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Researchers requesting administrators’ advices to launch a study

Hello all!

We bring together the forces of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and Sciences Po Paris to conduct a large-scale research project on the microfoundations and dynamics of online interactions and behavior. To this end, we invite internet users with many different profiles to fill out a survey on LimeSurvey which combines decision making involving money with substantive questions about attitudes and practices. As a part of our research agenda, we would like to achieve the highest answer rate possible among Wikipedia contributors.

For this purpose, we presented our research goals and methods to the WMF which agreed to support our project and help diffusing our call to participate among Wikipedians (to make sure, please check out the list of research projects which have the Foundation’s recognition or contact Steven Walling). We planned to invite Wikipedians to participate in this broad study by posting individual invitations on the users’ talk pages through an automated procedure.
So this message is both to let the community of admins know about what we intend to do (as our aim is surely neither to bother people nor to disrupt the editing process of Wikipedia!) and to ask for some clarifications and advices about some particular aspects of our invitation protocol, namely:

1. Is there a risk that our account could be blocked while we are in the process of sending our invitations to participate and, if yes, how could we avoid that?
2. Is there a risk that the external link to the study that we will include in our invitation messages could be blocked and, if yes, how could we avoid that?
   

At the end of the study, research outputs will be made available under an open access license and we intend to share them at a Wikimania conference. If they wish to do so, participants from Wikipedia have the possibility to donate their final earnings from the study to the Wikimedia Foundation.
We remain at your entire disposal for any further question or precision about this research project (if you like, please consider that you can also reach us by e-mail at: berkman_harvard@sciences-po.fr).

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Many thanks,

The Harvard / Sciences Po research team. SalimJah (talk) 09:15, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi SalimJah, I'm from the Wikipedia Bot Approvals Group. The correct place to get approval for mass message delivery using an automated process is WP:BRFA. Alternatively, you can look at getting a bot which already has broad approval for message delivery, such as User:MessageDeliveryBot, to do the job for you. Getting an approval like this reduces the risk of the bot or link getting blocked, if you use a bot without approval it will be blocked as soon as possible, for violating the bot policy. However, users often object to mass messaging which they have not specifically opted in for, as many consider it spam. An alternative would be to use a watchlist notice, or one of the other three site notices explained at the top of this page. Using this method would completely remove the risk of the link being blacklisted or the bot being blocked, as it would not be editing repeatedly. Hope that helps, feel free to contact me or any other BAG ember if you have further questions. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 09:26, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Can you please provide more details about how you will be contacting people? (ie, the exact text of the message and which groups of editors you will be sending it to). As this is a WMF-endorsed study I don't see any generic problems, but you obviously need to make sure that your approach is appropriate (and posting this message here is a great way to start things off). One problem I see with your current approach is that posting access codes in publicly-viewable user talk pages will mean that these codes a) won't be private and b) are very likely to be used by people other than the intended editor in some cases. This will obviously impact on the quality of your data and may cause some privacy problems. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:31, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much Kingpin13 and Nick-D for your precious input and advices!

We are currently in the process of technically validating a bot that will have two specific purposes: (a) posting our invitation to participate in the talk page of several thousands of Wikipedia registered users (according to the number of Wikipedia participants that we will be able to fund) and (b) retrieving automatically participants' agreement to participate (we intend to ask participants to confirm their agreement to participate on their talk page as an answer to our invitation before they actually participate). I hope that this solves the privacy problem mentioned by Nick-D. Then, the text of the invitation will be almost the same as in our research description page on meta (i.e. a brief description of the goal of the study and how to participate in it). This research project is a large scale one that aims at understanding the dynamics of online interactions and behavior. So we intend to send our invitations to participate to all kinds of Wikipedia contributors, not restricting ourselves to one particular profile or group.

About the issue of having our bot or account blocked while we are in the process of sending the invitations, I thought of asking Steven Walling to leave a note on my talk page in order to "whitelist" me and link to our research project page on meta. Would this prevent efficiently the risk of being blocked while sending the invitations? Do we still have to go through the whole bot validation process if we do that? I must confess that we would like to move fast and open the survey for Wikipedians to participate as soon as possible.

Thanks again for your helpful guidance! SalimJah (talk) 09:57, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The text at m:Dynamics of Online Interactions and Behavior is around 3700 bytes (after deleting the misguided <br /> html). My guess (I am not an admin) is that anyone delivering that page to thousands of users would be blocked (or is there some benefit to the encyclopedia that I have overlooked?). Johnuniq (talk) 03:23, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Not unless you consider the evocation of thousands of orange banners a benefit. No talkpage spam, please. Bishonen | talk 04:48, 24 March 2011 (UTC).

I second that, I'm sure interested people and pretty much everybody reads this board anyway, amongespecially admins. At most, if one really wants to reach thousand of admins, a feature in the Signpost (if its editor think it's a good idea) might be a less intrusive way of reaching out to a wider audience without spamming templates to everybody. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 06:13, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Dear all, thanks for sharing your concerns with us. Our research project aims at making a significant contribution to the field of human interaction systems design in order to inform the design and organization of online social spaces (if you like, please visit the webpage dedicated to this research project). We expect that current and future Wikimedia community projects could benefit a lot from the insight of such research, which is precisely why we will make it available under and open access licence and intend to share it at a Wikimania conference. Another benefit to the community is that all Wikipedia participants are given the opportunity to donate their final earnings from the study to the Wikimedia Foundation (each participant can earn as much as $50 upon completion of the survey).

From our side, we consider it important to get Wikipedia users to answer our survey, as the Wikipedia project has grown to achieve a prominent status on the internet. For validity concerns, we do not want to invite only admins to participate. We would like to be able to invite all types of Wikipedia contributors equally, ranging from the admin to the contributor who has just registered his Wikipedia account. So one reason why we finally opted for the talk page option is that this is the most widely shared discussion medium across all types of Wikipedia contributors and the only one available for recently registered users. We totally understand that this may appear intrusive to some. We are trying to figure out the best way to make our recruitment process valid and return our results to the community while not disrupting its editing process. Posting an invitation to participate in a research project on the user talk pages has already been done before. In response to this trend (and maybe because some researchers may sometimes not invest a sufficient amount of time trying to understand and abide by community guidelines and principles in their recruitment processes), the Wikimedia Research Committee and the Subject Recruitment Approvals Group are currently trying to come up with a formal procedure and define best practices for researchers willing to recruit subjects from Wikimedia projects. While this is still work in progress, we totally committed ourselves to respecting them all and are happy to do so. Regards, SalimJah (talk) 17:13, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Well unless someone has a way that can achieve the same result as asking lots of editors directly (watchlist notice wouldn't), I think we (/BRFA) should approve either a new bot or an existing bot to deliver this one-off request. Rd232 ^talk 15:29, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I'd suggest an existing bot, as that would also bring an experienced bot op into the discussion. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Rd232 and UltraExactZZ for your comments! So to be very specific and totally transparent about how our invitation protocol is planned to work so far:

1. We intend to use a Firefox plugin to post our invitation to participate on the Wikipedia talk pages. This plugin simply opens the talk pages that we would like to reach in turn (for instance in my case: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:SalimJah&action=edit&section=new), posts our invitation on it and simulates a click on the “Save page” button. As this is not a web service, I’m not sure it can be turned into a regular Wikipedia bot.
2. Then, we wrote up a crawl in Python that has two purposes. First, it collects the agreements to participate in the study that participants will post on their talk page (see Nick-D’s privacy concerns above). In case we did not reach a sufficient number of participants after a first experimentation round and are able to fund more Wikipedians to participate, we would like to be able to open the survey again for a second round (in any case we will not do more than two rounds in order not to be too intrusive!). So upon reception of the first invitation, Wikipedians have the option to opt-out of potentially receiving a second one (according to the Wikimedia Research Committee’s proposed guidelines on how to handle the subjects recruitment process). So the second purpose of our crawl is to collect the list of those Wikipedians who explicitly opted-out of receiving a second invitation message. If this is deemed useful by the community, we would be very happy to provide the source code of this crawl (maybe this could benefit the Subject Recruitment Approvals Group in his current effort trying to define formal procedures for researchers willing to recruit subjects from Wikimedia projects).
   

Alternatively, I guess that functionality 1 above could also be fulfilled by using the MessageDeliveryBot, as suggested by Kingpin13. However, I wonder whether this bot would be suited for posting a very high number of invitations. First, it would require some tedious manual checking work from community members on an issue not directly related to Wikipedia’s editing process. Then, according to the edit rate indicated on the bot’s user page, it could take several days to complete the invitation process while we intend to open the survey for Wikipedians to participate for about a week. I also wonder whether some overload problems could arise. But we remain totally open to this possibility if the community thinks that this option could work well!

For organization purposes, we would really like to be able to open the survey for Wikipedians to participate as soon as possible, ideally in the course of next week. I hope this is feasible from the community’s side. Best regards, SalimJah (talk) 08:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

If you think that with the edit rate of message delivery bot (10 epm) it will take several days, exactly how many invites do you plan on sending out? Yoenit (talk) 08:41, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I have a privacy concern to raise; as you appear to be proposing to give unique codes to users who will participate this will allow you to link user accounts to IP addresses (when they come to fill out your survey). Have you got an agreement with the WMF regarding how you will store or user this information (if at all). In addition do you have a) a privacy policy and b) clear explanation to users of the fact you will be exposed to their IP address directly? Apologies if I missed any of this in the above :) --Errant ^(chat!) 08:46, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Responding to Yoenit’s question: our prior experience at online based surveys indicates that response rates tend to be very low (roughly about 1%). While we could expect this answer rate to be higher for some profiles of Wikipedia contributors (namely the most experimented ones), the answer rate could well be below this number for newly registered users. There are about 60 000 newly registered accounts on Wikipedia each month. So if we want to achieve both validity (i.e. a representative coverage of all Wikipedia contributors’ profiles) and statistical power, we will have to contact many of those users. I think that all in all, contacting about 40 000 users would do the trick (which would take about 3 days for MessageDeliveryBot to do). I know that this is asking a lot from the community’s side. But I sincerely think that the benefits from this large scale research program in terms of practical lessons could be worth it. I see this being especially true according to the current debate about how should the community address the issue of the declining trend in newbies’ editing behavior, an issue that WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner considers to be the top priority one to solve for the community in her march communication. Note that this is precisely one of the reasons why the WMF accepted to support our project and help diffusing our call to participate among Wikipedians.

Responding to Errant’s question: yes, this is a totally relevant issue! Thanks for asking! :) Our survey is based on the open-source survey tool LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey generally records participants’ IP address when they login. However, this is part of our privacy policy not to record or use participants’ IP addresses. So what we do is that when participants click on the link to the study, they are directed towards a proxy that redirects them to the survey. This way, each time a participant is loggin in, we do not store his IP address but the proxy’s one. More generally, our research procedures are subject to European privacy protection protocols, under the supervision of the European Research Council and the French ethics committee (CNIL). This entails notably that (a) all the data collected in this study will be used for research purposes only and (b) individual answers won’t be made public. Regards, SalimJah (talk) 09:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Can I clarify a few things:

1. You want 40,000 people to take the survey—do you want Wikipedia readers without accounts, Wikipedia readers with accounts, Wikipedia readers and active editors with accounts, etc., or all of them? Because there is no way you will be able to get 40,000 actively editing (experienced) Wikipedians (I doubt there are even close to that many) unless you want to conduct this survey across different language versions of Wikipedia as well. So if you want users who don't edit much, I don't expect that posting on their talk pages will be useful at all if they don't check them. So that leads to question two:
2. Are you saying that every survey-taker has to have their own unique access code? If so, this is to me the biggest obstacle. Firstly, how will Wikipedians be given access codes—on their talk page, via email, through a separate site? If it's on the talk page, anyone could use someone else's access code. If there is any way that the survey could be done without the need for special access codes, it would be simple to set up a sitenotice (a banner at the top) and/or a watchlist notice that invites users to participate. I believe this could be adjusted to show only for logged-in users, logged-out users, or both, as well. It would be the least intrusive method, IMO, and reach a broader audience.

Thanks, /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I cannot speak for the other people that would get this message, but if I were to get what is essentially a spam message on my talk page I would be extremely upset, both with the people that placed it there, and in the event that it was sanctioned by the WMF, with the WMF as well. Quite simply, mass mailings are unacceptable. Every automated message bot on Wikipedia either a) delivers newsletters/periodical messages which are signed up for in advance by the recipients and are only delivered to those that signed up, or b) delivers messages informing editors that they have made a mistake or broken a policy and asking those editors to fix that mistake. Wikipedians, like most normal people, have historically shown a low opinion of unsolicited mass mailings. There must be another way to do this that would be less problematic. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:47, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Dear Fetchcomm and Sven, I have the feeling that the answers to (at least some) of your questions can be found in the above, but I can try and make it clearer! :) We are only interested in Wikipedia registered users (the majority of those who participate in its editing process). Although we have the means to fund many Wikipedians to participate and are happy to give them the possibility to donate their final earnings to the WMF (which we see as a means to contribute to the Wikipedia fundraiser), our financial means are not unlimited. So, as noted above by Rd232, the reason why we have to invite individual editors directly and not all registered ones through a watchlist notice or a sitenotice is that if we did the latter, we could well end up with a sample that is not at all representative of the many profiles of contributors that can be found on Wikipedia. If this was to happen (and statistically it can!), this would significantly alter the validity of our results and thus make them unusable by the community. What we do is that we invite a subsample of Wikipedians to participate according to the answer rate that we expect given their contribution profile. Among them, we are obviously interested in getting many admins and experienced contributors to participate (and I sure hope that as many as possible will!). But we also want to reach a significant number of newbies, because those are very important both for the success of the community itself and in terms of the practical lessons that we will be able to draw from their participation in terms of how to enhance the design of online social spaces. So among the 40 000 users or so that we will invite, many will be newly registered users, specifically because we expect their answer rate to be very low (our response rate estimations are based on previous surveys conveyed to Wikipedians which used similar subject recruitment methods as the one we designed, but I would be delighted to have you all prove those statistics wrong! ;) ). The survey in itself is fun and entertaining, so I think those who will see the invitation and decide to participate will definitely like it!

Fetchcomm, the access code privacy concerns that you raise are very similar to those raised above by Nick-D. We will indeed provide the access codes directly on the invitation messages. However, the privacy protocol we subject our research procedures to demand that we ask participants to confirm their agreement to participate in the survey before they actually participate. A consequence of this is that the wiki-signature that goes along with the agreement post will uniquely identify participants, thus preventing any user to use someone else's access code.

Again, we totally understand that some may consider that receiving an invitation message directly on their talk page is intrusive. But I don’t see another means to do it in a valid way. We are not inventing anything new here, as subject recruitment for research purposes in Wikipedia is a relatively common practice. If anything, the novelty is that we deeply try to make our subject recruitment process valid while respecting our community commitment (please check here, here and here for more on how our recruitment process respects community principles). Then, one also has to take into consideration the benefits that such research can provide to the community, both in terms of practical lessons for enhancing its organization and efficiency, and in terms of the visibility that such research generally provides to the Wikipedia project at large. We do not only conduct this study with Wikipedians (as I said, it is a very large scale research agenda), but we really consider it important to have Wikipedians as a part of it, as the Wikipedia project has grown to achieve such a prominent status on the internet. Receiving an invitation to participate in your talk page may happen. If you don’t like it, you will never hear from us again (unless when we will present our results to the community!). So this will be the only cost you’ll bear for making this research possible.

We are currently facing very stringent schedule constraints, so if it is ok with the community, we will try to open the survey for Wikipedians to participate in the course of next week. Best regards, SalimJah (talk) 14:37, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

A few thoughts:

• Harvard is top-notch and Berkman is top-notch. Whatever they are doing deserves the benefit of the doubt.
• The timeline is short; one week is not a lot of time to get consensus. Two would be better for something which can set precedent.
• WMF support is not sufficient, since the WMF supports us, and if editors revolt, it's a wash.
• A watchlist notice is better than a bot post. It will attract registered editors who use their WP:Watchlist. It will have a lower overall participation response, but they will be more involved editors. You may need to target new users individually.
• The incentive that survey-takers might make money from the survey is not necessarily a plus, since Wikipedia operates 'almost' entirely in a non-commercial, non-pecuniary, voluntarism mode.
• Your need for validity is not our problem. We want to help, but we are first here to build an encyclopedia, not be guinea pigs for research.
• It's not yet clear how this research will specifically help open source movements, online community collaboration, wiki-editing, or attempts at discourse-based consensus. At the risk of compromising your study, you might hit a little more at what the benefits/relevance would be. Ocaasi ^c 20:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

To comment on the technical issues with a delivery bot: Your proposed Firefox add-on would be a bad idea, for a number of reasons. Firstly, bots - especially message delivery bots - are expected to obey {{bots}}, which allows users to opt-out of "bot-spam", this is of particular importance here, considering the concerns that have been raised. In addition, the 10epm rate is self-imposed, following our bot policy, but in actual fact, a "proper bot" is technically capable of running at a much higher speed, and in a much more efficient manner, than the Firefox add-on. This is because the add-on is using the user interface, whereas bots would normally use the application programming interface, which removes the need for page rendering etc. So it may be possible to get the limit lifted for this specific case, but would be almost impossible if you're not using an efficient bot (because we (BAG and the community) would not want a bot which is that inefficient to be running at that kind of speed, when there are better alternatives, because it's a waste of resources) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the validity, I don't see any reasonable way to achieve the desired number of results with talk page posts unless you use a site notice. What if you put a few extra questions at the beginning or have the notice ask specifically for the type of Wikipedian that you are looking for? I agree that posting to 40,000 users' talk pages is extreme and unlikely to generate anything but criticism. Perhaps someone could find a way to go through Special:ActiveUsers and figure out exactly how many active users there are, but I doubt it's 40,000 (due to a lot of new users/blocked users being on the list as well). /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Approximately 150.000 according to Special:Statistics. That is only one action in the last 30 days however, which means there is a high chance the user will never even see the message. I we count only users with >5 edits per month we have approximately 36.000 users and 3500 with more than 100 edits per month.[1]. If they expect a 1% response rate and want to post 40.000 messages they want a sample set of some 400 users. Yoenit (talk) 07:32, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

• As people are indicating, spamming people's talkpages for an off-Wiki research project would not go down well, and it would harm any future research projects who would like to do a survey. There are various ways that people publicise projects. I would suggest MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-details. Write a short notice, linking to a page you can create, where you can give more details. The advantage is that people will read the notice in the background when they are ready. A talkpage message puts a yellow bar over what an editor is doing, and calls for attention. It has the tendency to draw people away from what they are doing to check that someone is not raising an urgent concern. To be drawn away or distracted from an involved editing session for something like this would really not be appreciated. SilkTork *^YES! 10:30, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

FWIW a bot needs to be implemented properly - a FireFox plugin isn't appropriate because of a potential lack of oversight on the process, using a pre-existing bot and upping the edit rate temporarily is the best approach IMO. I think the optimal approach here might be:

• Implement an obvious watchlist notice directing people to a page where they can "sign up" to recieve an access code (if that is how they still want to do it). This makes it largely opt-in.
• Put a posting on some of the main noticeboards; say, here and on the village pump

And then allow targeting of individual users on a smaller scale basis (which can be discussed). From a practical perspective getting occasional editors involved by sending a message to a super-huge number of people is non-optimal. It is unlikely to get you any better cross section anyway; the data is flawed, period, and not much can be done about that (as one of my better professors once said "any time you collect data on the internet remember, it's 99% inaccurate, at least according to Google"). As also mentioned above; I personally am willing to allow more margin here given where this is coming from & the WMF support, but it still needs to cause minimum "disruption" to the process. A research posting messages will cause massive complaints; I remember when I was first around here a legit researcher (I think with WMF backing) started posting to a a few hundred talk pages (it had been vaguely discussed prior to that I think) and the fall out was pretty large, even involving a short block. Not saying that will happen here at all; but do not dismiss the likelihood of a lot of people complaining. --Errant ^(chat!) 10:56, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

• Reading through the above discussion, this reminds me of Wikipedia:Subject Recruitment Approvals Group which planned to bot-spam users for research purposes. Researchers will continue to want to take advantage of the Wikipedia community, so this would not be a "one-off". We don't wish to block researchers from gathering useful data from Wikipedians, but nor do we open to open the flood gates to spam bots. Some people quite enjoy doing surveys, or are willing to help out some research projects. Rather than rush now into creating a "one-off" bot for one specific research project that might (WILL!) create a negative back-lash, it might be better to take some time building support for the general notion of research on Wikipedia, and to recruit a body of Wikipedians who would be willing to take part in this and any other future research activities. A sustained period of publicity via SignPost, Cent and the various site-notices would draw people's attention to a research page where people could register to receive notices about this and future research projects. Gaining site-wide consensus first would generate a whole bunch of good will which would benefit future researchers. There is the opportunity here for Berkman Center for Internet & Society to be thanked by future researchers for being involved in setting up a workable scheme, or to be cursed for messing things up! SilkTork *^YES! 11:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Dear all, let me make a few comments:

• First of all, thanks for granting us the “benefit of the doubt” as regards our intentions :) Saying that we may consider Wikipedia editors “guinea pigs for research”, however, is very far from the deep respect I have for this community, its members and what they have accomplished so far!
• Our approach could set a precedent, that is true. But in my view, this precedent should be that no research program should be conducted within Wikipedia without proper community discussion and consensus building (which is initially why I wanted to make this post here before starting the project, even if we had WMF support: in this I totally agree with Errant and SilkTork’s comments above). True, we face stringent schedule constraints. But there is no way we start this project without the community’s agreement.
• I see all of your comments as a clear sign that you all want to help, and I’m sure we can find a way to make this research program both valid and respectful of community principles. It will be a deep success I’m sure!
• I understand all of your concerns and remarks. Your feedback is highly valuable! Let me speak with our team at Harvard and Sciences Po. I’ll try to see what we can do to make things better.
  

Cheers! SalimJah (talk) 11:46, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I do not think this is a good idea, despite the fact that this proposed survey is being done by a respectable university that most likely has no malicious intentions whatsoever. But because of this reason, I am neutral. Now if this was not the case, this discussion would have hit the fan the second it reered it's head. Takeo™ 02:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

• Re Salim's comments just above. Salim, you seem prepared to go on "discussing" and "consensus building" indefinitely, so let me be frank. "No" does not mean "go ahead". Negative comments are not a clear sign that we all want to help. Your tireless praise of our feedback while apparently failing to notice its content is not respectful of community principles. Respectful would be to pay some real attention to what we say. Reminding us that you have WMF support is not necessary. Bishonen | talk 08:26, 2 April 2011 (UTC).

While I think many people have raised very reasonable points above, it is important not to forget who and what we are discussing here. We're talking about real people from a real (and very prestigious) university, who want to use real money in a fashion which is of benefit to Wikimedia and to this project. While it's quite right to consider long-term issues and the 'bigger picture', I'm afraid the "it would annoy me, so don't do it" attitude doesn't get very much sympathy from me. The fundraiser annoys people every single year; there have been numerous technical and social changes (Vector skin, for instance) which have been 'annoying' to many longstanding users but which are considered necessary to advance the 'bigger picture'. Ocaasi above is half right: the WMF exists to support our content, not this community per se; 99% of the time the best way to achieve that goal is to satisfy the community's whims, but not always. This is an opportunity which should be carefully handled, but one which should not be missed, even if it does "annoy" some people. Let's be honest, it's probably not going to be as annoying as Jimbo's face was last Christmas. Happy‑melon 10:29, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree entirely with Happy-melon, complaining about getting a "new messages" bar is petty in the face of what is trying to be achieved here. Especially when we have a system for users to opt-out of "bot spam" - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 10:34, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I'd also add that the "where will it end?" argument is easily countered: (a) we don't have to approve future requests just because we approve this (b) the handful of people who are actually bothered by it can be given an optout mechanism. Most people, I think, will be happy to be asked or at least interested in hearing about the activity and certainly not bothered by an occasional request. If anything, the sense that academics are willing to put such effort into this sort of study ought, for most people, to boost their sense that contributing to Wikipedia is valuable, which is surely a good thing. Rd232 ^talk 14:41, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Let's be blunt Kingpin, the no bots template solution/argument is bullshit. There is a huge difference between bots that tell me that a non-free image was orphaned and bots that ask me to do something for an off-wiki organization. If I were to use the no bots template, I'd block useful, Wikipedia related messages in the process of blocking glorified spam. That's not a viable option for most people. If Wikipedia is going to start mass mailing people, even for just this once, it needs to be opt-in rather than opt-out, and the default setting needs to be "no". Anything else is unsolicited mass mailing, which is unacceptable. Sven Manguard Wha? 00:17, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The nobots template is designed to allow users to specify what they want to opt in/out of, for example you could use {{bots|allow=orfud}} to opt-out of everything except the orphaned images notices you mentioned. It would also be possible to set up a category for this particular task, which would allow you to only opt out of it, or a category which is specifically for messages about off-wiki events, which would again allow you to opt-out (or opt-in, the nobots template also supports this). The template itself is very well designed. "Mass mailing" as you call it, happens all the time on Wikipedia, most of the time it's opt-in, occasionally it's not, it's an area where discretion is applied. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 00:31, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The template may be well designed, but that doesn't mean user-friendly, intuitive, or reasonable to expect 40,000 editors to figure out. Opt-out puts a burden on editors. Opt-out with any template rather than a simple click is an additional burden. Asking users to individually configure a bot to only deliver the kind of messages they want is basically a pipedream. If this kind of messaging is going to become common, the opt-out mechanism needs to be simpler, or it needs to be opt-in, or it needs to go through a watchlist notice rather than a talk message. On the other hand, if this research is a one-off, then we need a bit more information why this study deserves such treatment. Ocaasi ^c 00:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Kingpin the issue is this, in reality I have three choices: 1) I could allow no bots at all (bad idea) or 2) I could allow all bots (meaning I'd get the spam) or 3) I would use nobots but allow all of the current options (which is weird as hell). The issue is that it seems rather difficult to block a bot that hasn't been created yet from posting messages on my page. If there's a template that'll block this non-yet-bot but not disrupt any of the normal service bots, I've yet to see it. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:07, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

? What are you talking about? All we need to do is amend the template to create a new category, so users who want to opt out of this kind of thing can add {{bots|deny=studies}} to their user talk page. The message itself can include the instruction to how to opt out of this type of request (whilst making it clear that this particular study won't issue any more), so it'll be easy for people to do. And we can reasonably presume that no-one will be so traumatised by the delivery of a single message of this type that they leave Wikipedia. I mean really, what's the big deal? Rd232 ^talk 10:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose This is clearly request to spam. I can't believe it's needed all this discussion. Lugnuts (talk) 08:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Absolute nonsense. I can't believe anyone objects to facilitating an academic study of Wikipedia because - the horror! the horror! - they might get the orange "new message" bar flash up if an invitation to participate goes to them. Indeed, I can't believe that all this discussion is needed. Rd232 ^talk 10:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
    • I'll assume you're being sarcastic and you'll be more than happy to deal with all the complaints following the shit-storm this creates. Lugnuts (talk) 12:32, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
      • (a) I don't think many people will object and indeed many will see it as a good thing that it's happening even if they choose not to participate, and will make them feel better about contributing to Wikipedia (b) see above - if the message includes intructions on opting out of future requests of this type, then the handful of cantankerous curmudgeons who can't bear anyone actually talking to them if there's no direct benefit to them can immediately see how never to risk being bothered ever again. Rd232 ^talk 12:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. I am prepared to take part in this study even though the severely obfuscated language used in its "description" leaves almost completely open what it is supposed to be about. ("The ultimate objective of the study is to contribute to the development of a field of human interactions systems design aimed to improve the design and organization of online social spaces. We will combine the behavioral outputs of the study with the rich data publicly available from the web on social interactions. We will then interpret this aggregate data in light of the work on social software design and the rich qualitative work than anthropologists and sociologists have done to study the dynamics of online interactions." -- The vague language used suggests to me that you don't know what you are doing other than getting research money.) However, I will not do it if the study is advertised by talk page spam. If you want to study aspects of a community, you have to stay inside the community norms. By the way, do not rely on the "Subject Recruitment Approvals Group". I can see no indication that they are backed by anything approaching a consensus of Wikipedia editors. This is in contrast to the Bot Approval Group, which has a track record of ensuring that large-scale activities on the site do not disrupt work on the encyclopedia. Hans Adler 10:28, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose I'm sorry, but this is just not okay, and my personal concerns go far beyond "the orange message bar will pop up". The precedent that this idea, a community-sanctioned automated mass spamming, would set is highly disturbing. Sure, we all love to hate the donation banner. But notice how even the WMF does not spam users en masse with messages. Ever. The only unsolicited mass postings that are acceptable, are ones directly related to editing and editing privileges that require urgent attention of the users in question. And even then it's somewhat debatable whether those are "mass" postings. While I don't doubt there are good intentions behind this study, I don't care if it's being done by a "prestigious" and "respected" institution, or if it's an "WMF-approved" study. No one on Wikipedia has the right to bombard users with unwanted and unimportant messages. Period.

I'm also willing to bet that such mass mailing would actually put users off participating in the study. --Dorsal Axe 20:19, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose (the proposal, not NicholasTurnbull's suggestions). If this has the approval of the WMF, I'll wager a reasonable amount that whoever approved it from the WMF either didn't realize what you were proposing, or wasn't authorized to give such approval. As has been said above, even the WMF themselves never send out talkpage spam, but rely on watchlist notices and page headers. If this were to go ahead, then it would (a) result in such a distorted sample as to render any findings virtually meaningless (as you can see from the above, many if not most "regular Wikipedians" are extremely hostile to this, so you'd be surveying that subset who don't tend to have the "Wikipedia mindset"—you'll probably end up with vandals and trolls giving joke responses overwhelming the genuine answers), and (b) cause such a logjam of "why am I receiving this message?" queries and complaints across multiple venues as to logjam Wikipedia's internal processes and waste the time of a lot of people who could be doing something more useful, as your bot is repeatedly blocked, unblocked and reblocked, accompanied by a lengthy discussion each time. – iridescent 20:39, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose with suggestions. I do not approve of the idea of mass-spam beyond project limits, no matter how well-intentioned the purpose of that spam, being permitted for specific preferential projects such as the one above with the WMF's blessing. Why? Because, it's a precedent, a form of action-based WP:BEANS. If this group of researchers get some sort of exception to mass-spam, other researchers will be able to say, "But you let the Berkman Centre do it! You see, you're just in it for the money; you're discriminating against researchers with lower budgets..." and before we know it, the toothpaste will be out of the metaphorical tube and we will have spam bots permitted lest we be accused of offering other research groups second-class service. I also disagree that the community's way of doing things is being respected, judging from the tone of the researchers posting here. They seem to say, "We're going to do things our way, using Firefox plugins instead of tried-and-tested Wikipedia bot platforms with community consensus, and mass-posting talk page messages instead of other means, even though we find your non-academic objections rather cute and lovely." How about:

• Support only after alteratives have been tried I think one yellow bar popping up is a pretty small price to pay for a useful academic study on the nature of wikipedia's community. That being said I don't think a mass spam is really even necessary, as the SiteNotice/CentralNotice and/or Watchlist notice should be just as good for getting word out or better (with notices you could use the marquee tag with blinking red text and 64 point font if you wanted to, not that I would support that, but still it'd be possible). If that doesn't generate the responses needed I think a precision mass spam to a target audience. But really I don't see how this is any worse than all the notices we get for things that you may have edited once 5 years ago or for things like RFA thank spam that you most likely don't care about. At least this has a purpose that can benefit the community --nn123645 (talk) 01:54, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

NicholasTurnbull's alternatives to bot spamming

Alternative 1: Site notice plus pre-selection

1. The researchers compile their list of selected users by crawling Wikipedia passively, applying whatever criteria they want to it, then storing this selected user list on their servers.
2. A site-wide banner notice directing users to a page on Meta (which must be able to be dismissed) is set.
3. The Meta page describes the study, and links to the offsite project URL.
4. For those users who opt in to clicking on the URL via the Meta page describing the study, the system would prompt for their Wikipedia username.
5. The system would then send them a verification e-mail via Special:EmailUser to their Wikipedia account's registered address, which they would reply to in order to confirm their ownership of the Wikipedia account.
6. After users identify themselves to the external site in this way, the Centre's site would compare against the eligibility list and accept only those users who were selected in the initial processing.

Advantages: For this approach, no bots are required, but specific selection based on editor demographics and statistics is possible in exactly the same way, and there is no need for talk page messages to be sent at all. In addition, none of Wikipedia's internals need to be touched, and no Firefox plugins or mass messaging bots are required.

Disadvantages: Possible editor frustration if they are not one of the selected editors. Possible statistical self-selection effects as per the ratio of users in each category that click the site notice link that have been chosen, vs. median rates in that demographic.

Alternative 2: Special:EmailUser notification

1. How about just using Special:EmailUser to notify selected respondents? Its syntax provides an HTTP POST email form for any valid username passed to it after a forward-slash.
2. The process would then proceed as above, where users would verify, etc.

Advantages: Permits the Centre's protocol to remain intact.

Disadvantages: 40,000 messages sent via Special:EmailUser ain't pretty. (MW devs, I think you will want to crucify me if I suggest this and they try it without suitable throttling.) Also, this really is spam.

--NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 20:26, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Commenting on the alternatives, I think alternative 1 is the more realistic. Using what are apparently perceived as less intrusive methods such as a site notice, watchlist notice, or/and Signpost stories seems to be the only way to get a message to the community on this. Emailing would not be at all appropriate, and would be arguable worse than the talk page postings. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:48, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd personally rather get it in my Wiki email. That way I know what button to press if I don't want any more in the future. Then again, the group of users who have email accounts is even more particular and selective and experienced than those who will see a site-notice on their watchlist. Ocaasi ^c 21:24, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Alternative 2 is not viable because it would dramatically distort the sample, since most users don't have email enabled. Rd232 ^talk 11:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion that we can close this thread for now

Hi everyone. So since I've offered to help this research group out however the Foundation can (see the list of all research projects we're aware of) I wanted to jump in and make a quick statement. The early discussion here seemed vaguely supportive of the bot idea, but clearly that is not the preferred option right now. I'm going to reach out to the research group to explore alternative options, such as what NicholasTurnbull suggested above and others. But for now, I think we can close out this thread, because:

A) it's clear the community would not like to see 40,000 user talk pages messaged about a survey

B) there are a variety of other methods available and that can be discussed

If it turns out the project doesn't need 40k responses, then maybe we'll come back and propose the bot delivery option, but for now I think it's safe to say that there's no immediate danger of it just happening without further community input. In the meantime, please feel free to offer up more suggestions for alternatives either on my talk page or SalimJah's. Is that okay? Steven Walling at work 18:58, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

need unblock of valued editor

There's a good, regular editor blocked erroneously by a bot, for something about an open proxy, but with no bad or questionable edits in contribution history. The editor's unblock request has received unreasonable demands that the editor must fix problems in the system and its messages or wait until May 28. This is crazy. Would an administrator or 2 or 3 please see User talk:EraserGirl#Unblock and apologize, and of course immediately unblock. Whatever are the errors in the bot and its messages, this user should not be held hostage until May 28. Please discuss, fix other problems later. --doncram 16:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

As you have been advised, the account was blocked per WP:PROXY and is thus correct - as noted, a good editing history is irrelevant since it is the open proxy that is being blocked and not the contributor. There is nothing to apologise for, this is a matter of policy. LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:41, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

We don't intend to block good contributors though. The block is a good block, but I'm trying to assist the user in figuring out what is going on. There seems to be no intention of using any proxy solutions. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:37, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Of course we block open proxies, but I was under the impression that we had no prohibition of registered users editing through them. Why can't we simply grant IP block exemption? Nyttend (talk) 18:05, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I doubt it's necessary. The easiest explanation is that she got a dynamic IP address that had previously had an open proxy. At the moment the blacklisted IP address isn't up, so presumably when she is back she will have a new IP address and everything will be fine. Hans Adler 18:27, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Port scan doesn't currently find any open ports. (Not that I know anything about how these things work, but at least my scanner wasn't finding anything.) I'd agree the most likely explanation is a dynamic IP that's now safe. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:35, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I've unblocked, in the interest of ending the collateral damage quickly. If I was wrong about the technical analysis, please feel free to re-block if you consider it necessary. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:48, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

In the future, why can't we simply softblock the proxies? Nyttend (talk) 22:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Proxies are frequently used for block evasion by banned users. Softblocks would be trivial for such individuals to bypass, ergo a hardblock. However, one legitimate concern is that proxies blocked by Procseebot are often pretty dynamic and quickly roll over to new IPs, as there have been several requests along similar lines in recent weeks. Perhaps the duration of its blocks should be shortened? Sailsbystars (talk) 12:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Having investigated some more re the request at WP:OP, I think that the user in question needs to run some hardcore anti-virus software. The machine was still listed as a proxy as of earlier today. Sailsbystars (talk) 12:34, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If proxies blocked by Procseebot "are often pretty dynamic and quickly roll over to new IPs", I think the best solution may be:

1. The bot will give an initial 24 hour block (or maybe even shorter).
2. Near the end of this period, it will doublecheck that the IP is still an open proxy, and the give a longer block.

עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:35, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I tend to think ProcseeBot gets it about right on average, but there's also some code somewhere which checks if it's blocked the same IP before so it can lengthen it. I'm sure that's all in hand. I'd just like to add that at times like this admins should also generally think about handing out some short term IPBE first. Email a checkuser if you need a third opinion, then list the IP somewhere so it can get checked out and unblocked if necessary. WP:OP is pretty slick these days, but there's often a deliberate delay while IPs (especially dynamic IPs) come and go. Meanwhile an editor can wait for days. Obviously don't extend this courtesy to banned sleeper socks.. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 01:22, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Dynamic IPs tend to be a bit of a problem, especially when they're zombies, because of two main reasons: 1. many people tend to turn their computers/laptops off when they're finished using them (thus making the scan turn negative for the dark period), and 2. client builds of commercial operating system kernels like Windows XP tend to have severe limits on the TCP backlog in order to prevent a home user from using their PC as a server, which makes scanning them difficult. As a result, an IP can seem to be positive one minute, negative the next minute, positive one day, and then negative the next...then positive once again a few days later, etc etc.... Because most people use a router of some form (whether it be transparent/handled by a broadband modem or a full-on wireless home router), the IP tends to be pseudo-static on many broadband ISPs for a given period of time (e.g., until the router loses power or the ISP intentionally or as part of regular maintenance re-allocates new addresses at each DHCP lease expiry), simply because reassigning an IP while there's an open connection/stream will drop those connections/streams. Thus, when the bot verifies a proxy, it assumes "2 months" is a good period of time to minimize the load of (re)-scans on my end while minimizing splash damage if there's a re-allocation. Right around the time that the initial block is set to expire, it will re-scan to see if it can still get a positive, and if so, re-block for longer, presuming that if the same port on the same ip is open for that long, it'll be open longer. It seems a good tradeoff to blanket-scanning, continuously, a database of a hundred-thousand-plus ips. :P --slakr^\ talk / 21:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Community ban proposal for Babasalichai

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

Babasalichai (talk · contribs · count) is banned by community consensus. Courcelles 07:24, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

---

Pursuant to the numerous violations detailed at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Greenbay1313_forum_shopping, and the history at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Babasalichai/Archive, I think it might be time to community ban Babasalichai, thus freeing up everyone's time in dealing with this in the future. I'm not an admin, and I might not be doing this right. Please feel free to tell me if I goofed somewhere and/or correct the issue. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:29, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

You didn't notify Babasalichai of this thread, but otherwise you did everything correctly (and you don't have to be an admin to propose community bans, BTW). I'll notify him after this post. --Dylan620 ^{(t • c)} 13:28, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I would definitely support a measure of this kind. I have been dealing with this user since November 10, 2010, when I noticed him adding unsourced information to Rabbi Pinto while I was patrolling. It's been a long six months. His endless circular arguments, refusal to get the point, and sock puppetry are eating up time of myself and many other editors who have been watchlisting this group of articles. On the Rabbi Pinto article, he was attempting to link to a rumour that the rabbi had put a curse on someone who later met an untimely end, had some sketchily sourced stuff about mafia connections (sample diff), and wanted to put in material that implied that the rabbi and his followers are idol worshippers (sample diff) etc etc. The action has now moved to the article on to Ronn Torossian and the most recent sock, Greenbay1313 (talk · contribs · logs). On March 31 he posted on nine different notice boards and the talk pages of several users in an attempt to get some support for the edits he wishes to make. He is presently not blocked as the SPI is still open. The sock puppetry may go back as far as Emetman (talk · contribs · logs), who was originally blocked in 2008. This user is not here to build an encyclopedia and is eating away at the time and resources of others who are trying to protect the encyclopedia from harm. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 00:45, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Support - We need not to waste any more time on this guy. Community ban him so his socks can be blocked and reverted on sight. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 02:39, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Possible support - However I would like to see the results of the SPI first. If the SPI shows he has been socking, then consider this a support. Night Ranger (talk) 02:41, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Support - This has gone on for far too long, and the barrage of socks makes it almost impossible to figure out what exactly needs fixing in the article. Dayewalker (talk) 02:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Support Not only has the user socked, he has committed the cardinal sin of wasting everyone else's time. If I see a request related to him at EAR one more time I may eat a leather or felt product in frustration. Danger (talk) 03:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Support -- There are so many past admin discussions of this guy and the related articles you should open up this search and scan down all the reports at noticeboards. The article on 5W Public Relations has been at the center of this activity, which goes back to 2008. We are at the point where any non-sock editing of that article would be noteworthy. Lately the articles on Ronn Torossian and Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto have been the subject of fishy editing. The people making these questionable edits are constantly defending themselves at noticeboards and complaining about those on the other side. Anyone who has tried to explain Wikipedia policy (including BLP) to these folks is probably disappointed. The value of a ban on Babasalichai is that it may help slow down the flow of new socks. EdJohnston (talk) 03:10, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support -- as one of the other editors working with Dianaa on Pinto, I concur that this editor is a significant problem. In particular, if User:Greenbay1313 is found to be a sock, then it's clear that this user is not only socking, but making use of a whole variety of wiki-processes to try to enforce a certain set of viewpoints, most of which seem to revolve around Ronn Torossian, the public relations company he founded (5W Public Relations), and people whom I believe are either clients or opponents of the firm. It seems likely to me that the company (or one employee of the company, perhaps) is treating Wikipedia as a place that it can legitimately use for advancement of its own public relations work. On the one hand, I would think that this would make it difficult to actually ban them, as you'd think a sophisticated PR firm could learn to get better at socking, but xe seems to fall into similar patterns over and over again. One note though--I thought that the "original" editor in question was User:Jonathangluck, so wouldn't we make that the "official" banned editor, with the rest listed as socks of Gluck? Or is it more appropriate to use the name that caused the most problems? Qwyrxian (talk) 03:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The Jonathan Gluck acct (created 6/19/10) was originally thought to be the oldest but it is actually Baba that is to be considered the master (created 2/11/09). I will fix up the userpage templates to reflect this. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 04:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: It is my impression that he has become more sophisticated in his socking, in at least one way - he has been careful not to reuse computers that have been already marked for puppetry. I would like to suggest an hypothesis for possible action. I am guessing that all the IPs involved in socking have passed through one of two servers, one probably in Los Angeles and the second in New York. I am also guessing that those servers are privately owned and serve only those people involved in socking. Would it be possible to assume that all IPs passing through those servers and focusing on the articles in question are socks, and then automatically block them? --Ravpapa (talk) 05:36, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

He's also made attempts to change his writing style and leave out some of the giveaway stylistic tells, although he quickly gives himself away once he stops concentrating. In addition, there may actually be two separate sockfarmers involved here - a couple of the accounts do actually appear to be able to write coherent English, even if it's English that has a strong helping of PR-speak. It's also possible these more-coherent accounts are actually the same person but their output gets copyedited by an employee (or even translated from whatever the sockmaster's first language is!)

I don't have access to all the technical data, but regarding the IPs, I don't think it's as simple as you hope. There's been a variety of IPs involved, including an ordinary domestic broadband line and something that looks like it may be a club or similar type of organisation so not privately owned as such (although with a possible link to the Los Angeles area as you say). Certainly it's worth being aware of the pattern of usage so that it can be considered (privately, perhaps) next time something duck-like appears. A couple of the IPs now have owner notes on their talk pages, so those are the ones worth keeping a link to.

Right, now I have the thorny decision of whether to support or not :) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 12:31, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Support -- Having read the SPI and noting the intensive meatpuppetry he's doing like agreeing with Beobjectiveplease, not to mention butting in at the Clerk CU and Admin comments section in one SPI report when editors who are none of the above should not, I don't think he's psychologically and mentally capable of editing constructively on Wikipedia. If he's become good at socking, a site ban and semiprotect on Ron Torossian, 5W, and the Pinto article is in order. Dianaa, those circular arguments you're talking about are really the signs of pigheaded editors. What a tool that guy is. --Eaglestorm (talk) 05:48, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• This same user is up for a CCI for close paraphrasing. I haven't had time to look at the CCI request yet but if this is true there's another reason for banning. MER-C 13:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Support - more legal threats: Somehow I seem to bring out the best in these guys. At some point in some discussion (I am beginning to lose track), Greenbay mentioned libel, one of you responded that we don't like legal threats, and I chimed in that I thought Greenbay was talking about legal action by Ronn Torossian, not by him. Well, I have revised my opinion in light of his latest post on my talk page. I think the statement that "If you think that libelous content will continue to exist you are sorely mistaken" is a clear threat of legal action. Greenbay should be blocked. --Ravpapa (talk) 14:26, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support I only have recent experience with these accounts, but have already observed multiple abuses. Sock puppetry, legal threats, copyvio, forum-shopping, and personal attacks just off the top of my head. Much time has already been wasted in attempts to help these accounts along. Can see no benefit to allowing this behaviour to continue. The Interior (Talk) 21:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

May I ask does sockpuppetry permit use of undue sources like on Torossian page, and allow user: Ravpapa to out someone on his page (and apologize for it), and then insult someones personal appearance ? Have you reviewed the Torossian page ? There's a ton of Israel stuff, but no mentions of major clients: Foreign Ministry and Tourism Ministry of Israel and Likud Party and current Mayor of Jerusalem: http://www.jpost.com/Features/InTheSpotlight/Article.aspx?id=150936 has also represented Israel Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. http://www.thejewishweek.com/features/confident_comeback Trained Israeli government officials for media appearances. http://www.prweekus.com/israel-branding-effort-aims-to-humanize-nations-image/article/56167/ But some no name Reform Rabbi criticism is included ? Work with ruling Israeli government of course some frings Israeli official will criticize. Its undue balance and should be fixed. Noone is seeking to upset Wikipedia rules but its a hard system when editors seem to gang up together. greenbay1313 (talk) 02:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

As an aside, the above editor Greenbay1313 has now also started deleting positive material from other, competing PR companies [2] [3] [4]. Dayewalker (talk) 02:57, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Wow, this needs a ban, it will really make life easier for the copyright people who have to clean up all the stupidity from dozens of accounts over several years now, and also the rest of us who have to clean up the paid bias inserted by these socks. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

• Support. Up until now, I would always have said, what's the point, it's not like he's going to wear us down just by keep creating more sockpuppets, right? OK, I was wrong. Creating three sockpuppets per day, every day, and keeping up this nonsense for years now... well, it's more than I can easily handle. Ten or more noticeboards addressed in one day? More than once? Too much. I would be totally relaxed about all this, except that what the various sockpuppets originally wanted to do was not to remove some unfair representation from their own Wikipedia article; no, they wanted to use their sockpuppets to defame some personal opponent of theirs in their local area. Sad? Sick? No comment, but a ban is needed in a big way. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Right, this is getting out of hand, enough time has been wasted, it's time to pull the plug, initiate the ban, and flush greenbay1313 down with the rest of the waste generated by all this nonsense. Any admins want to officiate? Sven Manguard Wha? 03:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Do any of you people review what you actually say ? The content removed from other PR firms is it allowed on Wikipedia ? Are there sources ? The answer is no. I can and will return them if thats what you'd like. Its quite confusing why some things are allowed without sources and others arent. There was no sources thought am supposed to remove. have any of you bothered to actually review Torossian page before commenting here. Do you think a ban will mean Internet cafes will be closed ? be reasonable folks. greenbay1313 (talk) 03:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Translate that last sentence to us. Is that a threat? –MuZemike 03:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

of course not a threat simply saying its better to address the issue and review the content rather than enforcing rules which may not be understood. No one is trying to "game the system". You asked not to post to multiple forums, havent. Simply asking to review the content. No threats at all just asking to review the content. (and tell the truth - The edits of other companies above review the edits there were no sources. They arent competitors. User Ravpapa has outed people, insulted personal charteristics and offended families in this process its a 2 way road... just some dont know Wikipedia rules. They should be helped not attacked. Anyway have you been able to review the Torossian page. greenbay1313 (talk) 03:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Good Lord. "Do you think a ban will mean Internet cafes will be closed?" is a clear and obvious announcement of intention to sockpuppet if blocked. How many legal threats (here's a quick list [5]) and instances of disruption is it going to take? Dayewalker (talk) 03:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

• Weak support with a but - the user is not impossible to work with. They seem to have a real concern that the article's current state doesn't portray the subject neutrally, and have been working (as I suggested) on an alternate version of the Torossian article on their sandbox. If Greenbay1313 abandons their threats of legal actions and is willing to discuss the merger of the current article and their version civilly and respecting the policies and guidelines, I'd give them a chance to do it. Zakhalesh (talk) 13:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support -- The disruption by this person pushes far beyond the bounds one should have to deal with, and administrators should have the tools a community ban provides. The amount of socks, threats and disruption need this action. Dave Dial (talk) 13:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support - Not here to contribute in a collective manner. Threats, legal and otherwise, are an unacceptable response. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 17:58, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support - This is absurd. We've nuked users from orbit for far less than what's going on here. Let's bring down the banhammer and allow ourselves to deal with this user more efficiently. --Dylan620 ^{(t • c)} 20:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

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

Third call to provide closure for an RfC

The link is here. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 21:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Petty naming dispute with potentially widespread consequences

I think this deserves wider attention than just the policy & guideline pages. The issue is not the article in question, but the effect that the logic being used would have on the rest of WP.

There has been a petty dispute over whether Mexican-American War should have a hyphen or, per the MOS, an en dash. The admin moving it to the hyphen argued that this was indicated by TITLE because most sources use a hyphen, and that TITLE as policy trumps the MOS.

It's not clear to me that TITLE intends that title style and formatting of a particular article should follow a majority of RSs for that article, rather than following other WP articles. Indeed, the numerous exceptions in TITLE are largely matters of style and formatting.

My concern is this: If the 'follow sources' provision of TITLE is to cover style and formatting, and is to mean following the example of sources for individual articles rather than of English style guides, then the MOS does not apply to titles. Since we generally want the title to be in keeping with the text, that means that we may need to abandon any attempt at having a uniform style for WP, as other encyclopedias have. Indeed, that is an argument of some of the editors in this debate, who want the MOS scrapped. However, we even reformat quotations to fit our style guidelines, which to me at least suggests that a Wikipedia style is seen as having some importance.

So, as an encyclopedia, do we want coherent formatting across articles? Do we want an MOS? And do we want a decision as to whether to have an MOS contained in TITLE? — kwami (talk) 08:01, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Could you please indicate where this is being discussed? (I can't see it at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/All) There doesn't seem to be a need to have multiple discussions of the same issue, and a single discussion would be best (this also isn't the kind of issue admins have any particular influence over except for where it spills over into user conduct problems). Nick-D (talk) 08:38, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

A Requested Move discussion is at talk:Mexican-American War, if any admin is willing to close it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:28, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

But it is also being discussed at WT:MOS and WT:TITLE. --MASEM (t) 16:02, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

...and at Talk:Battles of the Mexican–American War where all the same arguments are being hashed over. JohnCD (talk) 17:11, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I see that this is extremely important to some editors, but I am left stunned that 170,000 characters of discussion has occurred around this issue on one article. It just seems like an outrageous amount of time to be spent on such an issue. Maybe it is just me but it's disheartening every time I see something like this to think what that kind of time and effort could have achieved toward improving the project for the readers. Camw (talk) 15:54, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. I think the MOS should be revised to say that petty disputes over hyphens vs en-dashes fall under WP:BOLLOCKS, and that from now on, any further disputes will be settled by an uninvolved admin, by the toss of a coin. Contributors who are unhappy about this may of course create their own forks of Wikipedia, and enforce the style they prefer. I wish the creators of Endashopedia and Hyphenopedia well in their new efforts. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Again, I don't mean to rehash that dispute. It isn't even a hyphen-dash thing. I have a more general concern: should our MOS be abandoned every time we have sources which use some other MOS? Should it be abandoned only if the title includes the stylistic point in question? That is, do we or do we not want a consistent style for WP? — kwami (talk) 17:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

This is not a question to be answered at WP:AN. The issue of MOS vs other sources is a question for all uses and should be discussed at the appropriate venue. --MASEM (t) 17:06, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not asking for it to be answered here. I am simply calling attention to it, because it has greater implications than what we call that one article: Do we or do we not want to be stylistically consistent, as an encyclopedia? That's a matter most of us probably have an opinion on. — kwami (talk) 20:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

This question should not need answering at all because it has been answered a long time ago, and in the only reasonable way: Where an arbitrary decision needs to be taken and the only thing that really matters is consistency across the project, the MOS takes this decision and then everybody follows it. The problem is that the "follow the sources" extremists are getting out of hand. Verifiability and NPOV means that we use the reliable sources for what they intend to say. It has never meant that we engage in automatic writing controlled by the sources, even down to minor accidents of spelling or typography. All extremism is bad, stupid and disruptive. Wikipedia has way too much tolerance for such nonsense. Some examples:

• The Beatles article, where some editors have decided for no good reason to simply not follow the MOS as to capitalisation of the definite article in "[T/t]he Beatles".
• The editor (I forgot their name) who engaged in widespread plagiarism because they thought anything but literal copying from random sources was forbidden by WP:V. This editor, at least, was banned.
• The article Wife selling, where some editors insisted to use the obsolete long s glyph, which is routinely transcribed as a normal s in far more than 99% of all modern editions – a tradition that started circa 1800 when the long s fell out of use and has been unbroken since then. But according to these editors it is somehow original research or even a misrepresentation of a source to replace each ſ by an s. (Of course this ignores the fact that most of our sources are filtered through modern editions where it would be OR to undo the replacement of ſ by s. OR because one would have to decide which s was originally an ſ and which was an s. These editors actually insisted on having one text with ſ/s and one text from the same era only with s, simply because one was copied from a contemporary source and the other from a modern source.)
• And now this stupid -/– matter. As if the random house styles of our sources were to dictate our house style, so that we have to choose sometimes one convention and sometimes another, depending on which publisher happens to have published most on a topic. Hans Adler 21:48, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Your phrasing "these editors" in reference to the discussion that took place on the wife selling article's talk page about the use of the long s in direct quotations seems unnecessarily combative. As I recall only one editor was strongly in favour of retaining it and the rest either weren't or thought it was a minor storm in a rather small tea cup. Malleus Fatuorum 22:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I did not mean it to be combative. As I remember things, one editor was strongly opposed to fixing this anomaly, and unfortunately this editor got support from one or more others, so that what should have been a quick consensus decision became a huge war that could only be resolved by drawing in a lot more editors on the MOS talk page. I am not interested in warming this up again, just in showing there may be a general trend that needs to be nipped in the bud.

It has always been clear that the general rules of publishing and more specifically our house style apply to Wikipedia in the same way that they apply to other written publications. With some specific exceptions due to our humungous size and our internationality. (E.g. ENGVAR.) But it appears that more and more clueless new editors who overgeneralise WP:V are negating this long-standing consensus. We are asking for trouble in the future if we are not careful to educate them, or if we even allow them to enforce idiosyncratic deviations from the MOS based on their misunderstandings of policy. Hans Adler 00:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. That was my reason for bringing this here. It's not a matter of using en dashes in the names of wars, but whether we have a house style or not. There is currently a discussion on eliminating the MOS altogether, and saying instead that we should simply follow whichever style guide we decide on for a particular project or article.

However, users Blueboar and Septentrionalis, who've made that proposal, are not clueless new editors. — kwami (talk) 00:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Aside from the trivial issue of dashes and hyphens, there's this point: "I have a more general concern: should our MOS be abandoned every time we have sources which use some other MOS?"

Wikipedia is an encyclopædia. Wikipedia's first - and overwhelmingly most important - task is to accurately document what happens in the outside world, rather to veer away from what sources say in order to line up hundreds of articles with a similar particle of text at the top: A feat which would not be visible at all to lay readers (except where they notice that the name used on wikipedia differs from the name used in the real world); a feat which is solely for the benefit of some wikipedians who for unfathomable reasons want exacting consistency between the titles of articles on many different subjects.

The real world, and sources, have varying usage. If you want lots of identically formatted strings, I'm sure there are appropriate projects for you to work on, but a project which holds up a mirror to the (complex, messy, and inconsistent) real world is not the place for it. Rejecting what sources say because they don't spell bits of text in the same way as an internal wikipedia convention? That's no way to build an encyclopædia. bobrayner (talk) 10:40, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Nonsense. Wikipedia is a project to build something like Encyclopedia Britannica, only better and bigger. Of course in the outside world sources use different typefaces: some with serifs, some without. Some use slanted/italic typefaces, some use upright typefaces. Some sources are even in black letters. That does not mean that the choice of a typeface for a Wikipedia is up to local consensus. Some sources are written as lipograms. One or more editors once tried to insist that the lipogram article should be written as a lipogram. They lost. Books are usually printed black on white, or black on some other light colour. A few books have different colour schemes, and a lot more websites do. Also layout can be handled in very different ways. That does not mean that editors are free to choose their own layout for individual pages.

What makes an encyclopedia more useful for quick information than a library is its predictability and its cross-article consistency. For technical (scope) and NPOV reasons (ENGVAR) we have to make some compromises regarding consistency, but it is in no way necessary or helpful to give up the MOS. In fact, having a manual of style means that most editors can write without worrying about it at all because breaking it is not a big problem and someone will eventually fix any problems uncontroversially. And we don't have to discuss minor style issues at thousands and thousands of articles instead of improving the encyclopedia. If this was just a huge game of Nomic it would be acceptable to keep everybody occupied with discussing minor style issues. It is not. Hans Adler 11:01, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

It is difficult for me to answer, since you appear to be responding to an argument very different from the one that I actually made. The MOS isn't going to vanish any time soon. However, I would merely advise that in the minority of cases where the prescriptions of wikipedia's internal style guidelines conflict with the facts that sources provide, perhaps we should err in favour of accuracy instead of a petty inter-article consistency which would never be seen by the average reader. Where the requirements of the MOS are consistent with what sources say, then it's a non-issue.

In fact, quite often these conventions aren't even a result of a grand consensus at all; sometimes they're the result of one or two editors who decide on their own that having exactly the same title formatting (or the same headings, navboxes, ELs &c) is more important than accurately reflecting what's happening in the outside world. As kwami appears to have done recently. Let's set aside the typeface strawman and consider some real examples: Railway stations in Burundi, Chad, Niger, Yemen, &c.

• Somebody decided that we should have a "Railway stations in ..." article for each country in the world. So far, so consistent.
• Obviously, you then need the same section headings and the same conventions in each article. Use the same UN country maps, and so on.
• Many of these countries don't actually have any railways; but that's nothing to do with the convention. Put the same standardised sections and links in the article anyway. In some cases, one might mention that there are no railway stations, but it's pretty much an afterthought - it doesn't fit into the conventional structure.
• Midway through the editing spree, one might find that the UN doesn't have a handy online map for some countries. Well, we've already decided that each of these "stations..." articles has a UN map, so the most consistent solution is to take a map from a different source and relabel it as a UN map. If you don't actually know where stations are, look for a line on a map and find the nearest towns to that line, to get a list of towns which looks similar to the other articles.
• Railway stations have altitudes. Since hundreds of these stations are fictional and the remainder are undocumented, the best option is to use fallingrain.com for an altitude figure for a nearby town. Fallingrain is an unreliable source, but how else are we supposed to maintain consistency?
• A small minority of countries have so many railway stations that a list article would be wildly unmanageable. The consistent solution is to create the article anyway and put in the names of a few towns so it looks like the other articles.

At each stage, these thousands of edits were consistent with the style and layout of many other articles of that type. However, the end result is a hundred articles that make a mockery of encyclopædic content, because consistent style was favoured over sources. Personally, I don't mind consistent treatment of many different articles, and it allows some folk to bump up their edit count by a few thousand, but I draw the line where consistency and sources diverge. bobrayner (talk) 12:30, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

What you describe there is the other extreme, which of course is just as bad if not worse. (If it really happened as you say it's much worse.) But this doesn't change the fact that where arbitrary decisions must be taken to get consistency, we must follow the MOS rather than study what the sources do. If (almost) all sources disagree with the MOS then (1) there aren't enough sources to give an accurate picture and we should just ignore them on such trivial matters, or (2) it's a huge accident, or (3) something is wrong about the MOS rule in question and it should be fixed, not ignored, or (4) the MOS is intentionally doing things in a slightly different way because for us articles on ancient history, Pokémon, genetical engineering and York should all be more or less consistent with each other (otherwise there would be a fault line somewhere) and it's easier to have one uniform rule with no special exceptions for certain subjects. We are mostly talking about very minor points that most readers will never notice. These must be handled as efficiently (in terms of editor time) as possible. Hans Adler 13:01, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

In terms of efficient use of editor time, perhaps it would often be appropriate to stick with the status quo - names which article authors have copied from sources - rather than subsequently changing the name because wikipedia's internal conventions overrule how a placename is written on a government document, or how a medical condition is spelt in a medical journal - and then dealing with occasional drama, redlinks &c caused by these additional changes which (we seem to agree on this point, at least) most readers will never notice.

Undiscussed mass moves to fit some structural convention rather than to fit existing content can be problematic in other ways, too. [6] [7] [8] and so on - if a process takes huge numbers of edits as an input, and delivers drama (and various article-space confusion) as an output, as well as guaranteeing that some articles will differ from what sources say, maybe it's best to stop running that process absent some really big benefit. bobrayner (talk) 15:50, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

The present title of Mexican-American War was the result of amove request, with a 8-2 discussion, in which the two presented no substantive arguments; their procedural argument was that insufficient respect had been paid to their favorite guideline. It was closed by an admin, quoting WP:TITLE, the governing policy. Within a few days thereafter, the initiator of this thread proposed to move back, and the three dissentients have been forum shopping ever since, along with attacks on the closing admin and other turbulence.

This is not a matter of whether we have a house style; several editors have looked at the Manual of Style and seen no requirement of the style Kwami prefers. One editor changed his !vote on this ground.

Part of the problem is that WP:RM now has over a month's backlog, leaving disputes to curdle. Could some admins have a look at some of these? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 11:22, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I should have known that you are involved. Your fight against cross-article consistency is occasionally useful for keeping the encyclopedia NPOV over all, but in most cases it's just pure disruption. If you don't like a guideline, try to get consensus for abolishing it in an RfC. Going around encouraging editors to break it for no good reason falls under WP:POINT. You have been doing this for years, and maybe it's time now to do something about it.

The close of the move request started thus: "The result of the move request was: move; MOS is only a guide and the Wikipedia:Article titles is a policy overiding it." This is the kind of idiocy that I was talking about above, and in this case even from an admin. What happened at that move discussion is absolutely shameful. I am not happy with the current MOS rules on hyphens, n-dashes and m-dashes. At all. But we can't have silly discussions about them spreading over the entire encyclopedia just because some people decide to ignore them. If you don't like them, help change them, don't disrupt the project. Hans Adler 11:34, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I had to strike the first paragraph because I am stupid. I believe the second paragraph still stands if it's read as not addressing anyone in particular. Hans Adler 15:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

MOS:CONSISTENCY, the manual itself says that articles don't have to be consistent across the project. You and Kwami are defending an idea that goes against the MOS. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

This just says that intra-article consistency is crucial and that inter-article consistency is not quite as important ("not necessarily"). For many things we cannot have inter-article consistency anyway. This discussion is about those cases where we can. Hans Adler 15:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

How odd. I wrote, and defended, the consistency clause of WP:TITLE; I have defended consistency -er- consistently; that's what I'm usually attacked for. What Kwami wants, however, is not the "rules on hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes"; WP:HYPHEN 3 says that "compound adjectives [and that's what Mexican-American is] should be hyphenated. This is something three editors have made up. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I am sorry. I am stupid. You are absolutely right. You made a convincing MOS-based argument, most other editors followed your reasoning (as do I, now) and it is not your fault that the admin misread everything and came up with a stupid justification for the close. Hans Adler 15:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Hans, Anderson knows full well that his argument is nonsense. I'm surprised even he continues to repeat it after it's been so thoroughly debunked. In the clause "compound adjectives should be hyphenated", the term "adjectives" clearly means attributive modifiers of any part of speech (OED definition A), as the examples and all English style guides make clear. The section then goes on to say "In some cases, ... the independent status of the linked elements requires an en dash instead of a hyphen", which is why we dash the names of wars. It's fine to want to change the convention, as it's hardly universal, but twisting what the MOS says to support an opinion as if it were fact is simply BS. — kwami (talk) 17:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

This is, of course, a personal attack. The claim of telepathy is not uncommon in such attacks; as usual, I am not thinking what Kwami supposes.

The rule of interpretation that "X" means not X, but "some Y I would prefer it to mean" would make all written conventions useless. (What Kwami quotes refers to WP:ENDASH 5.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

No, what I am referring to is WP:HYPHEN, just to the part that contradicts your argument and which you consistently ignore. — kwami (talk) 19:25, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Deeply obliged.

I also happen to think Graeme was reasonable; if MOS had contradicted policy and usage, we are likely to be in a case where it would have an occasional exception (as {{style-guideline}} says); those arguments were also made in the discussion. What boggles me is that this is still continuing after a month, with three strikes and a closure against Kwami's preferred title. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:58, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

As a side note, WPMED's getting complaints about Kwami's discussion-free page moves again. The current discussion is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#.22Non-small-cell_lung_carcinoma.22_vs_.22Non_small_cell_lung_carcinoma.22. I would like to have a long-term solution for this needless problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

That has consensus: we should not say a tumor is small when it is large, or large when it is small. Certainly not when people may be coming here because of a diagnosis of a loved one. — kwami (talk) 17:39, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

That is an argument for not having medical articles. It is no argument for not following reliable sources.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Peter Damian block violates WP:IAR

Seeing some of the examples of “admin culture” at the March 2011 Update Talk-page it occurred to me that the block of User:Peter Damian was (at least partially) motivated by comparable kinds of sentiments. IMHO, such blocks violate WP:IAR (and I paraphrase): "If character differences prevent you from allowing Wikipedia to be improved, ignore them". The implication is that this block was unjust and should be reverted. -- Hpvpp (talk) 03:15, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Are you for real? Peter has been community banned following an Arbitration enforcement block over 1 and a half years ago. After that, he's evaded his ban numerous times through sockpuppets. How the hell does "Ignore all rules" factor into this?--Atlan (talk) 11:10, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Your description of events is ah flawed.©Geni 11:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I think this relates to the block of User:Peter Damian VII who was working with him on Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. I really dont think (s)he is aware of the background of the case. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 20:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Maybe, but they link specifically to User:Peter Damian in their post, rather than User:Peter Damian VII.--Atlan (talk) 20:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Eh I try to assume good faith on misremembering a name. This whole thread is really weird especially below :/ The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 21:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Can someone put this thread out of it's misery? I tried but got caught in a conflict that moved another editors post. Given ARBCOM's stated intentions towards desysopping me I can't be dealing with anything to tricky anyway. Not allowed guv. More than my job's worth etc. etc. Pedro :  Chat  21:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

No harm in letting Hpvpp get one more comment in so we actually understand what they're on about.--Atlan (talk) 21:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. The long reach of ARBCOM are even now on IRC and updating their super secret page of evidence on me no doubt, so I'll step out of this. Pedro :  Chat  21:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

You know, you can get pills for that these days :) Yes, you have just popped up on email - someone has asked if anyone knows what you are on about. I guess we made this page so seekrit that even we can't find it. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused Pedro - where are these "stated intentions"? Do feel free to email me. –xeno^talk 21:34, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Wait, you can violate IAR? *scratches head* By, like, obeying all the other rules, or something? :) --Conti|✉ 21:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

WQFC

Someone moved QFC to WQFC against consensus — I find no evidence that it was ever called WQFC. Can someone revert the move and delete WQFC? (Also, you might want to check the edits of User:VH2, who has done nothing but vandalize since being unblocked.) Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 05:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

The move was incorrectly done via cut-and-paste, so I was able to undo it (you could have too). I've restored the status quo ante and left a message on the editor's talk page telling him not to do cut-and-paste moves and to discuss moves in the future before making them. An admin might want to take a close look at the editor's contributions as there seem to be a lot of warnings on the talk page.

BTW, this should have gone to AN/I.Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:31, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Long outstanding CFDs

Declaration of interest: I am the nominator of both CFDs. However as they have been running for so long it's best that somebody brings it to wider attention.

Wanted: Administrators with thick skins, the patience to read one of the longest discussions imaginable and a willingness to defend their decision in any resulting DRV.

There are two category discussions that have been open for nearly two months now. They are about naming conventions, and the current lack thereof, for categories for former pupils/former students/alumni/people educated at schools in the United Kingdom and Australia and involve a very large number of categories:

• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 February 9#Former students by secondary school in Australia
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 February 10#Former pupils by school in the United Kingdom

Most of the comment is on the UK discussion but some of the issues also affect the Australian schools.

The discussion has been extremely lengthy and heated with a lot accusations flying around. It's also been declared in the discussions that whatever the close outcome it's very likely to be taken straight to DRV - see [9] & [10]. Anything based purely on headcounting is going to be especially controversial.

The situation is also complicated as the most contentious issue does not apply to every single category.

Virtually all the regular closing admins at CFD have been sucked into the discussion either directly or through closing earlier, more limited nominations in the same area. Various potential outcomes have been listed by one such admin at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Working#closing the UK and Australia alumni discussions; note this raises some of the potential technical consequences of whatever outcome is decided.

My best wishes to anyone willing to take this task on. Timrollpickering (talk) 17:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Seconded. To be honest though, the Australian one would be pretty easy for an admin to close (if the UK one is not taken into account; if it is, it would be more difficult). Also Tim, you may have more luck finding a closer if you move this thread to WP:AN, which is where I have normally seen these types of requests made. Jenks24 (talk) 13:50, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Moved. I was confused by some of the other entries that implied AFD & CFD related requests had been moved the other way. Timrollpickering (talk) 14:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

CSD G5

Copied across from Village Pump (Policy) - now removed from there. Clarification required: If a user creates and edits an article, and then later gets blocked, does G5 apply or not? If it doesn't, what is it for? I can only see sockpuppetry as surely they can't create an article in their own user name while blocked. Peridon (talk) 18:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I would support a speedy deletion criteria for articles created within a week of the creating user being blocked. 117Avenue (talk) 19:01, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

end of copy Peridon (talk) 19:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

No, G5 is only for pages created in violation of a block/ban. Courcelles 19:59, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. While I think on, what is the db-reason thing for if only the various categories of CSD are valid reasons for speedy? It's been puzzling me for a time. Peridon (talk) 20:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, for G5 blocks/bans aren't applicable to prior contributions, i.e. "ex post facto". And db-reason exists for rare cases when some special case might apply (though, to be honest, every time I've ever needed a custom rationale, it's been with a G6 tag). elektrikSHOOS 21:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I thought I was right on G5 - declined a G5 speedy on grounds of timing. I used to try db-reason in my earlier days (when the summers were sunny and you could have a good night out with a girl and still have change from a half crown) but always (or almost) got knocked back. Peridon (talk) 21:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Advice for a fresh editor.

I have recently come across a editor that appears to be churning out article after article on questionably notable people. Most of his articles over a year or so history have been proposed for deletion or speedy deletion. The main problem appears to be his references. For example many of the articles are about employees of the Mormon(LDS) church, and the majority of them seem to only have references to the website of the Mormon church itself. This is equivalent to writing an article about a businessman and then citing the businesses website only. It seems like time and time again his articles are saved from deletion while the references remain unchanged/lacking. The author of these articles does not appear at all to even be responding to the discussions about his articles or updating the references. Instead he continues to churn out articles about dubiously notable people with poor sources. What should I do? Aquabanianskakid (talk) 20:20, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

A link to the user would be helpful. Unless other people can analyze and assess the situation directly, we have no way to know what the proper course of action is. --Jayron32 20:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

His page is [[11]] Perhaps I am taking it a bit too seriously but it seems problematic for him to move on to new article after new article without properly fixing the old ones. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aquabanianskakid (talk • contribs) 20:34, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

This description of the articles I create is debatable on multiple levels. The articles on William R. Bradford, Larry Y. Wilson and Durrel A. Wolsey all contain references to pages in no way controlled by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Beyond this the articles I have created on George B. Handley, James Arrington (in March of this year), J. Kirk Richards (also in March), also are exceptions to this. In fact this is best described as the situation in the last day, but even then describing men like Jose L. Alonso as employees is misleading. They are religious leaders. While this may not effect assesments of their notability, it conveys their positions much better.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:33, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

If I remember rightly, leaders in the LDS Church are volunteer in every sense of the word; for example, the ward bishop will generally have a full-time job that's no more related to the church than are the jobs of other men in the congregation. Nyttend (talk) 05:46, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I think User:Johnpacklambert is correct in adding articles on high ranking LDS church leaders, William R. Bradford and Jose L. Alonso for example. They are members of the First Quorum of the Seventy (not employees), which is the second highest group in the LDS Church hierarchy. They are sort of like a Cardinal in the Catholic Church... responsible for large geographical areas. In alot of cases, references from the LDS church will have to suffice as there will not be alot of press on them. Anything below, such as Second Quorum of Seventy member Larry Y. Wilson is iffy. Personally, I would say no, they are not notable, but I would ask User:ARTEST4ECHO for his opinion as he is THE person in Wikipedia:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement.

Adding most of the BYU professors such as George B. Handley should not be added. He should not create any other BYU professor article.

Others, such as James Arrington, should be added, but from the article you wouldn't know it. I think this is a major problem on Johnpacklambert's part. There needs to be more referencing and more reason on why the person is notable. I'd be glad to help Johnpacklambert in any way I can. Bgwhite (talk) 06:08, 5 April 2011 (UTC)