Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard

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

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Use the closure requests noticeboard to ask an uninvolved editor to assess, summarize, and formally close a Wikipedia discussion. Do so when consensus appears unclear, it is a contentious issue, or where there are wiki-wide implications (e.g. any change to our policies or guidelines).

Do not list discussions where consensus is clear. If you feel the need to close them, do it yourself.

Move on – do not wait for someone to state the obvious. In some cases, it is appropriate to close a discussion with a clear outcome early to save our time.

Do not post here to rush the closure. Also, only do so when the discussion has stabilised.

On the other hand, if the discussion has much activity and the outcome isn't very obvious, you should let it play out by itself. We want issues to be discussed well. Do not continue the discussion here.

There is no fixed length for a formal request for comment (RfC). Typically 7 days is a minimum, and after 30 days the discussion is ripe for closure. The best way to tell is when there is little or no activity in the discussion, or further activity is unlikely to change its result.

When the discussion is ready to be closed and the outcome is not obvious, you can submit a brief and neutrally worded request for closure.

Include a link to the discussion itself and the {{Initiated}} template at the beginning of the request. A helper script can make listing easier. Move discussions go in the 'other types' section.

Any uninvolved editor may close most discussions, so long as they are prepared to discuss and justify their closing rationale.

Closing discussions carries responsibility, doubly so if the area is contentious. You should be familiar with all policies and guidelines that could apply to the given discussion (consult your draft closure at the discussions for discussion page if unsure). Be prepared to fully answer questions about the closure or the underlying policies, and to provide advice about where to discuss any remaining concerns that editors may have.

Non-admins can close most discussions. Admins may not overturn your non-admin closures just because you are not an admin, and this is not normally in itself a problem at reviews. Still, there are caveats. You may not close discussions as an unregistered user, or where implementing the closure would need tools or edit permissions you do not have access to. Articles for deletion and move discussion processes have more rules for non-admins to follow.

Technical instructions for closers

Please append {{Doing}} to the discussion's entry you are closing so that no one duplicates your effort. When finished, replace it with {{Close}} or {{Done}} and an optional note, and consider sending a {{Ping}} to the editor who placed the request. Where a formal closure is not needed, reply with {{Not done}}. After addressing a request, please mark the {{Initiated}} template with |done=yes. ClueBot III will automatically archive requests marked with {{Already done}}, {{Close}}, {{Done}} {{Not done}}, and {{Resolved}}.

If you want to formally challenge and appeal the closure, do not start the discussion here. Instead follow advice at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE.

Other areas tracking old discussions

• Wikipedia:Requested moves#Elapsed listings
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• Wikipedia:Proposed mergers/Log
• Wikipedia:Proposed article splits

Administrative discussions

ANI thread concerning Yasuke

(Initiated 39 days ago on 2 July 2024) Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1162 § Talk: Yasuke has on-going issues has continued to grow, including significant portions of content discussion (especially since Talk:Yasuke was ec-protected) and accusations of BLP violations, among other problems. Could probably be handled one sub-discussion at a time. --JBL (talk) 17:50, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Closure review of The Telegraph RfC

(Initiated 33 days ago on 9 July 2024) Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard § RfC closure review request at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RFC: The Telegraph on trans issues's discussion seems to have died down. Hopefully I've put this in the correct section. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:49, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 16:56, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

This discussion is a huge headache. I'll keep working on it as I have time, but if somebody else wants to close this before I do, I won't complain. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 02:14, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

you could put the draft on the discusssions about discussions page, WP:DfD? Tom B (talk) 09:08, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Nah, I know what the result should be, I just need to write an explanatory statement. That will happen this weekend, Lord willing. Thanks for the resource though, I had no idea that existed. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 19:54, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Compassionate727. I want to make sure this is still on your radar. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:58, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, and it's very nearly done. There's no reason I shouldn't finish it tomorrow, if not tonight. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 20:44, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

{{Done}}. I fear I'm going to ruffle some feathers with that, but I do believe it both the correct outcome and the most inoffensive one. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 22:58, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

...why do you think the most inoffensive option is to re-close the original RFC to Option 1? What's your evidence that was the consensus of that original RFC? Loki (talk) 23:44, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

 Undone per WP:BADNAC#2 by another user. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:11, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

The close has since been rescinded by the closer, so is very much due for closing again. CNC (talk) 13:34, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Requests for comment

RFA2024, Phase II discussions

Hi! Closers are requested for the following three discussion:

• (Initiated 100 days ago on 2 May 2024) Administrator recall
• (Initiated 98 days ago on 5 May 2024) Designated RfA monitors
• (Initiated 98 days ago on 5 May 2024) Reminder of civility norms at RfA

Many thanks in advance! theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 04:27, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... reminder of civility norms. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:24, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

 Partly done reminder of civility norms. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:40, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

If re-requesting closure at WP:AN isn't necessary, then how about different various closers for cerain section(s)? I don't mind one or two closers for one part or another or more. --George Ho (talk) 17:39, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

During Phase I of RFA2024, we had ended up having multiple closers for different RFCs, even the non-obvious ones. I think different people closing subparts of this should be acceptable Soni (talk) 09:22, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Bumping this as an important discussion very much in need of and very much overdue for a formal closure. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... designated RfA monitors (at least in part). voorts (talk/contributions) 16:40, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

 Partly done designated RfA monitors. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:31, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

For recall, @Sirdog: had attempted a close of one section, and then self-reverted. Just in case a future closer finds this helpful. Soni (talk) 07:17, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the ping. For what it's worth, I think that close was an accurate assessment of that single section's consensus, so hopefully I make someone's day easier down the line. Happy to answer questions from any editor about it. —Sirdog (talk) 07:38, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I also think closing some sections at a time is pretty acceptable, especially given we have only been waiting 2+ months for them. I also have strong opinions on 'involved experienced editors' narrowing down a closer's scope just because they speak strongly enough on how they think it should be closed. But I am Capital-I involved too, so shall wait until someone takes these up. Soni (talk) 08:53, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Gaza genocide#RfC on the inclusion on the BU Today article in the lede

(Initiated 50 days ago on 22 June 2024) nableezy - 17:53, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Titles of European monarchs

(Initiated 49 days ago on 22 June 2024) - I thank the Wikipedia community for being so willing to discuss this topic very extensively. Because 30 days have passed and requested moves in this topic area are already being opened (For reference, a diff of most recent edit to the conversation in question), I would encourage an uninvolved editor to determine if this discussion is ready for closure. AndrewPeterT (talk) (contribs) 22:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

(Also, apologies if I have done something incorrectly. This is my first time filing such a request.) AndrewPeterT (talk) (contribs) 22:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

There is ongoing discussion there as to whether a closer for that discussion is necessary or desirable. I would suggest to wait and see how that plays out.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:58, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

This is dragging on ad nauseam. I suggest an admin closes this, possibly with the conclusion that there is no consensus to change. PatGallacher (talk) 17:50, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Anti-Defamation League#RfC: Wikipedia reliability section

(Initiated 41 days ago on 30 June 2024) - Note: Part of the article and talk page are considered to be a contentious topic, including this RfC. --Super Goku V (talk) 10:28, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 447#Reliability_of_Thomas_Lockley

(Initiated 39 days ago on 2 July 2024) - The original topic (Lockley's book, "African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan") has not been the focus of discussion since the first few days of the RFC when it seemed to reach a concensus. The book in question is no longer cited by the Yasuke page and has been replaced by several other sources of higher quality. Since then the subject of the RSN has shifted to an extension of Talk:Yasuke and has seen many SPA one post accounts hijack the discussion on the source to commit BLP violations towards Thomas Lockley almost exclusively citing Twitter. Given that the general discussion that was occuring has shifted back to [Talk:Yasuke] as well as the continued uptick in SPA's committing NOTHERE and BLP violations on the RSN, as well as the source in question is no longer being used - I think closure is reasonable. Relm (talk) 20:17, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Hermann_Göring#Rfc_for_Herman_Göring's_Lede_Image_(2024)

(Initiated 38 days ago on 4 July 2024) Discussion is ready to be closed. Nemov (talk) 01:09, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Nikola Tesla/Nationality and ethnicity#Nikola_Tesla_birthplace_,_review_after_10_years

(Initiated 36 days ago on 5 July 2024) This is a contentious issue, so I would like to ask for an uninvolved editor to properly close. Please have consideration to each argument and provide an explanation how each argument and source was considered. People have strong opinions on this issue so please take consideration if their statements and claims are accompanied by quotes from sources and whether WP guidelines are followed. We need to resolve this question based on sources and not opinions, since it was discussed multiple times over the years. Trimpops2 (talk) 23:46, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Edit_filter_manager#RfC about the status of this page

(Initiated 35 days ago on 6 July 2024) Discussion is fairly simple but as this is a policy discussion it should likely receive uninvolved closure. EggRoll97 ^(talk) 04:03, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

 Done. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:53, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:La France Insoumise#RfC: How should the political position of La France Insoumise be described?

(Initiated 34 days ago on 7 July 2024) Discussion has already died down and the 30 days have elapsed. Uninvolved closure is requested. Thanks a lot! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:45, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:2024 United Kingdom general election#RfC: Inclusion of parties in the Infobox

(Initiated 34 days ago on 8 July 2024). Ready for closing, last !vote was 12 July by looks of it. CNC (talk) 16:27, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: National Post

(Initiated 33 days ago on 8 July 2024) Discussion has mostly died down in recent days. Uninvolved closure is requested. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:44, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Seems like a pretty clear SNOW close to me. voorts (talk/contributions) 19:52, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Didn't need a formal closure, but  Done anyway. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 23:19, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Proposal to revise CSD R3

(Initiated 32 days ago on 9 July 2024) Poster withdrew the RfC but due to the language used, I think a summary by an WP:UNINVOLVED editor would be preferable. Nickps (talk) 20:52, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Hosni_Mubarak#Rfc_for_lede_image_for_Hosni_Mubarak

(Initiated 31 days ago on 10 July 2024) This is ready to close. Nemov (talk) 19:34, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:List of South Korean girl groups#RfC for whether there should be an "end date" on active groups just because they don't have activity

(Initiated 31 days ago on 11 July 2024) Participants requested for proper closure. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 18:02, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

•  Done Soni (talk) 12:35, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Deletion discussions

XFD backlog

V	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total
CfD	0	0	3	25	28
TfD	0	0	4	0	4
MfD	0	0	2	1	3
FfD	0	0	0	3	3
RfD	0	0	75	17	92
AfD	0	0	0	0	0

Other types of closing requests

Talk:There was no such thing as Palestinians#Merge to Golda Meir?

(Initiated 255 days ago on 29 November 2023) Discussion started 29 November 2023. Last comment 25 July 2024. TarnishedPath^talk 00:34, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Twitter_under_Elon_Musk#Requested_move_24_May_2024

(Initiated 78 days ago on 24 May 2024) Originally closed 3 June 2024, relisted following move review on 17 June 2024 (34 days ago). Last comment was only 2 days ago, but comments have been trickling in pretty slowly for weeks. Likely requires a decently experienced closer. Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 01:54, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive 194#Notifying_Wikiprojects_and_WP:CANVASS

(Initiated 75 days ago on 28 May 2024) Latest comment: 3 days ago, 79 comments, 37 people in discussion. Closing statement may be helpful for future discussions. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:29, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

 Doing...— Frostly (talk) 22:35, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

@Frostly Are you still planning on doing this? Soni (talk) 16:57, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Soni, yes - have drafted close and will post by the end of today. Thanks! — Frostly (talk) 17:56, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I wanted to note that this is taking slightly longer than expected, but it is at the top of my priority and will be completed soon. — Frostly (talk) 05:14, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

@Frostly Just checking, would you like someone else to help with this? Soni (talk) 07:31, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Archived. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 13:32, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Talk:You Like It Darker#Proposed merge of Finn (short story) into You Like It Darker

(Initiated 73 days ago on 30 May 2024) Contentious merge discussion requiring uninvolved closer. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:35, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:2024 Nuseirat_rescue operation#Proposed_merge_of_Nuseirat_refugee_camp_massacre_into_2024_Nuseirat_rescue_operation

(Initiated 63 days ago on 8 June 2024) Since much of the discussion centers on the title of the article rather than its content, the closer should also take into account the requested move immediately below on the talk page. Smyth (talk) 15:17, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

If the closer finds "no consensus", I have proposed this route in which a discussion on merger and RM can happen simultaneously to give clearer consensus.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 20:10, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Talk:List of common misconceptions#Split proposal

(Initiated 34 days ago on 8 July 2024) – Editors would feel more comfortable if an uninvolved closer provided a clear statement about whether a consensus to WP:SPLIT exists, and (if so) whether to split this list into two or three lists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:06, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Kaunas#Split section "Coat of arms" into individual article

(Initiated 374 days ago on 2 August 2023) – the request to split Kaunas#Coat of arms into a separate article was started more than one year ago and so far it received no support from other users, while two users opposed it. Consequently, I think it is pointless to leave this discussion open and it should be finally closed. -- Pofka (talk) 17:04, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

 Done. I would say this was unambiguous enough that an involved close could also have been done. Soni (talk) 07:15, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Admin bot

Would it be possible to start a bot with admin rights, to do very basic tasks, such as deleting redirects to deleted articles, deleting talk pages without a main article etc.? Or does one already exist? GiantSnowman 11:47, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

There are already several admin bots, though I'm not sure if they do what you're suggesting. equazcion� 11:56, 11 Oct 2013 (UTC)

...bots run by admins or bots with full admin rights? GiantSnowman 12:11, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

(ec) There are less than 1000 bots, and scanning through them I saw 8 that had both a bot & sysop flag. They are:

• 7SeriesBOT (talk · contribs)
• Cydebot (talk · contribs)
• DYKUpdateBot (talk · contribs)
• ListManBot (talk · contribs)
• Orphaned talkpage deletion bot (talk · contribs)
• ProcseeBot (talk · contribs)
• TorNodeBot (talk · contribs)
• Yet Another Redirect Cleanup Bot (talk · contribs)

Check out each one and see what turns up. Rgrds. --64.85.215.22 (talk) 12:13, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Since 7SeriesBOT already does deletions, this makes sense as an added task ES&L 13:00, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

If it could do that would be great. I'm trying to think of similar tasks that would be suitable for a bot but I think those two are all for now. GiantSnowman 13:09, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Per the community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in over one year). Most of these bots haven't edited in more than a year and should have their Admin rights removed until they are needed. IMO these are even worse than individual accounts because they are bots. 7SeriesBOT hasn't really done any editing in a long time. Just a couple edits that appear to potentially be errors or test edits on the part of the operator.138.162.8.59 (talk) 13:15, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

7SeriesBOT doesn't EVER edit anything ... it only deletes. It's exempt from the desysop due to non-editing ES&L 16:07, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I've reserved Cyberbot III for when/IF I become an admin. I'll ping BWilkins to see if he's willing to add this task to his bot. IP, the bot is active in deleting stuff. —cyberpower ^Chat_Online 14:00, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Psst...He's already here: ES&L=BWilkins. Rgrds. (same 64.85 as above) Rgrds. --64.85.217.134 (talk) 14:17, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• Hold on a second. Redirects often have history, may be required to remain for attribution purposes, and can often be just re-targeted rather then deleted. Likewise, talk pages without an article are sometimes the result of an article being created in the wrong name space, or may otherwise contain information that needs to be reviewed. We need to be exceedingly cautious with bot deletions. Monty₈₄₅ 14:41, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• An article is created at Monty Monterson (runner) and is then moved to Monty Monterson (athlete), creating an automatic redirect. The latter is deleted at AFD, but the admin forgets to delete the redirect. I see no harm at all in having a bot clean that element up. GiantSnowman 14:46, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• An article is created at Monty Monterson (runner) and is then moved to Monty Monterson (athlete), creating an automatic redirect. At AfD the consensus is "Merge content to Atheletes of nowheresville and delete" This is done, but the history remaing under the redirect is required for proper attribution of the merged content. How does the bot tell this case from the previous one? DES ^(talk) 16:21, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• Monty Monterson (runner) has no history in this case, only the creation of a redirect. All the history was at Monty Monterson (athlete) - which is why "merge and delete" can not be an AfD result because it creates WP:COPYVIO by breaking the attribution chain. In "merge" results a redirect must be kept. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 19:23, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:Copying within Wikipedia (guideline) and WP:Merge and delete (essay) are the relevant pages. Merge and delete is usually – but not always – an incorrect outcome. WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 47#G8 vs. redirected material (January 2013) has some discussion about G8ing redirects without sufficient checking. Talk page templates like {{Copied}} and {{afd-merged-from}} are supposed to prevent incorrect deletions. Flatscan (talk) 04:17, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• As someone who tries to maintain Broken Redirects to a reasonable level, I can certainly say the biggest influx of these is by former titles of now-G13'd AfC submissions. I've tried using Twinkle's batch-del functions to rather mitigated results. :) · Salvidrim! · ✉ 16:18, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

It appears that the problem stems from Admin error. Perhaps this is due, at least in part, to the current climate of not promoting the right editors to admins. If we were promoting those who were technically competent rather than only those who play nice and stay in their corner, we would have less problems with these things not being done correctly. I see no reason to create a bot to clean up after complcent admins. It would be better to ensure those folks fix their mess or allow people who know what they are doing to help instead of tell them they aren't needed or wanted because they are critical of admins and the broken system that is currently in place. 138.162.8.59 (talk) 16:36, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, no. Most admins I know use an AFD helper script to close AFD's. If that script were somehow tweaked to check the "What links here" for the article, and see if any of those were redirects to the article being deleted, and then delete that redirect at the same time the article was deleted, then you would not have these occasional glitches. ES&L 16:43, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

As I just pointed out below, it already does. :) · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

What they should be doing is checking the what links here for associations before running the helper script. So yes, it is a result of the admins not doing what they should be doing. Not as an afterthought. Part of that problem is that there is more work for the number of people doing it, hence all the backlogs. So many of them feel rushed to get it done. Hence, more help being needed from experienced editors. If only we still assumed good faith in our editors and everything in this Wiki weren't protected, life would be a much better place. But, since we no longer have faith or trust in our fellow editors, have massive amounts of content restricted or blocked from view/edits, we are left with an overburdeoned admin corps. 138.162.8.59 (talk) 16:53, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

For straight up deletions, I always check the "Delete redirects" box, or check for redirects to be deleted manually. I agree that admins deleting pages without doing this (despite the system message reminding them to do so) are the ones performing their work incompletely. :) · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:08, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Which goes back to my earlier point that too many (and more so in recent times) of the admins being promoted are political/popular promotions rather than promoting the people with the skills necessary for the job. Its common to see an editor get promoted who knows nothing about the technical side but doesn't ruffle feathers. Its relatively rare to see a technical editor who frequently participates in the drama boards and deals with controversial stuff, and isn't already an admin, get the tools. So whether its the intent or not, the morale of the story is if you ever want to be "trusted" don't participate in any of the controversial areas until after you get the tools. Otherwise your likely to torpedo your chances. 138.162.8.59 (talk) 18:26, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

*shrugs* I'm not arguing about admniship or RfA. All I'm saying is the administrators are specifically reminded to delete redirects when deleting a page, whether manually or via the closeAfD script; negligently failing to do so needlessly creates broken redirects. It literally takes mere seconds and it is the responsibility of the deleting admin's to clean up after themselves. :) · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:53, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

And that is why it will continue to be an issue. Because the only ones that want to talk about and fix the broken RFA system are the ones no one wants to listen too. Part of the reason why this is a problem is because we don't have enough people with technical skills with with the admin tools. Just the folks who hide and slide. Of the 25 or so editors who got the tools this year, less than 5 are technical. Only a few use their tools on more than an occasional basis and most of the rest rarely use their tools at all. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 14:13, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• i'm pretty darn sure there is a bot that tags talk pages with no corresponding article for speedy deletion. Forgetting to do so is one of the more common admin errors, especially with new admins, but it is hardly indicative of some sort of serious problem as some are implying here. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:11, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• I delete thousands of pages that are former titles of now-G13'd AfC submissions per month, and the names of the deleting admins are certainly recurring; same goes for redirects to other deleted pages. The biggest problem isn't about talk pages of deleted pages, it's redirects to deleted pages. :) · Salvidrim! · ✉ 21:22, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• I don't think bot deletion of orphaned talk pages is a good idea. Not infrequently the author of a speedy-deleted page who has contested deletion on the talk page re-visits it to add a further comment/complaint/question, and (some of) those need to be answered. JohnCD (talk) 22:08, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• @GiantSnowman: — we already have a bot working on pages that redirect to deleted or nonexistent pages; it's Legobot, run by Legoktm. Rather than deleting them, the bot tags the redirects with {{Db-redirnonebot}}, because these pages often shouldn't be deleted; that's the reason the template has a big warning in red letters. Sometimes someone vandalises the redirect so that it goes to the wrong place, while for other redirects there's a related topic, so the solution is retargeting rather than deletion. As a result, there are numerous cases in which blind deletion would be harmful, so a bot to delete broken redirects would not be a good idea. Nyttend (talk) 15:04, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Please stop being negligent

• Currently working through a batch of these, and while I hate to single anyone out, I'll politely remind the two admins whose names I see over and over again (although this stands for every admin working on page deletion), @RHaworth: & @Sphilbrick: (I consider these pings notification enough), to please clean up after themselves and delete redirects to pages they delete, especially declined or abandoned AfC submissions. Having to G8 thousands of broken redirects negligently left behind on a monthly basis is not something anyone should have to do. The "normal" broken redirects that need to be fixed are already numerous enough. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 03:19, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Salvidrim Question Since it's my bot that's been doing a fair amount of the G13 nominations, would a preemptive tagging of the redirects to the G13 nominated article (Some hybrid of G8-G13 to indicate that once the G13 goes through the G8 should be processed) be helpful for reducing the amount of broken redirects left behind? Hasteur (talk) 13:22, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Meh, whether someone patrols broken redirects or G8 deletions, it still ends up involving two people having to check out the same set of pages twice to clean it all up. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 20:33, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

@Salvidrim!: that's silly. If they're taking the time to delete orphaned G13's which aren't any good, why make them do any more work? The broken redirects aren't going to cause any major problems and someone will clean out the backlog just like you're doing. Legoktm (talk) 15:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

What's silly is involving two people having to repeat the analysis of the same set of pages, instead of one doing it all at once. It causes confusion amongst the users drafting through AfC, because often they have their userspace draft watchlisted, not the AfC sub because it was moved later, and they don't see the G13, they see my G8 of their userspace draft-redirect and come to me for explanations. It'd be highly preferable if the person cleaning out the declined AfC submissions also took care of the userspace redirects so that the drafting user only sees one name across the board. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 20:33, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

If you have a page watchlisted and it gets moved, the new page is on your watchlist too, so I'm not really sure what you're talking about. Legoktm (talk) 21:29, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I meant bookmarked (new users possible are even unaware of the Watchlist function). See lower my other reply. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 21:45, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

@Salvidrim: and they don't see the G13, they see my G8 of their userspace draft-redirect and come to me for explanations I'm going to call BS on that. The bot notifies the creator once the page is eligible for G13 that they need to do something. The bot notifies the creator when the nomination for G13 actually occurs. TWINKLE notifies the user who created the page that the page is being nominated for G13. The only reason why a user might not get a notification of G13 nomination is if someone was doing it by hand. Hasteur (talk) 13:05, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

@Hasteur: Oh, please. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 20:26, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

@Salvidrim: Example by example analysis

1. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/B S Ajaikumar has never existed, so your misleading deletion rationale is your own fault.
2. That doesn't appear to be a complain of "why did you" but a thank you for helping them consolidate and delete
3. User is indef blocked for edit warring but their AfC submission still exists. They appear to be poking you about getting help with the AfC submission, not complaining about a stealth deletion
4. User's submission still exists and hasn't been deleted, user is just petitioning you about how to improve the article, not complaining about deletion
5. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) still exists and the user is trying to get a new "trial" by changing the name which I would assume that you can admit is deceptive and evasive of the established processes.

Any more diffs you'd like to present to shore up your case or should we dismiss your complaint as grumpy-old-man syndrome? Hasteur (talk) 12:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

You should listen to my complaint, even if it's a grumpy-old-man syndrome (or projected OCD), but I don't see any reason to dismiss a reasonable request for admins to perform deletions correctly and thoroughly in order to simplify everyone's workflow. You're of course absolutely free to disagree with the merits of said suggestion if you prefer the current status quo. The point with the above diffs that you seem to be disregarding is that the users came to my talk page after I deleted a userpace broken redirect which should've already been deleted by the admin who deleted the target of said redirect. I shouldn't even be involved; I'm just the guy who cleans up messy broken redirects left behind by other valid deletions performed by other admins who should be the ones to answer queries about their deletions. Having no broken redirects ever is clearly utopian, but IMO such maintenance-positive goals are things everyone should strive towards. It's nice to have obsessed gnomes like me cleaning these things up, but ideally it shouldn't be needed. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 12:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

What I have done

I have just broken my promised holiday from my admin account in order to semi-protect 2 user talkpages from what was increasingly disgusting and persistent acts of threats, personal attacks and vandalism towards those two editors from someone with both the will and ability to change IP addresses very quickly. The two user talk pages are:

• User_talk:MoonMetropolis (specific edits needing removal and leading to protection: this and this
• User talk:PantherLeapord {specific edits needing removal and leading to protection: this and this

It was my belief that due to a) the fact that I might be one of the few who have both of those talkpages on my watchlist b) the disgusting and violent nature of those attacks, and c) the speed with which they were changing IP's, that rather than post a request at ANI or RFPP, I was better off protecting the pages immediately myself.

I welcome review of my actions in this specific case. I will be notifying the two users whose pages I protected momentarily for their comment. ES&L 10:42, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

It needed to be done so I have no complaints. As for who the IPs are: I have NO idea! I reverted their vandalism on User_talk:Jeremy112233 and then they just started coming after me. I also have no idea as to why they went after MoonMetropolis as they are currently blocked for edit warring. PantherLeapord|My talk page|My CSD log 10:51, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree it needed to be done quickly. I have revdel the revisions from the history because they are extremely offensive. GB fan 12:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

I think it was terrible and that you should either: shave your head and become a Buddhist monk or immediately commit seppuku. Oh wait, nevermind, this isn't Clavel's Shogun. Carry on. GregJackP Boomer! 14:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

The IPs are proxies, probably open proxies and should be blocked for longer. Peter James (talk) 17:23, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

I've reblocked 62.103.75.93 for six months as a proxy server. Could you please supply the other IPs here? Bishonen | talk 10:14, 13 October 2013 (UTC).

Three have already been blocked as proxies (72.252.114.147, 202.43.188.5 and 188.95.32.186); the other is 190.151.10.226, which was only blocked for 31 hours for personal attacks. Peter James (talk) 12:35, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Good, this person is helping us find quite a few open proxies. One year for 190.151.10.226 also. Thank you, Peter. Bishonen | talk 12:58, 13 October 2013 (UTC).

Good calls, good work, and quick action was certainly needed there. Has anyone notified WMF of the threats? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 12:39, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Our charming little vandal appears to have come back now that the talk pages of User:PantherLeapord and I have become unprotected. Oddly enough, they seem to only target us as far as I know.--MoonMetropolis (talk) 09:33, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I have reverted, Revdeled, and blocked 116.90.230.222 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) and 197.210.252.44 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) each for 6 months. GiantSnowman 09:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again! PantherLeapord|My talk page|My CSD log 10:15, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Community ban proposal for paid editing firm wikiexperts.us

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

---

So, I'm here to propose that we enact a rather unusual community sanction.

I am proposing that we ban any edits made by or on behalf of the firm which runs wikiexperts.us [1], and any editor who is paid, compensated in other means than money, employed, or otherwise encouraged to edit on behalf of this firm or its clients. This will also apply to any companies which may be reasonably construed as related to this one, such as spinoffs, parent/child companies, renamed companies, new management, or other changes of that sort.

This company's contemptuous attitude toward our conflict of interest guidelines may be found at their site above, as well as at their comments on a Signpost article here: [2], and in their statement on the CREWE Facebook page here: [3]. They note in their statement that several CREWE volunteers, not exactly harsh opponents of any COI editing, stated their approach is unethical and unacceptable.

The company claims that they will act ethically and that it respects Wikipedia's policies and guidelines with the exception of COI. We should put to the test whether they will respect our policy on bans by refraining from editing once banned from doing so, as paid editing without full COI disclosure is inherently unethical. The ban should be set so that it can be lifted at once if the company agrees all of its representatives will fully and publicly disclose COI/paid editing and otherwise fully adhere to the guidelines of WP:COI in the future, and contingent that they in fact do so in all future cases.

Note that this should not be considered or turn into a referendum on all paid or COI editing. Those PR persons or corporate representatives who respect our site guidelines and engage according to them are not at issue here. What is at hand and must be dealt with is a company which has explicitly stated that it will not follow those guidelines and in fact considers it "unethical" to do so. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:06, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support - a firm which considers it "unethical" to adhere to the guidelines of a private site regarding conduct on that private site can reasonably be seen as having a really strange concept of ethics. John Carter (talk) 20:14, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• I'd support this if there was a way of identifying these people immediately, but without a a firm grasp of who is editing in spite of COI and who is not, how are we going to enforce this? Regards, — Moe Epsilon 20:59, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I realize the difficulty in enforcing this, and I'm under no illusion that we can do so perfectly if they choose to defy it. I'm proposing it for a few reasons. The first is to simply say, as a community, that we find this type of conduct unacceptable. The second is that it would allow us to act on any discovered instances without any uncertainty. The third is that since we are aware of the identity of a company representative and can notify them of the ban, they would likely be required to notify their clients that they are not allowed to actually edit Wikipedia, and must do so in defiance of site requirements. That could cause some difficulty for them in doing such business. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:05, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• I am wondering if we are taking the wrong approach to this. If we try and police/ban these editors they will find ways around it. What about looking at a policy to manage these people and help integrate their service into our community. If we know who they are we can better judge their edits and allow the community I scrutinize their work.Mike (talk) 21:08, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
  • The big man what's in charge has explicitly said he is not interested in following COI procedure and that he considers doing so (i.e. following it) unethical. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 21:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
    • And if it becomes known to prospective clients that this firm has explicitly said it intends to violate the rules here, it might cause prospective clients to wonder whether they want to be, potentially, linked to a firm which engages in extremely dubious behavior, and might potentially cause the firm to revise their procedures. Most firms won't want that sort of negative publicity. Mrfrobinson might have a point about maybe, somehow, creating a location where PR people can announce datadumps of RS material which independent editors could then use for developing articles here, and I wouldn't mind setting up some way to allow that, but that is a separate matter. John Carter (talk) 21:29, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support, after the comments made in reply to the signpost article, it's clear that they are not here to improve the encyclopedia, have no interest in reforming to do so, and belive that avoiding/flaunting Wikipedia policy is "ethical" and following it "unethical". - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 21:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support this measure simply on the basis of the representative's posturing and messages. It all feels rather "Methinks he doth protest too much". This assumes, of course, that the gentleman in the CREWE group does represent the firm. Had those pronouncements not been made I would have expressed the opposite view. I believe in 'innocent until proven guilty', but he could not resist having a go, and thus, in my view, lost his own case. Fiddle Faddle 21:21, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support - self-declared outlaws who pretend to a "right" to violate our terms and conditions for profit. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:27, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Orangemike (talk · contribs), is doing something "for profit" a bad thing? Of course it could create a bias, but all edits are made by biased editors (there is no such thing as an unbiased editor). What matters is whether the content is NPOV (and compliant with our other polices and guidelines). No? --B2C 21:43, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Uh, yes, it is, considering that there is a more or less obvious bias for a firm to get paid, and that is a bias only for-profit editors would have. It is almost a presupposition that companies will be extremely unlikely to offer any sort of bonus, or repeat business, or renewed contract, if the results of the first term are unacceptable to them, and that would reasonably include if the firm created an article which is less laudatory than the client would want. Yes, all of us have bias, but only for profit-editors also have a corporate bottom line to worry about, and there is no really good reason to allow that additional difficulty a factor, nor, honestly, can I really see why a company would really want to face that problem, if they were in fact ethical. John Carter (talk) 22:31, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose, other than "they get paid and that upsets me" what exactly is the reason for the ban? Seriously, everyone shut up about people getting paid to edit, as long as they follow our policies on NPOV, OR, RS etc etc and their edits are not vandalism, leave them alone. Paid editing itself is not a reason to ban. I'm sick of this crap being talked about everywhere constantly on Jimbo's page and every where else that someone can stick it in, it's getting disruptive. If their particular edits don't follow our policies and guidelines then there are procedures and policies to deal with those editors as it happens, because any editor would get in trouble for those things. To single out those that get paid is wrong. You don't think it's fair? Find someone to pay you.Camelbinky (talk) 21:28, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Read the proposal carefully, please. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 00:18, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. First, their argument supporting keeping their clients anonymous is well taken. In theory, those clients could create anonymous accounts and edit WP directly. They are simply hiring an agent to do that.

  Second, what matters much, much, much more than WHO is editing, or WHY they are editing, is WHAT (content) they are editing. As long as the WHAT is consistent with our policies and guidelines, why does it matter WHO made the edits, or WHY they made them?

  Third, this is practically impossible to enforce, and and any efforts to investigate and enforce per this proposal is bound to be more detrimental to WP than the supposed problem itself.

  Finally, I just read WP:COI for the first time and I find it to be ridiculous. The emphasis on WHO and WHY rather than on WHAT is absurd. A COI could lead to bad and inappropriate edits. But everyone edits with a bias. The edits of anyone editing with a COI should be given the same scrutiny as any other edits, with an eye towards compliance with NPOV, Notability, basis in reliable source, etc. I don't think WP:COI improves WP - to the contrary. It's probably against broad consensus, but I, for one, call WP:IAR with respect to WP:COI. The emphasis there is inherently totally wrong, and, I believe, harmful to WP. --B2C 21:34, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support ban. The refusal to declare their COI is problematic for many reasons. These include that any account taking a pro-corporate stance is now often assumed to be a paid advocate, and this has led to a lot of bad feeling on various articles, with editors at each others' throats even more than usual. The best thing PR companies can do for Wikipedia (apart from staying away from it) is to engage ethically so that their presence here doesn't cause the atmosphere to deteriorate for everyone else. The way to do that is to declare their COI and stick to the talk pages, per the WP:NOPAY section of the COI guideline. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:45, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
  • SlimVirgin (talk · contribs), what about deleting WP:COI? Wouldn't that resolve the problem as well? Seriously. I see that WP:COI can create "a lot of bad feeling on various articles, with editors at each others' throats even more than usual." Does WP:COI do anything else? Does it do any good for Wikipedia? Like what? A better place to discuss this is probably at Wikipedia talk:COI#WP:COI guideline seems contrary to the interests of WP. Make it an essay? Delete? Or can you defend it?. Thanks. --B2C 21:58, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi B2C, what causes the bad feeling is the knowledge that some PR companies don't respect the COI guideline, so editors are constantly (often unfairly) suspicious of people who arrive with pro-corporate positions. The best way PR companies can help us avoid that kind of damage is to behave ethically: declare their COI, stick to talk pages, not try to ghostwrite content, make sure they don't overwhelm editors with requests, respect our policies, and provide independent sourcing for any suggestions they make.

So no, the way forward is not to delete the only guideline that, for all its inadequacies, is the only thing standing between Wikipedia and wall-to-wall paid advocacy. :) SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:20, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support, in line with the existing ban on the similar business Wiki-PR a.k.a. Morning277-of-the-300-socks. We may not have discovered this one's sock-farm yet, but I'm sure it's out there. JohnCD (talk) 22:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. WP:COI is indeed ridiculous and ought to marked historical. Eric Corbett 22:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Take it to WP:VPP, then. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:26, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

    Why should I take the trouble? Eric Corbett 22:49, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Given that he admits he uses multiple undeclared sockpuppets to avoid scrutiny, I'm not sure why this is even a question. I believe 100% we need a more functional system to deal with PR type editing than we currently have, but we don't need to endorse sockpuppetry in the process. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:13, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support - Blatantly disclosed misbehavior such as this muse be met with concerted action, or we leave ourselves open to all kinds of mischief. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:26, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support with the caveat that we need to be very careful about only banning those who are correctly identified. I think one of the newest gambits of tendentious editing is to accuse those editors with whom one disagrees in a content dispute of being COI editors, simply to gain the upper hand in the content dispute. But I certainly think that the recent SPI mega-case is an appalling assault on what Wikipedia stands for, and I support standing up against it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:27, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support as a deliberately punitive measure, pour encourager les autres. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:41, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

  Encourage them to do what? Eric Corbett 22:48, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

  To not act like these people. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:40, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support Given that this company has been using dozens of sockpuppet accounts and IP-hopping unregistered accounts to evade accountability, this is a no-brainer: they're plainly not here to develop neutral articles through collaboration-based editing. I'm all for mass deleting the articles which they created to send a message, and this should be uncontroversial for the articles in which no other editors have made significant contributions per WP:CSD#G11. Nick-D (talk) 23:08, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support per Alanscottwalker, Beyond My Ken and others. Wikipedia is supposed to be a hobby, not a job. While it should come as no surprise that there are a few paid editors, we shouldn't ever encourage it. It might be necessary if this needs to be written in stone to reopen the effort to formally make paid editing against policy.--MONGO 23:18, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

  Who has ever said that Wikipedia is supposed to be a hobby? Eric Corbett 23:22, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

  Wikipedia is not a hobby... unless you choose to see it that way. It is a public tool that is open for most people to use and keep current. I AM A BOX! OF APPLES! (talk) 23:28, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

  What was I supposed to call it? I don't and won't accept money to edit...I do it for free in my spare time when and if I want. That seems to fall into a definition of hobby to me.--MONGO 23:41, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support Reluctantly. I have worked with several declared COI or paid editors, and generally found it a positive experience. Nor have the subjects of those topics gotten the kind of bashing this company's spokesman claims to fear. If some of the points maind in the signpost respone had been made at an RFC to amend or delete WP:COI they might have gotten some traction. But to declare willingness to abide by all the rules except the ones you dislike does not show good ethics in my view, and given the socking history here, I see no reason to trust these editors. DES ^(talk) 23:34, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. At the moment, they aren't even acting against the guidelines. The COI guideline strongly discourages paid advocacy, but doesn't ban it. Even if they were acting in opposition, they would, at most, be acting against a behavioural guideline, not a policy. First, let's fix that - instead of strongly discouraging paid advocacy, let's make it a policy that all people with a financial conflict of interest must declare their COI, and block accounts which do not. Then we can talk about banning wikiexperts.us if they violate the policy. - Bilby (talk) 23:38, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support - per Alanscottwalker and multiple comments above - using multiple accounts to avoid scrutiny, means to continue. Tom Harrison ^Talk 23:44, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support. This is not a matter of WP:COI guidelines. This statement by chairman of the company, Alex Konanykhin (if I understand correctly) looks to me as a declaration of war on this site by openly defying our rules. If this proposal passes, we should delete two pages: Alex Konanykhin and WikiExperts.us. I am not sure you realize who this man really is: his BLP page does not explain where and how his initial capital came from. My very best wishes (talk) 23:54, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

  So, you accuse him of a "declaration of war" and then you do the same by saying the article about him should be deleted because he doesn't play by our !rules... um, either his article does not deserve to be here already or it does, how he feels about Wikipedia or what he does to or on Wikipedia has nothing to do with the article about him. Ridiculous comment and clearly a !vote with no merit, remember this is not a democracy of who has the most !votes, it is about who brings the best facts of argument.Camelbinky (talk) 00:03, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Then let me clarify. If a wikipedia user openly tells that he is not going to follow our basic rules and actually does it, he would deserve be banned. Now, imagine this is not just an ordinary user but a head of a PR company who makes their mission to undermine integrity of Wikipedia, and that is what he tells [4]. That is what I call a "declaration of war. As about deleting these pages, OK, let's wait if this community decision passes. My very best wishes (talk) 00:12, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Whoa up there! We have articles here on every tinpot dictator and mass murderer on the planet; just because we stop him spamming, doesn't justify deleting articles about him or his company, if they meet WP:BIO and WP:CORP respectively. --Orange Mike | Talk 00:24, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Point here is not that he is a "bad guy" (this is not a reason for deletion), but his company which uses Wikipedia for advertisement. If these articles were created and developed by banned users for the purpose of advertisement (one of them was blocked long time ago [5]), then edits by banned users can theoretically be removed by anyone. I saw his BLP page and more or less familiar with his story. Creating a neutral biography in this case is very difficult because he made a lot of PR effort and spend a lot of money to create a favorable publicity for himself in external sources/publications that ought be used in his BLP article. Saying that, I know that his company is not the worst player who is working to subvert wikipedia. My very best wishes (talk) 03:51, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support as their actions have conclusively demonstrated that their goals are incompatible with Wikipedia's, and they have no intention to change them. Remember that this is not a general referendum on COI editing, this is a discussion of the individual entity wikiexperts.us. It's possible that another company might do COI editing in a way that is compatible with Wikipedia's goals; this isn't the case with wikiexperts.us. It does seem that our approach to COI editing as stated at WP:COI doesn't exactly exclude it, but there's no reason to shoot ourselves in the foot on principle with wikiexperts.us until we fix it. Zad68 00:00, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support. Per Nick-D and others. Alex and WikiExperts have attitudes that are contrary to what Wikipedia is about. Manxruler (talk) 00:04, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support This is a sensible cause of action to take, it will give admins extra help in dealing with the fallout of edits by this company. WP's reputation relies upon it's WP:NPOV policy any paid for editing that puts a dent in that reputation and thus is prejudicial to the projects long term goals and we need to act to prevent that. LGA _talk^edits 00:09, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support per many above. NPOV is far, far more important than a paid PR firm's desire to control content in their clients' interests. The fact that this firm intends to mask COIs, thus actively hampering the project's ability to enforce this, is not acceptable. Resolute 00:28, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. It is not sensible to ban an editor (or group of editors) without first presenting diffs showing bad editing. If the WikiExperts are so bad, their edits will stand out, and there will be a trail of problems behind them. Surely a few diffs could be provided. If the WikiExperts are so good at what they do that we can't detect them, nor come up with any diffs, we are placing a symbolic ban that we cannot enforce. We should not help them gain business by giving them lots of attention. Do please consider restarting this discussion once you've found diffs. Jehochman ^Talk 00:32, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think we should state that it's okay to violate WP:SCRUTINY just because we've been unable to prove the person has been making bad edits (which cannot be done precisely because they are violating WP:SCRUTINY.) Will it have a huge effect on their business? Probably not, but there's no reason to let Alex contribute to discussions onwiki. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:37, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

The information at Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Morning277 isn't enough? Zad68 00:46, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

This isn't a discussion to ban Morning277 and any meat or sock puppets. If the discussion started that way, I'd support it. Jehochman ^Talk 00:49, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

And anyway, they are already banned. MER-C 02:24, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

So why are we here? Block any socks of Morning277 and call it a day. Why are we here? Jehochman ^Talk 02:32, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Morning277 and MooshiePorkFace are a different spamhaus (Wiki-PR). MER-C 03:15, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support The clearest infringements of policy of this firm is in regards to Wikipedia:Sock puppetry. The infringements of this policy have been systematic and malicious in the intent to avoid consensus and undermine WP:NPOV, a core policy. An encyclopedia-wide ban for the firm is an obvious and legitimate solution. Meat puppetry is covered by the policy. All the accounts and IPs associated controlled by this organization should be banned as sock puppets or meat puppets. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 00:39, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support If I'm correctly understanding the people who oppose this proposed ban, they're saying that we need evidence of misbehavior. The diff and the Facebook link provided by Seraphimblade demonstrate that this company (1) is actively trying to influence content here on Wikipedia, (2) plans to do its best to circumvent standards that we apply to everyone and everything, and (3) openly rejects and cannot be convinced to follow those standards. How is that not sufficient evidence that these people should not be members of the community? Banning them will mean that we can actively delete anything that they write, without regard to whether the pages in question look like spam; I am actively an opponent of deleting useful content written by banned editors, but this is different, because if we identify anything to which they've contributed without removing it, we help them by allowing them to demonstrate what they've been able to do. We have the G5 speedy deletion criterion, the 3RR exception for reverting banned editors, and other ways of getting rid of things added by banned editors; we need to be able to use all of them. On top of that, (1) During the discussion at the Signpost article, someone suggested that the US Government's Federal Trade Commission be notified because this company's perhaps engaging in an illegal kind of advertising. Perhaps banning them would enhance the legal issues if they keep on going. (2) We need to be careful to mark pages that they've edited: put the {{COI}} template on any such articles, and be sure to delete new articles with the G12 template, so they'll be marked as blatant spam instead of under G5, since these creations are done essentially for the company's own purposes. Finally, perhaps we can ask admins to log pages on which we've caught wikiexperts editing, and ask someone with a WMF email address to contact these companies, letting them know that someone looking for them on Wikipedia will now notice that the page is marked as a COI problem or that it has been deleted as spam. Nyttend (talk) 01:04, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Nyttend, I don't believe that you are correctly understanding the people who oppose this proposed ban. We are not saying that we need evidence of misbehavior. We are saying that, given a situation where there is clear evidence of misbehavior and where the misbehaving editor is expressing an unpopular opinion such as "the rules should be changed so that I am allowed to misbehave", you should support a ban based upon the bad behavior, but oppose a ban based upon expressing the unpopular opinion. You should not say "I support the proposal because there is also bad behavior" but instead should say "I oppose the proposal as written -- we do not ban based upon expressing unpopular opinions -- but would support a ban based upon evidence of misbehavior." It is a subtle distinction, but an important one, because it goes to the heart of what Wikipedia is and stands for. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:41, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support WikiExperts has openly declared war on Wikipedia, e.g. [6] "Wikipedia IS a marketing tool, the most important one in online visibility, with most companies using PR pros to improve their profiles. We have helped hundreds of clients." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:41, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Could you provide some links to show infringements of policy? This thread is turning into torches and pitchforks. Where is the evidence? I see an appeal to emotion, a very successful one, but that's not the way we should do things. Jehochman ^Talk 00:44, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

He explicitly admits to violating WP:SCRUTINY on the most recent signpost's talk page. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:51, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

And where is our policies is an editor not allowed to explicitly admit to violating WP:SCRUTINY, as opposed to actually violating WP:SCRUTINY? You say he did both? I agree. So write up a proposal for a ban based upon violating WP:SCRUTINY. Supporting a ban for explicitly admitting to a violation is wrong. The proposal should based upon an actual violation. It is a subtle distinction, but an important one. We do not punish thoughtcrime here. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:53, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose A rather IDONTLIKEIT proposal, given that nowhere on Wikipedia is paid editing absolutely banned. If the OP could prove that what they were doing was harmful to the encyclopedia we might get somewhere. KonveyorBelt 00:45, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree, I want to see diffs. I want a discussion based on policy and evidence, not emotion. Jehochman ^Talk 00:50, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

The reason it's hard to provide diffs proving disruption is entirely because he's violating WP:SCRUTINY with his socking. If he weren't violating the sockpuppetry rules and we could actually scrutinize his edits, I wouldn't support banning him. But as it is he is breaking WP:SCRUTINY (which is why there are no diffs of disruptive article space editing,) and saying that we shouldn't ban him just because we can't prove disruptive article space editing is pretty much equivalent to saying it's okay to violate WP:SCRUTINY as long as you are good at it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:53, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

And how do you propose that we enforce this ban, if we can't even generate a few diffs? Are we going to get a psychic to identify the banned users' accounts? You know what this ban will lead to: lots of false accusations and the resulting disruption. Remember MyWikiBiz? The hunt for Greg Kohs sock puppets and other "enemies" of Wikipedia led to a lot of harmful dramas. Please, let's not repeat those mistakes. Jehochman ^Talk 01:01, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I cannot imagine this proposal leading to the block of any user account other than the one currently commenting on the signpost article since he's good at covering his tracks. I'd be more worried about WikiPR blocks targeting the wrong people, because they are horrible at trying to cover their tracks. But seriously, why should we let this dude comment on the Signpost article? It's not the biggest deal in the world which is why I didn't bring it up myself when I saw him pop his head over, but what possible good is there from not blocking his admitted account? There's no reason User:AKonanykhin should not be indeffed on ENWP. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:05, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I will take a look at the signpost comments and block him if there's any problem with his edits. We should not block or ban people for merely disagreeing. There has to an action and a problem. Jehochman ^Talk 01:10, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Possibly block User:AKonanykhin and add him to Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Wexperts, containing already blocked socks (see block log here [7]). See [8] and [9] if you want unambiguous evidence of sockpuppetry. If WikiExperts contractors or employees want to appeal their block, they should make a request as per Wikipedia:Guide to appealing blocks, like every other blocked user.--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 01:51, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

What evidence do you have connecting these accounts? How do you know that's not some other troll having a little fun? There's needs to be a thoughtful presentation and discussion of evidence, not a rush to judgment. If there is sock puppetry, please go report it here: [[[WP:SPI]]. Jehochman ^Talk 02:29, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Connecting those banned socks? I gave the diffs, and obviously the blocking admin agreed. As to connecting the User:AKonanykhin, I only said "possibly". Thoughtful presentation and discussion is always a priority, and this discussion now is part of that. When looking at User:AKonanykhin's edits, it is pretty clear, or as many people at SPI say, WP:DUCK. Also, his contribs admit meatpuppetry explicitly. For example here [10] User:AKonanykhin explicitly says that he is part of an organization which supplies "a growing network of participating wikipedians with paid assignments". That is describing and admitting to unambiguous meat puppetry, at least when combined with the admission here [11] that not announcing the conflict of interest is done to avoid scrutiny. Assigning edits to other people to make edits for a common purpose and trying to avoid scrutiny of this activity is a clear infringement of Wikipedia:Sock puppetry, and I think the majority of editors agree with this. I think the editors voting support here are just part of that majority who have the same judgement. It's not a rush to judgement.--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 08:22, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

All these accounts pre-date the existence of WikiExperts for over a year. AKonanykhin (talk) 18:20, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support. This kind of flagrant declaration to violate Wikipedia guidelines means these editors have already lost the faith of the community. Binksternet (talk) 01:05, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Per several editors above, it seems hypocritical that they will respect all WP guidelines but COI and have intentions to to declare war on WP. At first glance, it even reminds me of how Jimbo went ballistic over Tony Ahn's PR firm including WP article creation services. --Eaglestorm (talk) 01:15, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Comment Declaring that you disagree with our policies and guidelines, and even stating you wont obey them is itself not a reason to ban. Everyone commenting here about "declarations" and "war" and they "don't respect us" and "he doesn't agree with our policies"... you're !votes seriously are illegitimate since they are not based on any policy! You have to back up your !vote with policy instead of, as another editor stated "emotions". Who cares if they don't respect us or have faith in the community? Are you that much of a control freak that we have the idea of a 6 year old "I'll take my ball and go home" because they wont play the game by the !rules we made? Wikipedia is what our readers need it to be. Seriously, grow up everyone and just go edit an article and close this shit out, if they break a !rule they will be punished. Until then mind your own business.Camelbinky (talk) 01:30, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I think the issue is if they have said they will not obey the policy and guidelines when challenged, that's disruption, and that's why we impose blocks and bans as to prevent such. Now, whether we do that in a precautionary manner, that's a different question, but I have seen this used before, so it seems to be valid option. --MASEM (t) 01:35, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Really? That's hearsay. Can we please ask the editor a few questions and let him answer in his own words, instead of jumping to conclusions. This discussion is much too hasty. We need to be more thoughtful. Jehochman ^Talk 02:26, 13 October 2013 (UTC)\

Hearsay? No, that's Masem's opinion of the statement and the guideline/policy just like all of the Users' comments above. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:44, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Clearly not here to build an encyclopedia. MER-C 02:24, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• I've just exchanged a few emails with Alex and he seems to have the potential for reasonableness. I think we need to walk back this dispute and try to understand what exactly people are objecting to, and how each side can understand the other's concerns, and how there can be an agreement about what sort of editing (if any) would be allowed. Placing a hasty ban will not prevent harm, and may just drive the activity deeper underground. Jehochman ^Talk 02:24, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

If he is a reasonable guy, he should prove it by providing a list of all their accounts - now and forever, which of course goes against his comment cited in the beginning of this thread. If all of them can be watched, and he follows his part of the bargain, then outright ban may indeed be unnecessary. My very best wishes (talk) 04:02, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose As an absurdly broad restriction. Were this simply saying that editors who work for the paid editing firm are banned that would be one thing, but what does "otherwise encouraged to edit on behalf of this firm or its clients" mean? It seems to be worded in such a way that takes this restriction well beyond the firm itself or regular paid editors.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 03:04, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose Guilt by association is simply wrong. What makes it even worse, is that many of the supporters of this admit it will be symbolic anyway, as we can't readily identify who is subject to the proposed ban. So now you banned if your an employee, of a client, of the company who has never violated WP:COI? Talk about over broad. Act in good faith, follow COI and self identify, but if you work, not even for the company, but a client of the company, you are banned. While we are banning categories of people, lets ban all racists, we can worry about identifying them later. Monty₈₄₅ 03:15, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• OPPOSE such a broad ban. It's ridiculous to apply a ban to anyone associated to the corp. Let alone, possible to enforce. How about a ban of the editors and management of the firms? —(っ◔◡◔)っ^{Ross Hill} 03:25, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• SUPPORT until they change their declared policy and commit to stating their COI and restricting their edits to talk pages. I'm perfectly happy to work with open COI editors. (What this whole issue throws up is the need to improve the skills of our new page patrollers, recent changes patrollers and AFC helpers.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Just like any other site, following the terms of service is not optional. These guys have indicated that they will actively violate Wikipedia policy. That is an option granted to absolutely no one, not even Jimbo. Ban these scumbags until they agree to follow all Wikipedia policy, including COI. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 05:27, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support per WP:IAR - paid editing would destroy the project unless we will do something about it. Alex Bakharev (talk) 06:17, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Weak Support, but I agree with Bilby above when he says "let's make it a policy that all people with a financial conflict of interest must declare their COI, and block accounts which do not". Then we have a clear supportable policy for paid editors. They can edit but they must admit they are paid and by whom. --Bduke (Discussion) 08:27, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Strongly oppose: This ban is based purely on speculation. Not one person has come forward with an actual example of an edit that anyone related to WikiExperts has made that egregiously breaks Wikipedia’s actual policies. Needless to say, since this ban was proposed, my own Wikipedia profile’s talk page has already been vandalized—with a user claiming that despite charges being dropped in a past event, the reason why is to be suspected. This is a very clear personal attack that breaks Wikipedia’s Biography of Living People protocols.

I invite anyone to look at my personal user profile here, which has not made one single edit to article space in the entire time I’ve been on Wikipedia. Banning me for editorial breaches would not make sense, as I’ve never edited Wikipedia’s articles. As Wikipedia administrator User:RKlawton on the WikiExperts.us Wikipedia page so recently pointed out in an edit summary, COI is a guideline on Wikipedia, not a protocol. There is no policy that requires a declaration of COI. A ban should only be in place if someone or some entity actually breaks a Wikipedia policy repeatedly, which there is absolutely no evidence WikiExperts has ever done. I believe we have never broken a policy, and the evidence appears to support this.

Firms that have actively flaunted Wikipedia policies could be considered eligible for a ban, such as Wiki-PR or MyWikiBiz. However, evidence of said flaunting of actual policies must be in place before such a ban can be enacted. My own personal disagreements with the COI Wikipedia guidelines, is in no way contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia. Real discussion on COI issues is beneficial for Wikipedia, as there are no firm policies on COI and therefore the only way to form them is through a firm policy and the discussions that lead to it. Instead of trying to ignore my ideas and force a community ban on a company that has never been proven to flaunt Wikipedia rules, perhaps a formal discussion on creating an actual paid editing rules should be completed.

Let me clarify something. I believe that COI guidelines on Wikipedia are ineffectual and unfair, but I am not stating, nor have I ever stated, that we have ever edited with a conflict of interest. We edit with pure neutrality and only for very notable individuals or organizations. COI guidelines state that it is very hard to edit without a bias, and we do that very hard job. The COI guidelines do not state that it is impossible to edit without bias, and rightfully so. We do it.

The nominator has claimed WikiExperts is an “unethical” company, but can provide absolutely no evidence that something unethical has taken place or that a single Wikipedia policy has ever been broken by WikiExperts. A breach of normative ethics is also different than an actual breach of policy, which has not happened. If my previous remarks have insulted people here on Wikipedia, I do apologize, as I was simply trying to start a discussion. I would add that these discussions were all had off Wikipedia’s pages, unless Signpost is considered a Wikipedia page. I would also add that we have spent a lot of time investigating how to best implement the COI guideline into our company model and have done so to the best of our abilities, to ensure only neutral edits are made.

In terms of the accusations above:

User:John Carter wrote “ if it becomes known to prospective clients that this firm has explicitly said it intends to violate the rules here, it might cause prospective clients to wonder whether they want to be, potentially, linked to a firm which engages in extremely dubious behavior, and might potentially cause the firm to revise their procedures. Most firms won't want that sort of negative publicity.” This is administrator has clearly stated that he intends to harm the business of WikiExperts with the tools of Wikipedia if he can, without providing any evidence that WikiExperts has broken a single Wikipedia rule. This is an abuse of administrative authority.

User:TheBushranger clearly states that his impulse to ban WikiExperts is based off of comments on a Signpost article that disagree with COI guidelines. He adds nothing else to support his argument. How is expressing someone’s own viewpoint on Wikipedia guidelines or policies against the spirit of Wikipedia to the point that one must be banned?

User:OrangeMike calls WikiExperts “outlaws”; what law is being broken and what policy. Either COI guidelines really mean that it is only strongly suggested that COI be declared, or that is false, and COI must be declared or a user will be banned. It cannot be both.

User:JohnCD states that a ban of WikiExperts would be the same as a ban of WikiPR. WikiPR was proven to have flaunted actual Wikipedia policies time and time again, and no such evidence is provided against WikiExperts. The two cases are not at all the same.

User:Kevin Gorman has stated something plainly false, by claiming that Alex Konanykhin uses sockpuppets to edit Wikipedia. Let me make this clear; my user account nor WikiExperts has ever once used a sockpuppet for a single edit. That is contrary to Wikipedia policies, all of which we follow to the letter. In addition, accusing someone of sockpuppetry without evidence is a serious thing here on Wikipedia, and inappropriate without evidence.

User:Beyond My Ken states that I have blatantly disclosed misbehaviour. Which misbehaviour is that? I have stated WikiExperts disagrees with COI guidelines. I did not ever say that we disagree with any actual Wikipedia policies. We agree with the lot of them.

User:Tryptofish has stated that abusers of Wikipedia need to be identified to be banned, we agree with this. And if we are proven to be abusers of Wikipedia policy, there is no way we would continue in a similar vein. We would correct any potential abuse of policy if there was one. Fortunately there has never been such abuse.

User:Nick-D also falsely accuses us of using “dozens of sockpuppet accounts”. We have never used a SPI to post an article and have never once had more than one account edit the same page, ever. In fact, we don’t have any “accounts” at WikiExperts. Wiki Experts have their own accounts and work entirely independently of one another.

User:MONGO has stated that Wikipedia is a hobby, not a job. There is no Wikipedia policy that supports this.

User:DES accuses us of only abiding by rules we like. WikiExperts abides by all actual rules on Wikipedia and has never said otherwise. COI is a guideline, not a rule.

User:Bilby is correct.

User:Tom Harrison also unfairly, and without evidence, accuses us of using multiple accounts.

User:My very best wishes has made a clear and inappropriate personal attack on me in the above string.

User:Orange Mike claims we are spamming Wikipedia. We are not. In fact, we have never encountered Orange Mike before despite his valiant efforts to keep spam off Wikipedia. That is because we have never spammed Wikipedia, and we do hope that such a significant figure on Wikipedia would be able to find value in our well-researched and community accepted articles if he ever came across them.

User:LGA discusses “fall out” from our work on Wikipedia, but does so without any evidence an article we produced was not within Wikipedia guidelines.

User:Jehochman is making the only argument I’d really like to make myself, which is, we’ve never broken any actual rules nor have we damaged Wikipedia in any way. No evidence exists to say we’ve broken policy or added non-notable articles, and I myself am telling you we have not ever damaged Wikipedia’s copy and text. Each article we have worked on has in fact received a great amount of praise from the community, from barn stars to personal thanks.

User:Resolute accuses us of breaking NPOV. Let me reiterate, we have never broken NPOV, and are known to our clients as very restrictive on only posting neutral material.

User:Atethnekos also accuses us falsely of sockpuppetry, when it has never been proven and isn’t even the subject of this proposal.

User:Nyttend is using speculation and original research to try and piece together an argument to keep WikiExperts from editing Wikipedia. He also accuses us of possibly breaking the law without any evidence whatsoever. I believe this is very contrary to Wikipedia’s rules.

User:Eaglestorm has declared that WikiExperts has declared “war on Wikipedia”. Firstly, at no point has this ever been stated by myself or WikiExperts.

In short, there is no evidence that WikiExperts or users associated with it have ever broken a rule on Wikipedia. Recently I have tried to state my beliefs on how COI guidelines have failed people we work with time and time again, and how we have been able to abide perfectly by the guidelines without announcing a potential COI, which is the truth. If stating we don’t follow a “guideline” that is not a “policy” here is enough to ban, I would request the closing administrator state as such. If guidelines are in fact enforceable policies, let this be the precedent. I would also add that while we would fight any policy that explicitly states we would have to declare COI for our clients, if made actual policy we would have to abide by that rule, as we abide by all others. AKonanykhin (talk) 09:25, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

AKonanykhin, the rule you are breaking is WP:COI. The fact that we say guidelines may have the "occasional exception" does not mean, once you're aware of them, that you may blow them off entirely. You and your company's representatives, or anyone else you're paying/rewarding to edit, must disclose COI and stick to talk pages/noticeboards rather than editing directly in the COI areas. It is not optional. The "occasional exception" is not "an editor who disagrees may just ignore it altogether."Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 11:09, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

AKonanykhin, nice try with that lengthy diatribe of yours and your comments on what I just wrote. You forget that I got that from similar points by Smallbones and a few other editors. Paid editing is paid editing, in the same principle of reporters being paid a sum to write favorable stories about certain people. Don't forget that there are editors who are adding or deleting info about the organizations or companies they actually work for.--Eaglestorm (talk) 14:52, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Very well, AKonanykhin, show me that you are maintaining NPOV by revealing your client list so that the relevant articles may be inspected for such. PR firms exist to promote a company or individual's image and the nature of the business is inherently POV. If you and your group are that incredibly unlikely exception, then you should be willing to stand behind your work. Resolute 18:06, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. It would certainly be permitted for you to reveal the list of firms you have here, unless the contact forbids making such revelations, but that is the only good reason I can imagine for withholding full public disclosure. And even in that event, it would certainly be possible and I believe permitted for you to e-mail the list of clients and known or presumed identities of editors to OTRS or ArbCom or somewhere (I admit I don't which would be most appropriate) so that they can review the edits and see if you have, in fact, been abiding by the standards of wikipedia. John Carter (talk) 18:12, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support per WP:NOTHERE.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:28, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support. Yes, AKonanykhin, WP:COI is a guideline; however, Wikipedia:Consensus is a policy. Wikipedia's guidelines are determined by consensus. Bans are enacted to prevent disruption of, and harm to, the project. A statement that demonstrates a unilateral refusal to abide by WP's guidelines due to one's personal perspective tends to show an inclination to disrupt and/or harm. Tiderolls 14:20, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support, of course. "Just a guideline", while in some rare instances a valid argument, is incorrectly applied more often by people who don't quite understand what guidelines are and their relationship to policies. Guidelines describe how consensus has determined policies are to be interpreted in particular circumstances. The WP:NOTHERE argument is also quite valid; While we can ensure some paid editors' intentions to purely produce accurate information on a company, a refusal to abide by COI as a matter of course makes it likely enough that their intentions are otherwise. equazcion� 14:38, 13 Oct 2013 (UTC)

Can you point out where the employees, of the clients, of wikiexperts are failing to abide by COI as a matter of course, because the proposal bans them as well, and what policy would justify such a broad ban? Monty₈₄₅ 15:35, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Guess the more accurate wording would have been, "as a matter of policy", but the point still stands. I can't point out actual infractions, if they exist, since their policy of not revealing themselves prevents us from identifying their potential COIs. Perhaps there's no written policy in place that dictates a ban in this situation, as we've probably never had such a situation before, but that doesn't really matter. It would be best for the encyclopedia to prevent institutions that state they plan to flout Wikipedia's rules from editing, as best we can. equazcion� 16:57, 13 Oct 2013 (UTC)

• Comment. I think any PR company which openly declares their Wikipedia services [12] must be outright banned, unless they: (a) immediately and openly provide list of all their past and currently active accounts, and (b) promise to follow all basic wikipedia rules and actually keep their promise. This should be included in WP:COI, unless it's already there. This is nothing personal. Based on their statements [13] and actions so far, this company openly defies such requirements. And, yes, the idea of collective responsibility must apply in such cases because these users may act as a group. For example, one can easily imagine a situation when several users from such company support each other by comments, votes or reverts - hence the open disclosure of all their accounts is absolutely necessary. My very best wishes (talk) 15:52, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• The above "action" was done prior to WikiExperts' opening and was not WikiExperts business. AKonanykhin (talk) 17:08, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support - The key is not that they are doing paid editing (which is not outright disallowed), but that they refuse to attach identity to the accounts that do that paid editing as such those contributions can be reviewed, as per WP:COI. That's the more troubling aspect. --MASEM (t) 16:01, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

@AKonanykhin: Honestly, that comment you made regarding me is at least to my eyes pure bullshit. At no point did I indicate that I would take any sort of direct action, which is an unwarranted assumption that you seem to have jumped to rather easily with little provocation. Please refrain from such incendiary, irrational comments in the future, because if nothing else they raise very serious questions regarding your input. John Carter (talk) 14:44, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• I object that this thread is commercial slander and a violation of BLP. Bad things are being said about a person and his business without proper evidentiary diffs. Jehochman ^Talk 16:07, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Comment: Replying to each of the individuals above stating things I believe are false is not a diatribe as User:EagleStorm has stated--I was putting all my replies in one place rather than scattering them across the votes above, paying attention to what each user has said, and responding where I can to make sure my side is clearly laid out, as should be done in any AN conversation. User:EagleStorm states that he received my "war on Wikipedia" comment from listening to other editors, which is exactly my point. There is a lot of misinformation being perpetuated above in terms of what WikiExperts does or does not do, due to large scale speculation. Let me reiterate. I have one and only one account and would never use another. Anyone who contracts with WikiExperts is instructed to follow COI guidelines to the letter as well as all Wikipedia policies, excepting only an official declaration of COI, to ensure our content is perfectly neutral. That has resulted in no complaints from any Wikipedia user upon reviewing our the articles we post. Regardless, the COI guideline is under much debate and constant editing. We don't have a clear consensus on Wikipedia. Banning WikiExperts without any clear evidence that WikiExperts has harmed Wikipedia in any way would merely be a backdoor to banning paid editors without first gaining full community support on paid editing generally, and that is both unfair and ignores the actual consensus that Wikipedia has reached--that only the current somewhat lenient COI guidelines can be agreed upon, and that banning paid editing is not something the community is willing to do. Until this is resolved to policy level, I have believed that following the more lenient approach that paid editing is allowed, so long as neutrality, verifiability, and other content policies are strictly followed. I would follow that up with a caveat that for anyone here who has a policy they believe we are not following, and that should be followed, please inform me of it so that we can review it and integrate it into how we edit. We want nothing more than to continue to be constructive members of the Wikipedia community, and very much sympathize with those that might be sensitive to the idea of paid editing. Our only intention in our off Wikipedia commentary being used to judge us above, was to open a dialogue on how we believe that COI declarations are not mandatory and can harm good, neutral editing Wikipedia paid editors by subjecting them to the same often over-the-top accusations that appear in this very comment string. AKonanykhin (talk) 16:27, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

How can an objective review of your contributor's content be accomplished without the requisite COI disclosure? Tiderolls 16:33, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• • • Wikipedia has many different methods of vetting articles and contributions, including new page patrol. Each of our pages gets patrolled when added. We write every article objectively, and they are all subjected to the same oversight that every new article has when being added. I'm not sure what you are asking for, for an additional level of scrutiny being given to us over other editors? Where would that occur? AKonanykhin (talk) 16:46, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

You're not sure what I'm asking? OK, I'll bite; I'm requesting that you and the editors from your organization edit within the policies and guidelines of this project. Tiderolls 16:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I think you've hit the nail on the head with your suggestion that you should be subject to "an additional level of scrutiny ... over other editors", AKonanykhin. The difference between your team's contributions and those of other editors is that you are acting as the agents of parties who quite naturally wish to be presented in the best light possible. Neutrality (a Wikipedia-wide policy) - i.e. a presentation of the negative aspects of the companies you represent along with the positive aspects - is strongly impacted when your paycheck comes from those that desire the minimization of their negatives and an emphasis of their positives. Considering that there is an actual motivation for you to violate or at least skirt NPOV, there is clearly extra reason to review your contributions. You've previously made the dubious claim that all editors present a biased perspective when they write articles, but the reason that these alleged biases are only subjected to normal scrutiny is that they occur on the individual level whereas your group is engaging in systematic editing. -Thibbs (talk) 17:44, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• • • (c-e) :::Agreed. And the rather weak statement that "we don't choose to follow unofficial rules" is clearly a rather weak statement. Repeated violations of such "mere guidelines", are I believe themselves in at least some cases demonstrably enough for editors to be banned or otherwise sanctioned by ArbCom or on these boards. The fact that an organization seems to boast that it can, and apparently does in some cases, violate the conduct guidelines established at a private site, where editing is a privelege, not a right, does I believe raise serious questions which have not yet been addressed about the ethics of the firm involved, and such questions about the ethics of PR firms, if publicly discussed, could not unreasonably result in damaging press and damage to the reputation of the firms involved. And, yes, contentious matters around here get discussed in a lot of external media fairly regularly and sometimes thoroughly, whether we want that or not. Your statement, in effect, seems to be little more than a statement of "Trust us - we know what we're doing", by a source whose ethics pretty much indicate that they are about as trustworthy as the first person that quote is attributed to. And, in response to the above comment, that isn't an answer. You seem to be attempting to dodge addressing the fact that you have one method under your control, regarding which you apparently insist you have a right to act contrary to guidelines. That apparent stated, insistent, refusal to abide by guidelines cannot help but damage any credibility you or your editors, and potentially all their edits, might have so long as you continue to make that insistence. John Carter (talk) 16:52, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

AKonanykhin certainly likes to rebut my comments. Hurt much?--Eaglestorm (talk) 03:12, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - I'm inclined to oppose per Bilby. WP:COI doesn't provide a particularly solid basis for blocking when it goes out of its way to use words like "advice", "recommendations", "discouragement", etc. It's not that COI is just a "mere" guideline, but the language it uses is exceptionally fuzzy. I for one am grateful to AKonanykhin for clearly illustrating the weakness of our COI [recommendations] guideline. As Bilby pointed out above, this guideline should really provide the basis for a new policy explicitly requiring the declaration of COI for individuals and corporations writing about themselves (broadly construed) and including their agents and paid advocates. Rather than blocking AKonanykhin for failure to follow fuzzy recommendations in a guideline I think it's high time these common sense rules were made into firm policy. The only thing that holds me back from opposing the proposed block entirely is the sockpuppetry aspect of it. That really concerns me because when systematic corporate-backed sockpuppetry starts it just takes a few more turns of the wheel until we have flotillas of sockpuppets voting in AfDs, jiggering consensus on RS determination, and otherwise degrading our ability to form a clear consensus. Atethnekos's links above provide enough circumstantial evidence of this kind of taint to restrain me from opposing the block. -Thibbs (talk) 17:29, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Policies are not laws and there need not be a policy in order to take an action that people feel is necessary. Practice often tends to come before policy. Those who feel that COI should be a strongly-worded policy should not feel there's a technical reason to oppose this action merely because COI isn't codified as such yet. equazcion� 18:51, 13 Oct 2013 (UTC)
    • Obviously the community can do as it pleases, but my lean toward "oppose" is based on moral, not technical grounds. I'm opposed to any kind of ex post facto proceeding. I can't help but imagine myself on the wrong side of a "practice often tends to come before policy" argument and it makes my skin crawl. If we are serious about tackling this issue then we need to craft serious rules. Blocking AKonanykhin for ignoring our suggestions misidentifies the source of the problem. -Thibbs (talk) 20:10, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose - Ban people for what they do, not who they are affiliated for. If we start preemptively banning editors because of their personal life and/or employment instead of because of what they actually did on-wiki, where will it stop? ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 17:56, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• I find it significantly sad that there is an AN discussion this long and this contentious about WikiExperts, when there has not been a significant public thread about Wiki-PR. Wiki-PR has hundreds of confirmed clients, many more suspected clients (including *Viacom*, and a number of fairly notable bands,) and thousands of more as of yet undetected clients. The sockpuppet investigation in to Morning277 has been effectively shut down, and their work is continuing. All this thread is serving to do is let Alex get free advertising by managing to inject himself in to a discussion that should be centered around a different group of paid editors. Kevin Gorman (talk) 18:30, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose as utterly excessive. WP:COI is a guideline, not policy. I'm not a big fan of paid editors, but I fully understand why a company would wish to keep the exact identity of their clients private. If all of the company's accounts were labelled as being linked to the firm, then there's little need to be this draconian. Beyond that, the proposal is VERY extreme, as it is literally just an enormous blanket; "otherwise encouraged to edit" is WAY too overreaching, as what is wrong with someone with this firm asking for one of their friends to update, say, the 2013 British GT season results table? That would violate this ban, and that makes this ban a bad idea. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 19:23, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Comment Everything here is a strawman argument. WP:PAY does not explicitly prohibit paid editing. Since the proposal cannot back up its claims with policy the whole thing should be withdrawn before anyone gets any silly idea about "declaring war on paid editors". KonveyorBelt 19:35, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• I suggest tabling this thread and instead using the energy to conduct an RFC on paid editing with the goal of forming a solid policy. In the thread below I suggested that the policy might require paid editors (employees of the subject, or contractors), to disclose their work on a noticeboard set up for that purpose. Once the paid editing is disclosed, we can monitor it for problems, and take any measures needed, including swift blocks of problematic editors. We can hold paid editors to high standards and not waste time with any who try to play games. For any paid editors who try to avoid scrutiny by omitting the disclosure, it could be our policy to indef block them. I think such a policy would be better than what we have now, and alleviate the biggest concerns. If we test it and there are still problems, we can then discuss next steps. Jehochman ^Talk 20:42, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I think having that RfC is a wise idea regardless. There's a real quick way to table the current discussion, though, and that is for wikiexperts.us to say "Alright, we get you, consensus is clear that we must reveal our edits. Here's the list of articles we've edited so far and the times we did, and we'll clearly mark such edits in the future." The fact that they won't do that makes it look even more like there's a reason they don't want those edits to be examined. AKonanykhin, would you be willing to do that? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:51, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
    • (e-c)Just adding this before the thread is closed. That proposal above sounds really good to me. There might be problems with undisclosed editors for hire, and I would myself also like to see some such noticeboard to also include a way for corporations who see problems with their articles but don't want to have paid editors be able to contact people with sources to use to develop articles. But that proposal is at least a really good start. John Carter (talk) 20:54, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
      • I think we have an emerging consensus that paid editors should disclose. If their editing is good, disclosure should not have any downside. People look at the edits and go, "Yep, those comply with our content policy. Good edits. Thanks." If not, remedial action can be taken as needed. For the moment, I suggest that Wikiexperts agree that from now on their paid editors will go the relevant article talk page and post a note that they, the individual editor, are working for the subject and that they welcome scrutiny of their edits. There is no need to for individual editor to identify Wikiexperts as the agency-intermediary on the transaction. It's not our concern how somebody has been hired; it's not our desire to interfere with a business contract that might stipulate confidentiality; we just need to know that they are being paid so we can check their edits more carefully. Can everybody agree to that as a temporary measure until there's an RFC which sets up a general policy, and possibly a central noticeboard? Jehochman ^Talk 21:53, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
        • For me, at least, so long as someone says "I'm getting paid to do this", I couldn't care less who it is paying them. I just want to know, to be aware of what I'm looking for. And that's not even to say paid editors will intentionally edit badly, but subconscious bias can creep up on the best of us. It's possible the paid editor didn't find some serious negative information about their client, because, well, they weren't terribly well inclined to look. I am going to object to closing this thread, though, because we do not yet have any indication wikiexperts, in particular, actually plans to do that. If and only if they do commit to doing that, I would say they're no longer engaged in the behavior the ban proposal is for, and at that point the discussion would indeed be moot. That hasn't, to my knowledge, actually happened yet. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 22:08, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose - largely per Monty845 and Jehochman. No need to so passively assume bad faith; surely we can wait until they at least do something to violate policy. Go Phightins! 22:24, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• That was a violation of policy which resulted in blocking an account by an arbitrator. I am sure there are many other similar accounts; I simply did not investigate (that's why Mr. Konanykhin is probably hesitant to disclose all his accounts). Mr. Konanykhin claimed above that it was not his company. Well, based on the editing pattern, that was either Mr. Konanykhin himself (in which case he should be blocked right now) or someone else who worked for Mr. Konanykhin. My very best wishes (talk) 23:11, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support in principle. There are many rules that are good to have as rules, even if difficult to enforce. I have no great aversion to the idea of paid editing, so long as it is done aboveboard, with disclaimer of all conflicts of interest. bd2412 T 00:12, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support but Oppose simplistic ban as written, preferring to insert the word "undisclosed" into the wording. Prohibition doesn't work. It just sends the practice underground where it is more difficult to monitor, let alone control. Paid editing is a fact of life. Some paid editors will be better, as in more compliant with our values, than others. We should reward the more compliant editors, the ones who self declare stick to that single account, and try to comply, so that their life is easier than paid editors working undeclared.

  What if they declare that they are a paid editor, but refuse to say who pays, or to give details on their COI? I can see that they may justify this refusal on privacy concerns. I have seen privacy suffer due to attempting to declare details of COI. I think some balance can be found here. If they declare that they are paid, and declare that they have a COI, that is way better than editing undisclosed, changing account every time caught, until they become good at being undetected.

  Tryptofish's concern is very important.

  Agree with bd2412. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• So how to do this?

Proposal: Undeclared paid editors are banned, effective from today. As banned editors, their edits are not welcome, even if otherwise constructive. Any pages authored by banned editors are summarily deletable per WP:CSD#G5. G5 deleted pages may be recreated by another editor in good standing, but they must be written afresh, as the banned editor's contributions are not welcome, and reuse of their material would require attribution per our licencing.

The question of whether an editor is an undeclared paid editor is resolvable at WP:COIN.

An undiscovered undeclared paid editor may retrospectively avoid banned status by immediately declaring as a paid editor.

An editor declaring their status as a paid editor must make a clear note to that effect at the top of their userpage.

Notes: There is little point attempting to punish accounts. Accounts are cheap and disposable. What matters in paid editing is their product. If we delete their product, per their terms, they must refund the fees paid. This will make them pay attention.

Paid editors still need to be afforded personal privacy. It is not necessary to disclose full detail on who is paying them, and exact what they are paid to do. Having them disclose that they are paid editors will be a very good start, and quite possibly sufficient, as they can be watched. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:34, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support The gentleman and his associates have blatantly declared that they have an agenda that aims to subvert the open-source, public interest character of Wikipedia, as per the following statement on his Wikipedia article Alex Konanykhin

  "We believe that boycotting fundraising efforts of Wikipedia might compel it to raise billions via advertising and develop content of significantly better quality."

He's a vulture capitalist tool of the "investor class", in short, targeting an organization that looks like easy prey to him.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 05:16, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. This proposal violates everything we stand for. If someone says they think vandalizing Wikipedia is a good thing without ever vandalizing Wikipedia, soapboxing, or otherwise violating any policy, do we ban them? If someone says that Wikipedia should deny the Holocaust but never goes beyond expressing that opinion, do we ban them? It goes against our core principles to ban for thoughtcrime or for expressing unpopular opinions. Bans should be based upon specific edits that violate specific policies or guidelines, not on having a "contemptuous attitude toward our COI guidelines". I am very disappointed in those of you who support this, and I can only hope that you just didn't realize what you were doing. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:04, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Consider the caveats of Tryptofish and SmokyJoe. This is an "ounce of prevention" approach. Disclosure is a core component of the COI policy, and the pretense to taking the moral high ground is made with accompanying statements that exceed the reprehensible and duplicitous. He is deviously waging an anti-Wikipedia PR campaign, like a devious PR man would be expected to do. What's wrong with upholding the stature of Wikipedia in the face of such chicanery.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 11:17, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Again, if someone says that Wikipedia should remove all material critical to Scientology but never violates any rule or goes beyond expressing that opinion -- once -- on the Scientology talk page, do we ban them? You are asking what is wrong with banning someone because they express an unpopular opinion. My answer is that everything is wrong with banning someone because they express an unpopular opinion. You may one day express the opinion that you disagree with the way Wikipedia is run. If that ever happens, would you object if we banned you for waging an anti-Wikipedia PR campaign, even though you had not broken any of the rules? In my opinion, your willingness to punish thoughtcrime hurts Wikipedia far more than any PR flack or sockpuppet ever could. Nonetheless, I would oppose banning you for it. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:44, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose ban. If you can think of a reason to impose a ban which is explicitly based on policy, then I would like to see that reason, but until then... "The company claims that they will act ethically and that it respects Wikipedia's policies and guidelines with the exception of COI. We should put to the test whether they will respect our policy on bans by refraining from editing once banned from doing so, as paid editing without full COI disclosure is inherently unethical." basically means "They say they're ethical. I think they're not. So let's ban them, and if there are any edits later, that proves they're unethical!". Banning somebody to give them a chance to prove that they won't edit through a ban is just a 21st century form of witch-dunking. bobrayner (talk) 12:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support. Let's face it: paid editors are here to spam and spin. No one pays an editor to objectively edit something like Ancient Rome unless they are trying to sell a book. So why pay for an article here? To sell a non-notable thing as "encyclopedic". 'Cause of the artificial notability. For me, Paid editing = spam. Doc talk 13:12, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• You do realize that you just supported a proposal that, as written, bans someone who has never spammed, never accepted pay for editing Wikipedia, and indeed has never edited an article, or done anything other that expressing an opinion that such editing should be allowed, right? I don't think anyone here has a problem with nuking actual spammers, but that's not what is being proposed here. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:52, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• My support isn't going to make any difference in this. I have a black-and-white view of paid editing in general. No one gets paid to edit an article for truly encyclopedic purposes. Who would pay someone to improve, say, Cuisine of India? Unless they have a financial incentive to promote something? I work for free here as a volunteer, and am highly suspicious of the motives of any paid editor. That us all. Doc talk 00:30, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support - they are everything that Wikipedia is not and should not be. Independent paid editors can be tolderated; a full company cannot, as they cannot be trusted to abide by our neutality, bias and POV policies. GiantSnowman 13:18, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Let's stop this now. This ban proposal is premature. We need to first work out the policy basis by having a discussion to the effect that undeclared paid editing is unwelcome. Once we have developed that consensus and tag the page as policy, then we can look at specific cases in violation and deal with them. If this ban is placed, I will request arbitration to have it overturned. It is silly to keep going here. We need to resolve the policy question first. Jehochman ^Talk 13:37, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

What policy question? Tiderolls 14:04, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

"Undeclared" paid editors usually get tripped up due to their use of WP for non-encyclopedic purposes. How else would one identify undeclared paid editing? Doc talk 14:16, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose: I've always found WP:COI to be misused in the vein of the Spanish Inquisition and heavily tilted toward those editors interested in writing about corporate entities. Until the community requires disclosure of a COI by any editor who might have one (instead of strongly advising), (See this comprehensive description in WP:COI), this type of ban request is merely an inquisition. --Mike Cline (talk) 14:57, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

So your position is that if the wording is changed mandating disclosure that the expressed intent to violate the WP:COI policy would be sufficient grounds for banning, but with the current wording

If you have a financial connection to a topic...you are advised to refrain from editing articles directly, and to provide full disclosure of the connection.

at Wikipedia:Coi#Paid_advocacy.2C_public_relations.2C_and_marketing), insufficient?

Maybe it is time to close that loophole.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 15:06, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if it's helpful to call it a loophole. AFAIR, the guidelines have been clear for a long time that neither is disclosure required nor is editing with a COI including paid editing forbidden. As I said below, despite some occasional confusion this seems to be supported by long standing practice. And while there are arguments for and against this stance, I'm pretty sure at the time of formulation the lack of a requirement for disclosure was intentional. If people want to change the guidelines, there are ways to go about, clearly trying to use a different intepretation at AN is not the way to go about it. If consensus is reached that failing or refusing to disclose a COI is blockable that's fine but it should be full thought given to the implications of such a requirement. (Personally I think if full thought is given the requirement will be far more more limited most likely only applying to a specific form of paid editing.) Nil Einne (talk) 16:17, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

@Ubikwit: I think my position is clear. COI as written and invoked today is grossly biased against editors who might want to contribute to corporate related articles because it presumes anyone with a COI can't contribute well sourced, neutral content to notable corporate topics. Such presumptions demonstrate great upfront bias and POV. I do not think that requiring disclosure of COI is neither wise nor practical. However, unless it is made a requirement and applied equally to all forms of COI--Any external relationship – personal, religious, political, academic, financial, and legal – can trigger a conflict of interest. (from WP:COI), ban requests like this will remain an inquisition. --Mike Cline (talk) 19:42, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose -- Editors should be judged on their editing behavior per WP:COI not who they might be in real life. This includes the color of their skin, their religious beliefs, their gender, their education, their age, their nationality, their philosophy and their employer. This proposal, if passed, is the beginning of open-ended and "legalized" discrimination on WP.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 15:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Let's face it. This is subversion of the project. Yes, it makes a lot of difference if someone edits in his own capacity, rather than as a member of an outside organization with goals very different from our goals. My very best wishes (talk) 15:44, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• I think this entire discussion went on a wrong track. This is not a "COI problem", but a "MEAT problem". If people work on behalf of an outside organization or another person, they appear essentially as "meatpuppets" and therefore must disclose that they belong to a certain organization or work on behalf of another person (who might also have his own account like Mr. Konanykhin).

• Support ban. This company isn't only advertising that they will create articles for companies that meet our notability guidelines - they're also advertising that they will keep these articles free of negative content (eg. "Your Wikipedia presence is completely safe, if you entrust it to us"), presumably even if well-sourced. I would appreciate more evidence about specific users identified as working for this firm, or pages the firm has edited, but even without that, I think we have enough to show that they are not interested in following policy in the specific, as well as a general problem with WP:NOTHERE (their goals and the encyclopedia's goals are not similar, and they've outright mocked our guidelines and people who try to enforce them). –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:00, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

That's what I see too. Taking negative content out of the articles seems like owning it - sometimes, truth hurts, live with it. Unfortunately, that's gonna happen if we let these Wikiexperts clowns run wild in the project.--Eaglestorm (talk) 04:21, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• Strong support: the very existence of a website like that one undermines the whole concept of WP. Its manager/CEO/whatever openly stating that he will not follow WP:COI and adding gems like this one:

RE: "you have no actual right to be allowed on Wikipedia. -- How come? I'm out, even though any looser can be there, safe in his anonymity and bullying experts and professionals?[14]

is a clear indication that he has zero respect for the project and the people involved in it. Even if the ban is technically very difficult to impose it sends a clear message and acts as a warning to anyone out there thinking of giving money to them. Gaba ^(talk) 20:06, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Very strong support " "..a company which has explicitly stated that it will not follow those guidelines and in fact considers it "unethical" to do so", seems to have been demonstrated by the OP. A function of the organization appears to be to use Wikipedia for reasons outside our core pillars.--Mark Miller (talk) 00:05, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• Weak support I was originally intending to strongly oppose based on the fact that the common reasons given aren't actually supported by our guidelines. In particular, our COI guidelines do not stop people with a COI from editing articles nor do they require disclosure. They simply strongly discourage such editing encourage disclosure This is supported by long standing practice where an editor is not blocked for editing with a COI nor for failing to disclose it, but instead only for actual violations they commit due to their COI and where we do perhaps have a lower tolerance for such poor behaviour for editors with an undisclosed COI. While I recognise a number of editors disagree with this, this obviously isn't the right place to change the guidelines. However looking more carefully, I see there is a resonable case to be made that the editors are actively violating WP:SOCK namely using multiple accounts to violate scrutiny so there is some merit to a block. Nil Einne (talk) 15:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

If people work on behalf of an outside organization or another person, they appear essentially as "meatpuppets" and therefore must disclose that they belong to a certain organization or work on behalf of another person (who might also have his own account like Mr. Konanykhin). My very best wishes (talk) 18:05, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Comment: It appears that in addition to unproven accusations of sockpuppetry against myself or WikiExperts (we have never once broken the rule against sockpuppetry), some editors are also bringing up unproven accusations of Meatpuppetry. The meatpuppetry on Wikipedia policy discusses the use of more than one person being used to sway an argument on Wikipedia, which is something we have never done. Never once has WikiExperts ever employed a series of individuals to support or oppose an argument on Wikipedia, including here in this comment thread. I'd also like to point out that I myself have plainly declared who I work for (as owner of WikiExperts) and my position there, and have never made an edit on a talk page without using this account, which features my real name. Even if there is a proclamation that editors must OUT themselves in all cases of potential COI in the future, I myself have never broken that possible future rule. Why would the argument that COI must be treated as policy and not a guideline result in the banning of a person who is open about their connection to a company being discussed? I've been very clear about my association. However I refuse to OUT any other editor, as this is against Wikipedia policy. AKonanykhin (talk) 19:32, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

No, you work for your clients. Given that you refuse to name them, your claim that you have "plainly declared who I work for" is objectively false. Resolute 20:04, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

As someone who cracks down very hard on attempts to out users...I find the outing argument completely weak and fallacious here. If you don't want to be identified as being affiliated with a company, don't edit articles in a promotional way on behalf of that company. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:08, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• @Konanykhin. No, I think at least three accounts (in addition to your own account) already acted as your sock/meatpuppets: [15], [16], [17] while editing your biography alone, and I am not counting other suspicious "trough away" accounts who edited the same article. One of them was blocked, and rightly so. Who knows how many others are out there editing other articles? My very best wishes (talk) 20:17, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sock puppetry says: "Improper purposes include attempts to deceive or mislead other editors, disrupt discussions, distort consensus, avoid sanctions, or otherwise violate community standards and policies." The link there, to Wikipedia:List of guidelines#Behavioral, says "Do not use Wikipedia to promote yourself, your website, or your organization." On Novermber 10, 2010, 15:36 default time, User:Eclipsed starts adding material to the page Alex Konanykhin [18]. Same date, 17:50 default time, new user named "Konanykhin" on Commons adds a photo of "Alex Konanykhin, author of book Defiance" and describes it as "own work" [19]. Same date at 23:46 default time, User:Eclipsed adds that photo to Alex Konanykhin article [20]. User:Eclipsed continues to edit Alex Konanykhin article, which also involved removing potentially negative information (November 20, 2010: [21]). User:Eclipsed also edits the KMGi (advertising agency) article, including uploading the KMGi logo [22] and adding it to the article [23]. On January 4, 2011 User:Eclipsed indicates [24] that he does paid editing and says that he has a "financial connection" with Alex Konanykhin and KMGi (advertising agency). All of this shows clear conflict-of-interest meat puppetry, an infringement of Wikipedia:Sock puppetry. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 20:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree. So, this is fourth meatpuppet account. I am not arguing that corporate accounts should be forbidden, but only that they must be properly registered as corporate accounts to allow scrutiny by community. Perhaps we need a separate category of accounts, called "corporate accounts", which would be a subject for more stringent rules, because a group of hidden corporate accounts can cause significant damage for the project, as we actually just have seen in case of Wiki-PR? My very best wishes (talk) 21:54, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Instead of accusing me of sockpuppetry here UserMyVeryBestWishes, please note that your prior attempt to investigate me for sockpuppetry ended without evidence to support your claim. I welcome you to do the same with any other account, as I have never committed sockpuppetry--in fact, I've never edited an article on Wikipedia before. Just review my user contributions to verify this. Also, User:Rosceles, no one has proven that I or anyone with WikiExperts has ever edited in a promotional manner, so I don't agree with your argument in favour of outting other editors, as it implies that we must be editing promotionally purely because we are being paid to edit. And, User:Resolute, please see our policy here, where we stated explicitly "We do NOT upload articles provided by clients. We do NOT upload press-releases, advertorials, or other material not in compliance with Wikipedia standards.". We create referenced, neutral Wikipedia articles on companies or individuals looking to have a presence on the site. I work for myself, as the owner of the company. Clients purchase our services, I do not work for them. Just as McDonald's does not work for you when you purchase your meal. Besides the fact, that the meatpuppetry policy on Wikipedia covers a very specific practice--the use of multiple editors editing in concert on a talk page in order to sway an argument. You've misinterpretted the policy. AKonanykhin (talk) 21:03, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

He is accusing you of sockpuppeting because you are sockpuppeting. KonveyorBelt 22:02, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi User:KonveyorBelt, I would encourage you to take a look at my response to his accusations here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Wexperts . I may post my response here, but am not sure what the protocols are for including identical information on that investigation's page and this page, as User:Atethnekos is doing? I think it would be beneficial to add the explanation here as well, but don't want to be accused of spamming the message. Would it be appropriate to add it as a comment below? AKonanykhin (talk) 17:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

RfC on WP:BRIGHTLINE An RfC has opened on whether Wikipedia:No paid advocacy (BRIGHTLINE) should become policy. See Wikipedia talk:No paid advocacy. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 17:34, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Comment. I think real problem here is not paid editing, but whether someone works as an individual or on behalf of an outside organization/another person in Wikipedia (added later)). In latter case, they appear essentially as "meatpuppets" and therefore must disclose that they belong to certain organization or work on behalf of another person (who might also have his own account like Mr. Konanykhin). My very best wishes (talk) 18:01, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

  Everybody belongs to some sort of organization. Would you force every editor to disclose their entire life story, their family members names, positions, affiliations, lovers, bastards, and so on? Come on, this is just getting too crazy. Jehochman ^Talk 23:03, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• I am talking about someone working on behalf of an external organization in wikipedia. I thought that was clear. For example, I never worked on behalf of an external organization or another person in Wikipedia. Do you? My very best wishes (talk) 01:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• support at a base level I was opposed to this proposal, because we should keep open access, but they have really shot themselves in the foot by explicitly saying they indent to ignore our policies. Gaijin42 (talk) 19:46, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose I've never been paid to edit Wikipedia, but I've been paid to write articles for others to publish on Wikipedia. I then took that article to DYK of my own accord because it was interesting and DYK-worthy (w/o getting paid). If this policy passes, what stops me from being punished? I've never been accused of not being WP:NPOV or posting articles that failed WP:GNG, so why shouldn't I continue to edit the way I do?--v/r - TP 23:53, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

If it passes, then yes, that would fall under the policy. But then, if the community decides that writing WP articles for pay is a problem, then writing Wikipedia articles for pay to be posted by a third party would also be a problem. Arguably not as big, and harder to detect, but still an issue. That's largely what has been happening with the Morning277 case - he writes the articles, and other people post them on his behalf. - Bilby (talk) 01:08, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support. That company should be banned from editing the Wikipedia. It is scarcely credible that someone who is paid on a regular basis to edit in Wikipedia can avoid conflict of interest that would defeat the usual Wikipedia criticism and contest process.Chjoaygame (talk) 00:53, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Oppose You can't get rid of it, all you do is drive it underground. The best way to deal with it is find acceptable guidelines, such as private disclosure (public would present obvious problems) and try to channel it. And, by the way, having recently been paid for an article (non-wiki) in real life, I find I like it.--Wehwalt (talk) 03:00, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose this issue is here to stay, if there's fuzzy guidelines rather than clear and actionable policies its our own fault. Admittedly the attitude of this particular "company" (?) leave a lot to be desired Jebus989^✰ 15:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
• Comment. Why would not Mr. Konanykhin simply tell us: "Our company has editors X, Y and Z. They created/edited such and such pages. Please inspect: this is good job". No one would object this. To the contrary, their company could earn a very good reputation here. There is no good reason why they can not do it. The argument about "outing" (working for a company) is indeed unconvincing. However, if they do not do it, there is only one logical explanation: they are going to violate our policies, exactly as Mr. Konanykhin said in some of his statements above and publications (e.g. No donations to Wikipedia). My very best wishes (talk) 04:15, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: To answer the question as to why I cannot divulge our client base, beyond the Outting rule and the fact that as of now COI guidelines are suggestions and not policy -- we have non-disclosure agreements with our clients and editors. That means we cannot legally disclose who our clients are, or who works with us as editors. So long as COI disclosure is voluntary and not mandatory, we feel that a lack of disclosure is within the rules and policies of Wikipedia. If COI disclosure does become policy on Wikipedia, we would have to reconsider our own policies, however this would never be done in a retroactive manner.

Secondly, I want to highlight my response to the accusations of sock/meatpuppetry above. It can be found here: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Wexperts#Comments_by_other_users. I prefer not to add it piecemeal to the above discussion as there is enough confusion over the "evidence" for our supposed bad deeds, and I want to record set straight. AKonanykhin (talk) 17:27, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

So, based on your response, I assume that you have already a lot of clients and currently active editors bound by a non-disclosure agreement. Well, I do not see a lot of difference between your company and 50 Cent Party or web brigades. And you are not logical. Your own article tells that our problem is anonymous editing. This is valid point. Let all your staff edit here under their real names and disclose their affiliations. But instead of bringing more transparency here, you created an underground army of paid propagandists. This is forbidden per WP:SOAP. My very best wishes (talk) 23:27, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Clarification I consider "We believe that boycotting fundraising efforts of Wikipedia might compel it to raise billions via advertising and develop content of significantly better quality." an obvious declaration of war upon everything that Wikipedia stands for, as it is a call to impoverish and eventually destroy us, and reduce the remnants to prostituting our once-valued name and reputation to the great profit of companies like his own. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Strong support. As per Orangemike. Those statements from Wikiexpert is truly a manifesto of WP:NOTHERE. Let them take their political agenda elsewhere. --Saddhiyama (talk) 18:07, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Support - I'm going with Orangemike on this one, it was a great point made. 173.58.61.71 (talk) 23:23, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support ban. The goals of marketeers are incompatible with those of Wikipedia. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:28, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support ban. You know what, I think they should stop operations until they come clean.

1. They're obviously using sock accounts in contravention of established policy. For those saying that, "oh, there's no confirmed socks", well, do you see any clean, COI-disclosing accounts anywhere? I sure don't.

2. "We believe that boycotting fundraising efforts of Wikipedia might compel it to raise billions via advertising and develop content of significantly better quality." This is just BS. So basically they're trying to starve us to the brink of death, and then say "Hey, here's some funds. Now, would you kindly kneel down to the interests of corporate entities by sticking stupid advertisements everywhere?". Why the heck do we want to raise billions? We're more or less a non-profit foundation, and our servers are running just fine with our donations here. Sure, we could always use some more money, but do you want to dirty your hands with blood in order to get some extra cash? One of the fundamental ideas about Wikipedia is that we don't accept advertising and we never will. People use Wikipedia in no small part because we don't have ads. Why don't we get people to boycott you and force you to run ads everywhere at every click? In addition, it's kinda hard to stay neutral when your life depends on companies that you're supposed to be writing "neutrally" about.

3. We don't really need diffs for evidence of misbehavior. The FOUNDER of the company has said himself that he's intent on not following our policies, so even though some of you might think that he hasn't violated anything yet, if the company really has "helped hundreds of clients", I'm sure that they skirted more than a few policies.

Overall, I think what they are doing is disreputable and must be stopped immediately, until they promise to come clean and stick to only a few accounts and stop violating our policies. Thekillerpenguin (talk) 01:13, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• support it's plain they won't follow WP:COI. That is enough by itself in my opinion. But in addition there pretty damning claims of puppetry. Hobit (talk) 01:50, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

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

Folken de Fanel

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

---

I'm here with a simple issue. While attempting to continue a major overhaul and merging of Dungeons & Dragons content I noticed that Folken de Fanel made 36 redirects in the court of 22 minutes from 23:42 on October 4 to 00:04 October 5.[25] Each of these redirects bore the edit summary "restore merge per a previous consensus". Whether or not the previous consensus from 3 years ago is valid, the edit summary is very misleading because Folken de Fanel did not carry out any merger at all. It was just a blank and redirect, resulting in dozens of pages being redirect loops, breaking over a hundred pages of links and removing a large amount of content under a misleading edit summary. I've gone and rollbacked these redirects; not on the grounds of contesting them as "keeps", but on keeping the content up while an actual merging process goes on. I have zero intention of keeping these pages beyond the time needed for merging in. I ask that these pages remain so Folken de Fanel does not promptly re-redirect them out and threaten me with ANI. I am not seeking any action against Folken; I do not have the time or energy to argue. These pages will be likely all gone within the week. Thank you for reading. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 03:36, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Redirecting does not remove content. If these are truly pages that were up for AFD years ago, and the results were merge + redirect, and no one bothered to merge in those three years, FdF is in the right to simply redirect - any editor can still get at the old content and add what is necessary. --MASEM (t) 03:41, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

They were not AFDed, they were discussed briefly three years ago in that link. Mass breaking content including links and entire groups of pages is not "merging"; Folken de Fanel did not merge the content as his edit summary stated. I've already begun redirecting them again. But I must sleep and more will be taken care of tomorrow. Also, the original mergers were contentious and not redirected out or had additional discussion prior to Folken's re-reverting.[26] If you check that link, you will see I have re-redirected (kept categories) the page out again. This is a brief and temporary solution to not break the rest of the Forgotten Realms content area. Whether or not I can recover the content in four-five additional steps means little when hundreds of readers will miss out unnecessarily. I find this option the best route and not deter, confuse or otherwise hinder readers who seek out the page's content until I can tidy the rest up on a list. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:13, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Do you have a better justification for your use of WP:Rollback? I don't see that it was necessary or allowed by the guideline. Flatscan (talk) 05:16, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Masem: really? Chris has been rapidly taking care of all this in the last couple of weeks. And you've no problem with someone using a clearly false edit summary? Oyi. Hobit (talk) 04:38, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

How is "restore merge per a previous consensus" "clearly false"? I don't see an implication in "restore merge" that FdF is redoing the merges at the list article. Talk:List of Forgotten Realms deities/Archive 1#Merge with individual deity and deity group articles is a valid wikilink to an archived discussion. The articles I spot-checked are in the discussed list. Flatscan (talk) 05:16, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Two reasons: #1 the articles were never merged, just redirected as far as I can tell. I see no evidence of any attempt to merge either years ago or this time. #2 Even if there was a merge at some point, redirecting isn't "restoring a merge" because, again, there is no merging being done. Hobit (talk) 05:52, 15 October 2013 (UTC) clarified Hobit (talk) 06:00, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

1) Redirecting without copying anything is allowed by the last paragraph of WP:Merging#Reasons for merger. The wording dates back to 2005 and 2007. You participated in the 2010 discussion, and you had 3 years to raise the issue with Neelix or edit the articles directly, as FdF pointed out. Requiring FdF to investigate and be responsible for Neelix's 3-year-old edits is unreasonable. 2) An edit summary like "revert to redirect per a previous consensus" would be more precise, but I think that describing FdF's "restore merge" as "clearly false" – in the context of your other comments, implying willful deception – is a gross exaggeration. Flatscan (talk) 04:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Merging does not require any material to be brought into the main article, if none of that material is new or appropriate, as long as that fact is checked. And as long as it is simply a redirect and not a delete, recreate and redirect, the content before the merge+redirect can be reviewed without admin assistance and brought in if the editor believes the fact was missed. --MASEM (t) 06:04, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

That's an interesting assertion, but completely unsupported by WP:MERGE: "A merger is a non-automated procedure by which the contents of two or more pages are united within a single page. Merging creates a redirect from the source page(s) to the destination page, with some or all of the content copied and pasted into that page." If no content was copied, then it wasn't a merger, it was a redirection without merging. While a merge includes a redirect as part of the process, what differentiates a merge from a redirect is the copying and pasting. Jclemens (talk) 06:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

That's an interesting bit of wiki-lawyering there. Don't think it's been merged properly? WP:SOFIXIT. It's in the edit history. Which is still there. So, you know, not a deletion. --Calton | Talk 11:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what you can actually merge, though, since all but one I've looked at were entirely sourced to TSR or Wizards of the Coast publications. In other words, nothin' but primary sources. --Calton | Talk 11:26, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Still not the point. There were 36 edit summaries that claimed he was merging stuff. No merging actually happened. He could have said "redirecting" and we'd not be here. But he didn't and we are. There is a strong difference between merging and redirecting, that's not wiki-lawyering.Hobit (talk) 13:28, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

No, not really. Redirecting an article to another where the appropriate encyclopedic content - in the eye of the person doing this - is already present, is a merge; the topic that was redirected still has content available about it in WP. It would not be a merge if the person redirected the article to a target article that made zero mention of the topic that was redirected, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. --MASEM (t) 13:41, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

So you are saying that merging something, in the Wikipedia meaning of the word, doesn't actually involve merging anything? While Wikipedia certainly has terms of art that are like that, WP:MERGE says quite the opposite. So your definition doesn't seem to work for the English meaning of the word "merge" nor the Wikipedia meaning. Could you explain why you think your definition is correct? Hobit (talk) 13:58, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

The WP definition, which matches the real world version is "A merger is a non-automated procedure by which the contents of two or more pages are united within a single page." Doesn't say anything about retaining information from every page involved in the process (unless you're wikilawyering the language). The only outcome that I would expect of a merge is that the topic that is merged in is not reduced to a single mention in passing: whether this means the topic has its own section, paragraphs, one or more sentences, or a line in a table, it doesn't matter (a mention in passing would simply require a redirect). If this means that information from one page is duplicative or not appropriate encyclopedic to be inserted into the target page, so be it. --MASEM (t) 14:48, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Wow, I'm wondering if you just stopped reading at that point. WP:MERGE goes on to say "with some or all of the content copied and pasted into that page". So yes, it does say something about retaining information. As does the English definition (combine or cause to combine to form a single entity, notice the word combine...). Are you seriously claiming that a redirect is a merge? Hobit (talk) 14:59, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

If some of the content in the article(s) to be merged already exists in the target article, then yes, some of the content has been put into the target article already. If that then leaves content that is deemed unencyclopedic and is left out, then that's what happens. (Mind you, the language "copy and pasted" is not really correct because more than likely a merge that does add more from a merged article will be edited appropriately to fit the flow of the target article during or after the merge - the attribution path should still be followed when doing so.) --MASEM (t) 15:16, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

So assuming a redirect target has some information on the topic, any redirect is a merge? That is taking the English language (and Wikipedia terminology) and bending it so far on it's ear it's amazing. Our policies speak of redirection and merging as different things on a regular basis. I'm having a hard time coming up with an example where a redirect from an AfD wouldn't also be a merge in your use of the terminology. I'm starting to feel like you are just yanking my chain. Hobit (talk) 15:22, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

A redirect (as a close action from an AFD/discussion) w/o a merge means that an editor can go and blindly replace the page contents with the right #REDIRECT, not having to worry about attribution, existing content, or the like. It may be worthwhile to consider anchors in the target article as to help the redirect link land at the right spot, but that's it. A merge w/ redirect means that the editor performing the merge should review the contents of the to-be-merged article(s) and target and carefully determine what, if any, content should be brought over, and if any content is brought in, add in tracking for attribution, before making the target page a redirect.

Yes, that means that a merge that doesn't bring over any information before the redirect is going to look from a 60,000 ft level like a straight redirect, but that's where AGF comes into play, that the editor performing the merge made a judgement call that no new information from the page in question was needed in the target page. And that's why merge + redirects are tons better than deletion, because any editor can go back and pull out details they felt were important that the merging editor might have omitted and add them after the merge. (I would argue we would be in a similar place if FdF pulled one sentence and added it to the target articles before redirecting, with claims "he didn't merge enough!"). If FdF did this blindly, without any prior discussion at all, sure, I would question the motives behind it, but here, FdF is doing an action discussed before, with changes that were undone in the interim. --MASEM (t) 15:33, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

My last reply on this: If nothing is merged, it ain't a merge. That's pretty obvious in my book. And as the action discussed before was a merge which never was implemented. Hobit (talk) 17:22, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

All I can say is that you were part of the original discussion back in 2010, Hobit, if you had any objection about the amount of content moved, you had all the time to say it, or to move more content yourself. You never did, so I had no reason to assume you were not in agreement. All I did was to restore the 2010 status quo. You obviously have your own view on what a merge should be, but I see nothing here in opposition with WP:MERGE, so this discussion doesn't belong at ANI.Folken de Fanel (talk) 21:38, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

... none of which deals at all with the fact that Masem has asserted something so utterly ridiculous that it defies common sense. He's asserting that redirecting an article to a target that already contains something relevant and not adding or changing any of that content at the target article constitutes a merge, contra the definition that I quoted, and (as Hobit pointed out) he selectively re-quoted. Masem's behavior in this matter is clearly worse than yours, Folken, because you could simply say you were going too fast and assuming that the merges had previously been done, while Masem's argument is something that's meritless, has been pointed out as meritless, and yet he maintains that it is the definition is wrong, rather than he. Jclemens (talk) 04:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Common sense would suggest that merging involves taking some portion of one thing and including it in another. But reality is not that clear-cut, especially when more than two articles are involved in the merger. We could imagine a discussion closing with consensus to merge articles A,B,C,D into article X. Now suppose that the merging editor finds that article C just repeats one of the sections of article A, and that article D is nothing but tinfoil hat gibberish sourced to the article creator's personal blog. In that case, after the merge there will be nothing of articles C and D in the merge product but I would say the whole thing still does constitute a merge. Wouldn't you? This D&D situation is the extreme end of that scale, where a lot of articles have gone into the merge discussion and some content from some of the articles has found its way into the merge target, but nothing or very little from each individual article. I agree that this is more like mass redirection than a merge, but calling it a very selective merge is not totally off the wall. (And a very selective merge is exactly what this content needs, not wholesale Ctrl-C Ctrl-V). Reyk _YO! 05:23, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

(edit) and the last paragraph of Wikipedia:Merging#Reasons_for_merger explicitly states that it's OK to simply redirect instead of merging if there is no mergeable content. Reyk _YO! 05:26, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

What it actually says is "If there is no information to be added to the destination page, you can simply redirect the other page there, but please make this clear in the edit summary." (Emphasis mine) That is, if there's nothing to merge, than redirect it. Don't call it a merge, because it's not. It's not saying that there's such a thing as a merge without content added to the target, it's telling editors to use redirect instead, and be clear in their edit summaries that they are not merging but instead redirecting which is exactly what Folken de Fanel failed to do. Jclemens (talk) 06:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

As has been pointed out over and over again, Folken was not claiming to be doing a merge. He was putting things back the way there were after someone else had undone the previously performed merges. That clearly is what "restore merge" means, and no amount of feigned incomprehension or creative misinterpretation will make it mean anything else- particularly when this has been clarified REPEATEDLY in this discussion, by Folken himself and several others. There is no dishonesty from Folken de Fanel here, as much as you obviously wish there was. If you think the original merges (or whatever you want to call them) were inadequate, take it up with User:Neelix who performed them. Otherwise, how can you call restoring an edit disruptive when you wouldn't call the original edit disruptive? And I still maintain that you could, at a stretch, call this a very selective merge anyway. Reyk _YO! 07:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you - that's exactly what MERGE says on the tin - combining two or more articles into one. It doesn't say a minimum amount of an article to be merge has to survive, only that we keep attribution history and redirect so that all the prior edits can be traced. There's a distict lack of good faith here in assuming what FdF is doing is purposely harmful. --MASEM (t) 05:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I have started a RfC draft discussion at User talk:Flatscan/RfC draft: Merge versus redirect. Flatscan (talk) 04:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

"If there is no information to be added to the destination page, you can simply redirect the other page there, but please make this clear in the edit summary."

Better history links:

• Folken de Fanel's 36 redirects
• ChrisGualtieri's 35 rollbacks

Spot-checking these articles, I see a pattern where User:Neelix proposes and performs the merger in October 2010, and an IP editor restores in December 2011. Flatscan (talk) 05:16, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Could you identify where the merging was done? I didn't notice any merging at all. I might have missed it, but I don't think Neelix made a single edit involving content. Hobit (talk) 05:52, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Neelix did merge the lead of Circle of Greater Powers to the lead of the list (overall diff, history). The last paragraph of WP:Merging#Reasons for merger allows for redirecting without copying, but asks that it be clearly identified in the edit summary. I prefer precise edit summaries, as they make WP:Copying within Wikipedia checking easier. Flatscan (talk) 04:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Folken de Fanel has a long history of problematic behavior, which was cataloged at a recent RFC/U. He has been blocked on multiple language Wikipedias for edit warring, including this one. He is indefinitely banned on fr.wiki, his home language wiki, and remains indefinitely blocked for sockpuppetry on it.wiki. He's had plenty of chances to shape up his contributions, but seems more intent on harassing those of us who point out his poor, uncollaborative behavior. If indeed he's making widespread use of misleading edit summaries, then it's probably time to increment the number of Wikipedias in which he's no longer welcome. No doubt some of the same people who opined in the that RFC/U that he was being persecuted for his views will rush to his defense here, but it really falls to the greater community--how much longer will this conduct be allowed to continue? Jclemens (talk) 06:27, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
• Chris has been doing a great job with the merges so far, and needs to be allowed to continue. If it helps him to have the articles live as he merges them, then I don't see a problem holding them restored for a brief time. He already merged back a few last night before logging off[27][28][29], and given the sheer amount of cleanup and merging work he has put in over the last week, I don't see why we can't extend a little good faith that he is going to have that taken care of quickly. If that really is an insurmountable problem for everyone else, then since he is doing merges by going through the categories, then at least do him the favor of keeping the categories when you redirect the pages. BOZ (talk) 18:00, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I have no problem with Chris merging D&D articles in his own way, but he absolutely needs to master the simple courtesy of communicating with other users rather than making misguided accusations of bad faith or needlessly dragging them at ANI whenever something doesn't go exactly the way he wants.Folken de Fanel (talk) 18:21, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Nothing to see here. I noticed a comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mask (Forgotten Realms) explaining that a series of merges to List of Forgotten Realms deities, performed per a consensus discussion in 2010, had been restored by a disruptive IP around 2011. Some of these articles ended up at AfD recently, and I agreed with the editor's recommendation of a procedural close to redirect/merge. I went to check the discussion and all the articles that were part of the merge proposal. Indeed, most, if not all of them had been illegitimately restored by an IP, and since there were was already users asking for these articles to be redirected right away so as not to clutter AfD, I went ahead and restored the redirect, ie the merge procedure from 2010. I saw that the 2010 consensus was apparently satisfied with the short content already present beforehand in the target article, so I didn't do more than restoring the redirects that should have stayed as such. What little content was added to the articles between 2011 and now didn't amount to much, and WP:MERGE doesn't prevent only a small part of the article to be moved, so yeah, that's it. I simply returned things to the 2010 status-quo, and the accusation of "false edit summary" is at best laziness, or at worse outright and misguided assumption of bad faith from ChrisGualtieri.
This is really a non-issue and a useless cluttering of ANI. ChrisGualtieri can easily access article histories and move whatever content to the target he deems necessary (something he doesn't seem to get), if he considered there were better merge targets or ways to merge, then he could just have informed me, changed the redirect target without mass-reverting me, and just proceeded (as long as he has consensus on his side). ChrisGualtieri seems to have major communication issues per his recent ANI reports, and on top of that this comes only a day after he again misguidedly assumed bad faith against me about another case of redirect, so I would not appreciate if this behavior became a trend. I have also noted that ChrisGualtieri has just created a new article, List of human deities (Dungeons & Dragons), to apparently merge all the articles in question there. I don't necessarily agree with this choice, of which ChrisGualtieri failed to notify me, and I hope this ANI report was not a way to preemptively stifle opposition.Folken de Fanel (talk) 17:58, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

There is a lot wrong with your post.since you were notified of it going to this noticeboard. You have harassed me and caused a great amount of stress and all because you are incapable of understanding when people are even on your side. In the span of two weeks, I've done more to fix the Dungeons and Dragons content than you have in your entire editing history! Deletion is a last resort and of the 100+ pages I've merged, you have the audacity to flagrantly twist my words and actions into some sniveling little behavior dispute? Wikipedia is a collaborative project to build an encyclopedia; it is not therapy and you should not be here to fight anyone. Folken de Fanel, you are not worth MY time, and you are not worth this communities time when you refuse to understand even the most basic of reasons why I temporarily restored them: To prevent over 400 broken links that go into a redirect loop. If you had bothered to check and carry out a merger instead of creating said redirect loops, I wouldn't have rolled them back and I wouldn't have brought this here. You equate "causing stress" to a personal attack.[30] You have caused a lot of unnecessary stress with your battleground behavior and wasted hours of time responding to your sheepish excuses and disruptive actions. Now I am going to conduct the rest of the mergers now that I have a few spare hours and maybe do some of the 500 other D&D pages that need merging or fixing. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 22:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Outside of your own, obvious hostile behavior against me, I can't see anything here that belongs in ANI. I have provided all the necessary explanation in my previous comment, that you keep ignoring it and even go further in your groundless accusations speaks volumes about you. That's not the first time you've written frivolous ANI reports, so I wouldn't like you to think ANI is your go-to whenever you don't want to bother communicating. I'm not (yet) seeking sanctions against you because you're otherwise a valuable user, but I'm asking the closer of this thread to firmly remind you that ANI is not your personal alternative to civil discussion. Folken de Fanel (talk) 12:53, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• If one merges a number of articles which are only besourced to primary sources into a list (which is therefore similarly only sourced to primary sources), the list is just as subject to deletion as the original articles ("Lists, whether they are embedded lists or stand-alone lists, are encyclopedic content as are paragraphs and articles, and they are equally subject to Wikipedia's content policies"). Not that it would get deleted round here, as there are too many people prepared to ignore Wikipedia policy in AfDs, but I hope Chris is hoping to add some real-world notability to that article. Black Kite (talk) 18:37, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

The plain descrption of plot and characters in fiction can and should be preferentially taken from the work itself, it is one of the places where primary sources are appropriate. since the sections of an article or the content of a list of this sort do not have to meet any notability requirements, there is no need for secondary sourcing of undisputed factual content, and the attempt to remove such is one of the reasons why some of us are a little apprehensive about indiscriminate merging. This attitude that we should remove ll mention whatsoever of the actual events and individuals in a fiction is thoroughly unencyclopedic. BK, you closed a very closely related discussion at AN/I --your comment above suggests to me that you are too involved in these questions to have done so. DGG ( talk ) 23:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Yet, at the same time, WP:NOT#PLOT says we don't burden topics with too much detail taken from primary sources even if it is verifiable. If no secondary source has bothered to do a more detailed discussion or review of the fiction, we should not be going into that great detail ourselves. The articles FdF is merging rest heavily on the primary sources and attempts to show secondary sources have brought up nothing, and as such, a lot of that content has to be trimmed out in the merge to make the target article appropriate for Wikipedia. --MASEM (t) 06:02, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I closed the ANI as it was getting off the point (towards RFC/U territory) and there was no admin action required. As for the above, I don't see how merely stating Wikipedia policy is at all contentious. As Masem says, if "the articles ... rest heavily on the primary sources and attempts to show secondary sources have brought up nothing" then we shouldn't be creating a bigger article with the same problem. Since the individual items are non-notable, the one reason for having such a list (navigation) does not apply. To say "the content of a list of this sort do not have to meet any notability requirements" is flat out wrong - there has no be notability for the main subject of the list, and that means secondary sources. Otherwise we could create lists of, well, pretty much anything non-notable using the same criteria. Black Kite (talk) 10:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

DnD's use of deities (and how it changes between settings and over time) is certainly a subject that has received outside coverage. Now, I don't think the current organization in any way promotes the effective presentation of that coverage, and the merges (by race of fictional adherent? seriously?) don't seem at the moment to be creating any better of a situation. But the topic does pass N, because you could go write Gods in Dungeons & Dragons and that would be a real article on a notable topic. --erachima talk 10:28, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

At which point, due to its length, List of deities in Dungeons & Dragons is a valid WP:SPINOUT (if not worthy of being that topic's main article in its own right). I don't remember the precise bit of WP:ALPHABETSOUP but it's always been my understanding (after reading it long ago) that if a list is on a notable topic, the individual items in said list do not necessarily need to pass N themselves (and this is why, my not-yet-caffinated brain continues remembering, merging to a list is often a good idea at AfD). That said, we shouldn't necessarily merge wholesale from fails-N articles to a list, instead using "X is Y, and is recognised in-universe for Z" in a single paragraph at most in the list with the article redirected there. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 13:35, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Comment- I do not see how FdF's edit summaries are deceitful. It's very clear that he is not claiming to actually be merging anything. Rather, he explicitly states that he is returning these pages to their post-merge state and links to the discussion where the merges were proposed. That much is obvious from reading the edit summaries. And if that wasn't clear enough, he's said much the same thing here at this ill-thought-out ANI thread. Reyk _YO! 04:28, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Realistically, since we're not even prepared to put any constraints on Claritas' freedom to roam the fiction topic area removing content at will, there's no point even discussing Folken de Fanel. Unlike Claritas, FdF doesn't have a history of bad faith.

  I do seriously question the community's judgment on this. I think it's a horrible mistake to let these users blunder about the fiction topic area like loose cannons, and I feel we could save ourselves a lot of future drama and heartache with a few judicious topic bans. But the community won't stomach it, so move on.—S Marshall T/C 15:44, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Primarily because if we topic banned everyone who did anything controversial, nothing would ever get done. --erachima talk 15:56, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
• I still can't see anything "controversial" or any "blunder" that I would have done in this case. In 2010, a consensus discussion established that a series of articles were to be merged, and several users, including some who have contributed here, approved the move, as well as the amount of content being merged (perfectly in compliance with WP:Merging#Reasons for merger). In 2011, a disruptive IP reverted the redirects against consensus and without discussion. In 2013, some of these restored articles ended up at AfD, where a member of the D&D project noticed the IP's disruptions and remarked these articles were better restored back to redirects rather than cluttering AfD. Following the said AfD I found all the other articles in question and in perfect accordance with my edit summaries, merely restored them back to their 2010 status, which should never have been changed. If there was anything controversial or any blunder, it lies with the original disruptive IP and the misguided user who overreacted by opening this thread in blatant assumption of bad faith instead of just trying to properly understand the situation, or even to initiate simple communication. End of story.Folken de Fanel (talk) 16:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• A three-year-old consensus of three users is your justification for this, right?—S Marshall T/C 18:00, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Last time I checked, WP:CONSENSUS is one of our major policies. I hope, also per your ambiguous edit summary, that you're not suggesting it could be trumped by WP:INCLUSIONISM ?Folken de Fanel (talk) 18:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Wikipedia policies are like scripture; somewhere in the labyrinthine mess of rules you can find support for any position no matter how extreme. I'm sure you'll be able to trot out other policy-based excuses as well. What I'm suggesting is that you're justifying your actions on the basis of a three-year-old consensus of three users.—S Marshall T/C 18:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• And comments at AfD. And support in this very thread. Your point being...?Folken de Fanel (talk) 18:18, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• My point being that there's considerable good faith doubt about your edits in this topic area and you should not continue with them until the consensus is clearer.—S Marshall T/C 19:18, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• And there has been objection to this consensus...where? (Somebody coming along and deciding "oooh boy I can make this article on my favourite fictional deity/Transformer/Pokemon!" doesn't count.) - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 19:20, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• Exactly, I don't see those doubts in this discussion. Or at least they failed to garner consensus, which unfortunately forces me to consider them unreasonable.Folken de Fanel (talk) 22:11, 16 October 2013 (UTC)#

• Okay, well those of us who aren't The Bushranger or Folken de Fanel can see the doubts in this very thread. You're not "unfortunately forced to consider them unreasonable", FdF. You apparently choose to consider them unreasonable because it suits your purposes to do so. As I've said before, there's no chance of this leading to a topic ban of any kind because you've shown no bad faith on en.wiki recently, but there's a wide gulf between the absence of a topic ban and the ringing endorsement of your actions that you're pretending is happening here.—S Marshall T/C 23:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I think this is moving into other issues by proxy. The pages did not go to AFD, but no one is saying "keep" them either. Folken's behavior has been tacitly and implicitly directed to being a dick by other editors, but its best to not be a dick at all. Folken's edit summary was misleading, but all that is moot when 36 pages are redirected without checking them. Folken has lied, the defense of the mergers already being done are false with the mere existence of such redirect loops saying Folken did not merge or even "restore" the merger because they were never carried out (as pointed out above). His and another editor stating this is ANI (when it is not) is mere theatrics - I was not seeking administrative action at all. If Folken is going to act like a troll; then we should treat him like a troll and deny recognition. I don't want to seem as "not assuming good faith", but its pretty obvious the user has thrown AGF out the window a long time ago and willfully fails to engage in a collaborative process; and his behavior has only gotten worse since the RFC/U. I made this notice to have admins aware of the situation and prevent edit warring while the merging process is done - as it was never done before and was not done by Folken de Fanel. We all got better things to do, so let's not continue bickering over inclusionism or deletionism and other proxy matters - unless someone wants to keep those pages, speak up or forever hold your peace. And Folken should not be punished, his edits were done on the 5th and he was warned about the merges the following week - he is aware so let's not gang up on him or have him drawn and quartered for lying here at AN. He's out to save his skin and take me down it seems, but I'm not gonna press for action here. I got better things to do than waste my time. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 00:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Folken de Fanel has not been lying, either here or in his edit summaries, as has been conclusively proven in this discussion. The only poor behaviour I have seen is your misuse of rollback. Reyk _YO! 00:17, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

(Comment self removed - comment was twisted to a personal attack and I rather remove it as withdrawn in apologies to Folken ChrisGualtieri (talk) 23:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC) )

• Sigh. Folken restored a bunch of redirects that had been left behind after another editor's merge of those articles, stating so explicitly in his edit summaries, which also link back to the merge discussion. Your position is that not enough of the articles made it into the merge target for it to really be called a merge and therefore Folken's edit summaries are deliberately dishonest. What a load of bullshit. Reyk _YO! 03:15, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I split my reply into numbered items:

1. FdF's edit summaries and merging versus redirecting have been thoroughly discussed above. I think that your replies would be better directed to specific comments there.
2. I don't understand your reference to WP:Articles for deletion. WP:Articles for deletion/Mystra (goddess) was closed as no consensus in 2007. Do you mean that AfD is required to establish a binding decision and that Talk:List of Forgotten Realms deities/Archive 1#Merge with individual deity and deity group articles is not a valid merger discussion?
3. I agree with FdF calling the IP editors' restorations "disruptive". The users in question are 129.33.19.254 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) and editor(s) on a dynamic IP (208.54.38.223 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 208.54.40.145 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 208.54.40.242 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 208.54.40.240 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), from Tyr, Talos, and Mystra). No substantial improvements were made during December 2011, and the only added sources through today are source books, an adventure module, and a tie-in novel. A lack of acceptable reliable sources was the original rationale for merging. The date parameters were removed from the cleanup tags, but there may be a reasonable explanation.
   • Tyr (Forgotten Realms): October 2010–December 2011 diff, history; 2010–today diff
   • Talos (Forgotten Realms): October 2010–December 2011 diff, history; 2010–today diff
   • Mystra (Forgotten Realms): October 2010–December 2011 diff, history; 2010–today diff

Flatscan (talk) 04:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, if I'm being called a "dick", a "troll", a "liar" who "spews bad faith and threats to any opposer" and other nice words, all that while consensus in this thread is clearly supportive of my actions, I'm changing my mind and formally asking for sanctions against ChrisGualtieri following his blatant personal attacks (at AN of all places...). It's time for this farce to end.Folken de Fanel (talk) 16:56, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm closing this as I've said it was off-topic before. This is not AN and the page issues have been rectified. No need for drama between inclusionists and deletionists. Sorry, Folken if this upset you. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 23:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

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

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manning naming dispute closed

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

1. Hitmonchan (talk · contribs) is indefinitely topic-banned from all pages relating to any transgender topic or individual, broadly construed.
2. IFreedom1212 (talk · contribs) is indefinitely topic-banned from all pages relating to any transgender topic or individual, broadly construed.
3. Tarc (talk · contribs) is indefinitely topic-banned from all pages relating to any transgender topic or individual, broadly construed.
4. Josh Gorand (talk · contribs) is indefinitely topic-banned from all pages relating to any transgender topic or individual, broadly construed.
5. Baseball Bugs (talk · contribs) is indefinitely topic-banned from all pages relating to any transgender topic or individual, broadly construed. He is also topic banned from all pages (including biographies) related to leaks of classified information, broadly construed.
6. David Gerard (talk · contribs) is admonished for acting in a manner incompatible with the community's expectations of administrators (see David Gerard's use of tools).
7. David Gerard (talk · contribs) is indefinitely prohibited from using his administrator permissions (i) on pages relating to transgender people or issues and (ii) in situations involving such pages. This restriction may be first appealed after six months have elapsed, and every six months thereafter.
8. The standard discretionary sanctions adopted in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Sexology for (among other things) "all articles dealing with transgender issues" remain in force. For the avoidance of doubt, these discretionary sanctions apply to any dispute regarding the proper article title, pronoun usage, or other manner of referring to any individual known to be or self-identifying as transgender, including but not limited to Chelsea/Bradley Manning. Any sanctions imposed should be logged at the Sexology case, not this one.
9. All editors, especially those whose behavior was subject to a finding in this case, are reminded to maintain decorum and civility when engaged in discussions on Wikipedia, and to avoid commentary that demeans any other person, intentionally or not.

For the Arbitration Committee, Rschen7754 01:44, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Discuss this

Deprecate PROD, close unchallenged AfDs as delete without prejudice

I have made a proposal to deprecate PROD in favor of closing unchallenged AfDs as if they were successful PRODs. Since this will likely effect the workload of administrators in one way or another, I'm notifying you of the discussion as well as the relevant deletion process talk pages. If you have an opinion on the matter, please chime in there. --erachima talk 17:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Men's rights movement/Article probation

Based on a community discussion, MRM pages were put on article probation in October 2011. There is no expiration date. Based on a subsequent discussion, a WP:1RR restriction was imposed, which is set to expire on October 20, 2013.

I propose that we extend the 1RR restriction for another year. At the same time, I propose a modification of the wording. The general probation impacts all MRM-related pages. However, the 1RR restriction, as worded, literally applies only to the Men's rights movement article. I propose that the 1RR restriction can be applied to any MRM-related page. It has already been applied in that fashion, at least by me. Some of the entries in the sanction log aren't clear in that regard, so I'm not sure if other admins have also done so.

Although no sanctions have been logged since August 2013, the previous sanctions have been effective in minimizing the disruption to the MRM pages. In particular, a 1RR restriction, which is a bright line, is helpful. There are still editors out there, who, in my view, have an agenda, and I suspect more will pop up, even if we are vigilant, but potentially a greater number if we are not.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I support this motion because it is clear that POV activism by SPA editors is a constant feature of the topic. Raising the floodgates will overwhelm the article and related topics. Binksternet (talk) 02:30, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Given the truly horrible state of the Men's rights article (see my rant on the talk page), I'm unclear how things could get much worse. "By their fruits you shall know them" is a pretty good motto. And the fruits of this 1RR restriction are pretty nasty. Maybe not as bad as if the restriction were removed, but certainly not a poster child for 1RR working in this area. I'll defer to those that generally oversee this area on the 1RR continuation/expansion, but wow, that article is a mess of generalizations. Hobit (talk) 03:41, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I support the renewal and expansion. The restriction has very clearly forced things to be discussed on talk pages, and limited general disruption to the article. --Kyohyi (talk) 13:53, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support renewal and expansion. Although I haven't been active in the men's rights arena much lately for real life reasons, I have still been keeping half an eye on it, and the 1rr restriction has helped some of the silliness. The article isn't great, and until a greater body of comprehensive secondary literature about the movement emerges would be hard to make great, even without the silliness - and the silliness makes it harder. 1rr hasn't been a panacea, but has helped restrain some of the biggest problems. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support Bbb23's proposal fully. Article remains on my watch and I see this as a positive for the community to renew this probation as suggested.--Mark Miller (talk) 20:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support, unfortunately, because removing it would make it worse. Hobit, which rant? I'd be interested to hear if you have any suggestions for improving the "policing" of the article; I wish I had some. Drmies (talk) 02:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
  • It's under the NPOV tag section. I think the real issue is that those unhappy with the article have at least a few good points--the article is poorly written and seems to paint with too broad a brush. After having lots of things explained to me, I think the problems are fixable but it's a lot of work and I'm a horrible writer and I should be working... We'll see. Hobit (talk) 14:09, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support based on the history of conflict over this topic. I don't think a 1RR restriction puts an undo hardship upon Editors who work on these articles. Restriction can be revisited in a year. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:53, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support Reviewing the article and talk page history of Men's rights movement suggests to me that the value of the 1RR restriction on that specific article is still rather high and it should therefore be kept. Looking through the sanctions logs also leads me to support explicitly expanding the restriction to other MRM-related pages as well. In both the specific and the general cases, there still seems to be an issue with editors attempting to insert (and re-insert) advocacy without the support of good sources. Simple Sarah (talk) 16:45, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Loomspicker again

I've raised this issue here before, but the user in question oh-so-conveniently went inactive for a few days while the thread was open. To sum up, User:Loomspicker is a single-purpose account devoted to pretending Islamophobia doesn't exist by scrubbing the word from Wikipedia, and in the service of this crusade, has engaged in a number of prohibited behaviors. In addition to the evidence detailed here, which includes the introduction of factual inaccuracy, blanking sourced material, and adding scare quotes, he has more recently continued to misrepresent sources ([31] [32] [33]), remove sourced material ([34]), delink pages in an apparent attempt to orphan them so they can be deleted ([35] [36] [37]), and otherwise edit in a disruptive and POV manner. Please deal with this even if the user goes inactive in order to avoid scrutiny. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:21, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Should I take this to ANI instead? Either way, I don't want this to be archived without being addressed simply because the user stopped editing right when the thread opened. That's what happened last time, and obviously he simply resumed the disruptive behavior as soon as it seemed like no one was looking anymore. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:10, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

On HiyoHiyo article

On article HiyoHiyo, I created for the subject's request. Another user is saying negative things about subject of article; they are person involved with the off-wiki harassment. The name is LINDA. LINDA has caused internet controversey before. Their website is here. (Sorry not good English) --Playabeacha (talk) 01:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

New "templateditor" user right

Per the discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Template editor user right I have deployed the requested change and there is now a Wikipedia:Template editor user right that can be granted to users by administrators. This group allows editing of pages protected with the new "Protected template" level, and overrides the title blacklist.

You can see the new user right the user rights list special page. — MPelletier (WMF) ^(talk) 02:11, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Template editors needs help. Legoktm (talk) 04:26, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Made some bold additions. Comments welcome. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 08:27, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Backlog at WP:Requests for permissions/Template editor

Could an admin clear the backlog at WP:RTE? NE Ent 02:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

2 requests is not a backlog. Legoktm (talk) 04:25, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

1 when he posted. It's a joke and a way to let people know the noticeboard exists. Or at least that's how I took it. Hobit (talk) 04:54, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

This must be the fastest turnaround of a new feature in the history of the developers! The two successful candidates, User:NE Ent and User:Technical 13, should be congratulated. But meanwhile we still have a few details to specify. The template editor user right should be documented like the other permissions. A description should be included at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions#Permissions. There was a section called 'Guidelines for granting' in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Template editor user right. Assuming that those criteria now have consensus, they should be included on the permissions page. Each applicant should (from now on) be prepared to show that they met the requirements stated in the RfC, such as 150 edits to template space and five requested edits to fully protected templates. EdJohnston (talk) 05:03, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

This new user right is not going to be useful for template editing until various templates are re-set to the new protection level. This addition did not automatically change the protection of various templates as far as I know. For example, {{Navbox}} is still currently set at full "block all non-admin users" protection, not the "protected template" setting. So is some admin or bot going to go through all these templates? Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:10, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Right, I've already downgraded one template, see [38]. I don't think a mass unprotection is a good idea, rather if any template editor wants to edit something, they can ping me or any other admin and once it's downgraded, it'll stay there. It kinda reduces the whole point of the right on the first run, but mass null editing the most used templates on the 'pedia is not a good idea :). Legoktm (talk) 05:17, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I think a recent change to MediaWiki made it safe to make null edits to widely-transcluded templates, so a mass conversion may not be problematic. You should check that rather than take my word for it, though. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I too am very impressed with the turnaround on this, and hereby thank all the developers and admins who are working on it. See Wikipedia:Template editor and feel free to discuss changes on its talk page. For now I think we can go with the "by request" method of protection change, and after this whole thing has proven reliable for at least a little while, we can perhaps propose a sweep of the remaining templates. equazcion� 05:21, 17 Oct 2013 (UTC)

Anybody notice that we admins also now have the technical ability to apply "protected template" to any page, not just those in the template namespace? I successfully just applied it to one of my user sandbox pages as a test. The option appears on all other namespaces as well. Is this an unintentional bug? Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:28, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

This is how the code that Coren deployed works. It simply created a new protection level, but the MediaWiki software doesn't have any way to restrict that to any namespace. Legoktm (talk) 05:30, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I don't think this is a bug. Restricting the protection potential to a specific namespace isn't technically feasible at the moment, if I understand correctly. The protection is only to be applied to pages that are/were transcluded to such a rampant degree that full protection was warranted, which should only be the case for Template: space pages. However if there are any such pages in other namespaces, it could be applied to those as well. PS, regarding the posting of the guidelines, it seems most other permissions at WP:PERM have their guidelines laid out at their individual project-space pages (eg. Wikipedia:Autopatrolled), rather than at their actual WP:PERM request pages. equazcion� 05:32, 17 Oct 2013 (UTC)

I doubt it would take a huge amount of coding to make this possible (maybe I'm wrong), but the way I see it, why bother, when presumably all of our sysops can be trusted not to misapply this option. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 09:11, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Someone should make a new protection template for this instead of the redlock we use on full protected high risk templates. Mark Arsten (talk) 15:53, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Pending some decisions here equazcion� 16:01, 17 Oct 2013 (UTC)
• Let me add my kudos to the developers. I am supportive of the new right, but wondered if it might take some time for implementation. That was fast. Thanks.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:38, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• You're cordially invited (everyone) to help choose a padlock color for the new protection level. Apparently this is the most time-consuming part of the whole implementation :) equazcion� 17:04, 17 Oct 2013 (UTC)
  • This is only to be expected, per WP:BIKE :) -- Diannaa (talk) 22:53, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

A little help on a minor matter

I was unable to move File:Hippodrome.jpg to Commons using CommonsHelper (a communications problem with the tool) or CommonsHelper2 (probably my fault), so I moved the image by hand to File:New York Hippodrome.jpg (because there was already a file there by the other name). However, it seems that the file has a talk page with content in it. The content is negligible, and should really be on Talk:New York Hippodrome instead. I could move it, but that would break the copyright - so could an admin with a few minutes time please move the content, merge the histories of File talk:Hippodrome.jpg and Talk:New York Hippodrome and then delete the former, or whatever the proper procedure is? I'd appreciate it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

 Done Legoktm (talk) 04:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Please remove this page

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

---

Please remove! Someone put false information about my business and about it's employees here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Seaman_Guard_Ohio. Furthermore you will notice most of the information in the article is about the company when the article is supposed to be about a ship, not the company. So not only is it false information, but it's not even related to the subject matter! I tried to edit it but they keep changing it back and now they have given me warnings as if I was the perpetrator of this business war! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmartin77 (talk • contribs) 13:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

If you're trying to edit a page that you're connected to, I suggest you read conflict of interest, since users should try to not edit pages that they're affiliated with. ZappaOMati 13:53, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I DID go there but it told me to come here! "For internal conflicts of interest involving Wikipedia administrators, see Wikipedia: Administrators: Involved admins."

You can't use read a small sliver of the page and then go here. You need to read the whole page. ZappaOMati 13:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Maybe so (and you may be right about the COI), but you need to read the entire article to see if there's anything to the complaint. I think there is, and I have removed that section from the article. Such indirectly related negative information needs to be presented in a balanced way, and this particular article does not, as yet, strike me as the proper place to put it. Thank you Jmartin. Drmies (talk) 14:20, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

@ALL: Hello, I am the person who widely researched and contributed to the MV Seaman Guard Ohio article and see that my contributions have been discarded. Please check that I have consistantly given my sources of info and not reported any 'made-up info'.

Three other users sessions already deleted all my submissions and I had to revert it and request them to open any discussion in the article's talk page. I feel that deletions of my contributions, which are done in the spirit of Wikipedia, should not be quickly deleted without any prior discussion. However, I notice that multiple persons (which seem to appear to be the same user) are more interested in deletions without discussing the matter on the talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.240.180.58 (talk) 14:33, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

The back-ground info about the AdvanFort, which as since been purely and simply DELETED (but which you can view here [39]) is HIGHLY relevant because the firm is presently being investigated in India for illegal entry with military weapons and guards. The firm also has a past history which is far from clean. Therefore the history of the firm can and should be cited here in the article.

81.240.180.58 (talk) 14:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

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

Replacable non-free

Can someone deal with these? Thanks!

• Category:Replaceable non-free use to be decided after 21 September 2013 (discussion on file page)
• Category:Replaceable non-free use to be decided after 14 September 2013
• Category:Replaceable non-free use to be decided after 13 September 2013

— Train2104 (talk • contribs) 13:57, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Admin-bot op needed

here.—cyberpower _Online^{Trick or Treat} 16:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

How to request mass template removal?

Ï have just closed a TfD which is to keep 340 templates. Is there a regular place to request a bot assistance for this? I checked a number of instructions and could not find anything useful. Thanks in advance.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:11, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Extended content

Maybe ask the operator of the bot that's put them there in the first place? Doesn't take a genius. — Lfdder (talk) 20:14, 17 October 2013 (UTC) I can try this. Btw you are not in a position to reopen the discussion.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:16, 17 October 2013 (UTC) Lfdder, you've been blocked before for personal attacks, what's the point in being so unnecessarily aggravating? GiantSnowman 20:24, 17 October 2013 (UTC) I'd expect a proper fucking summary for a discussion this long and heated. But you probably can't write a proper fucking summary cause you either don't understand or didn't bother to read it. — Lfdder (talk) 20:26, 17 October 2013 (UTC) What fucking summary do you expect if it is 28:9, and 9 = merge + delete? Prepare the nomination better next time, and you might get a chance to delete those templates.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC) it's not a vote count, you're supposed to look at the merits. And I wasn't objecting to the outcome. — Lfdder (talk) 20:34, 17 October 2013 (UTC) Lfdder blocked. Let's discuss the matter of removing the templates. Nyttend (talk) 22:17, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

@Ymblanter:, don't worry about it. This is one of those rare situations when rollback is appropriate for non-vandalism, so I've removed everything I could find. It was a simple matter of going through the bot's contributions and rolling back 50 edits at a time, and then checking WhatLinksHere for templates named "icon" that linked to the TFD. Nyttend (talk) 22:32, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• It's also a great way to move on up in Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits. Nice work, Nyttend! The collapsed content makes for interesting reading, and it was probably headed that way already. Drmies (talk) 23:21, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

  Thank you very much @Nyttend:--Ymblanter (talk) 05:25, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

template uw-block

Should we update template {{uw-block}} to warn users that "pinging" or otherwise using notifications to flag other editors may result in loss of talk page access? NE Ent 02:01, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

That sounds risky ala WP:Beans. PaleAqua (talk) 02:14, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

And unnecessary. We don't need to provide a specific do and don't list to blocked users - they will do what they do, which will show what it shows, and consequences will or will not be forthcoming, depending on situation and circumstances, which I doubt we could fully explicate even if we wanted to. What's wrong with that? Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:28, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I might be a bit slow on the uptake today. Do you mean blocked users repeatedly "pinging" others in order to pester them with the little red notification box? Reyk _YO! 04:31, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I believe NE Ent's comment was sparked by Tumbleman's talk page access being removed by JamesBWatson after Tumbleman repeatedly pinged IRWolfie, with whom he had had disputes which were the root cause of Tumbleman's being blocked. See Tumbleman's talk page. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:17, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

That and what occurred at User talk:Retrolord#Appeal_workshop. PantherLeapord|My talk page|My CSD log 08:27, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Suppose someone violates an interaction ban or topic ban by repeatedly hitting the thanks button on the edits of someone they shouldn't interact with or on a topic they should avoid. That would of course be a violation (with no need to spell it out in the rules) that could end in a block, but can you still thank people for their edits while you are blocked from editing? --Guy Macon (talk) 09:20, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Let's try that out, shall we? Just kidding. IMO it would have to be proven that it's not genuine (aka intended to be disruptive or in violation of the ban) - do interaction/topic bans explicitly include thanking? Ansh666 09:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You can not thank someone for an edit while blocked. I recently raised the question of disabling pings from a curious perspective.—John Cline (talk) 09:55, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

John, what do you mean about "can not"? Is it technically disabled, or are you making an emphatic "must not"? Nyttend (talk) 11:45, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

It is not technically capable, whether it was disabled by design, or simply a bug that needn't be fixed, I do not know, but the (thank) link does not appear for a blocked user.—John Cline (talk) 14:40, 18 October 2013 (UTC)