Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
This page is for urgent incidents or chronic, intractable behavioral problems. Before posting: Read these tips for dealing with incivility If the issue concerns a specific user, try discussing it with them on their talk page Try dispute resolution Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. Be brief and include diffs demonstrating the problem Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead go to Requests for oversight. When starting a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page; pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:ANI-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Closed discussions are usually not archived for at least 24 hours. Routine matters might be archived more quickly; complex or controversial matters should remain longer. Sections inactive for 72 hours are archived automatically by Lowercase sigmabot III. Editors unable to edit here are sent to the /Non-autoconfirmed posts subpage. (archives, search)
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User:Sabbatino being inpolite

Sabbatino (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) on his talk page uses rude communication style from a position of excellence on me:

• it appears that you lack WP:COMPETENCE to edit in English so just stick to Russian Wikipedia
• I have been editing English Wikipedia for about six years and I know a bit more than you do

I would not write here, but the user already had similar problems with calm communication. In addition, apparently, there is no such strong consensus on the issue under discussion as the participant is trying to show. Rather the opposite is true. Please convince the user to follow Wikipedia:Etiquette.·Carn !? 17:43, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Digging up an old discussion that took place two years ago just shows that the reporting editor is holding a WP:GRUDGE for no apparent reason. He/she just came out of nowhere and started to annoy me on my talk page. In addition, he/she went to the Los Angeles Clippers page, which was never edited by the reporting editor and reverted my edits. It makes an impression that those reverts were in retaliation to the AFC Championship Game page. The reporting editor then went to my talk page and started blabbering about some "longstanding" consensus on the Los Angeles Clippers' page, which he/she invented out of the blue, and also pinged two other editors, who are not related to the issue on my talk page. This whole report is stale and the reporting editor is doing everything just to make a WP:POINT, which is bad faith. It also makes an impression that I am being stalked. The first cited statement from my talk page was in my first reply to the reporting editor, because I could not understand what he/she meant and after looking at the editor's edits, it became apparent that his/her skills editing in English were poor so I advised him/her to stick to the main Wikipedia where the editor makes edits – the Russian Wikipedia. The other statement just stated the obvious as I am certainly not going to other language Wikipedia to show off like the reporting editor does here. – Sabbatino (talk) 19:56, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the underlying content issue, but must point out that it is totally valid to point out that Sabbatino has been given a final warning about civility and edit warring, that it is not annoying someone to start a discussion on their talk page, that telling someone that they shouldn't be editing the English Wikipedia is a personal attack, and that only D-list "celebrities" use the "don't you know who I am" argument. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:15, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

I already explained that I pinged users, which inserted sources from which you removed the "language = en" parameter. The fact that you mention my words as "blabbering", saying that I am "bothering" you, cut off an unfinished conversation with the words "The discussion is over until you understand how to use talk pages" leaves me not many options for the reaction. I think that anyone who reads our discussion with you will see that I have been peaceful and patient, and I want to continue to be so, but your communication style creates an atmosphere that is uncomfortable for me. ·Carn !? 21:42, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

@Phil Bridger: You do not know anything about the "final warning" situation so it is not for you to judge me. In addition, telling someone that they are lacking WP:COMPETENCE is not a personal attack. I also do not use any "that only D-list "celebrities" use the "don't you know who I am" argument" arguments as you are implying. You do not know my editing history and I do not know yours so just stop with the judgments. – Sabbatino (talk) 22:44, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

I suspect Phil's 'D-list' analogy is a reference to your having claimed to know a bit more than Carn. As a general rule, such statements come across poorly regardless of the intended meaning. Also, it is not a judgment to make the factual observation that you have been given a final warning. Lepricavark (talk) 23:17, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Basing my stance on a discussion from two years ago is absurd. The usee does not know me and I do not know him so he should just stop with implications. – Sabbatino (talk) 08:12, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

If you think this is a proportionate reply to this, then it would appear that the issues from two years ago are still relevant. Lepricavark (talk) 16:11, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, of course that was the meaning of my analogy, as I would have thought that anyone with enough proficiency in English to admonish others for minor grammatical failings would have recognised. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:28, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@Carn: I am calm. However, when a person starts to repeat the same thing all over again for no apparent reason, it makes an impression that the person does not really know what he/she wants besides trying to annoy someone, which is the case. – Sabbatino (talk) 22:44, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

My reason is transparent - I'm occasionaly translate pages from enwiki to ruwiki and I want language=en to be not removed in cases than it was set by editor, that added <ref></ref>. I'm sorry that I have failed to explain my position clearly to you. But don't you think, that if there were a newbie in my place, (s)he would be scared.·Carn !? 22:55, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

If you were a "newbie" then it would evident by your actions. And when I see a "newbie" I always try to help. – Sabbatino (talk) 08:12, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Will you agree to stop removing the parameter? This entire problem could be solved if you agreed I think. 50.35.82.234 (talk) 08:33, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Sabbatino's comments are indeed rude, condescending and overly quarrelsome for such a trivial issue. Carn was right to bring this to ANI. François Robere (talk) 11:28, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Have to agree that Sabbatino's comments are problematic. While Carn!? first comment to Sabbatino did have some language issues, and their English as shown here and in the followup issues isn't perfect, it does not seem to be bad enough to suggest the editor cannot edit here. I can't imagine Sabbatino analysing Carn!? contributions would have shown any different. And if they were offering that suggestion based only on that one comment Carn!? left on their talk page, that's hardly civil behaviour.

And it seems particularly weird to make a big deal over how long you've been here, when you can't even get basic policy right. WP:SOCK does not forbid the use of multiple accounts. Using multiple accounts to appear as if you're two editors is indeed a violation of our sockpuppetry policy but the accusation was fairly weird anyway.

Carn!? outlined why they pinged the editor when they pinged. And followed with diffs demonstrating what they said was correct, after the sockpuppetry suggestion. I don't know how Carn!? knew that User:Azure1233 is one of the one's who added the parameter. Maybe they used wikiblame. But it seems a fair enough ping especially as it was only a discussion on a user talk page anyway, not an RFC or something. And it seems weird to suggest sockpuppetry just because of that.

Also while 2 years is a fairly long time ago, the best way you can convince people you've improved is by showing it. Which I'm not seeing here or the discussion on Sabbatino's talk page.

As for the content dispute, that's best discussed elsewhere. But I've reverted since Carn!? has outline a reason why they want the parameter, but Sabbatino has outline no harm other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT nor policy or guideline supporting their actions.

To be clear, there's nothing particularly wrong with Sabbatino believing it's best to remove the template. I wouldn't even say it was wrong to remove it in the first instance since the documentation does sort of suggest it's not necessary. But once Carn!? objected, then Sabbatino should have given their objections including rationale for why they want the parameter, a fair hearing. And if they looked at the template documentation, they should have realised it doesn't actually say it's forbidden. And known that their vague memories of previous discussions are not good evidence it's forbidden. And therefore, if not reverted themselves at least told Carn!? they were free to revert. And also undertaken not to remove the template in articles Carn!? is likely to edit.

Nil Einne (talk) 18:18, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

I think that removing that parameter was encouraged when Sabbatino first started editing. The preference changed several years ago, as more translation work started happening and the CS1 folks updated the template to hide the parameter, but most editors outside the core AWB and CHECKWIKI groups probably didn't hear about the change. I'll see about clarifying the /doc pages, so that people will be able to find out the "rules" if they happen to look. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:20, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to know whether, on reflection, Sabbatino regrets his remarks that I will join the half-dozen experienced users here identifying as inappropriate. I think some self-reflection complimentary of his many valuable contributions here would be well received. If these were my remarks, and it turned out as it did that I was probably in error on the underlying issue to boot, I would show some contrition. --Bsherr (talk) 21:03, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

I am not going to say that I regret my remarks, because I can express my opinion, but I do agree that some of them were harsh. If the user was direct from the beginning of the discussion on my talk page then this could have been avoided. – Sabbatino (talk) 09:09, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Carn was direct from the beginning of the discussion, but you chose to insult him rather than conduct a civil discussion. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:16, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

How much more direct could they have been? --Darth Mike^(talk) 21:24, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

I see that nobody has seen fit to close this discussion yet. I think that there is a consensus that Sabbatino was uncivil here, so it just comes down to the decision as to whether a final warning is actually final, or whether we have to put up with such behaviour. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:28, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

So I guess this is textbook Wikipedia:Don't be inconsiderate. "If the community is telling you that you are being inconsiderate, then please reflect on your behaviour. Continuing to behave in a way that people are telling you is inappropriate or disruptive leads to problems. For you, for the community, and for Wikipedia." Support one month block and let's see if that time for self-reflection was utilized. --Bsherr (talk) 22:52, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Could I have acted differently? Yes? Did I? No. Do I understand my reaction was not good? Yes. Did I try suggesting that the parameter is sort of not needed? I did, and after the editor asked somewhere else about the matter, I replied there regarding the matter. In addition, when I saw that the editor went off-topic on my talk page, I decided to stop the discussion there. Finally, whatever the decision is – block or no block – I have bigger matters in my life at this time than think about anything Wikipedia-related. – Sabbatino (talk) 11:28, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Knights of Columbus

• Knights of Columbus (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Slugger O'Toole (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 278 § Avatar317 removing WP:ABOUTSELF material

My reading of the RSN discussion was that the use of ABOUTSELF material is excessive and that the article is bloated with self-sourced promotional and trivial content.

Slugger O'Toole has been around since 2006 and has around 20,000 edits. He has been mainly active since 2018. His top edited articles are connected the Knights of Columbus: 636 edits to the KofC article (highest of any editor by a large margin), 525 to Catholic Church and homosexuality (second highest), 349 to Political activity of the Knights of Columbus (highest, again by a large margin). He refuses to state whether or not he is a member or affiliate of the KofC, but asserts that according to his own reading of COI, he has no conflict. However, according to his own reading of WP:ABOUTSELF there is no limit on the amount or type of self-sourced material that can be included in an article, so I take that with a pinch of salt.

The article is, in part thanks to his reversion of any removal, extensively sourced from KofC and affiliated websites, including much promotional material such as claims of membership numbers, revenues, charitable giving etc. When I first checked, around half the inline citations were to KofC and affiliated websites or obvious press releases, and most fo the rest from a handful of books including at least one commissioned by KofC.

This looks very much like promotional editing. I am concerned by his refusal to acknowledge whether he has any connection with the subject and much more concerned by his bloating of the article with trivia, asserting that WP:ABOUTSELF provides effectively carte blanche to include as much detail as cannot be sourced independently, from affiliated sources, and his reversion of attempts to remove excessive self-sourcing. Guy (help!) 21:58, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

It's a shame that this has reached the stage of ANI. I've encountered Slugger O'Toole's work in the past and he seems like a solid content creator. I don't know if he has a genuine COI with the Knights or if he is just an ardent fan, but the state of that article is unconscionable. If he doesn't want to disclose his relationship with the group, that's fine, but his editing behavior is not justifiable. The Knights are a fairly high profile organization; there are reliable third-party sources out there, and there's no excuse for so much of the sourcing to be taken directly from the organization's own website. Michepman (talk) 03:38, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Agreed, normally I'd support anyone on Wikipedia not wanting to reveal personal information, however, when it conflicts with that person writing an article, especially if they're connected to it, yeah, that have to disclose it. Slugger O'Toole's responses smack of literally not answering the question at all. Necromonger...We keep what we kill 13:02, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

I can't agree. Our policy explicitly does not require people must disclose (have to) a COI unless it's WP:PAID territory. People are strongly encourage to disclose, but if they do not do so, we have to consider whether their editing is causing problems. If it is, it may very well be appropriate to block or topic ban them, but this will be based on the problems their editing is cause, not the fact they may have an undisclosed COI. Editors should be aware that failing to disclose a COI means others may be reluctant to help them with any edit suggestions, and they will be given short shrift in any discussion, but still it's not a requirement. Personally I find an editor who refuses to comment on a COI slightly better than an editor who comments but misleads, although the former doesn't seem to apply here since as I understand it, the editor has refused to comment on any connection, but says they have no COI. Whether the latter applies, I have no i dea. Nil Einne (talk) 13:39, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Nil Einne actually, WP:COI actually requires those with a COI to disclose it. Up near the top it states:

Editors with a COI, including paid editors, are expected to disclose it whenever they seek to change an affected article's content. Anyone editing for pay must disclose who is paying them, who the client is, and any other relevant affiliation; this is a requirement of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Even non-paid editors with a COI need to disclose it. Necromonger...We keep what we kill 15:14, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@Wekeepwhatwekill: Did you read what you quoted? It says "Expected". It does not say you are required or must do so. And later it says "you should disclose your COI when involved with affected articles" (emphasis mine). Notice these words. They were chosen carefully. The only parts were it says "must" is in relation to paid editing. In that case, it is indeed required, and an editor can be blocked simply for failing to disclose their paid editing. It doesn't matter if their paid editing is stellar and no one can find any problem with it. Nil Einne (talk) 15:49, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Nil Einne, and refusal to either confirm or deny is as good as a confirmation, as we all know. But that's not the main issue. The main problem here is a terrible article that makes a notable subject look like some crappy little group because it is mostly promotional text taken from the group's own sites and press releases. Guy (help!) 15:49, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@JzG: I don't know if I'd necessarily agree on that, and I'd argue your post demonstrates why. Someone may consistently refuse to confirm or deny precisely because if they start to deny, then they also have to confirm even if they don't want to. If you ask me whether I live in Wellington, and I refuse to confirm or deny, it may be because I live in Wellington. It may be because I live in Auckland and don't want to reveal that, and so don't want to go down a path which may eventually require me to either confirm I live in Auckland, lie about it, or basically tell people I do by the one time a question which I cannot truthfully deny is asked, I have to refuse to confirm or deny thereby confirming it anyway, or point blank refusing to answer which again if I normally reply will be taken as confirm it.

Likewise if you ask me if I am a member of Knights of Columbus, maybe the reason I may refuse to confirm or deny is because I am a member of Knights of St Columba and don't want to have to effectively reveal that when I feel there is no valid reason. I'm fairly sure some politicians have such a policy of refusing to confirm or deny a lot of rumours precisely for this reason.

Undoubtedly an editor should not be allowing their COI to cause problems, and the best way they can avoid having to disclose a COI is by steering well away from any area where they have a COI. But I'm also completely sympathetic to people who want to keep their private lives private despite editing here. And so fully endorse our current policy which IMO is clear that we cannot force people to declare an ordinary COI. Only when it comes to paid editing are editors required to disclose with no ifs or butts about it and their failure to do so is completely blockable.

Hence why as I said, we need to concentrate on problems this editor may be causing, putting aside whether they may or may not have a COI, rather than making misleading claims that a COI must be disclosed (which would imply it's ultimately a blockable offence to consistently fail to do so).

Nil Einne (talk) 16:09, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Nil Einne, when someone is engaged in promotional editing, it's legitimate to ask if they have a conflict of interest. If they refuse to answer, then it's equally legitimate to restrict them to the talk page as if they did, because the problem is promotional editing more than it is a conflict of interest. That's what I mean here: Undisclosed COI versus non-COI promotion is a distinction without a difference as far as the content goes. Guy (help!) 17:05, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Nil Einne Yes, I read what I wrote. I guess it comes down to how we interpret "expected to ". We're expected to stop at red lights, but it doesn't mean it's voluntary.

I read the COI statement the same way. NO, I won't get into a discussion about semantics, I totally see how you read "expected", you read it as something voluntary, and I don't. That's fine, we can agree to disagree. Necromonger...We keep what we kill 17:46, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Even if it means "required", they need not disclose anything other than the fact that they have COI. It's usual for editors in this situation to explain what the COI consists of (a member, and officer of the association, a close friend of a member, etc. ) but this is not required. We assume good faith, and recognize that the need to disclose further may be in some way identifying DGG ( talk ) 11:46, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

I think we are confusing two issues here. The first is the amount of WP:SELFSOURCE material that is appropriate and for which facts it is appropriate. The second is when a COI needs to be disclosed. I was of the opinion that a primary source was acceptable for things like membership numbers. Due to the longstanding stable nature of the article, I believe there was a consensus for it. Others have come in and started removing that material, claiming it to be promotional and not appropriate for a primary source, without changing the consensus first. I think this is inappropriate, but as a gesture of good faith have endeavored to find additional sources. I haven't seen that reciprocated on the other side, sadly, and in fact have found the tone of some other editors to be downright hostile. If the consensus changes on this, I would be happy to abide by it.

As to whether or not membership requires disclosure, this issue has arisen before on this article. Two admins, @TonyBallioni: and @SarekOfVulcan:, have both declared that we "have never interpreted the COI guideline to require disclosure for things such as" membership in a fraternal organization. I think this is a wise move for those who are not in the upper ranks or paid employees. As I said on the talk page, declaring membership in an organization like the Knights would reveal several pieces of personal information, including age, gender, and religion. --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 14:49, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

This is my impression as well. The general rule seems to be that you don't have to declare whether you are or ever were a Boy Scout to edit articles about Boy Scouts, but you do have to declare your association if you're paid for your involvement (either on staff for the organization [at least above a trivial level; mail room staff need not bother] or it's your job to promote the org [whether for pay or as a volunteer]). The same rules that apply to members of the scouting movement ought to apply to members of other large organizations. (For the smallest clubs, the situation is more complicated, because it's less likely that someone would technically be a member but not be involved in promoting the group or its aims in some way.)

As noted above, and according to the lead of that article, it appears that for this org "please disclose that you're a member" means "please disclose your religion on wiki". I can understand someone being reluctant to do that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Disruptive editing?

I'm less concerned about what might constitute COI than I am about his repeated insertion of UNDUE, promotional, and weakly sourced content in the article. The article is written in a tone and with a level of detail, jargon, and admiring excess that comes off downright bizarre to an uninterested arm's-length reader. This issue has been patiently explained to him, and I am not optimistic that he will be able to collaborate constructively on this article. SPECIFICO talk 22:19, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree that the COI is less important than the article content and how editor Slugger O'Toole does his best to own the article. Every time any other editor changes/removes content, he quickly reinserts it, and with his promotional spin. See this example of his whitewashing. [1]

He seems to believe that the only acceptable behavior of any other editor is to expand the article, (note his comments above) and he seems to be repeatedly either failing to comprehend or INTENTIONALLY IGNORING the repeated comments by other editors to point out that unless some piece of trivia or other material is sourced in an INDEPENDENT source, than it doesn't deserve to be in the article (it is not important enough to be in Wikipedia).---Avatar317^(talk) 22:04, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• O'Toole has made a baffling 60% of the edits to that page (75% by text), which is unacceptable for an editor who has both clear WP:DUCK WP:COI issues they've refused to clarify and who and has, more importantly, constantly refused to listen to people saying that the article has clear problems. Wikipedia has around six million articles, and this one as a reasonably high amount of attention now, so I think O'Toole ought to spend some time editing on a different subject and leave the Knights in the care of other editors for a few years. (I also think the fixation on "this is how it has always been", in the face of so many people pointing out so many problems, smacks of WP:OWN given that much of the current text was written by O'Toole with relatively minimal input from others.) --Aquillion (talk) 21:21, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I have stated on multiple occasions that I think the article can use work and that I am willing to work with anyone who wants to try and improve it. My main complaint is that, instead of editing text to improve the prose, some think the best course of action is to simply delete huge sections of text. My requests to work on this collaboratively with others have largely been ignored. --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 01:28, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Much of the content does not belong in an encyclopedia article, for reasons many several editors have explained. Much of the article is paraphrased from a few closely affiliated sources. That kind of content simply needs to be removed. It can't be "improved" by compromise or collaboration. It just doesn't belong in the article. Your talk page statements, and now this one here, just ignore that the content can't be "improved". New content from more neutral sources, some critical and others contextualizing the KofC, could be added from independent RS references. But you've shown no inclination to work on that kind of improvement. SPECIFICO talk 01:52, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Chronic Lyme

• Sthatdc (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Chronic Lyme disease (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Under Our Skin (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Sthatdc has 117 edits since registering in September. Following an earlier bout of edit-warring on the subject of "chronic Lyme" I notified him of DS on fringe / pseudoscience ([2]).

After a two month hiatus he has returned today to resume the disruptive edits: [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. These substantially repeat edits previously reverted in his September active period: [9], [10], [11].

He's now repeated the edit on "chronic Lyme" for the fourth time: [12].

The user has failed to WP:ENGAGE. No edits in Talk space at all, warnings and alerts are blanked ([13], [14], [15], [16]) and the only community engagement has been in the form of peremptory demands to "explain yourself or accusing long-term editors of disruptive editing.

I honestly suspect that this is not a genuinely new user, but regardless, I think he needs some assistance with understanding how we work here. I suspect that if he carries on as he is he will be topic banned pretty soon, if not blocked altogether. Guy (help!) 11:17, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Nobody has explained what they objected to about my edits. In fact, all the evidence suggests that they didn't even understand the point of them. User:JzG in particular has left canned edit summaries only, when reverting edits which are basic common sense and which I explained in the edit summary. Quite why they would prefer to pester me with form messages and report me on noticeboards instead of simply explaining what problem they had with my edits, I cannot imagine. Sthatdc (talk) 11:27, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Sthatdc, See above. You need to engage on the article Talk page. Guy (help!) 11:42, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

It seems that you don't actually have any concrete objections to my edits. Sthatdc (talk) 12:28, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Sthatdc, In fact I do, but since you appear unwilling to explain on Talk what you are trying to achieve there's no obvious way to resolve this. Guy (help!) 14:24, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

The obvious way to resolve this is that you explain what your objections are, if you actually have any. Repeatedly undoing without explanation my straightforward, minor edits, which I explained when I made them, is obviously not a good faith action. Sthatdc (talk) 14:47, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Sthatdc, actually the obvious way to resolve this is simply to block you as a timewaster who doesn't understand what words like "straightforward" and "minor" mean on Wikipedia. Guy (help!) 16:42, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

You are that reluctant to explain why you undid my edits? Sthatdc (talk) 18:00, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

• Comment Sthatdc is edit-warring and not discussing content, while being abrasive with other users. Content wise, the edits (e.g.[17]) are in my view not great (removing on-point content, not properly respecting WP:V). If they don't engage and start discussing content in a civil manner I suspect their Wikipedia career will be short, especially considering this topic is under DS. Alexbrn (talk) 12:42, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Which "on-point content" did I remove? Where exactly do you think my edits were in conflict with WP:V? I asked you this before; you didn't respond. Sthatdc (talk) 12:50, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

This noticeboard is for discussing behaviour. You need to discuss article content at Talk:Chronic Lyme disease and gain consensus for proposed edits. Alexbrn (talk) 13:01, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

So you, like User:JzG, are refusing to explain exactly what you objected to. That is a ridiculous attitude. Sthatdc (talk) 13:16, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

The burden is on you to use the article talkpage to explain your edits. Please do so. If you do not, you may be subject to discretionary sanctions. Acroterion (talk) 13:21, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@Sthatdc: It's up to you to discuss contested edits to get consensus (maybe try WP:BRD?). I don't think, though, you'll get consensus to change (for example) the opening of the article so it drifts apart what the reliable literature on the topic says, which is what you are apparently wanting to do. But if you don't explain what you're trying to do how can anybody respond? Alexbrn (talk) 13:24, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Evidently, you have not understood what my edits did; you've grossly mischaracterised them, still without explaining specifically what you object to. I explained them clearly in my edit summaries; your edit summaries have been either canned, or mere insults with no basis in reality. If you are not prepared to describe exactly what you object to, there is no possible basis for discussion, is there? Sthatdc (talk) 13:35, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm sure plenty of editors are prepared to discuss. You've been advised how to proceed; you can take that advice, or you can continue edit-warring in which case you will likely be blocked. The choice is yours. Alexbrn (talk) 13:38, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

You are not willing to explain what your problem is with my edits. That's a ridiculous attitude to take. Sthatdc (talk) 14:47, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Sthatdc, How do you know? You haven't raised it on the Talk page. Guy (help!) 17:01, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

I know because you have undone my edits without any explanation three times. If you were editing in good faith, you would not have done that. Sthatdc (talk) 18:00, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Sthatdc, The onus is on you to achieve consensus for a disputed edit. Since you refuse to even explain your issue, or to engage on Talk at all, I think we can readily see why that's not happening. And by now I think you're just trolling. Guy (help!) 23:24, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Nobody is willing to explain what they objected to about my edits. if the reversion is not adequately supported then the reverted editor may find it difficult to assume good faith. Indeed. Sthatdc (talk) 14:51, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

It seems to me that User:Alexbrn is the root problem here, having failed to properly understand what my edits did. Their initial revert seems to have been aimed at a different editor [18]. Their claim in that edit summary of "wild POV-skew" is a flight of fancy, and yet they have become instantly entrenched and simply refused to actually read my edits and see what they did. User:JzG has never bothered to give any reason for his reverts, seemingly persuaded by the mere fact of someone else reverting that they must do the same. Any editor who undoes an edit but refuses to explain why is not acting in good faith. Sthatdc (talk) 14:58, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Sthatdc, no, the problem is you. You refuse to engage on the Talk page, you remove warnings and comments on your Talk page, and you leave aggressive peremptory demands on the talk pages of those who challenge you. You have virtually no history here, and the people you are so belligerently challenging have a lot. Talk:Chronic Lyme disease is the correct venue for you to defend your edits, this page is for you to defend your behaviour. You've done neither, as it happens. Every comment you've made here is based on the assumption that you are obviously right, but it is definitely not obvious and the balance of probabilities strongly favours multiple long-standing editors being right, not one new editor who doesn't engage on Talk. Guy (help!) 16:40, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

On 8 September 2019 I told Sthatdc:

I have noticed that whenever you get into a disagreement about the content of a page you immediately go to the talk page of whoever reverted you.

Our policy at WP:CONSENSUS says:

"When agreement cannot be reached through editing alone, the consensus-forming process becomes more explicit: editors open a section on the associated talk page and try to work out the dispute through discussion. Here editors try to persuade others, using reasons based in policy, sources, and common sense; they can also suggest alternative solutions or compromises that may satisfy all concerns."

WP:BRD says:

"Discuss the contribution, and the reasons for the contribution, on the article's talk page with the person who reverted your contribution."

I am going to assume that as a new Wikipedia editor you were unaware of our policy on talking things over on the article talk page (not the user talk page of the editor who reverted you), but now you know.[19]

Sthatdc deleted that comment without discussions, as he does with all warnings and criticism. And he has continued posting rather aggressive comments to the talk pages of those who disagree with him while refusing to have any discussion on any article talk page or on his own talk page. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:44, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

If people undo a change I've made and give a reason that corresponds in some sense to what I actually did, we can all have a lovely discussion and find a way to make the article better. If people undo a change I've made for no reason, or give a reason that bears no relation to what changed, we cannot. You don't think that's obvious? Sthatdc (talk) 18:00, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

If people undo a change that you’ve made, go to the article talk page and explain why you made the change. Then it can be discussed, and (hopefully) a consensus can be reached about what changes are appropriate. That’s how BRD is supposed to work. Don’t just try to edit-war it into the article; that won’t end well. Go to the article talk page and discuss it there, and we can close this thread.

Alexbrn and JzG, it might be a good idea if, when reverting a comparatively inexperienced editor, you explicitly referred them to the article talk page in your edit summary. As Guy said, this editor had only a hundred or so edits. Wikipedia is a complicated place, and certain areas (articles falling under MEDRS rules being one of them) are more complicated than others; people really can’t be expected to know how things work around here by some sort of instinct.

There hasn’t been an edit to the talk page of the Chronic Lyme article since September. Can somebody please go there and start the discussion? Brunton (talk) 18:38, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Done. Why none of the involved editors could have started a discussion in the right place is beyond me. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:54, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 20:00, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

While I agree that AN/I isn't the right place for this, I think the editor's comments here makes it seem like there are bigger WP:IDHT issues. Darthkayak (talk) 23:12, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Phil Bridger, because we don't have a problem with the existing article. At least two of us have invited the user to state his case on Talk, and his response has been to delete the messages and continue the edit war. Not much to work with there. Guy (help!) 23:23, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

I also agree with Phil Bridger: BRD doesn't forbid the "wrong party" from beginning the discussion, and doing so is constructive even if the opening comment is just "please explain your edit". --JBL (talk) 16:03, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Joel B. Lewis, It is, however, futile when the user refuses to WP:ENGAGE. As evidence: TP discussion has been open for a day, and the user still does nothing more than make conclusory accusations here. Guy (help!) 16:37, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@JzG: Since the discussion has been opened, the editor hasn't made any edits at all. That seems like a major improvement to me (both over the edit-war and over this ANI thread)! --JBL (talk) 17:06, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Joel B. Lewis, you are not wrong. Let's see if he does the same in another three months. Guy (help!) 19:00, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

JBL, you are correct. In fact, WP:BRD directly says that the "wrong party" can start a discussion: "The first person to start a discussion is the person who is best following BRD." I begin to suspect that you might have actually read the page, unlike most editors.

For those who haven't, BRD also says that it is a specific and optional protocol that is recommended only for experienced editors who are trying to make progress. "Bold–Revert–Demand that the bold editor WP:SATISFY me" isn't how BRD has ever worked, no matter what anyone has ever told you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:15, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Cinema Clown removing comments at rename discussion

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

---

There was a rename discussion last month at Talk:La_Grande_Illusion#Requested_move_8_November_2019 that resulted in the article not being moved from La Grande Illusion to Grande Illusion. Cinema Clown has restarted the discussion at Talk:Grand Illusion#Requested move 3 December 2019, this time at the target article. He is now deleting comments that oppose the rename:

1. [20]
2. [21]
3. [22]
4. [23]

I have tried discussing the issue with him here: [24]. Betty Logan (talk) 19:42, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Blocked 31 hours for disruption. Yeah no, you don't delete multiple users comments on a discussion because you aren't getting your way. RickinBaltimore (talk) 19:46, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Cinema Clown is a sock of Agantuk0708, who has been editing here since 2014. There are other undisclosed accounts used by this editor as well. It's all very odd (see the deleted edits of another  Confirmed account Stolonifer for example). I've left a request for an explanation on Cinema Clown's talk page.-- Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 21:39, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for everyone's work with this. I think their last post on their talkpage speaks volumes. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:28, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

It is a novel approach to creating WP:CON..... Sethie (talk) 09:35, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• Given it is five socks and no embarrassment or remorse about using them to skew consensus their direction, I think there is one obvious course of action that should be taken in respect of ALL the accounts, including the Cinema Clown one: indef blocking all of them (Agantuk0708, Stolonifer, Aaron the Auteur, Bubaikumar and Cinema Clown) and checking to see if there are any others. – SchroCat (talk) 10:35, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I've created an investigation here. RickinBaltimore (talk) 15:17, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

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

User:Colin

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

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• Colin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles § Product pricing
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine § MEDPRICE

Colin has had a long term issue with incivility directed towards multiple members of Wikiproject Medicine. They were previously brought to ANI for this is 2018 but problems have persisted.[25]

Two days ago Doc James requested that Colin stop pinging him.(Dec 2nd at 19:04) Colin’s reply was “James As long as you won't drop this issue, you'll get pinged whenever I mention your name.” and he has continued pinging.[26]

There are lots of concerning comments by Colin in 2018 including "But there are real problems with his behaviour on this project, and frankly those problems are not helped by editors like you worshipping him........ James is so arrogant....... these videos are just a symptom of a deep illness affecting WP:MED, and James is at the core of it.......... This "making Wikipedia more shit" has been going on for years."

And in 2018 he compared editors at WPMED to sexual predators and refused to withdraw the comparison when called on it.

“These things that are being discussed are symptoms of an underlying illness with WP:MED which at its core lies Doc James, with a chorus of worshippers......... Tryptofish, do you realise your comments "If you choose to edit medical pages, you can, but you have to deal with it as it is" sound exactly like an apologist for sexual abuse in the workplace: "The guys here are a bit crude at times, might feel your bum in the lift, peer down your top, but you know, they don't mean harm by it, and if you want the job, well you have to deal with it as it is". Wrong and bad.”[27][28]

Issues go a long way back with Doc James requested that Colin not post on his user page in October of 2014 after a prolonged period of incivility directed towards him.[29] Despite this Colin has continued to do so.Nov 25 2019Nov 26 2019,Apr 4 2018,Apr 2 2018, etc--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:15, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

My suggestion is that the behavioral and content problems dominating WP:MED for several years now have become so pronounced, entrenched, and factionalized, that it will not be long before an Arbcase may be needed to look at all of the behaviors, and the serious content issues, and an increasingly entrenched approach that ignores sourcing and content policies, and applies guidelines as a means of furthering personal preferences. Colin is confronting a regular handful of editors who have a tenuous grasp of policy, and regularly pile on "Me, too" type support for non-policy-based arguments, with little logic or reasoning supplied. These trends have resulted in a clear deterioration in what was once a fine WikiProject, while Colin continues to argue, coherently and thoroughly, in favor of content policies. Should the needed arbcase eventually happen, Colin's preference for content policies will be viewed in the context of everything else that is going on at WP:MED, and those who continually ignore, or advocate to ignore, content policy are not likely to be happy with the outcomes of a deeper look at these behaviors or those who support them. As a once prolific medical editor, and FA writer, I have found that the scholarly direction of the WikiProject I was once a core member of has deteriorated to factionalism and support of people who don't evidence an understanding of content policies, so I have mostly stopped trying to improve medical content; the scholarly collaborators have long since left in the face of a lesser qualified crop of current editors. I am surprised that Colin --who was a core member during WP:MED's ascendancy, and responsible for most of the guideline and policy discussion and formulation that brought the project to its now-gone high point -- still tries, as the environment and lack of logic he faces is daunting. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:55, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Wasn't really expecting this, but SandyGeorgia's summary looks better than Ozzie10aaaa's. (Although the "I'll ping you if I want to" thing is a bit of a dick move.) --JBL (talk) 02:09, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with SandyGeorgia. Repeating what I've already said multiple times on the matter: I'm stunned by the behavior I've been seeing related to pricing across Wikipedia in order to support some sort of broad exception to content policies. It needs to stop, but it appears ArbCom is the only way it's going to.

(Yes, the pinging should stop.)

See Wikipedia:Prices#Discussions_about_best_practices for a partial list of discussions. --Ronz (talk) 03:22, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) SandyGeorgia's comment about the long-term changes in the group resonates with me. We used to be focused on writing brilliant articles filled with precisely delimited claims and superb sources. Then we went through an anti-woo phase: almost anything's okay, as long as it hurts the spammers and alt-med proponents, and nothing's okay if it helps them. This naturally is going to frustrate anyone who wants brilliantly written and carefully sourced articles, because there was nothing brilliant or careful about any of that. (Example: An editor once claimed that a peer-reviewed review article could not be used to say what color a cosmetics ingredient is, because the editor-in-chief was suspected of being a poor businessman.) Now we seem to be talking more about issues of health policy, which is a more approximate subject area with a focus on practicalities, like approximate prices. Which is naturally going to frustrate both of the previous groups, because it's not up to the standards of the first group, and practicalities sometimes don't produce the proper anti-woo signals. I have been thinking for some time that the group needs to have a proper sit-down and figure out what we want to accomplish. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:48, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Multiple issues affecting WP:MED are ripe for community-wide RFCs because WPMED no longer has a vibrant participation, or exhibits a core understanding of consensus-building, while previous RFCs are being ignored. Colin is the most knowledgeable and experienced wrt formulating an RFC to reach a useful conclusion, but we see a) other editors not understanding that a good RFC comes from ample discussion, and they instead pile on meaningless “me, too” supports that smack of cabalism, and b) other editors launching ill-formed RFCs and !voting. The sit-down that should be happening is in the form of discussion, not “me, too cabalism”, so that someone experienced like Colin can then write a neutral community-wide RFC. The core problem at WPMED is that guidelines are being interpreted as policy to further personal preferences of a handful of people, while more knowledgeable content and policy editors gave up and left. (And any time you see the pricing of a worldwide commodity with standard benchmarks -—oil—- compared to local prices of retail pharmaceuticals, you have to wonder where the logic has gone, and know that a broader community discussion would point out the faulty logic.) But pricing is not even remotely the first time we have seen this kind of problem recently at WPMED. Read any of the lengthy discussions occurring on the talk pages of WP:MED, WP:MEDRS and WP:MEDMOS to quickly see who correctly makes policy-based posts, and who always piles on one-way, me-too supports based on little understanding of policy. WAID and Colin are doing the best they can, given the conditions. Producing even mediocre content stopped being a priority at WPMED several years ago, and poor behavior from those who support the minority has been tolerated in what looks to be quid pro quo behavior. Broader community input is needed to break the logjam. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:25, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

This sounds like every walled garden in Wikipedia. It would be wonderful if we found a way to tear the walled gardens down. I've only been here a year but I understand this has been a problem since forever. – Levivich 05:00, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

There may very well be problems, but I'm unconvinced that Colin is the best person to be the primary one drafting an RfC to deal with them. This is one of those cases where I think as this "they're just words" or "bad words" or "sticks and stones" etc talk misses the point. Whatever problems may exist in the area, making such a comparison which is offensive not only to those involved but especially to those who have to deal with real sexual abuse does not help advance the discussion, or your point or case in any way. Such talk not only turns off those it's directed at, it turns off everyone else including both neutral parties and even those who are supportive of the editor. We all make mistakes especially when tempers fray, but it sounds like Colin hasn't actually acknowledged this was a mistake. Surely there's someone who can better lead the charge, who can actually have a hope to deal with the issues because they don't offend everyone in the process including those who may actually support them were it not for the fact they're so utterly terrible at communicating? Nil Einne (talk) 08:57, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Nil Einne, there was one remark that provoked my "sounds like an apologist for.." comment. Tryptofish wrote, "I will oppose any efforts to treat the WT:MED editors as wrong or bad." This sounded to me very much like one bloke sticking up for his mates regardless of whether anything bad was going on. History would come back to bite Tryptofish's defence of WP:MED editors. Jytdog was in that conversation too, and was among those siding with James and attacking me at the time. When Jytdog fell dramatically from grace, James et al, backed him as "one of us". The community disagreed and he is indef blocked by ArbCom. I accept my analogy was ill judged and likely to cause offence. Office bullying is a more appropriate analogy, then and now, and Jytdog was a symptom of a general behaviour at WP:MED, not an outlier. -- Colin°^Talk 09:20, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Colin, you need to understand the rationale behind that. WP:MED has some of the strongest sourcing requirements on Wikipedia, for excellent reasons. Medicine is very prone too hyperbolic claims based on a study of three mice, on one end, and bitter hatred from the Gary Null posse on the other. We maintain an exceptional standard of reliability on those articles by sticking to RSMED and managing out obvious POV editors.

The "pharma shill gambit" is very commonly used by fans of quackery to discredit anyone engaged in serious medical research. That's further complicated by people like Peter C. Gøtzsche who makes excellent points around issues with psychoactive drugs, but then erroneously extended that to criticism of HPV vaccine that has been exploited by antivaxers. Gøtzsche is a serious and thoughtful man (I've shared dinner him and David Colquhoun of UCL, also a trenchant critic of issues with academic medical publishing). This contributes to a bit of a bunker mentality whic, for the most part, the MED editors do a remarrkable job of tamping down.

The issue of pricing does not seem to have a genuine consensus. That's the underlying problem. Guy (help!) 11:27, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy, you are aware that I wrote WP:MEDRS and pushed it to becoming official guideline? You are aware that it is Doc James using the "pharama shill gambit", not some alt med quack? You see "bunker mentality" I see bullying, ignoring policy and edit warring. I appreciate some folk supported Jytdog because he was "on their side" against the quacks, but he was a bully and an edit warrior and deserved his block. That WP:MED would no doubt welcome him back with open arms is in fact a damning criticism of the current state of that project. -- Colin°^Talk 11:56, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Colin, Jytdog may have been an edit warrior, but he was not a bully. He is much more of a Tigger than an angry mastodon. Guy (help!) 12:40, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Didn't he get perma-banned because he made real-world contact with someone he was edit warring with, or something like that? That doesn't sound like a bouncy, cheerful Tigger to me.

Guy, I strongly agree with you that "The issue of pricing does not seem to have a genuine consensus." I think that WP:NOTPRICE might be due for a thoughtful review. I believe that there is still a strong consensus for not including ever-fluctuating retail prices for generic consumer products ("today, Amazon's cheapest price for a T-shirt is US$3"), but including some prices (e.g., the initial list price of some electronic devices, the base price of some vehicles) might have stronger support than we'd have seen among the original generation of Wikipedia editors. User:Alexbrn IMO brilliantly summarized this question as "in essence a philosophical dispute about where Wikipedia should sit on the information⟷knowledge spectrum" (information being approximately understood as a number, and knowledge being approximately what that price means). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy, as a medical editor since 2005, I can assure you that the community-wide acceptance of WP:MEDRS can be almost entirely attributed to Colin's efforts and that a good deal of WP:MEDMOS is also due to Colin's effort. Most significantly, it was Colin's ongoing insistence that WP:MED guidelines cannot get ahead of Wikipedia-wide guidelines and must reflect policy that led to a page that was widely accepted and useful. Considering the very effective guidelines, the bullying that took hold to deal with alt-med quacks was unnecessary, and ugly to watch. It is possible to deal with alt-med quacks without resorting to the kind of blunt force bullying that came to characterize WP:MED. Yes, Jytdog joined forces with a small handful of others (who rarely argue policy but always add "pile on, me-too support" to positions taken) in the factors that contributed to this environment. Not even the most qualified, experienced, and knowledgeable medical editors have been spared from the OWNERSHIP that overtook WP:MED. Both MEDRS and COI were used to bully, and not just alt-med quacks. Older and experienced policy and medical editors have watched as WPMED has descended to cabalist group that took its strongest tool (MEDRS) and used it as a blunt instrument to bully, quite often with a lack of civility that led the esteemed User:MastCell once to wonder why some of these editors still enjoy editing privileges on Wikipeda (that is, why they haven't been banned).

Similarly, the guideline WP:MEDMOS has been used to widely convert broad categories of medical articles to contain personal stylistic preferences not supported by guideline or policy. WhatamIdoing remains as one of the few WP:MED regulars whose positions are typically grounded in policy and well reasoned. User:RexxS is a sometimes medical editor who rarely resorts to faulty logic or pile-on support. Those who have a basic understanding of why we needed MEDRS and how to appropriately use it are mostly gone, replaced by newer editors that pile on support without offering reasoning grounded in policy (which Colin's always is). I invite anyone to read through any WPMED discussion and see the familiar lineup..

Colin, the person who mostly wrote the guideline, has consistently been opposed to the bullying that has come to characterize WP:MED as cabalistic behaviors became the means of chasing out alternate viewpoints, and even qualified experts.

(I am slowly working through the new posts, but I expect it can now be seen why the WPMED issues are ripe for an arbcase, and those issues go well beyond the current pricing dispute. No, this is not just a content dispute or support of older vs. newer editors; it is a long-standing problem of CABALISTIC, non-policy-based, OWNERSHIP that has overtaken WP:MED.) The other factor affecting the dynamic is that Colin does not edit war, while Doc James has a history of editwarring to install his personal preferences; I (again) brought this to his talk page within just the last month.[30][31] As an admin, he is typically spared blocking, but the admonishments don't seem to have long-lasting effect. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:06, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia, what kinds of alternate viewpoints? There are definitely alternate viewpoints that should be chased out (naturopaths and other fake medical professionals for example).

I do see QuackGuru as a problem, and have held him up as a classic example of doing mostly the right thing in mostly the wrong way. But n the main I see this as a case of policy drift based on too few eyes and a disagreement between editors acting in good faith who have not come up with a way of resolving an underlying disagreement for much too long. I could be wrong. My personal view is that canonical policy mitigates against including data and for including information, so pricing on albuterol or insulin, clearly a matter of active policy debate, should be included, but I am much less persuaded by some others. Maybe it should be fixed by using an external link to the database of drug information that includes pricing, much as we routinely link IMDB. I don't know. Anyway, I am trying to ascertain the policy-based rationale for blanket inclusion. At this point I tentatively agree with you and others here that the policy-based rationale for inclusion is weak, and the argument for inclusion verges on dogma, certainly in the case of QuackGuru. Guy (help!) 09:29, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy where I disagree is in the techniques and lack of civility employed to keep quackery, and some editors out. With a strong guideline supporting quality medical content, there is no need for bullying and misbehavior and lack of civility. The alternate viewpoints I was referring to are not from alt-quackery editors rather information that is compliant with policy and guideline, but that has encountered disagreement from certain editors who essentially have owned WPMED. The expert who was chased off of the epilepsy article is a good example; the problems in that article persist. In my personal editing (and I sure don't support any alt quackery or marginal sources), I have had correct and correctly sourced information reverted on prostate articles (text that stands today as accurate), with the usual Jytdog collegiality involved. I assure you that even policy-compliant, knowledgeable editors have been exposed to the tactics used to allow only certain information into articles, or for articles to be structured in certain ways based on personal preferences. Perhaps the constant quackery-patrol has led to a degradation in civility among some med editors. The "argument[s] for inclusion [that] verge on dogma" are repeated across multiple areas and topics, and supported by a handful of editors who employ no policy-based reasoning. You have mentioned QuackGuru, who is not the only one. Joining together in support of quackery-bashing led to a bad dynamic taking hold over ALL editing at WPMED, and an unfortunate "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" ("I must support anything proposed by anyone who supports me in keeping quackery out") effect in the "me-too, pile on supports" for issues that should be discussed with policy-based reasoning. We only get discussion grounded in policy from a few current editors, with a whole lot of "me-too" arguments, and a strong dose of IDIDNTHEARTHAT (good example being the videos). Moving to community-wide RFCs may help, because WPMED is, and has been for several years now, a walled garden with very high walls. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:09, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia, I don't have any basis on which to dispute this, and accept your word as one whom I have always trusted.

Nonetheless, I think the specifics here (i.e. around drug pricing) do stem from a question on which reasonable people may differ, and the lack of a proper resolution of the underlying dispute makes it harder to separate egregious warrior behaviour from excess of zeal in advancing a principled position.

I have made a proposal for resolution of the underlying issue. If that has traction then I hope we will rapidly find out whether this is resolvable or whether we'll need another ArbCom case, the process - and probably also the outcome - of which would very likely be unsatisfactory to all concerned.

In fact I'd have no issue with applying "consensus required" to all medical articles. I mostly see them when repeat vanity spammers appear to add their latest paper, but it does seem that most edits are either unexceptionable or lead to protracted fights, often with no middle ground. Guy (help!) 10:47, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Wrt current content dispute, see Talk:Ivermectin#Price and the edit war over pricing, which predates my involvement in the issue. It is interesting that Ronz sought further third opinions, who agreed with him, though one noted that "providing prices of drugs in the intro seems to be standard across Wikipedia" -- well it is only so because James, and James alone, added those prices to the leads, and will edit-war with anyone who removes them. On that talk page, James says "we have a very strong lobby which wishes to suppress pricing information but we are not censored" and indeed James has cited WP:CENSORED to me, as has CFCF. The detailed price-in-lead thing not only breaks WP:NOT and WP:LEAD, but his arguments for including it appear based on his agenda rather than policy. For example "Ongoing lawsuits by industry to prevent having to disclose the price in commercials. Obviously that demonstrates that they are of encyclopedic value" and "industry wish to hide how much medications actually cost both from the general population". Along come Ozzie10aaaa, QuackGuru and CFCF, on the talk page, MEDMOS talk page and WP:MED to back James up with "I support James" level of argument. Soon James is telling Ronz "Ronz the majority of people commenting here disagree with you." despite the count being 2:3 on the talk page, even if we assumed mere numbers were any measure of consensus.

See also Buprenorphine/naloxone edit war. There is also an edit war at WP:MEDMOS where QuackGuru has imposed Price-supportive text in the guideline. I should stress that in none of these venues, have I engaged in any edit warring.

So this is the background. The leads and bodies of most of our drug articles have price information, in defiance of two policies/guidelines WP:NOT and WP:LEAD, and James and a few others at WP:MED will outnumber and edit war with anyone who removes that. Anyone who does so is accused of being a big pharma shill attempting to WP:CENSOR Wikipedia in support of suppressing drug price information.

James is an admin and de facto head of WP:MED, and has single-handedly imposed his personal agenda on drug pricing across Wikipedia. As such he cannot ask inconvenient editors to stop holding him to account. He would prefer the problem went away, no pings, no talk page request, and above with Ozzie10aaaa's request, a clear attempt to silence an opponent.

In contrast to James's edit warring on multiple venues, I have engaged in detailed discussion about the many flaws in James' approach. We have a clear case of original research being performed by an editor who's article statements are unsupported by the source, who lacks even a basic understanding of statistics, who cherry picks prices from databases in order to present low-developing world price and expensive US pricing, and who just plain makes big mathematical mistakes. James has corrected a few of the mistakes and errors and has recently conceded that even the concept of a "wholesale cost" is complicated -- this is from an editor who juxtaposed wholesale and retail prices in articles without indicating so. James will happily juxtapose a price from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo in 2014, claiming this price reflects the whole "developing world", with a price for a different drug in the US in 2019. And he will make such egregious accounting errors while quoting numbers to four significant figures of "precision".

Wrt "Colin and the Videos", that didn't work out so well for James and his supporters. WP:MED deviated strongly from being part of a community-edited text-based encyclopaedia, which is what Wikipedia is. James secretly engaged with a commercial provider of medical student training videos for content, and added them to hundreds of articles, often without using any edit summary. James edit warred with anyone who removed them or questioned them. Does this sound familiar? In the end all 300+ videos were removed from Wikipedia, when the wider community expressed its strong rejection of commercial uneditable article-as-video content. Colin°^Talk 09:05, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

WPMED Break 1

• Support indef block Whatever else, I'd support an indefinite block of Colin until and unless they agree to stop pinging Doc James, and stop posting on their talk page except for essential messages. It's well accepted that such requests should be respected, and failing to do so is WP:harassment. Anyone who will ignore such basic decency is not welcome on wikipedia. Nil Einne (talk) 09:08, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

  I should clarify in case there is any confusion that such basic decency does not prevent people continuing to discuss problems with article content. Such discussions should normally happen outside editor talk pages anyway. If an editor has asked not to be pinged, they cannot complain they were not pinged and so were not aware of the discussion.

  It's often unnecessary to ping editors to discussions anyway, that risks WP:Canvassing concerns. If an editor is already aware of the discussion, there are plenty of ways they can follow the discussion such as watch lists or simply checking out the page regularly. And the fact they were already aware generally means it's expecting they will do so, and not rely on pings even in case where there's no barriers to pings.

  As for concerns over editor behaviour, as I've said before if it reaches the stage where someone is asking you not to post on their talk page it is unlikely your messages are helping. If someone starts banning everyone who posts on their talk page with concerns, it's fairly obvious this won't end well for them.

  Further such bans do not preclude you being a case to an appropriate notice board like AN or ANI (and notifying them of the thread is one reasonable exception to the ban), likewise with an arbcom case. You can explain in your discussion that you cannot try to discuss the matter further with the editor concerned since they've banned you, so editors will taken that onboard when considering whether you've adequately tried to deal with the matter via discussion before bringing it to AN//I or arbcom.

  Nil Einne (talk) 09:24, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Nil Einne, could you not just have written: "Colin, I think you should stop pinging James and writing on his talk page". You might get the response you are looking for if you ask nicely. Since when did we start indef blocking people before asking them first? -- Colin°^Talk 10:17, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Colin, all the time, if they are being a dick. Don't be that guy, eh? Guy (help!) 11:18, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Colin: By definition you were already asked to stop pinging and stop posting on their talk page otherwise we wouldn't be here. If this was just an accident, e.g. because you always ping someone and forgot about the request not to ping a specific editor then sure a firm but polite reminder would be enough. But we're here because you not only ignored the request, you thumbed your nose at it "As long as you won't drop this issue, you'll get pinged whenever I mention your name." I find this disgusting. There is absolutely zero reason you need to ping them. You're an experienced editor. You must know full well you can mention someone without needing to wikilink their name or do something else which would cause a ping. I'm guessing you even know there are simple ways you can effectively wikilink a name without pinging if you really need to do that. So there's zero reason why you would believe you need to continue to ping someone after they've told you not to other than your apparent view you have some right to annoy someone with behaviour that you can easily stop and which provides no benefit to anyone in the discussion. It's not the first time I've supported a block for such disgusting behaviour and sadly it probably won't be the last. The fact you needed to be taken to ANI before you would stop such disgusting behaviour israc on you. Not me. Nil Einne (talk) 11:36, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Nil Einne, you wrote the above rant one hour after I wrote the message below, that I would not ping Doc James. Talk about rubbing someone's nose in it. It is clear I got the ping thing wrong. Nobody else asked me not to ping him. The first I hear about it being an issue is this AN/I and your threat to indef block me. You might not have noticed, that James and I have been having a conversation for several days, where he makes some points and I make some points and we continue. I had no idea it was such a big thing. -- Colin°^Talk 11:49, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Colin: Well I knew you'd already agreed to stop pinging Doc James otherwise I wouldn't have said "before you would stop such disgusting behaviour is on you". You chose to reply to me saying I should have just approached you directly. I chose to reply explaining why there's no reason I needed to approach you directly because you were already approached. I don't really give a damn about who else did or did not approach you. As an experienced editor, there is absolutely zero reason you needed someone else to approach you before you would obey a reasonable request.

I'm somewhat unsure what happened with the talk page thing since it's an old request and I can't be bothered looking into the history. But for the ping thing, no one has said you could not reply to Doc James in discussions elsewhere wherever they occur. You're perfectly entitled to. (Subject to the normal norms of discussion.) You're perfectly able to continue to do so without pinging Doc James. No one has faulted you for pinging Doc James before you were asked not to ping. As I said, if you simply forgot about the request, then okay fine. But you explicitly said you would not follow it. Whether because you were lazy and couldn't be bothered making a minor change to your behaviour or worse reason, I don't know and don't really care.

It did not have to be a "big thing" if you had just obeyed the requests rather than thumbing your nose at them. You acknowledge you got this wrong, but don't really seem to understand why.

It's because that's how we operate on wikipedia as in much of the world. We treat each other with respect as much as possible. So if someone says "hey can you stop doing this" and they have a reason why they want it to stop (stay off my talk page and stop pinging me don't need explanations just like don't call me X, don't call me he/she etc), and it's trivial for you to do so and there's no benefit to anyone for you to not do so, then you do so. You may forget. That's fine. Explicitly refusing to do so is another thing completely.

Nil Einne (talk)

• For the record: I agree not to ping Doc James and post on his talk page. -- Colin°^Talk 10:50, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• I'd support an indef block or rather a temporary block per what Nil Einne stated. It's not just a pinging a matter. There's also the matter of not posting on Doc's talk page except for essential messages, and not making Doc feel harassed in any other way. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:17, 5 December 2019 (UTC) Updated post. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:41, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Flyer22 Reborn, what are you expecting me to do or say to avoid such a block? -- Colin°^Talk 15:45, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Just don't do anything that others will consider harassment. Nil Einne has already addressed this above. I've been harassed plenty, and those who harassed me were admonished and/or sanctioned because others saw it as clear-cut harassment. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:59, 5 December 2019 (UTC) Updated post. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:00, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Flyer22 Reborn, I hope you did not intend to compare Colin's policy-based arguments on policy and guideline talk pages to the type of harassment you have endured in article editing. There is an enormous difference. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:47, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• support a temporary block per Flyer22--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:53, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support designation of WikiProject Medicine as "Wikipedia friendly space" WP:5P4 says that Wikipedia is a civil place for everyone to enjoy. In any difference of opinion it is possible for everyone to express themselves in positive way. The conflict which I see here is that Colin has a style of personal expression which incorporates negative sentiment. Communities which want to permit negative sentiment can do so, and communities which wish to disallow it should be able to do so also. I wish for the community of contributors at WikiProject Medicine to designate it as a positive sentiment environment or Wikipedia Friendly Space.

Sentiment is unrelated to the validity of claims. Colin raises good points and is commendable for their creativity, insight, and correctness on many points. However, communities in public spaces should regulate how much negativity they allow into their environment. If individuals use negativity beyond the welcome allowance, then the community of that space should have encouragement to remove that negativity and direct the user at its source to another forum which has social capacity to benefit from their way of communicating.

WikiProject Medicine is a public facing forum which is unusual in Wikipedia for high activity and attracting all sorts of new users. New users thrive in environments which are more positive. In general, more people enjoy contributing to environments which are positive most of the time. Please look at Colin's choice of words with me. Here is WikiProject Medicine right now - special:permalink/929382711. Here are some phrases which Colin uses in this present version which I assert would trigger robotic sentiment analysis detectors for negativity, and which anyone could see by searching for strings in that page -

• just plain incorrect
• problems with our use
• wrong on so many levels
• rather embarrassing to WP:MED
• This is your problem
• I think you have forgotten
• James is misusing
• it is just nonsense
• wrongly claims
• usually inappropriate to use
• the sort of thing we shouldn't do
• The problem
• you are just acusing me
• It wasn't intended
• nobody else does this
• there is no consistency
• falsely claims
• more complicated than you want
• your statements are very unclear.
• If you won't accept this
• over-simplified like you do
• no reasonable way
• I know you wished
• you are being wilfully obtuse
• You ignore
• you are not acknowledging
• you cherry-pick
• you had an agenda
• WP:MED intends to silence any criticism
• It doesn't work
• which is wrong
• it would be good for you to admit you made a mistake
• You still haven't found any
• falsely claims
• isn't what I asked for
• you don't understand database copyright
• are not allowed to do that
• failing to present anything coherent

I take the position that Colin could have expressed everything they had to say without communicating in a way that people and bots can readily detect as negative. Many of these words are negative and fail to contribute to a positive friendly environment. If we make the shift to positivity then that should apply to everyone. The remedy for further use of negativity should be an invitation to post in a place other than WikiProject Medicine. I encourage everyone to be as friendly and supportive as they can everywhere in Wikipedia in all circumstances. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:45, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Bluerasberry I find your approach interesting, though must admit it seems a little naive and utopian to expect only positive sentiment in an environment where editors and admins might misbehave and are open to criticism. I can see it working for some photography forum and indeed the "Photo Challenge" on Commons I set up was deliberately designed to only permit positive sentiment vs the critical environment that Featured Picture and Quality Image can encourage (photographers nominate their works for FP/QI and other editors agree or explain why they disagree, sometimes quite harshly). The Photo Challenge only allows positive 1/2/3-value support votes or to give a 0-value "love" vote. It has been a great success and run now for many years.

Negativity and chasing away new editors can be achieved while still using neutral or even positive (wrt one's own edits and views) language. This is particularly so when an editor is in a position of power over another editor. Their position is already the content on Wikipedia and a slow revert war is all that is required to retain it. Can you consider that each revert or each out-of-hand dismissal of another's argument is negativity too? Perhaps that's too subtle for your robot? What if every time you saw a revert diff, it spoke out to you as a "f**k off"? What if every time a policy concern was raised and dismissed without addressing the concern, it spoke out to you as rude "meh".

In the diff list below, James responded to the removal of prices with "we have a very strong lobby which wishes to suppress pricing information but we are not censored". This positive language. Yay! We are not censored! Further James adds "Ongoing lawsuits by industry to prevent having to disclose the price in commercials. Obviously that demonstrates that they are of encyclopedic value". While that language sounds positive, James is clearly trying to frustrate the discussion. What on earth have prices in US commercials got to do with Wikipedia content? It is an odd tangent. James goes on to say "industry wish to hide how much medications actually cost both from the general population" are I hope you are getting a feeling here about what James might be suggesting wrt Ronz's price-removing actions. "One opinion was in each direction" is the happy positive edit summary that went along-side another edit-war revert from James. Remember to speak out a rude interjection of your choice that went with the revert. The interaction concludes with the thoroughly dispiriting "Ronz the majority of people commenting here disagree with you", after James recruits a body to support him. But really, the most negative language I have read on Wikipedia for a long time, language that is chilling is the following statement from Doc James to me: "That you are pushing the industry position to try to WP:CENSOR Wikipedia is concerning". What does your emotion robot make of that? -- Colin°^Talk 19:27, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Colin: There is a discourse about systemic tone policing in academic publishing about automated moderation. The best way to communicate about this would be to build out Wikipedia article's on this and related topics. Some of these points you raise are about principles and limits of the field, so I will not address that, because eventually we just have to edit wiki articles to frame the conversation.

As you might expect, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and the rest of the online moderators invest heavily in this, arguably into the US$billions. Those three were at wikiconference:2019 speaking about moderation and I would be in favor of Wikipedia increasingly intermingling with AI support from them and others. We do not have Wikipedia articles on this built out nor do we have much Wikipedia policy development.

Probably how tone bots would work in Wikipedia is to look at someone's entire Wikipedia edit history and count every instance of negative tone then score everyone based on percentage of negative interactions. Some people get more negative with other users or in certain contexts ("hounding"), like for example, some people are good editors but go out of control on politics or whatever overstimulates them. The bots detect that too. All of this analysis is based on other theories about what the optimal tone is for a conversation. As the theory goes, in general, communities like Wikipedia operate with more user engagement and satisfaction when public places have positive tone, and in general, the more private places have membership which can self sort to for individuals to choose the tone they want for their own environment.

You raise different test cases - anyone could discuss any of these, but the entire process happens at a societal scale and not just in Wikipedia. The tone we enforce in Wikipedia would be set with data and research from the entirety of the rest of the Internet. Whatever comes out of that will be more precise than any human review process. To me the more important part of this for the Wikipedia community is not focusing on the fringe of the tech, but considering how we want to apply moderation in the usual case. Our usual case in Wikipedia is that we have public forums and sometimes people say something which obviously triggers the negativity meter. When this happens, the bot steps in and suggests that they edit their message before posting. The normal case is that the bot will be correct for what it does, which is to match the Wikimedia community's tone expectations, and to be forward in saying that everyone can say what they want but they have to say it in a way the community deems nice.

In WikiProject Medicine I would not want a sharp line right now about individual posts, but I think we as humans could say that we all have an expectation of friendly tone in WikiProject Medicine. Perhaps users who have 100+ readily identifiable uses of negative tone could be put on notice to conform. Wikipedia moderation in the past has mostly been about single incidents, or sets of single incidents, but early experiments in tone are probably going to be about user history over years. I would not want to single anyone out, but in general, yes, I think tone is something that we can objectively set on a dial from 1-100, and that WikiProject Medicine should be set to about 95% positive. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:03, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Bluerasberry, if you examine the article Tone policing in actually explains how a tone argument is fallacious. I appreciate there is a wider point you want to make, and this isn't really a great venue for that, but the main thing is that by focusing only on tone, you ignore the elephant in the room: the polite bully who's pressing of the revert button does not register on any AI robot and whose declaration that "more people agree with me" sounds neutral but is in fact a "gave over mate, you lose" and not at all in keeping with our culture. You pull me out and quote me above, yet choose not to analyse James. Guy suggests that Wikipedians have to be tough with the quacks. I do wonder how trying to get a bully to stop being a bully can be done in a way that makes the experience enjoyable for the bully. There's ultimately going to be some disappointment, shame and community negativity (anger, outrage, frustration) against someone who edits in that way. I don't think you've been examining article edits or whether an editor is consensus-building or edit-warring in their approach. -- Colin°^Talk 12:14, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Support indef block — User:Colin has long-standing issues with civility, dismissing valid arguments brought forth by other users, while trivializing dissent of his positions. In response to an earlier incident I authored the essay WP:ORACLES due to his behaviour of WP:BLUDGEONing the process through sheer volume of text, and intensity of editing different articles, as well as stating that he alone was able to interpret community consensus (or at least invalidating and ignoring all attempts to discuss what consensus had existed up until his engagement).
  In short this is a case of a user with a very firm grasp of policy and who knows where and when to call for backup — but with massive issues with WP:CIVILITY and unclear editing goals (WP:NOTHERE). He does not respect WP:BRD, often coming to issues lacking knowledge — but with very strong opinions — acting by changing tens or even hundreds of articles at once, totally ignoring implied consensus. He may once have been a positive force on Wikipedia, but is today, and has been for a longer time — nearly without fail — disruptive per WP:POINTY. His style of editing is a danger to any collaborative work on this encyclopedia. Carl Fredrik ^talk 19:24, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• CFCF just hold on a second. Where does "He does not respect WP:BRD" come from? Where does "changing tens or even hundreds of articles at once, totally ignoring implied consensus". "His way of editing"? Who on earth are you talking about? What article content have I been abusing? What "hundreds of articles at once" edit have I ever made in my entire existance? Have you got the wrong AN/I section? If you are going to make such outrageous claims, I think we need some diffs. -- Colin°^Talk 19:37, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Colin — Rest assured no mistake has been made — my position is represented above. I and many other editors are unable to find the time or motivation to respond to repeated requests for clarification. I will not elaborate my position further, doing so would act to show WP:BLUDGEONING in action, engaging in a deliberate timesink. I believe interested parties will be able to see the issues for themselves. Carl Fredrik ^talk 19:52, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not really expecting you to clarify because the statements you made about me are 100% made up. I must object most strongly to someone making claims, in support of a indef block, that are outright fabrications, and then "unable to find the time or motivation" to respond when called out on it. Yes, interested parties will make of that as they wish. -- Colin°^Talk 20:03, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

CFCF, your statements about Colin are not even remotely aligned with fact; I suggest you strike a lot of content above, or produce diffs. I understand that you strongly supported Doc James position in the last effort that was overturned by a community-wide RFC (the videos), and I understand that keeping up with Colin's policy-based reasoning can be time consuming, but your personal views are unsupported. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:15, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia — For the record, I fully stand by my previous statement(s). My motivation for not providing diffs is that the behaviors in question are fully apparent as is. I neither wish for WP:BLUDGEONING to succeed by engaging in nitpicking over exactly when and where uncivility occured, nor do I wish to be provoked into saying something other than what I intended. Please respect that the above comments represent my opinion and that I will neither change them nor will I elaborate further. Anyone who is interested will be able to read all relevant discussions. Carl Fredrik ^talk 19:40, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I will be happy to accept and respect them as your opinion, but it would also behoove you should this case eventually appear before the arbs to be aware of previous arb findings about casting aspersions, and to take greater care moving forward to supply diffs for such accusations. To my knowledge, those diffs do not exist, and repeatedly accusing an editor who consistently argues (correctly) policy of BLUDGEONing a group of editors who do not argue policy and DON'THEARTHAT is to ignore WHY Colin's well reasoned posts have become lengthy by necessity. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:18, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• For the record, CFCF was and remains extremely vocal in his support of Doc James wrt the Osmosis videos and the more recent VideoWiki. He gets particularly upset whenever the essay I wrote, WP:NOTYOUTUBE, is cited, using language towards me that would certainly trigger Bluerasberry's negativety robot. The "changing tens or even hundreds of articles at once" might be referring to when James, tail between his legs, removed all 300+ videos from Wikipedia, after he lost his own RFC on the matter. It seems that CFCF has still not forgiven me for that. -- Colin°^Talk 19:51, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Colin, in my experience any accusation of censorship in Wikipedia is almost always POV-pushing. I find that disturbing. Guy (help!) 09:32, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy I'm a bit confused by the location and indent of this reply of yours. I'm don't think you are referring to the comments/replies by CFCF but rather to my comment much further up, where James accuses me (and others) of censorship in supports of industry evildoings. Could you clarify please, because it might look the "I find that disturbing" was a concern about me. If you want to move your comment to below my quote of James above, then that would make more sense, and you can delete this comment. -- Colin°^Talk 11:43, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose block – Colin said they'd stop pinging and posting on the talk page, so there's no need for a block to prevent that. It seems all sides of the debate have made some comments that were uncivil, and everyone should tone it down. I'd support civility warnings but I don't see evidence that a block is necessary to prevent any ongoing disruption. – Levivich 19:39, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose block. As I said below, a 2-way fight between "Block Colin" and "Topic Ban Doc James" is not going to solve the problems that people suggest underlie all of this. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:51, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose block. We don't block long-term editors on the say-so of people who have a dog in the fight, or indeed in one case a COI. Indeed, even though Colin shouldn't have made the rather silly ping comment, it looks frankly pathetic bleating for an indef block of a 14-year editor with a clear block log on the basis of "too many pings". I'd suggest you go away and self-reflect on that particular idea. Black Kite (talk) 20:01, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

This is not about "too many pings", but about long-standing and repeated uncivil behavior from the editor in question. The issues could certainly have been expressed more tersely above, but in one sense this is an issue of "editors that do" versus an "editor who complains". Liken the lack of a bulleted list of negative actions to WP:NOTSOCIAL. Carl Fredrik ^talk 20:06, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

CFCF I hope you did not intend to imply that Colin is an "editor who complains" and not an "editor who does", as his article content and guideline contributions do not match that description. The Medicine Project should be eternally grateful for the guidelines and articles it does have as a result of Colin's efforts, as his guideline contributions greatly facilitate the work we all do. Further, if his current activity on Wikipedia is similar to mine, I can say we would both be writing a lot more content today were it not for the current environment on WPMED that is not conducive to generating article content. (Writing content to FA standards only to see them degraded for non-policy-based reasons is offputting.) At any rate ... Whether intended or not, the ad hominems need to stop if we are to move forward. Colin is a DOer; I invite you to peruse this data I put together last year. I can add you if you wish. (My sneaking suspicion is always that if any of the editors entering non-policy-based logic to guideline discussions were to write and maintain a few FAs, they might see things in a different light, as did all of the original framers of the WPMED guideline pages.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:37, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Ronz asked me if I was trolling and restored Colin's comment that was not about improving the page. QuackGuru (talk) 20:27, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• I've had such unpleasant experiences with Colin that he is one of only three editors that I have banned from my user talk page. I also consider DocJames to be a wiki-friend. So those are my cards on the table. I'm going to make myself neutral about the indef proposal, but I do think that there has been a long-standing feud that involves multiple editors. As best I can tell, early editing about med-related articles was done by some editors who have also been very active with featured content, and who write content very well indeed. Gradually over the years, WP:MED came into existence, with a different group of editors as the most active ones. Over time, these have become two opposing camps. I'm not a regular participant at WP:MED, but I dip in and out of it from time to time, because my editing interests are more at the basic science end of it, and I've tried to stay as neutral as I could whenever I found myself in between the two clans. Roughly a year-and-a-half ago, I spent some time trying to help out at Dementia with Lewy bodies, at SandyGeorgia's request if I recall correctly. (See Talk:Dementia with Lewy bodies/Archive 2.) By the time of Talk:Dementia with Lewy bodies/Archive 3#"Should" and similar language, I became so exasperated with Colin that I just walked away from the page. Something that I think is important to understand about this dispute, as a whole, is that MEDRS and the like were developed over time by the most active editors at WP:MED, but it was absolutely not a "walled garden". As far as I can tell, and I think I do know enough about it, all of the discussion at WP:MED was open to whoever wanted to participate, and was driven by WP:Consensus. And it led to some very useful guidelines for standardizing our medical content. Unfortunately, the earlier FA-oriented editors disagree with a lot of those guidelines what newer editors see as best practice for med articles, and regard the WP:MED editors as upstarts who ruined what we had in the good old days. But I don't think the FA editors were excluded by WP:MED. Rather, they just didn't want to engage with others who disagreed with them. And here we are now. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:19, 5 December 2019 (UTC) Revised. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:39, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• • Tryptofish, That is a very odd history indeed. WP:MED predates Doc James and in its best years was de facto headed by User:Jfdwolff. It supported a collaboration between lay and qualified editors. It produced several featured articles, the best of which involved lay and professionals working together.I have written one myself, which was copyedited by one of our literature editors (sadly no longer with us) and reviewed on my request by a world expert in the subject. Those days involved collaborative editing the like of which todays's WP:MED editors know nothing. WP:MED also produced the MEDMOS and MEDRS guidelines but you get your facts wrong there. I polished MEDMOS and promoted to guideline status. MEDRS, I created and worked with others to push to guideline status. These are not the products of the newbies. Far from "the earlier FA-oriented editors disagree with a lot of those guidelines" it was those editors who created and nurtured them. They were interested in quality and sources and readability and Wikipedia being the best source for medical content on the internet. Which it was.

Then the edit warriors took over. They were only interested in fighting the alt-med people, and only interested in reverting contributions that failed to be perfect in their eyes. It didn't matter if the contributor was a subject expert or a troll. Revert. Revert. They weren't interested in writing articles and reading books, but just in inserting factoids into pages based on whatever PubMed paper they last read. The quality of content deteriorated and no more featured or quality output was produced by WP:MED. Our medical articles became random repositories of incoherent nonsense. The chief of these factoid-inserter serial-reverters is James, but Jytog was certainly up there at the top. Praised for keeping Wikipedia clear of alt-med woo, these editors could do no wrong and got blind support. Tryptofish, I quoted you above ("I will oppose any efforts to treat the WT:MED editors as wrong or bad.") stating that you refused to countenance a bad word said against any WP:MED editor. And I do recall you and James being among the most vocal supporters of Jytog when he, well, took things a bit too far. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe both of you opened your arms to any future prospect of this warrior returning to the fold. Someone who sought out the phone number of an opponent and phoned them to harrass them in person.

Admins here are welcome to view the history at the dementia articles Tryptofish mentions. You might also wish to compare the state of the article before User:SandyGeorgia started improving it, and after. Sandy is one of the old school, literate, quality-focused, editors. I believe the article history will well display Doc James edit warring and some current members of WP:MED tendentiously blocking progress with rather silly and unique interpretations of our policies. We are where we are because the edit warriors and illiterate factoid inserters won, and rule. And folk like Tryptofish defend them like brothers. Today, well, Wikipedia is no longer the best source of medical information on the internet. There are many other excellent websites, whose content is readable and coherent, and which don't inconvenience their readers with essentially random dollars and cents prices of drugs, in some bizarre effort to stick the finger up at Big Pharma.

Readers may be surprised that I too once counted Doc James as a wiki friend. I too fell into the "he's on our side" mentality, without really examining his edits. When he visited London, I took James and his wife out for dinner to a vegetarian Indian restaurant, and we all had dosas. But since those days, James edit warred away a neurologist who was in good faith trying to improve our epilepsy article, an article that James had taken ownership of and, frankly, a topic of which he is profoundly ignorant. James collaborated with a private company to produce more than 300 articles-as-videos and then inserted them into our articles without even an edit summary. Any editor who queried the content of these videos was edit warred into submission. Many at WP:MED repeatedly told frank lies about the videos being editable by the community (they could be cropped, that's all). At an RFC, the community clearly voiced its displeasure at our project being commercialised and content taken over by a private third party. James removed all 300+ videos. My campaign to remove the videos, and my essay WP:NOTYOUTUBE, has, shall we say, not made me many friends at WP:MED, though a few of the medical experts who had pointed out factual problems with the videos were supportive. I don't suppose I'll be on many WP:MED Christmas card lists this year, but, hey, when ever any one of them cites WP:MEDRS, I get my reward. -- Colin°^Talk 23:03, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

And that's a good illustration of what I was talking about. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:22, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Tryptofish, yes, pretty much your entire history above of how WPMED developed, relative to FA people, is incorrect; those who wrote most content, including the GA and FA writers, were the same group that helped develop and strongly supported the project guideline pages. What you describe as "two opposing camps" isn't entirely accurate either, nor is the idea that you aren't a regular who regularly supports certain positions. I haven't looked up the Dementia with Lewy bodies diffs, but yes, I basically invited anyone and everyone to help, hoping that WPMED could experience again what collaboration felt like versus constantly troll whacking and quack-bashing; my inner Pollyanna came out and I hoped that WPMED could once again be a group that worked together to bring quality content. I quickly found that would not be possible. The turning point for me was when Jytdog behaved miserably towards established and fine article writers, and then a lengthy discussion with another medical editor who intended to install a personal preference over objections from everyone else who weighed in finished derailing the attempt. Although I gave up on that article (indeed, the entire suite related to Lewy Body dementias), dementia with Lewy bodies was intended to show what WPMED might accomplish if they started collaborating, and still today offers a fine start. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:36, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not going to get sucked into a point-by-point back-and-forth. But as for "nor is the idea that you aren't a regular who regularly supports certain positions", I'll quote SandyGeorgia telling me on my user talk page, 31 March 2018: since I don't include you among those contributing to the "walled garden" mentality at WP:MED, I value your opinion. [32]. Now, I don't claim to be an expert on what happened on en-wiki prior to my starting to edit here, and I apologize for any due credit that I did not give, but I think my description of the two camps remains more accurate than the revisionism here. In any case, I think that the proposal below for an RfC on the content is an excellent one – and I look forward to finding out who does and who does not accept community consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:36, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

No point-by-point, and that is an accurate reflection of my views from one-and-a-half years ago, which have changed. On the two camps, I am not seeing where you would put many editors, like WAID. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:33, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I want to make it very clear that I do not think that everyone can be put into one of the two camps. Of course not. As of the time you said that, anyone can see my approach to med-related editing at Talk:Dementia with Lewy bodies/Archive 2. And I really have not edited any med-related articles since then, nor have I commented in any significant way at WT:MED. About the only significant thing since then is that I strongly criticized Colin for saying at Commons that en-wiki editors are "racist". Is that what makes me an active partisan at WP:MED? Or was it that I said that I was sad to see Jytdog leave Wikipedia? --Tryptofish (talk) 16:48, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Tryptofish To hopefully avoid any further unpleasantries of digging into old history, let me first apologize for my lack of manners, and thank you sincerely for the considerable effort you did provide at the DLB article. I greatly appreciate it, Wikipedia is better for your effort, and I meant what I said in 2018. Second, it would be unproductive to produce diffs of very old history, so I offer this: I am willing to and will be happy to continue to consider you as an impartial and neutral participant at WPMED discussions. Going forward, if I see you lodging a "me-too, pile on" commentary in favor of editors who bully and invariably provide support in one direction, I will bring it to your attention and hope we can discuss it with mutual respect. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:58, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Sandy, thank you very much for that! I'm delighted to read it, and of course I welcome helpful feedback. I really hope that other editors in this dispute will take that as the right posture to take, going forward. If there is anything that can be a cure for opposing camps, or for the perception of opposing camps, it is indeed discussion with mutual respect. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:06, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Tryptofish, I really don't think it is helpful to your case to refer to an instance where you went over to Commons, attacked me based on your own confused interpretation of events and personal animosity, and then went back to Talk Jimbo to try to hire a mob to attack me back on Commons. I never said en-wiki editors are "racist", but facts don't seem to matter in this AN/U. One particular editor made a racist comment. That event made you not only an apologist for bullies at WP:MED but also for someone who made a racist comment about one of Commons' Indian admins who didn't have English as his first language. I suggest you drop this and take Sandy's advice about being careful where you lend your blind support. -- Colin°^Talk 17:36, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I do not lend support blindly, and I saw what I saw. And if discussion with mutual respect is the right posture, then that comment is the opposite. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:46, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

You explained that you were quite ignorant of WP:MED history, but regardless still felt my description was "revisionist". Nothing respectful about that Tryptofish. And nothing respectful about lying about what I said on Commons and making folk here think that I claimed they were racists. I didn't and saying "I saw what I saw" is kind of an "there are alternative facts" response. Trypto, I think you are digging a hole and suggest take your animosity towards me and go watch something nice on telly instead. -- Colin°^Talk 18:25, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Before I "go watch something nice on telly", I feel the need to set the record straight. There was a heated discussion at Commons about a possible de-adminship, with a lot of editors from en-Wiki coming over to comment. Here at en-Wiki, I posted this: [33]. Not exactly hiring a mob, was it? Meanwhile, at Commons, one of two editors who had been dubiously blocked posted this: [34]. I would call that a blocked editor venting, and maybe showing some lack of cross-cultural sensitivity, but absolutely not racist. Colin said this: [35]. Sounds like it's directed broadly at en-Wiki editors, doesn't it? I replied this: [36]. Colin, to some extent, clarified here: [37], and here: [38]. The so-called personal issues refer to Talk:Dementia with Lewy bodies/Archive 3#"Should" and similar language. I replied: [39]. Judge for yourself. After reflecting, I also decided to say this: [40]. How did Colin react? Here at en-Wiki, he posted this: [41]. I replied with this: [42], and this: [43]. Colin's response was to try to get me blocked at Commons: [44], which went nowhere. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:25, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Allright, friends, we've all been heard-- time to hit the reset button.

Could we simply conclude that a good deal of the unresolved conflicts center on the perception of past support of bullying behaviors from bullying editors, and pile-on or cabalistic behaviors in talk discussions, while ignoring lack of civility and resulting in a decline in content contributions and productive discussions? Can we all agree to be on the lookout for those and curb them in the most egregious offenders? I am far more concerned with the consistent pilers-on who blindly add me-too support and never cite policy and do not seem to have a minimal understanding of same. More concerning, we have editors who haven't digested policy adding content. Could we all work on that aspect together ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:47, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Sandy, you are of course right. I will do so shortly, but first, I feel that I need to defend myself from something just above. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:02, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Understood, but perhaps you would be willing to open up your talk page to Colin so that you two could discuss this thoroughly off ANI? We have bigger fish to fry, and we don't need to have the "good guys" going at each other. A good step in the right direction would be to give Colin the possibility of working this out with you on user talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:30, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I appreciate the sentiment, but no. I look forward to the content RfC. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:35, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Coming back to fill in some data for Trypto:

• Colin started MEDRS in Nov 2006: [45]
• DavidRuben promotes to guideline status in Sep 2008: [46]
• If you look at editors in the interim, you find at least seven eight (corrected to include Graham Beards) FA writers: Eubulides (talk · contribs · logs), Tim Vickers (talk · contribs · logs), SandyGeorgia (talk · contribs · logs), Colin (talk · contribs · logs), OrangeMarlin (talk · contribs), Axl (talk · contribs) and MastCell (talk · contribs · logs). Jfdwolff (talk · contribs), also an FA writer, is involved early on as well. (My apologies to anyone I missed!!} I can't easily list GA writers, as there is not to my knowledge an equivalent page to WP:WBFAN for easily locating them, but most of the medical content editors are there, and certainly WhatamIdoing, Arcadian, Wouterstomp and Stevenfruitsmaak at minimum were also top medical content editors. Just pointing out that the division is not as you laid out. The division is along the lines of those who cite policy and those who don't or can't, and that the guidelines pages were heavily written by top content producers. Notice how many of these early, top content medical editors are gone now, or do not go near WP:MED, and keep in mind that I still hear from some of them and know how they feel about the current environment. I'd also add that WPMED does not have this number of top content producers today: the emphasis has changed from content production to whack-a-mole quackery control, altering articles for the purpose of translation, and promoting off-Wiki ventures like videos. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:23, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Sandy, you forgot Graham Beards (talk · contribs), virus expert, and true collaborator. -- Colin°^Talk 18:56, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Colin Oh, dear me, dear me, yes certainly, Graham Beards is an expert and true gem in content creation and behavior. But I saw Graham87 (talk · contribs · logs) (the other expert and editor extraordinaire in accessibility issues) in the early MEDRS editing, not Graham Beards ? My apologies if I missed the infamous poop doctor :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:14, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Colin, I defer to Jimbo on our handling of quacks: WP:LUNATIC. It is necessary to be firm because they have strong vested interests, which they very often refuse to accept. We are in a situation precisely analogous to evolution/creationism in the early days of Wikipedia. We should not subscribe tot he fallacy of "different ways of knowing" and should not treat in-universe sources such as quackery journals as equivalent to reality-based medical journals. Example: acupuncture as currently practised is largely a creation of Mao Zedong, who harnessed local superstition and then current disinformation techniques to build a mythos entirely uinsupported by any articulable scientific principles. The question of how to separate fact from fancy was settled in the 17th Century, but we are experiencing an unprecedented upsurge in assertions of Truth™ against fact. The word fact only came to have its meaning at the start of the scientific revolution, it has always been bitterly opposed by those whose religious beliefs are not supported by fact, and alt-med is a quasi-religious belief system. Guy (help!) 09:51, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy, I really don't have the answer of how to deal with quacks and their POV pushing. It does seem as though the whack-a-mole approach is having negative behavioural consequences for how some editors deal with other editors, particularly ones they haven't come across and already respect. Bluerasberry above asks for "a civil place for everyone to enjoy", but this does not seem compatible with the approach taken wrt quacks and infects the approach taken with others. I would ask both of you to study the diff-list interaction below on ivermectin. While we don't have guidelines on avoiding negative language, we do have guidelines on edit warring, on article ownership, on working towards consensus, on what consensus is, and on sourcing supporting article text. Such guidelines are not contentious. James was clearly doing a slow edit war. He added the drug price, without seeking consensus, but expects others to achieve consensus to remove it -- this is a very typical pattern. On the article talk page, Ronz was arguing based on policy, while James was stating his agenda. Consensus was not achieved. We would like a situation where both parties found something they could agree on. Ronz tried to compromise (by allowing price in body but not lead) but James knew he didn't have to compromise. Once a "I support James" body turned up from WP:MED, James had the numbers. This is against all the wiki guidelines we have. We edit articles by consensus, not by numbers of supporters one can recruit. We do not edit war with good faith editors. I find this bullying, agenda pushing, and slow edit warring with ordinary good faith editors to be far more concerning that whether either one of them used positive or negative language. -- Colin°^Talk 12:01, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• I oppose this block proposal. Clearly, Colin had already acknowledged the pingie problem and agreed not to continue pinging Doc James. (Although I find the whole thing odd. Because of the extent to which Doc James involves himself at WPMED, it doesn't seem reasonable for him to expect not to be pinged, but his choice, and I see Colin has already agreed.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:40, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. I'm not sure if it's appropriate for a non-admin to add comment here, but I am a less experienced editor who is the subject of an effort by Colin to stop Videowiki. Myself, James and Pratik came together for a 6 month push to make the platform Wikipedia compliant and engaging. You can read details elsewhere but at each stage of development and in almost any forum we needed to post, Colin would participate with 1,000+ word comments, links to his essay on his opposition to video, dismissive remarks about the project, hyper-critical remarks about the quality, and belittle stated reasons for the project. Examples can be found in the discussions about a namespace for scripts, templates for offline discussion, even congratulations on a Slate article and minor edits of related files on Commons. Collectively, having an experience and respected editor constantly overwhelm any conversation and critique the project with phrases like, "...boring Siri slide show...", "...better of watching a video created by an Indian government agency...", "...glorified PowerPoint slideshows with tedious robot narration...", "...half-baked "solution" to a problem Wikipedia does not have...", etc... is exhausting and a little frightening. It certainly made me second guess posting in many discussions and it absolutely took much of the enjoyment out of volunteering for the project. Ian Furst (talk) 12:02, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose block since Colin has agreed to stop pinging Doc James. Paul August ☎ 15:49, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose block at this juncture. I much prefer the more peaceful solution below suggested by Guy below, which I have supported instead. Colin, a knowledgable and skilled editor, does care passionately about Wikipedia which fuels his conflicts with some medical editors, but in the process he has developed an intense and unhealthy very personalised ego battle with Doc James and a few other editors. Hopefully an RfC will resolve things but a temporary block might be necessary as a last result further down the line. I really don’t know about the drug pricing dispute, first I heard about it was here on this incident board.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:01, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Strongest oppose. The timing of this report is not accidental – there is an ongoing discussion between Ozzie10aaaa and Doc James on one side and Colin and QuackGuru Guy on the other.[47] It started a couple of weeks ago and looks like it is not going to Ozzie10aaaa's liking. In my view, this report and ban request is a malicious attempt to weaken the opposing side. Note that Doc James did not file this report nor reached out to Colin about suspected harrassment, it's Ozzie10aaaa's initiative. — kashmīrī ^TALK 18:21, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

  Kashmiri, I was traveling over the US Thanksgiving holiday and may have missed something. My impression was that QuackGuru is advocating to add pricing ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:28, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

  Corrected now (your correction and my post crossed). [48] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:32, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

  SandyGeorgia Apologies, my bad. Yes, managed to correct it seconds before you replied :) — kashmīrī ^TALK 18:33, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

oppose block per sensible Boing ---Sluzzelin talk 23:18, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Propose topic ban on Doc James wrt Drug Pricing

I propose Doc James be topic banned from the topic of drug pricing in articles. Further, editors at WP:MED should accept the long-held consensus at WP:NOT wrt the inclusion of drug prices, and the guideline WP:LEAD that the lead should summarise the body.

As briefly noted above (more diffs can be provided), James has single handedly added pricing to the leads (and sometimes body) of most of our drug articles. He is, AFACS, the only editor doing this, and doing it on a massive scale. He has engaged in edit warring to retain the prices. He has voiced on multiple times that Big Pharma has an agenda to suppress pricing and any editor who removes or discusses removing such prices is engaging in censorship of Wikipedia. James is clearly and openly editing in this area with an agenda and to Right Great Wrongs.

Since our sources do not supply the price information James wants to include (merely incomplete raw data records), he has engaged in original research to invent prices, citing cherry-picked database records, arbitrarily choosing one pill size or formulation over another. He has in many occasions juxtaposed prices for the "developing world" and the "US" in ways that are not comparable or unsupported by the sources (e.g. different drugs, different doses). He continues to support the use of a source that has not been maintained since 2015, and uses it in a way the writers of the source recommend against. He juxtaposes wholesale with retail prices without informing the reader. He presents prices ranges in misleading ways, where the range is an artefact of his method, rather than inherent in the data. He repeatedly claims to our readers that "a" drug has "a" price, when in fact the article covers multiple formulations of a drug, for multiple indications and multiple methods of administration.

The price of drugs is notable on occasion. For example, extortionate price rises when there no competition for a generic version of a drug. Or a very high cost to healthcare providers of new medicines, which are then judged unaffordable and rejected by healthcare bodies or insurance. But the routine inclusion of these essentially random prices, which can vary by factors of 15 depending on methodology chosen by James that day, is not supported by policy. Further more, nearly every price I have looked at, has serious issues with being misleading or even just plain mathematically or statistically wrong. -- Colin°^Talk 10:50, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• No. So there's a content dispute, and you've come here to get administrators to rule in your favor AND shut down opposition to your position. Really really really don't think that's going to happen; a WP:BOOMERANG is far more likely, and how hard it hits would depend on how hard you push this tactic. --Calton | Talk 11:10, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Colin, that's not happening. Is there a central RfC on drug pricing? If not, that seems to be the obvious starting point. Guy (help!) 11:17, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• Calton, I didn't "come here to get administrators to rule in my favour". Did you spot the enclosing section where Ozzie10aaaa (who supports Doc James) hauled my ass here to silence an inconvenient critic. Just, for example, who do you think is edit warring on drug pricing? It isn't me.

• I didn't "come here to get administrators to rule in my favour" Baloney. That's EXACTLY what you did, since your long screed is all about how Doc James is wrong wrong wrong on the content and must be stopped, and nothing about behavior -- which is PRECISELY what Ozzie10aaaa's post was about and which behavior you are REPEATING. So spare me.
• who do you think is edit warring on drug pricing?. You. Duh. --Calton | Talk 12:52, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Calton diffs please? Or please retract that allegation. -- Colin°^Talk 15:49, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
    • I left a note on Calton's talk page a couple of days ago to say that he had (inadvertently, I was sure) made a false accusation. Colin hasn't edited a single medicine-related article since the question of when and how to describe drug prices started weeks ago, which would make it distinctly difficult for him to be edit warring over drug pricing. Calton replied on my talk page with a blunt refusal and profanity. I was surprised – we all make mistakes, and most of us up own up to it when we discover that we were wrong – but upon looking at his lengthy block log, I'm now quite a bit less surprised. I'm pinging the admins who've blocked and unblocked Calton over the last few years and who have been online during the last day: User:Boing! said Zebedee, User:Coffee, User:Drmies, User:JBW, User:RegentsPark, User:BrownHairedGirl, and User:GiantSnowman. Is this what you expect from this user? Can you recommend a way to prevent Calton from being so aggressive and rude towards other editors? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Guy, WP:NOT has been clear on pricing for some time. James was clearly aware that his edits were contra to policy, because he started an RFC in 2016 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 84#Price of medications to get it overturned or an exception made for drugs. James made a number of claims in that RFC that have been clearly shown to be false. His RFC failed, was closed "no consenseus" and editors were reminded by the closing admin of the longstanding WP:NOT requirement: "Except in the cases where the sources note the significance of the pricing". So, yes, there was an RFC to change policy and it failed. James ignored it and has continued adding and edit warring over this. -- Colin°^Talk 11:37, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

  Colin, so that's a "no" then. I have ventured an opinion at the ongoing discussion. Guy (help!) 11:54, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• Weak oppose As I said earlier, if you want the community to look into some dispute, it helps a great deal if the messenger isn't someone who rubs everyone else the wrong way. When someone takes forever to acknowledge an offensive comparison, and also needs to be taken to ANI before they agree to stop harassing another editor, then there's no way I'm going to waste my time looking into their claims, to see if there's really some reason for a topic ban. I suspect I'm not the only one to feel this way, so it would probably be best if this is dropped deferring to someone else e.g. SandyGeorgia to make this request if they feel it's merited. Nil Einne (talk) 11:42, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• This is basically a tone argument. So you vote "weak oppose" on an issue that you openly say "there's no way I'm going to waste my time looking into". Way to go! So yes, User:SandyGeorgia can take up this if they want to. -- Colin°^Talk 11:51, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• We all volunteer our time here. People can't be expected to spend their timing doing something which they feel likely has no purpose. The way you've handled everything, compounded now by the way you've behaved here makes me thing it will not be productive for me to look into this dispute since I'm unlikely to find anything meriting your proposed course of action. From what I've seen this happens a lot at ANI. People make a very poor request, so even if there is something behind it, no one knows since most people think there probably isn't and even if there is, it's hard to find it. Mostly it results in the request simply being ignored. And normally if I want to point this out I simply leave a comment or approach the editor directly. But in this case, with several people already opposing, I felt it best to suggest a quick death too this proposal. If people waste time on it now and it results in no consensus, it's likely to reduce the chances of anything happening when someone who can actually make a good case proposes it. In the event that this actually starts to get some decent support, I may change my mind. Even if I don't my !vote will count for little. Nil Einne (talk) 12:29, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Nil Einne to be sure I am understanding this correctly, the suggestion is that I should be the person to request a topic ban for Doc James on pricing? I am not sure why I would be asked to do that, but if that is what you are suggesting ... I believe the proposal is too narrow in scope and a pricing topic ban would not solve the broader problem. Doc James is a mature person, and should be able to recognize on his own, without the need for admin action, that his OWNERSHIP behaviors need to change. Pricing today, videos last time, altering structures of articles for personal preference before that, dumbing down language only so that articles can be translated to other languages before that, altering leads not in compliance with WP:LEAD for years, and so it goes. The problem moves from one issue to another, and pricing is merely the latest example. This behavior is encouraged by his supporters.

If I were to propose something it would be more like:

• Doc James must stop edit warring. Some admin needs to decide how this can be addressed effectively. Even giving Doc James a 1RR restriction would not be effective, because there are enough editors who revert to his position without consensus or discussion.
• Doc James must understand the difference between guidelines and policy. I don't know how admins can make that happen-- open to ideas.
• Doc James should stop installing personal preferences across broad swatches of articles. I don't know how to make this happen; the problem has existed across multiple issues for many years, and the message isn't getting through.
• Previous RFCs, and collaborative discussion, should be respected by all WPMED editors. The 'Me, too' cabalism needs to have a light shone on it.
• A community-wide RFC on pricing should be collaboratively developed, executed, and results respected.
• The OWNERSHIP and cabalistic issues dominating WPMED might improve if more non-MED editors watchlisted, became aware of, and called out these issues when they occur. It's not hard to decipher who does and does not consistently ground their positions in policy and guideline.

Again, in my opinion, the problems at WPMED are entrenched enough and serious enough that we are not far from an arbcase. I suggest that Doc James needs to take seriously the problem with edit warring and using a guideline to install personal preferences, but that there are many more editors than just Doc James that need to clean up their act and stop engaging in non-collaborative behaviors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:21, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• oppose....but,Support WP:BOOMERANG per Calton (for Colin)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:54, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

  @Ozzie10aaaa: do you mean a topic ban for Colin from drug pricing in articles or something else? Nil Einne (talk) 12:29, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

it depends on the discussion here, however 'drug pricing' or any other medical subject should not have to descend to incivility towards so many at WP:MED, can't he have a conversation without "unlimited pinging" or name calling as indicated in my original post....please?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:05, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Ozzie10aaaa, I'd like to think it's worth a concerted effort to understand what purpose people think is served by adding pricing, and have started a discussion around that. The idea that this is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS overriding canonical policy does have some merit, but there may be a good reason that;'s just not articulated yet and places the inclusion of pricing within the bounds of ordinary policy despite a MOS default preference for exclusion.

For what it's worth, I find MOS to be the weakest of all arguments used in Wikipedia content disputes, notwithstanding that it has caused some of our longest-running and most acrimonious disputes. Guy (help!) 12:30, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with your manner of discussion and in the end I might agree with you(using logic and not bothering Doc James or anyone else) however this ANI is not about content is it?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:12, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Ozzie10aaaa, no, but neither is it about one or another POV-pusher, it's about established and committed editors frustrated with each other over implementation of their view of consensus, without having an unambiguous shared basis to establish what consensus actually is.

Both sides are acting in a suboptimal manner, but both have sufficient history of good faith contributions that I think we're best served by trying to help them resolve the underlying issue and form some kind of truce based on that. And if one or more won't? Well, then we'll know who is actually a problem. Guy (help!) 11:55, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

per logic/objectivity you are correct (however due to the admission and evidence of pinging I ask for Colin to get a formal warning and going forward in the event of any future incivility to face a 24 hour block per the aforementioned warning)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:01, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• No Gray-zone content-disputes are not settled over here. see WP:DR. ∯WBG^converse 12:39, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Ivermectin:

• Prices removed by Ronz with WP:NOPRICES policy cited
• Prices restored by Doc James without intervening discussion -- James is now edit warring.
• Ronz opens talk page discussion.
• Ronz reverts James without waiting for reply. Ronz is now edit warring.
• James explains his position "we have a very strong lobby which wishes to suppress pricing information but we are not censored". James plays the WP:NOTCENSORED card.
• James reverts Ronz without waiting for reply. James is now edit warring a second time.
• Ronz makes a further request on talk page. Based on policy he is asking for "sources available to demonstrate such prominence and encyclopedic value"
• James explains "Ongoing lawsuits by industry to prevent having to disclose the price in commercials. Obviously that demonstrates that they are of encyclopedic value"
• James adds "Yes industry wish to hide how much medications actually cost both from the general population"
• Ronz replies "Neither [source] mentions ivermectin"
• a third opinion comments "The price of this drug is not mentioned in the article, and even if it were mentioned, I doubt it would be one of the "most important points" unless there are sources which show that this drug's pricing is unusually noteworthy. So, I would say that the price should not be in the lead"
• Ronz removes prices again taking 3rd opinion as consensus and lack of sources provided by James supporting price notability for this drug
• a fourth opinion comments essentially saying that pricing is common on drug articles [ed: that's because James put them there] so they supported James
• James adds prices to lead again saying "One opinion was in each direction"
• James adds prices to body
• Ronz asks "How about we remove it from the lede, given the lack of sources demonstrating such weight"
• Ronz removes prices from the lead since there was no reply from James for many days
• James restores prices to the lead. He asks "What is wrong with the sources"
• James explains "Price is present in medical textbooks thus making it sufficiently notable." "Yes prices are a key aspect of a medication." "Every version of the British National Formulary contains the price in the UK."
• Ozzie10aaaa joins the discussion "agree w/ Doc James, pricing should be included"
• Ronz cites the previous RFC "Except in the cases where the sources note the significance of the pricing (which did have consensus), there is no consensus to add the pricing to the articles"
• Ozzie10aaaa claims "pricing, in this case(article), would benefit the reader...IMO"
• Ozzie10aaaa removes "undue" tags from lead.
• Ronz restores "undue" tags to lead.
• James wins "Ronz the majority of people commenting here disagree with you" Having recruited Ozzie10aaaa, who hasn't made any policy-based argument, Ronz is simply outnumbered.
• Ronz cites WP:CONLEVEL: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale"
• James cites Wikipedia:Prices, an essay that James would go onto modifying further to support his POV.
• Ozzie10aaaa agrees with James
• Ronz complains "An essay does not overrule policy. You two know better".

This is typical. And if you open the article today click on the source James uses for the "developing world". You get a broken database search result. There are no prices at all. There are no prices for 2014, which is the "search year" James used. All that edit warring, and the source doesn't even have any prices.

If I search for 2015 I get a "buyer" price for the health service of Costa Rica. The source itself says not to use "buyer" prices (only "supplier" prices) if wanting an international reference price. So James is claiming the price Costa Rica government pays for the drug (after discounts, rebates, bribes, etc) is representative of "the developing world". The price James quotes (12 cents) would correspond to a 15 mg one-off dose for a 70kg patient with strongyloidiasis. But the tablets are 6mg and you can't buy 2.5 tablets. So James has indulged in original research to assume the age/weight of the patient, their particular tropical disease and done some crude maths to give a figure that requires asking the pharmacist for 2.5 tablets. And then he compares the price in Costa Rica in 2015 with the US price in 2019. This is typical. -- Colin°^Talk 14:36, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• Support, I'm uninvolved but reviewed the lengthy discussions linked here. Seems to me there is a serious problem. First, habitual edit warring is unacceptable, especially from editors of high station like admins, functionaries, and trustees. Second, statements along the lines of "XYZ drug costs between $0.01 and $0.05" are obvious oversimplifications that misinform our readers. Third, we have documented consensus on pricing that is being ignored. Fourth, the problem has spread to a large group of articles through the tendentious efforts of a few editors, apparently primarily DJ. Fifth, prior efforts at resolving or discussing this with DJ have clearly failed. Sixth, this is an example of the walled garden behavior I mentioned above. It needs to stop. I support the tban. – Levivich 13:56, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
  • In re comments below, I agree the content dispute should be handled through DR like a new RfC if needed, but I see evidence of disruptive editing regarding drug pricing and no indication it will stop despite prior attempts made by other editors. That's a conduct dispute, not a content dispute, and that's why I support the tban. I'd support an official warning of some sort as a lesser measure as well. – Levivich 19:41, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Question when did the wiki become focussed on pricing in one area? Eneryone in the UK knows that all drugs cost £9. But that doesn't belong in a drug's article. Cabayi (talk) 14:17, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support Unless the prices themselves are notable, do not include them as WP:NOPRICES says ArkayusMako (talk) 15:07, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Comment Nothing either way to this suggest yet by this, but now I recall this discussion at WT:NOT [49] that I commented on but that involves those mentioned here, which I see directly applicable for consideration in light of what's being argued here. --Masem (t) 15:14, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. See no reason to topic ban Doc. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:17, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Some here seem to be treating this as a discussion on whether drug price should or should not be included in articles, but that is not something to be decided at ANI. That's a content decision, and it needs a content discussion and consensus - perhaps an RfC as some have suggested. That consensus needs to be reached before we should be considering sanctioning anyone from either side of the disagreement. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:21, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Boing! said Zebedee, there is a policy WP:NOPRICES and there was an RFC (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 84#Price of medications), which James lost. James is now editing, and edit warring, against policy.That's a behavioural problem. -- Colin°^Talk 15:45, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
    • Colin, that's a 2016 discussion and there was significant support and opposition, and consensus can change - and I don't think this specific proposal is the way to resolve ongoing disagreement. If there's still a behavioural problem (which comments from a number of well-respected contributors, yourself included, suggest there is) then it sounds to me as if it goes significantly deeper than this one issue - the drugs prices disagreement sounds like a symptom rather than the core problem. So if behavioural issues need addressing, as others have suggested, I think it should go to ArbCom which can consider in-depth issues in a way that ANI can't. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:41, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
      • Boing! said Zebedee I get that the RFC had points on both sides, but ultimately it failed to overturn the policy at WP:NOPRICES. You need consensus to overturn policy, and there was no consensus. Yes consensus can change and yes another RFC might be required. It would need to be a bit more truthful this time about the limitations of whatever sources we have, and the complexities of how to explain prices to our readers. Most of the support comments last time were of the "I think prices are useful" variety and "We have great sources for prices here and here" variety. I think a telling factor here is that nobody else than James added the prices, nobody updated them, nobody spotted that most of them were wrong/misleading, and nobody seems to care that the source used stopped being maintained with new prices in 2015. Nobody took the care to check that Hey, that price you say is for the Developing World, is actually just for war-torn DRC in 2014. Or Hey, that price you juxtapose with a wholesale price is actually a retail price. This could be that (a) our readers are not the slightest bit interested in prices in dollars and cents and (b) the editing community is not the slightest bit interested either. But woe betide anyone who dare remove a price. The forces of WP:MED will rise up against these obvious Big Pharma Shills and their censorship and squash them. Anyone who plays the WP:CENSOR card to support their editing on WP has IMO already lost the argument. -- Colin°^Talk 16:59, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
        • Colin, that all reinforces my belief that this is too deep and emotive to be settled by a simple ANI discussion. A 2-way fight between "Block Colin" and "Topic Ban Doc James" is not going to solve the problems that people suggest underlie all of this. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:12, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I think the problem here is adding prices when MEDRS-compliant sourcing doesn't seem feasible (plus the WP:NOT policy context noted above); pricing also tends to fail WP:SYNTH. While Doc James might be driving this (a well-meaning effort since cost is a major concern in health care), I don't get the sense he's alone so I'm not sure a topic ban for one editor makes the most sense - perhaps WPMED needs a clear message on this topic (I'm too inexperienced to know the "right" way to do that, but the RFC did not ban addition of prices AFAIK, rather it provided no consensus for their addition in mainspace generally). The notes here about behavior are spot-on; as a physician and biomedical researcher I've been dispirited by the tone of discussions at WTMED - and have no interest in joining one of the factions. The prominent players here (Doc James and Colin in particular) tend to drive forward without consensus (or write a wall of text), quickly invoke old grievances, when we have so much less controversial content that deserves attention. — soupvector (talk) 15:54, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
  • soupvector, I haven't found any editor other than James adding prices to our drug articles, or edit warring to retain them (although others may join him in edit warring as diffed above). A few other WP:MED editors have taken "I support James" approach to discussions, but have not actually engaged in any policy or source based argument. The price additions were done on a mass scale and have been left to rot and age. The source used no longer maintained for five years. It seems very clear the community is not interested in adding or maintaining the prices, and until I started examining them, nobody had noticed that nearly all of them are wrong or very misleading to our readers. WP:MED used to prize accuracy and truthfulness in our articles. -- Colin°^Talk 16:05, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
    • My perception is that accuracy is prized, but discussions are exhausting because brevity / succinctness / civility get too little attention. Reasonable people might learn to stay away from the drama fest? — soupvector (talk) 16:09, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
      • Wrt accuracy, not if you examine any of the drug prices. There's more than one way to be uncivil. Edit warring is pretty uncivil. Slipping 300+ videos into Wikipedia with no edit summary is pretty uncivil. Making statements that are obviously false or misleading is uncivil. -- Colin°^Talk 16:33, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
        • Colin, perhaps you've forgotten that I came down strongly against the Osmosis videos, and was critical of the videowiki content. I read what you write and I respect nearly everything you do - except for the badgering. — soupvector (talk) 16:37, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• I think a topic ban is an over-reaction, but adding prices (that are not, in themselves, of especial noteworthyness) contrary to the 2016 RfC is a problem, because edit warring invariably follows. If participants wish to change the guideline that that 2016 RfC offers, they are more than welcome to launch another RfC, with the aim of weighing the current consensus or lack thereof. El_C 16:42, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose — merely as a formality, see my response above regarding support of an indef block of Colin. Carl Fredrik ^talk 19:24, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• No Not quite as terrible an idea as indef-blocking Colin (mainly because it's not as ludicrous), but no, that's not going to fly for the same reason. Black Kite (talk) 20:03, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. The wrong solution for the wrong problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:44, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose, but Support something like what SandyGeorgia suggested above Paul August ☎ 15:54, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Not necessary and wrong solution at this juncture — an RfC is the correct and necessary approach for resolution to this drama as this is an intractable content dispute. Doc James does need to be more careful, he should’ve, in my view, sought an RfC at a much earlier stage instead of letting the content dispute escalate. Similar advice really as for Colin. I need to think about the drug pricing dispute and read more arguments for and against to really form any sort of opinion.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:08, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support requiring Doc James to obtain consensus before forcing prices to WP articles (whether they are drug prices or any prices). Unsure whether this should be a formal ban or simply a clear recommendation – I prefer trying softer means first. To be clear, this is not a content dispute but a behavioural dispute, with Doc James regularly refusing to seek consensus before forcing his view through. — kashmīrī ^TALK 18:00, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Doc James is an experienced and trusted user. In my experience, he is also thoughtful and responsive. The idea of a topic ban in an area where he has considerable expertise seems... unsettling. A properly formatted RfC, where interested users can thrash out the issues and arrive at consensus, seems the better way to resolve this - I have no doubt that Doc James would respect the outcome of any such discussion. GirthSummit _(blether) 20:43, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• This is not really about anyone's experience or trust. It is about challenging behaviour and inability to drop the stick and work collaboratively. And yes, I am sure Doc James will respect any outcome, hence I am not keen on a ban and instead support a polite recommendation. — kashmīrī ^TALK 23:14, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

oppose topic ban per sensible Boing ---Sluzzelin talk 23:18, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

A word of caution from a member of the engineering community

I am an embedded systems engineer. If you are making an electronic toy at a rate of 100,000 units per hour and want to reduce your costs by 0.01 cents per unit I am your man. Medicine, not so much. I don't edit medical articles for the same reason that Colin and Doc James don't edit our articles on Cockcroft–Walton generators, Hall effect sensors or Negative resistance. I am very much an outsider in this situation, but I do understand the human aspect of how subject-matter experts like Colin and Doc James end up interacting with ANI and Arbcom.

In the above discussion, I am seeing a lot of discussion about user behavior, the usual "he creates content and has friends, so behavior that would get anyone else a 24-hour block gets a warning" bad attitude, and at least some examples of "Yeah, I know we aren't supposed to rule on content disputes, but dang it, this content dispute is just so darn interesting that I am going to forget the basic rules about ANI and content disputes just this once". I recognize the latter because I have seen it when engineers end up at ANI fighting over engineering content disputes.

My caution is for each of you to watch yourself carefully and only to deal with user behavior, without any hint of ruling on article content.

Nothing I wrote above should be construed as supporting either side on the content dispute or on the behavioral issues. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:13, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I have to second Guy Macon's analysis here. I also am not taking sides, but do note that the following problems are evident and blatant and occur quickly in the discussion:

1. Legitimate concerns about behavior are, within seconds, quickly swept under the rug because the person who committed the alleged infractions "does good work" otherwise.
2. Discussion veers away from behavior at all, and people start explicitly voting based upon their opinions of content.

We really need to stop this. I suspect that this discussion will go nowhere because the well has already been quite poisoned by the tangents the discussion has gone on. We really should ONLY be focusing on the matter at hand for this board, which is is there a problematic behavior being shown by a user and what should we do to address that. At no time should unrelated matters regarding content (either the content the accused user has contributed, or the content of the articles at the nexus of any dispute) ever really enter into the discussion. If there is competing bad behavior (that is, if the reporting party has also engaged in sanctionable offenses) then we of course should consider dealing with that as well, but we really need to keep content issues out of these discussions, and leave that to article talk pages and the normal WP:DR process. --Jayron32 15:28, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Jayron32, the way to stop it is, in my view, to establish what consensus actually is, and then abide by it. Guy (help!) 17:21, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Fine, but this is not the place we establish consensus on content. --Jayron32 17:27, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Jayron32, hence the link to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles § Product pricing above. Guy (help!) 18:58, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Not only do we not establish consensus on content here, we don't address content at all. This is difficult. What happens when two editors clash, one is 100% right about the content but has misbehaved, and the other has not misbehaved at all but is 100% wrong about the content? Every admin then has a choice; either go to the article and work on getting the content right as an ordinary editor, abandoning the ANI case and obeying WP:INVOLVED, or choosing to comment on the behavior only on ANI with zero reference to the content. It is, of course, OK to use the tools to deal with someone who has introduced content that goes against consensus or violates policy, but the focus must be on the going against consensus or the violation of policy, not about what the content is or is not. This too is difficult. It is difficult because so many editors who get reported at ANI either were reported for the content they added/removed or point to the content they added/removed when confronted with their behavior. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:15, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't think it's really 100% in either direction. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:32, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Reasonable people may differ on this, but in my personal opinion it should be as close to 100% as possible, and admins should try to stay well inside the boundaries set by WP:INVOLVED rather than standing right on the line that they are not supposed to cross with their toes hanging over the line. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:46, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Maybe I misunderstood you. What I meant is that I don't think either editor is 100% right or 100% wrong. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:17, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Ah. I did misunderstand. Neither being 100% right is most likely true, but I don't feel qualified to say in my own voice that I have examined the evidence and am ready to opine on the content dispute. On the charges of misbehavior I haven't carefully followed the history and examined the evidence, so all I can say is that, if true, either refusing to stop pinging someone or refusing to abide by the result of an RfD should get you a 24-hour block to show you that we don't tolerate such behavior no matter who you are. Note the "if true" disclaimer and that I have not personally examined the evidence. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:17, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! We basically agree. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:14, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Proposal for resolution

My reading of this and the prior debates is as follows:

1. There is a fundamental and unresolved dispute between committed editors on the issue of when to include drug pricing.
2. This has not been resolved despite several previous debates, and is being handled through editing disputes in articles and guidelines, which is disruptive and ineffective.
3. The dispute, and perhaps some other unresolved underlying disputes, has contributed to polarisation and factionalism among an editing community that was formerly much more collaborative.
4. Assessment of behaviour may be conditioned by opinions on the merits of the case being advanced, leading to competing demands for sanctions against members of other factions. This is a symptom of escalation of the unresolved dispute and is not helping. There has been an erosion of the assumption of good faith.

My proposals:

1. The question of drug pricing is remitted to a single venue (I propose Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles § Product pricing).
2. Editors are requested to formulate a consensus RfC to resolve the underlying issue, which will be published at WP:CENT for wider community input addendum by an uninvolved admin after confirming that the question(s) are neutrally worded..
3. The above debates will be subject to civility restrictions with strict enforcement of WP:AGF, WP:CIV, no WP:BLUDGEONing and no rehashing of grievances.
4. There is an embargo on adding or removing pricing during this process.

Is this worth trying? Or should we simply start dragging the warring parties apart and applying escalating blocks? Guy (help!) 10:33, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Support I think it's worth trying anything that avoids blocks and/or arbitration, the worst that can happen is it doesn't work and things move on to blocks and/or arbitration anyway, but at least we can then say all other avenues have been exhausted. I do not think drug pricing is the sole reason for the multitude of disputes outlined at length above but it's as good a place as any to start. Fish+Karate 10:56, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Support This is a reasonable and mature way to handle the problem; I would also add that, in the interest of advancing in a civil manner; and without either a finding of fault or innocence of the above parties in any prior bad behavior, we allow those parties to save face and, if they are willing, participate in that discussion in a civil manner. If the warring parties can agree to this process, I see no reason to consider sanctions (blocks/bans/etc.) against any of them. --Jayron32 12:57, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Support with one or two uninvolved admins watching over the discussion and using a heavy hand on any misbehavior. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:29, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon, yes, and I'd like to ask for volunteers. Guy (help!) 00:42, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Support — Although the problem is clearly much bigger than drug pricing, this sounds like worth trying to me, in order to solve this piece of the problem. I would appreciate knowing what SandyGeorgia opinion on this proposal, as well as what Doc James, and Colin have to say about this. Paul August ☎ 15:46, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Support. I was actually thinking about suggesting that this needs to be resolved via a formal RfC. The other suggestions to resolve this dispute above are also good.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:50, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Support in principle — The proposals are necessary, but not sufficient. The issue is bigger than drug prices, and is one of civility and above all WP:BLUDGEONing. Without clear restrictions there is no reason to believe that: 1) WP:BLUDGEONing of a dedicated page will be addressed; and 2) that WP:BLUDGEONing and WP:UNCIVIL behavior will be avoided with regard to other topics. Carl Fredrik ^talk 16:28, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Support however, as I explained over at talk MEDMOS, an RFC on "should we have pricing" could be a failure, with two factions talking past each other, having totally different value systems, and the result just a lottery rather than consensus. And it does't resolve what actually ends up on our articles. For example, de facto, we've had drug pricing for about four years on the majority of our drug articles. And nearly every one of them breaks WP:V, WP:OR, WP:WEIGHT. How would you stop editors cherry picking or arbitrarily selecting prices or juxtaposing different kinds of prices of different kinds of things. The community has not managed that in the past four years, so why should the next four be any better? -- Colin°^Talk 16:40, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Same as any other RfC: You put forward your concerns you mention above in your vote and comments during the RfC for consideration. And the result is what it is.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:46, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

[The above] comment wonderfully encapsulates the issue at hand — 'There is no acceptable outcome of community decisions apart from the WP:ORACLEs divinations'. — Truly an example of "No true Scotsman" together with BLUDGEONING by repeating the same position in different places. Carl Fredrik ^talk 16:46, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
Clarified Carl Fredrik ^talk 17:19, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

My post went through at exact same time as yours without an edit conflict, not had that happen before lol. Maybe we posted literally at the exact same second, it is the twilight zone, lol. Anyway, I do not see where you are getting that exact quote from Carl?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:49, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Not a quote, but a literary interpretation of what is textbook BLUDGEONING. Carl Fredrik ^talk 16:53, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Oh okay. You placed it in “double quotes” instead of ‘single quotes’ which is what made me think it was an exact quote that you forgot to add a wiki diff link to or something.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:55, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Support as a place to start, and hope that the trends/problems will either cease, or become evident to uninvolved editors so that they can then be addressed without escalating to the arbs. But more clarification is needed in the area of slow edit warring enforcement and civil POV pushing, reverts without consensus, and focus on Carl Fredrik's persistent tone and unwarranted (also diffless) accusations. User:JzG, could you consider the issue that we have seen malformed and poorly written RFCs launched in the past, so a caution NOT to launch a premature RFC may encourage editors to work towards consensus in the pre-RFC phase as well? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:56, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Yeah I agree, care needs to be taken in how the RfC is structured. Perhaps both sides of the dispute could carefully draft two statements — for and against — to be posted immediately below a neutral RfC question?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 17:35, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I am generally a proponent of the Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Example formatting#Pro and con RFC system suggested by User:Literaturegeek, but I am doubtful that we're at the point of this large and wide-ranging dispute being reducible to a yes/no question. I'd be very happy to use that format for some of the smaller associated questions (e.g., "Should prices be in the lead if not elsewhere?" with the options being something like "Yes, because readers are interested and it supports translation efforts" and "No, because the MOS says no"). The central dispute is more like "When, whether, and how should we handle prices?", which is not a yes/no question. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Support. As Jayron32 said, I see value in having a venue in which this particular dispute can be resolved that allows all parties to save face. I don't expect it to completely resolve the underlying issues with communication styles, editing styles, or trust, but having a clear direction on content would make it easier for the community to address conduct. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:41, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

neutral as the OP will wait and see if this works--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:10, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Support. Yes, this is worth trying. However, it looks to me like we're going to need to create guidelines for selection of sources and presentation of information. This is a horribly complicated issue, and a large part of the problem is that it has been presented as if it's easy to identify and present a price for a medication. There's also spillover to non-medical topics as Wikipedia:Prices and it's use demonstrates and documents. --Ronz (talk) 18:20, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Ronz, I am confused ... WP:MEDRS is the relevant "guideline for selection of sources" in medical articles, that the proponents of adding pricing seek to change. Please clarify?? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:26, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

There are at least three articles: NOT, MEDRS, and the Wikipedia:Prices essay.

There's spillover to non-medical articles, so NOT might benefit from changes.

Wikipedia:Prices needs to better align with policies/guidelines and whatever results come from the RfC. Hopefully we could get it on track to becoming a guidelines. Otherwise the essay should be place back into user space to avoid confusion.

There's indication from the discussions that specific guidance is needed on what sources should be used for pricing information and how they should be used. Yes, this type of guidance would go into MEDRS. --Ronz (talk) 18:54, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

It isn't obvious where the discussion should be. MEDRS is more about health claims than about economics, and it only really becomes a health matter when folk conduct original research to present a cost per some arbitrary daily dose or treatment duration. MEDMOS might be more relevant to the issue of whether or not to include price and how to present it, but then the discussion needs opened up to more than just a tiny number of people. Wikipedia:Prices should go in the bin. -- Colin°^Talk 19:04, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Ronz; now I understand where you're coming from (that NOT may need to encompass more information on pricing, applicable to more than medical articles). But again, is this really a problem for medical articles when we consider that WP:NOT is policy, WP:MEDRS is the guideline that interprets policy for medical articles, and we shouldn't even be contemplating an essay here ? Yes, move essays that don't reflect policy back to user space. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:24, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Support – worth trying, as good a place as any to start. – Levivich 19:16, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support Not unreasonable for this issue. There are however some undisclosed COIs that muddy the waters, and require at least disclosure. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:03, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

  Doc James ... While there have long been unjustified claims of COI in medical editing (Jytdog went after me twice), I have seen the issue that I suspect you are referencing via the editor in question's own wording, have stayed out of it to avoid agida (and because I was traveling), but am concerned as well about what that editor's wording seems to openly state. I assume you have addressed those concerns elsewhere and that the outcome will eventually be contemplated by any admin closing any RFC ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:29, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

  I have had a fair number of COI claims sent my direction aswell. The request here was simple for disclosure (not a huge bar to meet IMO). Will send to the admins closing any RfC. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:56, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Support as the obvious way forward - let's talk it through in a proper, structured manner, without trying to block or TBan any respected, valued and long-term contributors on either 'side'. GirthSummit _(blether) 20:47, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Ping @WhatamIdoing: to this proposal as they are a very active participant in these discussions, but missing from this proposal. Since most of us appear to be in agreement, it would be good to hear from WAID before this closes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:41, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the ping, SandyGeorgia. This proposal is really quite normal (albeit more fully explained and better written than most), and IMO there's nothing wrong with it, except that for my nagging sense that it won't work. If you'll let me use the comments near your 20:24 comment as an example, the list of potential problems includes doubtfulness that the traditional form of WP:NOTPRICE retains as much support (project wide) as it had back in the day. If that's the case, then we probably need to have the central NOTPRICE discussion first. Additionally, there's the complication that MEDRS is both relevant (you have to be true to the source, and you can only use decent ones) and irrelevant (the proposed guideline change is to the Manual of Style, which always assumes that you already have a sufficient source in hand). The existing financial information in drug articles does not seem to be our best work. Also, I think that it may be premature to try to sort this out, because people have very different views about what Wikipedia's ideal content would look like, and very different conceptions of how important the financial aspect is. We won't get "there" when everyone's idea of "there" is different.
    It's possible that we would have more success with a series of isolated questions than with a single large RFC. For example, one of the (likely) simpler points to this dispute is whether the price of a drug go in the lead if it's not mentioned elsewhere in the article. Now, with your long history in the WP:FA process, I think I could safely predict your view about whether anything belongs in the lead if it isn't described more fully elsewhere in the article, but some editors have other views. It might be easier to deal with some of these side questions slowly. And we're still missing an example of a "perfect" description with an unquestionably stellar source for the price of a relatively common drug. We've got a few examples of companies announcing a list price of a zillion dollars for a rare disease, but nothing that's really ideal for a more typical drug. We don't even have people speculating on what might be ideal: Do you want the head of the World Health Organization telling a business magazine that "Generally speaking, providing Combined oral contraceptive pills to a woman costs about US$100 per year in developed countries and US$20 in developing countries"? Or do we want a statistical tome that exactly calculates a theoretical average and uses thousands or millions of actual sales to determine the most common price per region? Do we need that fancy statistical tome when pretty much every source, regardless of quality or precision or even basic reliability, indicates that the worldwide wholesale cost of generic ibuprofen is on the order of two pennies per 200mg tablet, and none of them are claiming that it's two-tenths of a penny or 20 pennies per pill? It'd be easier to solve this problem, or even to formulate a potentially useful RFC, if people were writing (as User:Bluerasberry suggested last month) little "stories" like "If I had <this kind of source> that said _______ about the price, I'd use it to say _____ in ==This section== of the article on Subject". Also, this is bigger than drugs (e.g., cost of medical devices: I wonder how many people here already knew that the patented consumables for glucose meters have such a high profit margin that the manufacturer can afford to give away the device itself for free, just to lock you into buying their proprietary and expensive test strips). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:47, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
    • WhatamIdoing, you accurately predict my take on WP:LEAD :) Would the Epipen example I gave on talk weeks ago not provide a sample starting place? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:55, 6 December 2019 (UTC) PS, I was aware of the glucose meter issue, in fact. I don't see that we have a problem in these cases because MEDRS-compliant sources typically discuss them, and we can work the content into articles as long as we respect WP:WEIGHT and WP:LEAD. Similar with EPIPEN, which was why I provided that example. Perhaps we need to separate out the issues that are not coming from MEDRS sources, rather than relying on databases and original research to add content to leads. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:01, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support. I think a well-advertised community-wide RfC about the content side is exactly the right solution. And as for the conduct issues, they will be easier to sort out meaningfully, when we see who does or does not accept community consensus. For those designing the RfC, I'd suggest taking a look at WP:GMORFC. Now that was a far more extreme situation than the one here, so please don't get stuck on that difference. But I think that the general approach of how to structure the discussion, as well as the basic rules for civility, worked very well under those difficult conditions, and some of that might prove useful here. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support, although Doc James's remarks above indicating his intention to influence the RfC closure off wiki is very concerning. — kashmīrī ^TALK 00:00, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

  Involved parties will presumably have the same access to the closing admin to discuss confidential information involving COI concerns. On the other hand, clarification of one talk page post that seemed to indicate a possible COI could go a long way towards resolving one side issue here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:41, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

  Yeah, see that, but what is the weight of a talk page statement coming from an anonymous WP editor? Won't it tempt malicious editors to drag the interrogation further, risking OUTING? Good to remember that one admin here has a history of breaching confidentiality for reason of, as he has put it, "transparency", which then cost him his ArbCom seat. I honestly don't know how such things are best resolved other than with the help of ArbCom. For clarity, myself I have no conflict of interest whatsoever. — kashmīrī ^TALK 18:51, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

• Doc James, For this, I don't see any real need for waving the COI stick. It's a reasonably abstract question. SandyGeorgia, see my addendum, is that OK? Guy (help!) 00:47, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

  This addendum could help; time will tell if the parties can come up with neutral wording. JzG, if we don't hear from QuackGuru as to whether they have read and support this proposal, there will need to be some kind of notification of the restrictions in place. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:00, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

  SandyGeorgia, we are fully entitled to move forward without QG. He has been drinking in the last chance saloon since forever. Guy (help!) 01:22, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

•  Comment: @WhatamIdoing, SandyGeorgia, and JzG: I think the idea of discussing smaller issues first has merit, though some rather presume we have already agreed to detailed prices without supporting commentary from sources in the first place. I hope we can all agree that for the small number of drugs with really notable prices, the problem of describing cost to the reader disappears, because our sources do the maths for us. If we do routinely have prices for drugs, how on earth can we source this and present something simple enough for lead text or even body text without conducting OR? I think that should be the first question. And those wanting to do this, need to satisfy the community they can do it without breaking our fundamental policies first. Do we think that is a good first step? After all, if we can't do that, there really is no point having a emotive discussion of what our readers want, or what an encyclopaedia should present, or whether big pharma suppressing prices in US commercials should inspire us to litter our articles with them.

WAID's statement "The existing financial information in drug articles does not seem to be our best work." is rather polite way of describing numbers that are at best totally arbitrary and at worst effectively random. Her example (ibuprofen) may be quite a simple case, and she may be happy with being in the base 10 order of magnitude in terms of accuracy. The source currently used for "developing world" prices MSH actually has a median price for 200mg ibuprofen of 0.0068 with a high/low ratio of 2.97 (the highest is 0.0107 and lowest 0.0036). So the 2 pennies price is 3x higher than the source's 0.068 median price. I'm really not comfortable giving a price in dollars and cents that is 3x higher than our sources claim, and that's our problem with just having raw database records as sources. If we actually wanted to just tell our readers that the price is extremely low, or is very affordable, which is "knowledge" rather than just "raw data", then we need a much much better source, of the kind Wikipedia typically encourages -- Wikipedia policy hates original research from raw data. And ibuprofen is fairly easy with one obvious indication and common tablet size. Most other drugs are far more complex and so far have required extensive original research to select which database record to cite, and further maths to present a meaningful price to a reader. -- Colin°^Talk 11:37, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

So, now I see why my Epipen sample doesn't work to solve the bigger issue; in a case like Epipen, the sources do the work for us, and there is no policy question as to whether prices can be discussed. Epipen complies with my starting point that we shouldn't be including price info unless WEIGHT is met based on MEDRS-compliant sources, while others want to include database-type info, or info from one source, and it is those examples we need to sort out. Yes, there are preliminary questions that should be resolved on talk before we can advance an RFC; it makes no sense to advance an RFC to the community if information proposed and included now in articles is not even compliant with policy. The initial burden should be on those who want to include the prices to give a working and accurate example before RFC launch.

Another general concern I have is with the direction WPMED has been headed for several years now: important medical articles are incomplete, inaccurate and no longer kept updated, so who is going to keep up with all this price information? Why are our limited number of medical editors working on database information available elsewhere, while articles suffer, and why is there a need for this particular deviation on pricing from WP:NOT? (Concern about Big Pharma hiding prices can be solved by adding a generic external link to all drug articles, as we did in the past with DMOZ, and that helps us avoid doing the math/original research.)

As I see the preliminary work is already happening on the guideline talk page, I'll continue there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:28, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

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Same user under different IPs stalking a user

A user by the name of Walter Görlitz has currently been stalked and had edit wars with an unknown user using multiple IP addresses. I won't put much here, but here's a discussion me and Walter had (where he states that the user has been hounding him for 'at least 6 months'), along with his contribs, and this craziness at Tim Miner. I might add extra updates to this situation as it unfolds. ​ dibbydib ^💬/_✏ 02:28, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Update: Some IPs involved are 142.112.229.157, 184.153.56.220 (currently blocked) and 2600:1700:3221:1eb0:d84d:5bea:f93a:264. Note that many of these have little to no contribs. 02:33, 5 December 2019 (UTC) Changed my mind. dibbydib ^💬/_✏ 04:07, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

You're kidding, right? These IP addresses geolocate to New York, Tennessee, and Ottawa. And Walter violated 3RR to restore unsourced content in a BLP? Ugh. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 02:37, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I've blocked Walter for a week for edit warring to restore unsourced content to a BLP. Not a huge BLP vio, but where someone lives could be considered private, and even if it wasn't, edit warring to restore unsourced content is fairly high up on the "never do this list", and to be honest, his edit summaries read like someone who isn't thinking rationally and are disruptive in themselves. His last edit warring block was 72 hours, so a week seemed the next step. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:01, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Abusive administrator Bbb23

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Harrassing, deleting my votes in AfD.MarcelB612 (talk) 05:07, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@MarcelB612: to answer your question, the rule would be WP:NOTFORUM (and WP:PPOV and WP:POLEMIC). Your edit was completely inappropriate. EvergreenFir (talk) 05:15, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

WP:FORUM has nothing whatsoever to do with this incident. My edit was not inappropriate at all. I voted in an AfD discussion and stated a perfectly valid reason for my vote. Polemical content is "very divisive or offensive material not related to encyclopedia editing", my statement was entirely related to encyclopedia editing and nothing else, was related only to Wikipedia as it should be, did not attack any editors, etc etc. Obviously you disagreed with my view, which is fine, that's why we take votes! But my view is completely reasonable and conforms with Wikipedia rules. In no way do ANY of the rules you stated apply to my vote. MarcelB612 (talk) 05:24, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with EvergreenFir; voting to keep an article on the grounds that you think that it is bad and therefore "serves as a great example to warn people about what a disaster Wikipedia has become" is not a serious effort to participate in a discussion. The vote was properly removed, and further agitation in this direction should be dealt with appropriately. BD2412 T 05:29, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• As mentioned by others, MarcelB612's vote was a WP:POINT violation and was correctly struck. Anyone wanting to participate in discussions at Wikipedia needs to do so in a reasonable manner. Johnuniq (talk) 05:50, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Yeah, what the EvergreenFir, BD2412, Johnuniq said. MarcelB612, should drop this now instead of trying to escalate this further. —SpacemanSpiff 06:04, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• Whenever you hear about "administrator abuse" it almost always turns out that it is the administrator who is being abused. I cannot understand why anyone would want the job. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:20, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

  Money

  Power

  Fame

  Must be the t-shirt. – Levivich 07:01, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Wait, we were supposed to be given a T-shirt? DMacks (talk) 07:13, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I have a really old black hoodie sweatshirt that has a cool "Wikipedia Ambassador" logo on it, with the jigsaw puzzle piece globe on the back. It is so uncool that nobody ever mentions it when I am wearing my it. People probably think that I am crazy. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:30, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with others that MarcelB612 needs to stop this silly point violation "protest". If they don't, a WP:BOOMERANG block may very well be in order. Personally, I'd normal suggest that in a case where the !vote is so clearly nonsense it's probably not necessary to strike it out, but this is a very long AFD. Nil Einne (talk) 08:28, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

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EOP Gatekeeper - Executive Office Of The President editing our articles

• Washington Examiner (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• 204.68.207.13 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Probably should be a heads up on this one, but I didn't know where to post this. Bureaucrats? Jimbo? Anyone? WP:RFPP had a request for help on disruptive editing on Washington Examiner. I reverted the edits and protected the page. There were numerous edits re-writing the article, from IP 204.68.207.13 . Who Is Gateway and What Is My Address both confirm this IP is the Executive Office of the President of the United States. Not entirely surprising, but how do we handle this? — Maile (talk) 16:30, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

The notes on blocking sensitive IP addresses are here Wikipedia:Blocking_IP_addresses#Sensitive_IP_addresses WilyD 16:46, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) This IP (Special:Contributions/204.68.207.13) is not listed in the table of sensitive IP addresses nor on the handy list in the block settings window, but everything about the technical data and the contact domain name and such suggest that it should be. Nonetheless, it's clearly edit-warring, and considering the source, also blatantly violating WP:COI. Protecting the page was the correct approach, and I have sent a message to the WMF communications committee. (courtesy ping GVarnum-WMF Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:53, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Just another day in Wikiland... –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 18:28, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• A 3RR report was just removed due to this discussion. It seems to me that issues with the EOP edits in general are distinct from issues with the IP user edit warring, so I just want to make sure both are addressed. Dyrnych (talk) 19:06, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• User:Maile66 semiprotected the Washington Examiner article for one month at 16:04 on 5 December. That should take care of the matter for now. EdJohnston (talk) 19:49, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

• Technically Dyrnych is right that as I understand it, and rereading the above page seems to confirm my view, you are allowed to block sensitive IPs as you normally would except you should avoid long blocks, which weren't justified here anyway. You should take care with your block message, and should make sure your block is justified since it could easily receive media attention; and for that reason are supposed to notify the WMF when you block. But otherwise I don't think there's any limitations on blocking. Still I don't begrudge an admin not wanting to step in that minefield. And while I'm personally normally opposed to semiprotecting when it's likely a block will do (since it prevents other IP editors for no reason), in this case it seems a reasonable course of action. Nil Einne (talk) 20:31, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Maile66, I endorse semiprotection as the path of least drama here. Guy (help!) 11:00, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Repeated addition of non-free images without relevant NFURs.

User talk:213.205.241.118 has warnings about repeatedly adding non-free images without relevant NFURs for use on the pages in question, but he continues to do so, such as at Saudi Arabia national football team. --David Biddulph (talk) 18:04, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) This kind of thing happens quite a lot since many editors (not only new editors) often mistakenly assume all images are the same and are unaware of things like WP:NFC and WP:NFCC. This happens quite a lot in sports team articles like national football(soccer) team articles; someone sees see an image used in one article , and just automatically assumes it's OK for the same image to be used in other related articles. Sometimes all that is missing is a non-free use rationale (FUR) and that can be fixed by anyone who feels up to it per WP:NFCCE, but other times simply adding a missing FUR is not enough per WP:JUSTONE because there are other non-free content use criteria not being met as well. In some cases, like files have been previously discussed at WP:NFCR or WP:FFD and the consensus was to remove them, but most editors will not be aware of this without doing some digging through the article's page history or looking on the file's page/talk page for mentions of such discussion.

FWIW, there are bots (like JJMC89 bot) which go around like for non-free files without corresponding FURs being added to articles, and they will remove the files and leave an edit summary explaining why. Other editors who work with files may also remove the files or add the missing rationale (if they think the use is justified) per NFCCE; sometimes even using templates like {{di-missing some article links}} and {{Missing rationale2}} is done in lieu of simply removing a file when things might be a borderline case. Most of the time this type of issue gets sorted out without going to ANI.

The question in this case is whether the IP is knowingly ignoring your warnings and continuing to add non-free files without corresponding rationales despite the user warnings they've been receiving, and whether that disruption should lead to the account being blocked. Most IPs like this usually show up for burst of editing and then disappear, and pretty much never respond to anything posted on their user talk (they might not even be aware they have a user talk). For sure there might be some cases, where the IP is actually someone who has a regular account (perhaps they've been blocked) who's aware of the relevant policy but just doesn't like it; however, it seems pretty hard to try and establish such a thing based upon a hunch. This particular IP doesn't seem to be going back (at least not yet) and re-adding any files which might have been removed; so, maybe it might be better just to wait until the bots remove the files and then see what the IP does, If they come back and re-add the files without making any attempt to explain why, then perhaps that's one step closer to a block. If they don't come back or don't re-add the files, then blocking them would seems to be more to punish them than to prevent any further disruption. This IP made a handful of unrelated edits early in the year, stopped editing, and then reappeared a few days ago to start adding files to articles; so, perhaps they will disappear again. Anyway, they seem to have stopped for the moment and maybe nothing other then some cleaning up after them is all that is really needed at this time. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:47, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) Not sure it is a socking issue too. Not long ago, a very new user did the same: Simonnollaigcaomhanach (talk · contribs). Matthew hk (talk) 09:23, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Plagiarism

• Diotima of Mantinea (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Kristy.m (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) [Not active since 2016.]
• Antinoos69 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Article by Nancy Evans from which text might have been copied: "Diotima and Demeter as Mystagogues in Plato's Symposium"

I don't think this warrants administrative sanctions, but the less formal request has bounced [[50]] as it apparently requires the other editor to participate in the discussion [[51]] - User insists on reverting to plagiarism on article Diotima_of_Mantinea. I don't know how to make the issue any clearer to them since they don't seem interested in the article's discussion page. Not the reason why I started editing, and a poor way to stop if the editor were collaborating at all, but given the circumstances, frankly, it will do. A quick search only gives me Template:Uw-copyright-new which seems excessive. Perhaps someone they'd be more inclined to listen to could give them a nice message instead? Emelkaji (talk) 18:46, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Emelkaji: can you please show the source of the alleged copyright violation? EvergreenFir (talk) 18:48, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Here is a temporary picture [[52]]. Source is [[53]].Emelkaji (talk) 19:03, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

It's still not clear to me what the issue is. Is it plagiarism or copyright violation? They are related, but distinct, things. Plagiarism is passing off someone else's work as one's own, but copyright violation is a legal concept that protects the words (or images, music etc.) created by someone else from being reproduced without permission. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:11, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Apologies for referring to the content as "plagiarism". The issue is then copyvio, ostensibly through plagiarism of an editor [54] - though the old revision history has been cleared, it seems a first cleanup missed some of the copyvio words, and left them bereft of context. I've nonetheless rewritten the words so that they would, as far as I can tell, no longer be copyvio. I think it would be nice for the rewritten version of those words to not be reverted to the copyvio version of those words. I also think it would be nice if editors were to discuss rather than resort to rule-lawyering of this sort, however that is not the issue.Emelkaji (talk) 19:39, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

This is an obvious copyvio, I've restored Emelkaji's version for now. Paul August ☎ 19:56, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Picture has accordingly been deleted. As I will no longer be following the matter, please notify me if help is later needed with the source.Emelkaji (talk) 20:16, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

The filer did not name the other party in the dispute. I am guessing that the original copyvio is due to material added in 2016 by User:Kristy.m, a person who is no longer active. The party who was recently warring with Emelkaji was User:Antinoos69. The academic paper copied was presumably by Nancy Evans, as I show above at the top of this section. EdJohnston (talk) 20:11, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Elfboy758

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Smells like a sock, hasn't responded to any of my talk page notices and he keeps adding stuff that violates WP:CRYSTAL. I don't want to break WP:3RR so I'm leaving a note for you peeps. Whispering^(t) 02:43, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Whispering - I just wanted to apologize here to you for reverting your most recent edit / reversion of this user. I did not realize that he was violating WP:Crystal and I have reverted my own edits accordingly once I realized why you made that change. Michepman (talk) 03:43, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Michepman - It's all good. Whispering^(t) 03:45, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

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Legal threats by User:Alybood on their talk page

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Editor in question added the (claimed) name of the woman with John Entwistle on the night he died to the respective article. I AGF-reverted as unsourced and left them the "unsourced" welcome, they readded without a source, I reverted again and warned again for unsourced additions, they readded, claimed to be the person in question, and cited an ebook they wrote, I reverted one last time and said that that's not a reliable source (and am done reverting for now, WP:3RR and all that). They proceeded to make a legal threat on their talk page ("Put it baxk or faxe legal action you tirant" (sic)). I gave them the legal threats warning, they doubled down here and here (as far as I'm concerned, phrases like "defamation" and "slanderous action to my public image" suggest interest in legal action) creffett (talk) 03:51, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Did you also tell the admins that my name was previously a verified fact of this bio for over a decade or that I am the person in question? Did you tell the admins that you are defaming a previously wiki verified fact of that bio page included for over a decade by removal of the edits? And that I am a public figure and your putting this put publicli IS crossing legal territory of defamation by stating I am a liar and by the action of removal will also be considered legally defamatory. I was not vandalizing....as you put it...anyone's page but simply reinstating a previously verfied fact to a page that had been there a decade. Don't cry wolf and leave out facts like you do on the bio page you are harassing me over. And now you drag this onto a public source as to try and defame, humiliate and slander me even more? I consider this harassment on YOUR behalf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alybood (talk • contribs) 04:06, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I had a thorough and point-by-point rebuttal put together for this, but it's pretty clear that you're going to continue to call me removing an unsourced claim in an article harassment, defamation, and what have you, no matter what I say. The fact of the matter is that you've been informed of the relevant Wikipedia policies on sourcing (and legal threats) and don't seem interested in following them. There's nothing more for me to say here. creffett (talk) 04:21, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

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Proposal: Site ban for Edgar181

Discussion being held at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Indefinite community site-ban for Edgar181. –xeno^talk 18:48, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

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This will hopefully be a quickly-enacted community site ban for Edgar181, a just-desysopped admin who seriously abused multiple accounts and has been indeffed by ArbCom. A site ban enacted by the community will reinforce the ArbCom action, and raise awareness of a form of corruption that strikes at the core integrity of a volunteer website that millions of people rely on. Jusdafax (talk) 14:21, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I was wondering when someone would propose this. Pointless waste of time.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:22, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I disagree, since among other things it deals with possible further socking from a proven sockmaster. Jusdafax (talk) 14:28, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

And how precisely would it "deal" with that?--Bbb23 (talk) 14:34, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Please see my reply to the first oppose below, thanks. Jusdafax (talk) 14:45, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Have to agree with Bbb23 - ArbCom has already banned blocked Edgar181 (and in doing so, has banned the person behind the account), so I don't see any value in a CBAN other than a symbolic expression of outrage (which we've seen plenty of on the ACN talk page already). Regarding your "possible further socking" concern - any socking will be ban block evasion and will be treated as such. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 14:30, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

As far as I know, it's not a ban.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:34, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

You're correct, my mistake. Struck/updated above. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 14:45, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose process for process's sake. They're not going to be unblocked: check. Do we siteban people for propaganda purposes? Uncheck. Encourager les autres some other way. ——SN54129 14:32, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Again, I disagree and specifically with your saying I am doing this for “process’s sake.” To quote from the link in the section title, “ An editor who is site-banned is forbidden from making any edit, anywhere on Wikipedia, via any account or as an unregistered user, under any and all circumstances.” This is a useful tool. Jusdafax (talk) 14:39, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Not useful in this instance. Any new account created by Edgar would be sock-blocked. Any IP discovered, depending on how recent the edits, would probably be blocked for block evasion. A community ban would not make it easier to deal with any of this.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:47, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Unnecessary. I feel absolutely confident in saying that no administrator would unblock any of these accounts, nor any that are identified later. (Well, not unless he has another adminsock hanging around, anyway.) —Cryptic 14:41, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Agree with everyone who says this is pointless. It is already clear that Edgar181 will be blocked whenever he appears again, and adding the extra layer of a ban will not help that. Also, thanks to @Barkeep49: for assuring the extra extra bit of pointlessness by assuring this discussion drags on and gets even more repetitive. --Jayron32 15:26, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

  Not a bureaucracy and all that but WP:CBAN says these discussions must be open for 24 hours.-- P-K3 (talk) 15:30, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

In fairness I think that misunderstand what CBAN says - it can't be closed as successful sooner than 24 hours. I don't see that policy precluding closure as failure sooner than 24 hours. I'm not here to support the site ban (I saw this before it was closed) but I think people deserve a bit more than 90 minutes to weigh in. If someone wants to reclose it I'd be willing to accept that I'm in the minority. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:35, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, Sanction discussions must be kept open for at least 24 hours to allow time for comments from a broad selection of community members seems unambiguous to me, whether it's closed as successful or unsuccessful.-- P-K3 (talk) 15:56, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Pawnkingthree but that's not what the RfC which is footnoted as the basis for that language actually closed with. You're right the language at CBAN is unambiguous and should perhaps be modified to reflect what the RfC said better. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:59, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• I don't see the need for a CBAN here. This is an ArbCom block, and speaking as a former ArbCom member, I can assure you unblock requests are not taken lightly for these types of blocks. It would take a good deal of both time and good faith to reverse this block, and honestly I don't see that happening for the near future. If Edgar decides to keep socking, the CUs are already aware and will discover them I'm sure, as they do with other LTAs. RickinBaltimore (talk) 15:45, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• I personally see a need for a CBAN, just to completely rule out the possibility of ArbCom unilaterally reversing the block after a private discussion, which they (to my understanding) are currently allowed to do. There is very likely community consensus that such an unblock should not happen, but this consensus has not been formally established. An existing block, whether by ArbCom or not, should not prevent the community from formally clarifying that ArbCom alone does not have the authority to unblock the user. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:15, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose as pointless. Edgar181 is arbcom blocked and will not be unblocked without very good reason and lots of scrutiny. A formal ban will not change this. A formal ban will not help in detecting future socking, nor authorize any tools or procedures not already authorized by the arbcom finding. The only non-symbolic effect would be that if a future arbcom ever decided, with good readon, to unblock (unlikely but in theory possible) an additional hoop of removing the ban would be required. Doed it seem likely that a future arbcom would unblock here under such circumstances that a separate community review here at ANI or some simialr forum would be needed to confirm that such an unblock would be OK? DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:19, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
• Meh. He probably deserves it, but I don't see the need. He's not going to be unblocked nor allowed to return under a different name. The only ways he could come back are if 1) he manages to avoid detection, or 2) he gets a corrupt crony to cover-up his return. Neither of those outcomes would be prevented by a site ban. Lepricavark (talk) 16:28, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Support – The community, not Arbcom, should be the one to decide when, whether, and on what terms, Edgar can return to editing. I don't like the idea of a future Arbcom potentially acting on an unblock request privately, without community input. Could a future Arbcom agree to give him a clean start, and we wouldn't even know about it? Also, there was an RfC in 2018 with near-unanimous support to change "are normally kept open" to "must be kept open" (emphasis in the original) in "Sanction discussions must be kept open for at least 24 hours to allow time for comments from a broad selection of community members." and that's been a part of our WP:CBAN policy for almost two years now (until it was boldly changed just a couple hours ago). What more does the community need to do to ensure that these discussions are kept open for 24 hours? Promote it to the 6th pillar? What will it take for everyone to take on board that while you are editing, half of your colleagues sleeping, and they should be given the opportunity to weigh in on these discussions before they are closed, rather than being closed by whichever admin's patience runs out first? – Levivich 18:15, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

*:Without comment on this specific discussion, the notion that every ban discussion, even those determined to be disruptive, vindictive, vexatious, pointless, and without merit, must be kept open for some minimum time period seems unwise. If this specific one was closed too soon (and it may have been, I'm not saying it wasn't, and I'm not saying it was) then we should re-open this one on the merits, but the idea that we have to blindly obey some formulaic process at all times, without thought or consideration for the merits of the specific case at hand, runs counter to both Wikipedia's ethos and good sense. I have no problem with re-opening discussions if one has something valid to contribute about the discussion at hand (and I note, Levivich, that you raise valid points on this case, and as such, is probably evidence that this discussion was closed too hastily) however, that does not mean that we should endorse seeing every single discussion through to some pre-determined point... --Jayron32 18:24, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• Never mind. I've changed my mind. I'm re-opening it for two reasons. 1) 24 hours really isn't too short, even for a bad discussion. Giving it one day is not a big deal 2) Enough people have had substantive objections to this close. --Jayron32 18:41, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

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

The sockmaster NoCal100

In the last 24 hrs, I've uncovered two socks that NoCal100[55] used. I think there may be more, in particular among editors who called for me to be banned in a recent admin noticeboard discussion[56], which is something that both of those socks did. The pattern of editing for NoCal100's socks is to (i) run interference for anti-Muslim groups and individuals, (ii) accuse article subjects of being anti-semites (in particular, liberal Hollywood people), (iii) edit pages for Israeli and Jewish subjects, (iv) do lots of normal and minor edits to individuals involved in cinema, and (v) feign indignation and accuse others of being sockpuppets when they are accused. I literally do not have time to actively look for more of these socks, so I'm putting this here to alert others that this guy is managing multiple accounts at the same time and ruining the encyclopedia (for example, on the Gatestone Institute talk page, those two sock accounts ruined a RfC). If he has two accounts going at the same time, he has more. I'd check for editors who fit the pattern I mentioned, as well as editors who are new, jump into hotly contested topics and who happen to stumble into RfCs on subjects that they have never edited before (I have suspicions about two such users but do not have time to chase it down). Snooganssnoogans (talk) 16:16, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

When you do get the time, WP:LTA may be a good place to do to compile the evidence so we can all find it. They have a report format there that is useful for keeping things like this together. --Jayron32 16:19, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

User: Mortal Aphrodite

Mortal Aphrodite (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has a long-standing history of repeated disruptive editing on Wikipedia. Their continued removal of reliable sources, and either not replacing them for other reliable sources or simply implementing unreliable sources, not to mention, their continued inability to not stick to the source or follow manual of style policies have been on-going across multiple articles — or even remove maintenance templates without rectifying the issue. User has received multiple warnings, from myself and other editors, and their refusal to discuss with other editors or use an edit summary for their edits. Not to mention, as evident of their user page, they are using Wikipedia as some kind of forum for themselves, which is not what Wikipedia is about, and despite a warning about this, they continue to make such edits. livelikemusic talk! 17:15, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

No one is going to take this seriously without diffs. —AdamF in MO (talk) 00:12, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Apparent COI account not acknowledging issue, continuing to edit

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Thesciencenewsonline (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This account recently appeared on November 29th and began editing. Their edits so far consist almost exclusively of promoting the researcher Jack Turban. This includes creating and working on a draft about him, [57] and they have added content about his primary research to various articles. [58][59][60][61][62] Here is an especially odd example where the article already referenced Turban's research, but this account added his name to the main text for no apparent reason: [63]

I warned the account about COI. [64] After this, and after their edits had been reverted, they started putting edit requests on some of the same articles' talk pages, but still without declaring or denying any COI, and without mentioning Turban's name but still citing his research. [65][66]

Flyer22 Reborn then also warned the account about COI. [67] They still continued to work on their draft [68] and their edit requests [69][70]

At one of those, Spintendo specifically asked if they had a COI, [71] but they never addressed the issue and instead pushed to use other sources for the same POV. [72]

They've even made a couple of mainspace edits (albeit less controversial ones so far) to related articles since then. [73][74]

Most recently, they've removed the COI warnings from their talk page. [75][76]

I think it is clear that this account intends to continue to edit and make edit requests in this topic area without acknowledging their COI. So, I think it is time for the admins to examine its behavior for themselves and decide whether a COI is likely. -Crossroads- (talk) 18:00, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

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

Request copyvio rev-del

Per this edit [77] at Acadians, which was apparently taken from here at The Canadian Encyclopedia. User advised here of copyvio policy. Heiro 01:03, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

And now an IP has reinserted here. Heiro 01:35, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

And yet again, restored by the original editor with a minor attempt to reword, but still largely copyvio. Can someone with a bit go take a look at this. No response to talk page requests. Heiro 01:47, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Now at WP:3RR restoring copyvio, still no talk page response, not even sure if they know they have messages. Heiro 02:07, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I semi-protected Acadians but will leave handling the copyvio in history for someone experienced in that area. Johnuniq (talk) 09:05, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

OK, done. While there might be a whole pile of "email this or that to the WMF" to be done - and please let me know if there is - as shortcut see the Substantial similarity doctrine article about US copyright law. Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:48, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Right on. Thanks for mop usage, both of ya's. Heiro 15:01, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Editor incommunicado (for 7 years)

• Joloimpat (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Hi, I am a little reluctant to take this to ANI right now, feeling like a pre-emptive strike, or is it? The above editor has hundreds of edits over 7 years, pretty constructive and positive contributor. But he has never once communicated in any language. He has zero talk page postings. He has zero edit summaries. His user page was a bio for a dead man, so I guess not an autobio? He edits on zero other langauge Wikis, although he appears to be Filipino from his chosen topic areas. So today I am raising a minor dispute with him and it's the umpteenth time I've revered him on List of people beatified by Pope Francis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) but revert and protest is all I can do, because he won't speak and won't act on our notices. He was blocked about five years ago by ReaderofthePack (talk · contribs), and I raise the question here whether a second short block may be in order, with an "or-else". It's a shame to throw away a positive contributor, but editors who won't communicate are flirting with WP:CIR. Elizium23 (talk) 02:34, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I didn’t see the required ANI notice on his page (my apologies if you posted one and I missed it) so I have posted one on his talk page as a courtesy just in case he does opt to participate here. Michepman (talk) 04:57, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks; I posted it to the bottom two minutes after yours was posted... to the top for some reason. Fat lot of good it'll do, anyway? Elizium23 (talk) 05:14, 7 December 2019 (UTC

Hey, he may eventually break his vow of silence. Some monastic orders allow that under certain circumstances. Michepman (talk) 05:18, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

He would need to petition Abbot Jimmy for permission. Elizium23 (talk) 05:19, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

The edits are tagged "Mobile edit, Mobile app edit, iOS app edit". How do notifications appear in that case? What if they are using an old version of the app? It might not be easy for such a user to find their talk. Even if my speculation is correct, a non-collaborative editor is a net drain on the community and a block might be required. Johnuniq (talk) 09:12, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

If the 2015 block didn't have any effect, why would we think that doing it again would have a different result?

Let's try having an administrator email them. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:14, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn’t rush to a block. We don’t want to bite an otherwise constructive user unless that’s the only alternative to halt ongoing disruption. Michepman (talk) 22:46, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Sure, email away. The mobile edit tags began consistently in February 2017. When was the edit filter established? Is it possible he was using the mobile app in 2015 during the first block? What about 2013 when he began editing oblivious to such things as ClueBot? Elizium23 (talk) 23:58, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Very little is more frustrating, then an editor who refuses to communicate with other editors. It smacks of arrogance. GoodDay (talk) 00:06, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

(I think it's more WP:CIR, per Hanlon's Razor.) I've opened Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Joloimpat, sock's IP address is blocked for disruptive editing, so he's committing block evasion. Let's rush to a block. Elizium23 (talk) 00:12, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

My 14 years on 'pedia, tells me this isn't an CIR issue. It's a "I'll do whatever I want" issue. GoodDay (talk) 00:22, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

See my comment on that SPI. Any block here should come from ANI, not an SPI. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:24, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

I am surprised that a currently-blocked editor is allowed to continue. What happened to WP:Block evasion?? Elizium23 (talk) 00:26, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

The editor likely just forgot to log into their account because the mobile interface sucks and it's extremely easy to edit logged out. Editing in mainspace as an IP isn't socking unless there is intentional deception.

I get the block evasion concern, but I don't think you'll find many admins who are active in the SPI space who want to block an account with 4,000 edits based on a disruptive editing block from an IP that may be them. Most admins are block happy on IPs, and are significantly less likely to block accounts at all for stuff they would give lengthy blocks to IPs for. If there are issues, deal with it on the account that has a 4,000 edit record. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:32, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

To put his 4,000 edit record in perspective, he has thirty-eight unresponded warnings or errors listed on his page (I counted BracketBot). That's a rate of approximately 1% disruptive edits. Also his edit count is inflated due to his neglect of any "Preview" function that may or may not be available and multiple minor trivial edits each time he puts something in. Elizium23 (talk) 00:38, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

So you want to block an account with 99% good edits is what you're saying? I like the email idea better. – Levivich 03:05, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, seems ridiculous on its face. For perspective, if I had the same disruption rate, I'd have 400 warnings on my page (that's 100x what it takes for a block; Joloimpat already has been warned plenty of times over before a block would normally be imposed). Some years ago Shawn Nelson (American rampager) stole a tank and drove it through the streets of San Diego. I am not sure that the police would have stopped to consider if he only destroyed 1 in 100 cars he passed. The point was that a man in a tank is nigh unstoppable by civilian forces, and he's making his way through the city... Elizium23 (talk) 03:12, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

I see where you are coming from with the analogy, but I think it is also crucial to look at what the warnings are for. Some of the early warnings (in 2013) are indeed serious such as copyright violation but many of the later ones are not really that big of a deal and could easily be honest mistakes (formatting issues, typos, mistakes with markup). It may end up being a competence issue, but I wouldn’t look at the sheer number of warnings (incl. minor automated notices) and compare that to the wiki-equivalent a maniac plowing through Main Street in a tank. Michepman (talk) 04:24, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

As a member of the maniacs who plow through Main Street in a tank community (one of the most misunderstood groups in existence) I take offense to your analogy. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 04:50, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Well then, you can fully appreciate an unstoppable force that can't be signaled and doesn't talk back, and does what it wants to do while plowing through/over/around obstacles. Elizium23 (talk) 04:58, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Roy and Gigi Ben Artzi issue resolution

Hello, I am seeking to resolve this issue. Initially, there were two pages; One for Roy Ben Artzi and one for Gigi Ben Artzi. Both were put up for deletion recently. Since the deletion notices were put up, I've gone ahead and substantially expanded on both while providing sufficient references and citations. Since both subjects work and operate as a duo, the proposal was brought up to merge the two into Roy and Gigi Ben Artzi. I understand that creating this new article is problematic having had newly created it without the history of the previous articles. From my experience on Wikipedia, I know that it would be possible to merge the Gigi article under it, thus providing the proper history logs for the article. This is my request; If and when you can, please merge Gigi Ben Artzi under the current Roy and Gigi Ben Artzi and bring this dispute to a close. Thanks in advance. --Omer Toledano (talk) 05:47, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

• I would allow the AfDs to run their course before performing a merge. In any case, its unlikely we would merge the two and close out the AfDs with a result of merge without the AfDs running their course. Just be patient. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:41, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

CoolGood1567

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

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CoolGood1567 is very clearly a harassment only account. ― C.Syde (talk | contribs) 12:10, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Indeffed. El_C 12:35, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

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User:ThosLop

ThosLop (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Continues to add external links to local fire departments on several US city articles, for example [78]. I have left four warning on their talk page, referring this editor to WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, WP:LINKFARM, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities/US Guideline#External links, "Providing links to every commercial, educational, or other entity within the city is not appropriate for this section". Thank you. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:53, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

• Magnolia, I concur with your assessment. ThosLop is editing outside of our MOS standards and US city guidelines. I've left a message on their talk page to this effect. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:45, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Anthony Appleyard jumped the gun by moving page.

Anthony Appleyard (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I am no Wikipedia expert but this is not right. This was supposed be a non issue and supposedly doing normal changes. Anthony Appleyard jumped the gun by moving page over article event name without proper review which resulted this issue to become disruptive. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=UFC_Fight_Night%3A_Zabit_vs._Kattar&type=revision&diff=925928257&oldid=925622970 The user who requested a technical move review was very disruptive which was allowed through. The event name was officially named as UFC Fight Night: Magomedsharipov vs. Kattar ( Requested move 25 October 2019 ) after reviewing a source that been used for a decade in these UFC event wiki pages. https://www.ufc.com/event/ufc-fight-night-november-9-2019

The source that been used from same website for decade to determinate the event name no questions asked.

• https://www.ufc.com/event/ufc-fight-night-october-26-2019 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFC_Fight_Night:_Maia_vs._Askren)
• https://www.ufc.com/event/ufc-fight-night-boston-2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFC_Fight_Night:_McGregor_vs._Siver)
• https://www.ufc.com/event/FOX7#/fight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_in_UFC#UFC_on_FX:_Belfort_vs._Bisping)

Anthony Appleyard should not be handling any move related requested for a long while. Regice2020 (talk) 21:51, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

And why bring an issue that has been discussed elsewhere, with no consensus being reached, here? All you are doing by this is making many editors even more exasperated by UFC articles than they already are. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:05, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Most of those editors aren't administrators and aren't involved in ANI discussions, so they have no business being here in the first place. This is the place to discuss disruptive behaviors. 2600:1003:B843:7915:C405:89D6:FBD2:F1C (talk) 22:44, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I have no idea who you mean by "most of those editors", but discussions on Wikipedia are open to anyone, administrators or not. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:56, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

• @Phil Bridger and Regice2020: The "elsewhere" link points to Talk:UFC Fight Night: Zabit vs. Kattar#Requested move 13 November 2019. At 14:20, 15 November 2019 (see this diff) I moved page Talk:UFC Fight Night: Magomedsharipov vs. Kattar to Talk:UFC Fight Night: Zabit vs. Kattar: Requested by User:29cwcst at WP:RM/TR: because UFC Fight Night: Zabit vs. Kattar is the actual name of the event, as shown on the official poster." And after 10 days of discussion, the page has settled down at UFC Fight Night: Zabit vs. Kattar anyway. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:51, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

The move was skipped through. (ufc.com or ufc.com/events( website source that been used for years and years in these type UFC Events articles always to decide correct event name of the event on the wiki article no questions ask). Its not "anyway".The consensus on October 2019 was to double confirm the official event name. Less than 30 days - The chaotic November 13, 2019 consensus would not been requested if page remained official event name which is UFC Fight Night: Magomedsharipov vs. Kattar

@Phil Bridger: This was really no issue if the name remained Magomedsharipov vs. Kattar, and ufc wiki users are making normal minor changes. Now it became issue when it was suddenly changed away from the official event name less than 30 days of the last request move. Regice2020 (talk) 23:33, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

If a technical request for an undiscussed move is made and fulfilled but then quickly disputed, the move should be reverted as with all undiscussed moves while discussion goes on as it's clearly not the stable title. It could have been listed in the "Requests to revert undiscussed moves" section and that should have been fulfilled. I'm not sure if this actually happened. Regardless since there was an ongoing discussion which was just recently closed as no consensus, I don't think the new title can be considered the stable title. So it should still be reverted as an undiscussed move. However, it would have been better to approach Anthony Appleyard about this directly explaining the reasoning and without unnecessary accusations. It's rare that an admin who simply fulfills a technical request would be at fault IMO and even if a mistake was made here, I'm not sure this means they shouldn't make moves in the future. If all this has been politely explained to Anthony Appleyard and they refused to revert their move, I would have more concerns but I see no diffs to establish that. Nil Einne (talk) 06:38, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Over-tagging by PopularMusicEditor

• PopularMusicEditor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 2601:600:8280:58F0:C9D2:97F0:6FDE:C98E (talk · contribs · (/64) · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

I posted on PopularMusicEditor's talk page about their excessive use of the {{citation needed}} template after adding 39 of them to one article. I then pinged them again after they continued doing it, assuming they just didn't see the first message. After I pinged them they signed out and started editing. I gave them {{uw-login}} because it was pretty obvious it's the same person. They've since blanked their talk page, so at this point they're just ignoring the messages. Might be time for some admin intervention (but I'm not posting on AIV because I'm not sure it's necessarily vandalism). – Frood (talk) 04:52, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

I assume the article you are referring to is 2000s in music? If so, I'd have to suggest that drawing attention to the ridiculous amount of unsourced opinionating in that article (which has been tagged as an essay since 2010) was a good thing. 86.143.231.214 (talk) 07:12, 8 December 2019 (UTC)