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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Administrative discussions

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive366#IBAN_appeal

(Initiated 32 days ago on 18 October 2024) This shouldn't have been archived by a bot without closure. Heartfox (talk) 02:55, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

@Heartfox: The page is archived by lowercase sigmabot III (talk · contribs), which gets its configuration frum the {{User:MiszaBot/config}} at the top of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. Crucially, this has the parameter |algo=old(7d) which means that any thread with no comments for seven days is eligible for archiving. At the time that the IBAN appeal thread was archived, the time was 00:00, 2 November 2024 - seven days back from that is 00:00, 26 October 2024, and the most recent comment to the thread concerned was made at 22:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC). This was more than seven days earlier: the archiving was carried out correctly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:16, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

There was no need for this because archived threads can be closed too. It is not necessary for them to remain on noticeboard. Capitals00 (talk) 03:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. It is back in the archive, and hopefully someone can close it there. Heartfox (talk) 05:23, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive366#Is_WP:RECALL_a_policy?

(Initiated 21 days ago on 28 October 2024) Discussion has slowed for the last week. I think the consensus is pretty clear, but I'm involved. – Joe (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

 Note: discussion has been archived. voorts (talk/contributions) 16:52, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Requests for comment

Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline

(Initiated 101 days ago on 9 August 2024)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline is WP:PROPOSAL for a new WP:SNG. The discussion currently stands at 503 comments from 78 editors or 1.8 tomats of text, so please accept the hot beverage of your choice ☕️ and settle in to read for a while. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

 Closed by editor Tamzin. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 08:23, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Memorial_Hall_(Harvard_University)#Rfc_on_use_of_"imposing"

(Initiated 97 days ago on 14 August 2024)

Coming up on two months since the last comment. Consensus seems pretty clear, but would like an uninvolved party to look it over. Seasider53 (talk) 23:13, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:International Churches of Christ#RfC: Referring to International Churches of Christ (ICOC) as a cult in the lead

(Initiated 61 days ago on 19 September 2024) Legobot removed the RFC template on 20/10/2024. Discussoin has slowed. Can we please have a independent close. TarnishedPath^talk 23:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... I've read the whole discussion, but this one is complex enough that I need to digest it and reread it later now that I have a clear framing of all the issues in my mind. Ideally, I'll close this sometime this week. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 20:23, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. This issue has been going on in various discussions on the talk page for a while so there is no rush. TarnishedPath^talk 03:26, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: just checking in here. voorts (talk/contributions) 16:53, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm still working on this, and I apologize for the delay. Because of my health problems, I only occasionally have days where I am fit to take on complex stuff like closures, and this particular one is testing me. I do have an outline of my findings in a document, but need to flesh it out and proof it against the discussion. I could finish this as soon as tomorrow, depending on how things go, but I can't promise anything. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 19:39, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

No worries. Your health always comes first. Best, voorts (talk/contributions) 23:12, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I fear I gave the wrong impression. My health is in no jeopardy whatsoever, I just have intractable problems with fatigue and focus that frequently keep me from doing the things I want and intend. I appreciate your concern, though. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 19:37, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 456#RfC: using photos of record labels from Discogs?

(Initiated 51 days ago on 28 September 2024) Discussion has died down and last vote was over a week ago. CNC (talk) 17:31, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Archived. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 20:53, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/In the news criteria amendments

(Initiated 42 days ago on 7 October 2024) Tough one, died down, will expire tomorrow. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Turkey#RfC_on_massacres_and_genocides_in_the_lead

(Initiated 41 days ago on 8 October 2024) Expired tag, no new comments in more than a week. KhndzorUtogh (talk) 21:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:David Lammy#RfC: First sentence

(Initiated 35 days ago on 15 October 2024) Discussion has died down. The last vote was on 4 November. Khiikiat (talk) 10:10, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:One_Direction#RfC: Band status and members in the infobox

(Initiated 32 days ago on 18 October 2024) Expired today, last comment was three weeks ago. The consensus on this RfC appears to lean one way among the participants, but because of the high-profile and contentious nature of the change under discussion, I think an uninvolved editor should close. Thesixthstaff (talk) 19:25, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Administrator recall#RfC: Should we add text prescribing just signatures, no discussion?

(Initiated 16 days ago on 3 November 2024) The amount of no !votes relative to yes !votes coupled with the several comments arguing it's premature suggests this should probably be SNOW closed. Sincerely, Dilettante 16:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Deletion discussions

XFD backlog

V	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Total
CfD	0	0	0	35	35
TfD	0	0	0	3	3
MfD	0	0	0	5	5
FfD	0	0	0	2	2
RfD	0	0	5	58	63
AfD	0	0	0	0	0

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 November 8#Confederation of the Rhine

(Initiated 19 days ago on 31 October 2024) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:15, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 November 9#Category:Fictional characters from the Solar System

(Initiated 10 days ago on 9 November 2024) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 21:18, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 02:07, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Other types of closing requests

Talk:Feminist art movement#proposing merge of Feminist art into Feminist art movement

(Initiated 307 days ago on 16 January 2024) It would be helpful for an uninvolved editor to close this discussion on a merge from Feminist art to Feminist art movement; there have been no new comments in more than 2 months. Klbrain (talk) 13:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... may take a crack at this close, if no one objects. Allan Nonymous (talk) 17:47, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:List of pholidotans#Merge to Manidae

(Initiated 19 days ago on 31 October 2024) Discussion only occurred on the day of proposal, and since then no further argument has been made. I don't think this discussion is going anywhere, so a close may be in order here. Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 07:03, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to close this so soon. Merge proposals often drag on for months, and sometimes will receive comments from new participants only everything couple weeks. I think it's too early to say whether a consensus will emerge. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 14:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: OK, so what are you suggesting? Will the discussion remain open if no further comments are received in, say, two weeks? I also doubt that merge discussions take months to conclude. I think that such discussions should take no more than 20 days, unless it's of course, a very contentious topic, which is not the case here. Taken that you've shown interest in this request, you should be able to tell that no form of consensus has taken place, so I think you can let it sit for a while to see if additional comments come in before inevitably closing it. I mean, there is no use in continuing a discussion that hasn't progressed in weeks. Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 15:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Wolverine X-eye, I don't think thats what they are saying. Like RfC's, any proposals should be opened for more than 7 days. This one has only been open for 4 days. This doesn't give enough time to get enough WP:CONSENSUS on the merge, even if everyone agreed to it. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 21:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Cowboygilbert: So what should I do now? Wait until the discussion is a week old? Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 11:14, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

@Wolverine X-eye:, Yes. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 17:04, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

@Cowboygilbert: It's now 7 days... Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 14:09, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: You still interested in closing this? Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 04:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

This isn't a priority, given all the much older discussions here. I'll get to this eventually, or maybe someone else before me. In the meantime, please be patient. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 13:34, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: It's now been 7 days...I know this isn't a priority to you but can you at least take a look at it this week, even if it's not today? Thanks for your time, Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 04:26, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Pages recently put under extended-confirmed protection

Report

Pages recently put under extended confirmed protection (21 out of 8845 total) () WATCH Page Protected Expiry Type Summary Admin Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Paleoart review 2024-11-19 14:21 2024-12-03 14:21 edit Persistent sock puppetry; seems to be coordination of some sort BusterD Bunq 2024-11-19 11:51 2024-11-26 11:51 edit,move Edit warring / content dispute Lectonar Mariam Barghouti 2024-11-19 01:24 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:A/I/PIA ToBeFree 17 November 2024 Russian strikes on Ukraine 2024-11-19 00:51 indefinite edit,move WP:GS/RUSUKR ToBeFree User talk:138.64.112.72 2024-11-18 13:20 2025-02-18 13:20 create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector Thori Si Wafa 2024-11-18 05:28 indefinite create Pppery Betar 2024-11-18 01:03 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement; requested at WP:RfPP Fathoms Below 2024 in the State of Palestine 2024-11-18 00:29 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement; requested at WP:RfPP Isabelle Belato Battle of Bamut 2024-11-17 18:21 2024-11-21 18:21 edit Persistent disruptive editing from (auto)confirmed accounts; requested at WP:RfPP Isabelle Belato Rihanna Death 2024-11-16 20:26 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated: per RFPP Daniel Case Justin bieber dead 2024-11-16 20:25 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Daniel Case Template:Infobox airline/styles.css 2024-11-16 18:00 indefinite edit,move High-risk template or module: 4651 transclusions (more info) MusikBot II User talk:220.81.134.147 2024-11-16 12:13 2025-02-16 12:13 create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector Amazfit 2024-11-16 11:37 2025-11-16 11:37 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: persistent WP:COI Yamla User talk:118.237.51.201 2024-11-16 09:42 2024-12-16 09:42 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot Sidhant Mohapatra 2024-11-16 05:45 2025-08-23 01:14 edit,move Persistent block evasion Geniac Solomon Etefa 2024-11-16 02:11 2025-11-16 02:11 create enforcing outcome (draftify) of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Solomon Etefa Asilvering Pannu 2024-11-15 21:56 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: WP:CASTE RegentsPark Lamba (surname) 2024-11-15 21:53 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: WP:CASTE RegentsPark Mirdha 2024-11-15 21:52 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: WP:CASTE RegentsPark Karel Komárek 2024-11-15 17:43 2025-05-15 17:43 edit Violations of the biographies of living persons policy HJ Mitchell

WP:AN/CXT

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

There is consensus to move forward with Mathglot's proposal (see #Proposal), which will cause a mass deletion of the pages on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review, with the option to save certain pages from deletion within a two-week window. As part of the proposal, there is also a consensus to amend WP:X2 in the manner S Marshall specifies in this edit.

Opposition to this change revolved around the argument that the articles which would qualify for mass deletion should be improved instead of deleted. Elinruby proposed alternatively that we should focus on recruiting editors fluent in foreign languages, Mathglot initially proposed to mass-draftify the articles instead of deleting, and Sam Walton argued that the articles contained valid content that didn't deserve mass deletion.

A majority of other editors, however, argued that many of the articles involved are poorly sourced BLPs that have the potential to harm their subjects if left unimproved. Given the large number of articles and low number of editors involved, it will likely be months before these articles are improved. Additionally, a user who is not fluent in both of the languages involved in a translation will not be able to adequately evaluate the validity of the machine-translated content; the article may appear unproblematic to such a user, but the content translation tool could have subtly altered the meaning of statements to something false.

In short, the consensus is that in the long run, the encyclopedia would be better off if these articles were mass deleted. Respectfully, Mz7 (talk) 23:22, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Addendum: The process for working out how to cause the mass deletion has been established. To mark an article for retention, please strike it out. To unambiguously identify an article for deletion, include the word "kill" in the same line as the article. The articles will be deleted on or after June 6, 2017. Thank you for your patience. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:16, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

---

Hi, Wikipedians. I wanted to give you an update on WP:AN/CXT. Since that discussion was closed about eight months or so ago, we've cleared out about 10% of the articles involved, which were the easiest 10%. The work is now slowing down as more careful examination is needed and as the number of editors drops off, and I'm sad to report that we're still finding BLP issues. The temporary speedy deletion criterion, X2, is of little use because it's phrased as a special case of WP:SNOW and I'm not being allowed to improve it. The "it's notable/AFD is not for cleanup" culture at AFD is making it hard for me to remove these articles as well, so I'm spending hours trying to get rid of material generated by a script in seconds. I'm sorry but I'm discouraged and I give up. Recommend the remainder are nuked to protect the encyclopaedia.—S Marshall T/C 23:15, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

For more context on this issue, please see Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#X2 revision. Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 23:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Update: This link is now located at .../Archive_61#X2 revision. Mathglot (talk) 01:10, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this, S Marshall, and I don't fault you for your choice. - Dank (push to talk) 19:49, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

• Isn't there some way to use the sortware to delete all of these in bulk, if only as a one-time thing? Seems like a huge waste of time if it's being done manually by hand. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 00:07, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• Easily doable as a batch-deletion. I could have it wrapped up in 15 minutes. Unfortunately community consensus did not lean towards approving that option. In fact, most CXT creations which have been reviewed needed cleanup but turned out to be acceptable articles. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 21:00, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I would support a nuke, a mass draftification, or some loosening of X2. The current situation is not really tenable due to the density of BLP violations. However, ultimately, the broader community needs to discuss what the appropriate action is under the assumption that we are not going to get much more volunteer time to manually check these articles. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:54, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• No, the broader community doesn't need to discuss that. It's completely needless and the community has had a huge discussion already. All that needs to happen is for WT:CSD to let me make one bold edit to a CSD that was badly-worded from the get-go, and we'll all be back on track. That's it. The only problem we have is that there are so many editors who want to tell me how to do it, and so few editors willing to get off their butts and do it.—S Marshall T/C 19:34, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

• Restored from archive, as it's unhelpful for this to remain unresolved.—S Marshall T/C 17:30, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support systematic nuke/ revision of X2 to enable this mess to be cleared up. It's not fair that @S Marshall: is being prevented from improving the encyclopedia like this. Amisom (talk) 15:21, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support @S Marshall:'s revision or a nuke from orbit. I wasn't active when this situation was being discussed originally, but having now read over the discourse on the matter, it is clear that our current approach isn't working. No one else is stepping up to help S Marshall do this absurd amount of reviewing, leaving us stuck with thousands of machine-translated BLP violations. It's all well and good to say that AfD isn't cleanup and deletion solves nothing and we should let articles flower patiently into beautiful gardens, but if no one's pulling the weeds and watering the sprouts, the garden isn't a garden, it's a weed-riddled disaster. Give the gardener a weed whacker already. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:17, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support the bold edit required to X2; it's true, of course, that AfD is not clean up- but neither should it be a barrier to clean up. In any case, moving a backlog from one place to another is hardly helpful. — O Fortuna! ^{Imperatrix mundi.} 09:39, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Question @Elinruby and Yngvadottir: As users who (from a quick glance) seem to have been active looking through these articles, do you think the quality is on average worse than a typical random encyclopedia article, and if so, bad enough that speedy deletion would be preferable to allowing them to be improved over time as with any other article? I don't mean to imply that this is necessarily the case, but I think it should be the bar for concluding whether mass speedy deletion is the correct answer. Sam Walton (talk) 11:22, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• (I wish I'd seen this earlier; thanks for the ping. I feel I have totally let down S Marshall; I just couldn't stand it any more.) On the whole ... yes. Support deletion of those remaining that have not been marked as ok/fixed. As I tried to explain in the initial discussion, the basic premise here is incorrect: as it states somewhere at Pages needing translation into English, a machine translation is worse than no article. It will almost always be either almost impossible to read, incorrect (for example, mistranslating names as ordinary nouns, or omitting negatives ...) or both. Some of these translations have been ok; many have been woefully incomplete (just the start of the lede), and they all require extremely careful checking. Yes, what lies in wait may include BLP violations. I sympathize with the article creators, and I am usually an inclusionist; I put hours of work into checking and improving some of these, and I'm not the only one. But please, enough. We'd wind up with decent articles faster if these were deleted, and the majority that are bad do a disservice to their topics. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:52, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• You haven't let me down. You've given me a truckload of support with this.—S Marshall T/C 13:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• Still oppose mass deletion -- @Sam Walton: What she said: Thank you the ping; this discussion was seeming a bit reiterative and I had mentally checked out. Like @Yngvadottir: I have put considerable effort into some of these articles. In fact, two or three of them are my own translations, which I would not have attempted without the translation tool, btw. Some are from my translations on French law, and I think 1) they cover important and previously missing topics and 2) they are high-quality technical translations. In most cases they speak for themselves. A couple are not perfect, reflecting the state of the French article, yes, and need work. But while these articles -- I am speaking here specifically of my own translations that appear on this list -- may be imperfect they are still reasonable stubs that can be built upon, and they also support more important articles by helping to prevent redlinks in some of the top-level articles on French law and also the French colonial legacy in Rwanda and the Congos etc. See Biens mal acquis for example. That was painful but I am proud of that translation. I have also encountered other people's translations on that list that made me proud of Wikipedia; the one on a cryptology algorithm for example comes to mind, or Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations. I am an inclusionist, I have to admit, and yes yes, great wrongs and all, but I do think it is important that (for example) articles on Congolese history mention that there have been civil wars (beyond "unrest", and no, I am not kidding). The worst BLP problems I am aware of are in the articles on Dilma Rousseff and I don't believe they are on this list or were created with the tool. Some of the worst PNT pages I have seen predate the translation tool, for instance Notre-Dame de la Garde, which took me years to finish, and Annees folles which is as we speak an incredible mess requiring research in addition to copy-editing and translation. Yngvadottir is correct in saying that inappropriately translated proper nouns is a frequent problem. I recall a Hubert de Garde de Vins who became "wine", and yes, this did reduce the sentence to gibberish. It's annoying enough to make me wanna regex. But. Not mass deletion. I suggest case-by-case intervention in the case of egregious problems with particular users. It's not as though more that a very few users even try to translate. Or perhaps we should revise the criteria for translation user privileges. But even there -- one of the people tagged as delete on sight has created a number of skeleton articles about Quebec. These articles should be be fleshed out not deleted; we should have articles about Quebec. Some of the authors are unquestionably notable, the equivalent in my small culture of Simone de Beauvoir or Colette or Andre Gide. It seems to me that an article that says: this author was born, drank coffee, won the Governor-General's award and wrote these books, is better than having nothing at all. The placeholder takes the topic from unknown unknown to known unknown, or little-known in this context, I guess. We do know a little more about the folk dances of Honduras because there is a very bad article, for which I have done what I could. There are many different problems with the articles on this list. Someone has created multiple articles about, apparently every madrassa in central Tunis. Who am I? Some of the articles I have rescued at PNT were about the medieval wines of Provence, which might seem equally trivial to some. Some of the important but very flawed articles I have noted maybe should not be in the article mainspace -- I am thinking of the ones about the Virgin of Guadeloupe, pretty much everything flagged Mexican historical documents, the Spanish procession of the flowers, etc)--but an interested Spanish speaker could build these out. These topics are unquestionably notable. We should have an article about the Virgin of Guadeloupe, really, people, we should. My suggestion would be recruiting. We desperately need a Portuguese speaker and additional help with Spanish. Some of the unreferenced BLPs sitting around appear to be very fine even though they are unreferenced, and may in fact veer into fluff. But they don't approach liability for libel if that's the concern. I avoid them, personally, because I have in the past deciphered Abidjan l33t about a beloved soccer player, only to be told that we don't as a matter of policy consider these leagues notable. Fine then, they should not be on the PNT to-do list. I'd love to see the translation workflow improved but we should be encouraging the people expanding our horizons is what I think. I am sorry for the very long answer but I appear to be a voice wailing in the desert on this topic and I have now said pretty much the above many times now. Nobody seems to care so oh well, it's not like I don't have other work I can do on the history of the Congo and figuring out what Dilma Rousseff had to say about her impeachment. Reliable sources say she was railroaded (NPR for one) and that is not included in the article at all right now. The articles on Congolese history airily write off genocide and slaughter as "some unrest". In a world where these things are true I really don't care whether on not we find a reference for that Eurovision winner. Someone who cares can do that and I think ethnocentrism is a bigger issue on Wikipedia that these translation attempts. Move the ones that don't meet a minimum standard to some draft space or something. Educate the people who are creating this articles instead of shaking your finger at them. The article creation process is daunting enough and I myself have had to explain to new page patrollers that this punk band is in fact seminal whether you have heard of them or not and whether or not they sing in a language that you can understand. But I have been here enough to do that and I assure you, most people will not. Wikipedia wants to know why its editors grow fewer cough cough wikipedia, lookee here. I will shortly wikilink some of the examples I mention above for easier show-and-tell, for the benefit of anyone who has read this far. Thanks. Elinruby (talk) 20:38, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support removal of these attempted articles (especially to avoid BLP problems laying around). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:00, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support [1] I'd say "do a disservice to their topics" is a mild way of putting it. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose blanket deletion. Having just checked a bunch of the remaining articles I found plenty of perfectly reasonable, non-BLP articles here, and any bad articles I did find were certainly not in greater number than you would find by hitting Random Article, nor were they particularly awful; the worst offenses I found were poor but understandable English. There's a lot of valid content here, especially on non-English topics which we need to do a better job of writing about. FWIW I'll happily put some time into going through this list. Sam Walton (talk) 14:12, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Please take a look at the 20 articles I just reviewed here; none had any issues greater than needing a quick copyedit. Sam Walton (talk) 14:38, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
    • @Samwalton9: Thanks. It's been a long, hard slog. I appreciate it if any of these can be saved. However, did you check for accuracy? It's possible for a machine translation to be misleadingly wrong. And the miserable translation tool the WMF provides usually doesn't even attempt filmographies: look at that specific section of Asier Etxeandia. This is not acceptable in a BLP. Somebody who reads the original language (Spanish? Catalan?) needs to go through that article sentence by sentence and film by film. Unfortunately it's not a matter of notability (that's almost always attested to by the original article), it's a matter of whether we have time to save this article. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:27, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
      • That names of works likely don't get automatically translated properly is a good point that I hadn't considered, thanks for pointing that out. If that's one of the primary issues then I'd favour a semi-automated removal of "filmography" or similar sections, if possible. It just seems that there's a lot of perfectly good content in here. Sam Walton (talk) 15:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
        • I looked at the first one you listed, it is a mass of non-BLP compliant (non-neutral, no-inline source) material. Letting stuff like that hang around is not just bad for that BLP but as an example for other BLPs to be created and remain non-compliant. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
          • Sam Walton, you didn't answer Yngvadottir's question. Can you speak the source languages? Remember that because of the defective way that software feature was implemented, you cannot assume that the translator speaks English and in many cases they obviously couldn't. (In practice the source language matters a lot because the software accuracy varies by the language pair. Indo-European languages are often but not always okay, and Spanish-English translations have particularly high accuracy, approaching 80%. Japanese-English, for example, has much, much lower accuracy.) So the correctness of the translation must be, and can only be, checked by someone with dual fluency in the source language and English.

            In the real world you can establish some rules-of-thumb. For example, you can quite safely assume that everything translated by Rosiestep is appropriate and can be retained. The editorial skills of the different translators varied very widely.

            All in all the best solution is for a human who's fluent in the source language and English to look at each of these articles and form an intelligent judgment. The thing that's preventing this solution is that, having looked at the content and formed the judgment, I can't then remove a defective article, because the defective wording in WP:CSD#X2 encourage sysops to decline the deletion unless it's a WP:SNOW case... so I've got to start a full AfD. Every. Single. Time. The effort for me to clean up is out of all proportion to the effort editors put into creating the damn things with a script.

            If you don't want the articles nuked (and that's a reasonable position), then please support the X2 revision I have proposed.—S Marshall T/C 17:37, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

When you say "the first one you listed" are you talking about Tomokazu Matsuyama? Yes, if so. it is indeed an unreferenced BLP but... I suspect five minutes of quality time with Google would take it out of that category, and it's essentially a resume, something like the placeholder articles I mentioned above. I think that perhaps we are better off knowing that this Japanese contemporary artist exists. Why not do a wikiproject to improve these like the one we just had on Africa top-level articles? It does seem to me that you could use a break from this wikitask and a little gamification might well get er done. I share your sentiment that in some ways we have our fingers in the dyke here, but the dyke does serve a purpose I think...In short I respectfully disagree with the current approach to these articles. Elinruby (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Break

@Alanscottwalker: I found a reference for his influences in less time than it took to add the ref code....Elinruby (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Elinruby: Did you mean to ping me back here, many days after I commented, to tell me you found a pretty crappy commercial source? When I looked at it awhile ago, the article was filled with non-npov/non-referenced/BLP violating text. It is, thus, no comfort that since I commented, awhile ago, someone has according to their edit 'removed the worst of the puffery', and you added that crappy commercial source - its still not policy compliant (even if it is marginally better, since I flagged it) Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: I brought you back here to tell you that while it may be have been unsourced, fixing this is extremely trivial. I don't give a hoot about this particular article, but his gallery is not a "crappy commercial source" imho and if you want people to fix then article then you should enunciate your problem with it. Sorry if that doesn't fit your preconceptions Elinruby (talk) 00:51, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Adding a non-independent crappy commercial source is not fixing. It is selling. We are not in the business of selling. What you call "trivial" sourcing does nothing to fix just makes it worse - "trivial" should have tipped you off. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 08:25, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@AlanscottWalker: Um no.... I was using the term in its software development meaning. I apologize for picking the wrong dialect to make my point. I thought, since you were critiquing the software tool, you might know something about software even though you don't seem to be familiar with the features of this instance of it, or for that matter with a representative sample of its users. Commericial, hmm. The same could be said of my article about the thousand-year-old Papal vintages, you know. That vineyard is selling wine today. Is that article also commercial crap? Since it is a direct translation from French Wikipedia, are you saying that French Wikipedia is commercial crap? You really don't want to make me argue this point, seriously. Incidentally what is with the arbitrary insertion of a break in the discussion? Consider, for just a moment, that I might actually have a point. Entertain the notion for a minute. Why are you belittling my statement? Elinruby (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Critiquing software tool? No, I was clearly critiquing an article in English on the English Wikipedia. And I was referring to the crappy commercial source - you pinged me, remember, so that I would know you added it to the article. That was not done in French, it was done in English. As for break, that is your doing, why should I have any idea why you added the crappy source, and then wanted to tell me about it in this break. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:54, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: Let me use small words. CTX is software. Bad translation can happen with or without software. Lack of sources can happen without software. In software development "trivial" means "easy". Do you see now? Be careful who you patronize next time. 01:07, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall:I'd consider supporting your proposal, perhaps, once I have read it, but could you provide a link for we mere mortals who don't normally follow these proposals? I also disagree that all of these articles require a bilingual editor; some just need a few references and/or a copy edit. But you know I disagree at this point. And if you do, god help us, nuke all of these articles as opposed to one of the other courses of action I have (again) suggested above, please move mine to my draft space if you find them that objectionable. Some sort of clue as to what your issue is would also be nice. Elinruby (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

• The revision I want to make is this one. The intended effect is so that a human editor, who has reviewed the script-generated content and given it due consideration and exercise of judgment, can recommend the content for deletion and receive assistance rather than bureaucracy from our admin corps.

  The basic problem with these articles is that they are script generated and the scripts are unreliable. Exactly how unreliable they are varies according to the language pair, so for example Spanish-English translations are relatively good, while for example Japanese-English translations are relatively poor; and whether the articles contain specific grammatical constructions that the scripts have trouble with.

  You can test its accuracy, and I recommend you do. The script it used, during the problem period, was Google translate. I've just picked some sample text and run it through Google translate in various language pairs, first into a different language and then the translated text back into English, to see how it did. These were the results:-

Source text	Korean	Punjabi	Farsi
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition	Fourth and seventh years ago, our ancestors left the continent, a new country born in Liberty.	Four score and seven years on this continent, first our father a new nation, brought freedom and dedicated to the proposition	Four score and seven years ago our fathers on this continent, a new nation, the freedom brought, and dedicated to the proposition
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.	And when he saw the multitude, he went up to the mountain, and his disciples came, and opened his mouth, and taught him, saying, Blessed are the souls of the poor: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.	Jesus saw the crowds up on the mountain, and when he sat, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth, and the poor in spirit was teaching, that theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Yes: interestingly the algorithm interpolated "Jesus" into the text.)	And seeing the multitudes, he went to the mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for the kingdom of heaven.
Editors agree not to publish biographical material concerning living people unless it is accurate	The editors agree not to post electrical materials about living people unless they are the correct person.	To publish the biographical material about the editor, it is right to disagree,	Editors agree to publish biographies of living people, unless it is accurate.

I encourage you to try these and other examples with different language pairs. Can you see why you need to speak the original language in order to copyedit accurately?—S Marshall T/C 22:00, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

But that is not a fair test since it magnifies any word choice errors. There *will* be errors, yes. We clean them up at WP:PNT --- ALL THE TIME. And no, it is not necessary to speak the language always, though it certainly help. I really suggest that maybe you just need a wikibreak from this task. Bad english can mostly be fixed. There are the occasional mysteries, yes. There are colloquialisms, yes. This does not justify wholesale destruction of good content. I was just here to get the link as I mentioned your proposal to one of my PNT colleagues; I need to go but I'll look at your proposal the next time I log in Elinruby (talk) 00:46, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

The liquor was strong but the meat was rotten.

Translation wonks will recognize the (apocryphal) story behind the sentence above, concerning literal mistranslations exacerbated from there-and-back translation. (The story perhaps originated after the NY World's Fair of 1964, which had a computer translation exhibit in the Russian Pavilion.) In any case, I'm just getting up to speed on this topic and will comment in more detail later.

Briefly: yes, you definitely have to speak the language to copyedit accurately. I'm actually in favor of a modification to WP:MACHINETRANSLATION to make it stronger. I fully agree with the worse than nothing statement in the policy now, but I'd go one step further: the only thing worse than a machine translation in an encyclopedia, is a machine translation that has been copyedited by a capable and talented monolingual (even worse: by someone who knows a bit of the language and doesn't know what s/he doesn't know) so that the result is beautiful, grammatical, smooth, stylish, wonderful English prose. As a translator, puh-LEEZ leave the crappy, horrible, machine-gobbledygook so that a translator can spot it easily, and fix it accurately. Copyediting it into proper English makes our job much harder.

If it's too painful to leave it exposed in main space, perhaps moving to Draft space could be an alternative. In fact, rather than a mass-delete, why not a mass-Draft-ify? (Apologies if someone has already said this, I'm still reading the thread.) More later. Mathglot (talk) 01:31, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

mass-Draftify would work for me. And yeah I disagree with you too a little, but I knew that. My point is, we all agree that an issue exists so what do we do? I also have some more reading to do before I comment on what S Marshall (talk · contribs) is proposing. I have a story about the policy but I want to make sure it pertains to this discussion. Elinruby (talk) 22:03, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

• Elinruby is certainly correct to say this "wasn't a fair test", because going through the algorithm twice doubles the error rate. But a lot of people reading this discussion will speak only English so this is the only way I can show them what the problem is ---- without that context, they may well find this, and the original discussion at WP:AN/CXT, rather impenetrable because they won't understand the gravity of the concerns.

  It was even more unfair because it was me who selected the examples and I don't like machine translations. In order to illustrate my point I went with non-European languages and convoluted sentence structures. If you tried the same exercise with a verse from "Green Eggs and Ham" then you'd get perfect translations 99% of the time. (It tripped me up with the Sermon on the Mount because quite clearly, the algorithm recognised that it was dealing with a Bible verse, which I found fascinating.)

  The script is particularly likely to do badly with double-negatives, not-unless constructions, adverbs of time ("since", "during", "for a hundred years"), and the present progressive tense, in some language pairs.

  It would certainly be possible to construct a fairer text using more random samples of language.—S Marshall T/C 10:27, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall: alright, I grant you that there aren't many bilinguals here. This *is* the problem in my view. I'll also specify that I don't claim expertise outside the Romance languages, and very little for some of those. But allow me please, since I know you speak or at least read French, to propose a better example. There are common translation errors that can occur, depending on which tool exactly was used. The improperly-translated name (nom propre) problem was real but is now mostly fixed. The fact that a writer whose novels were written in French gave them titles in French should come as a shock to nobody. The correct format for a bibliography in such cases *is* title in the actual language of the words in the book, webpage or whatever. Translated title, if the title is not in English, goes in the optional trans-title (or is it trans_title?) field of the cite template. Language switch to be set if at all possible. If it is not, let me know, and I can reduce the number of foreign words that English wikipedia needs to look at. So. In all languages, pretty much, words like fire and sky and take tend to be both native to the original people and likely to carry additional meanings, as in take an oath, take a bus, take a break etc. On the other hand what the software tool does do extremely well is know the correct translation for arcane or specialized terms, often loanwords, like caravel or apse or stronghold. These words are in my recognition vocabulary not my working vocabulary and using the tool in certain instances saves many lookups. When there is a strong degree of ambiguity or divergence in meaning (like the example on my user page) then THEN yes a fluent or very advanced user is needed. There are known divergences that a bilingual would spot that an English speaker would not. Sure. "Je l'aime beaucoup, mon mari" is a good example. But the fact that this is true does not prove that every line of every one of these articles still needs to be checked before they can be permitted to continue to sully Wikipedia, or that each of these lines needs to be checked by you personally. If you feel overwhelmed, take a break. Elinruby (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

• I speak English, French, German, Gibberish and Filth.  :) Joking aside -- I'm not concerned about noms propres. I'm concerned when the script perverts or even inverts the meaning of the source text. It's quite hard to give you an example because the examples I've discovered have all been deleted, and there's only the one non-English language we share, but perhaps an administrator will confirm for you the sorry history of Daphné Bürki. It was created as a machine translation of fr:Daphné Bürki and the en.wiki version said she was married to Sylvain Quimène, citing this source. Check it out; the source doesn't say that. In fact she was married to Travis Bürki, at least at one time (can't say whether she's still married to him). We had a biographical article where the subject was married to the wrong bloke. It's not okay to keep these around.

  Draftification is exactly the same as deleting them. Nobody is going to fix these up in draft space. The number of editors who're competent to fix them is small, and the amount of other translation work those editors have on their hands is very large, and it includes a lot of mainspace work that's more urgent than fixing raw machine translations in draft space, and it always will; we can get back to fixing draft space articles about individual artworks when every Leibniz-prizewinning scientist and every European politician with a seat on their national parliament has a biography. (We're on target never to achieve that. The democratic process means new politicians get elected and replaced faster than their biographies get translated from foreign-language wikipedias.)

  I don't object to draftifying these articles if that's the face-saving solution that lets us pretend we're being all inclusionist about it, but it would be more honest to nuke them all from orbit.—S Marshall T/C 00:51, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

• I am just coming back to this. I agree about the relatively few translators and the large amount of work, and yet, we so fundamentally disagree. Some of the designated articles do are, in my opinion, within the top percentiles in article quality. Others have in fact been fixed up. You and I consulted about one once. Others, yes, need work, and I at least do get to articles that I say I will get to. Slowly, at times, sure. I have no problem with articles that don't meet a certain standard not going to mainspace, but I don't see why you singly out the translation tool as your criterion. I mention noms propres because I have mentioned one above from Notre-Dame de la Garde where Commander de Vins came across as wine, and this did make the sentence gibberish. But that article did not come out of the CTX tool. Ihave no idea what the Leibniz prize is, but I am not sure it's more notable, in the abstract, than Marcel Proust, but fine. Work on that all you like, sure. But don't tell me it's more important that some mention in Congolese history that there have been civil wars, or I will just laugh at you. The sort of error you mention above with Daphné Büki -- I'll look at it myself shortly, if it's from French I don't need an admin -- can be made by anyone who knows less than they think they do. Automated translation not needed. Now, I propose that since we are talking about this we work out some sort of saner translation process. For instance, if African football leagues are by policy not notable, as someone once told me, fine then, the article should not be in the translation queue. Put something in there about a minimum number of references, require the use of trans-title in the references, whatever is agreed upon is ok with me. Your proposed change would preserve most of by not all of the articles that have been worked on, which is a slight improvement I guess, except you'll also nuke the 3-4 articles that needed nothing and a whole lot of biography that I've avoid because people tend to write me snooty messages to inform me that the person isn't notable, and why waste work when articles like History of Nicaragua are so lacking? Elinruby (talk) 01:01, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposal

Okay, I've gone through this and thought about it, and I'm conditionally a Yes on change to X2 and nuking the list, with an option to save certain files.

S Marshall, I take your point about draftification being pointless, as they'll just sit there with most of them never being edited ever.

I believe you've also persuaded me that the nuke is appropriate, given some conditions below. In order to keep Elinruby and Sam Walton (and me, and others) happy about not deleting certain files we are working on or wish to work on, I had an idea: what if we agree to allow a delay of two weeks to allow interested parties to go through and mark files in the list we want to keep so when the nuke-a-bot comes through, it can pass over the files thus marked. (I don't know if we can gin this up for two weeks from yesterday, but that would be auspicious.)

More specifically, to Elinruby's (22:03, 1 April) "So what do we do?" question, I think here's what we do:

• Those of us who want to retain files, mark them with {{bots|deny=X2-nukebot}} to vaccinate them against nuking.
• Change X2 accordingly
• Somebody develops the nuke script
• Nuke script should nuke "without prejudice" so that if someone changes their mind later and wants to recreate a file, it shouldn't be "salted" or require admin action to "undelete"; you just recreate it in the normal way you create any new file.
• If needed, we run a pre-nuke test against sandbox files, or can we just trust the vaccination will be respected?
• Start the script up and let 'er rip

Elinruby, if this proposal were accepted, would you change your no to X2 modif to a yes? Sam Walton, would you?

Naturally for this to have any value, we'd have to agree to not vaccinate the whole list, but just the ones we reasonably expect to work on, or judge worthy of keeping. If desired, I can envisage a way to greatly speed up the first step (vaccination) for all of us. Personally, I won't mark any file translated from a language I don't know well enough to evaluate the translation. But, going through all 3500 files is a burden, since there's no point my even clicking on the ones in languages I don't know. If I knew in advance which ones are from Spanish, French, etc., that would be a huge help. If you look at 1300-1350, you'll see that I've marked them with a language code (and a byte count; but that was for something else). I could commit to marking another 200 or 300 with the lang code, maybe more. If we could break up the work that way and everybody just mark the files for lang code, then once that's done, we could all go through the whole list much more quickly, to see which ones we wanted to evaluate for vaccination.

I really think this could be wrapped up in a couple of weeks, if we get agreement. Mathglot (talk) 18:17, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

• Entirely happy with this idea.—S Marshall T/C 19:33, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
• Agree. Amisom (talk) 11:31, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
• This is fine with me. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:03, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Are there any objections to moving forward with this? Tazerdadog (talk) 01:48, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Almost two weeks of SILENCE sounds like "go for it". Primefac (talk) 02:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm still good with this as proposer, of course, but just to reiterate: we'd still need a two-week moratorium *after acceptance* of the proposal before nuking, to allow interested parties to vaccinate such articles as they chose to. I assumed that was clear, but that "go for it" got me a little scared, so thought I'd better raise it again.

On Tazerdadog's point, what is the procedure for deciding when to go forward with a proposal? Are we there now? Whatever the procedure is, and whenever we deem "acceptance" to happen, can someone close it at that point and box it up like I see on Rfcs, so we can then start the two-week, innoculation period timer ticking without having more opinions straggle in after it's already been decided? Or what's the right way to do this? Mathglot (talk) 07:00, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

• Request formal close, per Mathglot. Do I need to post on ANRFC?—S Marshall T/C 18:40, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

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

X2-nuke interim period

Wow, cool! Glad we made some progress, and just trying to nail down the next steps to keep things moving smoothly. To recap my understanding:

• we are now in the "inoculation period" with a fortnight-timer which expires 23:22, 6 May 2017 (UTC) an interim period where we figure out how to implement this.
• during this period, anyone may tag articles in the list at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review with the proper tag to prevent nuking two weeks hence

A couple of questions:

• do we have to recruit someone to write a script to do the actual nuking?
• what form should the actual "vaccination" tag have? In the proposal above, I just kind of threw out that expression: {{bots|deny=X2-nukebot}} but I have no idea how we really need to tag the articles, and maybe that's a question for the script writer?
• will the bot also observe strikeout type as an indicator not to nuke? A possible issue is inconsistent usage among editors: for example, some editors have not used strikeout for articles they have reviewed and clearly wish to save (e.g. see #1601-1622)

As for me, I will continue to tag a couple hundred more articles with language-tags as I did previously in the 1301-1600 range, to make it easier for everyone to find articles translated from languages they are comfortable working with, and that they therefore might wish to tag. Mathglot (talk) 02:28, 23 April 2017 (UTC) Updated by Mathglot (talk) 09:02, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

• Let's make two lists, one of articles to delete and the other of articles to retain for the moment. I don't think that it will be necessary to formally request a bot. We have quite a few sysops who could clean them all out with or without scripted assistance.—S Marshall T/C 15:55, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

  I would implement it as a giant sortable wikitable - Something that looks like this:

Name	Language	Vaccinated	Notes
Jimbo Wales	es	Tazerdadog (talk)	Translation checked
Earth	ar	--	Probably Notable
My mother's garage band	fr	--	X2'd, not notable

Tazerdadog (talk) 17:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Isn't the current list easier to deal with than creating a new table, or two new ones? Can we just go based on strikeout type, or add some unambiguous token like, nuke=yes in the content of the items in the enumerated list that need to be deleted? I'm just trying to think what would be the least work to set up, and easiest to mark for those interested in vaccinating articles.

If we decide to go with a table, I might be able to use a fancy regex to create a table from the current bullet list. Although I definitely see why a table is easier to view and interpret once it's set up, I'm not (yet) persuaded that there's an advantage to setting one up in the first place. For one thing, it's harder to edit a table than a bullet list, because of the risk of screwing up cells or rows. Mathglot (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The real advantage of the table is the ability to sort by language. This way, if we have a volunteer who speaks (for example) only English and Spanish, they can just sort the table by language, and all of the Spanish articles will be shown together. It's harder to edit, but in my opinion, the ease of viewing and extracting the information far outweighs this.

I have created a list that removes all struck items at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review/Tazerdadog cleanup list. I'm currently working on getting rid of the redlinks as well. Once that is done, we can move to a vaccination model on the articles that have not been cleaned up in the articles thus far. The vaccination can take virtually any form as long as everyone agrees on what it is - I'd recommend that we vaccinate at the central list/table rather than on the article however. Once the two weeks expire, it's trivial to extract the unvaccinated articles and poke a sysop for deletion. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:07, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: This was posted over at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review as well but wanted to mention it here. Timotheus Canens has created a language-sortable table in their sandbox at User:Timotheus Canens/sandbox that I think is similar to what you were thinking. Mz7 (talk) 04:06, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

And we may have to recreate the table, as I didn't notice it and have been continuing to mark language codes on the main list (and shall continue to do so, unless someone yells "Stop!"). Also, not sure how trivial it is: given a full set of instructions what to do, then, yes, it's trivial, but this is not formatted data (yet) and there are all sorts of questions a sysop might have, such as, what to do with ones marked "moved", or "redirected", and other situations I've come across while going through the list that don't spring to mind. We don't want to burden the sysop with an illy-defined task, so all of those situations should be spelled out before we ask them to take their time to do it, as if there are too many questions, they'll either give up, or they'll do whatever they feel like. Mathglot (talk) 06:20, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@Timotheus Canens: Tazerdadog (talk) 05:55, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

And am still doing so on the main page, and so have at least six others since the message just above this one was written. Mathglot (talk) 11:53, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

X2 countdown and vaccinate indicators

Floating a proposal to get the clock started on the two weeks. Any user can write "Vaccinated" (or anything equivalent , as long as the meaning is understood) on the list on the same line as the Strike out any article they want to vaccinate. I can then go through and use regex to remove the vaccinated articles line-by-line from the delete list. I will then separate out the articles with no substantive commentary attached (anything beyond a language or a byte count is substantive) for an admin to delete or draftify. Any article which has been individually substantively discussed will be evaluated independently. If this is OK, we can start the clock. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:23, 6 May 2017 (UTC) Updated Tazerdadog (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

People are already using strikeout type as the "vaccinate" flag so no additional method is needed though I see nothing wrong with using both, if someone has already started with the the other method. Mathglot (talk) 22:51, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, I have been placing substantive commentary on plenty of articles, with the intention of facilitating the work of the group as a whole, in order to aid people in deciding whether that article is worth their time to look at and evaluate. In my case at least, substantive commentary does not indicate a desire to save, and if you intend to use it that way in the general case, then you need to suggest another indication I can use as a "poison pill" indicator to ensure it is nuked despite the substantive commentary. Mathglot (talk) 23:31, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Strikeout works even better than my idea, as it is easier to write the regex for. I was figuring that substantive commentary at least deserved to be read before we nuked them, although unless a comment was actively positive on the article I would have sorted it as a delete. If you want every article you commented on to be deleted, I can use your signature as the poison pill. Otherwise, use what you want, just make sure it is clear what it is. Ideally, place it at the start of a line, so I don't have to think when writing the regex. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: If you need a tester, feel free to shoot me a pattern; I'm a bit of a regex wonk myself, plus I have a nice test app for it. Can't use my sig as poison pill, cuz often my commentary is unsigned cuz I did them 20 or 50 at a time, with the edit summary carefully explaining what was done, but no sig on the individual line items. Beyond that, quite a few have commentary by multiple people, so even if I did comment (and even sign) others may have, too. The only clear way to do this, afaics, is to have an unequivocal keep (or nuke) indicator (or more than one is okay, if you want to OR them) but anything judg-y like "substantive commentary" seems risky to me. In the latter case, we should just get everyone to review all their edits they forgot to strike, and strike them now, or forever hold their peace. In my own case, no matter how positive my comment, or how long, if there's no strike on the article title, it's a "nuke". It occurs to me we should poll everyone and get positive buy-in from all concerned that they understand the indicator system, to make sure everyone knows "strike" equals "keep" and anything else is nuke (or whatever we decide). It won't do to have 2,000 articles nuked, and then the day after, "Oh, but I thought..." Know what I mean?Mathglot (talk) 06:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I think the solution is to draftify until everyone agrees that no mistakes have been made, then delete. I'm happy to do the grunt work of the manual checking of longer entries, and I don't think it is particularly risky to do so. However, the vast majority are short, and can and should be handed with a little regex script. We do need to make sure that the expectation of strikeout = delete instead of strikeout = resolved was clear to all parties. As for a deleteword, literally anything will do if it is unique and impossible to misinterpret. I would recommend "kill" as this deleteword, as it is clear what the meaning is, possible to write the regex for, and currently has only a couple of false hits in the page that can be worked around easily. Does this work for you?

The reasoning for checking longer entries is to try to catch entries like this:

|Battle_of_Urica -seems fine, at least not a translation issueElinruby (talk) 19:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Tazerdadog (talk) 08:02, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: If by "draftify" you mean quarantine, i.e., staging/moving all the to-be-deleted files someplace prior to the hard delete, I totally agree. (Whether that should actually be the current Draft namespace is debatable, but might be the right solution.) As far as regexes, I count 738 <s> tags, 732 </s> tags, 587 keepers, and 2785 nukers as of May 7 ver. 779254187. Mathglot (talk) 22:40, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Ok, sounds good. By draftify, i meant "Move out of mainspace to a different namespace where the content is accessible for translators, but unlikely to be stumbled upon accidentally by someone who thins they are reading an actual encyclopedia article." it also should be noted that when any of these pages are deleted, it should be a WP:SOFTDELETE, i.e. if someone asks for a small number to be restored after they have been deleted so that they can work on them they can just ask any admin to do so. I think that's all that needs to be resolved for now, so I'm going to go ahead and start the two week countdown until someone yells at me to stop. Pinging some participants: @S Marshall:@Elinruby:@Yngvadottir: Tazerdadog (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

For clarity, the process is: At the deadline, June 6, 2017 all struck articles listed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review will be retained, and all unstruck articles will be deleted. Articles with significant commentary attached will have the commentary read before the deletion, but the default is the struck/unstruck status unless the commentary indicates clearly the opposite result is better. The work "kill" may be added to unambiguously mark an article for deletion. On or after June 6th, the regex nerds will compile a list of articles to delete and retain. The delete list will be moved to draft space (or subpages of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review), where it will be audited briefly just to make sure nobody made a systematic error, then deleted. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Per #deadline it's June 6. Your clarifications on "draftify" and the process all sound good, otherwise.
P.S. Note that one article matches /kill/i but none matches /\bkill\b/i. Mathglot (talk) 23:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Fixed, I was unaware of that discussion, thank you. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:34, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot and Tazerdog: so for purposes of making life easier I will strike what I think should be struck. At one point people were checking my work so I was rather tentative initially. I am following the regex discussion but haven't used it in a while so save me the trouble of looking this up -- did you conclude that "kill" would be useful, or not? Elinruby (talk) 00:58, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Elinruby: If the title is strikeout type, it will be kept; if it isn't, it won't. Placing "Kill" on an article has no effect at nuke time, but it does have a beneficial effect now:, i.e., it saves time for others. It lets others know that you have looked at this one and found it wanting, so they should save their breath and not even bother looking at it. For example: You marked #18 Stevia_cultivation_in_Paraguay "really, really bad". That was enough for me not to bother looking at it, so you saved me time, there. If you want to place "kill" on the non-deserving items you pass by, that will help everybody else. I may do the same. But in the end, on Nuke day, the "kill" markings won't have any effect. Make sense? Mathglot (talk) 01:20, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: yeah it does, thanks. And indeed I seem to be the most inclusionist in the discussion so if I think it's more work than it's worth I doubt that anyone else in the discussion would disagree. Elinruby (talk) 01:31, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Re-pinging@Tazerdadog: on Elinruby's behalf for confirmation. Due to the ping typo above, he may not have seen this, and it's really his call, not mine. Mathglot (talk) 01:35, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Mathglot's interpretation above is basically correct. Please do not duplicate work you've already done just to add the kill flag, but please strike entities that could be ambiguous (I will manually evaluate your intention based on comments that you left, but the default is the struck/unstruck status unless you are clear in your comments otherwise). Please do use these flags from now on, or on any where your intention is unclear. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:15, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Tazerdadog I'm looking at formation of the strikeout tags enclosing the linked titles, and found 43 anomalies that might trip up the nuke pattern. I'll probably starting fixing these tomorrow. Mathglot (talk) 09:44, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

assumption for User space items

@Tazerdadog: I notice that various contributors are strikeout-tagging Userspace items: see #14, 15, 691, and 695 for example. I have not been tagging any of them, my assumption being that all User space items will be kept automatically regardless of presence/absence of strikeout title (and ignoring any "kill"), and since it's trivial to skip over them with the regex it's not necessary to tag them. If you agree, please make a note at WT:CXT/PTR, or let me know and I will, so everyone can save their breath marking these. Mathglot (talk) 01:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

That was my assumption as well, all entries outside of mainspace should be fine. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:39, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

rescuing clobbers by CXT

@Tazerdadog: I just rescued #2611 Garbacz. This was a good stub created in 2008, then clobbered in 2016 by ContentTranslation tool, leaving a rubbish translation deserving of deletion. I just rescued it by reverting it back to the last good version before the clobber, and struck it as a keeper.

I'm concerned that there may be an unknown number of formerly good articles of long standing in the list that we don't want to delete, simply because they got clobbered by CXT at some point and thus ended up in the list, and time ran out before anybody got a chance to look at them. If I can get a list of potential clobbers in the next week, I will check them all out. (Am betting it's less than a couple hundred, total; but maybe S Marshall would help out, if it turns out to be more than that.) Shouldn't be too hard to create such a list:

pseudocode to generate a list of possible CXT clobbers

# Print out names of Titles in CXT/PTR that may be clobbers of good, older articles. # (Doesn't handle the case where oldest version is CXT, followed by user edits to make it good, # followed by 2nd cxt later which clobbers the good version; but that's probably rare.) # For each item in WP:CXT/PTR list do: $line = text from next <ol> item in list If the bracketed article title near the beginning of $line is within s-tags, next loop Extract $title from the $line If $title is not in article space, next loop Read Rev History of $title into array @RevHist Get $oldest_es = edit summary string of oldest version (last index in @RevHist) If 'ContentTranslation' is a substring of $oldest_es, next loop Pop @RevHist: drop oldest summary from @RevHist so it now contains all versions except the oldest one If 'ContentTranslation' is a substring of @RevHist viewed as a single string, do: Print "$title possibly clobbered by CXT" End For

Are you able to create a list like this, or do you know someone who could? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:56, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• Why not just ask the deleting administrators to check the translation is the first revision before they push the button?—S Marshall T/C 23:32, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

That would be a shitton of work for the deleting admin. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:57, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

3.6 metric shit tonnes, to be exact. ;-) And thanks for the ping, Taz. Mathglot (talk) 01:56, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: I think I've maybe got your query: I see from Samtar's query that you use MySQL. If that's the case, then to do this, I think you can take Samtar's query 11275 exactly as it is, with one more WHERE clause, to exclude the oldest revision:

AND WHERE rev.date > @MIN_REV_DATE

where @MIN_REV_DATE is either separately selected and assigned to a variable [as there would be one min value per title, it would have to either be an array variable or more likely a 2-col temp table with title and MIN date, which could be joined to rev.] Edited by Mathglot (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2017 (UTC), or probably more efficiently, a subquery getting the oldest rev date for that page using standard "minimum value of a column" techniques. So the result will be a subset of Samtar's original query, limited to cases where ct_tag was equal to 'ContentTranslation' somewhere other than in the oldest revision for that page. (By the way, I don't have access to your file structure, so I have no idea if 'rev.date' really exists, but what I mean by that, is the TIMESTAMP of that particular revision, whatever the field is really called. Also, again depending on the file structure, you might need to use techqniques for groupwise minimum of a column to get the min rev date for each page.) Mathglot (talk) 03:09, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Unfortunately, I've never used MySQL before. I was hoping I could muddle through with some luck and googling, but I had no such luck. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: And I could totally do it if I had the file structure but I don't; but my strong hunch is that this is very easy, and needs one additional "WHERE" plus another query (probably the groupwise MIN thing) to grab the min value to exclude in the new WHERE. OTOH, if you have access to Quarry, shoot me your query by email if you want, and I'll fix it up, and you can take that and try again, and with several back-and-forths I bet we can get it. Or if you've got zip, I can try a few establishing queries for you to try, and then we can try to build the real one depending on the results you get from those. (Or, we can just wait for someone else to do it, if they will; it really should only take minutes.) Mathglot (talk) 05:11, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog and S Marshall: I don't think this is getting enough attention, and your previous request appears to have stalled at V Pump. This is not good. We need to get this list. Is there someone you can lean on, or request help from, to kick-start this? Alternatively, if someone will give me access to Quarry, a MySQL account permitting SELECT and CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE (or even better, MEMORY table) and a pointer to the file structure descriptions, I can do this myself and create a list to protect these articles. Mathglot (talk) 06:32, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

*Bump* Mathglot (talk) 18:19, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Cryptic for db report 19060. We now have the list of clobbers, and can attend to it. Please see WP:CXT/PTR/Clobbers. Mathglot (talk) 05:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Re-requesting closure of Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest#Investigating COI policy

Someone already requested a closure of Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest#Investigating COI policy, which concerns outing/paid editor/harassment/COI... whatever. However, Casliber says that more than one closer, preferably three-person, may be needed. I wonder whether more than one closer is necessary. If so, this indicates that the discussion would be another one of more difficult discussions we've seen lately. Thoughts? --George Ho (talk) 13:44, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

It's not obvious from the discussion and the number of editors participating and the number of proposals made that it's a difficult and controversial topic? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:59, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

To me, closing the whole discussion is very difficult because of the controversy of the topic. However, I concentrated more on milieus and proposals. To be honest, I saw two milieus and one concrete proposal receiving support from the majority. I concentrated on the straw polls and arguments. How about this: close separate milieus and proposals separately? They aren't that difficult to separately close due to other milieus and proposals not likely to pass. --George Ho (talk) 20:17, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Closing each one separately probably makes more sense from a numbers perspective. However, it should still be one group of editors that does it, since there is the possibility (mentioned on the discussion) that some of the milieus could contradict each other depending on what gets passed. Primefac (talk) 01:57, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Milieus 1, 2, and 5 are easy to close as the majority opposes them individually. Milieu 3 and concrete proposal 1 received majority support, so those would be also easy to close. But you're right; one same group of editors should do the individual closures. However, I won't be part of the closing group, so I'll await the uninvolved closers then. --George Ho (talk) 04:44, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I would be willing to be involved in a group closure on this. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:02, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I cast a !vote in the discussion which I had forgotten about - it would therefore be grossly inappropriate for me to participate in this closure Tazerdadog (talk) 01:04, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I guess this means we're putting the band back together ;) Primefac (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

We still need one more volunteer for this. Tazerdadog (talk) 10:01, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll step up, if you like.—S Marshall T/C 17:34, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

And... we're back down to 2. Primefac (talk) 02:30, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Needed: Another closer please!—S Marshall T/C 15:35, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I suggest you just go ahead with however many closers you have now. I further suggest that the "milieux" were intended to get a "general view of the community" and were very vaguely worded, so that if all you can say is "there was no apparent consensus", then so be it. As far as concrete proposal 1, which I proposed, the 28-6 result seems to make the close obvious. You might as well just go ahead and close it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:53, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

• @Primefac: thoughts? Nobody else is stepping up.—S Marshall T/C 19:36, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Meh, let's just go for it. I think I've still got your email kicking about. I'll send you my thoughts hopefully in the next 24 hours. Primefac (talk) 20:46, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll write mine independently over the same period, and we can see if we agree.  :)—S Marshall T/C 21:39, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

• Sorry, I've re-opened the RFC. Re-opening interest for other editors willing to work on a close. Primefac (talk) 22:31, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Take your time. ;) Meanwhile, what happened to closing separate, individual milieux and proposals? George Ho (talk) 10:35, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll go back to what I said 4 comment above. The milieux can be very difficult to close because of the wording. I thought the reverted close was a very good attempt to make sense out of M.3 in that it focused on what the consensus there actually agreed on, but that aroused a storm and nobody seems to be able to agree on what was actually agreed on. Concrete proposal 1, which I proposed, is very much the opposite and I think can be easily closed. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:27, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll help close it, but I think the section below the actual RFC should be considered as well, since they're actively discussing the RFC and how to proceed. Maybe we should wait just a little while longer to see how that develops. Katie^talk 23:23, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. No point in cutting off productive discourse. Primefac (talk) 11:48, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac, KrakatoaKatie, and S Marshall: I'm going to close a couple separate milieus that receive huge opposition. Casliber, the proposer, is fine with it. However, may I summarize the tally votes as just short rationales? I'll leave the others open. --George Ho (talk) 22:18, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Fine by me, George Ho. It'll make the overall close a bit cleaner. Primefac (talk) 23:08, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Closed milieu 1 and milieu 5. I closed milieu 2 as "no consensus", but I commented that another closer can summarize that better than me. --George Ho (talk) 00:51, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I changed my mind and briefly summarized milieu 2. --George Ho (talk) 01:18, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Milieu 3, Concrete proposal 1, and Concrete proposal 2 are closed by Winged Blades of Godric. Give Godric thanks for the closures. George Ho (talk) 19:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I've been thinking. After closing all the milieus and concrete proposals, I wonder whether closing the remainder of the whole discussion as a whole is possible. If not, how about separately closing "RfC discussion" (including Break 1), Break 2, and Break 3? George Ho (talk) 02:53, 25 April 2017 (UTC); rescinding this consideration. 18:22, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Milieu 4 and Concrete proposal 3 still remain. --George Ho (talk) 04:00, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

I would like to thank Gamebuster19901 for closing Milieu 4 (closed as "there is consensus") and Proposal 3 (closed as "no consensus"). Now I shall ping Primefac, KrakatoaKatie, and S Marshall about this, so they can do the teamwork closure more efficiently. --George Ho (talk) 03:07, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

While I think three closers should suffice, I welcome and don't object to one or more additional closers if necessary. --George Ho (talk) 04:52, 8 June 2017 (UTC); edited, 18:11, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Needing more than one to close RfC discussion at WT:V

The discussion "Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Recent changes to policy about verifiability as a reason for inclusion" started in April. Then the discussion got larger and larger, making the discussion very complex. I discussed it with the proposer S Marshall, who says that several closers are needed. I welcome at least two volunteers. --George Ho (talk) 14:33, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho:--I am willing to serve as a closer.Winged Blades ^Godric 09:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Godric, and I welcome that. I also need another or more closers for teamwork closure. --George Ho (talk) 15:07, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, I created the subsection Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#How to best close this discussion? for team closers to discuss preparing the closure. --George Ho (talk) 02:51, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho: I am willing to serve as a closer as well, but I will defer to almost anyone else who wants to do it. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:28, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Tazerdadog. I notified the participants about this. --George Ho (talk) 02:35, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

@Godric: Tazerdadog will team with you on the closure. George Ho (talk) 03:01, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

If necessary, time for one or two more. George Ho (talk) 07:41, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I read a word that Primefac will be the third teammate. That should suffice, though I welcome more teammates if necessary. --George Ho (talk) 04:11, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Block review

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

---

Third Second time this week for me to ask for review. This is a block of an alternative account that I did, Franzboas, who was using this alternative account for WP:Advocacy and likely breaking the policy on good hand, bad hand accounts. His input at Talk:Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory, Talk:Jewish Bolshevism and User talk:Newyorkbrad were not the only factors, but they do frame the situation well. This block wouldn't extend to his primary account, just to the alternate account, which I do not have dots connected on anyway. It isn't often I block an alt account only, so wanted a review by my peers. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:04, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Unusual indeed, and a novel situation. I'm not sure but I believe the subject are is also under discretionary sanctions, in which case I believe a block would apply to the account owner and hence to all their accounts. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:36, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, broadly construed, is under discretionary sanctions,[2] and Franzboas was alerted to that fact on 17 May.[3] However, Dennis hasn't framed this block as a discretionary sanctions remedy. I don't think discretionary sanctions blocks are supposed to be indefinite, so an ordinary oldfashioned indef as placed by Dennis may be preferable. The option of blocking the main account as well is something that can be discussed here. (The main account isn't known, but a CU can presumably find it if they want.) Bishonen | talk 14:57, 4 June 2017 (UTC).

Oh, and I support this block, did I forget to mention that? Bishonen | talk 15:10, 4 June 2017 (UTC).

You are correct, that often it is better to push the boundaries of admin discretion and put it to community review than to deal with the limitations of Arb restrictions. My actions may not extend to the parent account, but that doesn't stop anyone else from acting on that account, ie: a CU, who might have a better view. My goal was only to stop the immediate disruption as it wasn't likely he would make the same edits with his main account. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:21, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict):::A CU could run a check and issue a Check user block without necessarily disclosing the main account. I contend that PoV/Advocacy is related to the owner of an account, in which case such an attitude exists in the person, not just in one of the accounts they use.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:28, 4 June 2017 (UTC).

• Good block. Saves ArbCom some trouble. There seems to be no inappropriate overlap right now so let's put that to rest for the time being. Drmies (talk) 15:50, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support block. See User talk:Rockypedia#Jews in cultural anthropology and ethnography, where the editor falsely asserted that I "supported" her or his antisemitic vandalism. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 15:54, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• Good block. This was a classic example of tendentious editing at its worst. GAB^gab 16:11, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• I thought about proposing an indef topic ban for Judaism for the unknown parent account (either as Community or WP:AE), but this would drag us pretty deep in the weeds as far as enforcement is concerned. They should understand that they may not create a new account and do the same thing. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:15, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• Good block. Thanks for taking it upon yourself to do what needs to be done. El_C 16:49, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• Obviously a good block. Neutrality^talk 17:09, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• Good block - this user got my radar over on Race and intelligence, a page known for sockpuppeting by Mikemikev. Given that Mikemikev likes to rail against Boasian anthropology, I thought this account was a sock of theirs but apparently​ there's a legit main account. Anyway, the block is needed given the comments on Newyorkbrad's page. EvergreenFir (talk) 17:35, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• Good block - I knew it would come to this after the arbitration request. My only question is why this wouldn't extend to the primary account, since it is the person who made the edits, not the account. {Which I've just seen is a point that Kudpung makde above. Obviously, I agree with that.) It concerns me that the editor involved is still free to edit with their main account, and even to make another so-called "legitimate sock" to continue their advocacy. In my experience, it's rare that people with hardline POVs such as shown by Franzboas are able to edit in other areas without being influenced by those strongly-held opinions. Of course, we don't know if that's the case, because we can't check their editing because we don't know who they are a sock of. This penalizes the community, and potentially the encyclopedia, in order to provide putative "protection" for an editor who has now been blocked for illegitimate editing destructive to the neutrality of the encyclopedia. That doesn't seem right to me. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:14, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• Commment No need for a CU as the main account is known. I won't comment on the issues as who knows, it might come to the committee. Doug Weller talk 18:28, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• Fair enough. Perhaps someone who does know can spot check their contributions? Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:31, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• Beyond My Ken, I presume checking the contributions of the two accounts was what Drmies, who is a CU, was indicating above that he'd done: "There seems to be no inappropriate overlap right now".[4] Bishonen | talk 18:54, 4 June 2017 (UTC).

• Thank you, Bishonen, I missed that part of Drmies comment. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:59, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• Beyond My Ken, it was one of those situations that I decided to deal with this as a non-Arb sanction because that actually freed me up to do an indef block instead of limited blocks and because the behavior (while perhaps violating Arb restrictions) was already covered under standard policy, so I wasn't forced to act under Arb authority. To do this, I felt I needed to limit it to the account that was being misused. Since I don't know the master account, that was the strongest sanction, and method, I had at my disposal. Obviously, I knew that Arb or CUs would review and take other actions if they deemed it necessary, but that is beyond my control. My actions were limited to stopping the disruption. In short, there is a dash of WP:IAR thrown in but given this is an unusual circumstance, it is warranted. And that is why I put it up for review myself. The net of my actions is to remove their ability to use a second account to do this. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:50, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you, Dennis. My apology if it appeared that my comment was a criticism of your action, as that was not my intention. I fully understand what your options were, and I think you acted in the best interests of the encyclopedia with the tools that were available to you.
  I have just posted a suggested addition to WP:LEGITSOCK which would void the privacy provision of that policy if the sock is shown to have violated basic policies and been blocked for it. I don't know if it will fly or not, but this instance is certainly a good illustration of the need for such a change. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:57, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• No offense taken, I know you better than that. I agree that was a limiting factor, since I couldn't compel them to expose their primary account and I thought taking it to Arb was just overkill. If he starts a new account and does the same, he's been warned that it would be truly socking since this alt was blocked, which would mean his real account WOULD be exposed. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 19:23, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• If the "other" account is a POV pusher, they'll run into problems on their own merit. I saw no need for further investigation by others, though of course it's possible that if someone digs deeper they find trouble. It is also no secret that I have plenty of problems with Franzboas's editing, but, I repeat, I did not see such problems in the other account and thus saw no need for anything else--and that's all that needs to be said about it. Let the other account do whatever it was doing; as far as I could tell it was contributing positively. I know it's an odd situation, and it's the first time I see something like this, but hey, the world is a big place. Dennis, thanks again; I am so happy to see you back. Drmies (talk) 22:11, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

He says he isn't going to fight this now, but adds: "@Dennis Brown: I think this is an abomination, but I'm not going to fight it. Not for now, at least. The depth of the bias here genuinely confuses me. Are you aware that one of the people opposing my edits, an administrator, identifies themselves as a "third-gendered sex worker" on their user page and recently defended using euphemisms like "revolutionary action" for ambushing and assaulting unarmed peaceful conservative speakers? (To ice the cake, that admin can and did look at my log information to identify my main account.) Did you know that much of the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory article was written by a user who identifies as an "androgynous British Marxist"? (Amusingly, this image gets passed around on right-wing social media.) Why are these people judged by their individual edits while I am harassed and deemed entirely malicious and unwelcome? Why is an androgynous British Marxist allowed to edit a contentious article about LGBTQ-friendly British Marxists? Are these people not fringe? Or are they just on a fringe that better fits most Wikipedians' tastes? Franzboas (talk) 9:08 pm, Today (UTC+1)" Doug Weller talk 20:39, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• I replied there, as I should since I did the block. It is my opinion that now that the review has taken place at WP:AN, any appeal should be conducted by Arb (or any subset) itself. This is the only way to guarantee his privacy in an unusual case like this. I'm happy to live with whatever conclusions they draw. I would in fact, encourage Arb to review this case before it is requested, and act if they feel it serves the interest of Wikipedia. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:42, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok, the quote Doug Weller have is too far. Attacking people's identities, suggesting they should not edit Wikipedia because of it... That's some bullshit. This editor should be blocked, not just the alt account. The issue is with their behavior and comments now, not the purpose of the alt account. EvergreenFir (talk) 23:21, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

The issue has always been with 'their behaviour and comments' EvergreenFir. The ZOG filth was my straw, so I have been watching since. A comprehensive block is overdue. Irondome (talk) 23:44, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• I have removed his talk page access for reasons that are obvious. I again would encourage Arb to review this case and consider blocking the parent account. This is not something we can do at WP:AN or as an individual admin as we don't have access to the data needed to do this, so this should fall squarely in the realm of what Arb is here for. Drmies, Newyorkbrad, GorillaWarfare, Doug Weller or another Arb, perhaps you can do this without a formal filing in public, which would defeat the whole purpose of privacy in that account? Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:29, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
  • User:Dennis Brown, Doug knows the other account, and I'll be happy to confirm this to the other arbs (I might change to "active" soon), or they can run their own check. I repeat that I didn't see problems, certainly not these kinds of strange, strange problems, with the other account. Drmies (talk) 22:13, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
    • Drmies, my block was never meant to prevent blocking the master, and given what he has said since, I think Arb should consider it. We are still policy bound to protect his privacy, so Arb is the only mechanism available to do review and take action, if they deem it necessary. Personally, I think we have crossed the threshold where the parent account needs to be blocked, but the community lacks the tools to effectively do this. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:20, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• Because they were made for purposes of WP:ADVOCACY, I have rolled back a number of Franzboas' edits. Any uninvolved editor with no bone to pick who believes that an edit I rolled back improved the article it appeared in is welcome to restore it without protest from me. I would suggest, though, that admins might want to look closely at the motivations of any editor who restores all (or very many) of the edits I reverted. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:40, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• Endorse block and thanks to Dennis Brown for decisive action. I saw some of the advocacy and it was corrosive. Johnuniq (talk) 23:32, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
• The main account should be blocked as well. Not sure why it hasn't been. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:58, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Main problem is that we can't link the master and this "legit" sock publicly. This is why I'm trying to get Arb to look at it. Even blocked editors get the same right of anonymity. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:02, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
    • @Dennis Brown: It's not a "legit" sock per WP:SCRUTINY. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:06, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
      • He declared it for a editing in a sensitive area, something we allow. Had he made good edits, there would be no issue with the second account. I didn't block him for creating the account, just for what he did and what the account became. He's been warned if he creates another account to bypass this block, they will all be linked. And yes, I agree blocking the master is a good idea, but my opinion is that Arb should do the dirty work here, given the totality of the circumstances and his expectation of privacy with the account. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:12, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
        • I agree that if he had made good edits then there would be no issue. But he didn't, so the legitimate part goes away. We're not going to have editors creating attack accounts and claiming an expectation of privacy and having the main account remain in good standing, their reputation untouched. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:22, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
          • • When I blocked him, and now, I just felt that was a decision best not made by a single person. Particularly since Drmies check the "real" users other contribs and they weren't problematic. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:49, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
              • I understand Dennis's actions and reason for not blocking the main account. And I agree that the arbs would be the best folks to deal with this. But NeilN is correct: abusing a legit alt account voids the protections that come with it. The issue is the user, not the account, and so the user must be dealt with. Trying to game an alt account to shield yourself from repercussions of what the user clearly knows is unacceptable behavior is not okay. EvergreenFir (talk) 04:19, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Whomsoever the ultimate jurisdiction should fall to, I am increasingly inclined to expect a siteban. There is no place for (fairly open) antisemitic fascists on WP, who are now openly attacking other vulnerable minority groups. No place. Zero tolerance. Irondome (talk) 00:28, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

• Question: It seems to me that the block of Franzboas is well supported by policy (based on the account's actions) and the increasingly robust consensus of uninvolved editors here. However, I am wondering if the two apparent views of the main account – privacy prevents action so long as that account edits unproblematically and it is the editor who took the actions so the main account should also be blocked – are truly the only available options. Could not an AN consensus impose a topic ban on the main account, to be informed to the editor off-wiki? Presumably the accounts are notified to ArbCom, so the ban could also be noted on the Arb wiki. Notification by an arbitrator who knows the identity of the main account could be accompanied by a strict warning that (for example) the topic ban will be noted on the main account on wiki and an AN thread to consider a block / ban started if problematic edits are found (in other words, privacy can't be used to protect an editor from prior advocacy problems on an alternative account being considered if the same problems appear on the main account). Or, that a violation will see the main account blocked for violations of the sock policy? Or, whatever other policy-compliant conditions that an AN consensus might support? I recognise that monitoring the account is an extra burden for arbitrators / functionaries who know the identity of the main account, but practically, any editor causing serious problems within the topic will ultimately be called out at a noticeboard at which point someone in the know will see it and a quick check would allow the imposed conditions to be triggered. To me, this approach would formally register to the editor the community's disapproval of their actions and keep whoever is behind the Franzboas account away from the topic. It would also reaffirm to everyone that the community does not approve of using alternative accounts for advocacy (ie. this is not a legitimate SOCK under the policy) and that advocacy and POV editing reflect the views of the editor. Is something along these lines possible / viable / desirable? EdChem (talk) 00:48, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
  • I thought of that and even typed it out and reviews a few times, but in the end, felt Arb was best to deal with this, and they can do it in private, then decide (based on what policy and community expectations are) what to do. I don't want the bad deeds of one person push us to violate our own rules on privacy. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:52, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
    • (e/c) Just on Neil's T/P. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Daniel_Craig&diff=prev&oldid=783834101. Who the hell is this? Irondome (talk)
  • A topic ban probably wouldn't do anything as this alt-account was specifically created to edit on this topic, shielding the main account. Also, we are talking about behavioral problems here, not only advocacy. It is well understood that behavioral problems in the past usually result in a (sometimes much) shorter leash in the future, even in unrelated areas. A private topic ban does not address this, unless the Arbs are willing to monitor future behavior in all areas. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 01:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
• As I mentioned above, I posted a comment on WP:Sockpuppetry suggesting a change to the privacy provision in which a violation of policies by the "legitimate sock" would void the privacy. (The thread can be found here.) An editor expressed the opinion that "This is all already covered, albeit less specifically than in your proposal." So at least one editor believes that violating Wikipedia policies voids the privacy provision. I'm not sure what, exactly, the editor feels covers this (I've asked them to comment here) but it's worth looking into. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:05, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
• Although there was no privacy issue, Til Eulenspiegel's alternative and harmless account was also blocked[5] , by User:The Bushranger. Doug Weller talk 05:55, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
• Restrictions are against the editor, not the account. The current situation is that the editor is unrestricted from editing in the same area, as their main account has not been restricted in any way. If there is a genuine privacy need to keep the accounts separate, then someone with CU access needs to email the main account and let them know formally any restrictions to the Alt-account also apply to their main. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:13, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
• Personally, I would be looking at blocking the main account as well. It is utterly ludicrous that the misuse of a sock implies some sort of privacy. Failing that, what I would certainly be doing is informing the two editors attacked by Franzboas on his talkpage of his description and attack on them, and if I was them I would have every expectation of being told the master account name as well, given that they appear to also be engaging in off-wiki harrassment ("Did you know that much of the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory article was written by a user who identifies as an "androgynous British Marxist"? Amusingly, this image gets passed around on right-wing social media.") The editor lost any claims they might have to privacy when they posted that - regardless of the fact that the sock was not SOCK#LEGIT compliant anyway, as it was only revealed when another editor forced them into it. I have no idea why we're tiptoeing round this elephant in the room. Black Kite (talk) 18:20, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
• @Black Kite: I agree with you. I have in fact contacted RGloucester about that photoshopped image. Of course it's a lie that he wrote much of it, see his edits here. Doug Weller talk 19:44, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Doug Weller I've pinged some Arbs but no reply. Do I need to file a formal case here, or will Arb simply look into this privately? As the blocking admin, who is limited on what he can do, I can't help but think this is a reasonable request, for an answer. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 19:46, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
    • ArbCom are discussing this. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:48, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
      • Yes, although I have no objection to this being handled by the community. Doug Weller talk 20:09, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
        • Hiding behind an alternate account for veiled antisemitism - coupled with the personal attacks - really does render privacy a moot point. Sanctions on the master are the only real path from this point. GAB^gab 20:36, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
        • It's rather hard for the community to handle it, since we don't know who the master is. I take Drmies' word that the editing of the master doesn't show signs of the advocacy of Franzboas, but I think the issue has now gone beyond that to: do we want the editor who spews personal attacks and antisemitic editing under a mask to be allowed to edit here at all? We could, in essence, try the master in absentia, and call for a block, which could then be implemented by an Arb without public announcement, but that rather flies in the face of the culture of transparency that WP generally runs under. In any case, I would think that many people would be uneasy about passing judgment on another editor based on less then the totality of their contributions, which would, again, make it difficult for the community to reach a decision and "handle it". Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:32, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
          • • Bingo. Thus my harping about Arb reviewing it. They review stuff in private all the time, I would trust them in this. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:47, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
              • It's not a question of trust; it's a question of need. Incidents should be reviewed in private only when there's an overriding need to. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:41, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
      • Thank you Newyorkbrad. I had a feeling, but no one told me as blocking admin. This is one of those times that really does require Arb. If you decide to link them publicly, not to, block, don't, whatever, that is fine but only you guys can really review it properly. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:33, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I have a naive question. Since nobody saw fit to raise it, I'll do it myself. Why wasn't a topic ban first considered, instead of an indef block? That way, one can topic ban the other account as well, if required. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 18:22, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Admins cannot hand out topic bans on their own for subjects not covered by discretionary sanctions. The editor was warned of the "intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour" DS but what they were blocked for does not fall under that (in my opinion). --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:41, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok. So admins can indef block someone for some reason, removing their ability to edit at all; but not topic ban someone for the same reason, removing their ability to edit in a certain area? Sound rather weird. In any case, bans can be handed out through consensus here. Why not start with a topic ban first? Is there evidence of disruption outside the area? Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 19:29, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

A block is just a block. When someone is banned in any way, other editors are expected to remove their edits and other admins to block them under circumstances. Blocks don't obligate others in such ways. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:36, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Admin are not allowed to unilaterally issue topic bans unless it falls under GS or DS sanctions. What you need to remember is this is a (questionably legit) SOCK that was created solely to make these kinds of edits, he has a main account. The only effective way of dealing with it was to block the sock and bump up to Arb to let them make the final call, in order to protect his privacy. They could lift the block and chastise me, although I wouldn't expect that. And remember, Kingsindian, my block did not prevent the real primary account in any way to edit any article. What I really blocked was his use of that sock. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 19:39, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Let's stipulate that the block was fine. After the block, it was brought here for review. I am saying: why not just topic ban them instead of indef blocking them? WP:AN has the power to do whatever it wants. Why go straight to an indef block, instead of a narrower ban? Is there evidence of disruption outside the area in question? One recalls the Noleander case, where they were given a topic ban by ArbCom. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 20:00, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Have you actually read through the above discussion? [6] --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:06, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

So, can we just clarify where we are at this time? I am under the assumption that this issue is now firmly in the hands of Arbcom, as Newyorkbrad has intimated by referring to ongoing Arbcom discussion, and that Dennis's block is a holding action. Or is the community to decide on whether it goes to ANI or Arbcom? I get the point about two accounts being in play here, which obviously makes things less straightforward. How are we going forward from here? Irondome (talk) 20:22, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

NeilN I have indeed read it. I wrote a response addressing your argument; but in the middle I realized that this discussion is likely to go nowhere. So I decided that it's better to just let ArbCom deal with the weird rules of Wikipedia. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 20:29, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

@Irondome: We are not discussing going to undo the block of Franzboas, if that's what you are asking. And it is my opinion that it is up to the community to decide if it wants to handle this at ANI. Although we may take some action in regard to the main account I personally don't see why the community can't handle it and would prefer to see that happen. The issue for me is whether we treat both accounts the same way or say that if the main account has not been editing problematically it can continue to edit. I'd argue for the former. Doug Weller talk 20:39, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: I don't see how the community can decide on what sanctions to impose (or if) when only Arbcom knows what is the main account. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:45, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

No Doug, I was aware this is not about unblocking this individual. My question was who is handling this issue now, Arbcom or the community. Basically would Arbcom prefer the community to handle this, and is that the majority feeling there? In which case we can take this to ANI and propose a topic ban on all Jewish related subjects, broadly construed. (Although wording may be harder as this individual has edited the ZOG Conspiracy theory and that old chestnut, The over representation of Jews in Communist organisations. I would argue further that this use of two accounts has been a cynical gaming and the community treats both the same. The arguments for privacy have been well critiqued above as being undeserving of further GF by the community. Irondome (talk)

Just one caveat, Irondome, AN is the proper venue for a topic ban discussion. Generally those only get handled at AN/I when they're connected to a discussion about an incident which has been reported there, and keeping the discussion in one place is valuable. Since this was brought here in the first place, any discussion about a topic ban for the master account should take place here... and since Arbitrators are open to letting the community handle this, I think I'll do just that. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:37, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Proposals

Proposal 1: Topic ban for master account of Franzboas

The account "Franzboas" was created by an editor currently unknown to the community at large (but known to ArbCom) as a supposedly "legitimate alternative account" under the privacy provision of WP:LEGITSOCK. However, it appears that the master actually created the account to avoid WP:SCRUTINY, as the edits made by Franzboas were almost entirely to identify article subjects as being Jewish, whether or not that identification had any relevance. After the sock account was indef-blocked for WP:ADVOCACY, Franzboas made a number of personal attacks against other editors on their talk page, until talk page access was removed. At the very least, the editing of Franzboas indicates that the editor behind that account has an unhealthy fascination, damaging to the encyclopedia, with labeling people as Jewish, whether or not doing so is relevant or not; at the worst, their editing shows them to be an antisemite who gamed the system and used the privacy provision to avoid any ramifications of their POV editing on their main account. On the grounds that there is a legitimate need to protect the encyclopedia from the bias of this editor, this proposal is for a topic ban on the main account from editing all things, anywhere on the encyclopedia, having to do with Judaism and Jewishness, broadly construed. The topic ban would be indefinite, but can be appealed to the community on AN after one year. Should the editor be blocked, this topic ban would remain in effect if and when that block is lifted.

• Support as proposer, in conjunction with the indef block in Proposal 2. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:37, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Support. Irondome (talk) 21:48, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support as obvious—if a person makes an account that is indeffed for advocacy, a minimal outcome is that the person is indefinitely topic banned. Johnuniq (talk) 05:13, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• I can Support this, but I don't know if it's necessary. Since the master is known to ArbCom and has no previous edits in this area, topic banning them doesn't do much. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 05:56, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support At a minimum. Its clear from Dennis above that the block was to prevent problematic editing - which as an (allegedly) legit sock is generally limited to this topic area. I do not see any real dissention above that people are disagreeing their edits in this topic are problematic. So there is no privacy issue in extending a topic ban to the editor and getting someone with the relevant advanced permissions to notify the editor on his main account in private. It would need to be logged at WP:RESTRICT (suitably anonymised) though for future reference. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:51, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as not sufficent. Their comments on their talk page show that their bigotry goes a lot further than anti-semitism, and their interest further than articles about Judaism. Black Kite (talk) 18:03, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• Siteban? Frankly I would support that, as I indicated way upthread. Irondome (talk) 18:11, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• Support, mainly as per Only in death. I understand Kingsindian's point here, although I think this is a necessary prophylactic and precautionary measure. GAB^gab 22:41, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support in addition to proposal 2. BMK's views on this subject throughout the thread sum my views up well. This is neccessary in case proposal 2 doesn't get consensus or if it does and it is appealed. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:15, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - along with proposal two. To be clear, this alone is insufficient in my view. Would still support this should proposal two fail. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:43, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support: I don't see how the indef. block of the sock for advocacy can fail to translate to a topic ban for advocacy of the master. Don't know whether this should be by an arbitrator informing the master account quietly or whether a public link is necessary – certainly monitoring is more difficult without it – but the topic ban is absolutely necessary. Also, in the event that the master account decided to do an RfA, this ban would need to be disclosed either by the editor or by someone knowing his or her identity. EdChem (talk) 12:11, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Proposal 2: Indef block for master account of Franzboas

(Please see the description of the situation under Proposal 1 above.) Given the attitudes and bias of the editor behind the Franzboas account, as expressed in their editing and their personal attacks, the Wikipedia community has decided that the editor is not one that we wish to have as a contributor to the encyclopedia, and for that reason, we have decided to extend the indef block for ADVOCACY given to Franzboas to the master account. Should this indef block be lifted, and should the topic ban in Proposal 1 be affirmed, that topic ban would remain in effect until such time as it is lifted by community consensus.

• Support as proposer, in conjunction with the topic ban in Proposal 1. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:37, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Support. Let us deal with this in a decisive way. Irondome (talk) 21:40, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support Without knowing anything else about this user (master account and alt), except what is here and the editing history of the alt account, comments on their talk page, this just seems like it was a mis-cue to allow the alt account in the first place. Given the subject matter the alt account was set up to engage in, and the whole Arb Com discretionary sanctions within that subject matter, it seems right to indef block of the master account. — Maile (talk) 22:40, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - If current policy is interpreted to mean that users can create scrutiny-evading socks to make racist/anti-Semitic comments on the encyclopedia and level despicable personal attacks at other editors without penalty to their primary account, our current policy *is fatally broken and must be changed. The limited license for users to create alternative accounts must not be allowed to provide an anonymous platform for behavior that is corrosive to the very fabric of a collaborative encyclopedia. We do not need editors so badly that we must be forced to accept the presence of someone who openly treats other editors in such a manner. That they have done so under the cover of an "alternative account" is of no account — this user must no longer be welcome on the project in any way, shape or form. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 04:07, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support for the abuse of WP:VALIDALT in order to violate WP:NOTADVOCACY in a sustained way. That alone is enough, without even mentioning the nature of what they were promoting. The thing that is puzzling is that as ugly as the editing was, there was this shred of honor in disclosing that it actually was an alt account. So odd. Jytdog (talk) 04:39, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support Editor X cannot evade sanctions by making alternate account Y for a particular purpose, and later repeat with account Z (or X) after Y is indeffed. It would be a mistake for anyone to think they could evade scrutiny by making an alternate account for an activity that is likely to lead to that account being indeffed. Johnuniq (talk) 05:13, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose: The master is known to ArbCom, and there is no chance of repeating this behaviour with another account, for obvious reasons. One should start with a topic ban and see how it goes. It would be in line with the Noleander case. Bad behaviour in one area is in no way necessitates bad behaviour in another; otherwise topic bans would be meaningless in general.

  In my opinion, WP:VALIDALT was not violated. See the inappropriate uses here. None of them apply. It was claimed that "Good Hand, Bad Hand" was violated, but I don't see it. There was no intention to evade scrutiny or deliberately try to vandalize or disrupt articles. The behaviour was judged as disruptive after the fact, that is fine. But there is no evidence that the alt was set up to disrupt. The editor said that they set up the alt because they wanted to edit in a sensitive area, and didn't want to disclose their main alt for privacy reasons. This is explicitly covered in WP:VALIDALT.

  In any case, if there are problems with alts, one can simply restrict them to one account instead of indef blocking them. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 06:14, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• Undecided. Not comfortable discussing an indef block of a user without at least some details of the user's editing patterns seen as a whole. Do they perform significant amount of good/productive edits on their main account? Is their main account hardly used and their legitsock make up the bulk of their edits? If the former - many editors can be productive once restricted from areas that get them in trouble. If the latter - there is no real benefit in allowing them to continue editing. Is this something someone with the ability to see both accounts can answer? Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:56, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support I understand this is under view by ArbCom, however let me just try to clear something up here. We have an editor, who has a legitimate alt account, that was making anti-Semitic comments. How is this not gaming the system? And if we are going to use the idea of "privacy" to protect the master from a block, then haven't we just given carte blanche for ANY user to do this? This is completely uncalled for. Both the sock and master need to go, this behavior has no place here. RickinBaltimore (talk) 13:55, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - see my 2 comments at the beginning of this issue. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:03, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Comment this may in effect OUT the master. Is this something the community can do? Mr Ernie (talk) 15:36, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• OUTing requires the attempt to identify an editor's personal information, but there is no possibility of this being OUTing, since any personal information about the master (if there is any) would already be on the master's user page. It would only potentially link the master to a misbehaving sock, and possibly not even that if ArbCom chose to make the application of any community sanction private. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:40, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• Support Anti-semitism, homophobia, and anti LGBTQ slurs. No reason why the master should be allowed to continue editing here. I'm not entirely sure why we're having this conversation; if the master for this sock was known, it would have been indeffed on the spot. Black Kite (talk) 18:01, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Undecided Before going off the deep end, all I see here are a lot of comments on talk pages. I was involved in some of those discussions, and I wasn't impressed by the logic of his arguments or what seemed to me like inaccurate use of sources. But that, by itself, is not unusual. Neither are intensely offensive comments from editors on talk pages, there are many such comments daily on contentious topics. A lot of editors seem to be deeply morally offended by the comments on Newyorkbrad's talk page. Is it because he noted a lot of academics are Jewish? Seriously? When did noting the background of academics become weird? Even Newyorkbrad doesn't think it rises to the level of antisemitism. And Jewish Bolshevism — well, this much is for sure, it was an important part of Nazi propaganda. Far more concerning then anything on Newyorkbrad's talk page, there were some truly offensive comments, about race and iq —which is around the time I checked out of the discussion. Generally, I agree generally with Jytdog's comment above that this was an obvious abuse of policy and Franzboas should have known better.. Black Kite mentions slurs, and if slurs were in fact used, on talk or in edits, that would be different from what I read on Newyorkbrad's talk page. I will note that while most of the support for this proposal is from editors who believe this was abuse of an alt-account, the way the proposal is worded suggests that the issue is attitudes and bias of the editor—to echo what Jytdog says above, it is enough that Franzboas made statements to the effect that the purpose of the account was to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS—it isn't necessary to mention the nature or content of the advocacy. Seraphim System ^(talk) 19:56, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose users without the right to know the identity of a master account are unable to block him even if these is some users in support of doing it. Govindaharihari (talk) 20:36, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support per BMK and other below. Socking to hide views that one is ashamed of and are reprehensible is not okay. If the accounts had been one, a topic ban would have been fine, but since socking was used the appropriate response is an indefinite block/ site ban given the actions of Franzboa both before and after they were blocked. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:15, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
• Comment I would again repeat that it would be preferable to see that Arb and the editing community in general is able to make decisions like this in content-neutral terms. Jewish Bolshevism is a toxic article for many reasons. The best thing to do is probably stay away from it. I don't know if it's true but our article on Menachem Begin says he accused Mapai of "Bolshevism" and this has been repeated and discussed by other Israeli scholars. Long story short, there are numerous long-standing issues with this article. Probably, Menachem Begin was not an anti-semite. Hmm. There is something deeply disturbing and toxic about the entire topic, and while I did not find Franzboas' editing style to be especially productive or constructive, I find that uncritical hypersensitivity to the topic is equally unproductive. I have not seen any posts that rise to the level of racial slurs (there may have been such posts but I have not seen them) and editors should really post such evidence if they are going to continue to use the term "antisemitism"—I would generally agree that this [7] is pretty clear evidence that the direction Franzboas was heading in would not have been an improvement for the article, as far as his intentions seem to have been to legitimize the canard. But this is one edit out of many, and it is a talk page comment, so I'm not sure how I feel about it. I think blocking the alt account was the right call, but extending it to indeff the master account may be too heavy-handed, at this point. Seraphim System ^(talk) 08:32, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

While he has made a lot of posts adding Judaism to biographical backgrounds, many of his edits weren't negative. This seems to be mostly about statements that he has made that he added this material to prove that Jews were "overrepresented" in certain fields [8]. As for the actual content of the edits - what is anti-semitic about this [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] is this anti-semitic [17] [18] is it anti-semitic to mention that someone's mother admired Emma Goldman [19] is it hateful to mention that someone is gay [20] ... is the concern here the content of the edits or what motivated the content of the edits? The edits themselves don't seem like WP:ADVOCACY, they seem on the whole neutral in tone, some are even positive, like a mention of Jewish values being a factor in personal success —but there are statements he has made about his motivations that could show his editing pattern as a whole is motivated by WP:ADVOCACY, though I think that reasoning is borderline at best. But regarding anti-semitism, I don't think the content of (most) of the edits rises to the level of what most people would think of as "anti-semitic fascist" pattern of editing, and I don't think indeff-ing the master account would be preventative. These articles are very closely watched, and if problems arise in the future, we can deal with that when it happens. Seraphim System ^(talk) 09:41, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

As with many other things, context is what matters. An editor who adds that the subject of an article is Jewish, when that is relevant to their history or work, can hardly be considered to be an antisemite, but an editor who does so in practically every edit they make, with a number of reasons given for why it is relevant, some of which are stretches at best, is doing nothing but spreading around the stigma of being a Jew. You don't have to pay attention to what this person says, because he's a Jew. This person writes about antisemitism, but that's to be expected, because she's a Jew. This one over here is a physicist, but that's not unusual because they're a Jew and many physicists are Jews. The net effect is that Franzboas was handing out scarlet letters to people with Jewish backgrounds in order to smear them. There was nothing innocent about their editing, their user page made that clear. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:08, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I understand that you feel this was an attempt to delegitimize individuals based on their religious background, but I am having a hard time applying that reasoning to a post that, for instance, notes that someone is Jewish because they are critical of Israel and support Palestinian rights [21] Seraphim System ^(talk) 08:15, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

That a Jewish person supports Palestinian rights and criticizes Israel is only relevant if one is of the opinion the normally all Jews support Israel and are opposed to Palestinian rights. That is an antisemitic prejudice, pure and simple, presupposing that all Jews think alike, are incapable of independent thought, and walk in lockstep with Israel, something I know from personal experience is not true, and something that any intelligent person editing this encyclopedia should know is not true. Franzboas didn't seem to know that, which means that the master doesn't know that, which makes them a ticking time bomb in our midst. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:57, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

"As with many other things, context is what matters." Johnuniq (talk) 11:26, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Too many preconceptions, Beyond My Ken. A productive editor can add material that they feel is relevant, and if a consensus of other editors disagree, they can remove it. All this conjecture about what is consistent with what and what is inconsistent with what, is little more than a difference of opinion between you and Franzboas. I didn't always agree with the edits of Franzboas. I found myself going around and tweaking or rewriting some of the material he added to articles concerning the Jewish identity of a person being written about. But I feel there is enough working substance to his input to keep him around as a contributing editor. I have no understanding of alternative accounts. I fail to understand their utility. I think we should tell him to keep one account and cease using the other. As to which to keep and which to discard I haven't the foggiest idea. How about the eeny, meeny, miny, moe method? Bus stop (talk) 01:32, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Nope, you're welcome to your opinion, but preconceptions have nothing to do with mine. Experience and knowledge of history have a lot to do with it, but preconceptions are what drove the edits of Franzboas, not mine. You, personally, may think the editor who socked as Franzboas is an asset to the encyclopedia, I, personally, don't want an editor with those vial prejudices around the place.

And may I just add that the master editor knew that the editing they would be doing as Franzboas would be unacceptable, or there would have been no reason to create a so-called "legitimate sock". The privacy provision of WP:Sockpuppetry says:

A person editing an article which is highly controversial within his/her family, social or professional circle, and whose Wikipedia identity is known within that circle, or traceable to their real-world identity, may wish to use an alternative account to avoid real-world consequences from their editing or other Wikipedia actions in that area.

However, the editing of Franzboas wasn't "editing an article which is highly controversial within his/her family, social or professional circle", what Franzboas was doing was making antisemitic edits, which should be generally rejected, as any edits which are prejudicial to any group should be. And what's happening now is that they're not only "avoid[ing] real-world consequences from their editing", they're also avoiding consequences on Wikipedia, which is not what the provision was designed for.

In other words, they misused and abused the purpose of the privacy provision because they knew their edits would not be appropriate to Wikipedia, and they wanted to protect the reputation of their main account. Well, that reputation is now totally shot, the only problem is we know it only as "the master account of Franzboas", not by a specific name. That may or may not change, but the need for a sanction on that account seems obvious to me, and to many other editors. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:06, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

If Franzboas' edits were antisemitic, that would be the most circumlocuitous form of antisemitism I've ever seen. You might be right. I found his edits curious. But I would not accept that they were antisemitic without further evidence. Incidentally, you mean "vile prejudices". I agree that the use of multiple accounts seems indefensible. Bus stop (talk) 02:21, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

No, I meant "vial prejudices" - didn't you see their derogatory comments about small glass containers? <g> Thanks for the correction. And yes, in my opinion they were antisemitic in the context of the number of them, and taking into account their comments on their user page, which made their agenda quite clear, at least to me. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:15, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean the statement presently at the top of the page User:Franzboas? A "fascination" with "Jewish identity" does not necessarily constitute antisemitism, not in my opinion. It is not a clear statement. I don't know what it means. For instance I don't know what the "taboo surrounding Jewish group identity" is. But a poorly expressed thought is not necessarily antisemitism. Bus stop (talk) 04:29, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Clearly, we read it differently, as it seems obvious to me what the agenda behind the thought, poorly expressed or not, is, and why he or she is hiding it behind a sock. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:26, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi Beyond My Ken—when something is nonsensical you can't pin a meaning on it. I'm referring to the "taboo surrounding Jewish group identity". If I had to come up with one best interpretation of what that is I would say that it is "antisemitism". Let me be clear. Let me restate what I'm saying, for the purposes of clarity: the taboo surrounding Jewish group identity is antisemitism. What other taboo is there surrounding Jewish group identity? This is a poorly expressed thought. Probably nothing more. Again—I agree wholeheartedly that the use of multiple accounts is highly problematic. Bus stop (talk) 20:08, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

• Strong Support I was waiting on more Arb input to point out how the privacy policy outweighs, and protects, abusive and pointed socking and I've yet to read anything compelling. If the master has real world identifiable info connected to their account then that's on them. They should've thought of that before socking so they could let loose with what they're really thinking. I know this vote functionally can't force a CU or ArbCom to do anything but they should openly link the master to this sock. Otherwise we have a scenario where anyone who has identifiable info linked to their account (true or not) has a built in immunity to sanctions for illegitimate socking. Capeo (talk) 01:13, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - After discussion, I have come to the conclusion that nothing less than a site ban would be warranted. If the human behind the account is afraid of the real-world consequences of having their anti-Jewish hatred exposed, they have the very limited right to have the reason for the site ban kept secret, making it an ArbCom block. However, their original reason for using an alternate account was that their behavior was shameful. Let the ArbCom inquiry run, but only for the purpose of determining whether there are any other socks, or any other shameful behavior. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:13, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support (non-admin comment) -- By bifurcating their accounts in this way, the owner has clearly demonstrated that they knew that such editing would be objectionable. This demonstrates that they wanted to avoid scrutiny. If they truly believed that this so-called systemic bias should be remedied & that they had reliable sources to back up their positions, they should have done so from the main account. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:30, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Was waiting on ArbCom but they're taking too long for my liking. The only acceptable option. Would add that the alt account and the master account should be publicly connected. This is an abuse/gaming of SOCKLEGIT and the protections that are afforded to legit socks were forfeited with that abuse. Further, add noted by Doug Weller below, there are other unknown socks as well. Those accounts, I if identified, should be blocked and connected to the master. The user's reprehensible bigotry and abusive comments are not welcome here. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:49, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

EvergreenFir—I would be interested to see an example of their "reprehensible bigotry and abusive comments". I simply have not seen that yet. That is the disconnect, for me. Please show me such comments on the part of Franzboas. This is of course entirely apart from the use of two or more accounts, which I don't find defensible. I haven't seen "bigotry and abusive comments". You might be right, but I simply haven't seen that, so I'm asking for examples. Bus stop (talk) 10:08, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

• Support - Anyone who can seriously write on their user page that they created a sock account to edit in their interest in "Jewish identity and its effect on characteristically Jewish political movements and schools of thought" is just using euphemisms to get around accountability for holding various anti-semitic canards. For that matter - his comment "Jews are, however, a group, and a strongly identified one. They have group interests, and those interests are sometimes at odds with those who they live amongst." is again, a more polite way to push the idea that Jews are some shadowy monolithic group that controls things from the shadows. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:24, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

While I'm inclined to think that any decision that might ultimately reveal someone's real identity and expose them to real harm, if that is a risk here, should always be made by attorneys with a fiduciary duty to the relevant organization, and not a mob of community edtors (for a number of reasons, for example, Franzboas might be a minor, or any number of things that no one but a paid attorney has time to consider fully) I am inclined to agree that the comment Ealdgyth highlighted was the one that I thought crossed a line, and additionally his comments on the links between race and IQ weren't stellar either. But limiting it to our internal policies, I still don't see how it would be preventative. Seraphim System ^(talk) 16:00, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Ealdgyth—I don't derive from the quoted sentence "that Jews are some shadowy monolithic group that controls things from the shadows"[22]. A society is composed of many groups as well as many individuals who do not perceive themselves as being primarily part of a group but rather perceive themselves primarily as individuals or independent-minded people. That the interests of Jews are "sometimes at odds with those who they live amongst" is not in the least bit surprising. Is it at all surprising that the interests of people as a group or as individuals are "sometimes" at odds with the interests of other people in a society? This was said by Franzboas in the context of a Talk page of an article on Jewish Bolshevism. If we want to have an article with that title we should expect Talk page input that is vulnerable to misinterpretation because the topic is inflammatory. Bus stop (talk) 16:24, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Not Ealdgyth, but my take on it is that it is problematic because it assumes there is such a thing as "the interests of Jews" in the first place...his poorly reasoned argument was basically 1) Jews have group interests 2)that may be at odds with "those they live amongst" 3)Jews are Communists 4)He is open to considering that it might not be a conspiracy. Personal feelings aside, he draws this conclusion out of thin air and repeatedly insists that the sources support his inferences, while seeming to ignore repeated attempts to explain the WP:OR policy. Seraphim System ^(talk) 17:49, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

• Support: If all the edits were by one account, the decision between topic ban and indef ban would be being debated here, and I might have been willing to support only a topic ban. However, adding in separating the edits into a good hand / bad hand mode seriously weakens my good faith. I saw the explanation about systematic bias, but I find it difficult to accept when the views expressed were controversial because of blatant prejudice and bias. I accept the master account appears to be editing unproblematically so I can accept a decision not to site ban, but I would much prefer to see a linking of the accounts and a community assessment of the master account. Failing that, I would like to see a statement from the master account (relayed through an intermediary) with the editor's response to recent events. To those who know the master account's identity, is seeking a voluntary disclosure or at least a comment possible? EdChem (talk) 12:21, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Proposal 3: No community action is warranted, ArbCom can act if it sees fit

Adding this for the sake of completeness.

• Oppose - I have no objection at all to ArbCom acting if it chooses to, but I don't consider the possibility of an ArbCom sanction (or no sanction) as precluding community action. It's hardly unusual for ArbCom and the community to deal with problems in parallel, and while the community does not have access to the full data, the proposals as written are based on what is available to the community. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:48, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Yeah I would agree with that. This is actually a serious business and I would expect it to be given due weight. An ideal solution is to allow the community to continue giving it's opinions under the above proposals, and see whether they chime with ArbComs' considered view. As BMK says, the community and ArbCom should be dealing with issues in tandem, and I suspect that the considered final community consensus and ArbCom sentiments will chime. Irondome (talk) 02:57, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose ArbCom can of course act if it sees fit, but that is not a reason for inaction from the community. Johnuniq (talk) 05:13, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - see my 2 comments at the beginning of this issue. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:01, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - This was a block given by an admin (me), who did so without any community input as it wasn't required, but I volunteered for community review after the fact. I asked Arb to review it, which of course means they review my actions as well. I could have just blocked and made a request to Arb via email but chose not to because I put my actions up for review. Because it involves privacy issues, I think Arb should review first. They may bump it down and link the accounts, or just take action, so the penalty may ultimately be up to the community, but linking privacy accounts is only something CUs (and Arbs) have the tools and authority to do. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:15, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

  It now looks like Arb may have already been on the case before or just as I blocked him. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:51, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• Support - no community action is possible without Arbcoms say so, all of these community suggestions are pointless without elevated authority in this case. No one will name the master apart from Arbcom. If Arbcom quietly ban him as he is clearly high profile all users will know his identity, if he edits under his real name that would create additional privacy concerns. I also see that even Newyorkbrad doesn't think it rises to the level of antisemitism. Govindaharihari (talk) 20:03, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support with qualification that the dichotomy between community action and ArbCom action that is the underlying assumption is a false and misleading dichotomy. ArbCom is not somehow separate from the community, it is the tool of the community (Jimbo created the "Wikiquette Committee" after several requests and community suggestions). In contrast to the, what, 1-200 or so editors that might see an AN/ANI discussion, ~2000 editors vote in ArbCom elections. That is a whole order of magnitude more participation. My point is, however, that the community has placed its trust in ArbCom. That trust was freely debated and extensively discussed. ArbCom acts only as long as it keeps that trust. That suggest to me, for what its worth, that the community can wait for its designated tool to take the actions that may be needed. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:55, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose that ArbCom is looking into it does not preclude community action. The community should be able to voice its opinion and form consensus on this, and ArbCom should implement if a consensus is formed. This of course is not being opposed to ArbCom acting on its own. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:15, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose with qualifications I think ArbCom will have to enforce any community decision related to the master account, unless they decide to publicly link the accounts (which does not seem likely)—they've raised the possibility of privacy concerns if they indeff the master account, but at the same time community input is something they should consider during their deliberations. But the final the requirements of the privacy policy is something we don't get a say in. Seraphim System ^(talk) 10:43, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose - I realize ArbCom has to deal with this in the end. But I also think the community has a responsibility to the project as a whole to take action on this. While ArbCom has their own perspective on anything, they surely will note what we do here. — Maile (talk) 00:22, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - ArbCom should act, but this proposal is incorrect that no community action is warranted. Rather, I'm hoping ArbCom acts in line with the community's wishes in proposal 2. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:55, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose any action by ArbCom when the community can handle the issue. Right now, it appears the community is leaning toward a block, which is fine for now. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 17:55, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:59, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose: ArbCom can act, but that doesn't preclude at least a community-imposed topic ban. EdChem (talk) 12:22, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Discussion of proposals

Please note that Arb is discussing this case as we speak, so it may or may not be out of the hands of WP:AN. Because of the potential privacy issues, it was my preference that Arb handle it. I have no authority to require how it is now handled, I already know that. Not everyone is as concerned about privacy concerns in this case, which is fine, and Arb may yet bump this back to us. Even if someone is a jackass here, I'm not inclined to unmask their master account without some careful deliberation about those consequences, and we can't do that here because we don't have the information. I don't expect everyone to agree, but that doesn't change my concerns about privacy. Since ArbCom members are reviewing, unless they tell us the master account's real identity, all this is kind of moot. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:13, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• Well Dennis, you did an excellent admin action right off the bat, and brought it here for perusal. I also note that there were strong concerns about this individual and their editing patterns from Newyorkbrad (on his talkpage) which was strongly echoed by Drmies, so there is deffo an issue. The main problem to my mind has been a lack of communication by Arbcom to the community about what was happening, and how to proceed. This has led to this community driven initiative, which I am sure Arbcom can understand the reasoning behind. With regard to the privacy question, from this individual's talkpage jibes, it would seem that respected Wikpedians are being ridiculed on 'right wing' sites, very probably initiated by this individual. I do not know how this links to the complex WP guidance on user privacy, but it would seem that would be damaging to the priviledge of privacy that this individual may claim or invoke. Irondome (talk) 00:35, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Dennis: I initiated the two proposals because I took the two comments by Arbitrator Doug Weller, saying that he had no objection to the community dealing with this issue, as a sub rosa indication that perhaps there wasn't a developing consensus within ArbCom as to what should be done, so if we wanted something to happen, we shouldn't hesitate to start the ball rolling. Admittedly, I could be misreading that, but that was my take-away.
  Because of the situation, I framed the proposals as not being dependent on the quality of the master account's editing for the simple fact that we don't know who it is and cannot determine that for ourselves; however, my feeling is that the editing of his or her sock is sufficiently egregious that it alone can be used to justify sanctions against the master without knowing anything about the editing of the master. Of course, we also cannot apply any possible mitigating factors, such as the high quality of that editing (if such is the case), but that's entirely the result of their gaming the system, and we should not be hamstrung by that manipulation.
  I would be as pleased as punch if ArbCom were to rule on this, but, frankly, my reading of the tea leaves does not indicate to me that they're heading towards a sanction, or even to a consensus ruling short of a sanction -- hence my proposals. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:16, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Question What in the hell provision of SOCKLEGIT is being used here to even protect the master? They gave that up by posting a bunch of malicious, discriminatory and basically awful shit. What if someone took this to SPI? What would the response be? We have to protect the "privacy" of the master's anonymous account? If this was any other sock they'd be blocked and all their other accounts would be logged. I can't believe this many words, and this much time, has been spent on someone who should just be blocked. All of their accounts obviously. Capeo (talk) 01:25, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• BMK, ArbCom drinks coffee, not tea. Irondome, ArbCom doesn't frequently post updates of things they're discussing, but I can tell you that this is a thing they're discussing. Capeo, I'll chime in with some of your words, and if I may speak ex officio, can I just say that hey y'all, this is really not worth all this time and attention. We had a problematic account; it is blocked (thanks Dennis). Drmies (talk) 02:18, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• I think one can prognosticate from reading the eggshells in the coffee grounds as well.
  Of course I don't expect ArbCom to issue press releases on privacy matters they're considering in camera, I'm just explaining why I thought what I thought and therefore why I did what I did. I should also say (to be obvious) that I disagree with you -- as apparently do other editors who have commented here -- that blocking the sock is sufficient, as we are dealing not with a "problematic account", but, in my opinion, with a problematic editor, someone I, for one, do not want wandering around Wikipedia with complete freedom to do as they will. Unless ArbCom is going to take the responsibility of monitoring the editing of the master account in perpetuity, there's no way that the community can be assured that this editor isn't going to get down and dirty again, since we don't know who it is and can't keep eyeballs on them. So, considering that, I'd say that it is worth the time and attention, in spite of your assurance (which I absolutely believe) that you found no hint of bias in the master account's editing -- it's not their past I'm concerned about, it's our future. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:40, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• I have to agree with BMK and Capeo. The issue is the account and their forfeited their right to privacy when they abused a legitsock and tried to game the system. The issue is the user, not the account. We block otherwise productive or unproblematic accounts all the time as socks for past abuses by a sockmaster (parent/master account misbehaves, all future child/alt/sock accounts are blocked when found). I don't see why we shouldn't address it same way when the time order is flipped (parent/master account behaves well but child/alt account doesn't). I'm withholding a vote on the proposals until ArbCom makes a decision. EvergreenFir (talk) 04:39, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• I think that it would be necessary to ask us, the committee, to implement this, and of course even if we did, it would be because of the specific circumstances and not a precedent suggesting that we'd always agree. I'm not sure I was suggesting anything " sub rosa". Doug Weller talk 05:18, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• I quite see that ArCom would have to be the agency to implement any community-based sanction, just as an administrator would have to implement a community block or ban in a normal case. I trust that if the discussion is closed with the authorization of a sanction, ArbCom would not impose its own will and override the community decision if it disagreed with it, but would faithfully act as the executor of the community's will. Further, if a sanction is agreed to by the community, ArbCom would have to be the conduit for any future appeal of the sanction, either deciding on it themselves in its role as a venue to appeal community sanctions, or by bringing the appeal to the community in such a way as to preserve the account's privacy. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:29, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• Neutral pointers to the proposals above have been placed on the user talk pages of every editor who contributed to the original discussion but has yet to comment on the proposals. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:07, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• This is an unusual circumstance. Normally, admin can just deal with it and ask for review if needed. All things considered, I think it is being handled. The community isn't barred from imposing a ban/block but only Arb could enforce it, so it made sense for Arb to just take the case. That said. Arb DID come up short when it comes to notification. Brad did tell me, but I get the feeling you were discussing it sooner, and had you just posted "ArbCom is currently reviewing and will take action" then all this additional "stuff" could have been avoided. You have to keep deliberations secret, we get that, but you do NOT have to the keep the fact that you are reviewing a secret when the block itself was this public. Throw up a banner or something, for goodness sakes. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:51, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• Can Arbcom at least tell us how the master was identified? Was it via private email from the master or some other way? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:40, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
• @Dennis Brown: We should have. We had been discussing him before, partially because of the case and partially because of sockpuppet accusations. I'm sorry about that. @NeilN: the main account was identified via CU. Doug Weller talk 18:32, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I am not going to vote on the proposals, but I will comment here. I do so as an individual editor/admin, not in my ArbCom capacity, although it's true that my role on ArbCom gives me access to the name of the primary account. To begin with the obvious, I was not happy about the editing of the Franzboas account, for reasons discussed in the thread on my talkpage, which Franzboas started after I criticized his editing in voting on his (subsequently withdrawn) request for arbitration. That account was properly blocked (technically it could have been topic-banned instead, but since it was a single-purpose alternate account, it makes little difference). The comments on User talk:Franzboas in the immediate aftermath of the block, which led to talkpage access being revoked, were especially uncollegial and reprehensible.

However, I have also spent some time reviewing the editing of the main account and studied the contributions, although I have not read each and every edit. There is no sign in the edits from that account of the types of edits that led to the block of Franzboas. The account focuses primarily on subjects having nothing to do with Judaism, anthropology, or related fields. The account has been editing for a significant amount of time. It has never been blocked and the talkpage history reflects no user-conduct warnings. My expectation is that if all the edits of the two accounts had been made by a single account, the resulting sanction would have been a topic-ban along the lines adopted in the Noleander arbitration case, rather than a site-ban.

I pass this information along for what it may be worth in the decision-making on this issue. I would also like to urge great caution before a decision is made that the two accounts must be publicly linked, since we do not know to what extent, if any, the identity of the main account is linked to a real-world identity. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:14, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks for the input. I wish Arb would have announced earlier that it was already looking at the case, which might have removed some of the stress involved. People do forget that ArbCom looking at this IS the community looking this, just with tools that the rest of us do not have. We voted you in. This is also why I have said I'm willing to live with the result, regardless of what it is. I understand that I don't have all the info, and again, this is why I only blocked the alternate account without referencing the master, which is an unusual use of admin discretion. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:09, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Brad, I understand your point that banning the alternate account is, in effect, a topic ban, and that Wikipedia has handled other cases in such a fashion. But I disagree with the implication that there should be no further repercussions to the main account holder here. To me, it's not a question of which articles or topic areas the main account edits. It's a question of community standards. This is an individual who has—in the most charitable possible interpretation—a creepy fixation on Jewishness and Jewish "over-representation" in certain fields. An equally valid interpretation, in my view, would be that he's a straight-up anti-Semite.

    So the question becomes: to what extent is such a person welcome here? If they manage to segregate all of their odious contributions under an alternate account, are they welcome to continue to edit using a "clean", unlinked account, immune from the opprobrium that would normally attach? What message does that send about our community values? Is it OK for me to create an alternate account, to go around spewing racist bigotry until I get blocked, and then come back to my main account as if nothing had happened? Because despite the best of intentions, that's the message that I see being sent here, and it bothers me.

    Of course, I have no idea who the main account is, nor the privacy issues involved, so I'm voicing an opinion without access to all of the facts, but I feel pretty strongly that the main account should be blocked—quietly, if necessary—by someone in the know. MastCell ^Talk 23:34, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

  • Well said MastCell! It perfectly encapsulates my concerns, and I suspect many other colleagues who have commented here. Irondome (talk) 23:46, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
    • MastCell says it well. But to add, Newyorkbrad seems to be saying that "well it's basically a tban which we'd normally do anyway" but that ignore the fact that this user tried to game the system and avoid scrutiny by employing a sock for the illegitimate purpose of spewing anti-Semitism. This is not qualitatively the same as done user who is unconstructive in a particular area and thus a tban is warranted. Rather this user intentionally abused the privacy afforded to users per LEGITSOCK​ to abuse individual wikipedians and malign an entire group of people. Again, if the order of events were reversed, we'd have no problem outing a sock as belonging to a master account and blocking them. Why do we now? EvergreenFir (talk) 00:06, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
• Comment - I have a comment at this time. If what I have inferred from the posting at User talk:Franzboas is a correct inference, then, on the one hand, it makes perfect sense for the person behind the sock account to use a sock account. On the other hand, their reason for using a sock account is reprehensible, and Wikipedia should not facilitate it. I am inferring that the identity of the person behind the master account either is known or can easily be determined. That is, the person is editing in true name, or has provided their true name. Franzboas cites fear as a reason for using an alternate account. In other words, the editor is ashamed of their anti-Jewish views, and does not want their neighbors to know that they are posting anti-Jewish calumnies. (I don’t like the term anti-Semitic. Jews are not the only Semitic people who can either be prejudiced or be targets of prejudice.) Hiding one’s shameful bigotry from one’s neighbors is not, in my opinion, a legitimate reason for using an alternate account. I don’t see a topic-ban as an appropriate response to bigotry. The only question is whether the community should site-ban the editor, or whether the community should defer to ArbCom. If ArbCom is indeed looking into the case, I am satisfied to let ArbCom deal with this editor. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:53, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
• I don't know if the following is useful, but I'll say it anyway. The main account did not make any objectionable edits, and thus should not be indef blocked. As Dennis Brown said in making the block, and Drmies repeated, the account was blocked for the edits they made, not the views they hold. The aim of the indef block was to end the disruption in the area; and it has succeeded. Furthermore, it is not true that there are no repercussions for the editor's behaviour just because they used a sock: they are now under a topic ban, and any such behaviour in the future (in another area) will likely lead to a total ban.

  Even independently of that, common sense suggests that one should start with a topic ban and see how it goes, before going straight to an indef block. Like it or not, there are plenty of people in the world whose views on certain issues are loathsome. I find some loathsome views among my own friends and relatives, as well as among a fair part of the editing population here (perhaps they think likewise about me, who knows). The aim of a topic ban is to allow such people to focus on an area where their editing isn't disruptive.

  I can add the following: given how useless the CU tools are to detect anyone who knows what they're doing, they could simply have created a random sock to edit; the way they went about using a (privately) declared sock counts in their favour, not against. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 03:13, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

  @Kingsindian: CU worked fine in this case. He said he was a sock, he never declared to anyone whose sock he was. Doug Weller talk 06:30, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@Kingsindian: We do not employ that model for regular sock puppets; if a sock is discovered of a previously blocked editor, we block that sock (WP:EVADE) even if the sock is being generally constructive. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:05, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir: I'm not sure what you're saying. The editor declared that they were a sock of another account. There is no evidence that they tried to avoid detection. WP:EVADE applies for socks which try to evade sanctions. There are no sanctions on the master account. @Doug Weller: Presumably you had your reasons to run a CU (why?) instead of simply asking the editor, but that simply means that the editor did not try to hide it in any way. If they wanted to do so, it's rather easy to do it. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 06:58, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@Kingsindian: I don't understand why the time order of account creation changes this. Is not the master account in this case effectively evading sanctions given to the sock? The only question is legitsock, but I agree with others that privacy protects and other benefits afforded to to legit alt are null and void when that account is used for hate speech, disrupting the project, and making egregious personal attacks. The editor is the same and by editing on the master account they are in effect evading their block. If I used an original undeclared alt account to edit war, malign Muslims, and accuse a few editors of being isil members, if expect to be blocked on both accounts and be outed. Entertaining the claim upon questioning that your sock is protected per legitsock sets a dangerous precedent. This is not just a user who edited warred to RIGHTGREATWRONGS or got angry and cussed at editors. This is hate speech. EvergreenFir (talk) 17:25, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir: No, the master is not evading sanctions given to the sock, because after this matter, the master would be either implicitly or explicitly (ArbCom can tell them explicitly) under a topic ban from this area. We can, if required, also add other sanctions, like restricting them to one account. Now, I see some people arguing that the master is not editing in this area at all, so effectively it is no sanction. Well, if the master is not editing in this area at all, and their other edits over a long period are fine, then what's the problem? I am not interested in whatever personal views this editor holds, as long as they don't disrupt Wikipedia. It is up to the people arguing for indef block to make the case that this editor is so bad that even their contributions in other areas are intolerable, so they should be blocked. I do not go along with this argument, I'm afraid.

As for starting a precedent, this account only lasted a few months and achieved less than nothing, while getting a topic ban on their main account for their troubles. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 23:44, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

• I'd like to point out that the blocking of Franzboas is not in any way the equivalent of a topic ban for the master account, since the master account is totally free to edit in the areas of Judaism and Jewishness, since there is no sanction to stop them. That makes me extremely uneasy, that an editor with the views and attitudes expressed by Franzboas is free to edit in the same area from which their sock has been blocked for ADVOCACY. That really makes entirely no sense at all. We can maintain the legal fiction that Franzboas and the master account are totally separate from each other, in order to protect the privacy of the master account, but we cannot forget that in reality they are the same person. It's not like we're making an unwarranted assumption about the views of the person behind the master account, since the person behind Franzboas is the same person.
  In any case, I am confused about why there would be a problem with sanctioning the master account with a topic ban, given that both Drmies and Newyorkbrad have said that their editing hasn't strayed into the areas of Judaism and Jewishness. If that's the case, a topic ban from those subjects wouldn't hamstring the master editor at all, and would -- if the editor maintained that editing posture -- essentially be a null sanction. However, it would provide the community with some assurance that the master account will not give in to the temptation to edit those subjects. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:39, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

• Just to be clear about what I'm saying, if Editor X makes problematic and disruptive edits in subject area Z, to the extent that it is decided a topic ban is required, then Editor X is sanctioned with a topic ban and can no longer edit in subject Z. In this current case, Editor X has, by their own choice split themselves into two entities, X and Y. X does not make any disruptive edits in subject area Z, but entity Y does. Entity Y is then blocked for their disruptive and problematic edits, and it is claimed that this is the equivalent of topic banning X from subject Z, but editor X is, in fact, not sanctioned in any way, and is free to make edits in subject area Z should they choose to. The only equivalent to topic banning editor X from subject Z is to topic ban editor X from subject Z, and any claim that the indef blocking of Y is an equivalent is logically and practically untrue. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:51, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

• I understand the points you are making. If there's a consensus for an arbitrator to privately notify this user that he is topic-banned (on his main account), or even that he must stop editing altogether, that can presumably be done. However, I would oppose publicly announcing a sanction against the main account based on this conversation, because I would perceive it as problematic under the privacy policy. Newyorkbrad (talk) 07:28, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

• Question for arbs - is there evidence that Franz's claim here that he didn't know about the legitsock policy plausible given knowledge of the master account? From what I gather, the master account is no noob, so this claim of ignorance seems dubious to me. But, perhaps, the user edits infrequently or is still "green" this is plausible. I ask because if the former is the case, the claim of legitsock seems baseless as this is more likely a case of malicious socking and thus the quandaries being mulled over are moot. But if the latter, this whole discuss makes more sense. I'm not trying to fish for info, but would like to ask if this has been considered. Pinging Newyorkbrad, Drmies, and Doug Weller as they've participated already. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:29, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
  • It's always difficult to try to read another person's mind, but my answer is that it looks like the editor was relying on the portion of the alt-account policy that recognizes segregating edits on a particular topic from other edits as a legitimate reason to have a second account. He did segregate the edits, and to that extent, he followed the policy. Also, please note that the WP:SOCK policy recognizes (under the heading "Privacy") that alt-accounts created for this reason will typically not be linked to the main account. Of course what is implicit in the policy's authorization is that the user must make proper edits on the second topic. Here, the widely shared opinion of almost everyone commenting here, including you and me, is that the edits were highly inappropriate—but I'm sure Franzboas still disagrees with that. So I think it's likely the user sincerely believed he was following the policy, for whatever that might be worth. Newyorkbrad (talk) 07:13, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
    • Thanks for saying that Newyorkbrad. This is exactly why I handled it the way I did and pushed for Arb to review. I don't think we should publicly link to the master account if the master sincerely thought his edits were acceptable. Instead, we stop the disruption using the least force and ask for review for the block, and a separate review of the master in private. We aren't mind readers, but we need a deliberative process for deciding this, which is what we elected ArbCom for. Linking just to punish him would be punitive. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:25, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
• Question - Can the master account be privately restricted to editing from one account, the master account, only, with the knowledge of that restriction known to the ArbCom and to CU? If so, shame will protect from any more offensive edits by this account, since they are publicly ashamed to make their anti-Jewish edits. Robert McClenon (talk) 10:25, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
  • That seems difficult, though it is one of the things Arbs are discussing--it would make Arbs and CUs the enforcers of something that any regular admin should be able to decide on. "Private" violations are ... well, contrary to many things most of us believe in, unless there are seriously mitigating circumstances. My position and Newyorkbrad's (with whose comments just above I agree almost completely) differ only to the extent that I no longer think the editor is owed much privacy consideration anymore. Drmies (talk) 13:07, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
    • Drmies, most of the time, an admin could make the call. Lord knows, I'm not afraid to go out on a limb. When privacy is a consideration, however, I don't have the tools to review their other edits and make the call. To ask me or the community to make the call blind is unreasonable, or choosing to would be unwise. Besides, this is why you ArbCom types make the big bucks and get the free health and dental plan. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:00, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll ask again what policy is protecting the master right now? Is this being considered a legit sock because the master hasn't edited in these areas prior to this? So any of us could just make another account and be complete assholes so long as we're not touching on any areas we've been previously involved in? So all this just disappears and the master never gets this connected to them? If a conflict arises concerning the master that has anything to do with the nastily discriminatory POV this sock has exhibited it'll be treated as outlier rather than a history. Unless ArbCom wants to perpetually monitor the master's editing which is obviously not feasible. Capeo (talk) 02:52, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

• about these speculations that the person operating these accounts may have thought that using the alt account in this way, was somehow truly legitimate and done in some kind of good faith.... please do consider what Franboaz said in this diff: ...but remember that I created this legitimate sock to lessen systemic bias on Wikipedia that I didn't feel comfortable addressing with my main account.... Like many other editors, I quietly took a long hiatus from Wikipedia because I was so frustrated with the systemic bias and how most editors were blind to abstract levels of that bias (e.g. how articles' topics are defined)..

Some editors go off the rails trying to correct perceived "systemic bias" and fighting the secret cabal that controls WP. That is what happened here. We indef those people.

This person's argument that it is OK to do that under ALT is in my view pure wikilawyering and should not be respected. I don't care that they did it believing WP is controlled by Jews; it would be just as much a violation of SOAPBOX if they did it to fight the skeptics, or big pharma, or the liberals. And likewise if they did it not out of passion but rather for pay, to promote or attack some politician for example. The person harmed Wikipedia and wasted community time dealing with their promotional campaign. This is not a legitimate use of editing privileges, period.Jytdog (talk) 04:39, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I think Jytdog puts the case extremely well, and, while I respect Newyorkbrad immensely and am glad that he is giving due weight to the privacy issue, I agree with Drmies that the editor is due very little, if any, consideration of his or her privacy. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:51, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Well put Jytdog. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:25, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Once again, let me say that I am not defending Franzboas's editing; as I noted before, I was one of the main people who confronted him about the troubling editing pattern, leading directly to the block and to this conversation. But the relevant policy here is that we do not knowingly damage editors' or even ex-editors' off-wiki lives. Let's assume, without my saying too much, that the real-world identity of the user in question can likely be discerned from his main account. And let's agree, without trying to decide whether the Franzboas account's edits were borne of bad judgment and bad philosophy or something much worse, that the edits reflect badly on the person who made them, and that at least some here regard them as overtly anti-Semitic. If we announce a public sanction against the main account based on this discussion, we are effectively lobbing the brand of irredeemable bigotry not against a username, but ultimately against the human being who is behind the username. We would be doing so on one of the most visible websites in the world, in a way that could affect his life in severe and unpredictable ways. I am all for stopping the bad editing that happened here, which we have, and making sure it doesn't start up again, but not at all for taking a step that risks permanently harming the editor's life because he said some very stupid things on a website. Newyorkbrad (talk) 07:41, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I see no problem with "effectively lobbing the brand of irredeemable bigotry not against a username, but ultimately against the human being who is behind the username." This was not an innocent mistake, editing under the influence, or some other mild form of disruption. They chose to use this high profile site, with the knowledge that their edits could be connected to their identity, and chose to do so regardless. If they are a bigot, let them live with the consequences of spewing hate speech, attacking specific editors, and disrupting this project. Again, this isn't a typical goblin just acting a fool. If they wanted to engage in this behavior they should go to /pol/. EvergreenFir (talk) 08:24, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

If there is a possibility of real world harm stemming from revealing someone's identity, and it sounds like there is in this case, then there is no choice but proceeding with caution. I think any individuals who are ultimately found to have violated the privacy policy are personally responsible for it under WMF's policies, so that is something to look into and confirm, as well—but if there is a risk of actual harm, then for sure, mull it over. Even if consensus decided it was necessary, if I were in your positions, I would run it through WMF before taking any action. Seraphim System ^(talk) 08:31, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Newyorkbrad, how is this any different than if any editor who uses their real name as a username says the same bigoted crap, attacks editors and then gets indeffed for it? That's what I'm not understanding here. That's their problem if it has real world consequences. The master, for all intents and purposes, did that but used an illegitimate sock to do so. I recall an Arb case I participated in during which an editor, also actively commenting on the case, socked as an IP, also commenting on the case, claiming the same type of privacy concerns. They were CU blocked and their IP was publicly connected to their account, and they didn't do/say anything nearly as horrible as Franzboa. Now, because the master apparently has real world identifying info on WP, they have impunity to get away with illegitimate socking? This just seems all backwards to me. It's the person who did this, not a username. There's probably thousands of editors who have used some variation of their real names or have identifying info on their user page. You're saying any of them could do this and our hands are tied to do anything about it? Capeo (talk) 20:55, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Anytime there are negative real world consequences, and the privacy policy may be implicated, it may have implications beyond our internal decision making processes. That is a lot of maybes. I, personally, don't like a lot of maybes when dealing with something like this. But it woul depend in part on what the consequences are...no, when you cause harm to someone else it is not enough that you feel it is "their problem" or that you feel it was justified. The editing pattern I've seen does not justify this, it is not a widespread persistent attack, he has not resurfaced from multiple IPs, he does not currently seem to pose any threat to Wikipedia. This is not a tool to punish someone who may hold views that many editors find distasteful. Seraphim System ^(talk) 10:39, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

On the contrary, it is well within the purview of the community to ban any editor whose views are distasteful to it, such as pedophiles, racists, sexists, and bigots of all kinds, as well as those who violate and abuse our policies, or attempt to game the system to their own advantage. We do it regularly, and very properly so, and we do so without any consideration of whether their being blocked or banned would reflect badly on themselves in the real world.

There is no right to edit Wikipedia, this is a private website, and the owners of it, the Wikimedia Foundation, have given to this community the control of who is allowed to edit here or not. That there may be "real world consequences" to being banned is something that an editor who abused their editing privilege should have thought of before they did so, or, if they expected (as seems to be the case here) to get away with what otherwise would be disruptive editing by creating a sock, they need to feel the consequences of those choices they made, and not be given immunity because of the loopholes they exploited. This is clear to the majority of editors who have commented here, only a few have held that privacy considerations are more important than protecting the encyclopedia from the edits of a person who has been shown to be an antisemite. I, personally, reject that utterly.

The actions by the master account of Franzboas abrogated any reasonable expectation that their privacy would be protected, and we must act with that in mind, and not pussyfoot around. If the master account had made those exact same edits, without the beard of Franzboas protecting them, they would be indef-blocked at this point, and that is the only real consideration which needs to enter into this. We really cannot afford to allow people to take advantage of us in order to make, yes, distasteful edits which have no place in a NPOV encyclopedia. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:09, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: we should not hurtle headlong into calling someone an antisemite in the absence of evidence. You are referring to "a person who has been shown to be an antisemite" but you are neglecting to provide the evidence for that characterization. I agree with you that using multiple accounts is a very serious problem. Bus stop (talk) 15:08, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

The issue would be that, if I am not mistaken, the CheckUser policy is implicated here, and the comments that you and other editors are publicly making about this may not be in line with what that policy says. You might be surprised—under our policy, a sincere distasteful belief is most likely better protected then if he were simply trolling (Which I personally think is what was going on, btw.) Bearing this in mind, self-righteous declarations that They need to feel the consequences of those choices they made should honestly be enough to demote you for not being able to understand that others have rights too, don't take into consideration that even those with (distasteful) minority views have rights, and they certainly have rights like anyone else to be protected from harm unless there is actual necessity that will justify risking harm to another person. That is going to be, like, the first comment that Franzboas pulls up if it comes down to it. Given your position as an admin, supposedly trusted by the community and all that, your strikethrough your comment about Wikipedia's core policies is more distasteful then most of the ill-conceived comments at issue here — this is what our policy actually says Wikipedia is free and open, but restricts both freedom and openness where they interfere with creating an encyclopedia. There is no evidence that he will engage in anything even remotely "disruptive" with his master account, and ArbCom can privately topic ban him if they want to. This bloodlust to punish him is the most distasteful thing going on here, have a beer and try to relax or something. Seraphim System ^(talk) 16:31, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Seraphim System I am not an admin, never have been, never will be. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:12, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Also, let me assure you that I'm not sitting here trembling with rage and righteous indignation about this situation. Is the core issue (which for me is the combination of illegitimate socking for antisemitic purposes) one that I feel passionate about? Yes, it is, for a number of reasons I won't go into. Has it clouded my reasoning, and made it impossible for me to engage in clear-minded thinking on the subject? No, I don't think it has, and I hope that I have demonstrated that in my commentary. Am I, or any other commenter here, part of a mob? No, I don't believe that is the case, since each editor has a different line of reasoning which brought them to their conclusion, and they did so at different times. In point of fact, I think it's rather dismissive and, frankly, insulting to categorize these disparate people in that way. "Bloodlust" is an extremely strong and derogatory description that I would urge you to strike through.

There are no pitchforks and torches here, what I see are people who are reacting to the misuse and abuse of our beloved encyclopedia for prejudicial purposes and who wish to see that abuse properly sanctioned, as it would be in any normal circumstances in which the system hadn't been gamed by the master account to ward off repercussions from the edits they made through their sock. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:02, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

The "bloodlust" to punish is the most distasteful thing going on here? Not the socks edits? Okay then, on that we'll have to disagree. Capeo (talk) 19:30, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Capeo: I've read through a lot of his comments, and he has stated that he believes he is correcting a systemic bias. He has, quite seriously, denied being anti-semitic and racist and indicated that he felt editors were blocking him from adding legitimate content. I don't think the content was legitimate—I think it was explained to him enough times that it was WP:OR, that he can't just draw his own inferences from statistics, etc. But yes, the strong appearance is that this is about a community perception of his views. Most importantly, he did not use abusive language or abusive racial epithets (until his post-block meltdown.) The implication is Kafkaesque, I still have to say that takes priority over someone saying things that I find offensive. (I'm a big kid now!) Seraphim System ^(talk) 19:57, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Bigots don't necessarily rant and rave, some of the worst of them never use abusive language or hurl epithets. Some of them even wear nice suits, and speak softly, and get to become commentators on cable TV news channels. There is nothing in the least "Kafkaesque" about sanctioning someone for what they clearly did, based on their editing, and their user page comments. (In fact, even bringing an innocent person to trial is not ipso facto "Kafkaesque", it is only so when the crimes are never specified, and the goalposts are constantly kept moving. You may disagree with the community's perception of Franbzboas' editing, but you have to agree that it has been abundantly clear what the sock and the master editor have been accused of. Hence, Kafka, like "bloodlust" has no place in this discussion, except as unnecessary rhetorical overkill.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:30, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Sock master accounts are blocked at SPI as a matter of routine when a sock is blocked. If they don't block the master, the socking continues. The only difference in this one, is the sock was pre-sanctioned by ArbCom, and that sock is troublesome. Let's put aside the personal issues here and get to the actions of the sock. — Maile (talk) 16:52, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

I honestly think that this account was trolling. I and other editors who interacted with him went through rounds of discussion trying to explain WP:OR to him. His responses in those conversations strongly suggested that he was trolling—confirmed by the fact that he is an experienced and competent editor, who obviously understands the basics of the core policies. In my view, his political views, and his statements about correcting a perceived systemic bias, even if they are distasteful, may be protected (at least as far as CheckUser and Privacy is concerned), to the extent that CheckUser is not a tool that can be used for political control; to apply pressure on editors; or as a threat against another editor in a content dispute. But his trolling and incompetent editing is not protected, because alternate accounts are only allowed so long as they are not used in violation of the policies. Early in this discussion, I urged that this matter be evaluated in a content-neutral way and focus on abuse of the account. You may not agree that there is a pro-Jew bias in Wikipedia, but he may sincerely believe there is, and feeling threatened, choose to use an alternate account to correct that perceived bias. Using an account to edit on a contentious topic is a legitimate use of an alternate account. The trolling, and pretending not to understand core policies, wasting volunteer time, etc. are abuse of that account. I vaguely recall something about a triple parentheses being added somewhere when this was going on—I am not sure if that was him, but if it was, something like that would also be a clear abuse. Seraphim System ^(talk) 17:14, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

ADD Triple parentheses was not him, it was an ip [23] Seraphim System ^(talk) 17:27, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Seraphim System—has he expressed that there is a "pro-Jew bias in Wikipedia"[24]? Bus stop (talk) 17:30, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Bus stop: He could have expressed it better, but I think that was the thrust of his last comments on talk before his talk page access was revoked - actually it was more about a perceived left-wing and gay/queer/transgender and Marxist bias. Some of his other comments indicated that he wanted to bring attention to the effect that Jewish identity has on scholarship and academia. That is basically like a site-wide WP:OR project. If its been studied and written about, great, write an article about it — but adding bits and pieces all over the site to push a thesis is a problem. All in all, I support the block, and I support even a TBAN for the Master Account, but I don't think anything more is necessary right now. Under normal circumstances, I think the last comments on talk were intensely personal, and earned him a significant block, but I do think he reasonably believed that his privacy and identity would be protected under our policies, in fact that is the entire purpose of the alt-account. It's nice that Jytdog clarified the policy, so that it would not be misunderstood in the future...Seraphim System ^(talk) 18:00, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Who, exactly, are you accusing of being a troll? — Maile (talk) 18:32, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Franzboas, sorry if that wasn't clear. I don't mean to be accusatory either, just saying that was the impression I got from my brief interaction with him, and why I stopped replying to him. For example comments like [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] ... it seems like classic trolling like, "I'm not suggesting we use a white supremacist source, I'm suggesting we use a white supremacist source." Seraphim System ^(talk) 19:27, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I see. That slant gives a new aspect on why they say they created the account; one explanation does not necessarily discount the other. Hopefully, we will see something concrete from ArbCom on this. However, whether it's the sock or the master, it's exactly the same fingers on the keyboard, the same individual behind it. We'll see what ArbCom comes up with. — Maile (talk) 19:38, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

• Question to ArbCom: Assuming that the master account is not publicly identified, if it opened an RfA and did not disclose this situation and the indef. block of the Franzboas sock, would the community be informed? EdChem (talk) 12:26, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
  • @EdChem: I can only speak for myself, but I see absolutely no chance of that happening. Doug Weller talk 13:10, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
    • Doug Weller Sorry to be a pest, but can you clarify, please: absolutely no chance of the editor in question filing an RfA (which is what I assumed you meant), or absolutely no chance of notification if they did? Beyond My Ken (talk) 14:44, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
      • @Beyond My Ken: Sorry, I meant the former. No chance they will file an RfA. That's all I can say about it. Doug Weller talk 16:12, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
        • Thanks for clarifying, I'm glad I understood it correctly the first time. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:44, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
          • Doug Weller, thanks for replying, and I accept that an RfA will not be filed in this case... but I am uncomfortable on the wider issue: If ArbCom is aware that an editor is operating multiple accounts (either disclosed under the SOCK policy or through CU or whatever) in an arguably or clearly legitimate way, and one of those accounts has been sanctioned in some way, and the editor launches an RfA through an unsanctioned master account and does not disclose, will ArbCom inform the community? I understand that an initial step may be to contact the editor directly and ask for a disclosure, so publicly linking the accounts would not be a first-step response, but would the community's need to know ultimately outweigh the privacy concerns associated with linking accounts? EdChem (talk) 01:41, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
            • Perhaps policy should be amended to place restrictions, or at least cautionary language, on those who avail themselves of WP:SOCK#LEGIT and additionally run for adminship. Perhaps there could be some boilerplate-type language added that cautions against using legitimate alternative accounts if the editor contemplates running for adminship. The language could say that disclosure of alternative accounts may be a prerequisite to running for adminship. Bus stop (talk) 02:29, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

How many socks

How many socks? I think there were more. He told Newyorkbrad " I quietly took a long hiatus from Wikipedia because I was so frustrated with the systemic bias and how most editors were blind to abstract levels of that bias (e.g. how articles' topics are defined).". On his talk page he wrote " Regardless, I have not been substantially active on any other accounts since starting this one, nor have I participated in topics or discussions I've participated in with previous accounts," - accounts plural. It is clear to me that there have been other socks. I don't know who these were but it wouldn't surprise me to find at least one was blocked or banned. Doug Weller talk 12:44, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I haven't weighed in on the privacy issue here. On the face of it nothing in the WP:VALIDALT "Privacy" section itself explicitly says that the intra-WP privacy protection may be removed if the alt account is used illegitimately. What it does say, is Although privacy-based alternative accounts are not, by nature, publicly connected to your main account, they should not be used in ways outlined in the inappropriate uses section of this page.. (That language was added here in May 2016, which arose out of this talk page discussion about improving that section, but this bit wasn't discussed explicitly).

I could see someone reading that as an assurance that the accounts will never be linked; the account is by nature private. That is really .. unfortunate. I could see Arbcom being cautious and not linking them in light of that lack of explicit "fair warning" especially in light of the high value the community places on privacy. That said, the rest of the policy is very clear that inappropriate use of a sock can lead to sanctions including linking the accounts and under any common sense application of policy, there is plenty of reason to link them publicly.

But I will not be surprised either way the linking issue goes; like Dennis and others have said, this is why Arbcom gets the big bucks. I do expect that the main account will be indeffed, however.

I have boldly made an edit to SOCK to clarify the "private" provision for everybody (people who want to use it, the community, and people who handle privacy issues for us) for the future (who knows if that will stick). It still leaves discretion as to whether to link them, but makes it clear that they ~may~ be linked if the private account is used abusively - nobody should be able to read that policy and be able to make an argument that they believed the accounts would never be linked. There has been a discussion ongoing on the Talk page.Jytdog (talk) 17:14, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: is that something a CU on the master account could determine and, if so, if the justification for using it? The apparent admission to having other accounts and the abuse by one account would seem to warrant a private CU by the ArbCom to me. EvergreenFir (talk) 17:48, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Unquestionably, some Arbs have done their own CU tool usage here. I would disappointed if not. They aren't saying much, but I trust that several people are eyeing this closely. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:05, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

The way the other accounts are described they seem to have been used certainly more than three months ago, so CU won't and indeed didn't help. Doug Weller talk 18:16, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

That's a shame. EvergreenFir (talk) 18:20, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I'd just like to say, in response to NYB's latest comment, that if a sanction is determined to be appropriate, either a community-based one, or an ArbCom sanction, because ArbCom is the only entity that knows the identity of the master account, it would obviously have to be put into effect by ArbCom. That being the case, I have no problem whatsoever in ArbCom doing that in whatever manner they see fit. If the Arbs think that a publicly-announced sanction is akin to outing, and want to do it privately (or even via a trusted third party), well that's OK with me, although it raises the concern discussed above of how, for instance, a topic ban can be policed if only ArbCom knows it's in place. That puts an onus on ArbCom to monitor the master's editing, as well as one on the master account itself to be self-policing. If that situation comes about, I don't quite see how disruptive editing in that subject area by the master which is noticed by a non-Arbitrator can be easily handled, since only the current Arbs would be aware of the prior sanction. The whole thing is a conundrum which is created by the master's misuse of the sock account, and by the lack of anything specific in policy which allows the privacy provision to be stripped away. That's what I was attempting to fix with my suggested change to WP:LEGITSOCK, a version of which Jytdog has now WP:BOLDly added to the policy page. Clearly, this case shows the necessity of such a provision, so that the next time this happens we're not tying ourselves into knots once again. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:48, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Let me just add one more thing, and then I'll try to stop commenting, as I've already said an awful lot: what happens if the master account is hit with a secret sanction applied by ArbCom, and in the future files an RfA, or, if they are already an admin, runs for 'crat or Arb or is up for CU? Do we expect that they would willingly reveal themselves as the master behind Franzboas? If any of the current Arbitrators privy to the sanction see that they haven't identified themselves as editing with Franzboas, is that sufficient for that Arbitrator to "out" the account as the master of Franzboas, or does nobody say anything and the community, not knowing the full story of the master's editing history, potentially rewards the master with a functionary position? Just another possible conundrum. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:32, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Incidentally, I trust that it is not the case, but if the account is an admin, then ArbCom really ought to reveal their name immediately, regardless of the privacy concerns, or at the very least proceed with an in camera desysopping. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:32, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Confirmed that the editor is not an admin. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:53, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm very glad to hear that. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:53, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Question for ArbCom

Will ArbCom be monitoring the master closely enough that they will catch new socks? From my observation, socking seems to be like eating junk food - hard to stop with just one. I give ArbCom credit for knowing their responsibilities, but it's hard to understand how a sock could have been allowed for a hot-button topic. And as we have seen above, this one has admitted to operating as other socks, with or without ArbCom's permission. For admins and clerks who handle talk pages, Edit Warring, AIV and SPI, wouldn't it be helpful if they knew who the master is? Otherwise, they're flying blind. But editing pattern of prolific sockmasters seems to indicate a mind set that slipping by on yet another sock is some sort of game they play. When it comes to those of us who deal with the issues on the various conflict sites and talk pages, wouldn't it help for us to know who we are dealing with? — Maile (talk) 22:27, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Another question for Arbitrators

Thank you for letting us know that the master account of Franzboas is not an admin, but I also think that the community deserves to know if the master editor has commented in this discussion. Because if they have, I'm going to have to ask, as forcefully as I can, that they immediately be indef-blocked immediately for gaming the system, again.

We don't allow editors to edit with socks in order to create a false consensus, because other people involved in the discussion are not aware that Editor A and Editor B are, in reality, the same person. Well, that's the situation here, if the master account is involved in this discussion, except in this case we know who Editor B is (the indef-blocked Franzboas) but we don't know that Editor A is the master account, and therefore is not a disinterested or uninvolved party. So, again, I ask the Arbitrators monitoring this discussion to affirm that the master account of Franzboas has not been involved in this discussion. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:21, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: the master account has not been involved in this discussion. Doug Weller talk 15:02, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Doug Weller: Thanks very much. That, too, is a relief. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:10, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Doug Weller, as the blocking admin in this case, I don't expect to know the outcome but notification that the case has been finalized would be appreciated, email or public. I think that people are missing the point that no matter what the community decides here, no one can compel ArbCom or the individual Arb members to implement or enforce the consensus here, nor compel ArbCom to out the editor. Editors with advanced bits can not be forced to use them. That said, I'm sure ArbCom is listening and will be sensitive to the views expressed. This is why I've just focused on Arb *communicating better* and using the same process they would any issue with privacy considerations. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:11, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown: I can say that I am trying to get this settled as quickly as possible. Once that's done someone, perhaps me depending on when that happens, will post here about it. Doug Weller talk 15:19, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Doug Weller Thank you for the part you are playing in resolving this very knotty issue. As Dennis says, I hope you and the other Arbitrators will be sensitive to the will of the community as expressed in the commentary on the proposals above, and that your corporate decision will take that into account. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:21, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Not to sound like a broken record, but I'm still failing to see what's knotty about this. At this point point, the only thing I can conceive of, was that was an ill-conceived joke account trying, an failing miserably, to be clever. We allow to many alt joke accounts on this site to begin with. Capeo (talk) 20:12, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Capeo If one is of the opinion that privacy is a paramount concern, then the tension between the privacy of the master account and the desire of the community to levy sanctions on it due to the editing of its sock is where the knottiness comes in. Like quite a few here, I believe that the master has lost their expectation of privacy by their actions, but I'm not a Wikipedia functionary, with an aspect of representing the community (and the WMF, to an extent), so I don't have the same burden that the Arbitrators do. At the same time that I wish they would hurry up and resolve the situation, I'm sensitive to what I believe are their concerns, and understand that their outlook on this is going to be somewhat different from mine, or from those of other non-Arbitrators in the community. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:40, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Resolution

Arbcom has been in touch with the editor and by mutual agreement they intend to stop editing Wikipedia under any account; they will need to contact the committee in the event they wish to return in the future. There is no need to publicly identify their other account, whose editing is, as mentioned above, entirely ordinary. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:31, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

 Additional information needed Opabinia regalis is this the ArbCom resolution here, and the editor will stop editing on their own? Is there going to be any notification posted anywhere, any closing of this thread here at AN? Call me suspicious, but "...oh yeah, I won't do it anymore ... " seems like famous not-last words by sockmasters. — Maile (talk) 13:26, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree that it would be helpful if we had a bit more, like knowing if Arb alone is going to police this, or at least knowing that Arb has put in a mechanism in place to police it, if you don't want to give details. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:04, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I suppose this solution is the best we could have hoped for, given the situation, and that it renders the community proposals moot -- as ArbCom would be unlikely to agree to impose any community-based sanctions after reaching this mutual agreement with the editor. However, membership in ArbCom changes every year, so I assume that there would be some kind of "paperwork" in ArbCom's private archives to let future ArbComs know what had been agreed to. If that's the case, then the documentation should include a link to this discussion, and a note to the effect that the community was (1) in favor of community action, regardless of what actions ArbCom took; (2) thought an indef block of the editor was called for; and (3) also thought a topic ban from the subject area of "Judaism and Jewishness", broadly construed, was appropriate. To my mind, I believe that means that for ArbCom to allow the editor to return to editing without consulting the community would be an abrogation of their responsibilities, and that they should either turn down such a request pro forma, based on the community's expressed will, or open a community discussion about it without revealing the editor's name. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:52, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Of course we have internal documentation of various things. Where else would we keep the lists of editors we're conspiring against, the secret plans for taking over the wiki, and most importantly, the bar tab to bill the WMF? ;) Seriously, arbcom is 15 people including experienced checkusers and editors knowledgeable in the subject area; you don't need me or anyone else to explain how to look for socks. As suggested above, I'll close this thread now. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:32, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

• Question - will CUs be performed regularly to ensure the user's compliance? This user was here to RIGHTGREATWRONGS and resorted to socking to do it. I, for one, highly doubt this user will stay away from the project. Some explanation of the enforcement mechanism, monitoring, and violation consequences should be posted by ArbCom here. For example, will the accounts be publicly linked if the user is found to have not abided by the agreement? EvergreenFir (talk) 04:41, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Private information obtained by CU is made public only under extremely limited circumstances where there is no other realistic way to manage a problem. For example, it happens sometimes in long-term abuse cases. This isn't on that scale at the moment. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:32, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

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

Tagging IP addresses with Template:IPsock

Hi all. A few days ago, I handled Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bertrand101/Archive#07 June 2017. There, an IP address was reported after having removed {{IPsock}} templates from sockpuppets of the long-term abuse vandal Bertrand101 (talk · contribs). The documentation for {{IPsock}} is vague about when its usage is appropriate, as is SPI's admin instructions, which only states that the additional {{IPsock}} template "may" be applied to an unblocked IP. The most helpful advice I could find regarding this template is the wording at Template:Sockpuppet category/suspected and Template:Sockpuppet category/confirmed, which states that IPs may be added to this category using {{IPsock}} if they are static.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Bertrand101 lists over 900 IP addresses, most of them from the following ranges:

• 112.198.0.0/16 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial))
• 120.28.0.0/16 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial))
• 180.190.0.0/16 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial))
• 180.191.0.0/16 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial))
• 180.194.0.0/16 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial))
• 222.127.0.0/16 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial))

I asked for advice at the SPI linked above, and CheckUser DoRD agreed that the templating here was pointless, since the IPs are dynamic (not static, as {{sockpuppet category}} advises). It is actually counterproductive tag hundreds of dynamic IP addresses in this manner with {{IPsock}} because it is more likely that an innocent user will one day switch to an IP address with this tag on it than Bertrand101 switching to the same IP address. Additionally, adding these tags provide the vandal with a level of recognition that might fuel their desire to disrupt Wikipedia further.

For these reasons, I'd like to propose that the {{IPsock}} templates be removed on a large scale from all of the IP addresses listed at Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Bertrand101. Instead, we should present this information over at Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Bertrand101 by listing the most frequent IP ranges that Bertrand101 has used (which I've done above). I think this large-scale removal could probably be done with a semi-automated tool like WP:AWB in less than an hour, but I wanted to ask at this noticeboard first whether this is okay before doing it.

Additionally, we should clarify our documentation at Template:IPsock/doc and WP:SPI/AI#Sock puppets (IP addresses) to state that {{IPsock}} should be applied in rare cases and primarily to static IP addresses, not dynamic ones. Respectfully, Mz7 (talk) 02:49, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

• Previous discussion (March 2014): Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Administrators instructions#Tagging IPs. I've cross-posted this discussion to WT:SPI. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 16:40, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
• The categories are used to identify the user's edits and ranges - if it's documented elsewhere then there's no reason to tag all the pages and I'd agree with removing them. On the wider question of the documentation, tagging dynamic addresses can be used to build up a picture of the ranges being used - not to say the user on it is the same person but to assist in identifying patterns of previous edits, so tagging dynamic IPs can serve a useful purpose. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 17:04, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
• I can't remember ever applying that tag. I checked on the pages that were recently reverted and found that most of them are being applied by other IPs and not by admins, checkusers or clerks. The only hesitation that I have about mass removal is that this may override the special cases where careful discretion was used. How would that be prevented?
   — Berean Hunter (talk) 17:51, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

  I was thinking we would avoid removing the templates if they were added by an admin, SPI clerk, or CheckUser. The wide majority of the IP addresses tagged are covered in the ranges I listed above, so perhaps we could start by mass-removing the templates from all of the IP addresses within those ranges, then decide the rest later. Mz7 (talk) 18:46, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Appeal my 1RR restriction

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

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Just over one year ago, following my successful appeal here against a ban and block, I had three restrictions applied as conditions of the unban and unblock granted. I was told that I could appeal each of those restrictions independently after one year. Today I would like to appeal my 1RR restriction. I have, to the best of my knowledge, never contravened this restriction, turning to discussion rather than reverting, at every opportunity. To be honest, I plan to continue limiting the reverts and using the discussion route to improve articles, as I have found discussion to be more productive and resulting in a more stable content than a continual flip-flop of content. The main reason for my appeal is to continue along the path back to full good standing within the community. -- de Facto (talk). 19:43, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

• Support - Glad you took my advice to withdraw the last discussion, break it apart and deal with one appeal at a time. I had been involved at SPI and in other admin-like duties in your past, so I am familiar with the case. At this time, I feel comfortable supporting the removal of this particular sanction and I'm hopeful for the future. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:57, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support. It's been a long time with no problems, so I say yes (especially as Dennis, who has experience in the case, supports). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 04:26, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Weak support Only weak because I'm not familiar with the situation - but the support of Dennis and BSZ counts for much here, in my view. GoldenRing (talk) 13:13, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support No issues seem to have arisen with regards to this restriction; I'm confident that you can continue in the same vein if it's lifted. Yunshui ^雲_水 13:22, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - the contrition seems genuine. I see no reason not to lift the restriction. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:56, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Restricted more than one year ago, time served. Capitals00 (talk) 17:49, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

• He has a total of three restrictions. I would be less inclined to lift the others today, but I think this is the best one to start with and we can revisit another in 6 months. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:33, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

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

User:Abdulahbkhan

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

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Earlier today I blocked this user for legal threats made regarding the topic of images in Muhammad and related article. I have subsequently exchanged several emails with him, in which he asked me to redact his statements, and has assured me that the perceived death threats were not intended as such. I have redacted or revdel'd his comments, and am of a mind to unblock, but after email conversations with Boing! said Zebedee and Yamla, have decided to open it up for discussion here.

The edits leading up to the block are as follows (some have been deleted and will thus only be available to admins): [33], [34], [35], [36]; see also this version of his user talkpage for context.

Please indicate below whether you are in favour of allowing this user to return. Yunshui ^雲_水 13:47, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

• Sounds like an editor failed to KEEPCOOL. The fact that they asked for their comments to be redacted says something,. Primefac (talk) 13:52, 13 June 2017 (UTC) but I missed the diff posted by TNT and agree: that post went a little past just pissed-off. Primefac (talk) 13:58, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Good block. Having already seen the deleted material, I was planning to place a block once I arrived at work, but Yunshui and Boing! got there first. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 13:54, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Can't really agree on an unblock based on this revdel'd diff - getting pissed off is one thing, but referencing those attacks tells a lot about the sort of person they are -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 13:56, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• I have been somewhat involved insofar as I deleted his (old) userpage; and was mulling over a block. I am usually lenient and very laid back concerning user behaviour, but this users whole demeanor strikes me as....let's just say I would not be happy to see him return. Using open death threats and implied threats of terror-attacks as a means to gain an advantage in a discussion is just excessive. Lectonar (talk) 13:57, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• This editor threatened physical violence and death to other editors, in addition to the legal threats. That has no place here on Wikipedia. I wouldn't personally choose to unblock this editor, but I'm not opposed to others choosing to unblock. I would suggest the necessary requirements would be an understanding of why their behaviour was inappropriate, a retraction of the physical threats, and a vow never to threaten violence again, on Wikipedia. Possibly editing restrictions, too, though I can't immediately imagine any that would be particularly helpful, here. --Yamla (talk) 14:07, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. The diff highlighted by User:There'sNoTime is the one that did it for me. Coming amid a stream of rants about blasphemy and demands about Wikipedia's coverage of Muhammad, it would have had me considering reporting him the police had he been here in the UK (especially after the recent atrocities here). We should provide no platform for religious extremists who think it is acceptable to use the existence of death penalties for blasphemy and terrorist atrocities to try to impose their ways on us. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:13, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
  • I agree. The views expressed in that diff, particularly where they excuse terrorism, should never be tolerated here. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 14:20, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Strongly against unblocking. Unacceptable religious extremist statements. El_C 14:28, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Yeah, I'm just not comfortable with people like this editing here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:31, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• As a die-hard liberal I'm always for unblocking and educating, but I just can't tell if this person is intelligent enough to understand what's going on. For one thing, he doesn't seem to realize that the world consists of great variety (and includes dappled things), and wishes to impose that one standard on everyone--but this is so elementary that it's possibly irredeemable, depending on their age of course. Drmies (talk) 14:32, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

• Astonishingly, we had biography.[37] El_C 14:49, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. I've not checked the diffs, since I'm on my non-admin sock for using not-my-own computers, but I trust the analysis presented by Boing and others here. I'm uncomfortable with an unblock, ever, for someone whose actions might warrant having the police called on him. It's not quite as serious, but just almost as unforgivable, as what got Ecoleetage sitebanned. Nyttend backup (talk) 14:34, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Boing! said Zebedee emailed me the text from the diff to which he was referring. This text reinforces my opposition. 198.62.73.7 (talk) 15:23, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
    • Oops, this is me. I'm very much out of town right now. Nyttend backup (talk) 15:25, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose the diff highlighted by TNT is a deal breaker for me. I'd want to see explicit repudiation of that behavior before considering unblocking. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:38, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per Ealdgyth. I don't see anything positive coming out of allowing this person to edit.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:53, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• No. Jauerback^dude?/_dude. 16:17, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Lord no that rev-del'd diff raises all the red flags that I have. Vanamonde (talk) 17:32, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Perhaps the biggest no I've ever given on this project. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 17:46, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - This is not a misunderstanding, or poor phrasing, in the diff TNT shared. That's an outright terroristic threat. User should never be unblocked. SQL^{Query me!} 17:53, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

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

Anti-Harassment Tools prioritization

Community health initiative
Helping the Wikimedia volunteer community to reduce the level of harassment and disruptive behavior on our projects.

Good Tuesday, Wikipedia!

I'd like to invite you to participate in a discussion about how the Anti-Harassment Tools team at the WMF is prioritizing our work, and how you can help. Join us at Wikipedia talk:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia#Anti-Harassment Tools prioritization.

Thank you, and I hope to see you all there!

— TBolliger (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 13 June 2017 (UTC) on behalf of the Anti-Harassment Tools team

Backlog at AIV again

There's a bit of a backlog at WP:AIV EvergreenFir (talk) 04:36, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I've dealt with a number of reports. There were a noticeable number that I declined as not obvious vandalism, and a couple that need someone more familiar with music genre-warring then me to deal with. GoldenRing (talk) 09:54, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Feels like half the reports at AIV lately have been genre warring related.. -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 10:19, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

@GoldenRing: Thank you! EvergreenFir (talk) 18:34, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Disputed RFC close at Controversial Reddit communities

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

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This is a request to review the closure at Talk:Controversial Reddit communities#RfC Including SRS as a Controversial Reddit Community to determine whether it has been closer correctly. After heavy lobbying from an IP hopping user USER:Winged_Blades_of_Godric has chosen to ignore the majority of arguments and votes and declare the RFC “No consensus”. His motivation for this is that he believes those arguments, including my own, are illegitimate due to wp:canvasing by user:Koncorde - a user he singles out in the close message.

The matter has been discussed with Wings Blades here: User Talk:Winged Blades of Godric#Canvassing

The “canvassing” in question raising concerns about the IP hopper’s activities on various users talk pages. Note that in my own case I’ve had numerous past disagreements with Koncorde and there is no reason whatsoever for him to suspect I am going to agree with him on anything. I have, on the other hand, had plenty of experience on pages where POV pushing SPA’s and IPs have been an issue. Personally I would not make a user page post like that myself but I believe it falls just short of the types of action WP:CANVAS is supposed to prevent. I do not believe it warrants Winged Victory disregarding the RFC arguments of myself or others and would like the close to reflect the consensus. Additionally I do not believe the editorializing in the close message calling put a particular user is appropriate and would like to see it removed.

Thank you all in advance for your input. Artw (talk) 17:57, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

• note I have laced a notice here for the IP hopper, I am not going to track down all the other IP talk pages and place notices there as well. FWIW I believe the reliance on multiple IPs may be a startegy to make dealing with this user more difficult. Artw (talk) 18:11, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I have, personally, no issue with any warning I get / got, I'll let edit history and contributions stand for myself. Regarding canvassing (I first note a discussion above relating to this very issue); I engaged with a series of Editors from the similarly themed Gamergate Controversy and did so based on most recent contributions to the talk page. I posted the same message to each. I have been clear in each case on both personal talk pages [38],[39] and on the article talk page itself [40], [41], [42] that this was about a due RFC process regardless of their agreement or disagreement with my stance. Under Godric talk page I have pointed out the IP's modus operandi and highlighted my serious concern that the user was a motivated SPA and potential sock (who has so far used around 30 IP addresses, several core ones are listed here [43] but I know this to be incomplete). Thank you. Koncorde (talk) 18:39, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I am indifferent to that RFC (I was one of the people you notified, though I didn't weigh in on it). But I would point out that if you're worried that someone else is canvassing or otherwise abusing the RFC rules in the future, the best solution is probably to post neutral-ish notifications about the RFC on various relevant centralized discussion forums - the Village Pump, various noticeboards, and the talk pages of relevant articles. This reduces the impact of canvassing or other abuse by attracting more comments for the RFC overall, without the risk of running afoul of the canvassing rules yourself. In particular, if you felt that it was closely related to another conflict, posting on that page is fine, ie. if you felt it was relevant to Gamergate Controversy, the best thing to do would have been to post a notice on that article's talk page rather than contacting individual editors from there. You can sometimes notify individual editors without running afoul of WP:CANVASS, but it's more difficult. --Aquillion (talk) 20:42, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Noted. And as I had attempted to get attention of admins related to the potential sock activity with no success, it was a relatively last act after becoming aware of canvassing by IP, and 8chan discussion etc. It may have been quicker on Gamergate, but was liable to draw more "attention" on the Gamergate monitoring thread. In the end, don't want my actions to detract from the not-RFC. Koncorde (talk) 21:50, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

• Comment by Closer--Regretably, while I initially concurred with the views of Artw--that the IP is plainly tedious,disruptive et al; that does not overshadow the blatant canvassing by Koncorde.That the IPs could not be established as socks(Result was inconclusive) do not necessarily confer any user to venture out on righting a perceived wrong.I don't know but a statement ---SPA has canvassed to overturn 3 years of consensus on a 4 day vote in the mass-call-out is canvassing.The best way to post such messages has been clearly discussed by Aquillion.Lastly, while the technicality of the close may vary, the outcome is same-- the content remains excluded.So, until and unless I'm faced with more compelling arguments; I'm refraining from changing my closure.Addiionally, it is not under the purview of my limited abilities and technical scope to draw on-wiki conclusions from off-wiki activities.Winged Blades ^Godric 08:14, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

If you lack the skills to assess the situation possibly you should have requested help before pressing forwards with a contentious close that assumes bad faith of users? Artw (talk) 15:19, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Artw, it's getting to the point of WP:IDHT.I don't think you will find any volunteer from the community(I read somewhere that it's forbidden due to privacy related issues)(other than those serving at ArbCom) willing to link off-wiki evidence with on-wiki behaviour.If that means you expect an arb to close the RFC, your time and efforts would be spent better, somewhere else, than this thread.Winged Blades ^Godric 16:55, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

There WAS bad faith. By you, Artw. You unilaterally changed the result of an RFC. 2600:1012:B01B:6D00:DC4E:1497:F42E:EF8A (talk) 15:54, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Thinking it was improper, yes, I did. That was subsequently reverted and now we are discussing it here. Artw (talk) 16:01, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Comment our IP hopping freind appears to be forum shopping like crazy over at WP:Teahouse, someone should probably check in on that. Artw (talk)

• The matter was raised at the Teahouse before it was raised here, if I am not mistaken, two days before this thread was opened. I suggested an ANI discussion in my response at the Teahouse. I don't think that constitutes Forum Shopping, and in any case the Teahouse is always open to people with questions about how to use Wikipedia, including questions about ongoing DR processes. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

The links to the AN and demands for help with it appear to postdate the creation of the AN. As I understand it the teahouse is for helping new users who are confused about policy, what IP is neither. Artw (talk) 16:45, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Obviously one cannot link to a discussion that hasn't happened yet. But those were continuations of an existing thread at the Teahouse asking for help with the close in question. The Teahouse has a very broad remit, it is for assisting any user (not just new users) who has a problem with how to do things, any things, on Wikipedia. This includes askign for admin attention to an issue. In any case, i was already considering raising this issue here or at ANI before this thread was opened, nor did the IP editor ask for the Teahouse volunteers to make any decision, merely to look over the matter and advise or respond here. So there is no forum shopping involved, and the Teahouse posts were in no way improper, nor is my commenting here. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 18:04, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Looks like he's directly appealing to you from these edits. [44] [45] [46] I also very much do not appreciate his defamation of me as an editor and question the appropriateness of the Teahouse as a forum for that. Artw (talk) 18:25, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

The IP editor did ping me, yes, presumably because I responded to the first Teahouse post on this issue, and perhaps because I ahd expressed the view that a change of close by an involved editor was generally not proper before I ever knew what page was involve, or your username, Artw. As for defamation, I suppose you refer to the IP editor's comment that ArtW has essentially made me a target for his wrath and the IP's statement later in the same paragraph that Keep in mind this editor (ArtW) has a history of tenditious and aggressive editing, particular toward those who don't know the system as well as he does. Be assured that I gave no significant weight to those opnions, and my views here have been based solely on the edits at Talk:Controversial Reddit communities#RfC Including SRS as a Controversial Reddit Community, largely the ones I have linked to below. I really don't think debating whether the IP editor in some way acted poorly at the Teahouse is highly relevant to whether the edits changing the close statement were or were nor proper. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 18:46, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

It appears to demonstarate a double standard on your part as regards to WP:CANVAS and further underlines that the IP Users own canvasing efforts have been ignored. Also that the IP user is engaged in this form of manipulation also underlines that Koncorde was right to have suspicions about them. Artw (talk) 18:53, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I have not been addressing any canvassing or alleged canvassing by anyone. If the IP engaged in improper canvassing, that can be taken note of, and sanctions applied if need be. Asking an experienced user to review a situation and act as the merits may appear does not seem to me to be a violation of WP:CANVAS, nor does drawing attention to a situation on a public forum. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 19:13, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

• Now to a more substantial issue. In this edit Artw reverted the close of an RfC, and in this edit replaced it with a quite different close, changing "no consensus" to "opposed". All this after Artw had commented in the RfC, and was therefore WP:INVOLVED. There are processes for challenging closures that seem to be in error, starting with a simple discussion with the closer. Just reverting a close, by an involved editor no less, is not a proper way to handle such a situation, no matter how mistaken the close may seem to be. On the merits of the close, i see significant arguments made for inclusion, and for non-inclusion, with sources cited and disagreements about the quality and meaning of those sources, on each side. "No consensus" seems well within the discretion of a rational closer. I haven't read all the sources, and i don't know how I would have closed it myself. But my main point here is that involved editors should not simply revert closes they belive mistaken. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
  • It seems to me that this is exactly the kind of case where Process is important applies. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:30, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
    • Process is great. Selectively applied process is a problem. Artw (talk) 18:54, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
      • It can be, yes. What aspects of process do you feel are being ignored here, if any? What would you like done about them? Do you disagree that the change of close was, shall we say, injudicious? DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 19:13, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
        • Yes, I beleve by reclosing the debate after lobbying from the IP user and disregarding one side of the argument in the favor of other on the grounds of “CANVASING” , when said IP user is engaged in a canvasing campaign of their own is extremely injudicious and appears to be a snap decision that ignores all context, That the same IP User has now canvased you and you appear to be responding to it is the cherry on the cake. Artw (talk)

IP is manipulating all concerned [47], [48], [49], [50] etc etc. Koncorde (talk) 19:47, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

IP user IMMEDIATELY (5 minutes) reverted three of those edits with an apology. I had not received any sort of response from my initial inquiry so I engaged two other forums/users and DISCLOSED (hint hint Artw) that I had brought the issue to the attention of other forums. Further I stated plainly if engaging separate users was inappropriate I would immediTely revert which I then did. 2600:1012:B01B:6D00:B144:599F:75ED:8217 (talk) 20:00, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

You canvas like a motherfucker mate. You just apply a level of low-key deniability to it that a child could see through. Artw (talk) 20:02, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I've canvassed literally no one. The ONE possible exception was asking Wordsmith to take a look at the SRS deal. That is the only time. I've disclosed every edit I've made from every IP address I've used (I frequently edit from a cell phone). Your accusations are without merit and everyone can see this. More importantly, you've managed to use misdirection to change the subject of the discussion at hand (completely improper closure, blatant disregard for policy, and disrespect toward other editors) into something completely unrelated 2600:1012:B01B:6D00:B144:599F:75ED:8217 (talk) 20:12, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I remember now what was going on that prompted me more than anything. IP pinged Wordsmith, who then responded, and then changed his vote to Supporting the RFC. The IP then voted using a new IP address, and attempted to close the RFC itself using its other IP [51]. At the same time, the ping on Wordsmiths page attracted the attention of Mark Bernstein and Jorm. Good times. Koncorde (talk) 20:29, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Is there anything to their claim that they are disclosing their Ips somewhere and are therefore trustworthy? I would have thought a username a better way of doing that. Also I hope the RfC close took the double vote into consideration. Artw (talk) 20:36, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

There was ONE vote from ONE IP address. More lies from you. There was no "double-voting". 2600:1012:B01B:6D00:B144:599F:75ED:8217 (talk) 20:42, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

From the edit history this [52] is absolutely one of yours. Note the vote. Artw (talk) 20:45, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

They likely doesn't consider their non-neutral RFC or arguments from different IP's as a vote, which is fair enough, but clearly misleading. Regarding openness of their IP's, they are known only where I raised the list on the Sock investigation [53]. Approx list of those I am aware of are here in my sandbox. User has been informed / advised on at least 3 occasions to create an account, including by myself back in November 2016 when at that time was only the two IP. Koncorde (talk) 20:51, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. If there was an actual user attached I would be requesting an immediate ban for the maneuver where they vote under one IP/user and immediately attempt to close under another. I'm surprised that didn't go straight to AN/I. Artw (talk) 20:56, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

"Immediately" sounds sinister but if these are the relevant edits they're more than 3 hours apart: vote, close. The related claim "The IP then voted using a new IP address" is accurate but should be clarified: the IP only voted once in the RFC, 3 hours prior to a defensible (but IMHO inappropriate) snow close. Full disclosure: I participated in the RfC. James J. Lambden (talk) 21:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

• Comment All the above is great fun and all, but the initial request was for a reassessment of the RFC voted based on arguments. Are there any univolved Adkins out there who could actually do that? Artw (talk) 20:59, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

NO it was not. You REOPENED an RFC, then CHANGED the result. That's what this is about. 2600:1012:B01B:6D00:B144:599F:75ED:8217 (talk) 21:11, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I did indeed. And it was reverted (two days ago I’d add) and i was informed of the proper procedure for reviewing an RfC, and here we are. As it turns out you did far worse with an actual intent to deceive. But no matter: It would be nice if we could get to the actual review part without further derails. Artw (talk) 21:20, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

it does matter. You are exhibiting behavior that suggests either lunacy or a pathological dishonesty. There was never, on my part any intent to deceive. Nor does any evidence support such a ridiculous assertion. You, on the other hand, RE-OPENED an RFC, CHANGED THE RESULT, and then RECLOSED it. This does not just suggest bad faith or dishonesty- your behavior IS deception. The actual literal definition of it. That is why we are here. To see if there will be some level of accountability for your blatant disregard of all five pillars of Wikipedia. 2602:301:772D:62D0:DD89:DC80:6EF:3F30 (talk) 21:32, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Civility is also a pillar, so strike your comment now or I will block you. There is no justification for your personal attacks here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:35, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Dennis Brown: he's responding to an editor who wrote above: "You canvas like a motherfucker mate. You just apply a level of low-key deniability to it that a child could see through" – which appears to be the first personal attack in this conversation. James J. Lambden (talk) 21:48, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I saw that after I wrote my notice, and just ended up blocking both of them for 24 hours. We don't need this kind of behavior here. One doesn't excuse the other. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:59, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)In this thread we have seen the following comments that are at least uncivil, and in some cases fairly clear attacks:

The comments

I believe the reliance on multiple IPs may be a startegy to make dealing with this user more difficult. If you lack the skills to assess the situation possibly you should have requested help before pressing forwards with a contentious close that assumes bad faith of users? There WAS bad faith. By you, Artw. You unilaterally changed the result of an RFC. You canvas like a motherfucker mate. You just apply a level of low-key deniability to it that a child could see through. More lies from you. you did far worse with an actual intent to deceive. You are exhibiting behavior that suggests either lunacy or a pathological dishonesty

Perhaps i missed a few, but I think that is quite enough from all involved. 22:13, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

IP editor, it has been made very clear that Artw reverted a close and reclsoed it differently. Those changes have now been reverted, and Artw says i was informed of the proper procedure for reviewing an RfC, and here we are. If Artw should in future revert or change a close while involved, This discussion will not doubt be cited so show that s/he should have known better. Now can everyone stop throwing insults and aspersions around?

Artw has asked for an impartial review of the close, and given the various people arguing with the close, that is a reasonable request. I could have done such a review, but given my exchanges with Artw above, I might now be considered WP:INVOLVED. Will any clearly uninvolved admin or experienced closer step up, please? This isn't by any means the most involved or intractable RfC ever seen on Wikipedia, after all. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 21:40, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Closers should be advised of the admitted ("This is rather blatant canvassing by myself") and significant (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) canvassing by Koncorde in that RfC, in addition to the alleged off-site canvassing for the other side. (Again, full disclosure: I was involved in the RfC) James J. Lambden (talk) 21:48, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I would prefer it if you had left the full context of that sentence in James, "This is rather blatant canvassing by myself to support a due RFC process that has seen the IP canvas on his behalf. Otherwise, you wouldn't find me doing such a thing". I have previously provided such summary to Godric and in each summary or response to anyone in any talk. Only ArtW responded to my request (much to his now assumed misery I am sure) at the RFC. All other users were actually attracted by the canvassing by the IP at the Wordsmiths talk page or (I assume) have the page on their watch-list in some fashion.

I did not "canvas" for a win, I allege no "side" other than correct process (such as not deleting the RFC header, and declaring it "closed" so as to not invite further commenters), any suggestion that I picked people who would agree with me is patently not true (as revealed by their actual responses to me). If the RFC was for inclusion, then it gets included, but it should be included appropriately and ideally via consensus not because an IP improperly followed RFC process and tried to WP:SNOW.. Koncorde (talk) 22:46, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Canvassing in response to canvassing--is not a good argument to put forward.You did show me no-evidence of on-wiki canvassing(other than on Wordsmith's talk) and if you demand all the supporters of inclusion arrived from that particular venue;I may as well say, that the chance that all the opposers arrived from the multiple venues where you canvassed is pretty higher.May-be that was an absolutely good-faith effort from you but somehow the language of the callout et al. do not give that look! Winged Blades ^Godric 06:24, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll let 11 years of uninterrupted continuous editing wikipedia and wider contributions to the project speak for myself. As stated, I don't actually care about any such admonishment, and whatever negative response from Editors received is irrelevant to the question of how the RFC was conducted, how it was closed initially, and subsequent questions over the re-closing and changing of the result (which actually bothered me far less than ArtW) subsequent to the IP's appeals across several Talk pages and noticeboards (including at least 3 personally criticising yourself).

However; my argument is not merely canvassing vs canvassing, that is an oversimplification. Reducing it down to that does not reflect even a cursory glance at the issues with the RFC that, from the onset, did not meet the standards expected (and I would expect any Closer to recognise that behaviour).

I was responding to an IP who demonstrated sock-like behaviour, I was receiving no response to any cases I posted to the noticeboards about the user, the IP had brought the same argument to the table 7 months earlier, rejected a Third Opinion (at the time I was UNINVOLVED), on return created a POV RFC, canvassed Danaa, Wordsmith (and due to nature of IP, an unknown number of others, I believe there was at least one other clear example that you could see from the list of IP's on my sandbox but you'd have to click through all 30+), made arguments in support from several IP, on receiving a few votes in favour despite the issue with the RFC being pointed out to him, voted on own RFC under another completely different IP, then declared it closed under (again) another IP and removed its header from its public venue to cease supporting the veneer of the RFC being legitimate. Mark Bernstein and Jorm (opposers) came from Wordsmith. There is no indication that any user, apart from ArtW, came from my canvassing (and instead I received comments back regarding why it was inappropriate which I readily accepted).

That the RFC vote, per your response to ArtW was apparently a headcount, rather than WP:not counting heads is of a wider concern. I argued a case from policy (and had done for months over several instances). The weight of the arguments are meant to be the basis of the decision, and adhering to the policies of wikipedia relating to the content is supposed to be paramount. Koncorde (talk) 08:05, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• From reading the RFC, imho, Godric's close accurately reflected the consensus, taking into account the various canvassing allegations. The only real ongoing solution to a canvassed RFC, is to set up a new one and advertise it in all the relevant locations. Unless someone is actually going to do that, all the above is hot air. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:04, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
• OID has it right. The RFC was so compromised from the very beginning by bad behavior on both sides, that this was the only close reasonably possible. I find Artw's reclosing to suit his preferred outcome grossly improper, though he does say he was not aware it was inappropriate. My suggestion is to have a new RFC, properly advertised in the correct venues (and only them), to establish a true consensus. Demands that the IP editor create an account are spurious, since creating an account has never been a requirement to participate in discussions. A dynamic IP is not sockpuppetry in any way, shape or form and those accusations need to stop. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 20:06, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Would agree that we don't seem likely to see any progress here. I withdraw my request for review, feel free to close. Artw (talk) 22:28, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

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

CU backlog

Hi all, there is a CU backlog at WP:SPI. Your kind attention (and laborious efforts) would be appreciated. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 13:59, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

See also. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:16, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

User:LanceLaytner has moved his user page to draft Draft:LanceLaytner

Please could an admin try and sort out a bit of a mess. User:LanceLaytner has moved his user page to draft Draft:LanceLaytner to make a second incorrectly titled copy of a draft of Draft:Jeremy Josse. Theroadislong (talk) 17:59, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

• Fixed - moved back, and blanked. Black Kite (talk) 18:01, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Cleanup on 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis ?

Could someone with free time take a look at the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis page? The volume of events (and edits) has calmed down enough that it should be possible to have some stability in the article. Power~enwiki (talk) 00:50, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

What's wrong with it? If I understand you rightly, there's something rather obviously wrong that anyone should be able to see (since you asked for outside review without specifying any details), but I saw no blatantly bad problems, no cleanup tags aside from occasional inline content problems (e.g. {{fact}}), and nothing else that could easily and quickly be fixed. So obviously I'm missing something here, one way or the other. Nyttend (talk) 03:32, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• I think he's just wanting an uninvolved admin to work the talk page, stay uninvolved and mop and archive the talk page, like I'm doing on Talk:2017 Congressional baseball shooting. He asked me, but I'm a bit busy to monitor two of these. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 09:42, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Yeah. I've been editing it for the past week as events develop and would like to take a break. It could use a copy-editor ( User:Emir of Wikipedia is doing some of this) and a separate un-involved editor to clean up the talk page. Power~enwiki (talk) 20:00, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Appeal my TBan

Half a year ago, I was TBanned from all deletion related processes. I have been told that I could apply to have my TBan lifted after 6 months, which is today. Ever since I was TBanned, I have focused my attention in improving voice actor articles by citing reliable sources, as well as placing a new template in them which encourages contributors to source their information. If I do succeed in lifting my current restrictions, I would still continue to contribute to Wikipedia by improving/writing voice actor articles (which can be viewed on my userpage), more often than AFD procedures as I believe that I am more capable in the former. I believe that I have proven that I could contribute to other areas in the encyclopedia, which was a concern when it was believed that I am too obsessed with the deletion process. I hope the community and admins will consider my appeal, and I look forward to continuing working with you all. Sk8erPrince (talk) 04:12, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Why do you want the topic ban lifted? What has it prevented you from doing that would have benefited Wikipedia? Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:16, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

So that I may contest PRODs on articles that I care about and participate in AFD discussions, which are both currently undoable due to my TBan. Even though my main area of focus has shifted, I would still like to redeem the privileges that I once had. Sk8erPrince (talk) 05:22, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• How do you expect to move forward without running into the same problems of a battleground attitude, mass nominations and rudeness [54] that got you the ban in the first place? Dennis Brown - 2¢ 09:39, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

As mentioned above, since my primary focus is no longer AFDing (and will no longer be if this appeal is approved), mass nominations won't be a problem as I will be spending most of my time here citing reliable sources on voice actor articles than nominating articles for deletion. I have no intention of being rude in AFDs ever again; rather, I would approach those discussions in a calmer, civil manner, I promise. This is how I plan to move forward. Sk8erPrince (talk) 10:25, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• I'm inclined to support this appeal, backed up with a reminder that any resumption of the previous behaviour will quickly result in the TBAN being replaced, perhaps alongside a block for abusive behaviour. But, that's not a threat. I'd expect the same to be applied to me; if I started mass-nominating, I'd expect to be sanctioned. What tips it into 'support', for me, is that this user has hundreds of edits since the TBAN was placed, and no blocks. There was a concern in early January that maybe the editor had violated the TBAN. Rather than become combative, the user discussed the situation. And that was early in the ban. I would encourage the user (encourage, but not require, and not request a response about) to consider what steps they will take if they find themselves heading down the wrong road again. In my experience, it helps to have a plan ahead of time to avoid getting in trouble again. --Yamla (talk) 11:42, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
• I'm tending to support too, partly because the appeal has been presented in a credible way, partly because of Yamla's reasoning, partly because I really do believe in second chances (unless it's obviously a bad idea), and partly because Sk8erPrince will be aware that any repetition of the problems that led to the ban is likely to result in its reinstatement with very little chance of being lifted again. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:50, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
• Supporting purely out of benefit of the doubt and believing everyone deserves a 2nd chance. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:08, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support per improvements and acknowledging that next time, the ban will be indefinite and appeal time will be 1 year or longer. Capitals00 (talk) 17:14, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - AGF regarding OP's improved attitude. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:20, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• Sorry, OP blew it with their comment below. Deletion may be a necessary thing, but it's not something to celebrate. I guess their attitude hasn't really changed much at all. Thanks to TheGracefulSlick for point it out. Oppose. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:32, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

:::If my attitude hasn't changed, I would have said that it wasn't Grace's business (that was actually what I said in the Tban discussion). Instead, I calmly explained my reasoning for keeping such a list. I fail to see how listing articles that I have managed to delete has anything to do with a battleground attitude or general rudeness, which were concerns when I was Tbanned. Keeping personal records doesn't mean I'm celebrating, nor does it mean that I am gloating that I am very good at the process. Sk8erPrince (talk) 08:08, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

• Comment - I'm not entirely sure if I'm just making a big deal out of it but did anyone else notice Sk8er still has all the articles he has deleted listed on his userpage -- almost like they were points or victories? I think it is right to ask: Sk8erPrince why do you find it is neccessary to keep such a list of "successful" AfDs and CSDs? I'm willing to support you as long as you have the right attitude toward the deleting processes.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 02:14, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll have a second go at answering that question. It's not necessary to keep that deletion list as long as there's viewable records of my AFD stats. I have removed it, so it no longer poses as a potential issue. Sk8erPrince (talk) 04:33, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

::The same could be asked for listing articles that I have tremendously improved, really. As long as it's a significant achievement, I'll list it in my userpage. Sk8erPrince (talk) 02:19, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Question: Would you please explain how these deleted articles are "a significant achievement", equal to that of articles you've "tremendously improved"? BlackcurrantTea (talk) 07:11, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

::::They're not equal achievements. They're entirely different processes; also, at present day, I think article expansion is more contributive (at least, I have been able to contribute more effectively in that area). However, the AFD process was what I had been doing before I started getting actively involved in article contribution. Since AFD was the only way for me to contribute (that's what I thought, at least), those were the only achievements I've made, and they were significant in my POV. It is simply a personal record, nothing more (so I don't forget what I did manage to achieve). Sk8erPrince (talk) 08:08, 17 June 2017 (UTC) *Clarification: I just found out that the TBan discussion had listed keeping my personal list of successful deletions as an issue when combined with other more immediate issues such as rudeness, combative, refusal to integrate into the community and having a battleground mentality (it should also be noted that the main concerns took up most of the OP's post and those that support placing a TBan on me, and that my personal list was only briefly mentioned in just a few sentences). I would like to take this opportunity, since Grace has pointed this out, to clarify the purpose of keeping a list. I don't deny that I was unpleasant back then, and that I was rather immature and inexperienced when dealing with AFD procedures (mass nominations without having conducted enough research is one of them). Despite that, I still managed to achieve something in the end, and keeping those AFDs as personal records helps me learn and move forward when looking back. It is part of the learning experience.Sk8erPrince (talk) 08:40, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

• Guy, it's revealing of your mindset being unchanged, ESPECIALLY since you title it "Pages I've deleted myself [emphasis added]" --Calton | Talk 23:23, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. Successful AFDs are "significant achievements"? If you had linked to the titles themselves -- perhaps as a watchlist against re-creation or as a guide for future re-creation if circumstances change -- I might have thought you had a point. But it's a list of links to the AFD pages, so serves no purpose other than that of a trophy list, like a fighter pilot painting his kills on his aircraft. --Calton | Talk 23:23, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
• Update: I just remembered that my personal AFD records could be viewed using the AFD stats tool, so I've removed the deletion list on my userpage. I don't want to give the wrong impression that I'm keeping victory lists. Sk8erPrince (talk) 01:48, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• So exactly the same attitude, just hiding it better? Not the winning rhetorical strategy you think it is.--Calton | Talk 08:14, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• Comment I have no opinion on the Tban but since I was aware of this discussion I was surprised to see Sk8erPrince add himself to the Active AfC reviewer list which I reverted [55] Keeping a list of AfD nominations is pretty silly. They are not trophies, just spam fighting. I can see, however, putting together a list to disprove accusations of making bad AfDs. I wish Sk8erPrince all the luck. Fighting spam attracts all kinds of unwanted attention. Legacypac (talk) 07:22, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. They are not trophies, so if keeping such a list attracts unwanted (negative) attention, I'd rather just delete it off of my userpage, which I did. I mean, there's other ways of viewing my AFD stats anyway, so it's not all that necessary to keep it.

"putting together a list to disprove accusations of making bad AfDs"

Thank you for understanding. That was actually another reason why I put together that list. Regardless, since the list has been removed, I think it would be for the best for all of us to not dwell on how it might be concerning. Sk8erPrince (talk) 09:05, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• Except that it's a list of the DISCUSSIONS, not the articles or topics, and he's labelled them "significant achievements": that's not "spamfighting" no matter how you parse it. --Calton | Talk 08:14, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

30 AfDs are not "significant achievements". I can do that many while bored in a board meeting. Get Twinkle, go to NPP feed, select Unreviewed Pages by New Editors and you can AfD all the junk you can stand to scan. Legacypac (talk) 08:47, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose - Sorry Sk8er but that was not a response that would give me any confidence in seeing the Tban being lifted. With all the struck comments here, I feel you are just looking for a response that appeases editors instead of one that reflects upon your current mindset.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 14:03, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support per Dennis Brown and Beyond My Ken. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 14:26, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• Just to be clear, I changed my !vote from "support" to "oppose". Given the discussion that's gone on since, I continue to think that change was the correct call. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:40, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• I'm still willing to give them a chance. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:58, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

• "You're a better man than I am, Dennis Brown." - Rudyard Kipling. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:16, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I doubt that. I'm just not afraid to be proven a fool. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:17, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Queryable move and edit request about articles about letters of the Roman alphabet

• The IPA user User:92.229.96.232 asked for the move Template:Latin alphabet to Template:Latin script; I obeyed. Then User:92.229.96.232 asked me in my user talk page to replace "alphabet" by "script" in the protected pages A B C G L and Roman numerals. So I got doubtful about such a request from an IPA user and reverted the original move and decided to query the matter here. And see Special:Contributions/92.229.96.232 for what he has done so far. His user talk page User talk:92.229.96.232 has no edits (undeleted or deleted). His request to me was "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Latin_alphabet could you replace in the protected articles A, B, C, G, L, Roman numerals "{Latin alphabet}" with "{Latin script}"? ". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:04, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• I would stick with "Latin alphabet". I am unfamiliar with the use of "Latin script". Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:29, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

• "Script" is correct, but it's a jargony term. "Latin alphabet" is probably just as valid and no doubt easier for the average reader to find. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 13:28, 17 June 2017 (UTC).

@Lankiveil, the "jargony term" is used as the title of the main article and main category to which the template is related, namely Latin script and Category:Latin script. Maybe Anthony Appleyard can explain why he named it like Latin alphabet, which is a subtopic.

@Beyond My Ken - if you are unfamiliar with the use of "Latin script", you can obtain information at: Latin script, Category:Latin script, Template:Latin script 77.179.202.221 (talk) 13:44, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

If you want this move made, you must present more cohesive arguments, not simply cite Wikipedia articles. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:21, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Also, since this is now obviously a controversial move, you must open a RM discussion in a centralized place, such as Talk:Latin script, with neutral pointers to the discussion on Talk:Latin alphabet and the talk pages of the various articles in question. This is no longer an admin concern, this must be decided by WP:consensus. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:24, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Beyond My Ken, I don't think I have too, the more "cohesive arguments" have been made in the WP:RM that Anthony Appleyard deleted. "controversial" is the move that Anthony Appleyard made from Template:Latin script to Template:Latin alphabet. 77.179.202.221 (talk) 00:50, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

 Comment: Anthony Appleyard removed the request including the rational from WP:RM and performed the move. Later he unilaterally reverted the move, but did not revert the removal from the list at WP:RM nor copied the original request to the talk page so it could properly be discussed. Is that a correct procedure? 77.179.202.221 (talk) 13:44, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm with Lankiveil on this one. While it is true that we have constructed a (rather technical and somewhat idiosyncratic) distinction between Latin alphabet (i.e. the original writing system of the Latin language in antiquity) and Latin script (the abstract superset of the Latin-based writing systems of modern languages worldwide) in these main articles, there really is no need to push this distinction into all sorts of other places where readers won't expect it. As for template names (such as that of {{Latin alphabet}}), they are arbitrary strings and not even supposed to be displayed to readers, so simplicity is certainly the most important consideration here. If you want it moved, you can of course propose a regular WP:RM on the template talkpage. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:10, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Fut.Perf. Regarding "(rather technical and somewhat idiosyncratic) distinction between Latin alphabet" https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Latin_script&oldid=779263998#The_latin_script_is_NOT_an_alphabet Good luck! 77.179.202.221 (talk) 00:49, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• @Beyond My Ken, Future Perfect at Sunrise, and Lankiveil: I did not call it "alphabet"; it was called "alphabet" before I saw the pages involved. If the verdict here is "leave the word as "alphabet"", someone may have to go through Special:Contributions/92.229.96.232 and revert the various changes of "alphabet" to "script" listed therein. Shall I start a discussion in Talk:Latin script, or leave the discussion here?, perhaps pointed to from Talk:Latin script? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 21:40, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

  Anthony Appleyard, you named the template Template:Latin alphabet, that fact is easily visible in the page history. 77.179.202.221 (talk) 00:49, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

  @Anthony Appleyard: As that is a content matter, I think it's better discussed on the article talk page rather than here. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:58, 18 June 2017 (UTC).

 Comment: Is the noticeboard taking over the work of members of the Wikiproject Writing Systems? Why is this at ANI at all? Anthony Appleyard? 77.179.202.221 (talk) 00:49, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

 Comment: Anthony Appleyard performed a "controversial" move from Template:Latin script to Template:Latin alphabet. Is this allowed because he is an admin? 77.179.202.221 (talk) 00:54, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

I see no discussion of this move on Template talk:Latin alphabet. I oppose any convoluted move proposal without discussions on the talk page, and support User:Anthony Appleyard in not conducting the move and removing it from WP:RM at this time. Power~enwiki (talk) 04:43, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• The page was named Template:Latin alphabet from way back. As stated above, I routinely obeyed a request to move it to Template:Latin script, but soon afterwards I reverted that move. I did not invent the idea of using the word "alphabet". It was not moved before, except way back at 14:38, 4 October 2006 when User:Dbachmann moved Template:Latin alphabet to Template:Unicode Latin (which at 06:50, 11 April 2007 was deleted), and changed the resulting left-behind redirect into a new template Template:Latin alphabet. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:47, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Note: This IP user's profile (and IP location) seems rather reminiscent of Tobias Conradi (talk · contribs), a long-term banned sockpuppeter. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:56, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Some sort of glitch in mobile view

Not particularly administrative; I've moved this to WP:VPT. Nyttend (talk) 10:39, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Category creation

Resolved

 – Page created. Primefac (talk) 00:50, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm performing some {{R from fictional character}} tasks and added multiple Tiny Toon Adventures character redirects to Category:Tiny Toon Adventures character redirects to lists. Creation of this category is currently restricted to admins, perhaps because of past vandalism? This is standard naming as subcat of Category:Fictional character redirects to lists, actually generated by the Rcat template itself by using {{R from fictional character|Tiny Toon Adventures}}. Can someone please create this category for me? Thanks.— TAnthony^Talk 00:45, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

 Done. TAnthony, no idea why "Tiny Toon" is on the title blacklist (I suspect "porn" reasons), but I've created the page for ya. Feel free to expand the page as appropriate. Primefac (talk) 00:50, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks!— TAnthony^Talk 00:51, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

It was added by @MuZemike: back in 2012 but with no explanation as to why. I've removed the entry as it is far too broad to be put in the titleblacklist without an explanation. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:26, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Edit filters and the Ross fans

Moved to Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Xaosflux (talk • contribs) 00:30, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Relisted RM at Template talk:2016 US Election AE

The ongoing RM discussion at Template talk:2016 US Election AE is relisted, so feel free to comment there until closure. --George Ho (talk) 01:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

G13 eligible help?

I personally cleared a 1200 page backlog at [56] than discovered there were hundreds more G13 eligible pages not added to the category. Something got fixed and today the list has balloned from zero to over 1100 pages. I just found out a bot used to CSD this junk. Is there any way someone can automate the CSDing again? It's only a matter of time before some bot or well meaning AWB user or delinking effort touches the pages and restarts the 6 months clock. Legacypac (talk) 07:12, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

I've deleted... somewhere upward of 1,000 of these. Twinkle's D-Batch makes this easy - perhaps too easy. I figured that if a bot used to do this then D-Batch could do it just as well. If I've done wrong, could someone let me know? GoldenRing (talk) 19:20, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

HasteurBot only tagged these, it didn't delete them. In theory, at least, the admin patrolling these is supposed to take at least a cursory glance at what he's doing and defer anything with potential, not robodelete more than 1300 pages in under two minutes without even the standard pointer to WP:REFUND for retrieval. —Cryptic 19:40, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

If consensus is that batch deletion is the wrong approach I'm very happy to undelete them and start working through them more slowly. GoldenRing (talk) 19:48, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Undeleting en masse would be overkill, but taking a second look at the deleted articles might be worthwhile. I looked through the first (most recent chronologically) 150 in that log; only Draft:Three Rivers Regional Library System struck me as salvageable, and that only if someone feels like finding some non-primary sources for it. (It's not the same subject as the existing mainspace article Three Rivers Regional Library System.) There were a couple more near misses - drafts that would have survived AFD as-is, but had better mainspace articles created after the drafts were rejected. Draft:The Search For Everything (at The Search for Everything) and Draft:Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology were typical. Also a handful of images to be brought to FFD or c:COM:DR. This was about the same percentage of drafts that need a little more attention that I see when deleting tagged G13s. —Cryptic 20:58, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

so there is no misunderstanding I was looking for a CSD tag to be applied enmass. An Admin would then assess them quickly. I've been manually assessing and CSDing but then the Admin also assesses which is duplicating my work. Very very occasionally I see something worth promoting or postponing but presumably the Admin would make the same judgement as I would to postpone. There remain many G13 eligible pages in AfC declined categories. I found several in the last few minutes. Hesteurbot has more to do to ID these. Legacypac (talk) 20:14, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Looking over the list I see a bunch of redirects from user to draft space deleted dependant on a deleted page. There is no point even looking at those. Legacypac (talk) 21:03, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, no, but there's no way to exclude them from the log listing. They're a fairly small minority, anyway: 1106 of the 1329 deletions in that run were summarized "G13 (TW)". —Cryptic 21:34, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Thats about typical for % of pages moved to draft vs started in draft. I'm working hard to clean up AfC backlogs. If we want to push thru ACTRIAL in some form we need AfC in better shape not stuffed full of garbage and unreviewed drafts. Legacypac (talk) 21:41, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac: I think that drafts not awaiting review don't contribute towards the backlog total. jcc (tea and biscuits) 22:04, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

@Jcc: yes and no. The +/-1800 waiting for review excludes the rest, but many of the pages in the larger pool will be resubmitted multiple times perhaps for years without reaching N or correcting other issues. If we miss the chance to delete them at 6 months many will add back into the review backlog. A large percentage of the review backlog is resubmissions. Make sense? Legacypac (talk) 22:29, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Got it- thanks. jcc (tea and biscuits) 22:30, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac and GoldenRing: Can I simply make the comment that if G13-eligible pages were meant to be deleted automatically, Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions would not exist and {{AfC submission}} would place old drafts in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as abandoned AfC submissions directly. Now if someone wants to make a proposal for G13 CSD nominations made by extended confirmed users for pages that have never had G13 postponed to be auto-nuked by a bot, then I'd be open to that, but I don't think auto-nuking everything without any review is appropriate. The signal-to-noise ratio in Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions may be about 1 to 20, but that 1 article is important. TheDragonFire (talk) 13:32, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Deletion is a serious business event, and one that very few (if any) bots ever get approved for. HasteurBot simply evaluted the page to determine if it was eligible under a higher bar than the current wording of G13 (6 months completely unedited). At 5 months unedited, it'd drop a notice on the creating user's talk page letting them know that their page is in danger of being nominated under G13. At the 6 month mark unedited, it would go through and procedurally nominate for G13. Admins were usually pretty calm about HB's nominations because we took the more conservative position in nominations. I can take some time and dust off my processes, but I'd prefer to wait for this proposal to finish before I start tinkering with the process. Hasteur (talk) 18:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

User Roadcreature / Guido den Broeder

Some of you may remember User:Guido den Broeder. He was later renamed to User:Roadcreature. The userpage of the later says "Originally banned by the community on December 19, 2008. Unbanned by the Arbitration Committee on May 21, 2009. Re-banned by the Arbitration Committee on June 1, 2009." As late as November 2015h he was still socking here (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Roadcreature/Archive), confirmed both by checkuser and by editing behaviour (the user also was sockblocked at nlwiki, where the master account was also indef blocked a long time ago). One of thie discussions about the socks are Jolly Bard here, with the socks editing about Paraduin and Liberland. Note that at no point the socks have admitted being Guido den Broeder though.

I will not reiterate everything from 2008 or before, let me just point to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Guido den Broeder, a 2008 RfC about his extensive COI editing / self-promotion in mainspace, which only was closed without a formal summary because he was indef blocked anyway. Other evidence of the period can (by admins only) be seen at this page.

His original ban was based on an already extensive block log, including for making legal threats / taking legal action against other editors, edit warring, and conducting a rather disruoptive "social experiment" with enwiki. Arbcom tried an unblock with restrictions, which lasted from 21 May 2009 to 1 June 2009; 2 months later his email had to be disabled, 3 years later his talk page access, and another 3 years later we had the above socking.

Despite all this, ArbCom thought it wise to unblock him without consulting or even informing the community about this, on 23 April 2017.

Guido den Broeder has used his time since then to create an article about a non notable micro-nation Paraduin of which he is the founder and "prince", and which links to obviously primary sources but also to e.g. an article written by Guido den Broeder, and the main page of Wikisage, a partial wikipedia clone / substitute founded by Guido den Broeder, and supposedly the basic "economic" activity of Paraduin. Paraduin has supposedly also contributed to a movie with Kristina Pimenova, an 11-year old model sometimes described as "the most beautiful girl in the world" apparently, whose page has also been substantially edited by Den Broeder. One of the sources he added was again written by "Ogidius", i.e. himself. Another article he edited was Liberland, another micronation which claims the same bit of land Paraduin does (and which has received a lot of attention, contrary to Paraduin). There as well he added two sources by himself. Paraduin has already been submitted to prod, which Guido of course reverted, and most editors commenting at the page seem to agree that it is an utterly non notable topic. He is already edit warring to keep it in other lists and templates, see [57][58][59].

I don't know why Arbcom thought it wise to quietly unblock a long-term banned editor, who socked as recently as 2015 (and denied the socking, even though the evidence is extremely obvious); but since it turns out that his return is not to help Wikipedia, but to promote his own, well, let's call them "ideas" or "interests", I see no reason to let him continue editing, or to wait until all previous problems, not just the severe COI editing and the edit warring, reappear. There is no evidence that anything has changed since 2008 (or since 2015), so I suggest to simply reinstate the community ban. Fram (talk) 09:17, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

You write that he is currently banned since June 1, 2009 when a test run failed. So the previous ban was reinstated by ArbCom if I read the archives correctly. So what change are you actually requesting? Regards SoWhy 09:53, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

The text comes from User:Roadcreature. However, in April Arbcom silently unbanned User:Guido den Broeder. You can find the link in his block log (which ArbCom updated), not on his user page or talk page. So at the moment Guido den Broeder is no longer blocked or banned (though technically the community ban never was lifted I think, only the ArbCom ban was undone?). Fram (talk) 10:11, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Well it wasnt silent as such, he did lodge a formal request in public. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:28, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

And it is still on the talk page, see User talk:Guido den Broeder#Unbanned. Regards SoWhy 10:36, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Ah I see what happened. He logged it at requests, but it was closed less than 2 days later by a clerk (correctly) saying per WP:UNBAN it needs to be done via email. Which is probably why no one noticed it. (Since Arbcom bans are not subject to community involvement in lifting.) So not so much silent as 'working per the current written process'. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:51, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

"Silent" as in not announced here, which is what usually happens when ArbCom unbans someone (an ArbCom announcement here and at their noticeboard, and a discussion if necessary at the talk page of the noticeboard). And that's not taking into account the fact that he was community banned in the first place of course. Fram (talk) 11:01, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Well unfortunately the unbanning process at the time for community imposed bans was... Arbcom. So cant do much about that. Banned by community, unbanned by Arbcom per the process at the time, rebanned by arbcom, unbanned by Arbcom per the current process. Granted from looking at this COI editing I'm with FPAS that he should probably be re-banned. (Pimenova has been on my watchlist since User:Lyrda was banned.) Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:07, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

In any case we shouldn't hold whether the unban was silent or not against Guido den Broeder, so I probably shouldn't have included that bit anyway. Fram (talk) 12:06, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

So is that whats behind the Kristina Pimenova stuff recently? If he is back to the same problems that got him banned in the first place, then thats probably the best option. (Original community ban here for reference.) Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:14, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Polling

• Support re-ban, this is pretty horrible COI editing, and if that's what he wants to be doing here, he should go. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:33, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support community ban, per FPaS. BTW, Paraduin is at AfD. [60]. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:59, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support ban Never should have been un-banned to begin with. RickinBaltimore (talk) 14:16, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support re-ban. Been watching Kristina Pimenova for a while, and them being involved that article's COI-editing rings all sorts of alarm-bells. Lectonar (talk) 14:22, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support community ban - So that this can be over once for all again. Capitals00 (talk) 17:01, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support ban. Once again, Arbcom neglects transparency. If they had done their usual due diligence and posted a notification on WP:ACN, people may have been able to monitor this user and raise a red flag before this became an issue. Evidently we get notified of new clerk trainees, but not a long term community banned editor being unbanned. The user's conduct is clearly unacceptable for Wikipedia, whether in 2008 or 2017. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 17:04, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support re-ban - As you can see above, he still denies most of the socking, despite ArbCom/functionaries confirming that Guido den Broeder = Roadcreature = The Jolly Bard. This involved cross-wiki data (CUWiki). You can read my summary of the investigation. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:18, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support RE Lectonar and my previous comments above. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support per above. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:30, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Please don't WP:bludgeon the polling. Since you insist on commenting on every vote, please do so here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:54, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

• (to Only in Death) At the time, some people misinterpreted an essay I wrote. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:27, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• (to Lectonar) I also uploaded the image, and my COI's are properly declared on my user page. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:12, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
•  Comment: Since there is no conflict, I suggest a normal evaluation of my edits after three months by User:Opabinia regalis. Guido den Broeder (talk) 14:39, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
•  Comment: For the record, I am not User:The Jolly Bard. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:09, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• (to Salvidrim) Well, you're a poor investigator, as really all you had to do to solve this was mail me. Regardless, he didn't create any problems either, and this was taken into consideration when the decision to unban me was made. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:32, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• (to The Wordsmith) This shows exactly why you weren't notified, for what we have here is a lynch mob, while there is absolutely nothing to see. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:37, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
•  Comment: Again, for the record, I have never made a legal threat in my life. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
•  Comment: Nor do I editwar, despite being baited regularly including by several participants in this thread. I am always the one initiating discussion and trying to build consensus. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:50, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
•  Comment: In conclusion, I have yet to see a single diff of any wrongdoing on my part. The same was true in 2009. People just jumped on the bandwagon then, as you are doing now. Do I edit articles that I have a potential COI with? Yes. Is that a problem? No. It's normal. The difference is that I declare any COI, while other editors don't. Bottom line, the bulk of my edits stand, the articles are in much better shape than before and with far more consensus. Guido den Broeder (talk) 19:02, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

GoldenRing appointed trainee clerk

The arbitration clerks are excited to welcome GoldenRing (talk · contribs) to the clerk team as a trainee!

The arbitration clerk team is often in need of new members, and any editor who would like to join the clerk team is welcome to apply by e-mail to clerks-llists.wikimedia.org.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 16:26, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#GoldenRing appointed trainee clerk

WP:ITNC

Currently five items ready to be posted at ITN. It's now becoming less "In The News" and more "Was In The News". The Rambling Man (talk) 19:33, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Is this thing on? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:22, 19 June 2017 (UTC)