User talk:JBW

If I left you a message on your talk page: please answer on your talk page, and drop me a brief note here to let me know you have done so. (You may do this by posting {{Talkback|your username}} on this page, or by writing your own note.) (I make only limited use of watchlisting, because I have found otherwise I am unable to keep it under control, and soon build up such a huge watchlist that it is unworkable.) If you leave me a message here: I will answer here, unless you request otherwise, or I think there are particular reasons to do otherwise, and usually I will notify you on your talk page. Please add new sections to the bottom of this page, and new messages to the bottoms of their sections. New messages at the top of the page may be overlooked. Clicking here will open a new section at the bottom of the page for a new message. After a section has not been edited for two weeks it is automatically moved to the latest archive. Links to those archives are given below. However, I reserve the right to delete vandalism, trolling or other unconstructive edits without archiving them.

Deutsche Standard

New sources will be added within 2 weeks, as i did not have time due to a new job. 172.56.17.79 (talk) 02:01, 4 June 2014‎ (UTC)

Response

Hello, JBW. You have new messages at Stephen B at USDA's talk page.
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Response to your message

Hello, JBW. You have new messages at Pigman's talk page.
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Response

Hello, JBW. You have new messages at GreyWinterOwl's talk page.
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Julian Assange

Hi there, as a recent editor of the page in question, you may wish to contribute to the discussions: ==Merge discussion for Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority ==

An article that you have been involved in editing, Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. prat (talk) 15:49, 20 September 2014 (UTC) prat (talk) 15:49, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

@Pratyeka: Informing substantial recent contributors to an article of a discussion is reasonable, but it is not clear that informing everyone who once made a trivial edit many months ago is useful. I once made a small edit to the article, well over a year ago, making the description "a recent editor of the page in question" questionable. I see that several other people you have informed also edited the article substantially over a year ago. I also see that you have not informed several much more recent editors, including three of the last ten editors to edit the article (not counting yourself and a bot). I have not examined the edits of the various editors concerned, so I don't know whether there is any common factor distinguishing the editors you have informed from those you haven't, but you should be aware that selectively informing some editors and not others could run the risk of looking like canvassing. Combine this with the fact that the discussion in question is an attempt by you to re-open a question which you raised before, which was discussed, with every single editor in the discussion apart from yourself being opposed to the merge proposal. Also, both of your merge proposals are effectively further attempts to get the article removed after two separate deletion discussions were both closed as "keep", making this rather like forum shopping, although you did not start the deletion discussions. You may like to think carefully about how clear it needs to be made to you that consensus is in favour of keeping the article before you decide to drop the matter. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 19:53, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Pratyeka, going off of what James said, there is no reason to ever canvass editors who have made one edit to the page. Oftentimes, many of us do not care what the article is about if we've made one edit. Other than the edit I performed today reverting your merge template, the only other edit I performed on that page was when I replaced a link with AutoWikiBrowser. That hardly is the edit pattern of someone who cares enough to participate in a merge discussion and appears to be blatant canvassing on your part. Furthermore, not notifying any of the recent contributors is in bad taste and your continued use of trying to remove the article in question will probably get you blocked if you do it again. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 21:14, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

In this case I just took the first two pages of the history of both pages in question, and contacted the editors. I don't think time is that relevant. I think this approach is reasonable. Rather than threatening me with ridiculous policy interpretations, perhaps you would like to enlighten yourself as to the fact that merger proposal process does actually encourage going and contacting people ... something I spent significant time and effort to do to enhance the chance of getting an open discussion with multiple points of view. As for reverting my proposal, I would like you to explain your reasoning as to why you feel you have the right to single-handedly make such changes? In this case I believe perhaps you midjudged the previous mergeer proposal as equivalent, in which case I understand fully. Please continue discussion on the talk page.. prat (talk) 05:02, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

There's a difference between notifying everyone, and notifying persons who have made meaningful contributions to the page. I changed one link, and was notified of a discussion on a page I couldn't care less about. Meanwhile, others who made recent changes were ignored. The policy does encourage notifying people, but you also don't need to identify everyone. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:27, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for blocking the Texas Rangers vandal

My only concern is that you may not have reverted back far enough. I reverted one particular edit, but the guy had been editing long before that. Someone may need to cross-check the records on the page with the Rangers' actual records in the seasons he touched. If you look into the page history, he probably had over a hundred edits there---how he wasn't caught beforehand is beyond me. Dozzzzzzzzzing off (talk) 18:59, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

A couple of queries

Hi James, there were a couple of things that I didn't understand with some of the assessments made about the current happenings on the Brahma Kumaris article. I see you've had a good look and looks to me like you would find your way around Wiki in your sleep no trouble, but do have any time to clarify a couple of things? (I see some admins are just so busy.....and it's only getting more demanding....). Cheers Danh108 (talk) 19:20, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

ok

i understood thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aditya pujari sagar (talk • contribs) 11:55, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Rizky Iconia

I'm a bit confused by the length of his block. His original ban for disruptive editing was for a period of one month[1]. He was then found abusing multiple accounts, for which he was apparently blocked indefinitely.[2] but his current status is block-free. Some clarification would be nice. Thank you. LRD 00:40, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

@LRD NO: I told the editor on the talk page of his/her sockpuppet account (User talk:Rizky Shaimoery) that he/she would be blocked indefinitely, and placed notices saying so on both user pages, but then forgot to actually put the indef block in place. Thanks for pointing this out, so that I have been able to correct my mistake. However, I am disappointed that the editor has not requested an unblock by now, as they had the potential to be a useful contributor, is only they would be willing to accept consensus. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 07:08, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Further to this, I believe Germany2014 (talk · contribs) is a sock of Rizky Iconia based on their editing behaviour... I will file an SPI shortly, maybe a CU would be worthwhile. Thanks, JMHamo (talk) 18:01, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

@JMHamo: @LRD NO: Germany2014 is a totally obvious sockpuppet account, and I have blocked the account. No SPI is needed for such a WP:DUCK case. There may be a case for a CheckUser in case of sleepers, but the SPI queue is currently severely backlogged, with 70 cases waiting for attention, including one that was filed about five weeks ago and is waiting for a CheckUser report, so it may not be worth doing. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 19:09, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I had a look at SPI queue and what a queue it is... I will keep an eye out for further Rizky Iconia socks. Cheers! JMHamo (talk) 22:05, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I think it's clear from the persistent sock and nature of edits that the editor has no intention to accept consensus. If someone is so stubborn as to create multiple alternate accounts to evade wikipedia policy, an indef block is more than validated in this case. It's rather ridiculous that he doesn't realise that those edits are so easily sussed out. LRD 23:56, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your action

Hi JBW,

Thanks for your diligent and intelligent assessment at Mrjulesd and DissidentAggressor .

You said "I have looked at a number of the articles in question, and having some knowledge of linguistics, I am able to say that most of the deleted content that I saw was not by any stretch of the imagination original research, or in any way controversial or doubtful. Much of it is stuff that I first read in reliable standard textbooks in the 1960s, and some of it has certainly been accepted fact since the nineteenth century." well I think what upset me about his actions, that fact that he was claiming WP:OR when it was obvious that he was wrong. Also that he wrote "I don't know crap about languages", how on earth can he claim WP:OR when he has no knowledge of languages? I am convinced that any perceived lack of citations does not automatically create the presumption that it is WP:OR.

You are right in your assessment " I have no way of knowing whether Mrjulesd has access to suitable sources or not, and even if he or she has, searching through them to find references for every statement removed from all the articles involved could be a very large task." Well I'm a he. I will try my best, but it will be difficult to find sources as most of the content was not written by me. I just noticed that he had blanked my work on Western Romance languages, despite the information being more or less that of the info box at the bottom. I then noticed that he had done the same to a large number of articles on linguistics and other subjects. Surely he should discuss it on the talk pages before doing this, at the very least?

Anyway, thanks again. --Mrjulesd (talk) 09:34, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

JamesBWatson, would you mind addressing this? It seems that even my removal of misplaced bold is not acceptable to Mrjulesd and I am not entitled to follow your suggestion to ask for more citations. The Dissident Aggressor 18:23, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

User:DissidentAggressor, I have already provided six references. If you checked them you would realise that my work is correctly sourced and verifiable. Please can stop harrassing my edits. I have reverted Western Romance languages as there was already a http://glottolog.org/ reference that, if you had checked it, would have provided ample evidence of properly sourced work. Please read WP:DE and try to fit in with the WP community. --Mrjulesd (talk) 18:33, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

More edit warring

JamesB, in addition to the diff above, and despite your admonishment about continued reversions being edit warring, MrJules has continued to revert my edits. I still can't figure out what was wrong with the removal of bold formatting he reverted. Perhaps you could intervene here? The Dissident Aggressor 04:18, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

• Why on earth are you continuing with your disruptive editing? I've been looking at your edits, and most of them are deletions of content that is correctly sourced and verifiable, sometimes with a sustantial list of references. But you totally ignore all the provided references, and pretend that the content is WP:OR, you never check any of the references provided. I shall continue reversing your edits if they are completely unjustified. --Mrjulesd (talk) 08:06, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

• Over the last couple of days I have spent some time looking at the relevant editing history. I will mention a few of the things I saw that suggest that there is room for both of you to give a little more thought about editing.

• Mrjulesd, did you really mean to do what you did in this edit? Your edit summary, which is about references, seems to have no connection with what the edit actually did, which was almost entirely restoring bold text to various parts of the article. I can only assume that you thought you were doing something else, and did not check clearly enough what your edit was doing. Also,while I personally have no opinion about most of the bits of bolding (and don't understand why anyone would care enough to bother to either remove them or restore them once they were removed), there are a few bits which really don't seem appropriate. For example, do you really think that restoring the bold text in "Some other Romance languages are spoken in North Italy, but are not included in the Northern Italian Dialects" was an improvement? On a different issue, in one or two of your talk page edits, you seem (if I understand you correctly) to be suggesting that an unsourced statement is OK because there are sources cited on a different Wikipedia page, and the reader can find them by following links from the article in question. For example, that is the best sense I can make of your comment at Talk:Western Romance languages concerning a template. Unfortunately, there are at least two problems with that approach. (1) It is unrealistic to expect a reader wanting to see a source for a statement to guess that there may be sources cited in other pages, guess which links to follow, and spend a lot of time trying to find the right one. In fact, most Wikipedia readers (as opposed to editors) don't know anything at all about such things as Wikipedia templates, and therefore are unlikely to have any idea that they may contain sources. (2) The content may at some time be removed from the other page, or that other page may even be deleted. For those reasons, and perhaps others, contents of an article should be referenced directly, in that article, and we should not rely on "the information is given on another page".

• The Dissident Aggressor On more than one page where you removed content because it was not sourced, I found that less than a minute on Google produced far more than enough sources. Yes, I know that by policy the burden is not on you to find sources, but while it would be unreasonable to expect you to do extensive searching through academic texts not readily available, it is not unreasonable to suggest that nobody should ever remove content merely because it is unsourced when a minute's work would enable anyone at all to find sources. Bear in mind that the ultimate objective is to improve the encyclopaedia, not to follow some set of rules, and it does not improve the encyclopaedia to remove good content, just because nobody has added a reference which can easily be added. I also saw cases where you removed a sentence which was tagged for sources, but left intact other sentences in the same article which included the same claims, sometimes without references, but sometimes with references, which served perfectly well as sources which you removed. It looks rather as though your only criterion was "someone tagged this statement for sources a while ago", rather than "someone tagged this statement for sources a while ago and I have made a careful assessment, and concluded that it is indeed true that there is no reference in the article for this statement, that it is not easy to find any, and that the content is sufficiently dubious that it is, on the whole, better to leave it out of the article". It may be helpful to reconsider your approach to dealing with "citation needed" tags. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 10:59, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

• JamesBWatson: the edit that I reversed on Italo-Dalmatian languages was not the edit I intended to revert. He made several edits in close succesion, which confused me. The actual edit I intended to revert was the one accusing me of not properly sourcing the article. Now if The Dissident Aggressor had looked at the bottom of the article he would have found perfectly adequate sources for the article. So I felt that being accused of not properly sourcing the article was wrong. He gave me no grounds for his assertion. He had earlier tagged the article as being essay-like, and contained original research, which are ridiculous. I think he was trying to get back at me for accusing him of vandalism.

As for my comments of the talk page at Western Romance languages, you're right, just pointing out the infobox supported me was probably not a great argument for accuracy. But I later pointed out that there was also already a glottolog reference that supported my views on classification, which he had failed to investigate. Only after pointing out that did I revert his edit. --Mrjulesd (talk) 11:45, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

If you could weigh in here (especially the latter parts), it would be appreciated. I've taken the discussion about as far as I can. The Dissident Aggressor 23:39, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

First of all, apologies for not replying earlier. However, here are some of my thoughts on the disagreements between the two of you, DissidentAggressor and Mrjulesd.

What I see is two editors, both acting in good faith, both largely constructive, but both making some mistakes in dealing with other editors. It is clear that the two of you have very different approaches, and different strengths and weaknesses as Wikipedia editors. It seems that there may be an unfortunate clash between the strengths and weaknesses on each side, with each of you seeing faults in the other editor in areas where you yourself do not have similar faults, with the result that the other's faults seem to you very large, while you possibly don't see your own faults. I have looked at Talk:Italo-Western languages, where both of you have commented, and it seems to me that there I see a microcosm of the interactions between you that I have seen elsewhere, so I will make some observations on what I saw there, and, for what it's worth, offer some advice.

Mrjulesd, I am far from being an expert on Italo-Western languages, but I have enough knowledge of the subject to be convinced that on the issues concerning the content of the article you are perfectly right: the Gallo-Italic languages and Venetian can be regarded as either Western Romance or Italo-Romance. I can understand your frustration at trying to deal with an editor who denies that, and who simply fails or refuses (it's difficult to say which) to understand the reasons you give. However, you seem not to see a fact which seems to me very obvious, and which I guess would seem equally obvious to most outside observers. That is the fact that the methods you use to try to get your point across are likely to be heavily counterproductive. For example, saying to someone you disagree with "You are either a vandal or just ignorant" is very unlikely to get them to take notice of what you are trying to explain to them. Saying things like that is unhelpful, even if it is true. You may remember that the reason I came into contact with you and DissidentAggressor in the first place was that I assessed a report you made at Administrator intervention against vandalism, and that I decided that although there were problems, there was no vandalism. If you accuse people who are acting in good faith (even if mistakenly) of "vandalism", the only things you will achieve are antagonising other editors, making them less likely to take notice of any valid points you may have, and possibly eventually getting yourself blocked, because continually throwing unjustified accusations around is disruptive. Another one of your faults is one that I can fully sympathise with, because I know that it is a fault that I suffer from too. That is writing at excessive length. The mistake which I make, and which it seems to me that you make too, is to try to say everything that is relevant, rather than just giving a summary of the main points. Writing a huge wall of text is counterproductive, because nobody will read it all, people may therefore miss important points that are buried among the minor points, and they take less notice of what you say, because they see you as ranting. Quite often, when I have written a talk page post, before clicking "Save page", I re-read it, and cut out a large of it. Probably I should do that more than I do, and I suggest you may like to think about it.

DissidentAggressor, I agree with much of the substance of what you say. For example, you say "there really hasn't been any discussion. I've seen walls of text thrown around, accusations of vandalism and incompetence, acts of passive aggression and dismissal", and that is exactly the way I see it. However, I wonder whether you saying that is likely to be helpful. As I have already indicated in my comments above to Mrjulesd, even if something is true, it is not always helpful to say it. I have no problem with the substance of what you said on that talk page, but there may be a problem with the way you said it, and perhaps a bigger problem with the fact that it was you that said it. You intervened in an argument on a talk page which you had never edited before, relating to an article that you have never edited at all. Your first comment there was "So anyone who disagrees with you is either a vandal or ignorant and should stop editing pages that you are interested in? Right", and that comment was addressed to an editor you had previously been in conflict with, in connection with other articles. I have two suggestions to make about that. (1) I have already indicated above that I think accusing everybody one disagrees with of such things as "vandalism" and "ignorance" is unhelpful, but the way you said it was unlikely, I think, to get the person it was addressed to on your side. Indeed, it could possibly be considered an example of the very "passive aggression" that you yourself criticised on the same page. (2) Going to pages where you have never before had any involvement, but where an editor with whom you have a history of conflict is in a dispute, and making critical remarks about that editor, could well be seen as stalking and harassing that editor. If there seems to be a pattern of such following around of an editor to make negative comments, it could even lead to your being blocked.

My advice to both of you would be to keep away from one another, since the history of your interactions makes it likely that it will be difficult for you to collaborate without problems. (It seems to me that it shouldn't be too difficult for you to keep apart, since you mostly edit in different areas, and had no contact with one another until 23 September, when DissidentAggressor suddenly started editing numerous linguistic articles which Mrjulesd had already been editing, some of them over a long time period.) Of course, that is just my advice, and it is entirely up to the two of you whether you choose to follow it. As you know, I first came upon the dispute between you in the course of assessing reports at "Administrator intervention against vandalism", and I still view myself as acting here as an administrator. However, being an administrator gives me no more ability to resolve disputes than any other experienced editor, nor does it give my advice any more authority. What being an administrator does do is give me the ability to perform certain actions, such as deleting pages and blocking editors. I don't wish to perform any of those actions, because it seems to me that, despite the various difficulties you both experience, you are both good-faith editors who both do a lot of good for the encyclopaedia. However, both of you, in different ways, have been doing things which are unhelpful, and which could be considered disruptive, and if you do continue, it is far from being out of the question that one or both of you may eventually be blocked, so I do urge you both to think carefully about what I have suggested. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 12:50, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments

JamesBWatson: Thanks again for your comments, which always seem to be logical and fair. Also, your recent edits that I've noticed seem admirable. I was hoping that you wouldn't need to comment any more on these issues, as I know you have far more important work in your fight against vandalism, and quite possibly in real life.

My dealings with The Dissident Aggressor: you're right, the best thing for me to do is to try to ignore him, and stay away from him as much as I possibly can. Any contact I have with him is never enjoyable, the more contact I have with him, the less I enjoy Wikipedia. He doesn't seem to have done any mass deletions recently, which suggests to me that maybe some good will come out of all this. So I've just got to try to ignore his remarks, which can irritate me, as they generally seem to be counter-productive.

My dealings with JorisvS: again this has been challenging for me. It started when he deleted most of my work from Italo-Dalmatian languages with a “rv” tag, work that I thought was extremely accurate and important. I reverted, but he reverted it again. Not wanting an edit war, I tried to question his edits on the talk page, which didn't progress very well. Then he did a similar edit on Italo-Western languages, which again annoyed me since I felt we hadn't finished our discussions on Italo-Dalmatian. But you're right, some comments I made may have been unhelpful.

Anyway, I've got a question about about dealing with disputes amongst editors. Obviously, to avoid an edit war, it best to try to sort out your differences on the Talk Pages. But when you've discussed issues thoroughly, and yet your differences remain, what recourse have you got? What is the best way to appeal against differences? In this case it was not obvious vandalism, it just seemed like lack of understanding, or possibly JorisvS didn't want to lose face. --Mrjulesd (talk) 14:17, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid, Mrjulesd, that in my opinion "what recourse have you got" when you have tried to discuss things and got nowhere is one of the questions which Wikipedia just doesn't have an adequate answer to. There are various suggestions at WP:Dispute resolution, and you may find one of them helpful, but in my experience most of them often tend to be just further ways of dragging out the dispute, very often without settling anything. Personally, I hate getting into unpleasant scenes so much that if I find a disagreement with another editor just isn't getting anywhere, I tend to just drop the matter and move on to editing somewhere else, but that solution doesn't suit everyone. Of course, that would not be an answer if I ever found myself dealing with an editor who just wouldn't let me go, and kept pestering me after I had dropped the matter, but in that case I would consult an administrator, asking him or her if he or she would block the offending editor. As an administrator, if I received a request of that kind, I would certainly be willing to block any editor who, after being told to stop pestering another editor, still did so, no matter how right or wrong I felt each of them was in the original dispute. However, you may find it worthwhile to have a look at WP:Dispute resolution, if you haven't done so already: the fact that my experience suggests that it often isn't helpful doesn't mean that it is never helpful.

One other point: my personal view is that taking such a case to one of the admin noticeboards would be an absolute last resort. Sometimes they can be helpful, but I find all too often they just create yet more unpleasantness and bad feeling, dragging out the dispute for even longer, and settling nothing. Of course, that is just my opinion, and you may feel differently. (The one striking exception is WP:AIV, which very often does deal with things, and even when it doesn't, it usually doesn't start up an endless argument and make things even worse.) The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 20:53, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Ok thanks again JamesBWatson. I was reading Wikipedia:GETOVERIT, and I think that it is probably good advice in some situations. Even if you "win" in certain situations it can be an unpleasant experience, and there is no telling whether the same thing will happen again, which kind of happened to me to some degree. --Mrjulesd (talk) 21:52, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Here we go again...

Good afternoon. You will certainly recall 74.135.53.96 (talk · contribs), otherwise known as 98.28.115.67 (talk · contribs) and various other IP's. His/her newest incarnation is 184.57.49.33 (talk · contribs), as evidenced by its geolocation to the same spot in central Ohio, and the same unsourced/unexplained/unexplainable edits on some of the same articles. Cheers, DoctorJoeE ^{review transgressions}/_{talk to me!} 18:37, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I have blocked the IP address, and rolled back outstanding edits. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 07:11, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, as always -- I hope this guy throws in the towel so I don't have to keep pestering you about him. I only recently discovered the "rollback" feature -- is that something only available to admins, or can regular editors request it, and if so, how? DoctorJoeE ^{review transgressions}/_{talk to me!} 23:17, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Please disregard the above -- I just answered my own question -- Twinkle gives me essentially the same function as rollback. Cheers, DoctorJoeE ^{review transgressions}/_{talk to me!} 23:48, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks for looking into my matters. Its really nice to have a third opinion on things, it has helped me deal the annoyance I felt in the situation. All your hard work is not unappreciated. Mrjulesd (talk) 01:27, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Links to another page with the same name

Perhaps you could explain to me or to user Wee Curry Monster about what's so wrong about having a link to another page that not only has the same name, but to someone that's also a porn star actress?[3] Now that page is up for deletion[4], but user Wee Curry Monster's problem with it seems to be just because to goes to a page to a person who does short sex films, is that really a reason to not to have a This article is about so and so, For the so and so, see link???68.75.24.68 (talk) 21:25, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

If you can't see for yourself why linking from an article about a children's cartoon character to an article about a pornographic performer is inappropriate, then I am not sure where to start explaining to you. (Wee Curry Monster has already said that that is the reason.) The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 07:55, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi, James. There's now a discussion about this on AN, here. Bishonen | talk 00:27, 30 September 2014 (UTC).

Stop Islamization of America‎

Thanks for your cleaning up, but did you really mean to leave it in it's current state? -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 08:12, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

@Roxy the dog: It took me a while to figure out what was going on: I removed the speedy deletion tag, but another copy of the speedy deletion notice kept showing up where none was to be found in the source text of the article, which was also the case in dozens of other articles. Eventually I realised it was because the articles all transcluded Template:Islamophobia, which contained a copy of the speedy deletion tag. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 08:29, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

wow, I have no idea what transcluded means - I suppose I've been here long enough to actually know by now. Thanks. -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 10:50, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Basically, Roxy, if a page is "transcluded", it means that another page has a link to it, which has the result that the page where the link is shows a complete copy of the transcluded page. This is useful where the same content is to be shown on a number of different pages: instead of having loads of different copies of the same content, and having to try to make sure that every copy is updated when necessary, we have just one copy, and when that one copy is edited, the changes automatically appear on all the different pages where it is transcluded. For example, if you look at the article Quran desecration, part way down the right hand side you will see a box labelled "Part of a series on Islamophobia". That box is, in fact, a transclusion of Template:Islamophobia, and it is there because the link {{islamophobia}} is included in the source text of the article. Some hours ago, someone put a speedy deletion tag on that template, with the result that the speedy deletion tag was transcluded on 21 different pages where the template is transcluded. (Above, I said "dozens", which was just a guess, but it seems I wasn't far out.) If you are interested, you can read more at Wikipedia:Transclusion. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 13:34, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

That's the first explanation of "transclusion" that has got through to me, and I have also skimmed the WP:transclusion page too. Thanks for taking the time to explain. best. -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 16:04, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

"New" Editor

Excuse me, JBW, I wish I could spare your time, but I thought you might be interested in looking at [this account] that suddenly appeared with the exact same arguments of Jan18/TITOR. His first edit was in may 2014 reverting to the exact same version of the article Jan18 kept, and now he is apparently ranting at User talk:EdJohnston. GreyWinterOwl (talk) 11:28, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and there are other aspects of the account's editing which look suspicious, too. I am close to blocking the account as a duck, but I would be a little happier if I had CheckUser input. Since there is a horrendous backlog of cases at WP:SPI, I will try asking an individual CU directly if he will be willing to have a look. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 11:56, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, a user also seems to have opened an [SPI] shortly after I opened this thread. GreyWinterOwl (talk) 12:03, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

The new account has now started reverting the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University article to TITOR's preferred version. --McGeddon (talk) 13:02, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes. The accumulation of evidence is now enough, without waiting for a CheckUser, so I have blocked the account. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 13:21, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Now that this user has been banned and the article is being chattily tidied up two SPA editors (one with a COI, and the other unwilling to say whether or not they have a COI), can I ask where things now stand with your statement from last month that "If I were to block the account "Truth is the only religion" then there is at least one other account on the other side that I would certainly block too"? --McGeddon (talk) 10:09, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

@McGeddon: Oh dear. I have to say that I am no longer as clear about that as I was. I am still as sure as ever that the activity of various SPAs is unhelpful to the project, and that blocking an editor on one side without blocking any on the other may have downsides, but I am no longer as sure as I was that there is any one account that I can confidently say is a sockpuppet. It is possible that when I wrote the message you refer to, I was aware of definite evidence that I don't recall at the moment. I will try to find time to look into it again, but unfortunately I am very unlikely to be able to give it the time that will be required to do the job properly until at least Tuesday. Meanwhile, if you have any information that you think might help, please let me know. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 18:39, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

No rush. And not much to add: User:Danh108 has stated having a connection to the group and a strong opposition to the Wikipedia edits of a "negative advocacy group", but doesn't feel that this is an actual COI. I made two posts about this at COIN to get a second opinion, but got no response; Danh108 took this as there being "no consensus" for my reading of COI and has continued to edit the article directly. User:GreyWinterOwl would rather not say whether he or she also has a connection. I don't share TITOR's conviction that the two editors are part of some closely coordinated Brahma Kumaris group, but I'm a little concerned that (since all of TITOR's edits were messy reverts) the article may now be largely in the hands of two COI editors who think it's okay for them to make edits because they're good people and they mean well. --McGeddon (talk) 19:08, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I do get the concern about the possibility of COI editors being left alone on the page and messaged McGeddon about this. JBW, it would be really good to get your opinion on whether my COI is apparent or potential (I say the former, McGeddon is concerned it could be the latter). It's just not true that I said "no consensus" and went on editing. Even though it was McGeddon's beef and there were no responses to his COIN, I messaged Adjwilley to try and get a respected opinion - basically having to run McGeddon's case for him (not bagging McG, but I think he has erred in suggesting my guilt is assumed and innocence had to be proven). Unfortunately Adjwilley didn't pass comment on this, but he did come to contribute to the article.

I think I should be judged on my editing, the fact that I am responsive to any feedback you give and willing to compromise with people's different views on how the article should be written. Otherwise it's more like I'm being judged based on one troll who spreads doubt, conspiracy and suspicion on anyone who gets in the way of his rigid editing agenda and I have been targeted by him because I got him blocked for outing me and smelt the rat (along with a few) with Marriage of Convenience and his other sock/s.

The sympathy you expressed in your block comments to Marriage of Convenience is the same thing that got me started editing Wikipedia, not an ambition to create a POV laden or promotional article, and I don't think there is any evidence of this (though I have done some things out of ignorance like make a 'linkfarm' for their retreat centres). Other 'promotional content' deleted was directly from RS and other encyclopedia's, so they were legitimate, but I respect there are a range of ways to write the article up.

Thanks for your time and efforts so far in clearing things up. Much appreciated. Danh108 (talk) 22:42, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

If you allow me I would like to add some things. First I am not in Wikipedia to promote Brahma Kumaris. I´m sure you won´t find a diff where I add any promotional content. I am not a single purpose account either. Half of my article edits were to articles not related to BK. And 95% of the edits I made to the BK related articles were to remove OR and fringe POV added by Januarythe18th. But that doesn´t mean I want to promote the subject. I do recognize that the article right now is promotional and I have declared support for all edits by McGeddon and Adjwilley to remove the promotional tone/content, and bring the article to neutrality. After the latest Jan18 socks were blocked, I thought McGeddon and Adjwilley would continue to remove the promotional content, but instead I am shocked to see McGeddon is accusing me and suggesting that I be insta-blocked?

I apologize if I had not opposed Danh108´s edits that added promotional content. At first I thought they were ok, because the user used RS and I saw it as a restoration of the article from its previous state when owned by Jan18. But now I do agree it´s too flowery and I offer myself to support the removal of anything you guys perceive as advert, and I hope this can demonstrate my good faith. I have said before and will repeat: I don´t work with Danh, I don´t share whatever is his POV, I don´t know who he is (except what Jan18 disclosed about him, if it´s true) and I never spoke to him, or anyone else off-wiki except JBW to share evidence and John Carter who provided me some RS.

McGeddon and Adjwilley made many edits which I consider to have significantly improved the quality of the article, and I never reverted a single one of them. For many months I don´t do any edit on this article except small grammar corrections, so clearly I am not even remotely owning the article. I hope this have made things clear about my intentions, and please let´s work to remove the promotional content of the article and then we will see whether Danh will accept our edits or oppose them. I personally don´t think he is ill-intended, he is just trying to make a good article, but has exaggerated it at many points, but he too hasn´t reverted McGeddon and Adjwilley and said he wants more independent eyes on it. Does that sound like owning?

About McGeddon´s accusations, I think they consist in trying to remove people affiliated to a religion from editing the religion´s article, but the problem is that I think most, if not all religious articles on WP have respective adherents edting them. I don´t want to disclose my religious affiliation because it´s a personal information I wish to keep private and don´t think it´s necessary to reveal it. I hope my support to removing anything promotional will be enough to demonstrate my good faith. I apologize for any mistake I may have done. GreyWinterOwl (talk) 23:00, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Debian Kit

I'm confused as to your deletion reason of Debian Kit. Can you elaborate? Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:27, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid the limited space available in a deletion log entry made it difficult to explain fully, but I'll try to make it clearer now. Up to the last edit but one, the article was an unambiguous copyright infringement. I considered deleting all but that last revision, but that last revision consisted almost entirely of a list that was already in the earlier versions, so leaving that revision without the earlier revisions would have failed to give copyright attribution, and would have wrongly attributed it to you. It was a very small amount of content, and in such situations it is quite common to just leave the article as it is, but that is not fully satisfactory, as making copyright infringing text available does not somehow become legal and OK because a reader has to first go to a page labelled "Revision history" in order to reach the illegal content. Eventually, I decided that the article in its final version, after you had removed most of its content, had so little in it that it would be easy enough to re-create a substantially similar article, if you want to, and so the simplest way to deal with the problem would be to delete it, and let you re-create it if you wanted to. I intended to come to your talk page and explain my reasons to you, but I got distracted and forgot to do so, for which I apologise. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 14:40, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Since attribution only requires that the author be indicated, couldn't you restore all of the revisions and then use RevDel to hide the text of the infringing ones while keeping the authors' names? Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:55, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Request for help understanding procedure

Hi James, I saw the change you made to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:New_Covenant_Ministries_International replacing the "admin help" tags with "help" tags. Thanks for doing that. Please, help me understand what the right procedure I should have taken to address the problems with the page. I looked at the page and saw that there was a systemic problem with the way the page was being edited by the majority editor. Almost 2/3 of the edits had been done by that editor and along with many other problems with the page there were many edits that had been done that were strong indications of bias. I talked extensively with that editor about specific problems and about the systemic problems and made little progress, in fact, I found a lot of resistance. After not being able to address the really egregious problems with the editor I wrote the two posts in the NCMI talk page outlining one of the problems (the CIFS quote and the systemic problem). I assumed, it seems wrongly, that I needed to communicate this to administration. I eventually brought the COI to the COI noticeboard. Please explain briefly or point me to a page (so that I will know what to do in the future) why the two posts I put on the NCMI talk page addressed to administrators should have gone to the regular help page. And what should I have done when I was running into protracted discussions and not getting anywhere on the really significant problems with the page? thanks...MuzickMaker (talk) 23:53, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

BigShowandKane

That user BigShowandKane64 is back, this time as 75.146.18.113 (talk · contribs). Isn't it time to get a range block on him? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 02:11, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

@Sjones23: Thanks for telling me. I have blocked the IP address, but I haven't found any other edits from IP addresses in a range that are obviously from the same editor. If you know of any, please let me know, and I will consider whether a range block is suitable. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 18:55, 5 October 2014 (UTC)