User talk:Abovfold

Final warning for uploading copyrighted images that do not fall under fair use criteria

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you disrupt Wikipedia. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 04:38, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ohnoitsjamie Why is this not fair use? Final warning? Utkin is a public figure intimately important to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is a uniquely valuable photo with media coverage discussing the photo itself. It is a fine candidate for fair use. I edited it and waited for its resolution to be reduced to degrade the image and keep it minimal, and I provided reasons to satisfy each section. Abovfold (talk) 04:47, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You will be blocked if you upload it again. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 04:48, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You're being obstructionist. Why did you take this action? Abovfold (talk) 04:49, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Because you obviously haven't read Wikipedia:Non-free_content#Unacceptable_use. I'm not discussing it further here. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 04:56, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And a new picture taken by anyone but the man himself wouldn't show anyone the tattoos concealed under his clothes, hence why this photo has news articles written about it which I linked in my rationale, which met the requirements of section eight just above that. And you could choose not to be rude, but I know its how all senior editors here treat people. It turns people off and its killing this platform. Abovfold (talk) 05:10, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If I may provide a third (or rather fourth) opinion, I understand both the fair-use claim and its rejection. I don't yet entirely understand the deletion, which should probably have been delayed per WP:F7; the chosen criterion F9 is about "obviously non-free images (...) that are not claimed by the uploader to be fair use", both of which is not the case, as it's neither obvious nor not claimed to be fair use.

The main concern I personally see with your behavior, Abovfold, is that you have repeatedly removed a speedy deletion tag from your own upload, which is something "the creator of a page may not" do; see the introduction of WP:CSD. The template Template:Di-disputed non-free use rationale specifically told you so. I'm also concerned by your statement "laughed out in two wikipedia forums" in one of your edit summaries there, which rings alarm bells regarding off-wiki harassment as it happens too often in such venues. The place to find a consensus about this is on Wikipedia, probably at WP:FFD, without off-wiki canvassing or whatever else happens when people are amused about Wikipedia's discussions from the outside.

I'm not concerned about the uploading itself. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 09:05, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

October 2022

Your edit to Chen Wenqing has been removed in whole or in part, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously, and persistent violators of our copyright policy will be blocked from editing. See Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources for more information. — Diannaa (talk) 23:26, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Diannaa: You removed text I had in properly attributed quotes, including lines that are very important to get precisely right in a biography of a living person like “arrests and purges accelerated rapidly under [the subject of the BLP]”) and, in attempting to defend copyright, your edit summary pointed to an illegal digital copy of the complete text of the book I purchased legally in print. I’d urge you to use a bit more restraint as you lock out previous edits so there can be no modification or repairs of this article I’ve built from nearly scratch across hundreds of edits, and perhaps reflect on the fact that in embedding that link to a free copy of one of the seminal texts on the topic of the page you have undoubtably done more to damage the commercial opportunities of copyright holder than the few sentences I included in the article did. Cheers Abovfold (talk) 12:49, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The contents of the book had actually been published in two different locations online. That is beside the point, because it matches the content of the copyright book from which you copied. Please don't add copyright material to Wikipedia. — Diannaa (talk) 13:54, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Many thanks for your creation of 29th Fighter Division, and, helpfully, your updates on the divisions -> brigades changeover!! Buckshot06 (talk) 09:17, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Warning

Purposely removing Wikipeida maintainance template is a vandalism. So stop your vandal. It has nothing to do with censorship.EditQ (talk) 12:48, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That’s pretty deceitful. You added a citation needed template after removing the two citations attached. That whole edit was reverted because you were attempting to edit war your viewpoint and delete dissent. I’m not sure why you’re trying to conceal the relationship between this school and the MSS spy agency, but I have asked for citations before and you have never chosen to provide any. - Abovfold (talk) 16:11, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Re 'false claim of vandalism'

Greetings. I read your edit on my talk page re alleged 'false calim of vandalism'; first, as you well know, I didn't claim you engaged in vandalism, only that you're approaching vandal territory. There is a difference. Nevertheless, I did editorially lose my cool at you a bit when I wrote that and I regret that (a little).

But you should understand that what you're doing now (December 2023) on the Type 093 submarine page is a bit sneaky to say the least. There is currently no physical or circumstantial evidence of a fatal accident involving type 093 having occurred in August 2023, but you went ahead and added text from a new reference source suggesting there's a significant possibility for such an accident and that actual evidence may yet emerge; what's worse, you extracted a quoted remark from the source, an article by Radio Free Asia, that would support your narrative when the entire tenor of the article in question is at best non-committal regarding the reality of such an accident occurring in the manner alleged. In fact, one of the US analysts (former submariner) quoted by that same article explicitly questioned the possibility of such an accidental occurence in the manner alleged while another cast doubts regarding the credibility of the Taiwanese sources for the alleged accident. In sum, you mangled the tenor of the source article in order to fit your own narrative and desire.

Further, the one quy quoted by the RFA article that you decided to use for your edits to the Wiki article (an individual affiliated with a Taiwanese government-funded org.) claims secret sources for the alleged accident and offers the 'failure' by the Chinese government and PLAN to publicly present the boat's captain as some evidence in support of the veracity of his claim. This is absolutely ridiculous; even apart from faulting the Chinese for not proving a negative. Consider the following scenario: someone makes a (patently false) claim on social media, later picked up by others, that the XO of SSN-23 was killed in a dispute involving firearms and a gay-love-triangle on the boat during a recent deployment (with some added false juicy details) based on secret sources, then some 'top' think tank guy in Iran picks up on it and offers the non-observation of the XO in public as tending to support the original (false) claim. What would be the public reaction to this? It'd be laughed out of the room by everyone: an Iranian asking the USN to publicly display a senior member of the command crew on a nuclear attack submarine in order to disprove social media rumors. What you did (is doing) on the Type 093 submarine Wiki page is to say that this type of nonsensical statement, by an adult who should know better, constitutes legitimate evidence that opinions differ regarding the reality of the alleged killing and so should be reported on an encyclopedia platform. You see why my (editorial) blood temporarily boiled over.

Now to be fair, if real physical or circumstantial evidence emerge for an accident on submarine 417 in August 2023 that killed the entire crew, then we should immeidately place it on the submarine's Wiki page; but until then, innuendos based on social media and tabloid rumors should have no place there

Looking at your editorial history, I do not hope to convince you to hold off editing the Type 093 submarine page with respect to the allged August incident. You. my friend, appears to me as an ideologically motivated US-NatSec propagandist. There's nothing wrong with that, there are plenty of Chinese propagandists, Russian propagandists, Fascist propagandists out there all editing Wikipedia, but I don't trust any of them, or you, to be consistently fair-minded. So if I see edits that mangle the source material (even when the source material itself is arguably non-neutral) I will try to do something about it. In the case of Type 093 submarine I'll give it a couple of days before revisiting so that I will not edit in anger.

Good day, and cheers. Spotty's Friend (talk) 23:34, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On my views

Bit excessive. Every content addition to Wikipedia has a narrative value. I orient my time toward adding encyclopedic material about Chinese influence efforts because I embrace the values that underpin Wikipedia - free expression and truth without government control - and oppose that which Chinese Communist Party stands for. To bastardize John McCain: "our values are our interests and our interests are our values." Damn me as a tool of the great satan if you like, but your I assume self-hating American leftist "everyone I disagree with is a propagandist" viewpoint is no less ideological. I hope you appreciate that your gay love triangle submarine homicide hypothetical would face far more objective scrutiny in the west with a free press versus China, and thus our analytic approach towards such claims between the two nations should differ.

On the article

My edits to this article really have nothing to do with my views. To me this is is just classic cold war intrigue in the early years of Cold War II.

What we know:

Both PRC and Taiwan governments say nothing happened.
- Are the Chinese saving face? Are the Taiwanese trying to conceal how good their submarine detection systems are? Who knows.
Rumors were inconsistent, but cleaved to an identifiable trend that has experts saying "that's not quite right but it sounds close to something that could have happened" while some say the likelihood remains relatively low.
Leader of prominent think tank with an arms length affiliation to Taiwan's military says something did happen.
Leader of the fleet in question really was removed from his post soon after.
The submarine really hasn't reappeared, despite how closely Chinese ports are watched.
- These subs, while nuclear, do have to restock with supplies and change crews at regular intervals every few months.
- Families of the dead haven't come forward, but of course could have been bribed or threatened into silence as was Soviet tradition.
- This isn't how China normally operates. I remember when rumors swirled about MSS Vice Minister Dong Jingwei defecting to the US with COVID secrets, the Chinese stuck him on stage at some CPPCC event within days to end the rumors.
Expert says rumors have a solid enough foundation now to evaluate claims and draw a conclusion in the future as evidence emerges.

Me framing it as "wait it out" is not the ideological attempt to tear down the CCP you purport it to be. Its not sneaky, its my interpretation of the relevant facts that I think best inform the reader. Its a tight single paragraph that says something may have happened and things seem off but nobody is sure. I think that is the view best supported by available information, and as a small tight paragraph best summarizes the potential incident in a way that isn't an undue imposition on the page.

On your edits

I would suggest there are some problems with your writing style, it is not in keeping with the manual of style, your headings are way too long and incorporate inappropriate parentheticals. Your long and rambling paragraphs are undue weight and end up filled with unacceptable POV pushing and poorly integrated quotations. You use brackets and parentheses haphazardly, and incorrectly use curved quotation marks ” in lieu of required vertical " marks. You criticize me for establishing a narrative through my citations but you misunderstand that producing a narrative mediated by citations is the core of authoritative encyclopedic content, and what makes it read like a smoothly integrated text in Wikipedia's voice rather than a dumping ground of quotes from reliable sources. The quality, verifiability, and authoritativeness of the narrative and the citations which underpin it is the space for negotiation, not the fact that it exists. I suggest you may need reassess your writing style.

– Abovfold (talk) 04:54, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ha Ha! you are absolutely right about my writing style, dear above the fold! Just doing stuff on the fly and not taking the time to consult the Wikipedia 'manual of style', or the proper key locations on my keyboard for that matter. On the other hand, it seems to me that your editing style (at least in the case of the 093 edit, [multiple parenthesis again! so ugly!]) is all form without substance. To wit:

social media rumor --> tabloid article with secret source --> picked up as a second hand article (i.e. hearsay) by an alleged reputable source (The Times) --> commented on by a rando (characterized by suspect source as a significant figure from a top think tank with an 'arms-length' relationship to the DPP) --> further comments by reputable US analysts --> slap some authoritative style on that pig along with some innuendos and qualifiers --> put it into the Wiki b/c it appears encyclopedic (of course, it's possible you may have access to classified US mil sources not available to the rest of us in which case I'd be wrong)

this to me is not working in the interest of turth, it is the epitome of one type of an influence operation which you profess to detest so much (or perhaps you only dislike influence operations by definitionally evil organizations); I'm sorry you seem to have internalized the subtle propaganda we all received since grade school (starting from Betsy Ross and Washingon's apple tree and on and on). For this reason, I really should give you some slack since you may not even realize you're engaging in propaganda yourself; why, you seem so sure of yourself that you'd even paraphrase John McCain, an otherwise honourable man who despite helping to pass legistlation banning the use of torture by the armed forces nevertheless grandfathered out from punishment everyone who engaged in waterboarding and electroshock interrogation during the Second Iraq War (he's flawed, but that just make him no different than the likes of John Calhoun, and the rest of us).

By the way, this western free press that you speak of appears to be substantially less free in its current coverage of the Ukraine and Israeli wars when compared to its past coverage of Vietnam, Nicaraguan revolution and US-sponsored Contras, Al-Qaeda and Mujahedeen resistance in Soviet Afghanistan, and the Iraq Wars, so its prospective performance with respect to any future or hypothetical incident is at best suspect and speculative.

I ton't know about you but I'm not self-hating (despite making many mistakes, darn it parenthesis, but they feel so right!), nor am I GOP, nor DEM, nor CCP, nor NSDAP, nor Labour, nor Tory, nor LibDem etc; just someone sitting at home who's interested in space flight in general and Chinese space flight in particular b/c of the great strides they've been making in this area. But the one thing that I can say from where I'm sitting is that, on the issue of Chinese and US influence operations, the latter is sophisticated and often unperceptible while the former is usually quite transparent (probably reflective of the great disparity in wealth between the two nations during most of the past century) and because of this we here in the States easily fall into the classic Matthew 7:3 speck-versus-beam-in-eye hyprocrisy problem.

I'd love to continue with this type of banter if I have the time, but alas, that is not the case, so pardon me for nnot continuing with this

Cheers, and happy new year! Spotty's Friend (talk) 00:37, 31 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hubei State Security Bureau

Thanks for your excellent work on the regional state security bureaus. With all the recent attention on the Hubei State Security Bureau, do you think it yet merits its own article? - Amigao (talk) 22:25, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Amigao Ha thanks. I would like them all to have their own, and certainly this weeks US OFAC/UK HM Treasury action probably justifies it. I’ve been compiling information about each of them at User:Abovfold/Sandbox/Organizational Structure of the Ministry of State Security, but I just haven’t had any free time to do substantial writing lately. My citations on that page from Intrusion Truth have a lot of detail on the Hubei SSD. If you want to create the page, go for it. Hubei SSD, if I recall, is one of the few that has photos of the HQ on the Commons. – Abovfold (talk) 00:23, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]