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Close review requested in AP / BLP article
I am requesting a close review of a recent RfC at Hunter Biden laptop controversy. The RfC is here.
The closer refers to having counted !votes and does not indicate that they fully considered the participants’ supporting arguments and concerns or whether there is a valid consensus in the poll. The close does not appear to have fully addressed the significant BLP and sourcing issues, the level of consensus required to change the status quo text, and the discussion of the content of the sources cited in the discussion. Several such issues were raised by the participants who posted more than brief “yes” or “no” responses to support their !votes with reasoning that went beyond merely counting the number of source citations.
The closing text is brief in light of the complexity and controversy raised by the RfC question. After the close, some editors interpreted the result as having decided only the RfC question as stated -- whether to use the word “alleged”. Others cited the close of the RfC as a basis to oppose broader wording that was consistent with the close and not synonymous with “alleged”. Such an interpretation was beyond the scope of the RfC statement discussion, and the !vote arguments and policy issues that might support such an alternative interpretation were not addressed in the closing statement. SPECIFICO talk 13:47, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
Comments from uninvolved editors (Laptop controversy)
- This needs to be re-closed by an uninvolved admin/editor experienced in closure, I think. The fact that it was closed by someone who on their talk page describes themselves as a fundamentalist evangelist Christian is one thing, but the fact that poor rationales do not appear to have been discounted (GoodDay's is meaningless and Madame Necker's is simply an opinion about the whole affair; we'll ignore the fact that MN is a new account who has already racked up five different DS notices on their talk page). Black Kite (talk) 14:05, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
Long tangential discussion about whether Christians, Muslims, and various other groups should hypothetically be allowed to close certain RFCs ~Awilley (talk) 04:28, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
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- I was actually about to start a closing draft when I saw on my watchlist that it had been closed. My initial reading was that it was too close a call to find any sort of consensus for either option, specially due to the raised NPOV and BLP issues. Isabelle 🏴☠️ 15:08, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- While I lean on overturning to no consensus due to my own reading of the discussion, I think it's important to note some of the comments on the closer's personal bias here are way out of line. Overturning a close because the editor is from a certain group or minority, without any proof that it affected their close, would set a terrible precedent in precluding editors from closing RfCs in certain areas, as Tamzin mentions above. Isabelle 🏳🌈 01:23, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Endorse. Though numerically the vote was close, with the "No's" being in the majority by only a few votes, I agree the closer properly weighted the votes based on the quality of arguments and application of policy, in particular WP:NPOV. Some editors thought we should use "alleged", other thought not, but then everyone started compiling sources, and as the "no" voters pointed out, the sources were almost unanimous in not using "alleged". WP:NPOV means we summarize those sources--i.e., we don't say alleged because they don't say alleged. The "Yes" voters did not rebut this in any way (e.g., by showing sources predominantly using "alleged"; not just one or two sources; and not from 2 years ago, but current). So, if most editors agree that most sources do not use alleged, then that's consensus to not use alleged. I don't see any error here, it's the proper application of WP:NOTAVOTE. Levivich (talk) 16:04, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- It doesn't seem like a great close. I'm particularly looking at
Some editors asserted that the ownership is still unclear but largely failed to support this with reliable sources, while editors opposing the adjective produced a plethora of recent RS that did not doubt the connection
, which simply doesn't line up with the quotes from sources produced in the RfC. There were a few more "no"s than "yes"s, but there were also more inexperienced/new editors saying "no" and more poor arguments on the "no" side (although not by much). The later comment by the closer extending the RfC about "alleged" to apply toqualifying the belonging in any way
is an overreach. I'm not saying there was consensus for the "yes" side, either, though. We have sources that appear pretty split on this, in terms of the language they use, and both sides have arguments backed by policy. I suppose I'd be inclined to err on the side of BLP, but that's my own $0.02. Although I don't think anyone would love the idea of a repeat RfC, it might be more effective to provide a set of options for wording and/or do a more thorough analysis of the sourcing apart from the RfC, along with weighting by how recent the sources are. i.e. what is the consensus of sources published since June (arbitrarily)? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:44, 29 September 2022 (UTC)- Are we looking at the same sources? That sounds sarcastic, but I am genuinely seeking clarification, as among the sources cited in the RfC, I count three sources that consistently use language like "alleged" and "purportedly" (all from April or earlier), eleven that pointedly omit such language, and a couple that use "alleged" when describing what earlier sources said about the laptop but omit that language when speaking about it themselves (as well as a couple whose constructions are too ambiguous to confidently parse). Where is the disconnect in what we are perceiving? —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:17, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- There is a section, "sources" which lists several bulletpoints. In order of whether they use/describe some qualification of ownership: no, yes [here and elsewhere, there is ownership/verification attributed to the emails, but not the laptop], yes, yes, yes, no, yes, sorta [for the first part, but again regarding emails], no, no, [quote from someone who funded the effort, not the publication], yes [again separating laptop from emails], no, yes [sorta], no [but the sentence isn't about this], yes, yes, [someone "yelling about Hunter Biden's laptop" isn't a statement about authenticity], yes, [doesn't address it], mostly no [attempts to rely on inference from the title]. While it's entirely possible to come to different conclusions about the consensus among those sources, it's hardly one side failing to support their argument and the other producing a plethora of sources. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:52, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- Adding: my evaluation of the close has nothing to do with the closer's userboxes/religion. Yikes, that doesn't seem like good practice. Those arguing that we should overturn on that basis are providing an easy target so people can endorse without addressing the substance of the close (as two of the last three endorsements have). i.e. this "the closer is a fundamentalist Christian and fundamentalist Christians vote a certain way that probably gives them an opinion about this topic ... so optics" line of argumentation isn't just lousy in its own right, but people seem to be focusing on that rather than the problems with the substance of the close (see above). It's weird to me that I'm the only one to flag that the closer declared their closing statement to extend far beyond the actual RfC, for example. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 01:13, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Are we looking at the same sources? That sounds sarcastic, but I am genuinely seeking clarification, as among the sources cited in the RfC, I count three sources that consistently use language like "alleged" and "purportedly" (all from April or earlier), eleven that pointedly omit such language, and a couple that use "alleged" when describing what earlier sources said about the laptop but omit that language when speaking about it themselves (as well as a couple whose constructions are too ambiguous to confidently parse). Where is the disconnect in what we are perceiving? —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:17, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- Vacate for a more experienced closer to re-close. With US politics, it's not enough that the close is right; it has to be seen to be right, so we leave closes that touch on US politics to the wizened and elderly who enjoy the fullest confidence of the community.—S Marshall T/C 17:22, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- Probably a WP:BADNAC, but the close is correct anyway. Nearly every comment saying yes is a WP:TRUTH vote, that we dont really know if it is or it isnt. Those votes should be given less weight when there are users providing numerous reliable sources that state as a fact what those users dispute to be a fact without any sources that likewise dispute it. The numbers may say no consensus, but as ever this isnt a vote and the strength of the arguments for "no" were much stronger than those for "yes". Id have closed it as a consensus for no as well. nableezy - 17:42, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- If the only issue is WP:BADNAC, what do you think we should do in light of WP:NACRFC? — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 17:29, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Its a BADNAC because it was a close call, and we leave that to people we've said we trust to make those close calls. nableezy - 03:00, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
- If the only issue is WP:BADNAC, what do you think we should do in light of WP:NACRFC? — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 17:29, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Endorse close Well thought out and justified through and through. These objections regarding experience or the users religion (really?) are incredibly superficial. Arkon (talk) 17:59, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- Endorse close. It's a reasonable decision, and it reflects the median point of mainstream news coverage at this time. And if you read the lede of this article as a whole, it contains plenty of indications of how murky this whole saga is and how not every claim about it is credible, so readers will not be misled. And the religion of the closer is irrelevant. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:35, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- Overturn close, and re-close by uninvolved admin or experienced non-admin closer - per Black Kite and S Marshall. It's the optics that matter here, and a good close by a partisan closer is not acceptable in controversial subjects. Also, the rigamarole over "give me a list of what Christians can't close" is hyperbolic and absurd, a very good indication of why a pristine close is necessary. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:43, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- Are you saying the closer was partisan or was that a hypothetical unrelated to this case? If the former, I would ask you to substantiate the claim. Mr Ernie (talk) 23:25, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- That is not an appropriate line of argument, BMK. What proof do you have of topic area partisanship in the editing history of this closer? If you have no such evidence, then I submit that the close should be judged on its merits. Which is to say, there would need to be some record of problems involving the topic area by the closer — ones that go beyond a declaration of adjacent (?) bias on their user page. And while I agree that optics matter, without evidence of such problems, they only matter with respect to the appearance of the close as being of substance.
- To that: though I haven't read the discussion and I don't know if I'll get a chance to, it does seem a bit insubstantial, though it may well be a correct assessment (or not, I have no idea). Personally, for a subject of this import, I probably would have written twice to four times more if I were to close that RfC myself. So, again, even if correct — optics. That said, I have been criticized on this board in the recent past that my standards for closures of weight are too high. Still, to me, at a glance, the close seems too brief. El_C 00:48, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Overturn - Many of the sources in the "source" section seem to support "alleged" being included, and many don't. There is sourcing that was presented in the article that supported both sides. So I'm not really seeing the "no" side having such stronger arguments that the discussion should have been closed in the "no" favor despite a near even split among participants. This close was not flat out terrible and I wouldn't say it even arises to the level of unreasonable, but nonetheless, it's best for the close to be done right, and I think the right close would have been no consensus. I don't believe the closer was trying to make a WP:SUPERVOTE, but it can sometimes be hard to balance the line between super vote and strength of arguments. Iamreallygoodatcheckerst@lk 00:29, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Endorse close per Levivich and Wasted Time R. As I see it, the close was correct based on the sources. Those seeking an overturn, as Levivich and others have noted, are using reasoning I will collegially term dubious. Jusdafax (talk) 00:50, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Vacate Having read the RfC, I agree with those above who point out that this closure does not appear to have accurately weighed the !votes which do not have significantly different strengths of argument. C727's response to inquiries about the close also point to that being the case. Should be reclosed by an administrator. ––FormalDude (talk) 05:24, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- @FormalDude This is the section for uninvolved editors. Since you were active in talk page discussion and made 1 of the 4 controversial post-RFC edits, please move your response to the "involved editors" section. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 13:34, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- I've moved this comment to the involved section from the uninvolved per our guidance on fixing format errors. Formal appears to be away from Wikipedia at the moment. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 21:44, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks Red-tailed hawk. I didn't think to do that myself, in case Formal wanted to challenge their "involved" status; it didn't seem like a 100% cut-and-dry formatting error. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 22:05, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Given the objection by FormalDude below, I've moved it back. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 03:57, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks Red-tailed hawk. I didn't think to do that myself, in case Formal wanted to challenge their "involved" status; it didn't seem like a 100% cut-and-dry formatting error. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 22:05, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- I've moved this comment to the involved section from the uninvolved per our guidance on fixing format errors. Formal appears to be away from Wikipedia at the moment. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 21:44, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- @Red-tailed hawk: I'm uninvolved with respect to this RfC as I did not participate in it in any form. Please move my comment back. ––FormalDude (talk) 03:54, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
- @FormalDude This is the section for uninvolved editors. Since you were active in talk page discussion and made 1 of the 4 controversial post-RFC edits, please move your response to the "involved editors" section. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 13:34, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Endorse Regardless of the closer and possible COI, at the end of the day, it seems that sourcing wins out here, but as a broader comment and reading through what's there, I think that that was a poor RFC and/or the issue wasn't fully explored first. In context of the laptop story, it is important to recognize the media's treatment of the story and how that changed, and there may be points where "alleged" ownership should be used to describe the broader media's stance on the matter when discussing the history of when the story first broke. It's now at the time that the media seemingly all agrees about the ownership, so we would no longer need alledged. I would recommend editors on that page to revisit this idea, knowing when "alleged" is actually appropriate in terms of the historical facets, and when it can be dropped. --Masem (t) 02:03, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Dunno — stumbled on this from following up on WP:AN3. It's a harder one because the closer needs to be confident in weighing policy against (and potentially overriding) arguments given. Given BLP, specifically, unless there are RSes with clear assertions stating it was definitely his (i.e., the sources themselves are putting their asses on the line from a legal standpoint), the inference should be reworded to disclaim/avoid it so as to avoid using Wikipedia's voice to assert factual-ness (at least, that's my interpretation of policy and my superficial skimming of the discussion). If I were closing it (I've done many of these via ANRFC), I would not say there's clear consensus based on policy; it's not a good argument to say "but there aren't (m)any sources saying it wasn't his" as it's still SYNTHy/OR to imply fact in Wikipedia's voice unless the positive sources, themselves, are 100% confident in stating ownership as a fact. I would, however, also suggest options combining the arguments involved to discuss for a subsequent RFC. For example, even though nobody mentioned it, "involves a laptop computer , its contents, and whether it was owned by Hunter Biden" is possibly a more neutral, factual representation of the topic at hand, because it unquestionably gets to the meat of what the article is about (and ironically the RFC) without making any risky statements of fact. This could help steer a subsequent RFC into a more productive direction focusing on examining sources and reporting facts as cut and dried as possible to avoid Wikipedia making determinations. Long story short, BLP sets a significantly higher standard for factually assertive statements to begin with, and that's the more important question; a new RFC to discuss these issues and/or rewording options would be warranted. --slakr\ talk / 10:49, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Comment and Questions - How are we to tell new editors that they MUST follow and include reliable sources but then turn around and tell them not to follow reliable sources in this case? I have no political affiliations. I don't care anything about a laptop and who owns it. I just want to make sure I understand how to tell new editors when to use and when not to use reliable independent sources. How do we determine that a reliable source is being lazy? Don't they have an editing process? We very curtly inform editors all the time that Wikipedia isn't trying to present the truth, we only share what reliable sources say about notable subjects. If the sources are wrong then Wikipedia will be wrong. That is mantra used across the encyclopedia all the time. Is that just lip service or do we apply our policies and guidelines equally across the board? --ARoseWolf 14:02, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Endorse. With respect to
The fact that it was closed by someone who on their talk page describes themselves as a fundamentalist evangelist Christian is one thing
, merely being religious does not make one WP:INVOLVED with respect to Hunter Biden's laptop. The fact of the matter is that we should not be deprecating people's ability to participate on Wikipedia simply because they express religious belief. I really can't get behind the notion that, in an analogous situation, all religious Jewish people be prohibited from closing articles within the scope of WP:ARBPIA if the sole basis for trying to exclude them is that they are religious Jews; doing so would be almost textbook antisemitism. The closer also appears to have properly weighed the arguments in that discussion, so I don't see any reason to re-close. WP:BADNAC, if you actually scroll down the veru same page to the WP:NACRFC section, notes thatany non-admin close of an RfC should not be overturned if the only reason is that the closer was not an admin
, so the claim of BADNAC here is self-defeating if that's the only remaining issue. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 17:25, 30 September 2022 (UTC) - Endorse BK's highly inappropriate response notwithstanding, the logic of the closer is sound. While some (politically) want to draw doubt about the laptop, the fact is that reliable sources indeed show it was. "Alleged" is not needed. Buffs (talk) 05:31, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- Concerns: Having read the discussion and the close, I would second Rhododendrites's concerns about the quality of the close, though I suspect a new close could very well come to a similar conclusion. That said, I do have serious concerns about Compassionate727's addendum to the close here where he uses his position as closer to prohibit any qualification that weakens the claim of ownership based on how he "imagines" the RfC participants would vote on the issue if asked. I don't see any consensus in the RfC that should prohibit someone from writing that the laptop is
"widely believed to belong to Hunter Biden"
as User:Korny O'Near suggested. (I'm not sure if that's the most accurate representation of the sources, as I haven't looked at them myself.) @Compassionate727: if you're reading this, would you consider striking or modifying your addendum to reflect what RfC participants actually wrote? ~Awilley (talk) 05:22, 6 October 2022 (UTC)- @Awilley: It seems we disagree about
what … participants actually wrote
. Opponents of using "allegedly" wrote that RS express no doubt that Hunter Biden owned the laptop and that it would be inappropriate for Wikipedia to do so. While the impetus for the discussion may have been the word "allegedly," the result logically and intuitively applies to any other construction that does the same thing. The question, then, becomes simply whether or not a given construction is casting doubt on the ownership in our voice; I opined that "believed to be" does, at least as SPECIFICO used it, and I am far from the only person who has said that. That does not mean that we can never say anything except simply that Biden owned the laptop: Masem rightly notes that there are contexts where that is appropriate (notably indirect discourse) and this discussion was about the first sentence of the article, so it's about the use of such qualifiers in summaries (and extremely short ones, at that). So I'm definitely not imagining this as a blunt prohibition on any qualification in all contexts, and I'm currently mulling over how I might best clarify that, but I don't believe the rational core of the addendum was off-base—though I'm open to being persuaded otherwise. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 16:17, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Awilley: It seems we disagree about
- Endorse close. There was a consensus to omit "alleged", based on the strength of arguments. The close is perhaps not as nuanced as it should be – it doesn't mention that the "yes" opinions largely weren't grounded in policy and guidelines – but closers don't have to be perfect. There's no evidence that the closer tried influence the outcome by "super voting" or such.The filer refers to
"significant BLP and sourcing issues"
, but it's not clear what the alleged issues are. In the RFC they were asked about potential BLP issues, but they evaded the question. Yes, the material is covered by the BLP policy, but BLP per se is not a trump card; if the material is properly sourced (NOR and V), it still must strictly adhere to NPOV policy.For what it's worth, I think the RFC question was too unspecific. Questions like that tend to lead to unclear situations that may require too much interpretation in edge cases. Which is what happened after the close. Politrukki (talk) 12:21, 6 October 2022 (UTC)- The BLP and NPOV issues relating to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden have been extensively discussed on talk on this article's page and before this page was created on the AfD and related page. They have been clearly specified and identified and "evasion" is not at play here, thanks. SPECIFICO talk 12:37, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Another evasion noted. What do you mean by
"significant BLP and sourcing issues"
? And to my knowledge, nobody has suggested that the laptop belongs to Joe Biden. Why would you mention Joe? How are"the AfD and related page"
relevant to this discussion? Please be specific. Maybe I missed something. Thanks, Politrukki (talk) 14:39, 6 October 2022 (UTC) - Whether or not the actual BLP issues were previously discussed is no reason not to bring them up in the RfC. RfCs by their nature are designed to attract editors who have no participated in previous discussions. The reason why you never explained the BLP issues is that there are none
- I phrased the question that way following the recommendations at Wikipedia:Requests for comment#Example. They are supposed to be concise. While SPECIFCO claimed that because the RfC was about alleged, it did not preclude "believed to be," there will always be editors who wikilawyer. I posted the RfC after near unanimous support for keeping the term and notice that the first six votes after mine were to keep. SPECIFICO immediately posted "An irksome revert is no reason to call for an immediate RfC. Ordinary discussion is the next step. Please withdraw this RfC. Or write an essay "BR-RfC"". [14:43, 28 August 2022] Obviously there is a hard core of editors who cannot accept anything that remotely reflects on their political leaders. So support for following policy in the RfC was never going to be overwhelming. TFD (talk) 15:41, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Another evasion noted. What do you mean by
- The BLP and NPOV issues relating to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden have been extensively discussed on talk on this article's page and before this page was created on the AfD and related page. They have been clearly specified and identified and "evasion" is not at play here, thanks. SPECIFICO talk 12:37, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Overturn to no consensus Seems just blatantly like a supervote to me. And when people in the discussion even here have to get into numerical specifics of whom discussed the sources or not, then that even more indicates a no consensus result because consensus was split. Add to that the non-NPOV closing description and the close itself seems way out of line. SilverserenC 01:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Comments from involved editors (Laptop controversy)
- Overturn to no consensus. To put this in WP:CLOSECHALLENGE language: "the closure was not a reasonable summation of the discussion". C727's closure depends heavily on his assessment that
"Some editors asserted that the ownership is still unclear but largely failed to support this with reliable sources, while editors opposing the adjective produced a plethora of recent RS that did not doubt the connection."
This is untrue, as participants on both sides were equally likely to make no explicit reference to sources, and it's safe to assume everyone was responding either to the sources already in the article or in the list posted in the RfC. I inquired about this issue at C727's user talk page (here), and C727 said"I found that many of the earliest sources provided in that list used some kind of qualification, but that by the end of April, most sources were consistently describing the laptop as Biden's, without qualification"
and then"Given how pronounced the trend was and how recent sources exert a controlling influence, I considered that sufficient."
I see this as clear evidence of a WP:SUPERVOTE. The trend analysis C727 is using as the basis of his closure was not presented by the RfC participants, nor did anyone reference WP:AGEMATTERS, the policy C727 linked in that last quote. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:34, 29 September 2022 (UTC) - I would welcome a review from an experienced closer in order to solidify the consensus. There have already been attempts to circumvent the close by messing with the descriptor. What sticks out to me in the RFC is that the sourcing presented came overwhelmingly from the "No" !voters, which the closer noted. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:37, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- Talk:Hunter Biden laptop controversy#Sources Here is a link to the section in the RFC listing the sourcing that many of the No votes seem to base their vote on. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:43, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- And Yes votes. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:44, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- Talk:Hunter Biden laptop controversy#Sources Here is a link to the section in the RFC listing the sourcing that many of the No votes seem to base their vote on. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:43, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- To be more honest than I feel comfortable being, it feels to me like SPECIFICO is forum-shopping because he didn't like the result. Shortly after I closed the RfC saying there was a consensus against stating that the laptop is "alleged to have belonged" to Biden, SPECIFICO added that it is "believed to have belonged" to him, which Mr Ernie reverted; at that point, SPECIFICO reached out to me via email thanking me for my closure and asking me to weigh in on the issue (there was no indication that SPECIFICO felt anything about my closure was incorrect); I did, explaining why I felt the arguments against using "alleged" also covered "believed" or any similar weasle-ish words, at which point he attempted to downplay it as "an after-the-fact personal opinion" rather than the clarification of the closure that he had requested. Now that several other editors have agreed that SPECIFICO's new wording contradicts the consensus I found, he's here seeking to overturn it.
- Between my various comments, I believe I have adequately explained why I found the consensus I did and don't intend to engage extensively with this unless people have questions. But to summarize one last time, for the benefit of uninvolved persons: pretty much every source cited in the discussion was provided in a list mid-discussion; many of them, including pretty much all of the most recent sources, described the laptop as Biden's without qualification. A majority of editors agreed that there is no longer any dispute in the RS that the laptop is Biden's; whether they explicitly mentioned Adoring nanny and his list or not is immaterial, I think it is clear from reading the comments that they are aware of it, and it would be foolish to say that they need to say exactly the right things for their intent to be relevant in shaping the consensus. Likewise, WP:AGEMATTERS was clearly on at least some participants' minds (see e.g. Thriley's reference to "current" sources), even if nobody explicitly linked to it (and it is relevant regardless). I likewise took into account the way the discussion unfolded; while in total, 11 people supported using "alleged" and 14 opposed, the ratio of support to oppose votes swung heavily in favor of the opposers as more and more sources were added to the list. For example, after Guest2625's large addition on September 1, three people voted for using alleged and six against; nobody would question that a two-thirds majority is a solid consensus without a compelling policy reason. And given the large number of RS produced in favor of directly stating the laptop is Biden's, I don't think BLP is a highly salient issue (BLP is not a license to ignore sources), especially when it only indirectly implicates Biden, given the ongoing controversy over the authenticity of the documents.
- I'm willing to admit when I screw closes up (I have done that here before), but I don't see any compelling reason to believe this is one of them. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 16:06, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- This misrepresents my email to the closer, in which I followed what I believe to be best practices to first approach the closer with a concern before formally requesting a close review. Compassionate, as I think is now clear, thanking you for your effort was not an endorsement of your conclusion. SPECIFICO talk 16:27, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- Thing is, Specifico, your edit on Sep 28 at 12:46 adding "believed to have", with the edit summary
more direct representation of status, consistent with RfC
, shows that at that time, you were fine with the close of the RfC, and were even making an editconsistent with
that close. No close challenge from you at that time. It was only after the discussions at the article talk page and ANEW (last post: 2:40 Sep 29) (both of which you participated in) resulted in the reversion of "believed to have" on the basis that it was against the RfC closure, that you then filed this close review (at 13:47 on Sep 29). It looks to me like you didn't have a problem with the close if you could change "alleged" to "believed to have" (i.e., if you could ignore the result with crafty wordsmithing)... only after that was shut down did you seem to raise issues with the close itself. In my view, this seriously undermines your argument. Levivich (talk) 16:37, 29 September 2022 (UTC) - Evidently, and even if it were, it would be reasonable for you to change your mind about my closure after discovering that it was broader than you had thought. I mention the email because 1) it seems to fit within what a pattern of back-peddling here and, more importantly, 2) I had wondered even when I first saw the email why you had reached out to me privately concerning such a public matter as on-wiki consensus, instead of using my talk page. Given everything that has happened since, I wonder if it was so that it wouldn't be obvious to everyone else that you had asked for my input (and implicitly assented that I held a bit of authority on that issue) in case that turned against you, which seems like an oddly underhanded way of seeking clarification of consensus, but a rather natural one if you had been planning to challenge an unfavorable finding the entire time. I find myself struggling to articulate that there was anything truly improper about it, yet the level of cynicism I see there discomforts me. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 16:59, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- I don't think you were forum shopping. Thanking the closer doesn't mean endorsing. But your article edit surely (see Levivich's comment above) looks like a smoking gun.Moreover, you can't make an unsubstantiated allegation that Compassionate727 mispresented you. Would you kindly publish the email – as Compassionate727 is likely unable to do so for copyright reasons – so that the community can be the judge or retract your allegation? Why would you even use email if the message didn't contain any so-called harmful content (private data, defamatory content, etc.)? Politrukki (talk) 14:00, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thing is, Specifico, your edit on Sep 28 at 12:46 adding "believed to have", with the edit summary
- This misrepresents my email to the closer, in which I followed what I believe to be best practices to first approach the closer with a concern before formally requesting a close review. Compassionate, as I think is now clear, thanking you for your effort was not an endorsement of your conclusion. SPECIFICO talk 16:27, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- One admin already reviewed this RFC case and determined that the closer was correct in their assessment of consensus on the WP:ANE case, and also opined on the article's talk page that the subsequent edits were out of line based on the RFC. I guess you're looking for a second admin's opinion, then? PhotogenicScientist (talk) 16:14, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- @EvergreenFir: just letting you know that two comments you've made have been referenced in this discussion. Iamreallygoodatcheckerst@lk 23:59, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- I'd like to see a challenge or a review of this close and whether it was a WP:SUPERVOTE. Andre🚐 16:19, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- Endorse closure- I promised to accept the RFC result (no matter what it was) & I'm keeping that promise. GoodDay (talk) 22:29, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
- As your entry was cited specifically one of the reasons to challenge this close, re: "meaningless", your endorsement carries virtually no weight. ValarianB (talk) 14:09, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- That's a matter for the closer or the re-closer of that RFC, to decide. I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it. GoodDay (talk) 21:27, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Indeed. If you noticed, understood and worried about things like that then I doubt you'd ever sleep. Begoon 14:07, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- Okay, while it's not clear to me why they participated in either the RfC or this review, that was uncalled for. It's not like they're hurting anything. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:07, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- Indeed. If you noticed, understood and worried about things like that then I doubt you'd ever sleep. Begoon 14:07, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- That's a matter for the closer or the re-closer of that RFC, to decide. I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it. GoodDay (talk) 21:27, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- As your entry was cited specifically one of the reasons to challenge this close, re: "meaningless", your endorsement carries virtually no weight. ValarianB (talk) 14:09, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Endorse close. I commented already welcoming any review because I think it should be clear, but here are my thoughts. Of the 10 "yes" !votes, only 3 refer to sources, and none refer to any policy. Consequently, of the "no" !votes, 10 explicitly refer to the sources provided, with the remainder hinting at them and referring to evidence. On this basis, the close is firmly on solid ground. The OP here challenging the close uses their !vote to attack the RFC as premature and suggest the opener of the RFC made a mistake. One RFC participant suggested NPOV wording which avoided this issue altogether (also suggested by Slakr above), which I believe should be pursued as a much better way to handle this. Mr Ernie (talk) 12:50, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Overturn Apparent supervote by an inexperienced editor unfamiliar with measuring consensus. ValarianB (talk) 14:09, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- 7 years, 27k edits = "inexperienced editor" 😂 Levivich (talk) 14:15, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Perhaps ValarianB meant "inexperienced closer"? Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:38, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- That wouldn't be accurate, either. Levivich (talk) 01:38, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
- Perhaps ValarianB meant "inexperienced closer"? Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:38, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- 7 years, 27k edits = "inexperienced editor" 😂 Levivich (talk) 14:15, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Endorse As the closer correctly pointed out, editors who thought the ownership was unclear failed to provide sources. Nor did they present any policy based reasons why facts reported in mainstream news media should be reported as allegations in this article. I note also that SPECIFICO did not inform RfC participants of this discussion. TFD (talk) 14:50, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- I don't think participants in the discussion should be notified, since they'd just come here and re-do their same votes (ie exactly what you're doing). Uninvolved people are the ones who should be in this discussion. This weird section splitting in that regard is a new one on me. SilverserenC 01:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Closure review of Jerusalem infobox RFC
Hi! I'm requesting a review of my closure of Talk:Jerusalem#Should the infobox contain this flag and emblem?. It was somewhat of a tricky close and GrammarDamner was kind enough to raise some concerns in my talk page. Concerns included:
- The possibility I closed based on what I agree with rather than the content of the discussion
- My judgement of the status quo being incorrect (i.e. was the status quo to keep the flag and emblem in the infobox or was it, as I believe, to not give more weight to one side of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over Jerusalem per WP:RFC/Jerusalem)
Thus, as both a non-admin closure and the opinion of those that refused to close it at ANRFC being that it would be a tough closure, I think it is in the interests of our coverage of the topic that my closure is reviewed here. I am more than happy to revert or amend my closure in line with consensus here. — Ixtal ( T / C ) ⁂ Non nobis solum. 10:26, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
- The close seems substantially fine. I think the crux of that RfC is that adding the flag/emblem turns the lead/infobox from its current neutral stance into something that could be seen as a less neutral stance, which contradicts the precedent in an awfully contentious topic. This concern wasn't really addressed by proponents. Most of them just argued that (in their view) doing this would reflect the reality on the ground, but failed to argue how a) it would improve the content of the article; or b) even if it would, if the content improvements offset the can of worms you'd open. Any attempt at an argument was opinionated or refuted. e.g. OSE is a perfectly valid argument, but the examples of OSE in that discussion were poor, some of which have been nominated for deletion and others (e.g. those relating the Russian annexation) are not stable or have no solid consensus behind their choice.
- I don't see the point of close review by closer though. If you feel confident in closing it then do that and stick by it unless you're convinced you made a mistake, which you don't seem to be. If others have concerns with the close, they can raise them on this board in their own words. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:04, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
- ProcrastinatingReader, I just thought it would be good caution to ask for review due to me being a non-admin and the complexity of the topic. I've been confidently incorrect in the past :) — Ixtal ( T / C ) ⁂ Non nobis solum. 10:08, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
- Without comment on the rest of the close, the wording "The "de facto" situation on the ground has no bearing on our neutrality policies" doesn't feel right. It reminds me of the persistent issues surrounding BBC coverage of climate change. Neutrality does not mean a disconnect from reality. Of course, the analysis of a particular reality should be guided by reliable sources, which is what I think was the point that came through in succeeding sentences. CMD (talk) 14:07, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
- Eh, whenever you weigh arguments while closing a controversial discussion, someone will accuse you of supervoting. I wouldn't pay that any mind, at least on its own. As for the actual finding: I think saying that the arguments against inclusion were
significantly superior
is an overstatement. Both sides made arguments deriving from NPOV. To be honest, after reading the RfC, the NPOV argument seems like a wash to me. On the one hand, there is a considerable dispute over the status of Jerusalem, and it is safe to assume that if the Palestinians ever take control of it, they will replace the icons with ones that don't use Hebrew script, among other things; on the other hand, the natural choice for iconography is the set actually employed by the city's functioning government, and refusing to include them could be construed in the opposite direction, as a denial that the government that established the icons is actually the government of Jerusalem (which it clearly is, regardless of whether it should be). So while you were correct to dismiss the WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS-type arguments, I think the NPOV arguments are actually a wash, and given the numbers, I would have found no consensus. If somebody else expresses a desire to press this issue, I will probably vote to overturn, but this is clearly a small detail and I'd rather this not become a whole dramaboard thing. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 03:04, 3 October 2022 (UTC) - Just in case it wasn't clear, the main reason I brought this up was that the RfC clearly did not indicate consensus to remove images from the infobox that had been in the infobox for over ten years. It should also be noted that having the images in the infobox does not mean Wikipedia is endorsing the symbols or taking a side in the dispute. GrammarDamner how are things? 04:31, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- I think that it would be better, to avoid what would, in effect, be re-litigating the RFC, if only admins comment here, or, at the very least, for commenters to indicate whether they are admins or not. As far as I can tell, though I may not have read the List of Administrators closely enough, nobody who has commented above is actually one. I am not an admin either. I took part in the RFC.
- Some observations:
- Above, a comment states: "The "de facto" situation on the ground has no bearing on our neutrality policies" doesn't feel right. The Neutrality policy says: "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." So, the "de facto situation" is only significant as far as the neutrality policy is concerned according to what reliable sources have said about it (the same is true of the de jure situation, which as far as international law goes is: neither West or East Jerusalem is Israeli; East Jerusalem is under occupation; any Israeli move to change the status of Jerusalem - including, perhaps, extending the Jerusalem Municipality to include East Jerusalem - is null and void). What happened in the RFC is that, rather than discussing what sources say and how that affects neutrality, editors were using their own, subjective, opinion about what the de facto situation is to argue for retaining the symbols. If anything, that's a bypassing of the neutrality policy.
- It was stated above: Both sides made arguments deriving from NPOV. I doubt that's true.
- GrammarDamner, who commented above, took part in the RFC. After it was closed, he or she questioned the result at the closer, Ixtal's, talkpage, which led to the current request on this noticeboard being opened. In my opinion, GrammarDamner has poor judgement, making a lot of dubious claims without offering any justification. That includes the claims made in the comment above. That includes the claims made at Ixtal's, talkpage after the RFC closure. At the RFC on the Jerusalem article talkpage, GrammarDamner buttressed his opinion with a claim that the situation in Taiwan is "almost identical" to the situation in Jerusalem: "one country claims a certain area, while another country controls it." That is a pretty inaccurate summary of the situation in both China and Palestine (in China, two regimes claim to be the proper government for the whole {Taiwan isn't an independent country}; in Palestine, the Arab state envisaged by the Partition Plan was never created) and ignores the significant differences between them historically, legally and ethnically/nationally. No situation really bears a close similarity with the one in Jerusalem. Perhaps pre-1967 the situation in Nicosia could have been seen as similar, but we're not dealing with the pre-1967 situation. Perhaps the situation during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait might be similar. But the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait only lasted for months. After I'd attempted a rebuttal of GrammarDamner's argument, he or she responded with "WP:BATTLEGROUND and WP:IDNHT" accusations. Those are more dubious claims for which no justification was offered, showing, in that case, a poor understanding of what those behaviours are supposed to consist of. I wrote a comment on GrammarDamner's talkpage asking him on her not to make any more unjustifiable comments about my behaviour. In my opinion, GrammarDamner's response is irrational and shows a poor understanding of the WP:NPA rule. Overall, in my opinion: not much judgement, not much understanding, not much in the way of reason.
- ← ZScarpia 00:17, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Regarding the response to my comment, I was not involved in the RfC so do not know the full scope of what was said there, but is the assertion given above that reliable sources disagree about what the de facto situation is? Generally we rely on reliable sources to lay out what that situation is. If editors subjective opinions disagree with what the sources say the situation is, I'm sure that will be appropriately weighted. CMD (talk) 03:55, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- With respect to
I think that it would be better, to avoid what would, in effect, be re-litigating the RFC, if only admins comment here
, WP:CLOSECHALLENGE wisely makes no such restriction. It's more than appropriate to have two sections: one for WP:INVOLVED and WP:UNINVOLVED editors. But, in general, any editor in good standing should feel free to comment on reviews of closures of RfCs. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 13:45, 6 October 2022 (UTC) - It's probably better to focus on the
remove images from the infobox that had been in the infobox for over ten years
part. I assumed it was a relatively recent addition. Apparently those images have been in the infobox even after the conclusion of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jerusalem, permalink on 31 December 2013, which significantly weakens the arguments that appeal to the principles behind that RfC closure IMO (including my own analysis above). So it seems having the flags included is the established stable version. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:24, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
WP:ACE Election Commission - Call for candidates
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Hello all, qualified editors are invited to self-nominate for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections Electoral Commission. Those interested should list themselves on this page. Commissioners are empowered to make binding decisions on unexpected or exception issues related to the election, and some other duties specified in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections/ACERFC decisions to date. This is a single-term position lasting until the end of the December election. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 15:20, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
- Just a bump here, a couple of days left on this - volunteers wanted! — xaosflux Talk 20:57, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oof, 3 candidates as of now. I suppose if that's gonna be all of em, we won't even need an election as they'll all get in by default. Silver lining? But I suppose the last few hours is when the influx usually happens (for reasons that are cosmic in nature). El_C 16:37, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- I may throw my hat in the ring, primarily so the other three can feel slightly better when they're elected and I'm not. Cheers! Dumuzid (talk) 16:39, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Please do! I will get you votes,
by forcepeacefully. El_C 17:31, 6 October 2022 (UTC)- Your wish is my command! Though I ask only that voters support whomever they think best suited to the position. Cheers! Dumuzid (talk) 18:10, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
Like. I've always voted for non-admin candidates when I thought they had a lot to offer, as Dumuzid does.←[Early campaigning] Sure, they may not know some of the finer technical details of admin work, but they usually have a decent grasp of the broad strokes, plus they bring a fresh perspective. It's unfortunate that this never happened. I suppose if such a candidate wins, though, they'd have to be granted +sysop at least temporarily alongside the other advanced permissions arbs get by default. El_C 18:22, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Err, why? Unless I've missed something important, it seems like EEC members just sit there and deal with crises if any happen; that makes it sound like the only requirement is a good head on your shoulders. If serving requires special permissions, that sounds like a headache I'd rather not deal with and I should withdraw. (Although, frankly, I'm hoping we get that last-second rush of qualified candidates and I'm not elected anyway.) —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:44, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Glad to see I am in good company both in terms of candidacy and my attitude thereto! Cheers, Dumuzid (talk) 20:46, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Err, why? Unless I've missed something important, it seems like EEC members just sit there and deal with crises if any happen; that makes it sound like the only requirement is a good head on your shoulders. If serving requires special permissions, that sounds like a headache I'd rather not deal with and I should withdraw. (Although, frankly, I'm hoping we get that last-second rush of qualified candidates and I'm not elected anyway.) —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:44, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Your wish is my command! Though I ask only that voters support whomever they think best suited to the position. Cheers! Dumuzid (talk) 18:10, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Please do! I will get you votes,
- I may throw my hat in the ring, primarily so the other three can feel slightly better when they're elected and I'm not. Cheers! Dumuzid (talk) 16:39, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oof, 3 candidates as of now. I suppose if that's gonna be all of em, we won't even need an election as they'll all get in by default. Silver lining? But I suppose the last few hours is when the influx usually happens (for reasons that are cosmic in nature). El_C 16:37, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
User with multiple accounts and "ownership" issues.
User:Kioumarsi and User:H.kioumarsi are the same individual. also, they seem to have an ownership issue with Taleshi_sheep as seem here and here. @Elmidae: you may want to chime in. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:54, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- Indeed they do - and based on that I suspect this is not much more than a basic misunderstanding of attribution, authorship, and COI on WP. Is there a suitable collection of newbie material one could drop on their talk page? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 12:33, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- They are hardly a newbie... they've been here since 2007. But I can hit them with something from Twinkle, and follow up with some pointers to WP:COI, etc. However, they do have multiple accounts, even though they've not used one in several years. This needs some formal addressing. - UtherSRG (talk) 14:04, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- There was no attempt to deceive anyone about the fact that they operate both accounts, so there's no WP:SOCK violation. If this were ongoing, it would be worth asking them why they're using two accounts and encouraging them to disclose this on their userpage, but given that H.kioumarsi hasn't edited in 7 yaers, I don't think even that is necessary. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she|they|xe) 16:43, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- Fair enough. I posted a message on their talk. We'll see what happens. Feel free to make a better attempt. XD - UtherSRG (talk) 17:24, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- Shalom and thank you! Kioumarsi (talk) 19:30, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- There was no attempt to deceive anyone about the fact that they operate both accounts, so there's no WP:SOCK violation. If this were ongoing, it would be worth asking them why they're using two accounts and encouraging them to disclose this on their userpage, but given that H.kioumarsi hasn't edited in 7 yaers, I don't think even that is necessary. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she|they|xe) 16:43, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- They are hardly a newbie... they've been here since 2007. But I can hit them with something from Twinkle, and follow up with some pointers to WP:COI, etc. However, they do have multiple accounts, even though they've not used one in several years. This needs some formal addressing. - UtherSRG (talk) 14:04, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- @UtherSRGI have two accounts, but I have not edited with the "H.Kioumarsi" in 7 years. For technical reasons, I can't deactivate an account or combine two user accounts into one user account. I have mentioned in my profile that I have two accounts. I appreciate it if you kindly remove the big temple from my account. Kioumarsi (talk) 07:18, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- I've removed it. Since you no longer use the H.kioumarsi account, you might consider redirecting User:H.kioumarsi&User talk:H.kioumarsi to User:Kioumarsi&User talk:Kioumarsi to eliminate any further potential for confusion. – Joe (talk) 09:24, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thank you more than words can say @Joe Roe Kioumarsi (talk) 14:58, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- I've removed it. Since you no longer use the H.kioumarsi account, you might consider redirecting User:H.kioumarsi&User talk:H.kioumarsi to User:Kioumarsi&User talk:Kioumarsi to eliminate any further potential for confusion. – Joe (talk) 09:24, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Deletion of main title and infobox of article
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User talk:Volunteer Marek deleted the entry for Kherson Oblast (Russia) and Zaporozhye Oblast (Russia) for it being "unsourced" and being "hoax" which I do not think is really the point. Yes, it is not recognised, but that does not mean you delete the whole entry and infobox for not "recognising" it. Muhafiz-e-Pakistan (talk) 13:09, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- In the discussion of these articles, this user behaves extremely aggressively, and threatens with permanent bans to those who oppose his position. Please restrict this user from discussions and editing articles for a while. PLATEL (talk) 13:43, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
VM is a bit ott here, 4 of the same revert in a couple hours at Kherson Oblast (Russia) Also see AFD in progress here. If there are issues, raise them on talk. Revert 1 Revert 2 Revert 3 Revert 4 Selfstudier (talk) 14:05, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- My edits removed unsourced text which presented false information. So yes, WP:HOAX. And yeah there have been some IPs and brand new accounts jumping in to try and restore the fake information. I did revert them since having HOAXes on Wikipedia embarrasses the entire project. Volunteer Marek 14:08, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Starting New Page
Hello,
I am requesting to start a new page. Ryan Wilson (politican)
thank you KlutheMN
KlutheMN (talk) 14:58, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- KlutheMN You don't need to request permission to start a new article(not a "page"). You may draft one at Articles for creation, but it will be very challenging. First, they will need to meet the definition of a notable politican. Mere candidates are insufficient unless they meet the broader notable person definition. 331dot (talk) 15:12, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- Ok, thank you. A new article will still be created, as there is quite a lot of media, even national, on Minnesota right now. And significant press coverage on this particular race. KlutheMN (talk) 18:11, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- Draft:Ryan Wilson (candidate for Minnesota State Auditor) was created by a different new user on September 27.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:18, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
User making malicious edits.
Anonymous user editing wikipedia page to add frivolous information
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=.30-06_Springfield&action=history
Anonymous user is adding " .306APOCWON " WarRaven (talk) 00:38, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
- Content dispute, no administrator action needed. Just guide them to the talk page, start a discussion and ask for references. Canterbury Tail talk 01:12, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
RfC which may be of interest
Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale Valereee (talk) 13:58, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
XDPOGCHAMPEPEGA
Recommend administrators' review @XDPOGCHAMPEPEGA:'s contrib history, at List of presidents of the United States page & talkpage. As well as editor's own talkpage. Seems to be a case of either WP:CIR or WP:NOTHERE. -- GoodDay (talk) 03:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- I don't think they're here to build an encyclopedia. Their mainspace contributions range from obvious bad-faith vandalism to unsourced POV-pushing, and then there's all the fuckery on their user talk page. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:24, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- Note: they have been notified. (fyi) - wolf 03:37, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- I believe firefangledfeathers has summed up this issue quite neatly. Both long-term edit warring and battleground attitude at List of United States presidents and it's talk page, as well as the must-see-to-believe edits on their own talk page and user page, including a post so obnoxious and hateful it had to be rev/del'd, shows they have no interest in engagement, just telling editors "fuck u" (repeatedly), posting a full copy of lyrics to a Kanye West song, posting their ugly opinions of politics and society, and of course, their off-wiki contact info (as if they're blowing up their account on purpose and so wanna get that out there). None of this behaviour has been about building or maintaining this project or working collaboratively with others to do same. - wolf 03:50, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
They quit and I blocked them. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 04:45, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Seems they've returned as a sock, named User:PieceControlLegend. -- GoodDay (talk) 09:13, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Probably but blocked as not here to contribute. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 13:28, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
Request to overturn or at least limit my topic ban
I currently have a topic ban on editing anything related to religion or religious figures "broadly construed". It has now been in place over a year. I understand that some of my actions that preceded this were disruptive, overly combative and otherwise unwise. However that was in August of last year. I think it would be reasonable at this time to overturn the topic ban. If people are not willing to do this, I think it should be at least limited to edits directly related to religion, and no longer cover "religious figures" "broadly construed". That wording has lead to people trying to apply it against me in what seems to be ever increasing ways. There was notice on my talk page given about me editing related to the Wood Between the Worlds article when this was its content [1]. I have been called up because I edited in minor ways an article on a political leader, not in elation to anything that related to religion, but because he happened to have been involved in creating documents defining government policy related to religion. The interpretation of some seems to be "broadly defined" means anyone who was an artist who ever created any work that was ever religion, no matter how little of their body of work was religious. I floated an example of someone who did some study at a place training people to be religious leaders, but left there without completion and has spent the rest of their career as a lawyer, government administrator and judge, and someone argued that little bit was enough to exclude. At this point the rule is not functioning to protect against disruption, it is functioning to cause me to have to worry about every broadening interpretations of what broadly defined is. I really think that after a whole year we could just overturn the topic ban, but at a minimum we should limit it to edits that in their substance actually cover religious topics.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:11, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- I'm currently neutral with respect to repealing part or all of the ban, but I agree that a topic ban that could conceivably be construed to include any person who is verifiably religious (although I'm not aware anybody has yet attempted to do so) is too broad. Especially when, at a glance, the edits for which he was topic banned pertained to Mormonism specifically. On the other hand, I see a history of not getting the point that concerns me. I'll wait until others have commented before assuming a more definite position, but I think at minimum some clarification is warranted, and I'll probably push to narrow it so that marginally notable places in allegorical novels are not included. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 19:08, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- One time someone did attack me for making what I think was a comment on my talk page that somehow related to Mia Love. Love is a politician and political commentator..John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- Johnpacklambert, you are well aware that Mia Love is a very high profile Black convert to the LDS church, that she was featured in a national TV advertising campaign called I'm a Mormon before that church repudiated the "M" word, and that she and a photo of her were highlighted in a New York Times article about that ad blitz. Cullen328 (talk) 00:34, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- [2] includes the exchange related to Love.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:28, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Johnpacklambert: By "attack", do you mean this question by Cullen328 on your talk page? If so, I fail to see how that could be construed as an attack; an explanation would be appreciated.
- On the subject of Mia Love, she is indeed a politician; however, her religious views feature prominently in the article (and appear to form the basis for her political views). –FlyingAce✈hello 01:51, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Personally, I believe that when a user occasionally infringes the edges of a very broad topic ban and the edits have nothing to do with the disruption that saw them topic banned to begin with, we should ask ourselves if the topic ban perhaps isn't too onerous before we accuse them of prodding to see what they can get away with. I don't believe an editor should have to read oodles of articles out of fear of violating a topic ban while doing routine maintenance like fussing with categories. Having said that: John, you're really not helping your case here. The point of a topic ban is to send you elsewhere and give you time to cool down and rethink things: that you were watching an article from which you know you are topic-banned (you yourself admitted that you are very familiar with Mia Love from news coverage), and watching closely enough to notice category changes within two weeks of them happening, actively undermines the effectiveness of the ban. Essentially asking someone to help you circumvent your topic ban is also not okay. Moreover, you are not helping your case by distorting the salient issues. You could have frankly admitted that there is a religious connection in some of these topics, that you hadn't realized it when you made the contested edits, and that you would like to loosen your topic ban so that you don't have to worry about unwittingly infringing it when making edits that obviously have no religious dimension or motive. People would have been sympathetic and we probably could have reached some kind of agreement. Instead, you have tried to bury the religious aspect of these topics—did you think we wouldn't investigate and find out? This suggests a battleground, not collaborative, mentality: one more focused on vindicating yourself than reaching an amicable understanding with others. That doesn't work in a project like this.
- I want to emphasize that I believe you are acting in good faith. I see that you noted on your userpage that you have Autism; I do too. Now that I have a fuller picture of the situation, it seems to me that you have been getting in trouble because you don't fully understand how other editors' perceive your behavior, and believe me, I'm sympathetic. Drop a message on my talk page—now, before your next appeal, whenever you want to have that conversation—and I'll gladly go over the unwritten rules with you. But modifying your topic ban before you understand those rules will just land you in more trouble in the future, and I don't want that to happen to you, so I will oppose for now. I want you to know that I have no hard feelings toward you and will gladly support an appeal when I think you are ready; let's work together to get you there. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 18:04, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- One time someone did attack me for making what I think was a comment on my talk page that somehow related to Mia Love. Love is a politician and political commentator..John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- This quote was posted on my talk page recently "Completely forget about trying to define where the boundaries are - simply keep so far away from the boundaries that you can't even see them. The vast majority of people on this planet, and the vast majority of BLP subjects in Wikipedia, have never had any specific religious education, have never had any interest in religion professionally, and have never uttered a word in public about religion. You should be fine with any of those. I would strongly suggest that if a BLP article contains any mention of any religious activity, any religious upbringing, or says anything about religious thoughts or comments from the subject... you would be safer to consider it closed to you. " That seems to be saying I should not edit any article on anyone who was verifiably religious.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:45, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- Short version: I oppose overturning the ban, and apologize in advance for the length of what follows. As someone who politely called this editor's attention to their editing of William Sayle (I assume this is the "political leader" referred to above) rather than just reporting them for a topic ban violation, I think that interaction is an interesting example to cite. That article has the word "religion" in the second sentence of the lead for good reasons, one of which is that the political events occurred in the context of the subject's religious leadership of the Puritan breakaway group that formed a European colony in the Bahamas for religious reasons. I understand why, having been notified of a possible topic ban violation, the editor would want to re-characterize the subject's article as something else, but it's not plausible to think that a ban on editing religious topics wouldn't include one of the pioneers of religious freedom in European colonies. So as far as I'm concerned, this appeal is already based on a mischaracterization of the situation.But the baseline problem here, as it has been before (see previous ANI/Arbcom discussions about this editor) is that this editor has fundamental and persistent challenges in applying the concept of "broadly construed" to his own editing, and a history of trying to figure it out by pushing boundaries and seeing what gets restricted. Whatever other purpose it serves, this topic ban on religion is a sort of ongoing test to see whether that problem is still a problem. Obviously it is, as the editor's own comments above indicate. Of course there are two simplistic solutions: one, remove all "broadly construed" restrictions on the editor, on the basis that it is too difficult for him to apply "broadly construed" language to his own editing; two, indefinitely block the editor, on the basis that it is too difficult for him to apply "broadly construed" language to his own editing. The first adds more of a burden on the community to monitor an editor with a long history of consuming the community's time with a recurrent cycle of apologies and topic bans and pleas and blocks and unblocks and second and third and fourth and fifth chances. The second frees the community of that burden, at the cost of losing future edits and making the editor feel bad. I don't think the editor wants the second solution, and I don't know whether the community wants either of these solutions. But in the meantime I oppose lifting this particular topic ban, since it is at least partly serving its purpose of keeping this editor out of editing areas where more attentive and collaborative participation than what they have previously shown is required. Indignant Flamingo (talk) 21:06, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- Knowing there is additional scrutiny during this appeal, after receiving advice to stop testing boundaries, and after receiving advice to stay away entirely from articles that could be about religion at all, the editor responds by editing Jela Spiridonović-Savić, an article in which approximately half of the substantive text is about religion, spirituality, and mysticism in her work. Which, I guess, reinforces my point about a fundamental inability to comply with any restriction that requires interpreting "broadly construed". Indignant Flamingo (talk) 06:35, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- This is a totally unfair characterization of what occured. The article has an opening that states "Jela Spiridonović-Savić (11 January 1890 - September 1974) was a Serbian poet." The categories all talk about being a poet, etc, and one was an 1891 birth category. I read that intro and realized that it did not agree with the listed year of birth. That was all of the article I read before moving it to 1890s births category, since we have a conlict on what exact year this person was born. I did not review the article, which was unwise of me, because this seemed so clear cut, and I was thinking that poets are generally not religious in nature. This was not an attempt to push boundaries, it was an attempt to deal with an issue that had no religious nature, on an article on a poet, which is not an inherently religious thing. I should have delved deeper into what type of poet this person was. I am very sorry for this and have reversed the edit.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:59, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Lambert,that was a totally fair and accurate description of your bad behavior. The fact that you argue that you shouldn't even be required to review the entire quite short bio to see if it fell under your topic ban demonstrates you cannot be trusted to edit properly. Oppose any relaxation of existing bans, support site ban. (s) Vivian.
- I no where said I should not be required to review the article. I reversed this edit. I just said that if I had not reviewed this article, I was not trying to test the limits of the ban, because I all knew when I made the edit was that I was editing an article on a poet in a matter related to how their birth was categorized. I have admitted that such an edit was wrong, but to say it was a testing of the ban when I had no idea what topic the poet had written on is not truthful. I realize now that I should have dug deeper, but at the time I was thinking many musicians, artists and the like have religious subjects, but I was not thinking abut poets that way, specifically when the poet was not even described further in the lead, not in any categories that were not about poets. I recognize that I was wrong, and have reversed my edit there and apologized. The topic ban itself says I should be allowed to reverse edits when I mistakenly do not realize they relate to the subject of the topic ban, and I sincerely did not realize this edit related to the subject of the topic ban when I made it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:50, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Lambert,that was a totally fair and accurate description of your bad behavior. The fact that you argue that you shouldn't even be required to review the entire quite short bio to see if it fell under your topic ban demonstrates you cannot be trusted to edit properly. Oppose any relaxation of existing bans, support site ban. (s) Vivian.
- I am very firmly opposed to the concept of loosening the topic ban until we actually see that they can abide by the various restrictions they are under. He just returned from a 1 month ban for violating another topic ban they are under. That pretty much shows that they are still having issues with figuring out the boundaries of topic bans so I don't see why loosening one would be a good idea. Ealdgyth (talk) 22:52, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
- Agreed with the above that we need to see evidence JPL can edit productively with restrictions before loosening any. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 01:23, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose Johnpacklambert needs to demonstrate over a lengthy period of time that he truly understands his topic bans and have fully complied with them without any testing of the boundaries. A highly experienced editor should not be constantly claiming to not understand clearly written topic bans and continuing to probe around the edges. Fully comply without any boundary testing for at least six months, JPL. We do not need to waste volunteer time evaluating biographies where JPL tries to claim that the article is not covered by the topic ban and several other editors reply, "Oh yes, it is, per A, B and C". JPL should use a ten foot barge pole to stay FAR away from any such articles. His failure to do so is evidence that the topic bans should stand. Cullen328 (talk) 03:21, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose per Cullen328 and Ealdgyth, and IF's concern about JPL's lack of understanding of "broadly contrued". Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:29, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose and support 1-year moratorium on any further appeals. The point of the tban is to reduce the amount of editor time spent on JPL. Levivich (talk) 15:54, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Also support siteban per WTT and BK below, and if that passes, also with a 1-year appeal moratorium. Basically, I support whatever the heck it takes to not have to spend any editor time on JPL for at least a year. Levivich (talk) 16:29, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Too soon (non-admin comment) Appeals to topic bans generally are not likely to be accepted if you get caught violating one too recently. I support Levivich's moratorium to give a window for building trust needed for an appeal to have a chance. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 18:07, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose As was pointed out, the editor violated the topic ban during this discussion.[3] I appreciate their point that "broadly construed" could be interpreted so widely that it could include virtually anyone. But the expectation should be that editors and administrators will interpret it in a sensible way. We shouldn't change a decision because we have no confidence that editors will do so. I think too the editor should consider taking up Compassionate727's offer of assistance. TFD (talk) 10:06, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- I am very sorry about this, and have rescinded that edit. I think that does go to Fram's point. The article opened stating the person was a poet, and that is all the detail given in the opening, and the way the birth date was presented made it make more sense to categorize in 1890s births than any specific year, so it seemed an uncontroversial edit. I should have reviewed the article in detail and apologize for this mistake.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:53, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose, but..." can an execption be made for non-religious category editing in articles? Much of their work is correcting, adding, changing... categories related to either years or to migration, which is unrelated to the topic of the article (i.e. doesn't matter if the subject is religious, somewhat religious, or doesn't deal with religion at all). Having to check each article to see if it is related to religion, just to be able to change e.g. "Category:1890s births" to "Category:1891 births", is a nuisance with no benefits (yes, it's a nuisance of their own making, but still...). They should still not edit anything but the categories of such articles, and they shouldn't edit religion-rlated categories. Is such a tailor-made change to the topic ban acceptable, or not worth the hassle? Fram (talk) 10:19, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- What Fram suggests makes sense. Still, I think it would have been better to see evidence of constructive editing completely outside of the TB area (say, editing articles about plants perhaps?) before asking for a loosening of the restrictions. I'm not sure a super-duper-mega specific restriction is the way to go, and I don't think it is reasonable to have to describe in minute detail every single scenario where the TB may or may not apply. –FlyingAce✈hello 18:49, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- It is very little, and probably not enough to sway anything at this point, but there were my edits to Robert F. Kennon, which has no relation to religion as far as I know. There are others. I have also spent some time creating missing emigration categories, such as one just recently for people who went from Italy to Greece, so that is something not related to religion. I see now this request was premature, and wish I could just withdraw it and go back to editing articles on people who were are in Category:1891 births, minus the ones who have any connection to the topic of the ban, broadly defined.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:53, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- @FlyingAce: FWIW, John's primary interest seems to be categorization by dates and nationalities. A single exception clause saying he may modify the categories of religious figures so long as the catergories he changes are not themselves about religion would be simple, unlikely to cause complications, and consistent with the spirit of his original topic ban, which was just trying to cut down on polemics related to the Mormonism and Roman Catholicism. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 21:07, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Compassionate727: the thing is, he has already been advised to read the article first to ensure that it does not fall within the boundaries of the topic ban (even if the edit itself doesn't). Having said that, I think I would support one last try; maybe the single exception clause you mention plus the mentorship you offered. This is in the hopes that no more editor time is spent going back and forth on this topic, and Mr. Lambert can continue with his work fixing categories. A site ban at this point feels like overkill to me. –FlyingAce✈hello 22:10, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Like Fram I'd like to find some tailor-made change. For editors we know to be well-intentioned, I believe this is worth the effort. Valereee (talk) 21:02, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- I also would support Fram's proposed exception to allow for non-religious category editing. Cbl62 (talk) 01:48, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose" the 'but' RE Fram above is that JPL clearly cant grasp the concept of broadly construed. The problem with editors who have that issue is that defining ever more specific restrictions/exemptions does not help in the long run as it imposes an even bigger burden on everyone else to monitor it (the 'hassle'). The solution that works is generally to impose an even wider restriction (eg, banning from biographies altogether, absolutely no issue with arguing over 'is this person fall into broadly construed then'). Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:25, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose The editor clearly shows that he understands the ban ~
That seems to be saying I should not edit any article on anyone who was verifiably religious
~ but doesn't think it's fair (i think). Once he shows that he can actually abide by the ban the community imposed, then we can talk about relaxing it. I'm sympathetic to Fram's suggestion, but i don't believe it to be a useful modification. Happy days ~ LindsayHello 11:49, 7 October 2022 (UTC) - I oppose lifting the restriction. I looked into JohnPackLambert's editing two months ago as part of the arbitration case and my opinion was that a full site ban was required. Since then, he's spent half of that period blocked and has now raised this request which further makes me believe that he lacks the ability to edit the encyclopedia productively. I therefore would also propose an indefinite community site ban which I suppose should go in it's own section, but lets see if there's any traction or it's just my opinion. WormTT(talk) 16:04, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- I voted against a site ban when it was part of the ArbCom case. I would now support such a sentiment given the block (I actually expected he would end up blocked a couple of times before it stuck), this appeal, but especially off-wiki evidence about Johnpacklambert. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:27, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Barkeep49: I recognize that you can't get into specifics, but would it be possible to summarize in broad strokes what the off-wiki evidence concerns? Is this is about religious opinions that he has expressed off-wiki (which I saw mentioned in one of the ANIs), then I don't really care, but anything involving off-wiki harassment of editors, potential sockpuppetry, or the like would obviously be of great concern to me. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:49, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- The off-wiki evidence isn't something sent to arbcom so in that sense it's not secret, but is protected by the OUTING policy. I am concerned about trying to summarize it too much without being able to link to it because I feel that gets into ASPERSIONS territory. Bottomline is that I think those postings, along with this appeal, suggests that Johnpacklambert has good intentions but can't understand the community's concerns about his editing in a way that would let him be a productive editor. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:34, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- I am a very productive editor who has tried to improve the encyclopedia. I do not think it is fair to judge me for my expressions of frustration that I have put elsewhere. I have said things like "this ban was started because of x", but have generally acknowledged that x is only the starting point, and that my overall actions in relation to the issue were too combative and are what really lead to the ban. I maybe have not always worded those statements as calmly as I should have. However Wikipedia has no expectation that every mention to it be editors elsewhere abides by Wikipedia rules. I do not believe any of my statements outside have been such that they would reasonable be considered in considering what I do inside Wikipedia. I have spent the last year mainly going back through birth year categories sequentially. Most of my edits relate to Manual of Style compliance, fixing categories, adding missing categories, changing the way a birth place is described to agree with what the way the birthplace would be described based on the time of birth. The edits that have ended up being with problems with the ban have been accidental, and I have tried to reverse all of them as soon as I can see them. I am perfectly willing to continue doing this editing. Are there other articles and other topics I would like to edit, but I cannot. Sure. Did I hope that I could edit in some way those articles if the topic ban was overturned? Sure. But topic bans are not meant to regulate thoughts or desires, only actions, and I have tried my hardest to abide by the topic ban as it exists. I have tried my hardest even when I complain on facebook or other places about it to make sure that I acknowledge that it came about because of actions on my part that were disruptive and worse. I may not have always done that as much as I should have, but I have tried to make it clear that my explanation of the starting point is complicated by the fact there were a lot of disruptive actions on my part before we got anywhere further. Anyway, the truth is that right now if I could get this topic ban overturned I would edit a punch of articles that only say someone was born about a certain year but are in a specific year category to be in a decade birth category, and a bunch of other articles that I have seen where someone was from place A but lived a long time in Place B, but it is not categorized or not well categorized I would change. However I have no list of what these articles are, I just know I have seen a lot of articles in my review that had these issues in categories to address but I did not address because of the topic ban. I have not tried to make any list of edits I would do once the topic ban was lifted. I wish I had never even started this AN discussion. I have tried to be a productive editor of Wikipedia. I hope I can continue to do so.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:31, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- I have been a supporter of Mr. Lambert in the past, mostly with making sure that any block or ban was clearly defined because Mr. Lambert doesn't fully understand the concept of "broadly construed" and that's not necessarily his fault, completely. Nor is it the community's fault. Having said that this isn't fair to the community or our admins to have to keep investing in this editor. Mr. Lambert needs to learn to live with these blocks and operate within the boundaries in such a manner that he does not even appear to flirt with violating the ban. So far he has not shown he can do that without multiple "mistakes". Some are understandable and can be expected but others, as the Mia Love example above, are unexplainable. I would not be opposed to a full site ban but my first choice is to maintain the tbans in place. This discussion should be the only warning he gets that another mistake of the Mia Love kind will lead to a full site ban. We have countless editors that receive a tban for whatever reason and they have had them successfully overturned because they show they can edit without violating the ban. Mr. Lambert should receive no special treatment. Enough is enough. I believe he can do positive things and I am a full believer that his actions are done in good faith but, to this point, it doesn't outweigh the negative timesink he has become for admins and the community. If he is given another chance I hope he makes the best of it. --ARoseWolf 19:54, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- The Mia Love edit was a comment on my talk page before I realized comments on the talk page were not acceptable no matter how much the might intersect with the topic ban. I am sure I had at least one editor express the view that this was not an objectionable topic, and I had assumed that that was the view if multiple editors but I may have misremembwred the exchange in question and do not know where to even look it up. It was also last year, and I voluntarily withdrew it from my talk page. I am trying to abide by this topic ban, and am seeking to make sure to fully abide by the restriction. I rescinded the only ban issue edit I know of in the last month. I see now that I misunderstood some aspects of broadly construed and this discussion has been very enlightening to me. I will abide by the newfound insights here as I edit in the future. It would have been really helpful if there was a knowledgeable person I could have discussed this with privately. I did not know who to turn to, and did not realize that this would create such a negative reaction. I am very sorry I even opened this subject and wish it could be rescinded.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:34, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- I have been a supporter of Mr. Lambert in the past, mostly with making sure that any block or ban was clearly defined because Mr. Lambert doesn't fully understand the concept of "broadly construed" and that's not necessarily his fault, completely. Nor is it the community's fault. Having said that this isn't fair to the community or our admins to have to keep investing in this editor. Mr. Lambert needs to learn to live with these blocks and operate within the boundaries in such a manner that he does not even appear to flirt with violating the ban. So far he has not shown he can do that without multiple "mistakes". Some are understandable and can be expected but others, as the Mia Love example above, are unexplainable. I would not be opposed to a full site ban but my first choice is to maintain the tbans in place. This discussion should be the only warning he gets that another mistake of the Mia Love kind will lead to a full site ban. We have countless editors that receive a tban for whatever reason and they have had them successfully overturned because they show they can edit without violating the ban. Mr. Lambert should receive no special treatment. Enough is enough. I believe he can do positive things and I am a full believer that his actions are done in good faith but, to this point, it doesn't outweigh the negative timesink he has become for admins and the community. If he is given another chance I hope he makes the best of it. --ARoseWolf 19:54, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
…but can't understand the community's concerns about his editing….
Has anyone made a serious effort to work with him on this before? I don't know what caused him to be topic banned in the first place, but the current mess strikes me as some minor stuff compounded way out of proportion by his Autism. He has a handful of recent topic ban violations (some noted here, a couple others he has volunteered on my talk page) that I believe were entirely accidental (he's rapidly working with categories on large numbers of pages, there are bound to be a few mistakes), and he's scared to death of admitting the violations because Autistic people tend to think in categories with little nuance (e.g., he's either guilty of violating it or not; the idea of an innocent or innocuous violation would be difficult for him to grasp) and because the community hasn't always exactly been kind to him in the past (justifiably or not). The obvious response, offered by several here, is that he should just avoid the risk and go do something else, which I think is good advice and I plan to offer it to him myself, but "normal" people definitely don't appreciate how much minor incorrect details like that can bother Autistic people (even worse when they are violating categories, since Autistic people like categorizing things so much), especially when pretty much everyone who has bothered to address the categories thing recognizes that John's edits here have all been sound (because telling someone that their edits are good, but that they are actually bad solely because he made them, and therefore they need to be reverted, even though identical edits would have been perfectly fine if anyone else had made them is on some level absurd, and a person with Autism sees that very clearly).- I'm not saying this to deny that this behavior has been a source of disruption or to excuse it. I'm also not arguing that any of the sanctions against him are improper, although a slight accommodation along the lines that Fram proposed would do a great deal to deescalate things (not that it stands any chance of passing). But the thing about disruptive Autistic people is that they generally just don't understand how other people are thinking about and comprehending their actions, and that understanding often can be taught to them: they just need someone who understands how they think to explain how other people think to them (society's unwritten rules for conduct, so to speak). I genuinely think he just needs a mentor who understands him; I'm not a therapist, nor much good at teaching, but I think I understand him well enough that I'm willing to try. I know mandatory mentoring has been experimented with in the past here; perhaps something like that is in order? —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:51, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- I am a very productive editor who has tried to improve the encyclopedia. I do not think it is fair to judge me for my expressions of frustration that I have put elsewhere. I have said things like "this ban was started because of x", but have generally acknowledged that x is only the starting point, and that my overall actions in relation to the issue were too combative and are what really lead to the ban. I maybe have not always worded those statements as calmly as I should have. However Wikipedia has no expectation that every mention to it be editors elsewhere abides by Wikipedia rules. I do not believe any of my statements outside have been such that they would reasonable be considered in considering what I do inside Wikipedia. I have spent the last year mainly going back through birth year categories sequentially. Most of my edits relate to Manual of Style compliance, fixing categories, adding missing categories, changing the way a birth place is described to agree with what the way the birthplace would be described based on the time of birth. The edits that have ended up being with problems with the ban have been accidental, and I have tried to reverse all of them as soon as I can see them. I am perfectly willing to continue doing this editing. Are there other articles and other topics I would like to edit, but I cannot. Sure. Did I hope that I could edit in some way those articles if the topic ban was overturned? Sure. But topic bans are not meant to regulate thoughts or desires, only actions, and I have tried my hardest to abide by the topic ban as it exists. I have tried my hardest even when I complain on facebook or other places about it to make sure that I acknowledge that it came about because of actions on my part that were disruptive and worse. I may not have always done that as much as I should have, but I have tried to make it clear that my explanation of the starting point is complicated by the fact there were a lot of disruptive actions on my part before we got anywhere further. Anyway, the truth is that right now if I could get this topic ban overturned I would edit a punch of articles that only say someone was born about a certain year but are in a specific year category to be in a decade birth category, and a bunch of other articles that I have seen where someone was from place A but lived a long time in Place B, but it is not categorized or not well categorized I would change. However I have no list of what these articles are, I just know I have seen a lot of articles in my review that had these issues in categories to address but I did not address because of the topic ban. I have not tried to make any list of edits I would do once the topic ban was lifted. I wish I had never even started this AN discussion. I have tried to be a productive editor of Wikipedia. I hope I can continue to do so.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:31, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- The off-wiki evidence isn't something sent to arbcom so in that sense it's not secret, but is protected by the OUTING policy. I am concerned about trying to summarize it too much without being able to link to it because I feel that gets into ASPERSIONS territory. Bottomline is that I think those postings, along with this appeal, suggests that Johnpacklambert has good intentions but can't understand the community's concerns about his editing in a way that would let him be a productive editor. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:34, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Barkeep49: I recognize that you can't get into specifics, but would it be possible to summarize in broad strokes what the off-wiki evidence concerns? Is this is about religious opinions that he has expressed off-wiki (which I saw mentioned in one of the ANIs), then I don't really care, but anything involving off-wiki harassment of editors, potential sockpuppetry, or the like would obviously be of great concern to me. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:49, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- I voted against a site ban when it was part of the ArbCom case. I would now support such a sentiment given the block (I actually expected he would end up blocked a couple of times before it stuck), this appeal, but especially off-wiki evidence about Johnpacklambert. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:27, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Full site ban. Tban was offered in lieu of full site ban last summer, to free up the timesink this editor has become for the community in religious and religous adjacent articles. Editor has circled around the edges near continously in the last 13 months, racking up multiple blocks for violations. Because their entire reason for editing WP is to edit about religion. Editor has proven to be a timesink when not under a tban, and a timesink when under a tban. Loosening the tbans restrictions to let them edit some parts of religious articles and persons will just be a first step for them to argue that the rest of the tban is just as onerous for them. Because their entire raison d'etre for being here on WP is to edit religious articles. No matter where you set the line, they will be there trying to skirt it, arguing for its removal, racking up blocks, and dragging dozens of other editors into the quagmire. Just let it end. Heiro 17:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- To my knowledge I have only been banned once for violating this topic ban. This is not something that has lead to my editing being restricted more than once. And that restriction was 10 months ago. Now maybe I should have figured that was too soon, or have considered issues related to other restrictions. Bur to create a full Wikipedia ban just because I once was banned because of a misunderstand of the scope, or because of multiple ANIs that did not result in a ban and were often found to either be created by people with their own huge issues with the rules, or in one case applying it to all members of an ethno-relugious group that was heavily ruled out to other editors, or because I did not understand the right amount of time to wait to ask to rescind the ban does not seem fair. I had no idea that asking that a ban be removed would be seen as disruptive in and of itself, and I would gladly just erase this whole discussion now if I could.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:34, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Can I request to close this with no action so that we can avoid these ever increasing attacks on me. I do not think it is fair to argue to more stringently enforce this ban because of something that is related to another ban. Also, the claim that my entire reason for being here is to "edit religious articles" is clearly not true. I have spent the last year making huge amounts of edits which relate to things other than religious articles. I have had a few cases where I accidentally and inadvetently made edits related to this ban. They have not been intentional. I am not sure what this mention of "off wiki evidence is", but I do not see any justified way to restrict my actions on Wikipedia based on what I may have said in other forums. Wikipedia restrictions apply to actions on Wikipedia, and cannot reasonable be extended to restrict people based on what they may or may not have done in totally different forums.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:34, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- As far as I know the only edit I have made since I was allowed to edit Wikipedia again that was problematic was the one mentioned above, that I have both apologized and reversed. This does not seem to be the type of edit that it is reasonable to ban someone from editing Wikipedia for. This is the first time I have ever made a proposal at AN. I did not realize that merely making such a motion would be treated as grounds for punishing me. I have really tried to abide by this topic restriction. I was not trying to be disruptive. I did not know that making such a motion would be seen as grounds for proposing these much more restrictive solutions. I do not think this response is justified. I have tried to avoid editing any article that comes under the "religious figures broadly construed" rubric. For example multiple times there was an article on an artist who I wanted to add or edit categories based on when they were born or other topics clearly not related to the subject of the topic ban, artists who specialized in painting contemporary to them political leaders or still life paintings, but I still dug down through the whole list of their works to ensure that there was no conflict. I have been trying to check and double check articles when I think there might be a conflict and to err on the side of caution. I have tried this over and over and over again. Occasionally I make mistakes, but when they are pointed out to me, or when I realize them before they are pointed out to me, I quickly and completely reverse these edits to avoid any problem. I am very sorry I made this nomination and wish I could have done it a different way, but I do not think banning of editing is justified because of it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:52, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose site ban The single recent violation has been acknowledged and reverted. JPL has apologized. Let's move on. Cullen328 (talk) 20:14, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose
per Cullen[20:31, 7 October 2022 (UTC)] see below Andre🚐 01:02, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support finding some way to adjust this so that JPL can make productive edits. It doesn't cost us much to customize. We spend as much time wordsmithing our opposes. :D Valereee (talk) 21:05, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose per Andrevan and Cullen. Magnatyrannus (talk | contribs) 21:09, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- For what it is worth I formally withdraw this request.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:01, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Per Levivich, Oppose and support 1-year moratorium on any further appeals. It's funny how the very vast majority of editors under restrictions have no trouble discerning what "broadly construed" means and how to avoid infringement. JPL has over time proved himself frequently disruptive and an enormous timesink. This is yet another timesink. If he can't learn to act within Wikipedia boundaries after all of this time, I do rather wonder how long he is going to last here after this. Competence, after all, is required. JPL, at leaast six editors here support a full site ban. So if there are any more timesinks or disruptions, it looks like you are out the door. Softlavender (talk) 03:03, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose lifting TBAN and support a 1 year moratorium on appealing per Levivich and Softlavender.
Oppose siteban for now, but the fact that it has gotten even a little traction should be a final warning to JPL that his behavior needs to change immediately. Pinguinn 🐧 07:29, 8 October 2022 (UTC) - Oppose removing or changing the T-ban - WP:NOTTHERAPY and starting to look like WP:CIR with the repeated lack of clue and repeated "accidents" after multiple warnings and short blocks. OrgoneBox (talk) 14:41, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose removing or changing topic ban. No grounds for doing that yet as evidenced by the recent infraction. DeCausa (talk) 09:43, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- I missed Fram's amendment suggestion when I posted earlier. I support that amendemnt which seems sensible. DeCausa (talk) 17:41, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support Fram's amendment suggestion. The purpose of a TBAN is to reduce disruption, and usually "broadly construed" is an aid to that. In this case, for idiosyncratic reasons, it is the opposite. Fram's proposal will align the purpose of the TBAN more closely with how it functions in this particular case. --JBL (talk) 17:34, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Site ban for User:Johnpacklambert
I mentioned last night that I would propose a site ban, and I see that since then we've had a handful of support (about half a dozen) and a smattering of opposition, so I thought I'd make it a formal suggestion. To be clear, Johnpacklambert has reached the end of community patience, including an extensive topic ban. In the recent Arbitration case, a site ban failed at 3 votes to 9, with the hope that three more topic bans would help. In response, Johnpacklambert generated over 5000 words on the proposed decision talk page asking a pile of what if's. He then proceeded to get himself blocked for a month, and immediately returned to ask for a topic ban to be lifted! It is quite clear to me that Johnpacklambert will not be able to abide by the topic bans that have been placed upon him, because a) he does not accept the gravity of the situation that he's in and b) he's looking for every possible way around them, be it asking incessantly about boundaries or testing them or asking for the entire topic ban to be removed in the face of near unanimous opposition. A number of individuals above have talked about a "last chance" - but I have to ask, how many last chances does one person get? More importantly - has Johnpacklambert ever acknowledged that any of his previous chances were opportunities to change? What is different this time?
- Proposed - formally this time. WormTT(talk) 18:13, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support with it being appealable once every year. I am shocked that Lambert has not been banned yet. Mr. Lambert has shown zero indication that he has or is willing to productively learn from any of his sanctions when given any leniency. No amount of apologies from him will change this. Only a long-term ban is left as a possible option to finally get Lambert to understand the gravity of his problems. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 19:01, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support, it is clear that JPL is a net negative to the project. Agree with the annual appeal restriction to prevent him from being an even bigger time sink than he already is. -- Tavix (talk) 19:13, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose - Put in a six-month moratorium on such requests. GoodDay (talk) 19:15, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose This topic ban has been in place for 13 months. In that time I have only ever made this request for having it lifted. I do not think a reasonable reaction to it would be imposing a siteban. The topic ban's own wording admits its exact limits are problematic. My exampkes may have not been good, but they were ines I also wilfully rebersed when they came up. I do not think people who have tried abiding by limits and quivkly resoonded to the issues when thry are brought up should be punished for mentioning issues they think make the ban inadequate. I have strived to abide by it as best I can. On the issue of the recent The recent problematic edit I reverted as soon as I realized that it was problematic which is an action allowed by the topic ban in cases where the issue is unclear. I made a mistake there and very, very sincere apologize for it. I do not think that is a reasonable grounds for banning me, nor do I think banning me because I made one unblock request after 13 months is reasonable either. I will admit this was a too soon request, but I do not think that in and of itself is reason to ban me. I do not think punishing someone for trying to get exact guidance on a limit of a ban as this proposal seems to do is reasonable. The fact that some of my hypothetical questions came up with a yes I could do that seems to indicate they were not really unreasonable. If I asked too many questions than I apologize for it, but to treat that as background to this request seems unfair. I see now I should have waited for making this request, and when I made it I should have been much more succinct. For both of thoss I am sorry. I do not see how a site ban is a reasonable reaction to this and even less how it could at all be a reasonable reaction to the most recent edit which I reverted.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:25, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- TLDR applies - and your wordiness has been raised as an issue in this very proposal. GiantSnowman 20:13, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- I am saying that I do not think after 13 months requesting a ban be lifted should be grounds for imposing a harsher ban, not do I think that an inadvertent edit that I did not realize was problematic and reverted as soon as I learned of it, especially when the ban itself allows that option to deal with problems, should be grounds for imposing a more harsh ban.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:16, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- TLDR applies - and your wordiness has been raised as an issue in this very proposal. GiantSnowman 20:13, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support per my own observations above and other editors' observations for years about intractable behavior, and per the reasoning summed up in WP:OWB#3:
One who sometimes makes good edits, but endlessly bickers, threatens, insults, whines, and is eventually banned, will have taken hundreds of hours from other users who would have better spent that time building the encyclopedia.
Breaking up is hard to do, but it's time for everyone to move on to other things, here or elsewhere. Indignant Flamingo (talk) 19:28, 8 October 2022 (UTC) - Support per above. Levivich (talk) 20:10, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support - I'm not convinced that editing Wikipedia is particularly healthy for Johnpacklambert. Shortly after his recent block for violating his topic ban, Johnpacklambert posted on his talk page about "feeling empty on the inside", and in the following period he posted numerous discussions on his talk page, counting down the days until he returned to editing (30 days, 28 days, 27 days, 24 days, 15 days, 10 days, 9 days, 7 days, 3 days, 1 day). While I do not doubt that John finds enjoyment out of editing, I am concerned about the impact this site is having on his mental health. To publicly count down the days in this manner suggests an addiction to Wikipedia, and when read alongside the comment on "feeling empty on the inside" and comment on panic, I believe this may be one that is impacting his life off-wiki. As a fellow autistic I can certainly sympathise with getting enjoyment out of editing, especially when this site has a rather large number of neurodiverse editors, but I can't help but keep Tamzin's guidance in mind when it comes to letting Wikipedia harm your mental health. I will happily strike this !vote, if John can assure me that his off-wiki life is not suffering because of his on-wiki presence. However given the breadth of his commentary during his recent block, I would suggest that it needs to be stronger than a single sentence like "I assure you that editing Wikipedia is not impacting my off-wiki life." Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:18, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- My editing Wikipedia is not harming my non-wiki life. Counting down to upcoming days is something I do a lot. When I first did it someone responded that this was a "novel approach" which I thought indicated it was an appreciated approach. I did it every few days to track things. I had a full and engaging life in other aspects of this, and just posted the countdowns because I like to count down and compare numbers over time. My life was functioning just fine, and I think this is an overly negative reading of a very common occurrence by me of tracking numbers and things over time. I was not trying to be disruptive, and that first reaction made me think that at least some people liked it. Since then I have tried to focus only on editing article contents and avoid anything that could be problematic with either of the bans. I made one mistake because I did not look deeply intl the article when basically moving it to the 1890s birth category because of unclarity about the exact year of birth. I am very sorry for that and would like to apologize. I have been doing various things including planning a major birthday trip with my wife, and took on a new task that involves me committing 5 hours each Saturday just as that ban was imposed. I have a full and engaging life with work, family and other responsibilities. I also choose to commit some of my time to editing Wikipedia, and I seek to improve categorization, style and other issues on articles. I maybe should also seek out more chances to add sources to some articles and overall expand content. My most recent attempt along those lines was focused on finding content that would allow us to accurately describe the name of a place someone was born when they were born. I didn't actually find any source that pointed to that but did make a post on the talk page for that article suggesting that we should seek more information on that front. I am trying to improve Wikipedia by my editing, and have and will continue to make sure to throughly review articles before editing. For example there were at least a few articles on artists described as painters of still life's that I saw some way they could be improved by editing but when I found that the artist had also had a small subsection of his work with a religious theme or placed in a religious institution I moved on and did not make the edit.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:11, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- For anyone wondering: counting things is indeed an idiosyncratic behavior common in people with Autism. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 23:31, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- My editing Wikipedia is not harming my non-wiki life. Counting down to upcoming days is something I do a lot. When I first did it someone responded that this was a "novel approach" which I thought indicated it was an appreciated approach. I did it every few days to track things. I had a full and engaging life in other aspects of this, and just posted the countdowns because I like to count down and compare numbers over time. My life was functioning just fine, and I think this is an overly negative reading of a very common occurrence by me of tracking numbers and things over time. I was not trying to be disruptive, and that first reaction made me think that at least some people liked it. Since then I have tried to focus only on editing article contents and avoid anything that could be problematic with either of the bans. I made one mistake because I did not look deeply intl the article when basically moving it to the 1890s birth category because of unclarity about the exact year of birth. I am very sorry for that and would like to apologize. I have been doing various things including planning a major birthday trip with my wife, and took on a new task that involves me committing 5 hours each Saturday just as that ban was imposed. I have a full and engaging life with work, family and other responsibilities. I also choose to commit some of my time to editing Wikipedia, and I seek to improve categorization, style and other issues on articles. I maybe should also seek out more chances to add sources to some articles and overall expand content. My most recent attempt along those lines was focused on finding content that would allow us to accurately describe the name of a place someone was born when they were born. I didn't actually find any source that pointed to that but did make a post on the talk page for that article suggesting that we should seek more information on that front. I am trying to improve Wikipedia by my editing, and have and will continue to make sure to throughly review articles before editing. For example there were at least a few articles on artists described as painters of still life's that I saw some way they could be improved by editing but when I found that the artist had also had a small subsection of his work with a religious theme or placed in a religious institution I moved on and did not make the edit.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:11, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support, per Sideswipe9th, out of compassion. These discussions are torturous. Ovinus (talk) 20:37, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support--who, really, is not tired of this? It's been going on for years, this constant time sink. In addition, I want JPL's talk page to be blanked per WP:NOTFORUM. Drmies (talk) 21:17, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Ironically enough, most of his talk page consists of deletion notices that he is topic-banned from doing anything about. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 21:22, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- What bothers me is the enormous number of posts that essentially call on proxy editors, and the jeremiads about Wikipedia: those really are NOTFORUM violations. And on talk pages we give more leeway than elsewhere, but this is just way too much, certainly when compared to the drama. What is JPL's carbon footprint for AN/ANI posts? Drmies (talk) 21:39, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Ironically enough, most of his talk page consists of deletion notices that he is topic-banned from doing anything about. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 21:22, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support Any benefit that JPL's editing brings to the encyclopedia is outweighed by the amount of disruption and wasting of editors time caused by his inability to keep to his topic bans, his constant questioning of them and sheer amount of TLDR he brings every time he is at a noticeboard. Enough is enough. If this proposal fails can we please implement the 1 year moratorium on any further appeals mentioned above. Pawnkingthree (talk) 21:25, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Question This only seems to be going one way. Is everyone confident of understanding what impact (if any) his disclosed autism has on his editing and that there has been reasonable accommodation of that impact? In particular, how it might impact his understanding of "broadly construed". I assume so. DeCausa (talk) 21:37, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- I've argued at length above that it has not been. In fairness, John's Autism seems to be especially severe (by Wikipedia editors' standards), so this is not entirely the community's fault. From what John has posted on my talk page, it seems clear to me that he does understand what "broadly construed" means, but routinely accidentally infringes it because of his patterns of editing (working within categories on large numbers of pages) and because he only reads the lead of an article to check if the subject is a religious figure, not the whole thing (understandably so, as reading a whole article every time he wanted to change a category would be onerous). I believe he has disputed his violations here because he felt like he needed to (because Autistic people categorize so rigidly, he thinks that admitting them would be admitting a need to be punished, which he is, of course, trying to avoid). One solution would be for him to stop editing categories, but I think that would be a waste, as devoted maintenance of categorization is the kind of simple, highly repetitive task that Autistic editors (and few others) both enjoy and excel at. I have argued that a modification of his ban permitting him to edit non-religious categories on religious figures' articles combined with mentorship from someone who understands Autistim (e.g., me) would mostly diffuse the disruption, but the community seems more interested in punishing John than working to accommodate him and make him productive again. A shame. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 22:41, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Please, let's not insult people with autism by using that as an excuse. We've had thousands upon thousands of editors with autism who are not disruptive. John is disruptive because he chooses to be; his autism didn't make him do it. And if it did, well then that's just too damn bad that his case is so severe that he cannot work with others (although if that's the case, I wonder how in other contexts he seems able to communicate with neurotypicals here and elsewhere without issue). If you haven't read what he's been writing on his social media, read it. Autism, my foot. He is abusing autism (and Christianity) as a shield against his own behavior, claiming that when people call him out for it, they are persecuting him for his religious beliefs or autism. It's despicable, and an affront to Christians and autists everywhere. Levivich (talk) 23:34, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- I asked a question and made no assertion. I don't think I insulted people with autism. So let's leave the over-hyped invective out. DeCausa (talk) 23:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Why do others get to use this language with impunity, and yet I am being raked over the coals in part because I accidentally edited an article that I did not realize fell under the topic ban, and willingly reverted the edit when I found out about it. In one of my recent posts elsewhere I did say something about my feelings about some of the starting events, but I also freely admitted that the outward appearance was not quite true and I had been far too beligenerent and quick to attack and take offense and worse. That was over 13 months ago, when this started, but I do apologize for that.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:06, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- JohnPackLambert, "I accidentally edited an article that I did not realize fell under the topic ban"--that is not why we're here, and that you'd say that is yet more of a reason for me to support a ban. Drmies (talk) 01:30, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Levivich: It is extremely unfair to accuse John of using Autism as a shield when he has not once mentioned it since this discussion started. (I'm the one who keeps bringing it up, and I learned it from his userpage.) As for his social media use, I think discussing that comes uncomfortably close to a violation of the outing policy and would request that you limit yourself to using his on-wiki behavior to assess the disruptiveness of his participation in the project. I'll wait to comment on the issue of his choosing to be the way he is instead of Autism making him that way until I'm calmer, but I want to note now that I find such a reductionist description of the issue both inflammatory and unhelpful. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 00:55, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
request that you limit yourself to using his on-wiki behavior to assess the disruptiveness of his participation in the project
abso-f'ing-lutely not. If others want to play this game of pretend, they can go ahead, but I am not going to pretend that when a person published something in one public forum, they can then go publish something else in another public forum, and the rest of us have to pretend like what was written in the first public forum was never written. This is total and complete BS, outing policy or not. Yes, I support a siteban, in part due to John's on-wiki behavior, but in equal part due to his, what I would label harassment of other editors, on social media. If you say it in public, you say it in public, it doesn't matter which website you said it on. Out of respect to the outing policy, I'm not linking or quoting or naming the specific social media site, but I absolutely will take it into consideration; I won't play this silly game of pretend. Levivich (talk) 03:26, 9 October 2022 (UTC)- If they are harassing editors off-wiki, that information should be provided to the Arbitration Committee. Otherwise, I will remind you that the outing policy says:
The fact that an editor has posted personal information or edits under their own name, making them easily identifiable through online searches, is not an excuse to post the results of "opposition research". Dredging up their off-site opinions to repeatedly challenge their edits can be a form of harassment.
—Compassionate727 (T·C) 04:51, 9 October 2022 (UTC)- They already know; some arbs have mentioned it in this thread. But you're right; if this doesn't get consensus here, I am contemplating asking arbcom to make a decision that expressly considers the off-wiki evidence. I just don't understand how any thinking person, such as yourself, can tolerate the cognitive dissonance of pretending that something he wrote in public doesn't exist because it's on a different website. That's not how life works. Levivich (talk) 04:59, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- And to clarify, the off-wiki stuff is ongoing, including during this entire discussion, even in the past 24hrs. It's new stuff, not old stuff. Levivich (talk) 13:56, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- I've just read it. He's saying the same stuff that he's saying on-wiki. As JPL tends to do, he's repeating the same points over again. I don't see that it it has any significance. DeCausa (talk) 17:46, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- If they are harassing editors off-wiki, that information should be provided to the Arbitration Committee. Otherwise, I will remind you that the outing policy says:
- I asked a question and made no assertion. I don't think I insulted people with autism. So let's leave the over-hyped invective out. DeCausa (talk) 23:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support Upon further review I am extremely unimpressed with JPL's responses here and do not believe he will be able to meaningfully change his pattern of behavior, which has become a major waste of time. I am sympathetic to DeCausa's question but ultimately we all have to follow the same rules here, and no reasonable accomodation should allow timewasting and rule flaunting. Pinguinn 🐧 22:20, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose. I've already extensively explained why, including in a comment just above here, so I won't waste everyone's time repeating myself. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 22:43, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support For both compassionate reasons and that JPL's involvement is a net negative for the encyclopedia project. MrsSnoozyTurtle 23:32, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- I am very sorry about the accidental edit on the article on the poet, and reverted it as soon as I learned of it. I would also point out in 13 months this is the first time I have made a request to change this topic ban. I do not think treating this request as totally unacceptable and a reason to ban me is reasonable. I reverted the edit as soon as I learned of it. It was a total and complete accident and I was not trying to flaunt any rules. I am very, very sorry. I would hope I could be allowed to continue to edit.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:51, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose Is there any evidence he hasn't complied with the topic ban? If not, then what would be the point of this? 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 23:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- I mean really, the guy requests his topic ban be removed and you folks all try and get him banned from the site? What a friendly community lol. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 00:05, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose Johnpacklambert's request for removal of a topic ban isn't enough ground for a site ban. That discussion could have been kept short and then closed, but this looks to me like "getting rid of unwanted editors". NytharT.C 00:01, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- On the issue of counting. I at times make tables of how large certain Wikipedia categories are. I loose them, and do am not easily able to use them for co.oarisons over time.To compare over time is the main reason I for a time posted the number of articles in the living people category. It is also the main reason I post the before and after with some of the birth year categories I review. The amount I do this on my talk page actually makes a big chunk of my talk page.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:37, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose When an infraction has been pointed out, JPL has has reverted and apologized. I have read his Facebook page and it is strange and unpleasant reading but he is not harassing specific Wikipedia editors. He appears to be upset with me because of what I have said about Mia Love. I can live with that. Easily. In my view, he is currently much less disruptive than he was in years past. I do not think that TLDR is a valid reason for a site ban, nor his admittedly strange countdown clock behavior on his talk page. Strange does not mean blockable. On a personal note, I have a son who engages in behaviors roughly similar to JPL's behaviors. The stories that I could tell but I won't. I have been dealing with my son's behavioral problems for a third of a century and it can be quite frustrating and that is an understatement. I deal with my son's problematic behavior almost every day, but I love him and he has many positive attributes as well. As does Johnpacklambert. He is devoted to this encyclopedia and truly wishes to improve categorization. I do not think this latest kerfuffle requires a site ban, but if consensus goes the other way, so be it. Editors, please be kind. Cullen328 (talk) 00:48, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Also, no matter how I feel about that matter I did rescind the edit immediately. I see now that was out of line, but it was also in December of 2021.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:08, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support per off-wiki evidence and comments from Sideswipe9th, Drmies and Pinguinn. Andre🚐 01:02, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose site ban. The support editors seem to focus on WP:CRYSTAL (let's end future time sinks). JPL has complied with his topic ban in ways that show that he cares about the context of his edits. Banning him from everything seems unfair, and even an attempt to do so has an edge of meanness about it. Read in total by someone just coming to it, this discussion seems pile-on. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:34, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose, as a site ban hardly seems proportional to, what? Asking bothersome questions about the nature of the restrictions placed on him? Asking questions about what he is and isn't allowed to edit is a good thing, banning him for that would be silly. If mere long-windedness were a ban-worthy offense, then half of Wikipedia's editors would need to be decapitated and buried with a stake through their hearts and a clove of garlic stuffed into their mouths. The art of brevity doesn't come to all of us naturally. Joe (talk) 05:03, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose - I understand the frustration (I agree with most analyses) but I feel we must be more thoughtful. Please don't site ban. - GizzyCatBella🍁 05:13, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose at present, support FINAL warning that if any further disruption (like this ridiculous request thread, his longwinded wall-of-text responses, his recent one-month block, and his claim to either not comprehend or to be editing too fast to abide by "broadly construed", or any other disruption which by now makes him currently and long since the most disruptive editor to be continually and regularly be brought to a noticeboard) ensues, a siteban is almost assured. He's had plenty of WP:ROPE, and competence is required to edit Wikipedia. Without competence, any editor, no matter how prolific, is a liability and an enormous timesink. Softlavender (talk) 05:55, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support this has been going on years. The idea that a final final final warning will change anything is idiotic. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:48, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support The flood of both on-Wiki and off-Wiki evidence clearly suggests a complete failure to understand or accept the various topic bans in place. And every attempt by the community to bend over backward and set some boundaries to allow him to keep editing rather than being banned is thrown back in its face as he sealions every aspect of enforcement. It strains credulity to the breaking point to think he's just asking innocent questions about obeying topic bans. This isn't his first rodeo or even his tenth. I sympathize with the good-hearted people who think the ten billionth time will be the charm, but at some point, we have to stop being Charlie Brown believing that Lucy will hold the football. A ban is long overdue. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 09:25, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose at the moment. The only things that seem to have changed since this was last looked at seems to be one or two minor infractions of the topic ban (which he apologized for) and his request to have the topic ban lifted. That doesn't seem enough to ban. The Supports seem to just be relitigating previous discussions on him. Everything else raised seems to have happened before the community and Arbcom last looked at this. The most extreme example is the proposal itself from WTT. As they point out in the proposal, this was considered and rejected in the Arbcom case. That was less than 3 months ago. WTT's rationale seems to be a recitation of why he should have been banned at that time. I can't see anything new to consider in what WTT says. WTT was one of the three arbs that voted for the ban in that case. Isn't their proposal effectively an appeal to the community against the decision of their colleagues? I'm not saying that's out of process but it reiterates to me that this is about relitigating what's gone before rather than considering anything new. DeCausa (talk) 09:33, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose. The recent ArbCom decision was (overwhelmingly, 9–3) not to impose a site ban. As far as I can see, there hasn't been enough since then that would warrant going over the top of that decision at this time, and justification for a ban here largely relates to behaviour prior to that case. wjematherplease leave a message... 11:07, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Support - Unfortunately. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:53, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Partial support - I've thought about this a lot today. I would support a shorter-term site ban - given that the user was blocked for a month in August, it would need to be 2 or 3 months. I'd love to oppose a ban - and would oppose many bans in favour of more limits on editing - but, honestly, this isn't going to go away unless we can force a change in behaviour. The only way to do that is to increase the length of the bans and demonstrate that threads like this, with 21 contributions from the editor in question, aren't acceptable on such a regular basis - and that's before we consider the edits made on a range of user talk pages regarding this. I'd also, fwiw, revoke talk page access at the same time given how the user seems to have used their talk page during the previous block. Blue Square Thing (talk) 18:40, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Close
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Seeing as JPL has withdrawn his request. GoodDay (talk) 18:20, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose since a site ban is now on the table, with multiple supporters (myself included). — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 19:02, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Unfortunately for him, it is premature to close just because the editor realizes that this will not succeed Andre🚐 19:04, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Resignation of Donald Albury
I am resigning from the Arbitration Committee with an effective date of December 31, 2022. I am announcing my resignation now in order to allow the election of someone to complete the second year of my term through the annual election process that will start shortly.
I have not been contributing to the behind-the-scenes work of the committee, which is not fair to the other members of the committee (although they have been kind enough to not mention that to me). While I have not been contributing to that behind-the-scenes committee work, I have found that the time I spend reading e-mails and the project pages that are relevant to the committee's work is more than I enjoy spending. I have decided that I just want to go back to being an editor who occasionally performs an admin action.
I wish to thank everybody who voted for me last year, and hope you are not too disappointed that I am not completing my term. I also wish to thank my fellow ArbCom members for their support of, and patience with, me. My exposure to the inner workings of this part of the governance of the English Wikipedia has been reassuring to me about the durability and fairness of such governance. Donald Albury 18:17, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Global ban for Александр Мотин
Per the Global bans policy, I’m informing the project of this request for comment: RfC/Global ban for Александр Мотин. - Sleeps-Darkly (talk) 03:26, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
Russo-Ukrainian War ECP Proposal at ANI
There's an extended-confirmed protection proposal at ANI for the Russo-Ukrainian War topic. Bringing it up here since AN is the usual place for these. 46.97.176.101 (talk) 06:49, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- Update: Proposal passed. Looks like we're still logging at WP:AEL#Eastern_Europe but with the WP:GS/RUSUKR shortcut added to those log entries. Works for me. El_C 18:50, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Well, that was just my initial implementation, with concerns about unnecessary logging complexity in mind. The shortcut can, and perhaps should, be redirected to a page describing this new sanction. As it's not only relevant for technical page protections but rather prohibits all non-extendedconfirmed contributions about this topic to other articles, there should ideally be something to point to when we inform/warn users about the situation. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:22, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- After some discussion among the arbs, I've removed @ToBeFree's protection from the AELOG and (as an individual editor) setup Wikipedia:General sanctions/Russian-Ukraine War where it has been noted. I think there is a lot of willingness among arbs to explore options to help the community with this - either by coming up with some system that would allow for the community to log or even to incorporate this GS into the Eastern European DS - if the community wants that. Any such request could be made at WP:ARCA. Courtesy ping to @El C. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:46, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Yeah, I thought about doing that, but the ARCA template is such a pain to use. And to the extent that it might have been designed in part to limit interaction with the Committee, it does its job well. But I'd submit that perhaps such a high barrier of entry isn't the best. Anyway, so that might account as to why the request to subsume the new proposal into ARBEE hasn't been filed yet there. But I'm sure someone will get to it, eventually (or not, who knows). El_C 16:39, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- You're no doubt correct that the ARCA template could be made more user friendly and I would support a proposal which did that. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:16, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Well, I'd propose it myself, but seeing as I burned some bridges with the techies recently, who'd ultimately be the ones to 'code' the thing, I'm probably the wrong person. El_C 16:59, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- You're no doubt correct that the ARCA template could be made more user friendly and I would support a proposal which did that. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:16, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks :) Also to El C who took the time to copy the other entries over, together with links. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:37, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Yeah, I thought about doing that, but the ARCA template is such a pain to use. And to the extent that it might have been designed in part to limit interaction with the Committee, it does its job well. But I'd submit that perhaps such a high barrier of entry isn't the best. Anyway, so that might account as to why the request to subsume the new proposal into ARBEE hasn't been filed yet there. But I'm sure someone will get to it, eventually (or not, who knows). El_C 16:39, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- After some discussion among the arbs, I've removed @ToBeFree's protection from the AELOG and (as an individual editor) setup Wikipedia:General sanctions/Russian-Ukraine War where it has been noted. I think there is a lot of willingness among arbs to explore options to help the community with this - either by coming up with some system that would allow for the community to log or even to incorporate this GS into the Eastern European DS - if the community wants that. Any such request could be made at WP:ARCA. Courtesy ping to @El C. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:46, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Well, that was just my initial implementation, with concerns about unnecessary logging complexity in mind. The shortcut can, and perhaps should, be redirected to a page describing this new sanction. As it's not only relevant for technical page protections but rather prohibits all non-extendedconfirmed contributions about this topic to other articles, there should ideally be something to point to when we inform/warn users about the situation. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:22, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Undeleting a Talk Page
I apologize if this isn't the right place for this, but it didn't quite seem to fit on the other pages for this kind of stuff.
Is there any precedence for undeleting a talk page? I was hoping we could undelete the talk page for *deep breath* Bruce McMahan a.k.a. David Bruce McMahan.
There's no WP:BLP issues, as the man has been dead for five years.
At the very least, I think it's in the public interest to make those pages viewable again. Barring further policy violations, I don't quite think it's fair to hide the discussion for why such a controversial page ran into the problems it did. Yes, the AfDs are viewable, but they really don't tell much. I always find the talk pages to contain the better picture. Riffraff913 (talk) 19:54, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- It would be rare to have a talk page without the article. You cite the public interest, but what is the source of your personal interest in restoring this talk page? You don't appear to have edited it. 331dot (talk) 20:04, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- And there really is nothing of interest on the talk page, it only had a handful of posts none of them particularly interesting or insightful. The AfD is much more informative. Canterbury Tail talk 20:32, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Correct, I did not edit it. I wasn't involved in any of that kerfuffle as it happened. Other than public interest (which I count as a personal interest, as I feel very strongly about transparency and openness), I do have another reason: I recently suggested adding a mention of the incident on the talk page for "List of Wikipedia controversies". I was hoping that being able to see the conversations that took place would help shed more light on the situation. Unfortunately, the only response I've gotten so far was one sarcastic one, but I'm hoping for more. Riffraff913 (talk) 03:15, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Riffraff913: Well, you wouldn't be able to cite the AfDs, talk page discussions, or article itself in List of Wikipedia controversies anyway, as these would all be primary sources (in addition to the reliability problem). You would need to find RS discussing the issue. As for your concerns about transparency, I'm not sure what the talk page would clarify, since all the salient discussion will be in the AfDs, which you can still view via their histories. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 16:50, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, unfortunately, those citation issues would be a problem. I more wanted them to wrap my head around what happened. Have some more context before writing anything up, you know? As for @Canterbury Tail:'s and @Compassionate727:'s suggestions that the AfD would be of better use, I would generally agree, but not in this case. The article seems to have been created in late 2006 or early 2007 (I can't find that exact information). From what I can tell, the page had 3 AfDs. The first (in early 2007) had quite a bit of discussion; the article was kept. The second (about a month later) was short, finding that the article really hadn't changed much on the last month, and it was probably just someone making trouble; they kept it. Then, in 2009, the third AfD appeared, and it too was brief; they voted to get rid of it, as the article had ostensibly been scrubbed clean of references to his incestuous relationship with his daughter and become simply a puff piece. Essentially, I don't know anything about what happened for most of the article's lifetime. One of the only other informative things I could find (internally) was a long Admin Noticeboard discussion (longer than all three AfDs combined) in 2010, where Jimbo himself showed up to address issues of potential libel against the Village Voice for running allegations that he and Wikipedia were personally cowtowed into taking the article down by McMahan and his team of lawyers.
- @Riffraff913: Well, you wouldn't be able to cite the AfDs, talk page discussions, or article itself in List of Wikipedia controversies anyway, as these would all be primary sources (in addition to the reliability problem). You would need to find RS discussing the issue. As for your concerns about transparency, I'm not sure what the talk page would clarify, since all the salient discussion will be in the AfDs, which you can still view via their histories. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 16:50, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Correct, I did not edit it. I wasn't involved in any of that kerfuffle as it happened. Other than public interest (which I count as a personal interest, as I feel very strongly about transparency and openness), I do have another reason: I recently suggested adding a mention of the incident on the talk page for "List of Wikipedia controversies". I was hoping that being able to see the conversations that took place would help shed more light on the situation. Unfortunately, the only response I've gotten so far was one sarcastic one, but I'm hoping for more. Riffraff913 (talk) 03:15, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- And there really is nothing of interest on the talk page, it only had a handful of posts none of them particularly interesting or insightful. The AfD is much more informative. Canterbury Tail talk 20:32, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Further, there must have been some controversy within Wikipedia at the time, as a blog post on The Broward Palm Beach's website (https://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/daddys-little-obfuscator-6309456) claims that Wikipedia general counsel Brad Patrick actually called the newspaper asking about potential legal issues arising from Wikipedia hosting the court records involved. Frankly, this all just seems like too much for me to believe that the AfD pages contain all the relevant information. Riffraff913 (talk) 18:59, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
AaronLestonBaptiste
Since coming on line 'bout 2 hrs ago, @AaronLestonBaptiste: have been making changes to several Charles III-related pages (too many edits to link), which appear in part non-constructive. A few editors (including myself) has since reverted him, but he either doesn't see the notices of reverts or messages on his talkpage. Assistance on how to handle the situation, would be appreciated. GoodDay (talk) 22:43, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- P-blocked from article space to try to get them to their talk; they aren't on mobile so maybe they'll see the explanation directing them to their talk page. Valereee (talk) 15:25, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
AWB user list
Request withdrawn
Hello, Could someone please add this public account to this page, I would like to test out User:Joeytje50/JWB. Not sure if I need rollback or not. Thank you, - FlightTime Public (open channel) 01:12, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Withdrawn. Thanx, - FlightTime (open channel) 02:51, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kherson Oblast (Russia) probably needs a panel close
This is a train wreck of a discussion, with SPAs and sockpuppetry, various accusations back and forth between participants, and a litanny of possible outcomes proposed. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lugansk People's Republic (Russia) is related. I am inclined to close these, but there is no close that will not result in a substantial portion of participants seeking to overturn it, so I think a panel close is advised. Are there any uninvolved administrators who care to dive into these waters? BD2412 T 04:44, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- They have both been deleted, along with a couple of others. I haven't investigated but a very quick skim failed to find why WP:CFORK would not apply. Johnuniq (talk) 06:36, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Donetsk People's Republic (Russia) remains. Unless we want to risk inconsistent outcomes, that had better be deleted as well. Selfstudier (talk) 09:14, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- I would suggest not doing a panel close for any of these or similar cases, simply because that's sucking up even more community time. Any discussion closing in any direction is potentially going to be overtaken by events. We sometimes have trouble with current events, and this is another one of those instances. CMD (talk) 09:24, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Chipmunkdavis: The close was correct and well done, but still subject to an effort to overturn at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2022 October 8. How much community time do you think that process will suck up? BD2412 T 02:42, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- More time! However I do not buy the assertion a panel close would somehow avoid this. This is going to keep coming back, because it's powered by pure recentism. CMD (talk) 02:59, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- I agree with this. And not just any old recentism, this is a full blown war. Expecting that this will be anything other than time-consuming is unrealistic. Of course opinion will be divided and passionate, of course there will be appeals no matter which way the discussion is closed, we just have to let the processes play out. Process isn't something to be avoided, process helps people work through difficult tasks (like how to write an encyclopedia article about a recently illegally annexed territory in the middle of a war). So it's OK if there's a contentious debate and then a DRV; the DRV will bring finality. Anyway, panel closes are not a panacea, they're not immune to challenge and I don't believe they arrive at better results either. (The recent RFA reform and NSPORTS panel closes come to mind.) Levivich (talk) 04:46, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- More time! However I do not buy the assertion a panel close would somehow avoid this. This is going to keep coming back, because it's powered by pure recentism. CMD (talk) 02:59, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Chipmunkdavis: The close was correct and well done, but still subject to an effort to overturn at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2022 October 8. How much community time do you think that process will suck up? BD2412 T 02:42, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- I would suggest not doing a panel close for any of these or similar cases, simply because that's sucking up even more community time. Any discussion closing in any direction is potentially going to be overtaken by events. We sometimes have trouble with current events, and this is another one of those instances. CMD (talk) 09:24, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Standard offer request of Mikey'Da'Man, Archangel
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
- The following message copied here on behalf of Mikey'Da'Man, Archangel (talk · contribs) per this discussion. -- posted by — jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 21:58, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
To whichever admin(s) see this, I am respectfully requesting a standard offer by the suggestion of another admin by the name of Ponyo. I simply put it as a request to be able to edit on Wikipedia again after eight months away. I was genuinely unaware that my actions two months later of suck puppetry was illegal on the site after seeing other users get away with it; but as six months have passed since then, therefore I put forth the request of a standard offer now. I fully recognise my short temper and hatred I felt for others if they made mistakes or fell short of what I believed were the standards of an article, and I did not find my block unjust. Since then, as I stated in my second block review, I have gone through rehabilitation via minor therapy and simply alone time, been relieved of stresses also applied at the time, and now I feel I am ready to start editing Wikipedia again without verbally attacking anyone for reason why; and I shall harass no more. This is the second standard offer I have made after the first a few weeks ago. The first standard offer was not rejected but was timed out. If whatever in that can be used as evidence for a decision made about this request, it can be found here.
Thanks, Mikey'Da'Man, Archangel 23:11, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
- Support - It appears this user has made an effort to correct their past wrong-doings and understand that their behavior was inappropriate. With 8 months gone by, I think it's time for them to be given another chance. Iamreallygoodatcheckerst@lk 00:39, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- I'm curious about how you know that they have "made an effort to correct their past wrong-doings"? Do you mean that they have said so? Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- I was referring to their comment saying they've gone through "
minor therapy
". Sure, they said they did; I don't know for sure. Iamreallygoodatcheckerst@lk 02:25, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- I was referring to their comment saying they've gone through "
- I'm curious about how you know that they have "made an effort to correct their past wrong-doings"? Do you mean that they have said so? Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- (Non-administrator comment) I'm sympathetic to this request. I was involved in trying to steward Mikey's first unblock request (now in Archive 1108, here; parallel UTP discussions here). On the plus side, is my gut feeling from numerous interactions that there is a sincere feeling of contritition, fairly biding his time during the block, and an awareness of what was inadmissible before and a conviction not to go there again. On the flip side, I would have hoped to see more activity at a sister project to provide some evidence of change, which we now lack (other than a sprinkling).
Mikey, I'm not an admin, as you know, but imho if your request is successful this time, and at some point later you run into some stressor and blow up and get blocked again, that's liable to be the end of the story; coming back from another block will likely be extremely difficult to impossible. Given that, do you feel confident you can keep things under control, do whatever you need to do (like take a WP:Wikibreak if needed) to avoid any problems going forward? Mathglot (talk) 03:05, 30 September 2022 (UTC) - From Special:Diff/1113160513/1113236493: Primefac (talk) 13:48, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
As I already said in my first standard offer, I know fully well how to correctly deal with errors of other users or resolve a disagreement over an edit. With minor errors, using the summary box explaining their error would be plausible to use. For a major error, approaching them via their talk page to explain their error would be more plausible; while for an edit conflict, a debate should be carried out on the article's talk page. I have also made consideration that I shall only edit on Wikipedia when I am not in a bad mood as to not provoke myself even more. Mikey'Da'Man, Archangel (talk) 13:29, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- Having only read what's here and not what initially led to the block, I am given to support. Many people mellow with age or learn to control themselves better, and when Mikey says that he has reflected and done some kind of "minor therapy" (whatever that means) and can now control himself, I am inclined to accept that. I'm not convinced from what I have read that he will be a paragon of calmness, but we have many temperamental editors here, and I think the fact that he has been blocked and had to learn from that how better to behave will make him better adapted to the project than many who skirt the edge of unacceptable conducts; as long as he is careful to avoid editing when angry, I think he will be fine. Besides, we are all called to be gracious to the penitents seeking forgiveness. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 14:52, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
- In reply:
Just a bit of clarity on what I mean by minor therapy. It doesn't mean I was sat one-on-one with a therapist for an hour every week, but a good friend who is a therapist gave me useful advice. Mikey'Da'Man, Archangel (talk) 15:52, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
Primefac (talk) 18:05, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
- In reply:
- Support Deserves another chance. Segaton (talk) 22:22, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The Rhydd
Please can someone import simple:The Rhydd? I'll take on responsibility for copy editing it to our standards. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:47, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Pigsonthewing You can place requests for page imports at Wikipedia:Requests for page importation. 192.76.8.81 (talk) 13:04, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
ResolvedRemoval of rights
ResolvedPlease remove the pending changes reviewer rights from Knightrises10 as he is banned for repeated socking. 2402:3A80:198B:833D:678:5634:1232:5476 (talk) 15:59, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- An IP with only one edit reporting that a sockmaster from 2019 still has the PCR right? Forgive me if I am failing to assume good faith but I have some reservations about this. Patient Zerotalk 16:05, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
@Patient Zero: it's unlikely that knightrises10 will ever get unblocked so he doesn't need the PCR right and many of his socks have had their rights removed so there's no reason for him to have that right. 2402:3A80:198B:833D:678:5634:1232:5476 (talk) 17:07, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- The IP is right. Plenty of people choose to edit as an IP and these can be dynamic so the "only one edit" might not be true. While we're at it Andrew Base (blocked as a sockpuppet of Knightrises10) should also not have the pending changes reviewer/rollback rights. Clovermoss (talk) 17:32, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Xeno and Clovermoss while we're at it, UnnamedUser a different sockmaster also has the PCR and rollback rights which should be removed. 223.223.139.51 (talk) 19:19, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Note that WP:BANNEDRIGHTS says, "In general, rights of editors blocked indefinitely should be left as is", and that also links to an RFC which had no consensus to change that for banned users, either. Jackattack1597 (talk) 13:09, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
#wikiwatt
Does anyone know what the hashtag in the heading above refers to? I ran across this misguided edit with a summary containing it, and it led me to think that we might have another African editing contest that needs some oversight. Deor (talk) 16:20, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- It's from Meta. The WikiKwatt Project's vision is to "bridge the huge content gap and make visible more knowledge about the neighborhoods in Africa". NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 18:23, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oh, that sounds like an incredibly worthwhile project. It is unfortunate if because of lack of oversight" it would backfire. User:Eugene233, what is the status of this project? Are new editors receiving any kind of guidance? Thank you, Drmies (talk) 21:21, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Are CSD tags edits for the purposes of WP:G13?
(T·E·H·L·R) Draft:International Treaty for Pandemic Preparedness and Response
14 Nov 2021: an editor made the last content-based edit to the text of this draft.
14 February 2022: Reviewer declined AfC submission
27 March 2022: User:Citation bot fixes a reference [4] and an editor fixes a unicode apostrophe error using cleaner.js.
1 September 2022: I submit for CSD on WP:G13 grounds, thinking the preceding two edits would qualify as "bot edits" and not human ones to the article itself.
1 September 2022: Admin User:Explicit declines the CSD tag, stating six months have not lapsed
.
29 September 2022: I wait until it has been six months and two days since those two edits, and re-tag.
29 September 2022: Admin User:Liz declines, saying Please stop tagging this draft for G13. It will not be eligible until 6 months from today (unless some else edits it in the meantime).
Now, I completely understand if I was mistaken about those two edits from Citation Bot and using Cleaner.js, that they are not "bot edits" for the purposes of G13. But what I am really scratching my head about is: Do CSD tags in and of themselves, reset the clock for G13? As far as I can tell, there is no consensus on this. It seems to be a sort of circular reasoning, that this could extend the life of abandoned drafts for years beyond their actual lifespan... I could, in effect, simply wait until 5 months 29 days and tag articles, extending their life for a year. Other admins (e.g. User:CambridgeBayWeather) have deleted drafts I've tagged in similar situations: [5] [6] [7].
I have attempted to inquire about this on the indicated admin's talk page, which is, as yet, unanswered, while User: Bungle agreed they didn't see any consensus on this question.
So what does AN think? Should CSD tags (and their declining), reset the clock for G13? — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:18, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Disagreements about venue
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- I can't see how tagging it as CSD resets the six month clock. If that was the case then all drafts would require a full Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. Of course there is Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions which suggests that a bot should be used to tag for WP:G13. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 18:43, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- @CambridgeBayWeather {{AFC submission}} automatically tags drafts for speedy deletion if they've not been edited for 6 months and are not currently awaiting review, no need for a bot. 192.76.8.81 (talk) 18:46, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- This comment is confusing because it is a bot which already does this? How do you think these automatic things happen on wikipedia? Its all bots, all the way down... — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:52, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Shibbolethink No it isn't, it's built into the template using the #time parser function. 192.76.8.81 (talk) 18:56, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oh I see what you mean. Differentiating between things that templates do over time, versus a bot user. So in that case, it would not be an edit. It would be a change in how the template appears, if it were not substituted. I would say this, overall, is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:58, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
This might be more useful as a thread at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion.Never mind, the hatted comments cover this already. Clovermoss (talk) 19:44, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Oh I see what you mean. Differentiating between things that templates do over time, versus a bot user. So in that case, it would not be an edit. It would be a change in how the template appears, if it were not substituted. I would say this, overall, is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:58, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Shibbolethink No it isn't, it's built into the template using the #time parser function. 192.76.8.81 (talk) 18:56, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- This comment is confusing because it is a bot which already does this? How do you think these automatic things happen on wikipedia? Its all bots, all the way down... — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:52, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- @CambridgeBayWeather {{AFC submission}} automatically tags drafts for speedy deletion if they've not been edited for 6 months and are not currently awaiting review, no need for a bot. 192.76.8.81 (talk) 18:46, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- I'll answer here but we should also hear from Explicit as I think the two of us are responsible for (I'm guessing) about 85% of the CSD G13 page deletions. We are pretty strict literalists about policy. Wait, I'll just speak for myself here! I don't look for the last edit that added content or substantial content to a draft article, we look for the last "human edit" to the page, whatever that may be. The policy says on this criteria that G13
applies to any pages that have not been edited by a human in six months
. So, bot edits are the only edits that do not count as human activity. So, for example, I closed an AFD recently and when I made edits to remove the links that were now broken, using XFDCloser, I made an edit to a draft page, removing that link. When I saw the draft which was set to expire a few days later, I skipped it and didn't delete it because of my recent edit to the page removing that broken link. - Bots do play an important role in this process. Explicit, I and all of the editors who tag expiring drafts, use User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon as our tool for what drafts are getting stale. The bot lists drafts that are going to be going to reaching that 6 month date and since it produces a list a week ahead of time, every draft or user page gets reviewed again before it is deleted to make sure that no last minute edits have been made to the page in the past 7 days. SDZeroBot started creating these lists for G13s and PROD in September 2020 and it has made our job so much easier as well as editors at AFC who review drafts that are coming up on their expiration date to postpone deletions on promising drafts. It has become an essential tool for us (thank you, SD0001!).
- There are approximately ~200 drafts that go stale each day although the daily actual number can vary from 150-600 pages. Having a guidelines of "last human edit" makes it pretty straight-forward process. If you want a more subjective measure for when a draft can be deleted as a G13, that would involve proposing a change to CSD policy and it would also require more time and judgment on the part of both editors who tag drafts for deletion and the admins who review those tagged pages. Those drafts which have had human edits but not ones adding content would not appear on the G13 soon lists. Of course, this is possible, policies do change, but I'd question whether editors would feel comfortable having more subjectivity added to determining when this criteria applies instead of a pretty straight-forward policy as it exists now. Liz Read! Talk! 20:00, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- As for Draft:International Treaty for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, RoanokeVirginia's edit on March 27th counted as a human edit. They used a script but it is considered a human edit. That is why Explicit declined the original G13 tagging. Then where were now subsequent edits to the page, by you, Shibbolethink, and Explicit and these would mean that a standard G13 deletion was delayed until March 29, 2022 unless the page is edited again or goes to MFD. I also want to apologize for my subsequent edit summary for my declining the second CSD G13 tagging, it was unnecessarily glib. I meant it to be helpful but it reads as sarcastic and irritated. Liz Read! Talk! 20:07, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Liz: You seem to have gone round the houses a bit but I don't think it really addresses the point that was raised here. In my experience, you seem to be a stickler for doing things "by the book" rather than sometimes considering WP:COMMONSENSE. I am surprised you opted not to engage with Shibbolethink's query on your talk page, even after I gave my 2 pence supporting their very reasonable position. I have disagreed and defended you on occasion and while it may be that there is a policy line that the CSD is declined because a human literally edited the page, I think in this instance, there won't be anyone suggesting it was a "standard" content edit. As I said on your talk page, I think the idea that a stale draft CSD could be declined in these circumstances is ludicrous, even if supported by policy (although, lets not forget that some policies exist for a reason to address that:
"If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it."
). Bungle (talk • contribs) 20:28, 8 October 2022 (UTC)- Thank you for the apology Liz, it's totally fine I did not interpret your edit summary as glib! I was more just surprised by it. But to echo Bungle here, yes I would say Liz's comments here really don't address the question of the thread. Are CSD tags in and of themselves, enough to make an article not stale? This seems to be literalist in the extreme, to the point of counteracting the actual point of the CSD criteria. It's intended to get rid of stale drafts which are not being used or made into an article. One would think that an article which has previously been ALMOST CSD-deleted should not be rescued by being CSD tagged and declined. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 21:51, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- What is the harm in having a draft stay for six months longer that IAR needs to be invoked? Is there an unanticipated or emergency situation? Sdrqaz (talk) 22:18, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- To answer your question with a question, what is the harm in deleting these pages that have not been edited in any way other than CSD tagging in 6 months? When they can be REFUNDed at any time? — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:24, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- At risk of stating the obvious, deletion makes content more inaccessible for both administrators and non-administrators alike. Sdrqaz (talk) 11:41, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- If someone's going through drafts and sees something they think needs to be deleted right away - say, it's an attack page, or objectionably promotional, or whatever - we want them to bring it to the attention of admins, and the most straightforward way to do that is with a speedy tag. The last thing we want is for them to hesitate to tag because they think an admin might possibly consider it borderline enough to decline, and thus make it hang around for another six full months instead of the perhaps one or two it would've taken to G13 had they left well enough alone. —Cryptic 22:32, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- If it's too harmful to leave around for another 6 months, but not harmful enough to speedy delete then take it to MfD. If it's not harmful enough to take it to MfD then it's not harmful enough that leaving it for another 6 months is problematic. Thryduulf (talk) 23:57, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- To answer your question with a question, what is the harm in deleting these pages that have not been edited in any way other than CSD tagging in 6 months? When they can be REFUNDed at any time? — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:24, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Liz: You seem to have gone round the houses a bit but I don't think it really addresses the point that was raised here. In my experience, you seem to be a stickler for doing things "by the book" rather than sometimes considering WP:COMMONSENSE. I am surprised you opted not to engage with Shibbolethink's query on your talk page, even after I gave my 2 pence supporting their very reasonable position. I have disagreed and defended you on occasion and while it may be that there is a policy line that the CSD is declined because a human literally edited the page, I think in this instance, there won't be anyone suggesting it was a "standard" content edit. As I said on your talk page, I think the idea that a stale draft CSD could be declined in these circumstances is ludicrous, even if supported by policy (although, lets not forget that some policies exist for a reason to address that:
- As for Draft:International Treaty for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, RoanokeVirginia's edit on March 27th counted as a human edit. They used a script but it is considered a human edit. That is why Explicit declined the original G13 tagging. Then where were now subsequent edits to the page, by you, Shibbolethink, and Explicit and these would mean that a standard G13 deletion was delayed until March 29, 2022 unless the page is edited again or goes to MFD. I also want to apologize for my subsequent edit summary for my declining the second CSD G13 tagging, it was unnecessarily glib. I meant it to be helpful but it reads as sarcastic and irritated. Liz Read! Talk! 20:07, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- A human tagging a draft for deletion as a G13 doesn't disqualify it from being deleted as a G13. Humans doing the tagging used to be the norm, back when the expectation was for admins to look at every page they were deleting instead of racing to speedy entire categories in one click with Twinkle, and sometimes even to decline deletion because the subject had potential rather than only for technicalities.A human removing a G13 tag may or may not do so. It certainly does when the intent is explicitly to disqualify it from deletion for another six months, for instance immediately after a restoration at WP:REFUND or when the edit summary is something similar to "reset G13 clock". If a speedy's declined solely for being tagged too early, though, I can't imagine anyone would've taken issue with it being deleted on the original timeline. And if they did, well, G13s are restorable with little or no questioning at WP:REFUND. —Cryptic 22:12, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- I think it's important to clarify in response to
"I could, in effect, simply wait until 5 months 29 days and tag articles, extending their life for a year"
that G13 is a six-month waiting period, not twelve. If there is a desire to extend it to twelve, I'd advise creating a separate thread (though I believe it wasn't your intention).I don't really understand why there's a rush. G13 is a simple criterion and works well because it is objective – disagreements on its application should not occur if taggers read the criterion before tagging, and administrators read it before deleting. Adding exceptions in this instance would unnecessarily muddy the waters – this thread has shown that taggers are getting confused over what is a bot edit and what is not – wouldn't adding another caveat make it more unclear? Sdrqaz (talk) 22:18, 8 October 2022 (UTC)- Sorry I meant "by a year" to mean simply that I was waiting 5 months 29 days, tagging, which would be declined, thus pushing it back another 6 months. Understand what I mean? 6 months + 5 months 29 days = 11 months 29 days, or in effect, a year. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:23, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- This thread is not about bot edits, @Golollop. You have completely misunderstood. It is about whether or not a CSD tag, in and of itself, counts as an edit for the purpose of G13. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:25, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- I know. But this thread came about due to you
'submit[ting] for CSD on WP:G13 grounds, thinking the preceding two edits would qualify as "bot edits" and not human ones to the article itself.'
If people are having trouble with determining which accounts are bots and which are not, perhaps we shouldn't be adding more complication and exceptions to G13. Sdrqaz (talk) 11:41, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- I know. But this thread came about due to you
Yes. The policy is clear that G13 applies to drafts that have not been edited by a human for 6 months. A human adding a CSD tag is a human edit and so resets the clock as the policy is currently written. I don't understand why there is disagreement about this - the wording couldn't be clearer. Where there is legitimate scope for disagreement is whether this is what the policy should be. However, I don't understand why there is any desire to change things - what benefits does it bring to the encyclopaedia? Some drafts are sufficiently problematic that they do need to be deleted sooner than six months, in the significant majority of cases this is because it is a copyright violation or an attack page and these are can be, should be and generally are speedily deleted using criteria G10 and G12. If the reason it needs deleting sooner than six months is not one covered by a speedy deletion criterion then it should be nominated at MfD. If a speedy deletion is declined then it means that it isn't problematic enough that it needs to be speedily deleted and so it can be left for another six months or taken to MfD. Thryduulf (talk) 22:55, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
- Don't tag for G13. It is not helpful. Leave G13 deletions for automated processes, with the appropriate associated notifications. G13's 6 months was fairly arbitrary, and the 6 month period is no the point of the deletions. It doesn't matter if the six months becomes 12 or 18, the point is that abandoned old stuff gets soft-deleted out of caution, mostly for BLP or copyrights concerns. If you think there is any real BLP or copryight concern, WP:MfD it. Otherwise, leave the objective criteria to be interpreted objectively. If a human fixes an apostrophe, that resets the clock. There was a human watching, and caring. The prior bot edit has a problem that requires attention. There may be any number of reasons to keep it alive a bit longer, and given that you are watching, you can do the manual check for BLP or copyright problems. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:47, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
If a human fixes an apostrophe, that resets the clock. There was a human watching, and caring.
I think this ignores the preponderance of auto-wiki-bot, which randomly scrawls through pages looking for fixes and presents them to the end-user... Most people turn off the draft namespace when they use AWB, but certainly not all! — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:13, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
It feels like there are two separate trains of thought here, one that considers what constitutes an "edit" to the point of being something to prevent a draft going stale, and the other that considers a draft's life existence as being immaterial and not something to rigidly be concerned about. Neither position, strictly speaking, is wrong, nor was Liz "wrong" (if interpreting G13 by the book) to decline it. The points raised about "is it harmful to reset the clock another 6mns" I think really overlook the point and perhaps the policy wording of G13 is too ambiguous that it can be interpreted too widely and entirely at one's own discretion. I take the point of SJ above about refraining from G13 tagging because there is already a process in place to handle drafts, but I stand by my view that I think the principle of a draft being tagged and reverted slightly early would constitute an "edit" is ludicrous. I imagine it'll be tricky to find consistency among sysops how to handle these situations, as no-one could really be pulled to WP:ANI for doing one or the other, so perhaps the earlier suggestion about this being focused on the CSD criteria itself, rather than at AN was the right call. Bungle (talk • contribs) 07:24, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Hello, Bungle,
- I wanted to respond to a couple of your comments in the middle of this discussion but I thought they'd be missed if I just inserted them into a conversation that had moved on. First, I should have engaged on my talk page. It is my biggest flaw as an editor/admin that I can miss or lose track of user talk page discussions. My talk page gets a lot of traffic, discussions can quickly move up to the middle of the page and I scroll to the bottom to reply and I miss seeing the messages further up on the page. My approach to talk page messages is to try to respond immediately or respond to multiple messages at the end of the day. But there is a lot of room for improvement on my part. If I could improve one aspect of my behavior on Wikipedia, it would be not to lose track of discussions that have started on my talk page.
- Second, yes, I am kind of a stickler to the letter of the law here. See, I've been an admin since 2015 but it wasn't until 2022 that an admin decision of mine was brought to Wikipedia:Deletion review, a noticeboard I had not really even been aware of until this year. Here, admin deletion decisions are scrutinized, critiqued and commented upon and I've found that at Deletion review, an admin's competency can be called into question. After you get taken there a couple of times, it can make one leery to do any deletion that is not clear cut and by the book. People can talk all they want about IAR and Wikipedia not being a bureaucracy but if one goes out on a limb in an AFD, you get called a supervoter and people start suggesting you resign. You start not applying the rules and you'll eventually see yourself in an Arbitration case. You can make hundreds of ordinary admin decision and you never know which one will get you sent to be reviewed.
- Finally, to other questions, Drafts get deleted before they become CSD G13s every single day! Go to the CSD categories and you'll see drafts tagged for all kinds of infringements, copyright violations, lots of self-promotion, attack pages, nonsense pages, no admin would never ignore problems to keep a bad draft around for six months, that's not how things work. As I've said at WT:CSD before, many of the G13s I see every day are what I call "social media profiles", drafts or Sandboxes where young editors write autobiographies of themselves. They usually create these pages on the first day they are an editor and then they never, ever return to editing Wikipedia again. It doesn't "hurt" anything to have these pages in Draft or User space except for the time it takes for AFC reviewers to decline them. At times they are tagged for speedy deletion but mostly, no one ever sees them until they pop up on the G13 soon list and then we can address them.
- Sorry for these long comments but I hope we can move past the rhetoric or hypotheticals and be grounded in how pages are determined to be G13s and then how they are handled. Like I said, we are talking about hundreds of drafts expiring each day and each are examined individually to make sure they qualify and I think our current system handles this efficiently. You start adding in exceptions to policy or asking admins to make subjective opinions and we will start seeing more disputes and we'll need more than our current 2-3 admins to handle their more complicated review. But it's a community decision and if you want to change the system, you are free to make a proposal to change the situation with G13s or any other category of speedy deletion. Liz Read! Talk! 09:29, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Hi Liz, not a problem, as I know your talk page traffic is somewhat heavy, to say the least. I can understand why you may be weary after the DRV back in April (which I remember, as I commented in it and offered you moral support at the time). This isn't an attack on anybody's judgement or decisions, but rather that there is split opinion here and maybe it's now becoming somewhat farcical, to say the least. I still think it's very daft this was declined for CSD and I remain in support Shibbolethink's position and views, however I also know that there is no consequence to the status-quo.
- As for Thryduulf's comment, "every admin who has commented here" is far away from "every admin", although maybe the way I expressed that could have been considered differently; I guess what I meant is that this is one of those situations where you can have two binary choices, neither of which strictly speaking is wrong and that assuring consistency in a scenario like that isn't always clear-cut. Bungle (talk • contribs) 11:09, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
you can have two binary choices, neither of which strictly speaking is wrong
in this case we have a choice between interpreting an unambiguously written policy with the clear, objective meaning it has or interpreting "have not been edited by a human" to mean "have not been edited by a human, unless the human edit was nominating the page for deletion or some other minor edit that was not intended to improve the draft." One of those is actually wrong, whether one is speaking strictly or otherwise. Thryduulf (talk) 11:34, 9 October 2022 (UTC)- By your stated interpretation, @Thryduulf, wouldn't an admin be forced to decline every CSD G13 that was nominated by a human? As that nomination was, as you have said, a human edit? Are you saying that G13 should be removed as a human editor tag altogether? That sounds like a new thing, as I have had probably a dozen pages deleted via G13s I tagged in the past few weeks. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:19, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, they should be being declined. Thryduulf (talk) 13:23, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- That sounds like a pretty hard turn for this CSD criteria which is included in Twinkle and RedWarn as a user-action. And is regularly employed by users every day. If that is your interpretation,Stating that a consensus for this already exists is ignoring the very real set of valid arguments being made on this thread, by admins and non-admins alike. If a consensus for this in favor of your position develops, I will happily abide by it. But before that point, I will continue to use CSD G13 for drafts that I stumble upon that are 6 months stale. it certainly is not how the tag is used in practice. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:25, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- (edit conflict × 2) I can't explain why the criterion is included in those tools (I don't use them) but every human using G13 is wasting their time. If a draft was missed by the bot then let the bot operator know so they can fix the problem, if the draft needs deleting before the problem is fixed then that's what MfD is for. If admins are deleting G13s that have been edited by humans in the past 6 months then they need to stop unless and until the criterion is changed. Thryduulf (talk) 13:30, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Well, my days of thinking you should get into the trenches and actually do some speedy deletions before absurdly misinterpreting their intent and practicalities are certainly coming to a middle. —Cryptic 16:15, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- That sounds like a pretty hard turn for this CSD criteria which is included in Twinkle and RedWarn as a user-action. And is regularly employed by users every day. If that is your interpretation,Stating that a consensus for this already exists is ignoring the very real set of valid arguments being made on this thread, by admins and non-admins alike. If a consensus for this in favor of your position develops, I will happily abide by it. But before that point, I will continue to use CSD G13 for drafts that I stumble upon that are 6 months stale. it certainly is not how the tag is used in practice. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:25, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, they should be being declined. Thryduulf (talk) 13:23, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- By your stated interpretation, @Thryduulf, wouldn't an admin be forced to decline every CSD G13 that was nominated by a human? As that nomination was, as you have said, a human edit? Are you saying that G13 should be removed as a human editor tag altogether? That sounds like a new thing, as I have had probably a dozen pages deleted via G13s I tagged in the past few weeks. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:19, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- If this is policy that is treated as being then the policy is nonsense - Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and admins should not be blindly applying rules - in reality, there has been no work to change or improve the article since November last year, and treating someone fixing a unicode error or adding a deletion tag as an attempt to improve the article is ridiculous - those doing so deserve trouting.Nigel Ish (talk) 08:32, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- It is not ridiculous to apply an unambiguously worded policy in accordance with its unambiguous meaning, especially when that policy relates to speedy deletion where consensus is to interpret the criteria strictly in all cases anyway. The policy does not include any consideration of the purpose of an edit so whether an edit was to improve the article or tag it for deletion is (and should be) irrelevant. If think a draft needs to be deleted sooner than it would be under G13 then nominate it at MfD not G13.
- As for
I imagine it'll be tricky to find consistency among sysops how to handle these situations
, given that every admin who has commented here so far has expressed the exact same opinion (i.e. any edit literally means any edit) I think you need to get a broader imagination. Thryduulf (talk) 09:24, 9 October 2022 (UTC)- The title of the CSD is Abandoned Drafts and Articles for creation submissions. If unclear, the text of the CSD should be interpreted in the spirit of this title. Adding a CSD tag, and removing it for procedural reasons, does not change its status as abandoned. Animal lover |666| 11:34, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Yes it does, because the criterion defines "abandoned" as "[has] not been edited by a human in six months". There is nothing that is unclear. Thryduulf (talk) 11:46, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Thryduulf:
given that every admin who has commented here so far has expressed the exact same opinion (i.e. any edit literally means any edit)
This is explicitly untrue. See the replies of Cryptic and CambridgeBayWeather above. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:21, 9 October 2022 (UTC)- Cryptic appears to be arguing for what the criterion should be not what it is. CambridgeBayWeather appears to be mistaken about what currently happens. Thryduulf (talk) 13:33, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- The title of the CSD is Abandoned Drafts and Articles for creation submissions. If unclear, the text of the CSD should be interpreted in the spirit of this title. Adding a CSD tag, and removing it for procedural reasons, does not change its status as abandoned. Animal lover |666| 11:34, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- So, you are saying that we should never tag drafts as {{db-g13}} again, because doing so would just "reset" the 6-month G13 clock anyway (so Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec become Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun respectively)? If the consensus is that we should stop tagging drafts with db-g13, then we could TFD the db-g13 template and remove G13 from Twinkle and AFCH (see Wikipedia talk:Twinkle#Remove db-g13 and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Remove G13 functionality). Until then, admins should continue deleting G13-tagged drafts that were tagged when 6 months have passed since the last edit. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 16:32, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Edit for a player
Hello, more than a month ago I started editing Wikipedia articles to keep users informed. I regularly edit footballers like Jay Stansfield, the problem and I was warned that they were going to have a discussion with the moderators for some reason that I don't understand. The problem being that I did not know that on Wikipedia cup matches did not count as real matches played. I understand that I could have made a mistake and know that the error will not be committed again. Please stop the site moderators discussion regarding my Wikipedia account Hoping for a quick response Thomasthimoté (talk) 13:26, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Thomasthimoté: You've come to the wong noticeboard: this is where you need to post your reply: WP:ANI#Disruptive editing by Thomasthimoté. DeCausa (talk) 14:03, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Consensus on whether filter warnings alone are enough per WP:BEFOREBLOCK
On WP:AIV/TB2, DatBot reports users who've triggered specified filters a varying number of times. A rule of thumb for many administrators, including me, for when the disruption isn't in obvious bad faith, is that the user must be warned four times and blocked if they've vandalised (or attempted to) after the fourth warning. The variance in consensus comes when considering whether abuse filter warnings are part of those four. I'm of the opinion that seeing MediaWiki:abusefilter-disallowed and the like plastered across your screen when you're trying to vandalise pages should be regarded as identical to a typical {{Uw-vandalism}}1-4 warning, even when the user's talkpage is a redlink, but it seems this opinion isn't unanimous and other administrators warn the user when their talk page is blank [8] [9].
Pinging some TB2 patrollers for comment: @Ad Orientem, Reaper Eternal, Daniel Case, Materialscientist, and ToBeFree. DatGuyTalkContribs 15:07, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks for the ping. "Four times" is a very conservative rule of thumb. Of course I take filter warnings and "Disallow" entries into account. If someone tries to run with their head through a wall, even in good faith, a block may be required and reasonable after (or even without) a single talk page warning.
- As there is no formal number of warnings required before blocking, a discussion about whether filter warnings are a part of the non-existing requirement is a bit, hmm, unnecessary. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:49, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- I tend to address each case on its own merits. I weigh the nature of the offense and act accordingly. If the disruption is especially egregious, i.e. racist trolling, porn image vandalism etc, I just block on the spot. See WP:ZT. Other things I look for are, how many times they triggered the edit filter, have they been previously warned and or blocked, is there a history on the targeted pages of similar disruption that might suggest IP hopping or block evasion and etc. In general, I prefer not to issue a block w/o some kind of warning and ideally more than one. But it just depends on the nature of the problematic editing and the exigent circumstances of each case. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:58, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- To my mind, the user needs to be informed that what they're doing has an effect ("anyone can edit" is still a novel concept to the uninitiated) and asked to stop. How many times they need to be told that depends partly on the severity of their actions—gross racist slurs will get escalation much more quickly than the trivial "hi mum" sort of things—but ultimately once we're satisfied that it's not good faith we should block. We shouldn't tie ourselves up in bureaucracy and arbitrary numbers of warnings. Nor should we lose any sleep over short blocks of disruptive IP addresses or permanent blocks of accounts that clearly have no intent to edit constructively. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:04, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- I would agree with that 90% of the time. But there are cases where commonsense demands immediate intervention to protect the project from severe disruption. And quite frankly if you are repeatedly using (or attempting to use) the N word in reference to another editor or the subject of an article, then to my mind there are only two possible interpretations. You are obviously NOTHERE or you really don't understand how wrong that is, and are bonecrushingly incompetent to edit here. In either which case "you are the weakest link. Goodbye." -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:17, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- Absolutely. There are some actions that, by their very nature, we can be sure weren't attempted in good faith. We should avoid extending olive branches to people who are only going to beat us with them. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:31, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- I would agree with that 90% of the time. But there are cases where commonsense demands immediate intervention to protect the project from severe disruption. And quite frankly if you are repeatedly using (or attempting to use) the N word in reference to another editor or the subject of an article, then to my mind there are only two possible interpretations. You are obviously NOTHERE or you really don't understand how wrong that is, and are bonecrushingly incompetent to edit here. In either which case "you are the weakest link. Goodbye." -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:17, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- To my mind, the user needs to be informed that what they're doing has an effect ("anyone can edit" is still a novel concept to the uninitiated) and asked to stop. How many times they need to be told that depends partly on the severity of their actions—gross racist slurs will get escalation much more quickly than the trivial "hi mum" sort of things—but ultimately once we're satisfied that it's not good faith we should block. We shouldn't tie ourselves up in bureaucracy and arbitrary numbers of warnings. Nor should we lose any sleep over short blocks of disruptive IP addresses or permanent blocks of accounts that clearly have no intent to edit constructively. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:04, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
- It's not like repeatedly tripping the edit filters has totally no effect on the project. Some people use the edit filters to patrol for vandalism, and if someone is flooding those logs by repeatedly tripping filters, they should be blocked to eliminate that distraction. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 16:53, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Unblock request of Nauriya
The following is the unblock request of Nauriya, which requires a community consensus to remove. I am transferring it here as a courtesy, and make no endorsement in doing so. 331dot (talk) 19:52, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
Dear Wikipedia community and admins,
I hope you are all well doing the things you like. I am also doing well. I am here again to ask for another unblock request as I did more than two years ago. In last two years I have tried to keep myself busy with other things alongside work, and I have written contents for various channels and mediums but it has always been Wikipedia where I took my first leap of faith from, when I started my journey 8 years ago. In the past two years I have really tried to appeal for an unblock, but thought it hard over if I am ready or not and after careful and long consideration, I am requesting my unblock for your kind attention.
During my time off from Wikipedia I have learned to make better decisions for me to grow as a better person with better understanding and knowledge. As you can see my above request and the reason there, why I was banned, and why I was held accountable - I once again apologize my mistake and I promise I will show myself as a better contributor to this platform. I sincerely hope that admins and other community members overseeing this request will consider it positively and give me a chance to show that I have grown from my past mistake. Please give me a chance to prove myself. Thank you. Nauriya, Let's talk - 20:08, 20 September 2022 (UTC) 331dot (talk) 19:52, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
- Unblock per WP:UB CHEAP. Seems like enough time has passed. Miniapolis 22:27, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
- Unblock per Miniapolis plus WP:AGF. I just read through the discussion in which they were banned. They violated copyright and they socked. I'm not saying those are good things, but in the scheme of things, there's much worse things they could have done. And it seems like they understand what they did wrong and have made a commitment to not do those things again. That's all we ask. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:51, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
Unblock. I've taken a look at the previous discussion (which others may also wish to take a look at), and the user's responses to questions regarding copyright, and while I'm hesitant about an unblock given the severity of the case, it has been five (maybe a little less or more) years since the original block by consensus. A lot of change can happen in 5 years. However, if unblocked, I would expect that the user in question would take great care in ensuring they adhere strictly to the copyright policies, lest they end up blocked again for copyvios. EggRoll97 (talk) 03:49, 21 September 2022 (UTC)Oppose. I've recently been provided with a slew of new information that I had not originally reviewed. The only way that I could support the request given the new information that I have overlooked previously is if an experienced editor was willing to review all of Nauriya's edits following unblock for copyvio. EggRoll97 (talk) 04:11, 22 September 2022 (UTC)- Oppose The unblock request fails to address major problems such as massive copyright violations, meat puppetry and paid editing. This unblock request is the same as the one that was rejected 2 years ago,[10] and it fails to give confidence that how disruption won't happen again. The concerns that were raised last time haven't been addressed even now. I am yet to see this user address the repeated recreation of Wasi Shah. @Miniapolis, EggRoll97, and RoySmith: See the talk page section here where I had pointed out misleading claims by Nauriya,[11] and his reply was just as misleading.[12] Concerns raised by Moneytrees last time seem relevant.[13] Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Nauriya (started by Fram) is still huge and far from being completed. Maybe an alternative solution would be a topic ban from WP:ARBIPA at least because that's where this user was entirely disruptive, but since copyright violation is a broader concern, it is entirely possible that it will happen wherever this editor would edit. Lorstaking 03:57, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
- That won't address the copyvios either. MER-C 18:58, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
- @Lorstaking: Thank you for pointing out the copyright page. Seems to have slipped my mind (trout me if you must). I've changed my vote to oppose given the slew of information presented, though I do wonder about unblocking with requirements to have potential edits reviewed by an experienced editor for copyvios. It would require someone to actually review the edits to be made, however, so this may not be an appropriate solution. EggRoll97 (talk) 04:11, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose - copyright problems not addressed. MER-C 18:58, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose I would have expected someone who has been blocked multiple times for copyright violations across several different accounts to at least try to show in their unblock request that they now understand our copyright policy. Pawnkingthree (talk) 19:19, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose: It doesn't appear that any of the stated concerns above have been addressed so far, and these promises to reform were also made before the community ban was enacted. --1990'sguy (talk) 04:55, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose as this doesn't address the copyright concerns. Unblocking people with a long history of copyright problems is very problematic anyway because it's unlikely that anyone would notice if the problems continued. Reviewing every edit someone makes for copyright concerns is not a productive use of editor time, it's also very tedious and not infallible. Hut 8.5 18:38, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
- Oppose due to failure to address copyright concerns. dudhhr talk contribs (he/they) 21:41, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Thread recycled for a formal close. Please also accept or deny the unblock request at User talk:Nauriya accordingly. MER-C 18:35, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Closure review for Kiwi Farms external link RfC
- Link to RfC: Talk:Kiwi_Farms#RfC_on_linking_to_Kiwi_Farms
IMO, this close seems like a fairly classic case of a WP:SUPERVOTE.
In the summary statement at the end, Szmenderowiecki cites two policies/guidelines as the central rationale for their close: WP:BURDEN and WP:PROBLEMLINKS. Neither of these were mentioned in the discussion, it was just Szmenderowiecki's own (entirely novel) argument, which they admit (even though no one cited the guideline, WP:PROBLEMLINKS makes it perfectly clear...
). This seems to me to be exactly what a supervote is; a closure based on one's personal opinion, rather than anything that had to do with the actual discussion it was closing.
FWIW, I also think these P&Gs were cited incorrectly. WP:BURDEN refers to the burden for demonstrating verifiability; verifiability was not something in dispute in the discussion. For WP:PROBLEMLINKS, the advice in that guideline hinges on how encyclopedic the link in question is, so one would presumably have to argue that an official link to a website is not particularly encyclopedic, which Szmenderowiecki did not argue. It would've been better to be able to argue this in the actual RfC itself, but because it was a novel argument brought up only in the closure of the RfC, we did not get a chance. Endwise (talk) 18:52, 9 October 2022 (UTC)