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This talk page was last edited (diff) on 25 March 2020 at 16:16 by BrownHairedGirl (talk • contribs • logs)

Statement by BHG on the ArbCom decision

Please note that the following is a personal statement, made solely to explain BHG's decisions in response to the ArbCom decision. It is not any way an attempt to open discussion on any of the issues raised.

Copy of WT:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Proposed decision#Statement_by_BHG

I have reflected on proceedings so far, and want to say:

1. I now regret not supporting the request for a portals case back in about March 2018. Earlier intervention by ArbCom could have established less conflictual methods of resolving the mess left by the mass creation of automated portals, and created a better climate for examination of the rest.
2. Regardless of the outcome of this arbitration process, I commit to no further involvement with portals, in any form. My views on the structural problems with portal space have not changed, but is abundantly clear that my further involvement would serve no beneficial purpose.
3. Consequent to the above, I will ask that BAG withdraw its approval for WP:BRFA/BHGbot 4.
4. I will henceforth follow the principle of rigorously avoiding unparliamentary language. In particular, I will not call other editors liars, and I will not accuse them of incompetence, regardless of what facts I see and verify. I remain concerned that the community lacks effective and accessible mechanisms for dealing with such conduct, but I unreservedly commit to abide by the letter and spirit of what the Arbs guide.
5. I accept that in future, an apparent WP:FAITACCOMPLI should not be addressed by unilateral application of WP:BRD. That was not my understanding of the relevant policies, but I stand corrected.
6. I remain saddened by the proposed finding BrownHairedGirl_has_used_administrator_tools_to_delete_portals. I have been unable identify any allegation by the Arbs of misconduct in my making of MFD nominations, so I have no idea why that is included under this heading. I have been assured that there is no suggestion that I used admin tools to further my views. I accept unreservedly the Arbs recommendation to take in future a strict view of WP:INVOLVED. However, I feel that it is unjust that I am apparently condemned for my good faith use of admin tools for purely clerical purposes to implement decisions made by others, assisting in cleanup in the context of a deepening shortage of admins within what I believed was the broadly accepted interpretation of INVOLVED.

--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:02, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom has finalised its decision at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals. I stand by my pledges at WT:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Proposed decision#Statement_by_BHG (see box to the right), and I will observe ArbCom's restrictions for as long they apply and for as long as I continue to edit Wikipedia.

However, that continued editing will not be for long.

I accept ArbCom's decision to apply a strict interpretation of WP:CIVIL, and to censure me for what amounts to unparliamentary language. I accept that my use of direct language to describe the problems which I encountered was counter-productive, and I accept with regret ArbCom's decision to sanction me for that. But I have not been persuaded that I was materially wrong in identifying serious problems, which have been entrenched by ArbCom's findings.

I believe that ArbCom's decision is seriously flawed in several respects, including:

1. It wrongly dismissed evidence of misconduct by other parties, falsely representing me as the sole cause of a wider conflict.
2. It attributed fault to me for clerical tasks which I undertook in good faith, which were uncontroversial, which were supported by many other editors (including at least one admin), and which a significant minority of arbitrators recognised as such. I am very disappointed that the Arbs failed to respond to requests from me and others for even a single example of me using tools to advance my views.
   The Arbs' support of a principle of strict interpretation of WP:INVOLVED may well be wise, but it does not reflect current community norms, and has been opposed in this case by many editors in good standing. As pledged, I will apply that strict interpretation in future, but I object strongly to its retrospective imposition on me personally, especially as a basis for sanctions.
   I am also concerned that it will seriously damage the community's ability to complete laborious technical tasks which require the mop, since the number of admins continues to fall.
3. It ignored all the evidence which I produced of systematic poor quality and transparency in edits which I reverted, thereby undermining both the established principle of WP:BRD and the ArbCom-created principle of WP:Fait accompli. I accept the Arbs' decision as future guidance, but I believe their interpretation to be a development of policy which failed to WP:Assume good faith, and censures me unreasonably.
4. It applied double jeopardy, explicitly reprimanding me for making my case in the course of the proceedings which were supposed to judge my case. This is a fundamental breach of natural justice, and leaves the community without a process for addressing the issues which I raised.

ArbCom decisions are not appealable. So this leaves me no possible path to remove these unwarranted slurs on my character and conduct. They will remain as "facts" for as long I remain on Wikipedia. With my good name shredded through flawed process and false "findings of fact", it is not possible for me to honourably continue as part of the Wikipedia project.

I know that this case presented ArbCom with a huge task, and I thank all the Arbs for their hard work and their sincerity. But the result is a decision that I cannot live with.

Additionally, I believe that ArbCom's decision exacerbates some systemic problems in Wikipedia, which I had hoped that it would try to help fix. I have described these problems in the proceedings, and I won't repeat them here. But I will note that first item of WP:Five pillars is that the purpose of Wikipedia is to create an encyclopedia, which is a work of reference that requires scholarly rigour. Sadly, the development of policy and practice has allowed that overriding goal to be undermined by the prioritisation of secondary considerations. This decision by ArbCom exacerbates that problem.

Over the years, I have seen Wikipedia make progress on many systemic issues, so I have faith that there will eventually be progress on the systemic problems which I encountered. But their entrenchment for now places a serious barrier to editors who try to uphold quality.

So, after over 1.6 million edits in the course of over 14 years as an editor, and nearly 14 years as an admin, I will therefore wind up some incomplete tasks on my to-do list, and then leave Wikipedia. In the meantime I will also provide whatever assistance I can to other editors who would like guidance or tools for the tasks I used to perform. If you would like any pointers, please just ask.

I expect that this will take a few weeks. Then I will permanently disable both my main account and my bot account, by removing the email link and scrambling my password.

I am grateful for having had the opportunity to play a part in building a unique contribution to human knowledge. For all Wikipedia's many flaws, it is overall a huge success, and hope that it will thrive, and find ways to overcome more of its systemic problems without sacrificing those who tackle them.

It has also been a great pleasure to work with so many fine editors who uphold encyclopedic principles and who apply critical thinking to their work. It is a great pity that Wikipedia does not value more highly those who use those critical skills. Instead, in practice it too often values superficiality over reason by preferring glib brevity over analysis, and prefers unchallenged assertion over actual debate. I have especially enjoyed those with whom I disagree, but who conduct a good debate; those debates are essential to any intellectual endeavour, ensuring that decisions are made by scrutiny rather than by cheerleading, and that crowdsourcing does not mean dumbing down. May the goddess continue to grant you strength to work in an environment which is increasingly biased against those who use critical thinking skills.

Please note again that this statement is intended solely as a one-off personal explanation of why I have decided that my time as editor will soon end. Please do not use this page for any discussion of either the numbered points or my wider structural concerns. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:45, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

• PS. Some time in the next few days I will post a list of the tasks which I intend to complete before leaving. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:49, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Discussion on BHG's statement

I can't change your mind BHG. But note, for a few years I was under two topic bans & then concurrently, I was Arb banned from Wikipedia for a full year & a month. Never once did I consider retirement. Not only did I return (after my ban was lifted), but I also successfully had my 2 topic-bans repealed? In these last few years, I've proven my detractors wrong & have thrived. If I could do it? so can you. GoodDay (talk) 23:24, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, @GoodDay. But the problem is simple: sanctions can be lifted, but findings of fact are in effect tablets of stone. There is no mechanism or opportunity to review or overturn them. So no matter what I do or how much time passes, the false findings of "fact" will remain as a stick to beat me with.

Life is too short to give my time to a project which has indelibly smeared me in that way. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:46, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I've been smeared in the past on Wikipedia by some editors, as having psychological problems. Apparently, they were wrong. GoodDay (talk) 23:53, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

@GoodDay: my concern is not smears by individuals. It is smears by the community's ultimate decision-making body. It no longer matters whether a squillion editors agree that ArbCom erred (as indeed nearly half the Arbs believe); the smears are now Wikipedia's final word. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:00, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Check it out & I'm still here. GoodDay (talk) 00:06, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@BHG: GoodDay was one of the first editors I worked with when I started editing a year ago. GD offered me both instruction and encouragement. I've directly benefitted from GD's decision to continue editing post-damnatum, and I'm glad GD made that decision. I've also benefited from working with you, BHG, over the last year, as have many other editors, and as will many more editors if you stick around. No one would fault you for taking a break if you wanted to, but I hope that if you do, you'll consider coming back. I want to point out to you that FOF9 (admin tools) was 9-5-1, FOF11 (conduct during arbitration) was 8-7, and the desysop remedy was 9-6. The majorities carry under the rules, but they were slim majorities; not exactly what we'd call overwhelming consensus. Two votes is not "the project" or "the community". I think the community wants to have you as an editor and would benefit from it. So I remain optimistic that even if you step away, you will decide to come back, and I look forward to supporting your future RFA whenever that may be. (So please don't scramble your password.) Levivich 04:07, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, @Levivich:, both for your kind words of encouragement now and for the pleasure of working with you at various points.

But even a finding of "fact" by a majority of one has been enough to create an unappealable, unamendable, permanent statement of an unjustified slur on my work and character. I am not sticking around with my record sullied in that way, or and I am not staying in an environment which censures someone for making their case in a forum whose purpose is to hear that case. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:17, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, all ArbCom decisions are amendable! They can amend them as they see fit. They can restore sysop status. They can substitute my name for yours. Literally anything at all. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:51, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Are you sure, Hawkeye7?

I have never seen a finding of fact amended, but I don't follow Arbcom closely. Can you point me to any examples of a finding of fact being amended or removed? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:31, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I won't use this page for any discussion of either the numbered points or your wider structural concerns. Just asking you to reconsider. Your work here and Wikipedia are quite a bit more than portals and ArbCom decisions. You'd be missed. Sorely. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:29, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks, @Sluzzelin. I thought long and hard about this over the last few days, as the shape of ArbCom's decision emerged, and as the Arbs dismissed repeated pleas from other editors. But my hard-earned life experience over more than five decades is that nothing good comes from continued close involvement with people or groups who for whatever reason assert falsehood as fact, as has happened here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:55, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't know anything about this decision. I'm just interested in making an encylopedia. As one who has been banned before, I would say stop making edits for as long as you want or as the community requires it, but also don't feel constrained from or limited in making useful edits by some kind of complex moral or philosophical reasoning. This is a for-fun volunteer website. When you want to make edits to the encylopedia, make them. When you don't, then don't. Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:39, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Very sad. As someone who was also desysopped, I feel your pain. All the best in your future endeavours. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:02, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

• BHG, you're a peerless shining figure on here, not even slightly stained by what's just happened, at least that's my view even as someone who agrees with much of the Arbs findings. Lots would strongly support an RfA if you wanted it. This outcome is painful & I so hope before too long you come to see us less poorly than you do now, and come back to us. FeydHuxtable (talk) 00:25, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

  Many thanks, FeydHuxtable. But false findings of fact set permanently on my record are a bright line for me. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:34, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I hear you. There's some small but worthwhile possibilities I'm looking into. FeydHuxtable (talk) 01:00, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

• Damn. It's certainly no consolation, but this is harsh. We haven't always agreed but I am stunned to see this. I don't think we've ever seen an unproblematic admin desysopped for a handful of instances of petty incivility confined to a contentious topic area that the community has repeatedly failed to address, and that's not even mentioning that said admin did not abuse their admin tools in any way, and had sincerely acknowledged the problem and comprehensively laid out a voluntarily resolution. I really have never seen a desysop like this before. I've thoroughly read through the progression of the case and I don't get it. When the desysop was proposed in the workshop phase, it was given little consideration, with the overwhelming majority of feedback in opposition. In the proposed decision phase, you laid out a strong argument as to why a desysop, or lesser sanctions, were not necessary, in keeping with our traditional standards of voluntary resolution in lieu of preventative action. No one argued the point that a desysop made sense in the face of your attempt to diffuse the problem. No one really even argued as to why a desysop would have been actually necessary at all. Not even the supporting arbs in their voting statements. It's not like you went to unique extremes of incivility, indeed many people say far worse in heated situations, and we usually have a understanding that tempers flair sometimes because we're all human, particularly in contentious, heated environments, and sanctions in these situations are generally frowned upon. No sanction they implemented resolved an issue that you did not pledge to voluntarily resolve, and no one in any way suggested that your voluntary resolution could not be trusted. I don't see a single credible argument that you have a fundamental problem incompatible with adminship, and that you're anything other than a normal person whose temper flared in a contentious dispute. We have never desysopped over that, especially when the person is saying "my bad, I'll work on it, and it won't happen again". I really don't get it. Both at face value, and reading the documentation, the action is literally not supported by any logical justification. It's very strange and concerning. I don't understand why this happened to you, and I can't understand the mentality of the current Arbcom. On another case I have been chastising them for not taking literal straightforward admin abuse seriously, and yet here they seem to have desysopped a non-abusive admin for little to no reason whatsoever. Arbcom is supposed to be evidenced-based and logical, and it appears they are straying from that standard. I am sorry that I was not around to defend you, whether or not it would have made a difference. You will be a great loss to the community. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 02:42, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
• I don't know what to say in this situation, but the desysop was clearly excessive, and I am saddened by it. BD2412 T 03:35, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

  Many thanks, @BD2412, and also for your counsel along the way and for your sadly unheeded attempts to shine a light for the Arbs. But the desysop is actually the least of my concerns. I don't like it, but it might be fixable at a future RFA, and I might enjoy a period of moplessness. There can be a liberation in being free to say that a problem is beyond my pay grade.

  So if it was only that, I would probably stay. But even if there was no sanction or reprimand, I will not stay while I am misrepresented by bad judgements which have been erected in tablets of stone as "fact".

  Best wishes, --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:03, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

• Very sorry to see this. Of course I hope you will reconsider at some point in the future, but all best wishes anyway. Johnbod (talk) 05:46, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
• Desysopped? How ridiculous. All the best for whatever your plans are for the future. I rarely say this to any editor, but your contributions will be missed. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:16, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

  Thanks, Lugnuts. I have enjoyed working with you, esp the fact that you are one of those editors who can have strong disagreements on one issue and then treat the next encounter on its merits. You're a fine Wikipedian, and I hope that your skills remain valued. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:24, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry to see that you were desysopped. Let me state for the record that I think they're dead wrong on that and just as you said, think they missed the real case. Sorry this happened to you ! Necromonger...We keep what we kill 12:58, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Necro. Good to know that I am not alone! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:20, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

NO problem - hopefully, they'll come to their senses and do the right thing and resysop you ! Necromonger...Arbs were wrong, Resysop BHG! 14:01, 30 January 2020 (UTC) _{PS: Yes, I changed my signature in protest}

I am sorry too to see this happening, but this is the common way that ArbCom is operating. They either remove the fuel or the oxygen, but never the heat. Unfortunately you are not the first one, and very, very unlikely to be the last one. People still keep voting for members to take their seat in this institute, and hence it continues without reform. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:07, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Dirk. One of my underlying fears for the future of Wikipedia is that it is possible for any crowd-sourced project to reach a tipping point where the processes start to serve the interests of the less-talented participants rather than the project's ultimate goals. When that happens, a vicious circle begins where mediocrity can censure those who seek better, making it impossible to reverse the situation.

That's one of the reasons why I am not hanging around. I thought that the tipping point had been reached in only one backwater, but ArbCom seems to be upholding the problem rather than curing it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:32, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom hearing a new case request

ArbCom, for many years, has been the poster child for this. They have improved, but not enough. Their solution is almost always to remove one editor (and for years, that was by default the named editor, in this case basically: you) and they think the problem is solved. "You were mentioned by 'the community' as the main problem in the Case request, so the problem is you." At the moment a case starts, your faith is set. They are fundamentally incapable to find a root cause. The community here had a problem with what to do with portals and how. So they removed you. ArbCom is not a dispute resolution, it is a bludgeoning tool, a firing squad. And as you say, it is a vicious circle, one that started years ago. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:49, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

"it is possible for any crowd-sourced project to reach a tipping point where the processes start to serve the interests of the less-talented participants rather than the project's ultimate goals". Oh my, that's happening right now on Stack Overflow (amongst other drama) and it's a blood bath.

I'm sorry to see you go BHG. Thank you for your efforts over the years. --kingboyk (talk) 23:51, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

• There's quite a lot I could say, but it wouldn't get us anywhere. So I'll just say I disagree with, and am saddened by, the outcome of this case. Wikipedia will be significantly poorer without you. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:03, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Many thanks, Boing, both for your comments here and for the pleasure of working with you over the years.

You are wise not to comment more directly. ArbCom has made it very clear that even making a case in the course of proceedings to examine that case is verboten, so caution is needed.

I wish you and others good luck in turning the tide. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:27, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

• Sad to see this BHG, however, per my (poor) attempts to convince ArbCom to take the route that the high majority of the community favored at the previous mega-ANIs on this case (topic + i bans), a core of ArbCom was not for turning. Per the ANIs, which underlined the obvious respect for you as an admin outside of the recent portal-incivility (even by those you were uncivil to, to their credit), I never thought this was going to end up in a deysop. However, when I saw some of the Proposed FOFs (FOF #6 and FOF #9, and even FOF #11), I was concerned. Deysoping is one of the least effective ways to handle the issues raised (unless you believed FOF #9). While ADMINACCORD is important, so is a contribution history of +1 million edits in some of the more technical, and least supported, areas of Wikipedia. There were better ways to handle this, but unfortunately, there is no DRV to ArbCom. Britishfinance (talk) 14:30, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
• It’s cliche, but I cannot believe this. None of it makes sense. A little human directness, in a contentious area, occasionally slipping into incivility, should not be able to lead to this. How could anyone get to this conclusion. And while it’s not a numbers game, some leeway has to be given for far over a million edits, and care for many important but often-neglected tasks. I call this irrational, self-defeating, harmful to the project - and, respectfully, seems just plain wrong. BHG has been a quiet inspiration for all these years, and this bizarre decision will not change my mind on this - but leads me, like many others, to wonder about the project. I suggest many members of ArbCom need to consider their own positions, if they can take the inputs of this case and produce such an outcome. And all this for a part of the project most readers do not seem to value or use. I could cry. Best of luck BHG!SeoR (talk) 17:07, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
• Then I will permanently disable both my main account and my bot account, by removing the email link and scrambling my password... I ask of you to not do this. Please don't do something you'll regret; I'd hate to see it happen again. Feel free to leave, to take a long break, whatever- but this is not worth you losing your account. The less people we permanently lose, the better. On the topic of feeling down over the FOFs, there's been users before, like Rootology, Everyking, and Floq, who suffered some sort of blow and reprisal against them, but went on to become some of the most legendary users to edit. It's your choice, but I do not believe this is the end for you. 💴Money💶💵emoji💷^{Talk💸Help out at CCI!} 20:14, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
• Sorry to see you go. This has all been rather shocking to me. Shearonink (talk) 21:49, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
• Comment My interactions with BrownHairedGirl have been limited, but always pleasant. She is somewhat of a rarity among Wikipedians—that is, she is a free and independent thinker, on most things, generally speaking, and from my limited observations of her. She does not "buy in" to the partisan-controlled narratives in much of the mass media. She does her own independent research, and makes her decisions based on that thorough research. Did she say some unsavoury things in the admittedly, very heated Portal: deletion discussions? Perhaps. But is that a de-sysop-able offence? The answer is...it depends. I think ArbCom made a huge mistake here in not looking past the supposed "evidence," and instead considering BHG's intent and the general climate of the situation. I don't think anyone can legitimately say BHG loathes Northamerica1000 or meant what she said as something that was said. Moreover, BHG makes a compelling case of potential double jeopardy, which is worthy of exploration.

BD2412 said it best here...the desysoping was excessive. Moreover, Northamerica1000 is not faultless here. And, even if they were, the dissenting arbitrators rightly, in my view, note that a two-way interaction ban would not necessarily have implied fault, but rather is an acknowledgement that their non-involvement and ignoring BHG can be seen, broadly speaking, as passive aggressive retaliatory behaviour.

I would've preferred BHG to seek a new RfA, if only as expressing the community's distaste for ArbCom's decision. A swift re-sysoping would be seen as a stunning rebuke and, to those ArbCom members who won support in the fall 2019 elections with the narrowest of margins, they are likely to end their term on ArbCom as "one-and-done" arbitrators. The general and prevailing early consensus among Wikipedians, from what I've been able to glean and gather, is that the community disapproves of this process.

For that reason, I will be semi-retiring from Wikipedia, effective at the end of this week.

Thanks,

Doug Mehus T·C 23:09, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

• I am extremely saddened to see this, BrownHairedGirl. While blocking - the worst fate for a normal editor - is, as we admins are constantly reminded, supposed to be prevention rather than punishment even for the most uncivil and unruly editors, it does at least come with possibilities of appeal, but one can only wonder how in desysoping cases like this, how such an Arbcom outcome can be anything other than a pure, harsh punishment and one with no route for appeal. Busy admins walk on precarious ground and will automatically accumulate enemies and vindictiveness - even among sitting arbitrators so it's hardly surprising that so few users are prepared to run for office, and why it has become a trend for so many to voluntarily lay down their tools. Swarm and Beetstra put it well, and while my efforts for Wikipedia are paltry compared to yours, it looks almost as if the community is looking for reasons to rid the project of older, long-term productive admins and I may well therefore be the next admin to suffer a similar fate. Arbcom is prosecutor, jury, judge, and executioner, they appear to take the witness evidence on face value so I'm not encouraged to even put up any defence. Like others here, I thank you enormously for all you have done for this great knowledge base. It will be a long time before anyone else can match your contribution to it - if anyone ever does. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:26, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

• BHG, you asked above about FoFs being modified. I know of one precedent, the Matthew Hoffman case. The case was decided in February 2008, modified by motion in December 2008, and finally overturned by a motion in June 2009. This motion explicitly stated that the adverse findings related to the sanctioned editor were nullified and ArbCom offered an apology both to the editor and the community. No other examples of overturned cases or modifications of findings after a decision is posted come to mind for me (as opposed to removing sanctions, which is a regular occurrence), though there may be other examples. NYB probably has the best knowledge of prior cases and ArbCom actions, FYI. But, Hawkeye is correct that they have the power to modify findings by motion and there was at least one example where a dreadfully unfair decision and injustice was corrected. EdChem (talk) 07:38, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks so much for this EdChem. This is what I was looking into per my comment above – you've saved myself & probably others much time digging this out. If BHG wishes to proceed with an appeal, these are possibly the next steps:

1) Clarify which FoF BHG needs changed.

2) See who is available to help her with this. ( This is too important not to at least ask some of the big name & wisest editors like Iridescent & JHochman, IMO.)

3)Ask if BHG wants to contribute to the wording, or if she'd want to leave it in our hands. (BHG would likely at least have to sign the appeal though.)

Depending on the answers to 1) & 3) we should probably ask at least one of the Arbs to clear if its ok for BHG to discuss these matters on a sub page in her user space. For now, I think it's safe though for her to answer a simple yes/no question about 1).

@BHG, would it be sufficient if we got just 'conduct during arbitration' & 'used administrator tools' struck as FoF? (PS -if your answer is 'No', I'll bow out of this process & leave it to others who seem more completely aligned with your PoV on this, like EdChem. ) FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:54, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

FeydHuxtable and any other users considering helping BHG to consider an appeal, I'd like to offer a few thoughts:

1. The Matthew Hoffman (MH) case took 16 months to finally be overturned.
2. Arbitators who participated in a case can be unwilling to spend much time reviewing whether there was a mistake when they already have a view that they did not, which is an understandable human failing. It's one reason that a review / appeal generally goes before a different panel.
3. The MH case spanned two Committees as it started in December 2007 and some of the concerns related to the changeover. That is not the situation here.
4. The MH case was initiated by a member of ArbCom, who recused but continued to monitor the mailing list (I know this for certain as that arbitrator replied to an email that I sent to the list about the case). ArbCom procedures should now prevent such behaviour and in any case I know of no comparable issue in the BHG case. That recused Arbitrator's actions prior to the case were also problematic but went unexamined by ArbCom.
5. In the MH case, a non-recused Arbitrator proposed and voted on adverse findings and a desysop motion within 13 hours of the case opening. This was about 7 hours after the targeted sysop had posted to the evidence page that they had exams in a week and was unlikely to have time to look back at a two-month-old block until they were done. This kind of prejudging of a case and apparent bias was ultimately viewed as an irregularity in process but was actually evidence that the decision was unfair (in my opinion).

My point is that getting ArbCom to agree to modify its original decision is difficult and time-consuming, even when there are issues that seem like obvious problems to outsiders. The situation is comparable to the one faced by a wrongly-blocked editor. Arguing the block was wrong is generally pointless, but arguing it is no longer necessary (even if the editor believes that it never was) is often effective. With ArbCom, eidence of a restriction no longer being needed is more persuasive that arguing it was never needed (which is easily taken as IDHT). BHG, it might be easier to ask for modifications of findings that you could accept as balanced. For example, ask to change:

8) BrownHairedGirl has used her administrator tools to delete over 2000 portal pages since April 2019 and has nominated dozens of portals for deletion. (log)

to something like:

8) BrownHairedGirl has used her administrator tools to delete over 2000 portal pages since April 2019 and has nominated dozens of portals for deletion. (log) In some cases, after an MfD that BHG had started was closed, she implemented the consensus decision at the request of the closer (as proper deletion of portals can be complicated). The Committee notes that some of these actions can be interpreted as technical violations of the WP:INVOLVED policy, but also recognises that none of these actions have been challenged or reversed.

assuming this is accurate. Another wording might be: The Committee is divided on whether or not such actions fit within the "routine maintenance" exception to the policy against administrators using their tools in situations in which they are involved, but also recognises that none of these actions have been challenged or reversed.

Equally, perhaps you could ask for a modification of:

10) During this case, a temporary injunction was enacted to prevent BrownHairedGirl and Northamerica1000 from editing or discussing portals. BrownHairedGirl violated this injunction by discussing an MfD in which she had participated. BrownHairedGirl also used arbitration case talk pages to insult and belittle other parties in the case. (BrownHairedGirl's talk page, talk page for main case page)

to something more like:

10) During this case, a temporary injunction was enacted to prevent BrownHairedGirl and Northamerica1000 from editing or discussing portals. In a subsequent post at BrownHairedGirl's talk page(link), BHG (appropriately) confirmed that she was not permitted to discuss deletions of Portals. However, she then linked to an earlier comment that she had made in an ongoing Portal MfD and then indicated the outcome she saw as correct. This addition was inconsistent with the injunction. BrownHairedGirl also made comment(s) (link(s)) on arbitration case talk pages in which she argued her position with insults and by belittling other parties in the case. Greater than normal freedom is given to editors making a case before ArbCom but parties are also expected to maintain decorum. Casting aspersions or making ad hominem comments does not advance an argument and may reflect adversely on the commenter's adherence to Wikipedia's fourth pillar.

BHG, would changes along these lines be ones that you see as more fair / balanced / accurate? EdChem (talk) 02:51, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Huge thanks, EdChem for all the effort and thought that you are putting into this. I am very grateful.

It's late now, and I need to do some CFD tagging before I go to bed, but unlike that AWB job, I need both braincells to think carefully about these issues.

So I will reply properly tomorrow.

Again, thank you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:00, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

@EdChem: I am sorry for taking so long to reply to your kind offer. I have found myself overwhelmed by the kindness and support of so many editors, and I needed a lot of time to think about all this, much more than I thought I'd need.

Having mulled it over, I see no point in going back to ArbCom, especially not for the minor changes which you propose. Some of them would help, but others make little difference. And in any case, I don't have the stomach for it.

As a senior politician once said to me in my lobbyist days when he withdrew support for my amendments to a bill, "we've got everything out of them that we can get for now" ... and frankly, if any of the Arbs was wiling to abandon the follies which led to that decision, we'd have heard from them by now. Since the leopard has not changed its spots, I see no point in wasting more time on them.

Thanks again for all the time you put into exploring the options. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:45, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

spirale of justice

• song without words, and yes, I assume you acted in good faith --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:56, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
• We have never interacted (to my memory, but it may be flawed), so you can take or leave my comments as you wish. Like everyone else commenting here, I find it sad that a valuable contributor, to what is an important endeavor, decides to give it up. However, even if I knew you much better I would not persuade you to stay. We are volunteers, we need to get something back from the time we commit. If you feel insulted, or disparaged for your work, then why commit your time? You'll be happier elsewhere and I wish you all the best. QuiteUnusual (talk) 11:26, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
• The desysop makes no sense and it's something I don't at all agree with, I know we've had our differences in the past but you're a great editor and was a great admin and it's sad not only to see you desyopped but also seeing you leave, I wish you all the very best and hope one day you pop your head back here!, Take care BHG and my best wishes for the future, Thanks, Dave /// –Davey2010^Talk 14:22, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
• I am sorry to hear that you are thinking about retiring from Wikipedia; we haven't interacted much, but we did have some fruitful discussions about list-making at WiR a little while ago and your name often crops up in subject areas I edit. I just wanted to thank you for everything you've done for this project, and wish you all the best for the future if you do decide to leave. —Noswall59 (talk) 15:26, 1 February 2020 (UTC).
• There has been so much discussion on the slowing rate of sysop appointments. And so little discussion on retaining sysops. How much work is necessary to develop a new Wikipedia editor into a mature administrator? In this era of alternative fact, rampant promotionalism, and attacks on social order, Wikipedia needs administrators that can function for years at the level of BrownHairedGirl. This desysop decision was not wise, nor in the best interest of the project. Arbcom should revisit their decision. — Neonorange (Phil) 04:27, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
• I mostly lurk and so never got involved in Portal discussions myself, but I appreciated your efforts to clean up the namespace. This Arbcom result is very disappointing. Philbert^2.71828 00:42, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
• It's also my understanding that ARBCOM decisions can be directly appealed to Jimbo, I've seen it recently a couple of months ago. He declined the appeal, but you can always try. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 02:53, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

I see I'm late to the party, but here are some thoughts of mine.

I hesitate to make comments relating to the arbcom case and its consequences, as you may well feel you have had far more than enough, but I really feel I have to add a few of my thoughts. For quite a while now I have thought that most of the members of the arbitration committee are fools, and your case has confirmed that belief to a large extent. (I thought of saying which of them I regard as exceptions to that generalisation, but that would turn my generic expression of contempt for an unspecified majority into personal attacks on those I didn't name as exceptions, so I'll leave it at that.) The conclusion that the abrbcom came to is absolutely absurd.

I wholeheartedly agree with the essential points of your view on "portals". I can't imagine why some editors think it worth putting their time and effort into those things instead of into useful work for the encyclopaedia. I therefore think your initial attempt to do something constructive about them was totally laudable. However, it seems to me that this whole stupid affair grew out of the fact that, when it became clear that your totally constructive and laudable attempts to deal with that crap were not going to achieve much, you allowed yourself to get sucked further and further in, instead of deciding that it wasn't worth pursuing, and walking away. Unfortunately, you got so involved that you lost your sense of proportion, and at times got carried away. Some of the things you did therefore deserve criticism, but deserving criticism for sometimes not keeping things in proportion is not the same as deserving the treatment you got. I also think that it is a gross miscarriage of justice for arbcom to present their conclusions as though you were the only person at fault. That was far from being the case. I should also say that, despite my negative comments about the arbitration committee, the vote for desysopping was only 9:6, so a very significant proportion of them (40%) had the sense to keep things in proportion. In the discussion, as you no doubt know, several of them said things to the effect that since the problems were restricted purely to the portal area there was no justification for removing your adminship, as opposed to just keeping you away from portals. I totally concur.

As for the exhortations in another section of this page to run an RfA, I am not so sure as those who have taken that line. My guess is that you've had more than enough of the whole affair, and don't have any interest in taking it even further. If you were to go for it, who knows how it would turn out? There would be many editors who, like those who have already commented on this page, would support you, and I would be among them. However, there would be those who would be against, some for stupid reasons, some for better reasons. My guess is that an RfA would succeed, but as I said, who knows? If I were in your position I don't think I would have the stomach for RfA, and I certainly shan't blame you if you don't. On the other hand I would very much like to see you take on a successful RfA, because we would regain one of the best administrators we had. I was going to say "and also because it would convey a message to arbcom", but on second thoughts it probably wouldn't: they would just think the RfA got it wrong and they were still right.

My very last comment is that I am delighted to see that so far you have continued to edit, despite what you said about leaving. See you around. JBW (talk) 15:21, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 on this, BHG: "[S]anctions can be lifted, but findings of fact are in effect tablets of stone. There is no mechanism or opportunity to review or overturn them. So no matter what I do or how much time passes, the false findings of "fact" will remain as a stick to beat me with. ... [M]y concern is not smears by individuals. It is smears by the community's ultimate decision-making body." Worse, this generally also applies to anything WP:AE does, because AE is ArbCom's delegated enforcement squad, and ArbCom will virtually never contradict what AE admins decide (it would undermine ArbCom's precious WP:AC/DS regime), much less expunge anything that AE wiki-cops decide to lodge against you, no matter what proof you have that the claims are false. Other editors have quit over the exact same "scarlet letter" effect you are feeling (both due to ArbCom findings and AE ones) and have been doing so for nearly a decade that I know of, probably longer.

I did myself for a year, but through blind luck a third-party got ArbCom to re-examine false AE claims against me, via ARCA (despite third-parties not normally being allowed to do that), and got the accusation against me modified to no longer be a blatant lie. That was sufficient for me to come back, but the odds of anyone getting a "justice" result like this today are probably like 1% or less.  :-( ArbCom claims to be not bound by precedent but tends not to live up to this. Even when it modifies an old case page via motion, it just does strikethrough on the original nonsense and tacks on a revision, nor is there any way to get rid of the original version in the diffs, so people can always find a way to use old WP:DRAMA against you. The only salve I've found is time, and even that is not a cure. E.g., I've had that same case and related AE drama from around 2012 thrown back in my face recently (which someone claiming that me making them unhappy on some page was part of a "long-term pattern of abuse" based on ancient ArbCom crap).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:51, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I know I need to reply to this. I will write something in the next few days. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:55, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Arbcom decision redux

Nobody cares about an Arbcom finding of fact three minutes after it is archived. Don't scramble your password just yet; take a month or two off finding other things to which you might volunteer your time. If working on Wikipedia still makes sense after a period of cooling off and looking around, come back strong! There are many here, myself included, who hope that you do. If other ways to volunteer make sense for you, do those. Just make like an Ent and don't be hasty. Carrite (talk) 17:41, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, @Carrite. I am thinking a lot about all the wonderful encouragement and support I have had in the last few days from you and others. It has been quite overwhelming to find so much kindness from so many.

But my three-score-and-ten is ticking away towards its limit, and I need to think long and hard about how to use whatever years are left to me. There's a time for everything, and the discomfort of this ugly episode may be a sign that I should finally take firm action to clear space to do the substantive writing which many of friends rightly accuse me of dodging. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:27, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, bravo!! there is plenty of other great ways to use your considerable talents. if you have friends encouraging you to write, then I say go for it. Wikipedia will still be here whenever you want to come back. We all have a certain amount of time to use our talents. I think you should pursue any creative areas that seem worthwhile for you. good for you! I hope all's well. best wishes. --Sm8900 (talk) 16:50, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I've cut my WP content writing time way, way, way back for a couple years now to work on a book series so I know exactly of what you speak. I'm the last person to fault you for that decision. But there's no need to scramble a password even if you do go that route — let it sit. Come back if it feels right and seems important; correct two typos a year if it doesn't. If you're like me, you'll be using WP as a book-writer even if you don't write much for WP when you're so engaged. All the best either way, —tim /// Carrite (talk) 19:36, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

I want to add my words of support to what my friend Carrite wrote above. Take some time off, as long as you like, but please don't do anything irrevocable. I know that you are hurting right now, with a lot of justification. However things turn out, I just want to say that I am very grateful for all of the excellent work you have done for this project. Thank you so much. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:57, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

My three-score-and-ten came and went and I'm ticking along on borrowed time according to my physician, so I hardly have time for those who use their claims of PSTD as an excuse for their behaviour to insult, harass, and bait admins in the hope of a reaction they can complain about, or get away with paid editing. I haven't forgotten Jimbo Wales' 'civility' speech 2014 in London and the message he was trying to impart without directly naming names of people who have deliberately made breaches of civility their stock-in-trade for years. At Arbcom, defence is characterised as 'doubling down' , so in my case I'm not even watchlisting Arbcom. In the words of Iridescent: ...something as blatantly "verdict first, trial later" as this one. I've semi-joked before that it's possible to predict the outcome of arbcom cases before they even take place just by looking at the personal grudges of the participants and calculating how far they each think they'll be able to push their preferred outcome and still call it a compromise, but I'm not sure I can recall an example this blatant before. When It's all over and done with, I'll also probably be scrambling my password, but maybe not until I've had the opportunity of meeting some friends and enemies alike at the next Wikimania which will be taking place in a few months right on my doorstep. And then I'll have more time to spend with my adult grand children, get back to composing some serious music, and write some more books. BrownHairedGirl, your work on Wikipedia will be sorely missed, but I know how you feel. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:12, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl and Kudpung: I wanted to wish you both the best for your creative endeavours outside of Wikipedia. Getting those things done is a struggle a lot of us have, to be honest. Airbornemihir (talk) 04:09, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

This is actually exactly a reason to take a break, not to scramble the password.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:36, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

I concur 200% with all of the above; you could scramble your password, for security purposes, but don't remove the e-mail link just yet. If nothing else, I would encourage you to seek a new RfA, which you would undoubtedly win handily, as a method to rebuke the ArbCom decision. Notionally, Wikipedia has no rules, so there's nothing in set in stone that ArbCom can't pass a motion to refine the wording of its previous rulings, to the extent that anyone cares about ArbCom rulings as @Carrite and GoodDay: have pointed out. I haven't read the GoodDay ArbCom case because, frankly, I spent all of two minutes with it, and it was a grossly erroneous smear job. GoodDay, like you, is one of the finest and hardest working editors Wikipedia has. Doug Mehus T·C 16:40, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Moreover, even after seeking and winning a new RfA, whether or not the ArbCom decision is amended or not, you could still decide that you've got other priorities in your real life you want to take care of, so could retire your mop shortly thereafter anyway. But, crucially, you would give yourself the satisfaction of knowing ArbCom was dealt a crucial blow to their credibility with your re-election as an administrator. Doug Mehus T·C 16:42, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

I concur with Doug and Kudpung. You have your life to live; still, Arbcom should be forced to examine its actions, however little good it will do them. Consider your de-sysopping a blessing in disguise. Life is too finite and uncertain to donate your blood time any further.

Wikipedia will miss you far more than you will miss Wikipedia. I have no knowledge of the workings of ArbCom, yet, from reading every post in this thread, I am somewhat appalled that they would choose punishment over rehabilitation.

Let them eat dirt cake; you are a hero(ine) to the many Wikipedians familiar with your show trial case, and an inspiration as well.--Quisqualis (talk) 18:06, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi BHG, I was away for 3+ months from October to February, and I missed all of this. I think it's just ashamed you were de-sysopped and I think that decision was a poor one. I can't think of anyone who has so tirelessly and humanely contributed to the encyclopedia. I'm shocked at this result and can only shake my head in disbelief. I know you want to decrease your time spent here, but lifespans are very long these days and I hope we will continue to be blessed by your presence. In terms of "ArbCom decisions are unappealable", I'm not sure that is entirely correct; I've seen many ArbCom decisions revisited and overturned down the line, usually at least a year or two later so fresh Arb eyes are in play. I think if you want the tools back, you'd pass an RFA even today with flying colors.

It's so sad to see female admins leave or be desysopped or both. I hope you will stick with us. Softlavender (talk) 13:25, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

RfA

TonyBallioni (centre right, with hat and very smart side-parting) prepares to give the oration by the graveside of Arbcom's once-good judgement.

Just so you know, I would support an RfA this instant, and I suspect many others would as well. This is the only time in memory where I’ve seen a desysop where I’m convinced the arbs got it wrong both in my gut and after reading through the case. Thank you for your years of dedication to the project: you are the reason many of us got more involved in Wikipedia. Anyway, take all the time you need, but if you were to run, I’m confident it would be a vindication of the trust many of us still have in you. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:39, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

I second that. Reyk _YO! 07:07, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:13, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:27, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes please. An RfA is the way to demonstrate your wide support. Johnuniq (talk) 22:13, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:19, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 here as well. Doug Mehus T·C 22:29, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Unsure. Would people treat it as an assessmwent of BHG or an assessment of Arbcom's desysop? Some might support BHG because she has been a superior editor, but who also believe Arbcom was justified. Expect a lot of neutrals. Moriori (talk) 22:33, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Not trying to stop you from writing or any other activities you see more deserving for your brain, energy, and time. I fully respect whatever decision you take, and (per Moriori) of course I'm not sure either. But you'd have my support, with bells on. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:27, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 here as well. Cbl62 (talk) 03:26, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I really would personally suggest, just as my own personal opinion, that perhaps BHG might be better off pursuing other activities? serving as an editor of Wikipedia is fine, and I hope she continues to do so. Why pursue adminship again, after all that has happened? who says that would be beneficial? I am not an admin, never have been, and never want to be one. my own personal highly-insignificant personal opinion on this is that, after all that has occurred, I think that BHG deserves a wiki-break from the admin role itself. I am really speaking based upon my own subjective experiences of life, and not for any other reason. you guys simply need to see the wider world around us. BHG gave the admin role their best shot. I don't think we are necessarily doing BHG a favor, by suggesting this so soon after the whole proceeding. I truly mean this as an idea of a positive nature, and I hope my input is seen that way. I appreciate it. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 16:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I believe the thinking is that BHG ought to be able to quit or move away from WP on her own terms, rather than on the terms set by ArbCom.--Quisqualis (talk) 18:14, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Quisqualis, Exactly, and I don't think they've successfully prosecuted the case for an ArbCom-directed desysop, either. Certainly, we've had experienced and administrators alike who have used unparliamentary language in their discussions. I do also think BHG raises important points on the lack of procedural fairness employed by ArbCom, and on their (lack of) factual accuracy in their decision. Doug Mehus T·C 18:18, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 ミラP 20:03, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 20:10, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 I suppose there's no limit to the number of nominators one can have, eh? Schwede66 05:47, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Schwede66, Nope. I assume the nominators would be implied votes of support and thus not need to actually !vote in said RfA? A potential new RfA for BHG may well break wikirecords in terms of the number of co-nominators; would be funny if they had to recode the RfA template to reflect the implied votes of support into the "support/oppose/neutral" template maintained by Cyberbot due to the co-nominees not being reflected in the "support" total. ;) Doug Mehus T·C 17:41, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Dmehus Nominators do vote in RfAs. Schwede66 18:14, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Schwede66, Oh, in addition to their nomination? Doug Mehus T·C 18:15, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. Schwede66 18:38, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Schwede66, Thank you. Doug Mehus T·C 00:45, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 Please consider this path carefully—not just for yourself, but also for all those who benefit from your good work building an encyclopedia. Neonorange (Phil) 07:02, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 (Goodness, all this had escaped my notice entirely.) As discussed above, the FoF can be challenged. As revealed here, it has little impact on the enormously high regard in which you are held by many fellow editors and admins. I've had the privilege to see some of your behind-the-scenes activity on self-populating navigation templates rolled out, and they are works of genius and beauty. If you leave, you'll find other good things to do with your life, but you've been a great fit with this project, and it does not have to end here. – Fayenatic London 08:22, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 Lourdes 17:22, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

+100000000 Puddleglum ^2.0 01:11, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 –Davey2010^Talk 01:36, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 Would support a RFA in a heartbeat; although we quibbled in the recent past, your record and long standing demonstrated integrity speaks for themselves. Agreed with every word and analysis points you made in various portals discussion before the arbcom...fiasco; have always acted like a true content orientated admin. Obviously you have brought huge value to the project and have for years been just irreplaceable. Your closing statement above is one of the most considered, graceful and optimistic I've read on the internet. Really, really really hope you reconsider staying with the project. Ceoil (talk) 18:33, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 Johnbod (talk) 04:47, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 removal of administrator access was a net negative — Wug·a·po·des​ 02:00, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I wish I had said something when you were wronged by ArbCom. I didn't, because I have never really interacted with you, you don't know me, I'm just a nobody, I had nothing to do with the case, and because I'm a coward. I'm very sorry that I did nothing to help you. You deserve so much better. Should you decide to to try to regain adminship through an RfA, whenever the time is right for you, I'd be very happy to support you. Vexations (talk) 03:06, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 ! What unmitigated poppycock. You are and will ever remain one of the best to have wielded a wikipen. 🌤️ – SJ + 21:45, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 You and I have had our run-ins and disagreements in the past and some of the exchanges were not as polite as they could have been, but I never thought you were acting out of spite, only conviction as I was. I cannot believe that desysopping was considered necessary. Like you, I have considered leaving Wikipedia in the past due to my treatment by other editors here (including when I was briefly desysopped myself when my account was hijacked through no fault of my own - the attitude of some editors was not edifying), and continue to do so on occasion. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:36, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Necrothesp, Exactly. BrownHairedGirl argues passionately in her arguments, but I've never construed those arguments being made with malice or spite. Like the RHaworth case decision, this was another example of ArbCom coming to the wrong decision based on procedural flaws in weighing the arguments. Doug Mehus T·C 14:05, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 06:17, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

You gave me a thorough shake-down at Template talk:UK MP links 5 years and 2 usernames ago. I'm a better editor for it. The power of wishful thinking worked for me there. It's got to work here, right? Cabayi (talk) 11:37, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

+1 as well. Please don't scramble your password and de-link the e-mail. Time for reflection is good, but why take irrevocable actions? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 12:12, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

A kitten for you! +

I know it is not much coming from me, and I have not had the years of experience on this site that you have had. However, I do think it is a mistake for you to give up on Wikipedia now.
In politics, we have what's called a Second Act. BHG the superstar admin who wields the mop with righteous fury may be no more, but that shouldn't stop you from finding something new to become.
Regardless, Wikipedia can use your help now more than ever!
–MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 17:14, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Seconded (so to speak). Surely you joined Wikipedia to edit, not to admin? --GRuban (talk) 20:02, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Good luck BrownHairedGirl in whatever you choose to do. Many thanks for your awesome contributions to the wikipedia. Govindaharihari (talk) 08:11, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

• I never knew you were a lobbyist! Looks like you probably have more political experience than me lol woops –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 02:12, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

TV-related category templates

Hey, I have a question regarding your latest TV-related category templates. Was there a reason why you created both "debut" and "endings" templates, instead of just one?

Take Template:Nationality television series debuts category for example, it checks the pattern "^.+ television series debuts$", but you could just do here a "if pattern1 (debut) ok, then pass debut-params, elseif pattern2 (endings) ok, then pass endings-params, else error. Then to Template:Nationality television series debuts category/core you currently pass "country" and "nationality", but here you can also pass either "debut" or "endings" which you can then use in the category (or header text where present). So here, for example [[Category:Television series debuts by country|{{{nationality}}}]]" can be [[Category:Television series {{{type}}} by country|{{{nationality}}}]]". --Gonnym (talk) 10:31, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi Gonnym

Thanks for your question. These things are a bit of a toss-up. Over the years I came round to the view that category header templates are a good thing for many sets, especially if they can a) handle all except a few edge cases, and b) are intelligent and don't require parameters. They make it much easier to create new categories, reducing errors and creating consistent parenting and presentation across the set. That's good for both readers and editors.

The problem is that both A and B increase complexity, which reduces maintainability. In general, I think that maintainability gets less critical as usage levels increase. So the cite templates use Module:Citation/CS1, which is an utter monster of a code farm, but it's used on over 4 million pages (nearly all in article space), so I reckon it justifies requiring expert maintainers. Similarly Template:Infobox, with ~3.5 million transclusions.

I feel that in these cases the transclusion count will range from ~100 (for the container cats) to the low thousands for the by-year cats, and they are used on the relative backwater of categories (much lower viewing than articles) which isn't a big enough or sufficiently widely-viewed set to attract many coding wizards. I have stretched the complexity about as far as I want to go for this level of usage. The crudity of the Lua-based pattern-matching matching would make the code even more complex if if I added that extra layer, esp because parser functions don't do if/elseif/else, just if/else, so it would take quite a lot more code (or some hacks which produce code that is less verbose but more obscure). I could write that code easily enough, but each step of added complexity creates a corresponding fall in maintainability.

Over the last 4 decades, I have had several occasions where complexity led to abandonment when key personnel changed, so I am very wary of creating similar problems on en.wp. So in this case it seemed better to just fork each type of template, and have one template for each type of category.

That last para is a judgment call about fuzzy boundaries, and I won't swear that I have got the balance entirely right. What do you think of that explanation? If you can demo a version which does both without getting too ugly, I'd be happy to take a look. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:29, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I completely understand your point about the complexity (which is part of the reason I would have gone the Lua way, as I find template code horrible in that regard). The reason I brought this up was because I changed something in one of the other templates, only latter noticing the same issue, which was when I noticed that the debut/endings template call different /core templates. I'll make a mock up later today as I've used if/elseif/else in template code before without any hacks needed. I'm pretty sure (but I might be wrong) that it won't add any layer of real complexity to the code. --Gonnym (talk) 11:37, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

See Template:Nationality television series debuts category/sandbox and Template:Nationality television series debuts category/core/sandbox on how this works without any problems with barely any change to the structure. In Lua this can be a bit more efficient, as there isn't need to find the title parts multiple times. --Gonnym (talk) 13:31, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

@Gonnym: Sorry for not replying more promptly ... but many many thanks for making this version. It inspired me to explore the idea, and I have devised what I think is a slightly neater way of achieving the same goal, which I have implemented at Template:(Dis)estCatUSstateCentury and Template:YYYY (dis)establishments in one of the Thirteen Colonies. Basically, my variation is to use string:find to check both versions of the title at the outset, which removes the need for the second call to the core.

I am going to implement that now on the TV templates ... and then do it on other establishments/disestablishments templates. Thanks again for all your help on this; if you hadn't poked me about it, I'd not have tried it.

@Fayenatic london: you may also be interested in this. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:57, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@Gonnym: I have now made five of these TV series debuts or endings category header templates:

• Template:Nationality television series debuts or endings category
• Template:Nationality television series debuts or endings by year category
• Template:Nationality television series debuts or endings by decade category
• Template:Year nationality television series debuts or endings category
• Template:Decade nationality television series debuts or endings category

I may create one or two more, but so far I am very pleased with how this is working out. Thanks again. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:11, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm happy to see these changes! :) Are the following templates leftovers that should be deleted? Template:Decade nationality television series debuts category/core, Template:Decade nationality television series endings category, Template:Decade nationality television series endings category/core, Template:Nationality television series debuts by decade category/core, Template:Nationality television series debuts by year category/core, Template:Nationality television series endings by decade category/core, Template:Nationality television series endings category/core, Template:Year nationality television series debuts category/core, Template:Year nationality television series endings category/core. --Gonnym (talk) 17:40, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@Gonnym: I think they are all leftovers. But I still haven't finished work on the categories (about 7,000 done and and 1,200 still go). I want to wait until the work is all done before deleting anything, just in case there is something weird that might require the old stuff. I can't think what that might be, so it's in the realm of Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns ... but I don't want to have to come back and undelete anything. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:52, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Hey, do you mind renaming the helper templates to something that doesn't use CamalCase? It's not only consistent with the other templates in the set and easier to read but also follows the recommendation at WP:TPN. --Gonnym (talk) 11:35, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Gonnym, and thanks again for keeping a close eye on this work.

My initial thought is that I think I would mind.

I deliberately chose CamelCase for {{TVChronoCatsErrCatName}} and {{TVDebutsEndingsAntonym}} for several reasons:

1. To distinguish them from the templates used to create categories, which use standard English descriptive names.
2. To keep the names terse when used in template code, which makes the code easier to read. The main reason for creating them is to make the code easier to read, and since they are used only in the code, that seems to me to be the primary consideration.

WP:TPN says "'Template names are easiest to remember if they follow standard English spelling, spacing, and capitalization". But because these templates are very unlikely to be used to by most editors, the need to remember them hardly applies. If you look for example at the source code of {{Year television series debuts or endings category/core}}, there is a line:

{{Category see also if exists|{{{year}}} television series {{TVDebutsEndingsAntonym|{{{type}}}}}}}

I think that the legibility (and hence maintainability) of that line would be reduced if it was changed to something like:

{{Category see also if exists|{{{year}}} television series {{Antonym of either of the words debuts or endings when used in television series categories|{{{type}}}}}}}

Does that make sense? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:25, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

To me personally, it would be easier to read as a sentence, but I'm sure that long version isn't the only possible name this template can have. While {{TVDebutsEndingsAntonym}} is used only in TV templates, it has nothing in the code that cares for TV-specific names. It only accepts |1= and checks if it is either "endings", "debuts" or something else, so the template name also does not need to mention "TV" in it. Niether does it's usage in category has any connection to it. So something like {{Antonym of debuts or endings}} could work. It's short and easy to read. --Gonnym (talk) 12:45, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@Gonnym: I considered {{Antonym of debuts or endings}}, but rejected that idea because it lacks specificity. There are many antonyms of each of those two words, but this template is specifically for the antonyms as used in television chronology categories. Using a generic name runs the risk that someone will change it to suit some other purpose or to suit their preferred variant of English, and thereby screw up the templates for which it was designed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:53, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok. Heads up Category:British television series debuts has some kind of issue. Also Category:Swedish television series endings. I wish people would report issues instead of just removing the template. --Gonnym (talk) 06:50, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

@Gonnym: Thanks for the pointer. I sorted out Sweden, by creating and populating Category:Swedish television series. Will look again at the British. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

Do you think a Category:20th-century American television series is needed? As there are Category:20th-century American animated television series and Category:20th-century American mystery television series or are those categories not needed? --Gonnym (talk) 18:51, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Your edit warring on Carl Huntington

AGF? Please. You're the one initiating silly, bullshit, tit-for-tat edit warring. How many of the 30 articles remaining in that category have you similarly scrutinized? Are you really going to venture into JPL territory and tear down the encyclopedia simply because some other editor didn't jump through all the hoops you expected them to jump through without them knowing what those hoops are? Wikipedia:Six million articles is a steaming crock of shit in that it invokes the Jimbo quote about "the sum of all human knowledge". This project is nowhere near that stage despite being around for 19 years. Some editors have spent years making countless edits per day every day and have never sought to achieve that. If you spent even a tenth as much time actually improving content as you do running scripts, this project would have been much better off and I would have more incentive to spend time here helping to improve it. As it stands, you appear to be another editor who is only about passing judgment on the content contributions of others without having much to contribute to content yourself. In other words, you're sitting back expecting others to do the real work for you. When you make hundreds of edits a day, you're setting the standard. Expecting casual contributors to do the heavy lifting and then viewing them as "second-class editors" like I saw in someone's comment a few years ago speaks volumes about what that standard really is.

The creation of the Huntington article is emblematic of Wikipedia's problems. A newspaper archive search clearly establishes his notability. Numerous sources refer to his mushing feats as something special and to his fame during the height of that period. That wasn't why the article was created, however. The article was created because he holds a particular title, namely Iditarod champion. This is the same thing driving the creation of other musher biographies, often at the expense of more historically important (read: notable) persons. The editor who created the article performed only the minimum effort necessary to collect a hat over at DYK, as evidenced by the numerous sources overlooked because they couldn't be obtained by picking low-hanging fruit. In the thirteen-and-a-half years I've been here, there are only two statements I've read which I agree with 100 percent. One of them is that DYK encourages self-promotion and bad writing. I'm no longer emotionally invested in this project, where it appears you are. It's very easy for me to walk away and abandon my efforts to improve this article, leaving it for what it really is, a blatant attempt on someone's part to collect a hat (your actions thus far have already proven that if I do walk away, the article will only be torn down, not built). The countless times I've pointed this situation out with articles nominated at DYK or ITN/C has not resulted in any appreciable improvement to the content in question, only the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig. In other words, this evinces the notion that Wikipedia regulars believe readers to be too stupid to know any better or that readers don't actually read encyclopedia entries in depth. This makes your claims of AGF a case of Wikipedia being "the blind leading the blind". RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 18:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

@RadioKAOS: per the notice at the bottom of this page, I prefer to keep discussions in one place. But in this case I think that moving your post across to User talk:RadioKAOS#AGF_please as a reply to my post[1] would be perceived as as hostile, so I won't do that.

Bluntly, RK, you chose to misinterpret my routine cleanup edit[2] on Carl Huntington (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) as persecution of you, and used your edit summary as an opportunity for a rant[3]. You ignored my reply to you, and now came here to post a longer rant because I removed[4] one of the two categories which you added, since it refers to an attribute not mention in the article: see WP:CATVER.

There are indeed many problems with en.wp, but I don't see how any of them will be resolved by adding an unsourced assertion. If it was a mention in the article text, I would have left it in place and added a {{fact}} tag, since the article is not a BLP. However, there is no way of tagging a category as unsourced, so I removed it.

And as to the rest of your post, you appear to be using me as the outlet for your anger about those wider problems ... so I don't think that further discussion is likely to be productive at this time. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:24, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).

Administrator changes

Money emoji

Athaenara • DeltaQuad

Fishhead64 • Kudpung • Mikaey

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad

CheckUser changes

DeltaQuad

Oversight changes

DeltaQuad

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
• A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

Technical news

• Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: BRPever, Krd, Martin Urbanec, MusikAnimal, Sakretsu, Sotiale, and Tks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
• The 2020 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Ajraddatz and Uzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.

---

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:20, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Understanding the category tree

Hi BHG! (I'm happy you're still editing. Also, I'm happy User:Bhg redirects to your userpage, which makes it so easy to find you .) I was trying to figure out how many articles we have about living people vs. non-living people. It's about 950,000 living people per a WP:PetScan of Category:Living people–that part's easy. So I ran a PetScan on Category:People, 10 subcategories deep, excluding Category:Living people. (It's PSID 15662751 and here's the link [5] but warning, it takes a very, very long time to load, so you may not want to click on it.) The result I got is 3,744,430. That is far too high, and, indeed, the results list includes articles like Anarchism, Autism, and our article on the letter A. The article A is a good example to go with because it's in very few categories: Category:ISO basic Latin letters and Category:Vowel letters. How are those categories ending up as sub-categories of Category:People?

My conclusion – and the reason I'm here – is that I am misusing and misunderstanding the category tree. I already know it's not a strict heirarchy, and many subcategories are children of multiple parent categories. But I'm scratching my head about how Category:ISO basic Latin letters and Category:Vowel letters are ending up as subcategories of Category:People, at any level. Do you have any insight on where I'm going wrong, or how to do what I'm trying to do (figure out how many articles are about people, living v. dead)? Is 10 categories "too deep" such that everything is within 10 category levels of everything else? Is the category tree actually a category circle? (Is... is the world actually round and not flat?!) Thanks for any guidance you can offer! - Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 21:13, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi Levivich, and thanks. I am still cleaning up unfinished business, so Ill' be here for another month or so. Beyond that, I'm not sure. Still rethinking after the wonderful response above.

The key thing to remember about the en.wp category system is that per WP:CAT it is primary a navigational tool. That distinguishes it from the de.wp category system, which is (or allegedly used to be) purely mathematical, so that all subcats of people would be people.

All the same, the en.wp category shouldn't be that bad. There used to be a tool to check the path between two categories, but it stopped working, and now I can't even recall its name. Pity; it was a godsend for tasks like this, and I used it eliminate some horrors. I looked on toolforge (https://tools.wmflabs.org/admin/tools#!/search/category), and I thought that https://tools.wmflabs.org/catscan2/reverse_tree.php might help, but it's broken. I suggest you may want to post at WP:VPT asking if anyone knows of a currently-working tool to check that path between two categories. There are lots of v good techie folks at VPT who will know if there is something.

As to your immediate problem, there is a workaround that I use. Instead of checking Category:People+subcats, try Category:Deaths by millennium+subcats; optionally add in Category:Year of death missing and Category:Year of death uncertain. That should be fairy clean.

Hope that helps a wee bit. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:25, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I knew you'd be the lady to ask! Category:Deaths by millennium, Category:Year of death missing and Category:Year of death uncertain +10 lvls subcats = 721,883 [6], which is a more realistic number, but still strikes me as too high, and indeed it has false positives like Iraqi opposition (pre-2003) and Iraqi National Congress. (I thought FM-2030 was a false positive but turns out, no, that's the actual name of a person.) I'll ask over at the pump about a replacement tool for category pathing (is that what you call it?). My ultimate goal is to update User:Smallbones/1000 random results but with real counts instead of basing it off a sample, if possible. (Let me know if you have any interesting in working on such a project–your high-level understanding of the encyclopedia's organization [or lack thereof] would be invaluable.) Thanks again for the help! – Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 03:45, 3 March 2020 (UTC) Update: There's already a conversation about this from just last week: WP:VPT#Is there a tool, that can search a path through categories, to find a way how an article falls into some category?. Go figure. – Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 03:48, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Very glad to read that BHG is still rethinking...

The above was too tempting a puzzle to ignore. I don't plan to spend more time on it, but replied at the VPT link above. – Fayenatic London 21:43, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich: briefly, as this has been discussed elsewhere before (a number of years ago), it is also possible (or used to be possible) to get an approximation by looking at the number of articles tagged by Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography. The claim there (click edit over there to see how that number is produced) is that there are currently 1,665,526 articles within the scope of WikiProject Biography, but this will also include 'group' articles, so that is still only an approximation. Some of the earlier discussion will be found in the talk page archives of that WikiProject, and you could ask there. There will also be a fairly large number (unsure of the size of this) of pages that are not tagged with the right category or talk page tag to be picked up by these counting methods. The BLP figure should be the most accurate one, but some BLPs out there will still be untagged as well, and some articles containing material on living people that are not biographies might be 'tagged' by the category (not sure about that). BLPs used to be around a fifth of the 'people' articles (I can dig up the old estimates if needed), but I may be mis-remembering that as it seems they are currently over half (57%) so it seems that Wikipedia is continuing to create articles on living people and may be slowing down in terms of creating articles on non-living people. (PS. For Category:Living people the current (approximate) number is right there on the category page: "approximately 943,573 total"). Carcharoth (talk) 14:28, 5 March 2020 (UTC) @Levivich: apologies for the second ping, but I found some possibly relevant bits: (1) A Signpost article I wrote just over 10 years ago here (hmm, someone should re-do that survey); (2) The value of numbers (old thread at Wikipedia talk:Biographical metadata); (3) here: "Thom Hickey at WorldCat recently counted the number of biographical articles on Wikipedia using Category:Births by year and Category:Deaths by year, and reached the total 283,655 Dsp13 12:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)" (@Dsp13:; (4) here: "I'm part of the way through building a list of articles within the subcategories of Category:Dead people, and already I have a list of over 100,000 articles. My (wild) estimate is that biographies form ~25% of the over 1 million articles on Wikipedia. [...] kingboyk 16:28, 7 August 2006 (UTC)". @Kingboyk:. Carcharoth (talk) 14:57, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Carcharoth, thanks for all this info! Very interesting! I have a lot of reading to do – Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:17, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I think what I was remembering with the "one-fifth" bit was that biography articles (in around 2008) were about 20% of the articles on Wikipedia. I still can't find the earlier discussions, which is very annoying, but will drop you a note if I find them. If you do come up with a current set of article statistics (and a better way of generating them), please let me know. Carcharoth (talk) 17:23, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

They are now about 25%. This is probably the one and only thing for which Wikidata is useful. There is a lot of discussion on this topic, as you can imagine, over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red. This extended discussion from last year is especially illuminating, and links to the work being done by User:Andrew Gray and others. Johnbod (talk) 18:25, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Or just these stats from Wikidata. Johnbod (talk) 20:25, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Category:Members of the Parliament of England (pre-1707)

I've withdrawn the CFD so you can discuss with other people on what to do with the category and the constituency categories. ミラP 19:10, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Category:Members of the Parliament of England (pre-1707) by parliament has been nominated for merging

Category:Members of the Parliament of England (pre-1707) by parliament, which you created, has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Rathfelder (talk) 17:19, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

March 2020

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. ミラP 22:23, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

For the record, that ANI discussion is archived at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1031#BHG_again.

The outcome was that the complainant User:Miraclepine (who signs themself as ミラ) was indefinitely blocked for WP:CIR. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:57, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry

Walk in, chips and sauce for everyone  :)

Hit the wrong contribs button before blocking. You’re now the first victim of being accidentally blocked be me. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:31, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Tony gets a trout. Hehehe –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 14:51, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

That was probably a deserved fish, but Tony is one of the good guys, so I think he deserves chips with that. And curry sauce. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

Hi TonyBallioni

We're all human, and mistakes happen. Thanks for remedying this one so promptly and for your speedy apology ... but it would have been helpful if the unblock had used a more informative explanation than just "ugh". I hope that doesn't get used by miscreants as a stick to beat me with. I fear that I will need to bookmark the diff[7] of your apology above.

Anyway, congrats for your solution[8] at the ANI thread. It's a pity when it has to come to that, but I think it was the right decision. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:53, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

If you want I can block you for a second to note the previous block was a misclick. Up to you. I’ve seen it happen enough that I thought it’d be obvious to anyone looking, but get your concerns. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:57, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Tony, but I think that extending the block log would be worse than leaving it as it is. It's done now, and you're probably right that the v prompt unblock will be evident. It's a pity that there isn't some power for bureaucrats to amend block logs so that an easily-done good faith misclick like this doesn't become a permanent part of someone's record.

Anyway, the main thing is that the timewaster is no longer wasting people's time. So we can all get back to work. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:03, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

If you both agree to it, I wouldn't see any issue with redacting the relevant entry from the block log since it's clearly there in error. It theoretically would breach policy, but since neither of you are likely ever to want to use it as evidence against the other, I'd be willing to apply IAR and take the hit should one of the usual busybodies haul me off to Arbcom over it. ‑ Iridescent 16:10, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Iridescent, that's v kind of you. I absolutely would never want to use that against TonyBallioni, so I'd like this redacted.

But it's Tony's actions, so I'll leave the final decision to Tony. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:19, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I have no objection if Iri wants to redact it per IAR. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:21, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm now having second thoughts, as if I revdelete it, it will still be visible to admins in the block logs with the reason hidden. (I just checked on the long-suffering User:ThisIsATest; logged-in as a non-admin the edits are fully hidden, but logged-in as an admin they show as greyed out with the "(Username or IP removed) (log details removed) (edit summary removed)" summary.) That might actually be worse than leaving the "ugh" in situ, as it will mean admins looking at it in future will potentially assume that it was some kind of child-protection or legal block that's been hidden by the WMF; even though it means more paperwork, it might be better asking Arbcom to oversight the relevant log entries. ‑ Iridescent 17:37, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

That’s fine from my end. In terms of OS: I’m obviously not going to suppress it myself, and I doubt this arbcom would. It’s likely there to stay :/ TonyBallioni (talk) 17:43, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

(ec) Thanks again, Iridescent. I wasn't aware of that twist, but I agree that the whiff of legal smoke is best avoided.

If you feel up to making the request to ArbCom, that'd be great. Or does that need to be done by me? Or by TonyBallioni? I dunno the procedure at all, so I am in your hands. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:44, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

You could ask, but it doesn’t fall under the oversight policy as written, and in my opinion the current ArbCom is probably on the stricter end of the spectrum on their reading of policy re: CU/OS (that’s not a bad thing). I don’t think it’s likely to be suppressed, and they’d likely point to all the other admins with misclick blocks in the log as a “no big deal” type of thing. (I’ll ping Bishonen because she’s the first example that comes to mind of this, but there are others.) Anyway, up to you. I don’t mind whatever as it was a misclick on my end. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:50, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

There is at least one precedent for Arbcom oversighting a block log, albeit that was different circumstances (the block reason was "hate speech" so there were reasonable grounds to think people would draw seriously negative conclusions from seeing the incorrect log entry). I assume it's safe to say that in light of Recent Unpleasantness at least some arbs have this talkpage watchlisted and will be aware of this thread. ‑ Iridescent 18:11, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Iridescent: I happened to be watching from another (as yet unresolved! any category enthusiasts around?) matter. I think simple revision deletion would be fine if consensus exists to perform same: the revision deletion itself has a log entry for any future administrators to understand the reason for the revision deletion e.g.. The relevant policy is Wikipedia:Revision deletion#Log redaction which calls for "consensus or Arbcom agreement" to redact logs. Suppression might raise more questions than it quells. (Does the log entry just disappear altogether?)

While testing, I saw I had the ability to change the "tags" of the log entry. What about just adding a tag "Mistaken block"? –xeno^talk 01:15, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

xeno, tagged this as "revert" and there's a log entry somewhere saying it was a misclick. Figuring out tagging and the like is a bit beyond me, but I tried. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:13, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

talk page stalker - phab:T160233 has a patch pending that would accomplish that (allowing annotations in the block log) DannyS712 (talk) 21:14, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

That looks stalled DannyS712, is someone going to pitch it at WP:VPR? –xeno^talk 01:15, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

@Xeno: maybe when I have time... way too much stuff to do. Do you (or anyone else watching) want to open a discussion? DannyS712 (talk) 01:17, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

(exec. summary: Danny wrote code to add comments to block logs but it won't be considered for addition to MediaWiki without a project on record as actually wanting the feature.) DannyS712, can the comments be inserted anywhere or do they just go onto the next line of the block log? –xeno^talk 01:23, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

@Xeno: next line. See the screenshot at [9] - basically its to replace the 1 second blocks used today. Some places where this can be used: Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Recording in the block log, Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Recording in the block log after a "clean start". Some places where this could have been useful (random): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=User%3AAanmoldhiman (note in the log that the block now has a different reason, rather than unblocking just to reblock), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=User%3AREMEndofTheWorld (to correct the reason, instead of unblocking just to reblock). Some points of caution: shouldn't be used to issue warning, but rather just in place of the current places where this should be used DannyS712 (talk) 01:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

"shouldn't be used to issue warning" Tasty beans! Beware of unintended consequences... –xeno^talk 01:45, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Template:Nationality television seasons by decade category

This template, which you created today, seems to contain an error. Many category pages transcluding it have popped up in Category:ParserFunction errors. See, for example, Category:Canadian television seasons by decade. Deor (talk) 19:56, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Deor. Now fixed[10]. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:03, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

TV templates part 2

I've been playing around with module code to see if groups of the TV templates can be combined.

Module:Sandbox/Gonnym/sometest5 is an example of combining the code from {{Year in television category}}, {{Decade in television category}} and (a not created) {{Century in television category}} and their /core counterparts. You can test this on Category:1938 in television, Category:1930s in television and Category:20th century in television by placing {{#invoke:Sandbox/Gonnym/sometest5|main}}. This basically reduces 6 templates to 2 (template/module). What do you think? --Gonnym (talk) 20:07, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks for trying this, Gonnym. I think that the proliferation of intricate templates has gotten to the point where something like that would be a good idea in principle.

I had had mulled over this a little in the last few days and had formed some some vague notions, but I'm getting a bit tired tonight ... so I hope you will forgive me for not even looking at them until tomorrow, when I hope my head will be clearer. I have enough energy left to continue down the path I started on, but not enough to engage with new concepts, or ti give meaningful feedback. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:48, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure, there is no rush (and any module work is anyways based on your research and template code, so that isn't wasted work). --Gonnym (talk) 20:51, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Correct category

Hi this edit is wrong[11] Because Counties change, Please create them, not delete them, See also here. Thank you M.k.m2003 (talk) 22:42, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

@M.k.m2003, please create the articles, citing sources, ... and only then create the category page.

Your edits placed many dozens of articles to a non-existent category, in edit which included no edit summary to explain why you had done it. In many of the articles which I checked, the county name had not been changed, so the article said the place was in one county, and the category said another county. Categories should reflect the content of articles, and changes such as this should be sourced: see WP:CATVER. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:48, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

These edits require 2 days Because of 500 edits And sorry I didn't explain M.k.m2003 (talk) 23:07, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Maybe you don't know But I'm not allowed to create a category (User_talk:M.k.m2003/Archive_1#Blocked_2) I thought you didn't know! Anyway thank you M.k.m2003 (talk) 23:16, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

You can go back to the first Because I don't want to change the category again And I'll finish the pages tomorrow Only the category should be created Which is created as soon as the articles are moves. Thank you M.k.m2003 (talk) 23:51, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

M.k.m2003: If you are not allowed to create a category, then you should refrain from this task. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:13, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Draft: InfoBeans

Hi BrownHairedGirl,

Could you please take a moment to review the Draft: InfoBeans and suggest the specific changes required to make it notable for inclusion in Wikipedia. Everything in the article is sourced from news articles, official reports of the company. If there are particular statements you object to I would appreciate you letting me know and I can rephrase them.

I am not getting a clear idea about how this article is not meeting the guideline as I can see the similar articles in the mainspace and are active. Reviewed the below articles and many more with the similar flow of content and third party references used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCL_Technologies

I'm new to Wikipedia and willing to work with you to remove or rephrase the article to meet the notability guideline of Wikipedia. Please help me in editing the content.

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1994vd (talk • contribs) 05:48, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Category:Harare Polytechnic alumni has been nominated for discussion

Category:Harare Polytechnic alumni, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Coyets (talk) 16:59, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Jordanian television series endings

A tag has been placed on Category:Jordanian television series endings requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:00, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Baba Farid University of Health Sciences alumni

A tag has been placed on Category:Baba Farid University of Health Sciences alumni requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:39, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Articles with Ladino-language external links

A tag has been placed on Category:Articles with Ladino-language external links requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Gonnym (talk) 22:07, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

In media

Question, do you think that the categories of xx-century media (Category:20th-century media) should be moved to "Category:20th-century in media"? The decades (Category:1900s in media) and years (Category:1900 in media) are using "in". --Gonnym (talk) 08:47, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

You are removing categories

Do you realize that this edit to Category:2017 beginnings removed Category:21st-century beginnings? Was this deliberate? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:16, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Ah. Seems deliberate because it's in a child category. Brilliant. Keep up the good work and ignore me. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:17, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, per WP:SUBCAT, Category:2017 beginnings should not be in both Category:2010s beginnings and its parent Category:21st-century beginnings.

So I have rejigged Template:Beginnings by year to stop it populating both. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:31, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Category:1950 in Taiwan and subsequent categorization

Hello, I've noticed that your placement of {{Year in country category}} has subcategorized all years in Taiwan within years in China. This is correct for Category:1946 in Taiwan through Category:1949 in Taiwan, as the Republic of China controlled both Taiwan and mainland China. However, I suggest that you reconsider the subcategorization, from 1950 onwards as from that year, the Government of the Republic of China, no longer exercised effective control over mainland China. Likewise, the government that replaced the Republic of China on the mainland, the People's Republic of China, does not have effect control over the island of Taiwan. Firstly, consider an example from the Chinese Wikipedia, in which zh:Category:2012年台灣 is not a subcategory of zh:Category:2012年中國.

As another example, Hong Kong has been a special administrative region of the PRC since 1997. Category:2020 in Hong Kong reflects the fact that this rule continues today. However, Category:1995 in Hong Kong is subcategorized within Category:1995 in British Overseas Territories and not within Category:1995 in China.

Taiwan's sovereignty is muddled in the present day due to several transfers and other factors, but it was under Qing rule until 1895 when it was transferred to Japan and invasion. As a result, Category:1895 in Taiwan is subcategorized under Category:1895 in the Japanese colonial empire and Category:1895 in China, because Taiwan was ruled by both governments in that year. However, from Category:1896 in Taiwan, categories referencing China are not included, because Taiwan was not under Chinese rule. Category:1945 in Taiwan is rightly a subcategory of Category:1945 in China, and Category:1945 in the Japanese colonial empire, which references to rule under two governments in one calendar year, when Japanese rule ended after World War II. The government of the People's Republic of China and the government of the Republic of China have been separate entities since 1950, so from then on, years in Taiwan should not be subcategorized as years in China. Vycl1994 (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

@Vycl1994: there are several different ways of viewing this, and I chose what I thought was the least controversial. Here's why.

The Taiwan/China thing is an unusual case, and possibly unique. In many cases, there is an asymmetric view of sovereignty, e.g. in Abkhazia which is de facto sovereign, but is regarded by Georgia as part of its territory. That's common to many other cases of secession, or of contested colonisation. The example of pre-1997 Hong Kong was of contested colonisation, which produced a clash of views similar to that in Abkhazia.

But in Taiwan China, we have broadly two views:

1. the govt of the Peoples Republic of China regards Taiwan as a part of China, but accept that it does not currently have de facto control of the island of Taiwan.
2. the govt of the Republic of China regards Taiwan as a part of China, but accept that it does not currently have de facto control of mainland China.

So both parties agree that Taiwan is de jure part of China ... but disagree about which of RoC or PRC is the legitimate govt of the whole.

Yes, there is a non-trivial Taiwanese independence movement, but it doesn't hold power ... and United Nations classifies Taiwan as Taiwan, Procince of China".

Given that situation, it seems perverse not to categorise Taiwan as part of China. That would amount on en.wp effectively choosing the view of the Taiwanese independence movement over the view of both the PRC and ROC govts, and the view of the UN. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:43, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Because articles like Government of the People's Republic of China and People's Republic of China redirect to Government of China and China, I don't believe that direct categorization of Taiwan under China is neutral, as it implies that Taiwan is a current part of the PRC. As it stands, English Wikipedia has chosen, not the widely-recognized One-China Policy, but the non-neutral One-China Principle. In a similar way, Chiang Wei-shui was active in politics on Taiwan, and died in Taiwan before Republic of China rule began, so he is listed within Category:Taiwanese politicians, but is not included a member of Category:Political office-holders in the Republic of China on Taiwan, nor is he included within Category:Japanese politicians. English Wikipedia, has I believe, a good system to maintain neutrality in these cases, with the creations of categories such as Category:Political office-holders in the Republic of China on Taiwan and Category:Politicians of Taiwan for people. Perhaps, Category:Years in the Republic of China would be a suitable container category. Vycl1994 (talk) 20:39, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

@Vycl1994: neutrality is maintained by both/and categorisation, rather than by choosing one view over another.

That's why in each of these cases, Taiwan is also categorised in "Cat:YYYY by country". So the current setup reflects the 1992 Consensus, i.e. views of both the PRC and the ROC, and the mibority view of those such as yourself who disagree with the position of both govts and of the UN. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:54, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't say the 1992 Consensus is set in stone by either side, considering developments in January 2019, which that article covers. In addition, the Kuomintang's original candidate for president in 2016 was replaced as her interpretation of the consensus came into question during her campaign. The more recent developments makes it seems as if the consensus is headed toward "agree to disagree" status, in particular when considered alongside the election of a younger reformist in the 2020 Kuomintang chairmanship election. In any case, then, I'll note that Category:2020 in Kosovo and similar need to be subcategorized also. Vycl1994 (talk) 21:23, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

@Vycl1994: I reckon that you are sweating this too much. Please remember that per WP:CAT, the primary purpose of en.wp categories is navigation. They are not some of Linnean classification. The current setup for Taiwan assists navigation.

I think you have a point about Kosovo. I'm not familiar with the nuances of Serbia's stance, but in general I think that is Serbia regards Kosovo as a part of its territory, then Kosovo should be categorised both as an independent country and as part of Serbia. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:32, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Album cat template with navigation

The only one that seems close to 100 is Category:Johnny Cash albums which has 81 but is erroneously included in the tracking category of 100+. Category:Buckethead albums, Category:Jandek albums, etc. I don't see any artist with more than 100 but even if there were only 100, how would a table of contents help navigate it since 200 appear on a single page? I'm just at a loss for how this can be helpful for a category that is used in the Category:Albums by artist scheme. Taking a look at that category, I'm not seeing any 100+ categories, do you? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:19, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

@Koavf: I had done a mismatch, checking for over 80, but labelling the tracking cat as over 100. Now fixed[12]; the tracking cat is now correctly labelled as Category:Albums category with over 80 pages (population: 0).

It can take 24 hours for this to purge, so let's see what the numbers are like when it's all purged.

As to what use, this isn't just "navigation"; it's a table of contents. A cat TOC doesn't just help navigate between pages; it also help navigate within a page, when the listing extends below the fold ... which is why the threshold for {{CatAutoTOC}} is less than the 200 which denotes a full page. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:31, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, Again, maybe I'm dense here but I'm just not understanding the occasion where someone is using this... Maybe if someone has a media phone with KaiOS and can only display 17 lines on a web browser or something...? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:37, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

@Koavf: it's a table of contents. Like we have in every article page with with over 3 sections, even though every article is on a single page. Or like a project page, e.g. WP:CFD/Today.

Did you read below the fold? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:43, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, Are you asking if I read the Wikipedia article on this topic? I am familiar with the concept in newspapers. We don't have tables of contents on every category so I'm asking what the function of it is here. If it's something that is meeting a need and we should have it on categories of 80+ entries, then that is a MediaWiki change that should happen. What is the problem this is solving? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:48, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Effect	Pages	%
No TOC	592,152	87.65%
Standard {{Category TOC}}	72,775	10.77%
{{Large category TOC}}	10,648	1.58%
Total	675,575

@Koavf: the problem is that the abysmally crude MediaWiki category software doesn't automatically add a TOC to any category, even if the category contains 5409492247492 squazillion pages. That is why editors manually add {{CatTOC}} when they think a category needs it.

The problem which {{CatAutoTOC}} solves is the need for editors to do this manually. Just place {{CatAutoTOC}} on the page (or, in most of its uses in a cat header template), and the software will then automatically add or remove the TOC as needed. It's a simple, easily deployed workaround to a failing of MediaWiki. Just shove it in the category header, then forget about it.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:58, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, And why do categories with 80 pages need a table of contents? It's all displayed on one fairly compact page? This is what I'm asking? Who needs this and what does this allow someone to do that he can't do otherwise? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:09, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

@Koavf: sorry, but your failure to properly read what I have written is starting to wear my patience. So I will give you one last reply:

1. once the category listings exceeds a few dozen pages, it extends below the fold. Masses of usability research shows that readers hate scrolling, so a TOC enables the reader to jump directly to the section they want. Try it on e.g. Category:1440s births (currently 115 pages).
2. on an article page, presence a TOC still displays on plenty of compact pages.
3. if like me one you are one of the minority of readers who do scroll, and you don't use the TOC, then just scroll past it.

Have a nice day. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:18, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, And do you have any citation that readers are unwilling or unable to scroll half a page down? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:26, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

@Koavf: start with two decades of research by usability guru Jakob Nielsen, e.g. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/scrolling-and-attention/ ... which should keep you busy for a few days. To keep up-to-date subscribe to his AlertBox newsletter at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/subscribe/

Then do your own googling for other studies.

I find it exasperating to discuss things with you. Apart from your long-term reluctance to clearly communicate your own intentions or reasoning, you repeatedly fail to engage fully with replies to you, requiring lots of repetition ... and you don't do your own research. The effect is like trying to work with a student whose attention is elsewhere, or to have a phone conversation with someone who is busy watching television.

I think you've had more than enough of my time for now. I am going to leave this section open in case anyone else wants to comment, but please don't you reply again to this thread unless I ping you. Thanks. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:42, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, Your problem is that I don't do research to substantiate your claims? That's not how it works. It's actually totally fair for me to ask you to show some proof of what you're claiming. I've read books and reports by Neilsen for over 20 years and so I'm willing to believe he's discussed this but I just can't recall it. If you can't actually show that this is a problem that is being solved, then that's not my fault. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:44, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

There you go again ... writing as if you have not read a singe word I have written. I have shown the problem, and I pointed to the research explaining what the problem is. Yet you reply if you can't actually show that this is a problem that is being solved, then that's not my fault. Not: your repeated failure to read and comprehend what has been written is your problem, not mine.

And I don't believe your claim that you have read books and reports by Neilsen for over 20 years. He has banged on about scrolling for years, based on extensive lab testing.

You also apparently failed to comprehend my request I am going to leave this section open in case anyone else wants to comment, but please don't you reply again to this thread unless I ping you. Since that was not clear enough, let me spell it out very clearly: STOP WASTING MY TIME. DO NOT POST AGAIN IN THIS THREAD UNLESS I LEAVE A MSG on YOUR TALK ASKING YOU TO POST HERE. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:54, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Tourist attractions in Viken (county)

A tag has been placed on Category:Tourist attractions in Viken (county) requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 01:44, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject Demographics

Hello, I left you two messages over on the talk page for that Wiki Project. Nerd271 (talk) 17:37, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nerd271: I have replied[13] at WT:WikiProject_Demographics#Project_revival.

In a nutshell, you are putting the cart before the horse. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:45, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I disagree. I specifically mentioned the front page, not the talk page. For our mutual convenience, let's keep the conversation over there. Nerd271 (talk) 17:53, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

No, you did NOT specifically mention the front page. And yes, let's keep the conversation there -- so stop posting here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:56, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

"Prostitute" cats

Hiya BHG, I found a "prostitutes" cat for Nepal in the article alert today. Naturally, I got curious how a Nepali prostitute could have become wikipedia notable. Turns out the article is Tulasa Thapa. It seems very wrong to me to categorise someone sold into sexual slavery as a prostitute (I find that insulting to both). Is there room for distinctions like that in our cat policies, or does she become a prostitute because the article has the word, and we can do nothing about it? Thought you might know. Best, Usedtobecool ☎️ 21:02, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Good question, @Usedtobecool ... albeit about an ugly topic.

My own initials thoughts are that anyone whose body is hired out for cash in return for sexual services is a prostitute, even if they are coerced in to doing so ... in the same way that a painter is still a painter even there is a gun to her head while she wields the brush.

It turns out that we also have Category:Victims of forced prostitution, so I added Tulasa Thapa to that. Poor woman . --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:15, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Template:Year in country category

This has suddenly started populating category redirects when the country in question subsequently changed its name - see User:RussBot/category redirect log for the ones that have so far shown up. Any idea what's causing this and how to negate it? Timrollpickering (Talk) 12:56, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the headsup, @Timrollpickering.

I made some tweaks yesterday to Template:Year in country category/core, which may not have worked as intended. I will look into it now. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:01, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

OK, I see the the list corresponds closely with Category:Template Year in country category with newname parameter. I need to add parameter for the year when the name changed, so that it can know whether to use "Category:19Y0s in NewName" or "Category:19Y0s in OldName". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:11, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Update: @Timrollpickering, that should all now be fixed. I have updated Template:Year in country category, so that it now takes a pair of parameters |newname= and |newsnamestart=. This allows intelligent handling of namecahnges.

I have't yet updated the documentation (because a number of other changes are underway), but the usage is fairly simple, as in these examples:

• Category:1960 in Nyasaland — {{Year in country category|Nyasaland|Africa|the British Empire|newname=Malawi|newnamestart=1964}}
• Category:1977 in Burma — {{Year in country category|Burma|Southeast Asia|newname=Myanmar|newnamestart=1989}}

Now to deal with the countries which changed their name twice in one century. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:38, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Category:1930s in Siam, Category:1980s in Myanmar and Category:2010s in Eswatini (all the decades the name changed) are all stubbornly filling up. I think they're the only ones. Timrollpickering (Talk) 11:45, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Timrollpickering. Those are all now fixed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:05, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

PS @Timrollpickering. I have just worked my way through North Macedonia. I think I have sorted everything, but if you spot any glitches, please let me know. -BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:11, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Another case is Category:20th century in the Czech Republic - the correct category uses "Czech lands". Timrollpickering (Talk) 14:59, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks again, Timrollpickering.

Actually, the correct category is Category:20th century in the Czech Republic, since that's the newer name. It's the other pages which need fixes , so I'll get onto that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:02, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

The current title was set by a CFD discussion some years ago. Timrollpickering (Talk) 15:06, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@Timrollpickering: I got a solution, which is to split it. Czech lands pre-split, then Czech Republic. Not perfect, but probably least worst--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:08, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Years of the 20th century in the Orange Free State

A tag has been placed on Category:Years of the 20th century in the Orange Free State requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:45, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

April 2020 at Women in Red

April 2020, Volume 6, Issue 4, Numbers 150, 151, 159, 160, 161, 162 April offerings at Women in Red. Online events: New: Gender studies / Dance / Geofocus: Caucasus Photo and image campaign: #VisibleWikiWomen Continuing initiatives: #1day1woman / Sports! Editor feedback: Schedule planning at the Virtual Ideas Cafe Join the conversations on our talkpage Social media: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest / Twitter Stay in touch: Join WikiProject Women in Red / Opt-out of notifications

--Rosiestep (talk) 14:58, 23 March 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Sorry ...

Enough, long ago.
This has been one of the least edifying episodes I have seen on my talk page for a long time, so I am closing it and giving myself the final word. (It's my talk page, so I get the final word here).
 
I also reckon that that this is on a path towards WP:ANI, so I am summarising the saga here to provide background for any ANI thread.
 
There is an open discussion at WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 March 24#Muiscal_compositions, in which Gerda Arendt and I had a brief exchange. Gerda came here to tell me that she had a self-imposed limit of two comments per discussion. I think that's a very foolish stance, but it is her call.
 
Francis Schonken then piled on with repeated attempts to bully me into withdrawing the nomination, and Gerda joined in the discussion. So the pair of them had effectively forked the CFD discussion onto my talk ... but Gerda then resumed posting to the discussion page (at 06:48, 25 March 2020‎[14] and 11:03, 25 March 2020[15]. So the whole basis of coming here was baloney, and WP:MULTI applies. Both editors are sufficiently experienced to know not to fork discussions.
 
The substantive position of the pair of them is a series of specious arguments thrown out in a blatant FUD exercise to support their WP:IDONTLIKEIT stance:
 
Gerda has been posting away at the CFD, but has explicitly refused to even read the list of nominated categories[16], and accused me overlooking a category[17] even though it was explicitly mentioned in the nominating statement. Gerda also claims that adding 8 characters to the category names will make them cluttered.[18] Spouting away in an XFD discussion without reading either the nominator's rationale or the list of nominated pages is blatant disruption, because it wastes the time of other editors who have to point out the errors made by the decision not to read, and of those who might read the saga of falsehoods and corrections.
 
As to Francis, he repeatedly makes the false assertion that WP:NCM requires the use of the bare word "compositions", rather than musical compositions. This is utter nonsense: there is no guidance anywhere on that page about using "compositions" rather than "musical compositions" in any context, the only mention of the Bach category which Francis cites is in the section WP:NCM#by_last_name_only, which is explicitly about disambiguating personal names, not about "compositions"/"musical compositions". Francis did this three times: (06:14[19] (rebutted  11:21[20]), 11:43[21] (rebutted 12:04[22]), 12:44[23] (rebutted 13:11[24]). Repetition of falsehoods is a disruptive attrition strategy.
 
To top it all, Francis has been using his barrage of falsehoods as a tool in his attempts to bully me into withdrawing the nomination (which I can't do, per WP:CSK, because the proposal has supporters). Francis has tried this three times at CFD (11:18[25], 11:43 [26], and 12:44[27]) ... and twice on this talk page (9:01[28] and 12:19[29]).
 
I was getting fed up with this nonsense, so at 12:27[30] I explicitly asked Francis not to post here again ("get the hell off my talk page" .. "Do NOT reply to this here", edit summary "GET LOST"), but Francis replied here at 12:49[31], again claiming that the discussion is a terrible time sink. I reverted that post.
 
I don't believe for a second that Francis is unable to understand "get the hell off my talk page", "Do NOT reply to this here" and "GET LOST". His decision to ignore that was just WP:HARASSMENT.
 
The only time sink here is Francis's strategy of disrupting consensus formation by barrages of FUD and falsehood. Creating a shitstorm and then claiming that the said self-started shitstorm is a time-sink is a WP:GAMEing strategy, and Francis's contempt for truth extends even to claiming in his post at 12:19[32] that the CFD is is going nowhere good, even though at the time the CFD page showed 7 editors backing the proposal, and 3 opposed.
 
This pair of truth-averse, tag-teaming bullies have wasted several hours of my time. The community is entitled to expect much better from a pair of experienced editors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:16, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

... I am trained (by arbcom) to make two comments per discussion, no more, - it's a wise thing, just please don't think I'm not polite in case you miss a reply ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:08, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

OK, @Gerda Arendt. I think that's a bad principle, but if that's the one you follow, that's up to you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:22, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

That's not a principle, it's a saver of time and other ressources. I invented it (in my arbcase) to shorten infobox discussions, then they turned it against me in the decision, and I spent unpleasant time on AE for making a third comment. I need none of that any more. When I see that I will not be understood, I rather leave early. I tried harder here, only to feel more wounded than if I had given up sooner. Call it self-protection. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:00, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, I'd kindly suggest you retract your Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 March 24#Musical compositions proposal, because it is based on a misrepresentation of the *actual* WP:C2D guidance. The example I gave is

• Category:Lists of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach

which according to the actual WP:C2D guidance should be named as it currently is, per the eponymous article:

• List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach

and not be renamed to (according to your proposal)

• Category:Lists of musical compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach

while then it would no longer conform to the actual WP:C2D guidance. This is a time sink for editors who have better things to do than point out to categorisation experts what the actual rules are, and prevent them from embarking on a recategorisation scheme proposal that would mean a massive breach of elementary rules (no matter how many editors you already convinced of wandering from actual rules based on an erroneous reasoning). --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:26, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Francis, the whole problem would be solved - I think - if Musical composition was moved to (primary topic) Composition. Would you initiate it? My efforts in WP:RM all failed, because I am not as versed in guidelines and policy as you are. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:36, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not going to turn this into an even bigger time sink. The bottom line for BrownHairedGirl is that, as a categorisation expert, they should not have misrepresented the WP:C2D guidance in their opening statement at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 March 24#Musical compositions, and for that reason the initiator of this time sink should retract their proposal, as the shortest way to stop the time sink. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:01, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Francis Schonken should read WP:C2D in full, in particular the last criterion. Oculi (talk) 10:07, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes I read it, that's why I suggest BrownHairedGirl *retract* their proposal. If the proposal passes for all 1,342 categories, the next step would be a CfD in the other direction, exactly by that last criterion, while e.g. "compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach" is unambiguous in mainspace article titles. In other words, whoever wrote that last criterion should have invited to make the thought experiment that if categories included in the set proposed for renaming have *eponymous mainspace articles* then the C2D rule applies to these individual categories too, and that, unless these mainspace articles support all instances of the set renaming, proposing the set makes no sense while shooting in its own foot. I expect categorisation experts like BrownHairedGirl to realise that, whether or not it is explicitly stated in the guidance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:27, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Soldiering on

@BrownHairedGirl: what I see happening is the "soldiering on" syndrome – which has caused so much damage before. Never taking a step back, never taking a minute to ponder someone else's take on the issue at hand. The last time I saw it happening I could in the end no longer support your stance, while the "soldiering on", irrespective of circumstances and meaningful thoughts by others, only further demonstrated your stance was untenable. Please retract your ill-conceived Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 March 24#Musical compositions proposal. This is going nowhere good – and frankly, the "time sink" aspect is becoming overwhelming. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:19, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken, I will be very blunt here.

You are engaged in an exercise of disruption and FUD, and you are trying to bully me into withdrawing a nomination which has clear majority support, despite the efforts of you and Gerda. (Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 March 24#Musical_compositions is currently showing 7 editors backing the proposal, and 3 opposed). So, this is far from what your claim as going nowhere good. It's going in the direction I wanted, albeit with a noisy barrage of WP:IDONTLIKEIT disruption by you. The only 'time sink' aspect is your disruptive antics.

I will NOT be bulled, by you or by anyone else.

The pair of you have engaged in a series of mischievous attempts at specious argument, including:

1. Gerda's attempt to claim that the word "composition" is unambiguous because everyone knows that Bach composed music. That's blatant cherrypicking: there are over 900 subcats of Category:Compositions by composer, and the vast majority of those composers's names are unknown to the general reader for whom we build Wikipedia.
2. Your utterly dishonest attempts to claim that WP:NCM guides the use of "compositions" rather than "musical compositions". It says no such thing. That is pure fabrication on your part.
3. Your blatantly false assertions that "musical compositions" is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "compositions" or "compositions in YYYY". As noted in the nomination, the page composition is a dab page.
4. Your repeated attempts to disrupt the readability of the nomination by dumping the full list of categories into the discussion page, even though the full list is already on the talk page, where it is more readable because it is grouped under headings.

Your disruptive conduct is on getting close to being an ANI issue, and your attempt to bully me into withdrawal is completely unacceptable.

Now get the hell off my talk page, and clean up your act while there is still time. You are welcome back here to discuss other issues, but on this topic, please stick to the CFD page. (And for clarity, this is my talk page, so I get the last word here. Do NOT reply to this here). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:27, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Captaincy General of Chile

These categories have just been renamed with lots of bits left behind. Timrollpickering (Talk) 00:03, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Timrollpickering. I will get onto it tomorrow. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:06, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Fiction set in years and decades of the 10th century

These categories are to be merged. Timrollpickering (Talk) 14:38, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Timrollpickering, links? What merged to where, and why? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:56, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 March 11#Fiction set in years and decades of the 10th century. Seems to have all been handled by the bot though. Timrollpickering (Talk) 14:59, 25 March 2020 (UTC)