User talk:Awilley
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Your opinion on my AE action
I completely disagree. The page was protected while the editor was online, they refused to discuss their edits on the talk page during the protection and then jumped to casting aspersions in their edit summary of a strict 1RR violation. I'm not sure if you're aware of how 1RR is applied, as I can see you aren't the most active administrator we have here, but it specifically does not require "talk page warnings" for one very big reason: you can pull off way more than 2 reverts in the time such a message is being typed out, and such a requirement has always been looked at as "wikilawyering" and an opening for gaming of the system. That aside, they had already been warned just last month on their talk page regarding the WP:AC/DS system, as is required if the editnotice hadn't been there (of course that was too). On top of all of that, I even pinged the user at the talk page of the article with a very clear message. If you find that to not be enough warning before taking action, then I'm not quite sure you have ever once in your time here enforced an arbitration ruling the way it is written in their policy to do so. If you wish to discuss this further I'm all ears, but as of yet you've made a very poor argument that seems to be based in your lack of experience yet you were fine with verbally chopping my head off without ever doing research first. I don't take kindly to that type of behavior, especially from someone who is an administrator. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:18, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
- @Coffee: I apologize again for my tone in that post. It was written in haste and annoyance, and I definitely should have done that thing where I sit on it for a few hours before submitting. My problem with your actions was not that the block was unjustified, but that it was avoidable. I don't actually expect to be able to convince you to change your AE approach, but since I've got your ear let me see if I can't make a few points. Specific to the current case:
- 1. It isn't clear to me that User:Anthony22 saw that the page had been protected. There was a gap in their editing from 3:10 to 13:39 (presumably for sleep and stuff). The protection lasted from 8:00 to 14:00, so while it technically expired while the user was active they would have had to either try to edit the page itself during the 21 minutes of overlap or examine the page's history.
- 2. I don't consider a "ping" sufficient notification for "Hey if you do this I will block you" for the same reasons that pings are not sufficient to notify someone that they are being discussed at WP:ANI.
- And a couple more general points:
- A. Blocks are blunt tools, and you can often get better results with less collateral damage using other methods. (*insert scalpel sledgehammer analogy*) AC/DS in particular puts a lot of handy tools in your box.
- B. I believe that you will get the better results from users when you give them a clear choice and then allow them to choose to modify their behavior. There is something powerful about having somebody make a commitment of their own rather than having one imposed on them by force. One way I've done this in the past is to approach the user on their talk page with something similar to the following:
They will often come up with something a little less harsh than #3, and it's more effective at modifying their behavior than if I had simply blocked them.Hey <username>, <behavior x> (<supply diffs>) is a problem, and it's happened repeatedly despite warnings. At this point you have the following options: 1: I block you for <x number of days>. 2: I impose a topic ban from <problem area> for <x number of months>. 3: You take a "voluntary" break from <problem area> for <x number of months> and limit yourself to 1RR elsewhere. 4: You come up with your own solution sufficient to convince me that <behavior x> won't happen again.
- Note that all of the above only applies to long-term productive editors... if you're dealing with vandals, trolls, people being disruptive to make a point, POV warriors, etc., block away by all means.
- Anyway, I realize this isn't your style, and I don't expect you to change your style based on my inexperience, but I do hope you'll think about it. And I do think the page protection was a step in the right direction, even if it didn't work quite as intended in this particular instance. ~Awilley (talk) 04:53, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
- I highly appreciate the change of tone. It severely helps me to be able to understand where you were coming from, but to that end I actually think we both agree: this block didn't need to happen. I just think where we disagree is that I place the onus for why it happened on the user who is now blocked, whereas you appear to be stating that administrators are at fault for users not following Arbitration rulings they are well aware of. I am given quite a bit of room on what to do with these things, but this user had a history of not responding to warnings (look at their talk page) and poor communication. So my intuition says that a short 24 hour block is the best way. Perhaps that's because I handle things a bit more firmly than some of my colleagues (such as yourself) but that's likely because of my military background. I have been pulling away from the old "letter of the law" enforcement however, and that is what I tried to do today with Anthony. It didn't necessarily work as I had hoped, but I feel they still had an ample chance to not screw up again, but chose to anyway. You seem to see that differently based soely on the fact that I used a ping, but you may be forgetting that pings and talk-page messages function exactly the same now in MediaWiki, except that they're on different pages (and you can allow yourself to customize notification settings for both). I literally cannot tell the difference between them when I receive one or the other, besides the page link/specific notification message itself. As such, I figured trying to start the discussion on the article talk page rather than the user talk page would be best. Why? Because it would hopefully begin a thread between the two users who I both pinged, regarding the article content itself rather than comments on editor behavior (which are allowed at user talkpages but not article talkpages). I do wish to try to find new and better ways to get people to want to follow the policies on the site intrinsically, but I currently also still feel there are times for strict consequences for refusal to obey policy: specifically when dealing with Arbitration Enforcement (a place with little gray area). I have in the past attempted 24 hour topic bans instead of blocks... but I literally have had more complaints about those actions than anything else, so at a point you stop sticking your head out when you think an axe is waiting right outside. I am still pondering on ways to lessen the weight of the hammers I choose however, so don't think all of your thoughts here are going to be discarded by me or whatnot. I still respect you as a colleague even if I originally wanted to make it clear that I didn't appreciate being told off out of the blue.
— Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 05:19, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks, I appreciate the consideration and your response. Your experience with pings may be different than mine. I get the little red bell for pings, reverts, and talk page messages, and I don't always check them right away. For talk page messages I also get a prominent orange notification in the toolbar, and I do check that when I see it. (Apparently that can be turned off as well. I learned something today.)
- I'm certainly not saying that you, not Anthony22, were solely responsible for the block. But I wouldn't say the opposite either. Both of you had choices along the way.
- Re "gray area" I think AE actually has more of it than other areas on the wiki. It includes the messiest topics where most of the editors are entrenched and admins are deputized to enforce whatever the heck they want, including weird/confusing rules like "if you make a change to the article that has been reversed before without getting consensus then you get blocked" (paraphrasing). How far back do you look in the history to see whether something has been reversed before? How old does something need to be before it becomes status quo? If you looked closely enough at the edits and interpreted the rule narrowly enough you could almost block anybody who edits. And that can be helpful if you're blocking experienced POV warriors skilled in "borderline" behavior, but at the same time I believe a conscientious admin should try to help WP:WikiGnomes avoid getting trampled in the process. I'm not exactly saying that I hold gnomes to a different standard of behavior than POV warriors, but I do go out of my way more to make sure they understand those standards, and that includes going beyond the standard AE templates.
- Re the 24 hour topic bans, I actually like the idea in principle as sort of a softblock against specific pages, but I think part of the reason you were getting complaints was that they were perceived as an excuse to rack up negative marks against users on the DS logging page, perhaps as ammunition/rationale for longer blocks and topic bans later on. I think that's part of the reason we are discouraged from recording warnings in the block log via very short blocks. Slightly related to that, somewhere I got the impression that you also log your warnings in the DS log. I suppose that could be helpful if you really want to impress upon a user that something is a very serious warning, but it seems overkill to me in most circumstances. A sternly worded and specific warning from an admin is not something most editors take lightly, logged or not. Back to the 24-hour topic ban, a creative workaround might be a "warning" similar to my example above that carefully says "either you take a break from this topic or I will issue a topic ban that forces you to take a break." Here's an example where I did something similar to a user, who if I remember correctly recently took you to AN/I over one of the 24-hour topic bans. This was back in November 2016, and while the exercise was apparently lacking in long-term effects, this normally revert-happy user voluntarily followed 1RR in American Politics for 3 months during a politically heated season. And there was zero blowback. Anyway, thanks again for listening to my ramblings. ~Awilley (talk) 07:21, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
- I highly appreciate the change of tone. It severely helps me to be able to understand where you were coming from, but to that end I actually think we both agree: this block didn't need to happen. I just think where we disagree is that I place the onus for why it happened on the user who is now blocked, whereas you appear to be stating that administrators are at fault for users not following Arbitration rulings they are well aware of. I am given quite a bit of room on what to do with these things, but this user had a history of not responding to warnings (look at their talk page) and poor communication. So my intuition says that a short 24 hour block is the best way. Perhaps that's because I handle things a bit more firmly than some of my colleagues (such as yourself) but that's likely because of my military background. I have been pulling away from the old "letter of the law" enforcement however, and that is what I tried to do today with Anthony. It didn't necessarily work as I had hoped, but I feel they still had an ample chance to not screw up again, but chose to anyway. You seem to see that differently based soely on the fact that I used a ping, but you may be forgetting that pings and talk-page messages function exactly the same now in MediaWiki, except that they're on different pages (and you can allow yourself to customize notification settings for both). I literally cannot tell the difference between them when I receive one or the other, besides the page link/specific notification message itself. As such, I figured trying to start the discussion on the article talk page rather than the user talk page would be best. Why? Because it would hopefully begin a thread between the two users who I both pinged, regarding the article content itself rather than comments on editor behavior (which are allowed at user talkpages but not article talkpages). I do wish to try to find new and better ways to get people to want to follow the policies on the site intrinsically, but I currently also still feel there are times for strict consequences for refusal to obey policy: specifically when dealing with Arbitration Enforcement (a place with little gray area). I have in the past attempted 24 hour topic bans instead of blocks... but I literally have had more complaints about those actions than anything else, so at a point you stop sticking your head out when you think an axe is waiting right outside. I am still pondering on ways to lessen the weight of the hammers I choose however, so don't think all of your thoughts here are going to be discarded by me or whatnot. I still respect you as a colleague even if I originally wanted to make it clear that I didn't appreciate being told off out of the blue.
Administrators' newsletter – February 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2018).
Administrator changes
None
Blurpeace • Dana boomer • Deltabeignet • Denelson83 • Grandiose • Salvidrim! • Ymblanter
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC has closed with a consensus that candidates at WP:RFA must disclose whether they have ever edited for pay and that administrators may never use administrative tools as part of any paid editing activity, except when they are acting as a Wikipedian-in-Residence or when the payment is made by the Wikimedia Foundation or an affiliate of the WMF.
- Editors responding to threats of harm can now contact the Wikimedia Foundation's emergency address by using Special:EmailUser/Emergency. If you don't have email enabled on Wikipedia, directly contacting the emergency address using your own email client remains an option.
Technical news
- A tag will now be automatically applied to edits that blank a page, turn a page into a redirect, remove/replace almost all content in a page, undo an edit, or rollback an edit. These edits were previously denoted solely by automatic edit summaries.
Arbitration
- The Arbitration Committee has enacted a change to the discretionary sanctions procedure which requires administrators to add a standardized editnotice when placing page restrictions. Editors cannot be sanctioned for violations of page restrictions if this editnotice was not in place at the time of the violation.
Notification
Kindly check out discussion at User talk:Dlohcierekim#Ayurveda. Anmolbhat (talk) 11:57, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
11 years of editing, today.
|
Hey, Awilley. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Chris Troutman (talk) 21:00, 10 February 2018 (UTC) |
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Administrators' newsletter – March 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2018).
Administrator changes
- Lourdes†
- AngelOfSadness • Bhadani • Chris 73 • Coren • Friday • Midom • Mike V
- † Lourdes has requested that her admin rights be temporarily removed, pending her return from travel.
Guideline and policy news
- The autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) is scheduled to end on 14 March 2018. The results of the research collected can be read on Meta Wiki.
- Community ban discussions must now stay open for at least 24 hours prior to being closed.
- A change to the administrator inactivity policy has been proposed. Under the proposal, if an administrator has not used their admin tools for a period of five years and is subsequently desysopped for inactivity, the administrator would have to file a new RfA in order to regain the tools.
- A change to the banning policy has been proposed which would specify conditions under which a repeat sockmaster may be considered de facto banned, reducing the need to start a community ban discussion for these users.
Technical news
- CheckUsers are now able to view private data such as IP addresses from the edit filter log, e.g. when the filter prevents a user from creating an account. Previously, this information was unavailable to CheckUsers because access to it could not be logged.
- The edit filter has a new feature
contains_allthat edit filter managers may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.
Miscellaneous
- Following the 2018 Steward elections, the following users are our new stewards: -revi, Green Giant, Rxy, There'sNoTime, علاء.
Obituaries
- Bhadani (Gangadhar Bhadani) passed away on 8 February 2018. Bhadani joined Wikipedia in March 2005 and became an administrator in September 2005. While he was active, Bhadani was regarded as one of the most prolific Wikipedians from India.
Administrators' newsletter – April 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2018).
Administrator changes
- 331dot • Cordless Larry • ClueBot NG
- Gogo Dodo • Pb30 • Sebastiankessel • Seicer • SoLando
Guideline and policy news
- Administrators who have been desysopped due to inactivity are now required to have performed at least one (logged) administrative action in the past 5 years in order to qualify for a resysop without going through a new RfA.
- Editors who have been found to have engaged in sockpuppetry on at least two occasions after an initial indefinite block, for whatever reason, are now automatically considered banned by the community without the need to start a ban discussion.
- The notability guideline for organizations and companies has been substantially rewritten following the closure of this request for comment. Among the changes, the guideline more clearly defines the sourcing requirements needed for organizations and companies to be considered notable.
- The six-month autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) ended on 14 March 2018. The post-trial research report has been published. A request for comment is now underway to determine whether the restrictions from ACTRIAL should be implemented permanently.
Technical news
- There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.
Arbitration
- The Arbitration Committee is considering a change to the discretionary sanctions procedures which would require an editor to appeal a sanction to the community at WP:AE or WP:AN prior to appealing directly to the Arbitration Committee at WP:ARCA.
Miscellaneous
- A discussion has closed which concluded that administrators are not required to enable email, though many editors suggested doing so as a matter of best practice.
- The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team has released the Interaction Timeline. This shows a chronologic history for two users on pages where they have both made edits, which may be helpful in identifying sockpuppetry and investigating editing disputes.
Entre nous
I know you were trying to help here [1], and you did, but perhaps the phrase "... allow him to rest in peace"
was not the best choice of words? - MrX 🖋 17:05, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- I meant it literally (lay off and let him take his wikibreak) and figuratively (stop WP:GRAVEDANCING). I hope there wasn't an alternate connotation related to life circumstances I'm not aware of. In any case thank you for closing the thread. ~Awilley (talk) 19:56, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2018).
Administrator changes
- None
- Chochopk • Coffee • Gryffindor • Jimp • Knowledge Seeker • Lankiveil • Peridon • Rjd0060
Guideline and policy news
- The ability to create articles directly in mainspace is now indefinitely restricted to autoconfirmed users.
- A proposal is being discussed which would create a new "event coordinator" right that would allow users to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit.
Technical news
- AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new
equals_to_anyfunction can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability to see which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access to Logstash. - When blocking anonymous users, a cookie will be applied that reloads the block if the user changes their IP. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. This currently only occurs when hard-blocking accounts.
- The block notice shown on mobile will soon be more informative and point users to a help page on how to request an unblock, just as it currently does on desktop.
- There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.
- AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new
Arbitration
- The Arbitration Committee is seeking additional clerks to help with the arbitration process.
Obituaries
- Lankiveil (Craig Franklin) passed away in mid-April. Lankiveil joined Wikipedia on 12 August 2004 and became an administrator on 31 August 2008. During his time with the Wikimedia community, Lankiveil served as an oversighter for the English Wikipedia and as president of Wikimedia Australia.
A drive-by thank you
My apologies for being overly descriptive with the hatting reasons, and thank you for making it better. I have since created a little list of appropriate reasons to use in the future. Also thank you for contributing with properly weighed and measured reasoning...I found it both refreshing and a bit of a relief. Happy editing! Atsme📞📧 18:54, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
I have to ask...
From my perspective, your comment appears to sympathize/excuse bad behavior but quite frankly, this edit did not lift me to higher ground, much less equal ground. Last time I checked, I didn't have any balls...and that includes the kind one juggles, hits with a baseball bat, throws through a hoop, or putts...and I have no "busybody crew"...I only see injustices and imbalance...so what about my feelings, or don't they count? Atsme📞📧 22:19, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
- If I correctly understand what you're asking, no I do not condone MrX's outburst. ~Awilley (talk) 00:18, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
- I've just noticed your block of Factchecker while the AE concerning their behavior was open. I wish you would have commented there. This gives me the impression that the standards are not equally enforced
, given your lenience regarding the issue just above and your words to SPECIFICO after their AE was recently closed. I do, however, appreciate your attempts to help administrate the topic area. Mr Ernie (talk) 18:14, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- Sure, I can comment there. The big difference in my mind between the Specifico and Factchecker cases was that Specifico showed a recognition of what the problem was and made a commitment to fix it. Factchecker seems to have no awareness that their behavior is problematic and is externalizing all the blame. ~Awilley (talk) 18:31, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- Ernie, I'm hoping you will revise your reference to me which first of all is irrelevant Whataboutism since you could have documented your concerns about Awilley's block here without referring to a different time place and set of facts AND which secondly just puts on the record some sort of insinuation that AE made the wrong move in not blocking me or that some real real bad stuff happened with SPECIFICO. Somebody someday will stumble on this page and that diff and it can prejudice them against me or for that matter against Awilley in a way that our WP:ASPERSIONS policy is intended to prevent. So, since you and I have always gotten along fine I hope you'll consider revising or striking the reference to yours truly. Thanks SPECIFICO talk 18:40, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
More bile during block
It continues, even after the block has started. He hasn't even read, and fully absorbed, my statement at AE, or, worse yet, believed it and changed his mind about me. Now even a topic ban isn't enough. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 20:05, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- Your best move here is to try to disengage from the user as much as possible. They already have a 1-way topic ban. Trust the community to enforce that and keep in mind that personal attacks are more harmful to the attacker than the attacked and that stridently defending yourself is unnecessary and may actually hurt your own credibility. That's been my observation at least. ~Awilley (talk) 20:38, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- Good advice. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 20:42, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
Re: comment
Hi, Awilley. I'm one of those old-fashioned Wikipedia editors who generally respond to people on their pages, not my own, but feel free to respond to this in either page. Also, I wanted to clarify that my topic ban is "Donald Trump, broadly construed," and not all American politics since 1932 or anything like that. I didn't respond directly to all of the admins who commented on my page, either, in this case, but I did read and heed the advice. Anyway, I don't want to get into an argument with you, but I think the admin oversight of these articles has been disgraceful, and frankly, my intervention (in this case, as an editor opining on the talk page) was sorely needed. Obviously, I didn't go about it in the right way. That being said, I stand by the point that Wikipedia policy is being disregarded and made a mockery of on these articles. Furthermore, individuals assisting in the whitewashing campaign of Trump articles are endangering our collaborative editing process and our neutral point of view. I am not the first admin who has raised these warnings. Also, please note that my topic ban does not preclude my own future case filings to address POV pushing, admin failure, COI, etc., so not being able to edit the Trump article will give me time to do that. Finally, I agree with SPECIFICO regarding some of your own comments, behavior, and demeanor. I am an old school WP:ROUGE admin but I am not acting as an involved unbiased admin. I question the current admin oversight of these articles as ignoring violation of policy, and it's not "both sides are good people." Andrevan@ 18:17, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- 👆 That is the problem you are unable to see. You just mentioned "individuals assisting in the whitewashing campaign of Trump articles". That was the problem before. Now it's a violation of your topic ban and will lead to blocks on your account. I'm trying to help you with your blind spot. I'm rushing out the door right now so I can't reply in full, but I'm interested in having a conversation with you. I'm the type who likes to have conversations in one place instead of spreading them across multiple pages, so let's do it here. Here's a ping: @Andrevan: ~Awilley (talk) 19:25, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- Talking about the reason for the ban is treading very close to the line. Your post above and your post on Jimbo's talk page cross the line. If you knew how dangerously close you were to a block you world definitely stop discussing it. The fact that it is your first topic ban is probably the main reason you aren't blocked yet, as admins are cutting you some slack. But seriously, just take the day off and stop editing if you aren't sure what is a topic ban violation or not. ~Awilley (talk) 19:51, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- Discussing it with you here and on Jimbo's talk page are defensible in the immediate aftermath of the imposition of the topic ban. Obviously, if I am still here arguing and stuff in a few days then it's an issue. But, as I said, I'd rather drop it and not interact with you on it. I don't think we agree on this, and that's fine. I will not be editing Donald Trump or related pages or talk pages, or pursuing disputes with users Trumpian. Blocking me for having a conversation with Jimbo, who I haven't talked to in years, would be over the line on your end, in my opinion. Andrevan@ 21:45, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
- OK, I'm home for the evening and can afford a longer reply to the above. If I thought that blocking you were in the best interest of the encyclopedia I would have done it already, and if I had wanted to see you blocked by someone else I could have led you on by chatting about the pro-Trump cabal, waiting for Winkelvi to report you to WP:AE. I had two goals: in the short term I wanted to prevent that trip to AE and block, and in the long term I wanted to help you understand exactly what went wrong. As I said earlier, it wasn't the outing. On the subject of the former, yes there is traditionally some discretionary leeway for "appeals to Jimbo" and such, and users often get a first strike, but that's very much up to the admin that happens to be watching. For the purposes of you not getting blocked it would be best for you to simply stop saying the word "Trump" altogether. (Impeachment jokes are definitely out of bounds.) For the second issue, I'm not going to force it on you and if you don't want to talk that's fine. If it's an issue of not being able to discuss it without mentioning Trump or Trumpian editors feel free to shoot me an email. As a side note, I get it that Wikipedia used to be more of a wild west than it is now, and there are aspects of that I wish we had more of (humor, IAR, less bureaucracy). At a certain point, though, you have to accept that things are different and adapt yourself. ~Awilley (talk) 00:00, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not here to violate my topic ban, so if you perceive that this comment does, I ask you to please remove it instead of reporting or blocking me. Consider my description that follows to be abstract and not specific. This isn't my first rodeo, for example someone posted some 2014 diffs of mine recently. I'm responding to your above comment because it is thoughtful and well-considered, and you deserve some sort of explanation - in fact, you offered to help me find my own blind spots. You and NeilN managed to become an admin here, and a well-regarded and well-respected admin, by being such. In the old days we relied a lot more on blunt talk, intuition, and embracing contradictions with dispensing judgments and justice, remembering that some principles, like NPOV, verifiability, consensus, reasoned argument, logic, etc. are more important than the letter of policy, and so we can act as judge and executor of the constitutionality. Because my embrace of the core principles is strong (usually), I may sometimes violate the specifics in the ultimate service of the goal. Because administrator was always conceived as a "janitor," but in fact is more of a "policeman"/"lawman"/"sheriff", it's kind of a real life Stanford prison experiment. To lighten the load we would use humor and surrealism, to blunt the violence of enforcement. Also, Wikipedia has always been something of an anarchistic, populist-oriented project which "punches up." And of course the free culture, self-organizing decentralization is an anarcho-syndicalist idea on some level. So what I'm saying is that there were always cabals on Wikipedia, contrary to the truism, lots of little self-organizing cabals on IRC and elsewhere. There's nothing inherently wrong with cabals -- except when there is. Admins need to get involved and be a little aggressive, especially on major targets. Trusts need to be busted, rackets need to be broken up. You're like the FBI after mob bosses. We also used to have a Mediation Committee that was functional, the Association of Member's Advocates, etc. That's enough on the subject of cabals, and again please redact if you determine that to have been a topic ban vio.
- Some will say that my actions were a violation of WP:POINT. I will contend that I didn't show up to the articles I've been banned from with an intent to prove a point. All I did, was show up to the articles and honestly post what I thought at the time or that day, just as most casual editors, and not admins, are doing on these article talk pages. "Straight talk express," I "told it like it is." Until I found myself on the precipice of undisclosed CLI-land and I stepped over the edge. For example, I noticed some people reading up about "advocacy duck" vs "coot". I am a pure coot, you can call it temporary insanity or self-destruction. My girlfriend was concerned, as I had complained of not sleeping well and back pain, and seemed to be overly concerned about Wikipedia. So it's completely justified that I am now topic-banned, as Jimbo says, I couldn't write unemotionally on that topic anyhow, and I didn't. The system worked in my case. There were many ways my entire editing career, of a week or so, on those articles could have gone. Things escalated pretty quickly. I contend that my actions served a purpose in illustrating a significant problem with the articles, the enforcement of reliable source policy on the article talk pages, etc. You can review the discussion yourself and see if I was off my rocker and ranting for most of the time, or if I was talking hard content talk most of the time. I won't get into the specifics here. I also believe that the admins need to get into the trenches and be a neutral 3rd party checking the sources and what they say, confirming that NYT is reliable and not biased, academic sources are different from op-eds, etc. Andrevan@ 19:34, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
- OK, I'm home for the evening and can afford a longer reply to the above. If I thought that blocking you were in the best interest of the encyclopedia I would have done it already, and if I had wanted to see you blocked by someone else I could have led you on by chatting about the pro-Trump cabal, waiting for Winkelvi to report you to WP:AE. I had two goals: in the short term I wanted to prevent that trip to AE and block, and in the long term I wanted to help you understand exactly what went wrong. As I said earlier, it wasn't the outing. On the subject of the former, yes there is traditionally some discretionary leeway for "appeals to Jimbo" and such, and users often get a first strike, but that's very much up to the admin that happens to be watching. For the purposes of you not getting blocked it would be best for you to simply stop saying the word "Trump" altogether. (Impeachment jokes are definitely out of bounds.) For the second issue, I'm not going to force it on you and if you don't want to talk that's fine. If it's an issue of not being able to discuss it without mentioning Trump or Trumpian editors feel free to shoot me an email. As a side note, I get it that Wikipedia used to be more of a wild west than it is now, and there are aspects of that I wish we had more of (humor, IAR, less bureaucracy). At a certain point, though, you have to accept that things are different and adapt yourself. ~Awilley (talk) 00:00, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
- Discussing it with you here and on Jimbo's talk page are defensible in the immediate aftermath of the imposition of the topic ban. Obviously, if I am still here arguing and stuff in a few days then it's an issue. But, as I said, I'd rather drop it and not interact with you on it. I don't think we agree on this, and that's fine. I will not be editing Donald Trump or related pages or talk pages, or pursuing disputes with users Trumpian. Blocking me for having a conversation with Jimbo, who I haven't talked to in years, would be over the line on your end, in my opinion. Andrevan@ 21:45, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – June 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2018).
Administrator changes
- None
- Al Ameer son • AliveFreeHappy • Cenarium • Lupo • MichaelBillington
Guideline and policy news
- Following a successful request for comment, administrators are now able to add and remove editors to the "event coordinator" group. Users in the event coordinator group have the ability to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit. Users will no longer need to be in the "account creator" group if they are in the event coordinator group.
- Following an AN discussion, all pages with content related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, are now under indefinite general sanctions.
Technical news
- IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in June. This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
- The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team will build granular types of blocks in 2018 (e.g. a block from uploading or editing specific pages, categories, or namespaces, as opposed to a full-site block). Feedback on the concept may be left at the talk page.
- There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups.
- It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked.
Arbitration
- A recent technical issue with the Arbitration Committee's spam filter inadvertently caused all messages sent to the committee through Wikipedia (i.e. Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee) to be discarded. If you attempted to send an email to the Arbitration Committee via Wikipedia between May 16 and May 31, your message was not received and you are encouraged to resend it. Messages sent outside of these dates or directly to the Arbitration Committee email address were not affected by this issue.
Miscellaneous
- In early May, an unusually high level of failed login attempts was observed. The WMF has stated that this was an "external effort to gain unauthorized access to random accounts". Under Wikipedia policy, administrators are required to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.
Hello!
Are you still interested in helping coordinate WP:WER's efforts? Cheers, JustBerry (talk) 20:40, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
- Hi, I would like to help but I'm currently juggling so many things IRL that I don't feel up to coordinating anything new at the moment. Sorry! ~Awilley (talk) 23:09, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
Comment
I'm going to ask you to rescind your comment about me. I got a warning, but I am not going to treat it like a TBAN/IBAN. If you think I was any more disruptive than anyone else there by posting a statement, then open a separate AE about me and make your case. If not, then there is no need to comment like that. -- Netoholic @ 04:58, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
Trump
There was no edit war. MrX edited during discussion for the second time in a few days, different discussions. Since there was no challenged edit preceding the discussion, MrX did not violate the letter of the restrictions. At least two of us felt he violated the spirit of the remedies, and that's what most of that thread is about. I would like a clarification from ARCA but it doesn't look like anybody is inclined to ask for one, so far. I hope this helps. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:58, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2018).
Administrator changes
- Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor
Gogo Dodo- Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD
Bureaucrat changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
- A request for comment closed with a consensus that the {{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.
Technical news
- Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.
- Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon (
) in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates. - IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
Miscellaneous
- Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Your AE close
I intended to also log a formal warning to Drmies (as was clear in the discussion), but it could be construed as changing an AE close (which is forbidden) so wanted to check with you first - are you okay with me going ahead with this? GoldenRing (talk) 08:54, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
- In the AE thread there was only one admin (you) calling for a formal warning for Drmies and four admins (responding to you) saying with varying degrees of conviction that they didn't see it as necessary. Most of the admins didn't express an opinion at all since the proposal to warn Drmies came fairly late and the thread wasn't about Drmies in the first place. If you think that Drmies needs a formal warning then nobody can stop you from warning him. Just be aware that you'll be doing it on your own authority, divorced from the AE thread and the admins there who didn't support it. ~Awilley (talk) 15:33, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
Need eyes, please
No, I'm not asking you to sign an organ donor card :-) But I would appreciate an administrator's attention to a thread a started several hours ago at the Donald Trump talk page. (see here [2]) I'm trying to better understand what constitutes a revert and what doesn't. There seems to be some confusion, and with new attention being brought at AE to the active arb remedies in place at the politically-related articles, I know I don't want to screw up but would also like to have an awareness of when other editors do, too. Admins can't be everywhere. If something arises, I don't want to bring an issue to AE that shouldn't be. Your opinion on the diffs I provided at the article talk page would be appreciated. Thanks. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 15:56, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
- I see what looks like 2 regular edits and 1 revert on July 4, and then 1 revert on July 6. Discussing the content on the talk page is probably going to be more productive than a trip to AE. ~Awilley (talk) 17:10, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks for taking a look. AE would never be my first stop. Probably not even my second or third. My confusion is in how removal of content added and the previous state of the article maintained is any different than using the revert button. My frustration is in the fact that the edits seemed to be focused primarily on content I added, and that included the reversion last night. It's not the first time I've seen this happen at that article (and with at least one other editor doing the same thing) as well as other related articles with active arbitration remedies in place. Wholesale reverts/removals of quality added content and sources, and done within policy guidelines (e.g., no undue weight, encyclopedic in nature, no BLP vios, etc.). The claim is always that the content is "challenged", but no talk page discussions are ever started by the individual saying they are challenging the addition. Just removals or reversions are performed. To me, it looks like a way to WP:GAME the system. And it's always the same editors who are doing it. Believe me, I'm not the only one who's noticed this. It's frustrating to add good, quality content with good sourcing only to have it removed not because it's poorly written or an actual policy vio, but because it's "challenged" - and nothing more is offered. Just a non-specific or very vague claim of a challenge that, in all frankness, looks more like WP:IDLI than an actual challenge to content inclusion based on policy. Seems to me that if they were really challenging it because they care about the integrity of the article and its content they would also then start a discussion on the talk page of the article so that actual improving of the article could be accomplished. What ends up happening is disruption and hard-feelings created. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 17:29, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
- Looking at the edit summary of the most recent revert here that looks to me like more than a vague claim of a challenge. And I can kind of see his point about "minor gossipy details". A concise statement
is more encyclopedic than rambling multi-sentence verbatim quotes of Trump"Trump says he receives Holy Communion, but that he does not ask God for forgiveness"
Stepping back a bit from this specific example, I get your frustration and I know you're not the only one feeling it. But I also am not going to make a rule saying that the person challenging additions is required to start a talk page thread every time they perform a revert. Sometimes an edit summary is enough. And as the person trying to change the status quo, it is your responsibility to build consensus for an edit when you are challenged. ~Awilley (talk) 17:58, 6 July 2018 (UTC)"During a July 2015 campaign stop at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump was asked by event moderator Frank Luntz if he has ever asked God for forgiveness. Trump responded, "I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don't think so. I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't." When he further noted in his response that he does take Holy Communion, Trump explained, "When I drink my little wine -- which is about the only wine I drink -- and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed. I think in terms of 'let's go on and let's make it right.'" During a follow-up interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Trump was asked again about his beliefs on forgiveness from God. Trump replied, "I go to communion and that's asking forgiveness, you know, it's a form of asking forgiveness."
- The current version is encyclopedic, but only half-so. It doesn't include any follow-up and leaves the impression to the reader that was Trump's final word on his religious beliefs re: communion and forgiveness. Which is what I was attempting to add, with sources and direct quotes rather than going only by what the press reported. If we're going to have a section in the article on Trump's religious beliefs (this is his bio, by the way, not the presidential article), then it should reflect that, not a sound byte taken from online media reporting. It's unfair to the reader and incomplete for an biographical encyclopedia article.
- As far as responsibility for building consensus -- I thought Wikipedia is supposed to be a community working together to build an encyclopedia. Doing a hit and run reversion/removal of content by saying "Challenge!" and doing nothing else to build the encyclopedia via the talk page of that article is not a community-like response. It's what happens in a debate or a game of Scrabble. Shouldn't we be working toward fostering the community/collegial editing environment rather than turning editing in a competition that feels at times to be as brutal as rugby? -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 18:19, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
- Looking at the edit summary of the most recent revert here that looks to me like more than a vague claim of a challenge. And I can kind of see his point about "minor gossipy details". A concise statement
- Thanks for taking a look. AE would never be my first stop. Probably not even my second or third. My confusion is in how removal of content added and the previous state of the article maintained is any different than using the revert button. My frustration is in the fact that the edits seemed to be focused primarily on content I added, and that included the reversion last night. It's not the first time I've seen this happen at that article (and with at least one other editor doing the same thing) as well as other related articles with active arbitration remedies in place. Wholesale reverts/removals of quality added content and sources, and done within policy guidelines (e.g., no undue weight, encyclopedic in nature, no BLP vios, etc.). The claim is always that the content is "challenged", but no talk page discussions are ever started by the individual saying they are challenging the addition. Just removals or reversions are performed. To me, it looks like a way to WP:GAME the system. And it's always the same editors who are doing it. Believe me, I'm not the only one who's noticed this. It's frustrating to add good, quality content with good sourcing only to have it removed not because it's poorly written or an actual policy vio, but because it's "challenged" - and nothing more is offered. Just a non-specific or very vague claim of a challenge that, in all frankness, looks more like WP:IDLI than an actual challenge to content inclusion based on policy. Seems to me that if they were really challenging it because they care about the integrity of the article and its content they would also then start a discussion on the talk page of the article so that actual improving of the article could be accomplished. What ends up happening is disruption and hard-feelings created. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 17:29, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
RfC Close
Hi Awilley
Your close of this RfC seems to have generated some confusion and wikilawyering. A specific question was posed in the RfC, with specific wording, and by my count that proposal has consensus. 3 of the 41 respondents indicate that the material should be "included in some form". You seem to have taken that minority viewpoint and stated it as consensus. I don't believe that it's a proper closing statement, and it has already caused some editors to object to including the proposed text in the article and listing it as a consensus on the talk page. I would request that you revise your closing statement to make it clear that the proposed wording does has consensus, but that that does not preclude the possibility of revising the wording. Thank you. - MrX 🖋 15:28, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
- You have every right to challenge a close. You do not have any right to characterize good-faith disagreement on process as "wikilawyering". ―Mandruss ☎ 16:27, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2018).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
- Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.
Technical news
- The WMF Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the second set of wireframes for the Special:Block redesign that will introduce partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.
Comment
Noticed you hatted my comment properly but not going to address Cullen's incivility and lack of AGF or Drmies pinging another who has not participated in the discussion?--MONGO (talk) 07:22, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
- Looks like Cullen commented just after I hatted your comment. I logged off after my edit and didn't see it until today. It's not ideal but isn't worth trying to hat. The first sentence is obviously responding to your off-topic remark (which probably wasn't hatted yet when he began writing) and basically says pot-kettle. The rest of the comment seems on-topic enough to me, responding to substantive arguments. I don't see anything wrong with pinging a long-term active editor of an article to ask a question about the history of that article. ~Awilley (talk) 14:59, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
Your close at Trump immigration
This is entirely out of process. First, although you may not have commented on that discussion, you are hardly uninvolved with the page, the topic and many of the editors there. Second after a bit of back and forth, two editors suggested a close request, which @JFG: reported he posted at AN. Third, you seem to be "counting votes" among comments early in this ongoing event, when it was easy to argue mention would have been UNDUE, and comparing these "votes" with ones base on a longer history of RS coverage and of the ongoing development of the events themselves. Please undo your close and stand back and let us have the benefit of fresh eyes there. Thanks. SPECIFICO talk 19:34, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
- JFG wanted an uninvolved admin to close the discussion, and seemed to want it done in a timely manner. I obliged. Hanging around an article long enough to get to know the different personalities doesn't make me involved. Like anyone I have my own opinions about the article's subject but I try very hard not to let those influence any closes or administrative actions that I make. I'm happy to discuss with you my process of counting and evaluating the votes. Here's part of the Excel sheet I made (please excuse typos)
| Yes | Include something | No | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| MrX | Months of international coverage, 4 articles, more notable than other things in the lead | ||
| Mr Ernie | Undue | ||
| Icewiz | More noteworthy | ||
| O3000 | Coverage | ||
| PacMecEng | POV, Undue | ||
| ScJessey | Alternate wording | ||
| MyVeryBestWishes | Supports Scjessey | ||
| JFG | Regrettable policy blunder, no lasting significance. Not opposed to Scjessey | ||
| Emir of Wikipedia | |||
| MONGO | Major policy blunder | ||
| Snooganssnoogans | Supports Scjessey | ||
| K.e.coffman | |||
| Snow | Not crazy about half sentence, but got behind Scjessey | ||
| Kerberous | Overwhelming cverage | ||
| Gandydancer | "The news media is saturated with stories of immigrant families being separated at the border. People are protesting. Elected officials are weighing in. Congress is threatening action. Seventeen states have now filed a complaint against the Federal Government challenging the family separation practice." | ||
| Henry | Suppports rework; DUE | ||
| Markbassett | problems with wording "enacted" "revrsed" "forcibly" | ||
| A Quest for Knowledge | Too much detail for lead | ||
| Volunteer Marek | Relevant and notable | ||
| Casprings | Due | ||
| Wumbolo | Because it was reversed | ||
| NickCT | Recentism | ||
| Mr Guye | Recentism, also "policy" | ||
| power~enwiki | problems with wording, not enough space in Lead to discuss with enough nuance | ||
| Meatsgains | Undue | ||
| Govindaharihari | Undue | ||
| Dr. Fleishman | Recentism | ||
| Aquillion | Coverage | ||
| Ikjbagl | Overly dramatic and political | ||
| Bus stop | |||
| Pincrete | with rewording. Coverage | ||
| Newbipedian | most notable | ||
| L3X1 | Scjessey's | ||
| Marie Paradox | Would support revision that avoided using "enacted" | ||
| Fyunck | NPOV. "forcibly" | ||
| LM2000 | UNDUE | ||
| Space4Time3Continuum2x | as important as other stuff in the lead | ||
| Winkelvi | |||
As you can see, there were actually more No votes later in the process, bringing into question your argument that giving a higher weight to later votes would have changed the result. ~Awilley (talk) 20:03, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
although you may not have commented on that discussion, you are hardly uninvolved with the page, the topic and many of the editors there
- By that reasoning, I should never close a discussion on that page. I stopped reading there. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:21, 10 August 2018 (UTC)- (pinged) Awilley's close seems fair, and s/he explained the reading of the discussion quite extensively above per WP:ADMINACCT. If SPECIFICO or anybody else disagrees, they can of course open a close review. — JFG talk 12:09, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
- Awilley, I'm disappointed you discussed "votes" at your close and are still discussing votes. Quite surprising. JFG - nobody is talking about whether you or other folks like the outcome. My argument was about process. Did you read what I said -- "out --- of --- process." So your evaluation of the outcome is pointless. SPECIFICO talk 12:50, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
- I did read your comment very carefully, and I disagree that the close was out of process. If you maintain that it was out of process despite Awilley's explanations, you have a clear avenue for review. — JFG talk 13:21, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
- @JFG, A close review shouldn't be necessary. If SPECIFICO can articulate a good reason that I should revert my close I'm happy to do that.
- @SPECIFICO, if you are arguing that I should undo my close so we can observe some "process" of waiting an extra week or two for another admin to come by and redo my work, I'd point you to our fifth pillar. If you're saying my close was invalid because I counted the number of people taking various positions in addition to analyzing their arguments, go fish. That's not an uncommon procedure in closing RfCs, and I definitely didn't make the decision based on numbers alone (even though my close did go in the direction of the majority). ~Awilley (talk) 13:42, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
- " I'd point you to our fifth pillar" - yeah, that should be changed to WP:IARBOIYAA ("but only if you're an admin").Volunteer Marek (talk) 01:55, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- I did read your comment very carefully, and I disagree that the close was out of process. If you maintain that it was out of process despite Awilley's explanations, you have a clear avenue for review. — JFG talk 13:21, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Sanctions
I tend to sympathize with edits by many of the folks you just sanctioned. But, I see the problem, respect your effort, can’t argue with the sanctions, and appreciate the fact that you didn’t TBan them. I hope that they will come to understand this. I also realize the crap you will need to put up with for a time. But, duty calls. See: [3]. O3000 (talk) 00:53, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- I've never had that conversation with my wife... :-S ~Awilley (talk) 02:05, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- The cartoon was meant for those that get into long arguments. (I must admit I've done so.) O3000 (talk) 10:40, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- Imagine if all Admins made up their own rules. Wikipedia would stop. Not a good development, and the wording is an unintelligible mass of hedging. A backward step, AJ, if I may say so. In fact it is almost as bad as the 'made up by an admin' sanctions at Ayurveda that effectively stopped progress on the article for some years. It is a good job I don't edit in that area. -Roxy, the dog. barcus 12:15, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- Discretionary sanctions are not arbitrarily made-up rules. Arbcom has authorized admins to apply their discretion to rein in disruption. Indeed, Arbcom and the community have pleaded that admins do what they can to rein in disruption and Awilley is to be commended for taking the trouble to spell out what house-trained editors already know. Johnuniq (talk) 23:18, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- Guess what? I'm house trained and I got served with three Special Sanctions for reasons Awilley has declined to document. The thing about house training is there has to be a connection between the message and the mess. On my talk page, Awilley has been unable to provide the basis for even the first of the several Special Sanctions he put on me and appears now to have disengaged from his attempt to explain them. His impulse may have been good, his intention may have been noble, but these sanctions were not well conceived and would have benefitted from a lot more community input or an application in a different form, such as improvements in the DS page restrictions on AP articles. SPECIFICO talk 03:29, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- A sanctioned editor is the least objective judge of whether the sanction makes any sense or has any merit. That is axiomatic in my view. I've yet to see a sanctioned editor who didn't feel the sanction was a bad call, and that includes me. That you think you could be objective about that, to the point of writing walls of instructional prose about it, explaining to an admin how to be a good admin, just makes me shake my head in wonder. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:51, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- Guess what? I'm house trained and I got served with three Special Sanctions for reasons Awilley has declined to document. The thing about house training is there has to be a connection between the message and the mess. On my talk page, Awilley has been unable to provide the basis for even the first of the several Special Sanctions he put on me and appears now to have disengaged from his attempt to explain them. His impulse may have been good, his intention may have been noble, but these sanctions were not well conceived and would have benefitted from a lot more community input or an application in a different form, such as improvements in the DS page restrictions on AP articles. SPECIFICO talk 03:29, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- Discretionary sanctions are not arbitrarily made-up rules. Arbcom has authorized admins to apply their discretion to rein in disruption. Indeed, Arbcom and the community have pleaded that admins do what they can to rein in disruption and Awilley is to be commended for taking the trouble to spell out what house-trained editors already know. Johnuniq (talk) 23:18, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- Imagine if all Admins made up their own rules. Wikipedia would stop. Not a good development, and the wording is an unintelligible mass of hedging. A backward step, AJ, if I may say so. In fact it is almost as bad as the 'made up by an admin' sanctions at Ayurveda that effectively stopped progress on the article for some years. It is a good job I don't edit in that area. -Roxy, the dog. barcus 12:15, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- The cartoon was meant for those that get into long arguments. (I must admit I've done so.) O3000 (talk) 10:40, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
Cops
In my opinion things would work far better if editors were not responsible for policing each other's behavior. What would the real world be like if we were all expected to act as cops? Wikipedia needs cops who don't edit, and they need to do all of the policing of behavior. I'm not saying it would be simple or easy, only that it's necessary. Interested in your thoughts, if any. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:04, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- I think the world would be a scarier place if everybody were expected to act as cops. And I think I agree with you that Wikipedia would work better if editors didn't need to police each others' behavior. What if there were an artificially intelligent admin bot that could make good judgment calls about policy violations, but with the capacity to watch over the entire encyclopedia? We'd certainly waste less time arguing about meta stuff. (Although by that point we probably wouldn't have to write at all because the bots would be writing our articles.) On the other hand, I think an even better solution is if editors work in a culture where the norm is for editors to resolve disputes between themselves without any administrative intervention at all. Right now the culture in certain areas seems to be:
- A: "Stop edit warring [hits revert button]"
- B: "You stop edit warring I have consensus [hits revert button]"
- A: "You just violated 3RR"
- B: "Oh yeah, report me."
- A: [Rolls the dice at AN3 hoping for a block]
- What if those same editors stopped reverting for a minute and took the time to understand what the other person was saying to try and make a compromise? ~Awilley (talk) 21:37, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- I think any approach that depends on large numbers of people changing their basic nature is not a realistic or workable approach. For the most part and with a very few exceptions, the collaborative, cooperative, mature nature is not made at Wikipedia by reasoning with people, but rather in the home by about age 12. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:07, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- I would argue that normal developed people, put into different structured environments, will behave differently. The Stanford Prison Experiment comes to mind. I know people, intelligent and good people of the sort who will let relatives of friends live rent free in their basement when they're between jobs, troll on Twitter. ~Awilley (talk) 23:23, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- What different structured environment would you suggest? So far all I hear you saying is that we should do more to evangelize the virtues of cooperation, hoping that gradually more and more editors will see the light we wish them to see, finally reaching a reasonably functional environment some time around the year 2050. I'll be dead by then. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:30, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- I wish I had those answers, but even if I did I'm certain I'd never have the clout to make any significant changes to structure. One of my goals with the so-called "special" sanctions is to effect small changes to the cultural norms surrounding a subset of troubled articles. Take the "Courtesy in reporting" sanction for instance. That forces a structured, polite dialogue between two users before one reports the other to an administrative noticeboard. That could, I hope, shift the focus from trying to get others blocked or banned, to trying to resolve things at a lower level. Legitimate errors could be remedied before ending up on administrative noticeboards, and then the cases that do filter up to the noticeboards are the ones involving editors so entrenched that they refuse to correct their own mistakes. The "special" sanction would not need to be applied to everyone for it to become a norm, just like you don't need to place 1RR restrictions on all AP articles for editors to habitually reduce the number of reverts everywhere out of caution, and to occasionally report each other for 1RR violations on articles without 1RR restrictions.
Another thing I'm trying to do is to increase the predictability of blocks and bans. This is probably one of the more controversial changes as it runs against the grain of our current system of escalating and unpredictable block lengths. Right now if you personally attack someone you can get anything between a warning and an indefinite block depending on the admin and the length of your block log, and the block could come at any time without warning. However if sanctions I outlined were in effect the user would be given a chance to retract the personal attack (best outcome) and even in the worst outcome the "punishment" would be predictable and proportionate (a one-week non-escalating ban from the topic area, converted to a block if the ban is violated). That's the idea anyway. I may be completely wrong, and if that's the case I'll work on whatever reparations need to be made. ~Awilley (talk) 00:23, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- Awilley,
Take the "Courtesy in reporting" sanction for instance. That forces a structured, polite dialogue between two users before one reports the other to an administrative noticeboard.
It does no such thing. A polite notice is often greeted with "get off my talk page" "stop harassing me" "lying troll" etc. Anyway, the report before a noticeboard posting is already required. What do you mean by "reparations?" I doubt that applies on WP, and it's another reason why it really would be better -- now that there are more eyes on your effort -- to vacate the Special Sacntions applciations and seek comment on the page we now see you have been working on. Big changes work best after thorough community discussion. I believe this is true without exception on WP and several users have raised questions and concerns that should be addressed before, not after sanctions are handed out. Please consider. SPECIFICO talk 00:43, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- Awilley,
- I wish I had those answers, but even if I did I'm certain I'd never have the clout to make any significant changes to structure. One of my goals with the so-called "special" sanctions is to effect small changes to the cultural norms surrounding a subset of troubled articles. Take the "Courtesy in reporting" sanction for instance. That forces a structured, polite dialogue between two users before one reports the other to an administrative noticeboard. That could, I hope, shift the focus from trying to get others blocked or banned, to trying to resolve things at a lower level. Legitimate errors could be remedied before ending up on administrative noticeboards, and then the cases that do filter up to the noticeboards are the ones involving editors so entrenched that they refuse to correct their own mistakes. The "special" sanction would not need to be applied to everyone for it to become a norm, just like you don't need to place 1RR restrictions on all AP articles for editors to habitually reduce the number of reverts everywhere out of caution, and to occasionally report each other for 1RR violations on articles without 1RR restrictions.
- What different structured environment would you suggest? So far all I hear you saying is that we should do more to evangelize the virtues of cooperation, hoping that gradually more and more editors will see the light we wish them to see, finally reaching a reasonably functional environment some time around the year 2050. I'll be dead by then. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:30, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
- I would argue that normal developed people, put into different structured environments, will behave differently. The Stanford Prison Experiment comes to mind. I know people, intelligent and good people of the sort who will let relatives of friends live rent free in their basement when they're between jobs, troll on Twitter. ~Awilley (talk) 23:23, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
Nearly a half century back, Frank Herbert wrote the sci-fi novel Whipping Star. There was a planet with an interesting legal system. If a prosecutor took a suspect to trial for murder, and the prosecutor won the case, the prosecutor was put to death. The logic is simple. That a murder occurred meant that the state failed to protect its citizens. Thus, as a representative of the state, it was the prosecutor that was taken to task. (So, we can blame Jimbo for everything.) My point is that we do need to look at the rules and the prophylactic actions. Thusly. I appreciate your efforts; although these rules may be even more difficult to deal with than IBans. O3000 (talk) 00:46, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
Segue to off-topic in two comments, the theoretical minimum. So much for a thorough examination of the proposition. Ah well, worth a try. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:06, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- Everyone knows there is a problem. Your well-meaning suggestion brings to mind abuses like the Blue wall of silence. (Or, abuses far worse, as I’m currently watching the History Channel.) IMO, folks with the intelligence and wherewithal to understand the nuances of editing complex articles, that don’t get to enjoy editing articles themselves, are likely to devolve. O3000 (talk) 01:26, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- You have astutely pointed out that the cop system has a dark side. Nevertheless there are far more good cops than bad cops, I hope you wouldn't dispute that. And the cop system is what many centuries of social "natural selection" have decided fails less badly than any alternative; otherwise it wouldn't exist. This round of civilization may be approaching collapse, but not because it uses cops. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:36, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Mandruss: I'm a bit unclear what you were saying above in the theoretical minimum comment...not sure who it was addressed to because of the threading. I hope I didn't nudge the conversation off track with my previous comment above. I'm a bit curious where you were going with the idea about policing-only cops. ~Awilley (talk) 14:44, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- It's an idea that's been bouncing around in my head for some time, and I felt you were a good choice as sounding board. It had no connection to your Special Sanctions, and my timing was poor coming right after them, as evidenced by the fact that the topic changed so early in the thread. I'm prepared to let the idea continue bouncing around in there; you have enough on your plate at the moment. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:19, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Mandruss: Yeah, sorry about that. I assumed that this, like literally everything else that day, was about the sanctions. I don't know how the community would accept such a thing. "Not enough content work" is a common oppose reason at RfA. Do you know of any other online communities or forums that outsource the moderators (rather than assigning trusted community members to mod)?
- It's an idea that's been bouncing around in my head for some time, and I felt you were a good choice as sounding board. It had no connection to your Special Sanctions, and my timing was poor coming right after them, as evidenced by the fact that the topic changed so early in the thread. I'm prepared to let the idea continue bouncing around in there; you have enough on your plate at the moment. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:19, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Mandruss: I'm a bit unclear what you were saying above in the theoretical minimum comment...not sure who it was addressed to because of the threading. I hope I didn't nudge the conversation off track with my previous comment above. I'm a bit curious where you were going with the idea about policing-only cops. ~Awilley (talk) 14:44, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- You have astutely pointed out that the cop system has a dark side. Nevertheless there are far more good cops than bad cops, I hope you wouldn't dispute that. And the cop system is what many centuries of social "natural selection" have decided fails less badly than any alternative; otherwise it wouldn't exist. This round of civilization may be approaching collapse, but not because it uses cops. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:36, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
Predictability
Awilley wrote: Another thing I'm trying to do is to increase the predictability of blocks and bans.
This sounds to me like a much-needed improvement in Wikipedia's policing culture, that has historically been governed by "far-west" rules: easy to formulate, easy to twist, the sheriff is always right, especially when you ask another sheriff for redress. Some more clearly-spelled-out jus strictum may be the key to simplify disputes and actually enforce the collaborative spirit we should all be striving for. Kudos for trying! — JFG talk 13:53, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- What about kudos for the result? Any thoughts? It's clear to me this was not ready to be rolled out. That, even though it's not a policy or guideline, it suffers from WP:LOCALCONSENSUS in a discussion that most editors didn't know about and that could benefit from much more input. The idea of predictable short sanctions is fine, but why not make these page restrictions so that they apply on all AP articles and to all editors? It seems to me that's clearly a more effective, less burdensome, fairer, and more predictable approach. The Special Sanctions as they have now been rolled out are not fully developed. SPECIFICO talk 14:14, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- Re:
it suffers from WP:LOCALCONSENSUS
,maybe you should look upthat's why it's called a discretionary admin action. As for results, we'll wait and see until the mechanism gets some mileage. — JFG talk 17:11, 15 August 2018 (UTC)- JFG, I'm surprised to see you respond with a straw man and snarky comment here. I was not raising any issue as to discretion. And as I presume you're aware, the Arbcom DS authority includes other criteria which are beyond the scope of this thread but which would nullify your suggestion I do not understand the meaning of that English word. Awilley obviously believed that community input would be helpful or he would not have created the discussion page before rolling out the Specials, so if you care to respond in substance, I'd be interested to hear your view on the issue I raised. SPECIFICO talk 18:36, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- All due respect, JFG, but if you had been on the receiving end of the sanctions and were confused as to why (1) they are being imposed based on something that occurred two months ago and was already dealt with at AE; (2) one of the four editors with the sanctions imposed has just been pardoned from them for no apparent reason - I dare say you wouldn't be so ready to wait and see what happens. This seems to be an experiment with the lab rats used in the experiment still unclear why they've been singled out above and beyond all other possible (and possibly better subjects to be the chosen) lab rats. None of this lends to the "predictability" being touted as premise. It also defies logic (which is the basis for predictability). -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 18:15, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- Hey, nobody likes getting a sanction, happens to the best of us. Sorry you became one of the initial recipients of this particular batch, but it should not be difficult to abide by Awilley's terms. I agree with you that receiving this sanction was unpredictable, but you will probably agree with me that the consequences of tripping up are very clearly spelled out and thus predictable. Much better than getting bogged down at WP:AE in my opinion. — JFG talk 18:23, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- You seem to have completely missed my point. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 18:48, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- My comments aimed to clarify what I meant by "predictability". I was deliberately not responding to your questions (1) and (2) as to why this sanction was imposed on you, because I can't read Awilley's mind. — JFG talk 13:01, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
Editors trying to figure out what the hell admins and their discretionary sanctions actually want from them - I actually agree with Awilley. Don't particularly being an unwilling subject of some "experiment" to see if something works or not. "Let me sanction these people just to see if my new idea works" is not only an extremely ill thought out approach to admin'ing, it's also very unfair to the 'lab rats' involved. And yes, at the very least it would need some kind of consensus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Volunteer Marek (talk • contribs)
- There's also the problem of what happens when the Specials conflict with other conventional community-accepted modes of enforcement, e.g. Admin-applied DS for verifiable preventive cause, and AE-applied outcomes based on evidence and discussion. That's a big issue that does not appear to be addressed. I really think its fine that this alternative approach has been brought to wider attention, but I think it's important that Awilley vacate all these actions pending wider and deeper discussion of the many issues they've brought to the fore. SPECIFICO talk 15:04, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
- My comments aimed to clarify what I meant by "predictability". I was deliberately not responding to your questions (1) and (2) as to why this sanction was imposed on you, because I can't read Awilley's mind. — JFG talk 13:01, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
- You seem to have completely missed my point. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 18:48, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- Hey, nobody likes getting a sanction, happens to the best of us. Sorry you became one of the initial recipients of this particular batch, but it should not be difficult to abide by Awilley's terms. I agree with you that receiving this sanction was unpredictable, but you will probably agree with me that the consequences of tripping up are very clearly spelled out and thus predictable. Much better than getting bogged down at WP:AE in my opinion. — JFG talk 18:23, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
- Re:
Please don't call us Mormons
Just read this in the news. Does this mean revising a number of articles? Doug Weller talk 09:06, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Doug Weller: I would say no. According to the CNN article they tried similar pushes in 2001 and 2011 and it never really took. I don't see any reason why it's more likely to work this time, especially with this coming on the tail of the I'm a Mormon campaign (2011—?). I think MOS:LDS will be just fine for the foreseeable future. Besides the terms Mormon and Mormonism as we use them are often broader than just members of the modern LDS Church. (I was going to type the full name out there but it was too much effort.) ~Awilley (talk) 14:56, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
- The irony is that this was announced at www.mormonnewsroom.org. O3000 (talk) 16:51, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
- That's an easier url than membersofthechurchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaintsnewsroom.org ~Awilley (talk) 17:02, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
- ...and so it begins... ~Awilley (talk) 17:07, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
- That's an easier url than membersofthechurchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaintsnewsroom.org ~Awilley (talk) 17:02, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
- The irony is that this was announced at www.mormonnewsroom.org. O3000 (talk) 16:51, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
- It would be quite a mouthful, one reason why I can't see it sticking. I wonder why this change of attitude after the campaign. Doug Weller talk 18:17, 19 August 2018 (UTC)
- Interesting link and raises some interesting problems. Latter Day Saints Tabernacle Choir? Rebranding is not easy. And I doubt Romney will want to say he's a Latter Day Saint or a member of the "restored Church of Jesus Christ,” , the optics of either aren't good for a politician, at least not unless these become the standard terms. Doug Weller talk 15:03, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
- Another problem: domain http://churchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints.org/ is owned by the very small Strangite schism. O3000 (talk) 15:21, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
- Interesting link and raises some interesting problems. Latter Day Saints Tabernacle Choir? Rebranding is not easy. And I doubt Romney will want to say he's a Latter Day Saint or a member of the "restored Church of Jesus Christ,” , the optics of either aren't good for a politician, at least not unless these become the standard terms. Doug Weller talk 15:03, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
- Not sure I like either version. Doug Weller talk 20:12, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
81.149.45.82 (talk · contribs) just made major changes at Mormon folklore which I've reverted. They also made some changes at another article, also reverted. The edits broke links and the Mormon folklore changes would need a page move. Could you maybe talk to the IP? Doug Weller talk 16:21, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
- It looks like more of a drive-by type situation (only 4 edits from the IP total). One link you might use in the reverting edit summaries is MOS:LDS which spells out the current consensus on Mormon naming conventions. ~Awilley (talk) 01:41, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
- A belated thanks. Doug Weller talk 09:58, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
Logging of Special Sanctions
Hey, shouldn't the special discretionary sanctions that you've been imposing be logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log/2018? Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:38, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
User violating sanctions
A user named Volunteer Marek accused me of being a vandal and a troll on the talk page for Murder of Mollie Tibbetts. I noticed that this user is under Special discretionary sanctions and is supposed to refrain from making personal negative comments to other users. Just wanted to let you know it appears this user violated those sanctions. I'm not sure if this is the right place to report them but I am new to Wikipedia. If I need to report them someplace else please let me know, thank you. Orspac (talk) 05:50, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
Just wanted to add I did make a post on the talk page about family members because I read on website that these were potentially not true cousins of Tibbetts. However you can go through all of my edits and check to see they were all made in good faith and there was no trolling or vandalism, thanks. Orspac (talk) 06:24, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
- I wasn't born yesterday. I won't be enforcing any sanctions based on reports from proxy IPs or throwaway accounts, and if I see more reports like this I'll have to modify VM's sanction to prevent this kind of abuse. ~Awilley (talk) 13:11, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
I don't agree with your actions
I don't agree with what you did. Other people have similar things on their Wikipedia's why the heck can't President Monson nor other LDS presidents have a tributes thing?!?! JZimm09 (talk) 04:23, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
Because Honestly if US presidents and celebrities can have them why not others. Because for one it would be interesting to have such reactions. I don't think your excuse is a good one unless you can give explain to me why the heck it is. JZimm09 (talk) 04:29, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
- I don't think Tribute sections like that are standard practice anywhere on Wikipedia. You mentioned US presidents so I looked up Ronald Reagan and he doesn't have a Tributes section. There's about a short paragraph of material in the section titled Death. In the Monson article I could see a case for a couple sentences about the most notable tributes, but we definitely can't include quotes from every notable person who tipped their hat. ~Awilley (talk) 13:04, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
My Apologies. I totally forgot I could've sworn there was some thing. Maybe you're right. But I would like to include some of them if that's not too much trouble. Because on the other Prophets you don't get the reactions and personally, I would love to read the reactions/tributes paid to them but they're not on Wikipedia. Doesn't have to be every single thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JZimm09 (talk • contribs) 22:54, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
- @JZimm09: I don't doubt that there are many Wikipedia articles that have that kind of material, but it's something we generally try to avoid, and it's stuff that generally tends to get trimmed out over time. Like there will be an article about a school shooting or something and in the first few days there is a "Reactions" section with lengthy quotes from every politician who expressed thoughts and prayers on social media. But the actual substance of those quotes doesn't actually add anything to the article, other than to inform the reader that important people made tributes. So one could achieve the same outcome by writing two sentences saying something along the lines of "Many religious and government leaders and foreign dignitaries expressed condolences and admiration, including [name the most notable]. Here's a recent example: John_McCain#Tributes. That was added yesterday or today, and I predict that it will first get longer, and then shorter, with the extra subsection about Donald Trump's lack of a tribute being cropped down to a sentence or two. The other problem with the long quotes is that they can contain material that is "non-neutral" for Wikiipedia purposes like in the case of Monson, "...He was a true prophet of God..." or the like. Even though the material is attributed to someone (we're not saying it in Wikipedia's voice) it still isn't great. So back to Monson, do you think you could condense the section you added into a couple of sentences summarizing the key people offering tributes? (Also if you can provide links to the sources that would be good too.) ~Awilley (talk) 01:49, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
Again I apologize for my initial reaction. But I can shorten it down to only a few reactions. I now can kinda understand where you're coming from but, wikipedia is a place for information (kinda) and, as I said i'm personally curious about how people and figures reacted to events like Monson's death..and there's literally almost no other place to get said reactions so getting them here I think would help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:681:8100:6E9B:3D40:BA89:3880:A390 (talk) 16:41, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
- @JZimm09: No problem, and thanks. Wikipedia is a place for information (kinda) as you said, but obviously not all information has a place on Wikipedia. (See WP:INDISCRIMINATE for instance.) For a more comprehensive summary of tributes I think a blog might be your best option. For the summary, I can help you with formatting your references when it comes to that. Also don't forget to log into your account. ~Awilley (talk) 16:57, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
- Well, so can I add some tributes? like from President Trump and the quorum? or no..and I would love to do a blog but there's no where I can find tributes for past prophets...there's always so hidden. Which if they were on Wikipedia would make things easier. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JZimm09 (talk • contribs)
- Why don't you write up a sentence and propose it on the article talk page at Talk:Russell M. Nelson and see what other editors have to say? If you don't get any objections there you can go ahead and try adding it to the article. ~Awilley (talk) 02:04, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2018).
Administrator changes
- None
- Asterion • Crisco 1492 • KF • Kudpung • Liz • Randykitty • Spartaz
Optimist on the run → Voice of Clam
Interface administrator changes
- Amorymeltzer • Mr. Stradivarius • MusikAnimal • MSGJ • TheDJ • Xaosflux
Guideline and policy news
- Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.
Technical news
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
- Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says
Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example isarticle_textwhich is nowpage_title. - Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is
page_age.
Arbitration
- The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.
Topic ban
Can you please provide me a rationale for topic banning me from all politics BLPs forever? I have never been assessed with a BLP violation. I don't see why run of the mill edit warring (which I wasn't engaged in prior to my ban, and haven't been for some time) justifies a ban.
Also, what is false or misleading aout my edits to Kavanaugh's page? All the content I added is still in there. Steeletrap (talk)
- I"m willing to work with you in terms of mediating my tendency to edit war . But I think a permanent ban is very extreme with no evidence of BLP violations. I have contributed a lot to the project, even if I'm too hot-headed sometimes. Would you be willing to reconsider sanctioning me, or impose some more moderate sanction? Steeletrap (talk) 18:43, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- The ban isn't "forever" or "permanent". It's indefinite, meaning in place until it is successfully appealed. The rationale was that you added unsourced and poorly sourced negative information to the Lead section of an extremely high profile BLP, reverted it back in when it was challenged (blatantly violating the discretionary sanctions on the article) and then after being warned on your talk page by two editors and two admins you refused to self-revert and seek consensus on the talk page. I placed the ban because I don't trust you to be editing BLPs. ~Awilley (talk) 18:29, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
- You're mistaken. I'm not being a jerk, I'm being honest. REad my talk page. There wasn't an edit war issue with me on this page. The admin who blocked me for EW admitted he was mistaken.
- As to poorly sourced/unsourced, please be specific. All of the "negative" information I added is still in the article (about Ford's allegations and Kavanaugh's role in the Vince Foster investigation), so whether it was negative or not, it appears to have met our guidelines. Maybe it's unfair that these allegations were so widely publicized (as Kavanaugh argued the other night), but Ford's allegations are notable and belong in the article and (for now at least, maybe not if he's confirmed) the lede. Steeletrap (talk) 22:30, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
- I'm asking two things. 1) Provide specific evidence (diffs) of violations of policy, and 2) consider a less extreme sanction (I'd be willing to listen to you and fix any problematic editing). You're in charge, but I hope you take me up on the offer. Steeletrap (talk) 00:19, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
- Sure, here are a couple of diffs. (A bit tricky to find given you rarely use edit summaries.)
- [5] Addition of unsourced negative information to the Lead section
- [6] Restoring that sentence to the Lead after it was challenged, in violation of the "Consensus required" sanction. The sources you added are not adequate to support the statement that
Kavanaugh has been criticized for investing federal money and other resources into investigating partisan conspiracy theories
in Wikipedia's voice, as both are primary sources (opinion/op-ed pieces). It looks like you're correct that the sentence is still in the article, but it's certainly not in the Lead anymore.
- Here are the four user talk page warnings that you ignored:
- [7] Galobbter saying you violated the consensus required restriction and asking you to self-revert
- [8] MONGO saying that they're still challenging the edit
- [9] Myself saying you violated the consensus required restriction
- [10] User:KnightLago with a stern "final warning" saying you must seek consensus before making edits.
- You completely ignored all this, and the next day you again violated the consensus required sanction by reverting this into the Lead.
- Also to be clear, this is the less extreme sanction. The alternative was an indefinite block. ~Awilley (talk) 02:27, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
- OK so you're claiming that my violation is adding accurate content (that Kavanaugh has been criticized for investigating conspiracy theories related to Foster) but with inadequate sourcing? That justifies an indefinite block from all BLPs? There's no more moderate sanction that you're open to? Steeletrap (talk) 11:42, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
- No, no, and no. The ban was for discretionary sanction violations and disruptive editing, like I said here, and for behavior like what I just described above. ~Awilley (talk) 13:23, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
- Ah, so it's the usual Wikipedia "administration" of justice:ague (and therefore unfalsfiable) charges ("disruptive editing") rather than credible, specific evidence; a total lack of self-awareness or willingness to justify or rethink one's decisions; hypersensitivity; and ejaculations of ego. Have fun on the internet, mister admin. Steeletrap (talk) 13:55, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
- Incidentally: Can you clarify the scope of the ban? Does it include talk pages? And does it include pages that relate to political BLPs (if so, how close to the connection have to be?) Steeletrap (talk) 15:59, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
- Ah, so it's the usual Wikipedia "administration" of justice:ague (and therefore unfalsfiable) charges ("disruptive editing") rather than credible, specific evidence; a total lack of self-awareness or willingness to justify or rethink one's decisions; hypersensitivity; and ejaculations of ego. Have fun on the internet, mister admin. Steeletrap (talk) 13:55, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
- No, no, and no. The ban was for discretionary sanction violations and disruptive editing, like I said here, and for behavior like what I just described above. ~Awilley (talk) 13:23, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
- OK so you're claiming that my violation is adding accurate content (that Kavanaugh has been criticized for investigating conspiracy theories related to Foster) but with inadequate sourcing? That justifies an indefinite block from all BLPs? There's no more moderate sanction that you're open to? Steeletrap (talk) 11:42, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
- Sure, here are a couple of diffs. (A bit tricky to find given you rarely use edit summaries.)
- The ban isn't "forever" or "permanent". It's indefinite, meaning in place until it is successfully appealed. The rationale was that you added unsourced and poorly sourced negative information to the Lead section of an extremely high profile BLP, reverted it back in when it was challenged (blatantly violating the discretionary sanctions on the article) and then after being warned on your talk page by two editors and two admins you refused to self-revert and seek consensus on the talk page. I placed the ban because I don't trust you to be editing BLPs. ~Awilley (talk) 18:29, 28 September 2018 (UTC)