and informing people that these parameters are not deprecated at all and don't generate any errors or issues is another such step. Fram (talk) 17:57, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If there has been no consensus for deprecation then they are simply not deprecated, and neither the template code nor help pages should be written on the basis that they are. I agree that "less work for humans and bots" is a good thing - that was the basis of many of the opinions given in this discussion. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I get where you guys are coming from, the three most commonly used non-hyphenated parameters (imo), accessdate, archivedate and archiveurl still work. But the parameters listed in those tables definitely do not work and have to be replaced. And believe me, there are a lot of editors who still use those deprecated/removed parameters listed in those tables. In 2020, I fixed 10,000+ of those cite errors myself, and plus other editors who worked in those tracking categories and the bots, that's a shit ton of cite errors that were generated just from those parameters already listed in those tables.Isaidnoway(talk)18:21, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If there has been no consensus to deprecate those parameters then they are simply not deprecated, and using them is not an error. You have fixed 10,000+ non-errors instead of recognising that the error was in giving an error message in the first place. That is what needs fixing. All of this is simply make-work that could be avoided with a bit of common sense. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:02, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus or not, and call them what you want, but those parameters do not work in citations. And no, they were not non-errors, they were cite errors, because those parameters don't work, and some of them haven't worked since September 2019 and October 2020. If you can get them restored, go for it, but meanwhile, until common sense prevails (good luck with that), when those call them what you want parameters are used, they will still create a cite error and be placed in a tracking category.Isaidnoway(talk)23:05, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is a minority of editors who voted either way, frankly, and not statistically significant numbers. It would be interesting to discover, for example, that the majority of every access date added is hyphenated. I don't know, but it would be good to know. Then we'll know who the minority and majority are. This can be easily done. Go to [68]. Click the "C" column to sort. Download the latest dumps for each template (note dump dates in "A" column). These are complete dumps of every template on Enwiki updated every 7 days. Then simply grep -Fic "access-date" file.json; grep -Fic "accessdate" file.json . Record the result and do again every week or so. It will show the trend and ratios. I just did it for {{cite book}} and there are 297,045 |access-date= and 152,822 |accessdate=. This works out to 66% for |access-date=. Note this is legacy, the current trend going forward may be different and is in some ways more significant ie. what we are doing now. -- GreenC19:36, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The proportion of uses is completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether editors are required to know whether parameters are hyphenated, or whether they can just use whichever they personally prefer at that moment without needing to care about matters unrelated to improving the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 20:39, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We wouldn't want to ignore what people are actually doing as irrelevant, traditionally considered a form of consensus; and it helps to mitigate the problem of a loud minority in these relatively small discussions vs. how many editors create templates (most of them). -- GreenC22:03, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly, this is not the venue to rehash the discussion, secondly it doesn't matter here whether the editors with a strong opinion are a minority or a majority of all editors using the templates. What matters is whether the very significant disruption caused by removing an option that people use is justifiable and for that the only thing you need to know is the absolute number of people using those options, the proportion doesn't matter a jot. In terms of absolute numbers, there are sufficient voices in the discussion to know that it's a non-negligable number and I would be astounded if every person who uses unhyphenated parameters commented in that discussion (or was even aware of it). I can't fathom a reason why the number (or even proportion) of editors who create templates could possibly be relevant to this discussion? Thryduulf (talk) 22:46, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, but you can't get away with saying that everyone who didn't comment supported one position. The discussion was widely advertised, and a clear majority of editors who commented supported option C. Every decision made on Wikipedia only gets made by a very few people in proportion to our many millions of readers, but we can't assume anything about their opinions if they don't comment. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:24, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I commented above. I think other than clarity issues the closer got to more-or-less the right place. Basically option "C" with granting permission for a bot to change to the hyphen versions as a cosmetic fix (with all the restrictions associated with doing so), and not requiring that more than one option be officially documented. The problem is that their wording wasn't great, their justification was lacking from what is needed, and they got at least one relevant fact wrong (I think). Also, it would have been best if they had said option C with a note about the bot/documentation rather than option B with changes.
Would people be okay with the following: "Option "C" with granting permission for a bot to change to the hyphen versions as a cosmetic fix (with all the restrictions associated with doing so), and not requiring that more than one option be officially documented.? My sense is the option C people wanted to be able to proceed as they have and folks want to avoid massive watchlist disruption but very few "C" people expressed concerns about documentation or even someone changing the style as long as it didn't disrupt watchlists. I think that's what MJL was trying for (based on their feedback to my question to them above) and I think it's reasonable. @Phil Bridger:, @Fram:, @MJL:Hobit (talk) 21:16, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"very few "C" people expressed concerns about documentation or even someone changing the style as long as it didn't disrupt watchlist" Well I don't think it was that few - I for one certainly didn't say anything about watchlists, at least in the short !vote I left (and I'm not the only one, see Thryduulf and "without needing to care about matters unrelated to improving the encyclopedia" above). Even if there were "mostly" objections to watchlist disruption I don't see how allowing the bot to do exactly that would be acceptable; given that option C included explicitly "revoke the bot approval for this task". RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:50, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Because there were few, if any, reasons given to not allow a bot to make those changes as long as it wasn't disruptive. To be clear, cosmetic changes like that are allowed to be done by a bot only if the bot was fixing something non-cosmetic at the same time. I get what C says, but I'm asking if you can articulate a reason to not allow a bot to make that change under the same restrictions as any other cosmedic edit. I didn't really see any reasons given in that discussion why such a thing would be objectionable, but it was a long and detailed discussion I could easily have missed something. Hobit (talk) 22:05, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there was a direct objection to that. The crux of the objection to the bot change was that there's just so many articles which have |accessdate= that it's needless clutter; and that both parameters are ok (for ease of use by editors, WP:KISS, "if it ain't broken don't fix it", ...). Of course if there are other more substantial edits that might be ok (though the "quasi-cosmetic" ones, such as removing |ref=harv, aren't really that substantial); though I didn't really write about that in the RfC given I wanted to stick to the point (the RfC was already long enough as is, imagine if everyone wrote 200 word !votes...) RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was against C, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I read the close similarly to Hobit: our existing project-wide consensus is that anyone (human, bot, or semi-automated human) can make "general fixes" as long as they're doing something actually useful at the same time. While there's a clear consensus against Monkbot's task 18, there is certainly no consensus in this discussion to change the policy on "general fixes" that govern things like AWB and syntax cleanup. Discussion are not a vote, and most of the "Option C" !votes used their dislike of Monkbot to argue against a tangentially related point: should we prefer hyphenated parameters over smashedtogetherwords? A significant portion of C !voters were "per Phil" but that comment was subject to serious debate and criticism. Almost every sentence of that rational was about the bot, and Scott pointed out that Phil's reasoning was fallacious. Scott clearly states where Phil misunderstood the proposal: Deprecation is not synonymous with disabling. You're confusing replacement of the parameters as written in a template transcluded in a page, with removal of the runtogether parameter variant's ability to function in the template. Following this was some discussion on how "deprecation" means potentially removing the functionality eventually but nothing in the proposal required that, and John and Scott discuss a modification to option B to make that explicitly clear. The close largely substantiates that view, so the argument that this is a "supervote" because it was not discussed is simply false if you had read the discussion. It gives a clear and specific prohibition on doing what C !voters don't want (removing the parameters) until a clear consensus arises to do so. What seems to be at issue is that some C !voters don't want to be told that a segment of the community thinks we should prefer hyphens over smashingwordstogether. I and others argued that using hyphens was better than smashingwordstogether for various reasons you can read in the discussion. By contrast, many option C !voters were not saying smashingwordstogether is better, rather they were saying that they don't want the option removed and especially not by bot. This is exactly what the close gave: prefer hyphens, follow existing policy on cosmetic changes, and don't remove the template parameters without a definitive RfC. Leaving aside the misunderstanding about previous consensus (which is largely a red herring and can simply be fixed by editing it), the challenge relies largely on vote tallies to argue against giving voice to a significant minority of the editing community. That's not how consensus works, and we should not ignore a solid 40% of the community just because a bot left a bad taste in some peoples' mouths. — Wug·a·po·des00:26, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But these replacements aren't "general fixes", they are imposing one accepted, working variant over another accepted, working one. There is no reason at all to make this change, not on its own but not as part of another edit either (just like we don't accept mass edits that impose spacing preferences in headers or in lists, or that change one variant spelling or reference system, or...). There never was any agreement that these need replacement, that this "is" an actual fix, so your reading of the discussion is flawed from the start. Fram (talk) 08:00, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Uninvolved but having watched the conversation: I was very surprised to first hear the closer had apparently found consensus for B, which didn't look to me to have consensus in either a numerical or strength-of-arguments sense. The fact the closer was apparently working on false principles explains the odd position, but only makes reviews more important. Vaticidalprophet00:58, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I note that the close statement still, even after I pointed out the error, contains the sentence, "the first major aspect of this discussion was whether or not non-hyphenated parameters are still deprecated for the CS1/2 family of templates." That is simply a factual error which undermines the whole close. Non-hyphenated parameters have never been deprecated, and that is one reason why most people went for option C. Surely it would be better for the closer of such a contentious discussion to be an admin, and for them not to be a template editor? It is in fact very simple to write a close that reflects the consensus of the discussion - it would simply say, "option C".Phil Bridger (talk) 16:13, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the closer needs to be someone without template editor privileges, or necessarily an administrator. Someone experienced with weighing discussions with a wide variety of comments would be good. isaacl (talk) 21:08, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
According to this edit, users were told that they would be paid for voting "delete" (it looks like "salt", too). However they weren't actually paid. I however don't want to talk about paid editing or scam but wanted to say that the discussion seems to be manipulated. I'm not sure if anything should be done now. FF-11 (talk) 13:26, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There was some disruption during the AfD from canvassed delete votes, but (in my potentially biased opinion as a participant) there was nonetheless a clear consensus for delete among editors in good standing. I think that the outcome can be as is. signed, Rosguilltalk20:02, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the outcome was correct based on the participation of experienced editors. Furthermore, I am skeptical of the claim that delete votes were paid for. This could just as easily be a tactic to try to overturn the outcome by creating a false narrative of shenanigans purported to invalidate it. BD2412T20:28, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Eh, if that were the case I would have expected the article's initial editor to be relitigating it by now. My guess is that Rt Rana probably posted about this on social media and some troll picked up on it, either by telling people that they would pay for delete votes or by showing up themselves and claiming that this was the case. signed, Rosguilltalk20:34, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure how best to handle this, admin-wise. We've got edit warring, socking, and a seemingly endless battle for Twitter link supremacy. My original inclination was to remove the disputed "official" link(s) altogether and fully protect the article to drive talk page discussion, but I'm concerned that will just bring about more socking and off-wiki canvassing by the various link supporters. My second inclination is to nominate the article for deletion - the sourcing is abysmal and I don't see how it will ever be expanded upon beyond the current sentence. My final inclination, which I've acted on, is to pass the buck on to my fellow admins by posting here.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots21:55, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Page semi-protected, both recent editors (SPAs the lot) indeffed for edit warring, page added to my watch list. I think an AFD may be in order, but I'll leave that in your competent hands. Primefac (talk) 00:46, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh goodness. Yeah, the subject has had to deal with a lot of fake websites, which is why I explicitly mentioned which one was correct with a citation. Sigh. I guess I should've expected this when writing the article. Elli (talk | contribs) 02:54, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your track record of creating Wikipedia:Not every story/event/disaster needs a biography speaks for itself, Drmies. At least I didn't have to search through my own contributions history for a diff from 2007. I am slightly concerned that DyR0t(- -t) (talk·contribs) was blocked, after repeatedly taking the false information out of a Wikipedia biography, but I suspect that the person whose account it is will shrug that off if the problem that xe created an account to combat goes away. Uncle G (talk) 07:10, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was considering a shorter block just for edit warring, but the insult-throwing in edit summaries made me think that there might be an agenda here. They are more than welcome to request an unblock, and if someone wants to downgrade to a shorter length I will not oppose such a move. Primefac (talk) 13:05, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This user is clearly trying to incite hysteria when information pertains to mass shootings. As defined by the federal government, a mass shooting is a public event that results in the killing of FOUR or more people, NOT INCLUDING the shooter. However, this editor seems to think every single shooting that has happened since January 1, 2021, should be included in the "mass shooting" page. This is clearly misleading information, and a danger to the public to post is as truth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TXWingedLion (talk • contribs) 18:55, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is the above editor's third edit to Wikipedia. The first was to delete 35K bytes from List of mass shootings in the United States in 2021, and the second was to TomCat4680's talk page to make virtually the same complaint as they made here. They have made no edits to the article's talk page, where content disputes such as this should go. TomCat4680 is an editor of 14 years and 5 months service time with 88,810 edits - not that makes him necessarily right, and the newbie wrong, of course. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:06, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think if there's not a reference for Mass shootings are incidents involving four or more victims of firearm-related violence then TXWL might have something there, but this is also not an administrative issue - definitely need a bit more discussion at the article's talk. I'm going to close this for now. Primefac (talk) 00:50, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I'm not completely sure, but my guess is to give us a heads up on this kind of activity, using AFD for vandalism. But I really don't know. Dennis Brown - 2¢18:32, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just so that any Speedy Deletion Patrollers knew what on Earth was going on with an AFD day page in the category. It was there for some time. Uncle G (talk) 19:23, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the heads up... yeah not everything is connected to April 1st per WP:FOOLR "Vandalism, including inappropriate joke edits in article space, should be treated in the usual manner as vandalism on other days of the year." - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 21:39, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Addressing G11's , G12's & G10's
I was under the impression that if any of the aforementioned is violated, they are almost always instantaneously deleted but I have tagged a blatant copyvio on Busola Dakolo for almost an hour and it still appears that no admin wants to review that. What’s seems to be problem here? Celestina007 (talk) 18:53, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Speedy" deletion is not about the time, but about the need (or lack thereof) for discussion. An hour for a copyvio is actually quite low. I also don't think that meets the G12 criteria, as there's enough content there to save. Primefac (talk) 18:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the pages in CSD are inappropriately tagged or are edge cases at best. Reviewing & untagging these takes time, and there is also a high probability that the nominator will throw a tantrum, which unsurprisingly results in fewer administrators taking on this backlog. -FASTILY22:17, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The general impression of "nominator will make an annoying complaint if declined per policy" is confirmed by the creation of an AN thread when deletion doesn't happen fast enough. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:02, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's someone replacing the image on Commons with the infamous goatse, and edit warring to keep the replacement. The image has been temporarily removed from the article. If I was more Commons-savvy, I'd suggest protect that image. I imagine it is in much-viewed articles on many language wiki's. As a wrok around, we could make a local copy and protect that here. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:19, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
File:Duke of Edinburgh 33 Allan Warren.jpg has been locked now, and I think it was a compromised account that was doing it, glocked. I think this is the image that was being toggled. Dennis Brown - 2¢21:36, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, well the one I spoke of is full protected (admin only), but the image you are referring to hasn't isn't protected. They do things differently over there, I suppose. I didn't check the date of protection, it may have been locked some time ago. Seems under control for now at least. Dennis Brown - 2¢23:03, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I feel I should add a further clarification for future reference. There's been several compromised accounts, and these are relatively abundant for this vandal, who has been doing this same performance for years. These compromised accounts are the reason that Prince Phillip is EC protected. Blocking is great, global locks are better, but protection can be of equal importance (on Commons or not). Understatement of the week - compromised accounts never come alone. -- zzuuzz(talk)08:07, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved
Note: Carlossuarez67 seems to give permission to delete qualifying articles per WP:CSD#G7 
D🐰ggy54321 (the Easter bunny has been summoned...) 13:27, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
00:23, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
._%D0%A1%D1%83%D0%BD%D1%96%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB%D0%B0_(%D0%A1%D1%8F%D0%BC%D1%91%D0%BD_%D0%A1%D0%B0%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%B0)_(1709).jpg){kind=link}
wikimedia.org or at the clerks' noticeboard.
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § (Un)paid votes in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rt Rana![[69]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ACorfu_Mon_Repos_R01.jpg&type=revision&diff=551538936&oldid=551535769){kind=link}
![[70]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AG_House_from_the_South_Lawn_on_an_Autumn_Afternoon.jpg&type=revision&diff=551539038&oldid=551535104){kind=link}
